The Spandau Phoenix wwi-2

by Greg Iles

feet were tightly bound with telephone wire. His hands, too, were tied.

  That was really unnecessary, he thought distantly, since his mangled

  left hand and wrist had swollen to twice normal size. He heard the big

  man speak angrily into the phone, then slam it down.

  Schneider strode through the splintered bedroom door and looked down.

  "You've got some friends coming to see you," he said. Then he walked

  back to the womanand lid a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  The next thilig Misha would remember was four men in white medical coats

  lifting him onto a stretcher. He felt strangely comforted by this,

  until he spied the olive-drab of American army uniforms beneath the @.

  When he tried to rise, a strong hand pressed him firmly back onto the

  stretcher. The hand belonged to Sergeant Clary. Misha's short, violent

  career was over.

  Just over a mile to the east of Eva Beers's apartment, Captain Dmitri

  Rykov sprinted up to a phone box and punched in the number of KGB

  headquarters in East Berlin. He got an answer after two rings.

  "Is Colonel Kosov back yet?" he asked breathlessly.

  "No. Who is this?"

  "Rykov. Shut up and listen. Tell Kosov that Borodin followed Major

  Richardson to his apartment-not just to it but into it! I'm outside

  now, but I'm going back up. The building's in Wilmersdorf, about three

  blocks north of the Fehrbelliner Platz. Zahringerstrasse, I think. It's

  a really expensive building. Kosov can trace it. Sixth floor. Have

  you got that?"

  "I think so," replied a nervous voice. "But would you repeat it on

  tape? I just got the recorder rolling."

  "Christ!" Rykov repeated his message for the tape; then he dashed back

  into the lobby of Harry Richardson's apartment building.

  7.23 Pm. Hasiomere, Surrey, England

  Swallow arrived at Michael Burton's tile-roofed cottage just as it

  started to rain. She climbed out of the Ford Fiesta which she'd rented

  at Gatwick Airport and puttered up the walk carrying a bright blue

  umbrella. In her other arm was a clipboard and a large tin cup-the bona

  fides of a charity worker. She rang the bell, but there was no answer.

  Seeing no lights in the windows, she went round back, and there she

  spied the yellow-lit hothouse that Burton had constructed from

  second-hand lumber and thick sheets of clear painter's plastic.

  The hothouse glowed like an island of summer in the chilly dusk.

  Swallow walked right up to it and, finding the door open, stepped

  inside.

  It was incongruous somehow: the tall, rangy excommando standing among

  the fragile orchids; the artificial warmth of the hothouse after the

  bracing evening air. Humidifying heaters hummed somewhere out of sight.

  Rain pattered on the plastic above their heads. The cloying scent of

  orchids masked even Swallow's distinctive perfume. Burton looked up

  suddenly, startled, but he relaxed when he realized that his visitor was

  a woman, a village matron by the look of her, probably colleeting for

  the orphans or something. He watched her shake off her umbrella and

  lean it against a two-by-four stud.

  "What can I do for you?" he asked in a kindly voice.

  Swallow had meant to shoot him through her handbag, but when her hand

  went into her purse, the ex-SAS man perceived what almost no one else

  would, an involuntary narrowing of the eyes, a slight tensing of the arm

  that suggested a shooting posture. Swallow was too far away for Burton

  to attack her-whieh his training told him to do-so he spun away toward

  the double-layered plastic wall of the hothouse.

  He snatched up a sharp spade in his right hand as Swallow fired, hitting

  him in the shoulder. He dropped behind the line of a planting table,

  slashed open the plastic wall with the spade, and plunged through it

  into the yard.

  Swallow darted to the opening and knelt in a textbook shooting stance,

  preparing to fire again as Burton fled across the lawn. But Burton did

  not flee. Having judged it too long a mn over open ground, the

  ex-commando stabbed the spade back through the plastic, missing

  Swallow's throat by inches. Stunned, she aimed at his blurred

  silhouette and shot him again, this time in the chest. The impact blew

  Burton backward onto the glistening turf. Swallow stepped through the

  rent in the plastic wall and stood over him. He was gasping, and she

  could hear the pitiful wheeze of a sucking chest wound.

  The last words Michael Burton spoke were not the names of his ex-wife,

  his children, his mother, or his brother. In the gathering dusk he

  raised his head, choked out, "Hess"; then he fell back and gurgled,

  "Shaw, you bloody bastard." But only Swallow was there to hear him.

  Four seconds later she shot him in the forehead, turned, and walked

  calmly back across the lawn toward the cottage, leaving Burton lying in

  the rain with potting soil on his fingers and.the smell of orchids

  seeping out of the little hothouse like a soul.

