The Spandau Phoenix wwi-2

by Greg Iles

  Harry drummed his fingers impatiently. "Christ, tell me something."

  Rose took a pull from his Wild Turkey. "Our computers didn't have squat

  on Zinoviev, Harry, zero. I was tempted to put in a coded request to

  Langley-you know, can we run a name through your sacred database, blah,

  blah? But I never liked using those guys. To me it's kind of like

  going to the Mafia. They're a little too greasy for my taste. So what

  I ended up doing was calling an old buddy of mine stateside.

  Programs computers for the FBI. He ran it through their setup for me,

  and you wouldn't believe what their machine spit out."

  "Surprise me."

  Rose smiled, knowing that for once he would. "V.V.

  Zinoviev was a captain in the Okhrana. Ring any bells?"

  Harry looked bewildered. "The tsar's secret police?"

  "Give the boy an apple," Rose quipped. "The Okhrana were the world's

  original anti-communists. They make Joe McCarthy and his pals look like

  a pack of church ladies. The question is, What could a hitman for Tsar

  Nicholas possibly have in common with Rudolf Hess?"

  "Well," Harry reflected, "for one thing, the Okhrana carried out massive

  pogroms against the Jews in Russia."

  Both Rose and Schneider looked stunned.

  "Look, Colonel," said Harry, "you're way ahead of me on this. Why don't

  you just back up and give me the Reader's Digest version?"

  "Okay. My FBI buddy punches Zinoviev into the Bureau computers, right?

  Well, up comes a file. It gives the Okhrana reference, Zinoviev's date

  of birth, but no death date. It says he disappeared from sight in 1941,

  which was@' "The year Hess flew to Scotland," Harry finished.

  "Right. Well, in Zinoviev's file was a code-HCOwhich I'm told stands

  for 'Hardcopy Only.' There was also a cross-index to another file."

  "Hess?"

  "You got it. So my buddy goes for the Hess file, right?

  And what does he find? A bunch of crap you can get from Encyclopaedia

  Britannica. But he also finds a notation showing a special addendum to

  Hess's file, with what the Bureau calls a J classification. Want to

  guess what the J is for?"

  Harry's face showed disbelief. "No way."

  Rose smiled thinly. "Old J. Fdgar himself. And J files cannot be

  accessed by anyone except the director."

  "Christ. What does the FBI have to do with Rudolf HessT' "You're not

  gonna believe this, Harry. Remember the big Soviet defections of the

  sixties and seventies? Nosenko, Penkovsky and the rest? The CIA

  handled their debriefings, right? Naturally. But if you'll recall, the

  FBI wasn't always limited to operations within the Continental U.S.

  During World War Two, Hoover couldn't stand seeing Bill Donovan's OSS

  get all the glory, and the result-aside from a lot of political

  head-butting-was that the Bureau got involved in some pretty big

  espionage cases. So-after the CIA finished debriefing those big

  defectors, the FBI got themselves a little taste. They were given a

  very limited brief, of course, questions to be confined to KGB

  recruitment methods on U.S. soil, et cetera."

  Harry nodded slowly.

  "However, when the FBI got their shot at these defectors, they took the

  chance to clean up some unfinished business.

  They had quite a few unsolved cases from the war years, and Hoover had

  left instructions that they be pursued whenever possible. One of those

  cases happened to involve British collaboration with the Nazis-e.g the

  flight of Rudolf Hess."

  Harry whistled long and low.

  "The FBI questioning turned up a shitload of information, but as you

  might imagine, the Bureau wasn't anxious to reveal to the CIA how far

  outside their brief they had strayed. Anything that couldn't t)e

  confirmed by collateral evidence was buried in the basement of a file

  warehouse.

  'Hardcopy Only,' get it? Apparently Zinovidv fell into that category."

  Rose's eyes shone with excitement. '@, those files have been sitting in

  that warehouse for twenty-five years. My contact thinks our query is

  the first dung to turn up Zinoviev's name since it went to disk."

