by Greg Iles
"I knew they'd come after us, but I didn't think they'd make such a fuss
about it. Shine too much light on us, and some inevitably shines on
them."
"No, Dieter, listen. They're saying that you and-"
"Apfel."
"Yes, they're saying that you and Apfel killed Erhard Weiss.
They're playing it like a simple murder. They brought Weiss's body up
from the basement and paraded a few lieutenants and pressmen through.
I'll tell you, Dieter, some of the boys were pretty upset. The story is
that you and Apfel were tied into organized crime and Weiss found out.
Most don't quite believe you did it, but everyone's damned angry.
You'd better walk softly if you come up on any old friends."
"I understand, Josef. What about that other matter?"
"Another call went out from an empty office about 16:30 this
afternoon-same destination."
"Pretoria?"
"Right." Steuben's voice dropped lower. "Dieter," he said hesitantly,
"you didn't really kill young Weiss, did you?"
"My God, Josef, you know better than that!"
Steuben hesitated. "What about Apfel? I don't know him."
"He tried to save the boy! They were comrades. Think, Josef.
Weiss was Jewish-that doesn't lead you anywhere?"
Steuben's reply was almost inaudible. "Phoenix."
"Yes. I've got to go now. I want you to stay on duty as long as you
can, Josef. You're my last link to that place.
Someone's got to watch them. And watch yourself, too. Now that I've
shown my true colors, they'll start looking for others. They know we
were friends. I'll use the same story when I call back-Telefon."
"Don't worry," Steuben whispered. "I'm here for the duration.
But ... I'm worried about my family, Dieter. My wife, my little girls.
Did you cover them?"
"Just as I promised. There are two men with them now, good friends of
mine. GSG-9 veterans. No worries there.
Funk couldn't get into your house with anything less than a full-scale
military assault."
"Thank you, my friend."
"Auf Wiedersehen, Josef."
Before Hauer could set the phone in its cradle, Hans broke the
connection and punched in a new number.
"Who are you calling?" Hauer asked.
"None of your goddamn business," Hans snapped. "You can cover your
friends with GSG-9 men, but you can't take twenty minutes to save Ilse?"
"Hans, you don't understand-"
"Eva?" he said loudly.
"Hans!"
"Yes. Eva, I want you to look outside your door and-' "Listen to me,
Hans! Someone is tearing your apartment to pieces right now! That
tells me they haven't found her yet!"
"What? You've seen Ilse?"
"Seen her? I sneaked her out of the apartment tonight just before the
stinking Russians got her! What the hell have you done?"
"Russians!"
Hans's exclamation brought Hauer out of his chair like a cannon shot.
"Tell me, Eva, hurry!"
Eva related the story of their escape from Kosov's team, ending with
Ilse fleeing into the dark alley. Hans slammed his fist against the
table. "But you don't know where she is now?"
"No, but she told me to give you a message."
"What message?"
"Mittelland."
"That's it? One word?"
"That's it. Mittelland, like the canal. I guess she didn't want me to
know anything."
Hans shook his fist in exultation. "Eva, that's it! I know where she's
gone."
"So get her, you damned fool! And you'd better get some serious help. I
don't think your Polizei friends are up to it."
She paused. "And if you come up on a young fellow called Misha .
.
'.YesT' "Kill the bastard. Send him to hell. He cut my face."
Hans felt his heart thump. "What happened?"
"Just find Ilse, Hans. If anything happens to that girl, you're going
to answer to me. And stay the hell away from her-e. Your apartment
sounds like a Bremen bar fight." Eva hung up.
Hauer grabbed Hans's shoulder. "You said Russians."
"Eva said Russians came to the apartment looking for me.
"How does she know they were Russian?"
Hans shrugged. "She's been around, you know? She's an old barmaid who
turns a few tricks for rent money. She got Ilse out of the building,
but that's all she could tell me."
"It must be Kosov," Hauer muttered. "The quiet colonel from Funk's
polygraph session. He knew that test was rigged from the start.
Did Ilse have the papers with her?"
"I don't know."
"For God's sake, Hans, you've got to start thinking like a policeman."
"I don't give a damn about those papers!"
"Quiet! You'll bring Ochs in here. And you'd better give a damn about
those papers. They may be the only thing that can keep us or Ilse alive
now." He held up a forefinger.
"You said you knew where Ilse had gone. Where?"
Hans's eyes narrowed. "Why should I tell you?" he asked, suddenly
suspicious. "Christ, you might have brought me here just to find out
where she is. Where the papers are!
God, you might-2' Hauer slapped him, hard. "Get hold of yourself, Hans!
You brought me here, remember? You've got to trust somebody, and I'm
all you have."
Hans scowled. "Wolfsburg," he said quietly.
"What?"
"Ilse's grandfather has a small cabin on the Mittelland Canal, near
Wolfsburg. It's an old family retreat. The professor must have been
working there and Ilse found out. God, I hope she's made it."