  As she drove back toward Gatwick-where she had a seat reserved on the

  next flight to Tel Aviv-4t struck Swallow why Sir Neville Shaw had

  wanted Michael Burton dead. No doubt it had been Burton who four weeks

  ago had slipped over the wall of Spandau Prison during the American

  watch month, stuffed a forged suicide note into Rudolf Hess's pocket,

  and strangled him with an electrical cord. But Swallow had no interest

  in this, unless at some future date it might give her leverage over

  Shaw. To her the man who murdered Rudolf Hess was merely a way station

  on the road that led to Jonas Stern.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  7.30 Pv. Zahringerstrasse, west Berlin Julius Schneider wished he'd

  taken the stairs. The elevator war, an old hydraulic model, slower than

  walking. When the doors finally opened, he hurried into the green

  carpeted hallway and toward the corner that led to apartment 62@e number

  Colonel Rose had given him over the phone. The colonel had said

  little-no more than a choked command to appear at this address as soon

  as humanly possibleWhen Schneider rounded the corner, he saw Sergeant

  Clary standing guard outside the door to apartment 62.

  Clary's right hand rested on the butt of the .45 in his belt.

  His taut face revealed nothing. Schneider remembered the young man only

  an hour before at Eva Beers's flat, grinning with satisfaction at taking

  a KGB killer into custody. Clary looked like he couldn't grin now if he

  wanted to.

  "Inside, sir," he said as Schneider approached.

  "Danke, " the German replied, and passed through the door.

  Even if the corpse had not been lying in the foyer, Schneider would have

  felt the presence of death in the apartment.

  He smelled gunpowder, and burmt flesh. The overheated air hung with

  that foul stillness that Schneider had long ago learned to breathe only

  shallowly when exposed to it. Too much of that reek could poison a

  man's soul. But the corpse was there, lying on its stomach. A small

  bullet holeprobably an entrance wound-stained a dark spot between the

  shoulder blades. Without hesitation Schneider rolled the body over.

  Dmitri Rykov
stared up with sightless eyes.

  "Well?" said a strained voice.

  Schneider looked up at Colonel Godfrey Rose- The American had an unlit

  cigar clamped between his teeth. His face was gray and haggard.

  "Isn't he the Russian from the Sonnenallee checkpoint?"

  Schneider asked.

  "Yeah. Clary got a telephoto shot of him standing outside the customs

  booth."

  Schneider nodded. "Is this why you called me here?"

  Rose shook his head, then turned and disappeared down a short dark

  hallway. The German followed, the familiar weight of mortality in his

  belly. When he saw what awaited in the bedroom, a cold dread began to

  seep outward from his heart.

  Harry Richardson sat wide-eyed in a wooden chair, facing the bedroom

  door. He was naked. The chair sat in a pool of blood. Thin nylon

  ropes bound Harry's arms and legs to the chair. A pair of navy blue

  dress socks had been stuffed into his mouth. Schneider immediately

  noticed the cluster of small red circular marks on Richardson's chest.

  Cigarette burns. Schneider had worked his share of child abuse cases.

  Just below the burns, three lateral slashes trisected the abdomen, not

  deep, but bloody and probably unbearably painful.

  But the head was the worst. Carved into Harry Richardson's high

  forehead was a jagged red swastika. Rivulets of sticky blood streaked

  down from the arms of the broken cross, into Harry's open eyes, across

  his lips. Schneider had to remind himself to start breathing again.

  "What happened?" he asked in. German.

  Colonel Rose stood in the far corner of the room, his legs slightly

  apart, planted as firmly as trees in the earth. He held his arms folded

  across his chest. "You tell me," he said, his voice distant, almost

  nonhuman. "That's why I called you."

  "Goddamn it," Schneider muttered, "why haven't you closed his eyes?"

  "You're the homicide detective. I wanted you to see the crime scene

  before we touched him. Maybe you'll see something I don't."

  Schneider looked around the room. It had been torn to pieces by someone

  who knew how to conduct a rapid search.

  "What about your people?"

  Rose's eyes narrowed. "You said you wanted to help me, Schneider.

  Here's your chance."

  The German squinted at Rose, then shook his big head slowly. "Colonel, a

  homicide investigation is a team proce I need fingerprint men,

  photographers, forensic technicians.

  "I don't care about all that crap," Rose retorted. "I could have

  high-tech coming out the wazoo if I wanted it. I'm interested in your

  gut. Your trieb, remember?"

  With a surreal sense of dislocation, Schneider walked a slow circle

  around the room, keeping his eyes on Richardson's naked body all the

  time. He noted several facts at once-the obvious. But Schneider was a

  great mistruster of the obvious. Too often plain facts concealed more

  subtle truths. The cause of death seemed plain enough: a bullet hole in

  the back of the neck, small caliber, fired into the fragile bones of the

  cervical spine. An execution. That Harry had resisted death was also

  plain; his skin had been burned by the ropes that held him fast.

  Schneider's eyes found Harry's lifeless gray orbs just once, and he

  looked away quickly.

  There was nothing to be found there but the frozen moment of stunned

  horror-more animal than human-that Schneider had seen more times than

  any man should.

  Last came the message-if message it was. Drawn in the pool of blood

  beneath Harry's right foot, like a child's fingerpainting, was a small

  but clear capital B. Harry's right great toe was stained'scarlet, like a

  blunt pen dipped in a well of blood. After the B came a curved line

  that could have been the start of another letter-perhaps a lower-case

  rebut in the midst of forming it Harry must have been shot, for a

  tangential line arced sharply outward, as if the foot drawing it had

  been flung wide in spasm.