  "Jesus. What kind of access do we haver' "Hess's file is out of the

  question. A team of MIT hackers couldn't break into a J file in a

  month." Rose suppressed a satisfied smile. "Zinoviev, on the other

  hand, we may get.

  My buddy is constantly updating the Bureau files, and it seems he's got

  legitimate access to the warehouse where the 'Hardcopy Only' stuff is.

  He's probably digging through Zinoviev's file right now."

  Harry looked skeptical. "Colonel, you realize that there may be nothing

  on Zinoviev in that warehouse. If Zinoviev is cross-indexed to Hess,

  his real file probably has a J classification too."

  "We'll find out soon enough," Rose concluded. "Let's get to the heart

  of this mess-the Spandau papers."

  Harry glanced over at Schneider. "I assume the Berlin police have

  them?"

  "Not exactly," said Rose. "Two Berlin police officers have them."

  Rose consulted a file on his desk. "Hans Apfel, sergeant, age

  twenty-seven; Dieter Hauer, captain, age fifty-five. Schneider here

  thinks one of these two must have stumbled over the papers while they

  were guarding the prison. He says this guy Hauer's a real piece of

  workcounterterror training, the works. And he must be right. Not only

  have these two escaped the city, they've escaped Germany. They flew out

  of Frankfurt two hours ago."

  "What? How do you know that?"

  While Schneider listened in silence, Rose summarized his actions after

  receiving Harry's call. Rose had wanted to storm Abschnitt 53

  with guns blazing, but Schneider had persuaded him to pursue a more

  discreet course. The colonel's compromise had been a city wide

  communications blanket of West Berlin, conducted by the Army Signal

  Corps under the reserve powers held by the Allies since the Second World

  War. Assets nominally dedicated to the Soviet target were reassigned to

  cover all police communications traffic entering or leaving Berlin. Rose

  was grinning as he revealed his b ou h.

  "Six hours ago it paid off, Harry. We intercepted a call from the

  Wolfsburg police to West Berlin police HQ. A traffic unit stopped a man

  for speeding and reckless driving, and because they'd received reports

  of shooting in the forest to the south the night before, they made a

  routine search of the car. They hit the jackpot. The driver was a

  forger from Hamburg. Right away the guy starts screaming how he's just

  been blackmailed into manufacturing false passports for two West Berlin

  cops. Claimed he knew Hauer personally, and he described Apfel to a T."

  -Did he have any idea where they were headed?" F asked.

  Rose grinned. "That ever-popular vacation spot, the Republic of South

  Africa. Traveling as father and son. The forger also made passports

  for two older guys who were with Hauer and Apfel, but traveling

  separately. He didn't know their true identities or their destination,

  but he gave us the names and numbers on all four fake passports."

  "Great. Who else knows that?"

  "If o
ur luck is holding, almost nobody. I called the Berlin police

  presidium and used every authority short of the president to block the

  relay of that information to Abschnitt 53.

  I also let them know in no uncertain terms that I'd know if they tried."

  Harry sat in silence for nearly a full minute. "South Africa," he said

  finally. "Is there anything that connects any of what's happened to

  South Africa in any wayt' "As a matter of fact, there is. My little

  high-tech offensive included pulling the telephone toll records of

  certain West Berlin police facilities. We found several calls from the

  police presidium going out to different numbers in South Africa. Some

  of those calls were made from the office Of the prefect himself."

  "Holy shit. Do you have names to go with the numbers?"

  "I should have them within twenty-four hours. For once I happen to have

  an exotic contact-a major in the South African secret service."

  "That's not soon enough, Colonel."

  "That's as soon as we can get it, Major And that's if we're lucky."

  Harry stood. "You've got to get me down there, Colonel.

  Whatever's going down, it's going to happen there."

  Rose shook his head. "I can't send you, Harry."