His face clouded. "But how could she?
I've got the car!"
"Train?" Hauer suggested.
"She didn't have any money at home."
"All women have money at home, Hans, believe me. They hide it for
emergencies we never think about."
"Captain, I've got to get to Wolfsburg!"
"I agree. But before I give you the keys, you're going to listen to me
for ten minutes. Then I'll figure out a way for us to get out of
Berlin. You know you'd never make it without my help."
Hans knew Hauer was right. He could never evade Funk's dragnet on his
own. "Ten minutes," he agreed.
Hauer sat down and leaned forward. "You've got to understand something,
Hans. Early this morning you stumbled into a case that I've been
working on for over a year. That's what I meant about Steuben.
There's more that needs protecting at his house than his wife and
children. There's a fireproof safe full of evidence that he and I have
compiled over the past year. Until a couple of hours ago, I had no idea
that Spandau Prison had anything to do with this case, but now I'm
almost certain that it does."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Those papers you found at Spandau aren't just some relic from the past,
Hans. The Russians haven't gone crazy searching for a museum piece.
Those papers pose a very serious threat to someone now-in the present."
Hauer took a cigar from his pocket and bit off the tip.
"Before I tell you anything else, you must understand some thing very
important. Right now, as we speak, Germanythe two Germanys-are very
close to reunificatio
n."
"What? "
"I don't mean it's going to happen tomorrow, or next week. But six
months from now ... a year ... maybe."
"Are you mad?"
Hauer paused to light his cigar. "Most Germans would say so," he said.
"And they would be as wrong as you are. Tell me, as you grew up, didn't
you notice all the societies who clamor for the reunification of the
Fatherland? I don't mean administrative committees plodding through
mountains of paper; I mean the hard-core groups, the ones that exist
only to restore Germany's lost might."
Hans shrugged. "Sure. So what? What's wrong with working to make
Germany strong? I agree with them. Not some of the crazier factions,
maybe, but I want Germany to be united again. One nation, without the
Wall."
Hauer raised an eyebrow.
Hans colored. "It's my country, isn't it? I want it to be strong!"
"Of course you do, boy. So do 1. But there are different kinds of
strength. Some of these groups have some very strange ideals. Old
ideals. Old agendas.' "What do you mean? How do you know?"
Hauer studied his cigar. "Because we've been to their meetings-Steuben
and 1. I stumbled into this whole thing by accident.
About two years ago, I got drawn into a Special Tasks drug case.
The money trail led me to two police officers. In short order I became
aware that quite a few cops were involved in the drug traffic flowing
into and through Germany. And in spite of orders to the contrary, I
began to compile evidence on these officers. Steuben helped me all the
way. It didn't take us long to realize that their drug operation
extended into the highest ranks of the force."
"Prefect Funk?"
"Excellent example. But then things got strange. Pretty soon we
discerned a attem. Every officer involved in the drug traffic was also
a member of a semisecret society called Der Bruderschaft."
"The Brotherhood? I've heard of that."
Hauer exhaled a cloud of blue smoke. "I'm not surprised.
I joined it myself last year. That's what the tattoo is about.
The eye is their symbol. Ever see a policeman with a bandage behind his
right ear? That means he's gotten the mark.
They wear the bandage till the hair grows back. I don't know what the
eye means, but I was only a month away from getting it myself. You get
marked after a year in the group." Hauer stood up and flicked some
cigar ash into Ochs's sink. "The real name of the organization is not
Der Bruderschaft, however; it's Bruderschaft der Phoenix. Have you
heard of that?"
Hans's eyes widened. "I have! It was in the Spandau papers.
Something about the 'soldiers of Phoenix' appeanng before Prisoner
Number Seven."
"Christ, what else do you remember?"
Hans shook his head. "I only remembered that because it was in German,
not Latin."
Hauer began pacing the kitchen. "God, it's so easy to see now.
Der Bruderschaft is neo-Nazi. It would only be natural for them to try
to contact Hess in prison, to try to use him as some kind of mascot.
But maybe Hess didn't like the idea, eh? Maybe-my God," Hauer said
suddenly. "They might well be the ones who killed him! Hess would be
much more valuable to them as a martyr than a pathetic prisoner!"
"Who comes to these Bruderschaft meetings?" Hans asked.
"A bunch of malcontents and young toughs, mostly. You know the type@ops
who won't answer a call to help a Turkish woman who's being beaten in
the street. Most weren't even born until fifteen or twenty years after
the war." Hauer shook his head in disgust. "'They get drunk, argue,
make speeches about throwing the traitors out of Bonn and making Berlin
the capital again. Then they sing Deutschland fiber Alles. If they're
really tanked they sing the Horst Wessel. At first the whole thing
seemed comical.