  Schneider crouched and examined the first letter. There was no

  mistaking it: it was a B or nothing. With a long last look at the

  second letter, the big German stood, carefully closed Harry's eyelids,

  and walked back to the front room.

  The air was breathable there. Rose's marching feet echoed behind him.

  ,what do you make of it?" Rose asked. "Dead Russian, dead American,"

  Schneider replied.

  "None of my business."

  "I'm making it your business. Who do you think did it?"

  "Someone in a hurry."

  "I'm not in the mood for games, Schneider."

  The German took a huge breath, exhaled. "All right.

  Someone broke in here, surprised Richardson, tortured him for

  information, and was surprised by the Russian in the front. The Russian

  tried to run; the killer shot him in the back.

  After getting his information@r not getting it-the killer executed

  Richardson and left." Schneider sighed.

  "How did you find out about it?"

  "Anonymous call. Guy had a British accent. Clary and I hauled ass over

  here, found Harry, and sealed the place off."

  Schneider digested this in silence.

  "What about that swastika?" Rose asked.

  Schneider shrugged.

  "A bullet in the neck is a Dachau-style execution," Rose pointed out.

  "SS-style."

  "They do it the same way in Lubyanka."

  "Yeah," Rose muttered. "So you don't think it's the Germans? Not

  Phoenix, or the Brotherhood, or whatever neoNazi wackos Harry pissed off

  when he killed Goltz?"

  "Why would Germans do dais?" Schneider asked. "Even Der Bruderschaft?

  Or if they did, why would they leave a swastika? Why not the red eye?

  Why leave anything at all?

  They would know you Americans would go mad with rage.

  How could that help them? If you implemented one-fourth of your reserve

  powers, Berlin would become Beirut."

  "Why this, why that' Rose grumbled. 'Why would the fucking Stasi kill

  a KGB officer and bring the whole weight of the KGB down on their heads?

  Nothing makes sense since yesterday, Schneider. Maybe they want us to

  crack down on Berlin. Maybe they think that would spark big protests

  against continued occupation." Rose rubbed his forehead anxiously. "The

  scary thing is, I can't do a damned thing about this.

  Five minutes before that anonymous call, I received an order to cease

  and desist all investigations pertaining to Spandau Prison or Rudolf

  Hess."

  A faint smile touched the corners of Schneider's lips.

  "Who gave you that order, Colonel?"

  "It came from on high, my friend. What we call Echelons Beyond Reality.

  If you ask me, Washington's covering for the goddamn Brits."

  "You mean the letters on the floor?"

  "Damn right. Harry was obviously trying to tell us who did this.

  And it seems to me that B and r are the first two letters of British."

  Schneider sucked in his breath. "Colonel, I'm not sure that second

  letter is an r It could be a c or even an o. If it is an r, Richardson

  could have been trying to wr Bruderschaft-the Brotherhood. Phoenix."

  "Maybe, Rose admitted. "But you just told me you didn
't think Germans

  did it. Make up your mind, will you?"

  He paused in thought. "No, that swastika is just too goddamn obvious.

  This case revolves around Spandau, and Hess. We've got a dead Russian

  and a dead American. In my book that leaves the Brits, not the

  Germans."

  Schneider raised an eyebrow. "An anonymous caller using a British

  accent is just as obvious as that swastika. Also, we can't discount the

  possibility that the murderer himself drew those letters in the blood.

  To mislead us." The German sighed uncomfortably. "Colonel, is it

  possible that men from

  your own government could have done this?" is

  Rose looked up sharply. "Schneider, I've been in this man,s army all my

  life. But if I believed what you just suggested, I'd take this story

  straight to the fucking New York Times."

  Schneider believed him. "So what are you going to do? If your own

  people won't help you on the Hess case, you're stuck."

  ,you ought to know me better than that by now," Rose countered.

  He lifted an arm and pointed back down the hall.

  "I liked that man back there," he said soffly- "He served his country in

  war, and he served it in what the politicians like to call peace."

  Rose's cheek twitched with the intensity of his anger.

  "Whoever did that to him-Brit, German, whoever-he and his bosses are

  going to pay like they never dreamed in all their worthless goddamn

  lives. I won't rest until they do."

  Just then Clary knocked twice quickly on the door, then opened it.

  Schneider's mouth fell open. Silhouetted in Harry Richardson's

  apartment door was the stocky, trenchcoated figure of Colonel Ivan

  Kosov. The Russian took two steps into the foyer and bent over the body

  of, Dmitri Rykov.

  When he looked up, Schneider saw points of black fire flickering in his

  eyes. Fury crackled off him like static electricity.

  Stunned, Schneider turned to Rose for an explanation.

  "I called him," Rose confessed. "if my own people won't help me, by

  God, I'll take help where I can find it."

  Schneider peered into Rose's eyes. "Why am I really here, Colonel?" he

  asked quietly. And then suddenly he knewRose had been forbidden to

  pursue the Spandau case using his own men, so he had called Schneider

  here to pick up the torch Harry Richardson had dropped. It made

  Scfineider angry that the American thought he needed cheap theatrics to