  "Why not?"

  "You heard me. That's not our turf of even Close. We can't prove that

  this thing endangers @can Also, we're not too popular down there right

  now, in case you haven't noticed. Not since @ sanctions were put in

  effect and half our industry pulled out of @. @ Army's not going to let

  me send you down from here just because the Soviets are interested! They

  kidnapped me, for Christ's sake.

  There's something big going on, Colonel, I can feel it. The reason you

  can't find out anything about this Phoenix is that it isn't based here.

  it must be in South Africa. This isn't just some legacy from the past

  ... Can't you feel it?"

  "I feel it," Detective Schneider said softly.

  Rose drained his second whiskey, stood, and laid his stubby hands flat

  on the desktop. "I feel it too, Harry, but my hands are tied.

  I've got half of Bonn and all of Berlin breathing down my neck to

  prevent any kind of international incident. Officially, I can't do a

  thing."

  Harry stared curiously at Rose. He sensed some implied communication,

  but he couldn't quite pin it down. Suddenly the answer came clear as

  ice water. "Grant me two weeks leave, Colonel," he said.

  "I've got it coming."

  Rose grinned. "That you do, Major. That you do."

  "Can you get me a military flight?"

  "Negative."

  "But it's probably a fifteen-hour flight by commercial carrier!"

  "Eleven on Lufthansa," Rose corrected. "Fourteen via South African

  Air."

  "That's still too long!"

  "You're lucky to get a flight at all, Harry. Most airlines only fly

  there once a week. Your flight leaves Frankfurt at two Pm.

  tomorrow."

  Harry shook his head in exasperation, then grinned in spite of himself.

  "By the time I get there, I want some names tied to those telephone

  numbers."

  "You'll have 'em." Abruptly, Rose slammed an open hand down on his

  desk. His face showed puzzlement, exhaustion, frustration.

  "Goddamnit Harry, what the hell is going on?

  Do the Russians really ' care, that much about something that happened

  fifty years ago?"

  Harry looked thoughtful. "I know what you mean.

  Gorbachev has a hell of a lot bigger things on his plate than

  fifty-year-old mysteries. I wouldn't think the truth about Hess would

  help glasnost any."

  "The Russian memory is long," Schneider said gravely.

  "And Gorbachev has limited influence over KGB."

  Harry glanced at the German. "Maybe. But we're missing the forest

  here. We're not talking ancient history. The Berlin police wouldn't

  give two shits about something like that.

  We're talking about a tie between the past-Hess's past SPANDAU PHOENIX

  and the present. The here and now. Maybe Zinoviev is connection."

  "Whatever the connection is," said Rose, "I've got a feeling it's pretty

  goddamn dirty. I don't have to tell you how many friggin' Nazis our own

  government shielded from justice."

  Harry looked hard at both men for a few moments; then ..he reached into

  his pocket, drew something out, and tossed it on Rose's'desk. The

  fragment of Goltz's scalp landed upside-down with a plop, like a wet

  scab. Black flecks of blood stained the file on Rose's desk. The

  colonel reached out to pick it up, then jerked back his hand in disgust.

  "What the fuck is that?"

  "Goltz," Harry explained. "That was a shaved spot a little above and

  behind his right ear. Turn it over, Colonel."

  Rose looked up at Harry with an expression that suggested he might be

  wondering if Harry kept a VietCong ear necklace in his dresser at home.

  "I didn't have a camera," Harry muttered.

  Rose took a ballpoint pen from a stand and flicked the shriveled swatch

  of skin over, revealing the tattoo it bore.

  He made no sound as he studied it, but Schneider sucked in his breath so

  sharply that both men turned to him.

  "You've seen this mark before?" Rose asked.

  The German nodded. "Yes. It's hard to detect. Once the hair grows

  back in, the mark is invisible."

  Harry looked curiously at the German.

  "What the hell's it mean?" Rose demanded.