But after a while I realized something. These clowns were bringing in
millions of marks through their drug operations, yet they didn't seem to
be keeping any of it. No Ferrans, no new houses. Where was all the
money going? I traced the command chain all the way up to Prefect Funk,
but after six months of investigation I hit a dead end."
Hauer's eyes flickered. "Then I had my revelation. It had been right
in front of me all the time. Their money came from drugs, right?
Well, where do the drugs flow in from?"
"The East," Hans said softly.
"Right. So I asked myself, What if their organization extended
laterally, not vertically? You see? How were the drugs getting through
East Germany? Were the Vopos blind?
Hell no. They were allowing the drugs to get through. The East German
police have their own Bruderschaft members."
Hans blinked in astonishment. "The Volkspolizei?"
Hauer nodded. "And the Stasi."
Hans drew back at the mention of the hated East German secret police.
"But why would the Stasi smuggle drugs? For hard currency?"
Hauer shook his head. "Think about being a Stasi agent for a minute,
Hans. What it's really like."
"No thanks."
Hauer waved his cigar. "Sure, a lot of them are scum. But they're
German scum. You see? All day and night they have the Russians leaning
over their shoulders telling them what to do. They hate the Russians
more than we ever could.
They're communists, sure, but what choice do they have?
They've been,under the Russian boot since 1945. So, what do you think
they do? Lie down and take Moscow's crap?
Most of them do." Hauer's eyes gleamed. "But some of them don't.
The HVA-East German intelligence-sucks Moscow's shitpipe. They're like
a German arm of the KGB.
But the Stasi? Forget it. They go their'own way. They can beat the
KGB at their own game and the KGB knows it. If Moscow complains about
the Stasi, Honecker himself tells the Kremlin to mind its own business."
"You sound like you admire the bastards."
Hauer shook his head. "This isn't a case of absolutes, Hans. The point
is that some elements of the Stasi want reunification even more than we
in the West do, and they're willing to fight for it. They want their
slice of the European economic pie, and they know that so long as
they're separate from us, they'll never get it. And that brings us to
the drugs.
"How? Drugs are their slice of the pie?' "No. Drugs are part of the
strategy. I think their theory runs something like this: the more
rapidly the social situation in West Germany breaks down, the more
rapidly the right-wing and nationalist factions in the West consolidate
their power. Think about it. For twenty years the Stasi supplied the
Red Army Faction and other left-wing terrorists with guns and plastique.
Why? Just to create chaos? No. Because every time those misguided
hotheads blew up a bank or an airport lounge, the right wing in the West
hit back a little bit harder. The public reaction got a little stiffer.
I'm telling you, Hans, it's a sound strategy. Moscow has never been
more lenient than it is right now. The entire Eastern Bloc is restless.
Trouble and sedit
ion are brewing everywhere. And East Germany is the
most independent satellite of all. The Stasi monitors everything there:
student unrest, political volatility, economic stress, plus they have
that rarest of all commodities, direct intelligence lines into Russia.
I think Der Bruderschaft-and whoever controls it-believes that a strong
enough chancellor in West Germany could seize the right opportunity and
wrench the two Germanys back together." Hauer was breathing hard.
"And by God, they may be right."
Hans stared, fascinated. "Is the Stasi really as powerful as people
say? I've heard they have hundreds of informers here and in Bonn."
Hauer chuckled. "Hundreds? Try thousands. If I had the files from
Stasi headquarters, I could break half the political careers in West
Germany and a good many in Moscow. I mean that. Some of our most
powerful senators are actually on the Stasi payroll. Funk is just small
beer."
Hans was shaking his head. "Do you really believe all this?"
Hauer shrugged. "I don't know. One minute I believe every word of it,
the next I wonder if schnapps has pickled my brain. When I stand in
those Bruderschaft meetings, I want to laugh. Funk and his rabble are
just grown-up children fantasizing about a Fourth Reich.
It's classic infantile bullshit. Germany will be united again, don't
doubt it. But not by drunk policemen or skinheads. It's the bankers
and board chairmen who'll bring it off. Men from the world your mother
worshipped. We're the richest country in Europe now, Hans, and anything
can be bought for a price. Even a united Germany."
Hauer tugged at his mustache. "The question is this: is there a
connection between Der Bruderschaft and those bankers and board
chairmen? And if so, what is it? How much power does Phoenix exert
over the institutions in Germany? The Stasis potential for blackmail is
formidable.
Funk's group may seem like clowns, but no matter how you look at it, the
Polizei are an arm of the state."
Hans look confused. "But how could all this tie in with the Spandau
papers? With Ilse?"
"Bruderschaft der Phoenix, remember? Phoenix was mentioned in the
Spandau papers, therefore it ties Funk and the Stasi to the papers.
Your hooker friend said Russians came looking for you and chased Ilse.
The Russians went on the rampage when you discovered the Spandau papers.
Do the Russians know about Phoenix? Maybe they've infiltrated Der