  Schneider shrugged. "Certain members of a semisecret political group

  wear that mark. The group is called Der Bruderschaft-the Brotherhood.

  Quite a few policemen belong to it. I don't know what the tattoo means.

  I always thought it was just a badge of membership.

  Now and then you'll see a policeman with a bandage behind his ear.

  They always make some excuse, but after a while you realize what it is."

  "Sounds like some kind of friggin' cult thing," Rose declared.

  "Is it like the Aryan Brotherhood in the States?"

  Harry shook his head. "The Aryan Brotherhood is made up of convicts,

  not police. They're cop killers."

  "How many Berlin cops have this mark? A dozen? A hundred?"

  "More than a hundred," Schneider said thoughtfully. "But I never

  realized that it extended into the DDR. That's very disturbing."

  "You're goddamn right it is," Rose agreed.

  "Detective," Harry said softly, "do all members of Der Bniderschaft have

  the tattoo? Or just a select few? A few who might belong to some truly

  secret group, for instance."

  "Like Phoenix, you mean," mused Schneider. "No, I don't think all the

  members have the tattoo."

  Rose was staring strangely at Schneider. When Harry realized why, he

  couldn't help staring himself.

  The big German scowled back at them. "No, I don't have a tattoo under

  my hair," he growled. "And the first man who asks to look is going to

  spend the night in the hospital."

  When Rose looked as if he might ask, Harry stood quickly. "Thanks again

  for saving my life, Detective. If you fellows don't mind, I'm going to

  crash until takeoff time tomorrow."

  Rose finally shifted his attention to Harry. "Just remember," he

  warned
, "you'll be going in blind down there. What I told you about the

  British still holds: no contact at all, not even with your personal

  connections. No one's above being manipulated by his

  government-especially ministers and lords."

  "Not even me," said Harry, and smiled wryly. "You worried about James

  Bond catching up with me, ColoneIT' "No. I'm worried about some goddamn

  George Smiley type. A fat little guy with glasses who's five steps

  ahead of us already. Somebody who knows all about whatever happened

  back in Germany in 1941."

  Harry ruminated on this for a moment. "By the way, Colonel, Ivan Kosov

  told me he'd like to collaborate on the Hess case."

  "When hell freezes over," Rose muttered. "We'll get to the bottom of

  this well ourselves."

  Harry grinned. "That's what I told him you'd say."

  Schneider stood and offered his prodigious hand. "Gluck haben, Major."

  "Danke, " Harry replied.

  "Get the hell out of here," Rose bellowed. "I'll brief you before you

  fly out."

  Harry sauntered out, returning Clary's sharp salute as he passed through

  the outer office.

  "What do you think?" Rose asked, when Harry had gone.

  "I think I should go with him," Schneider said blun ,Well, you can't. I

  need you here. You've got a lot do before you get any rest, mister."

  "Such as?"

  "Such as helping me rout out the scum that's holed up in that police

  station."

  Schneider smiled coldly. "Gut.

  "But first I want YOu to get over to that police sergeant's apartment.

  kpfel, right? Talk to the guy's wife. We should've covered it hours

  ago, but I couldn't spare you."

  Schneider stepped to the door and pulled on his heavy wool overcoat.

  "And Schneider?"

  "Yes, Colonel?"

  "Sorry about that tattoo business. I'm on edge. If you stumble into

  trouble, don't play hero, okay? I know YOu don't like Americans messing

  around in your backyard, but solo's no way to flY On something like

  this. You get me?"

  Schneider nodded, but as his broad back disappeared through the office

  door, Rose wondered how sincere the gesture really was.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  612 P.M. SOViOt Sector. EB$t Berlin, ODR In a black BMW parked two

  blocks from the red-and-white border posts of the Sonnenallee

  checkpoint, Colonel Ivan Kosov sat in silent rage while a man in a

  two-thousand dollar Savile Row suit berated him for blatant incompetence.