The Spandau Phoenix wwi-2

by Greg Iles

  car, and in the confusion of the air raid I managed to escape to the

  countryside east of London. I used my escape plan just as if the

  mission had been accomplished. I lay low for a few days on the British

  coast, with a, German agent who maintained a radio link with Occupied

  France-then crossed the Channel to safety.

  I served out the remainder of the war in Heydrich's SD, and near the end

  fled with some others to South America.

  My dream of returning to my native Russia was crushed forever in 1944. I

  must live with the knowledge that the terrible shadow my Motherland

  lives under is in no small part due to my failure in England in the

  spring of 1941. Surely that knowledge is punishment enough for my

  failure.

  Signed, V V Zinoviev, Paraguay, 1951

  Witnessed, Rudolf Hess, Paraguay, 1951

  Stern's stomach rolled. Rudolf Hess? 1951? Good God!

  What did it mean? Had Hess survived the war after all? Had he fled to

  Paraguay with Zinoviev after his failed mission?

  But what of Helmut, the daring German spy with the eyepatch? Had he

  really died from his terrible beating? Or had he somehow managed to

  escape and eventually make his way here, to South Africa? Stern felt

  more confused than he ever had in his life. How are Hess and Zinoviev

  connected?

  he wondered. Where did their lives intersect? Nowhere in Zinoviev's

  account was Hess mentioned, yet the date of the planned assassinations

  simply couldn't be coincidence. Hess had flown to Britain on May 10-the

  exact date that Zinoviev had been ordered to kill Churchill and the

  king. So why had Hess been ordered there at all?

  Abruptly Stern stood and closed the notebook. Of course!

  Zinoviev's failed mission-the double assassination-as important as it

  was, was merely preparatory. The real objective was the replacement of

  Churchill's government-a coup d'etat. That was Hess's part of the

  mission, the political side. But what had gone wrong? The bombs had

  fallen as Hitler ordered, but Churchill and the king had not. As far as

  Stern knew, no assassin ever got close to either leader on May 10, 1941.

  So where did that leave the British conspirators who had planned to

  replace them? Where did that leave the real Rudolf Hess? Whatever

  Hess's mission had been, Zinoviev's failure had blown it. So where had

  Hess gone? When his mission failed, why didn't he go straight back to

  Germany? Why run to Paraguay, where he had ap patently witnessed

  Zinoviev's document? Many Nazis fled to South America after the war.

  patently witnessed Zinoviev's document? Many Nazis fled to South

  America after the war. Had Hess been- one of the first to go? And had

  he gone alone? No. Somehow, Stern realized, somewhere, Hess had met

  Zinoviev before Paraguay.

  Had it been in Germany? Or was it in England, on the run after the

  failed mission? I'll bet dear Helmut of the one eye could answer that

  question, Stern thought wryly. And I've got the oddestfeeling that he's

  sleeping in this very house!

  Stern hurriedly reconstructed Hess's flight in his mind. If what the

  Spandau papers said was true, the real Hess had taken off from Germany,

  picked up his double in Denmark, then flown across the Channel and

  reached the Scottish Coast around ten Pm. The real Hess had bailed out

  over Holy Island; then the double flew on, directly over Dungavel

  Castle-his supposed target-all the way to the western coast of Scotland.

  There he had turned, paralleled the coast for a while, then flown back

  toward Dungavel and parachuted into a farmer's field a few miles away.

  Why was the double needed at all? Stern asked himself. As a diversion?

  He pictured the lonely, frightened German falling from the Scottish

  sky-an image that had captivated the entire world.

  What had been in the double's mind at that moment? In the Spandau

  papers he had frankly admitted ignorance of the real Hess's mission.

  All the double knew was that the scheduled radio signal from Hess had

  not come, and rather than kill himself as ordered, he had bailed out of

  the Messerschmitt, broken his ankle, and then, when a shocked and sleepy

  Scottish farmer approached him, he had claimed to be Rudolf Hess-just as

  he'd been ordered to do had the proper signal come.

  Stern felt the breath leave his lungs in a rush. My God! he thought.

  The double had not claimed to be Rudolf Hess! Not at first, anyway. He

  had not given the farmer Hess's name, but another name-a name always

  thought to have been a cover. But that was ridiculous, Stern realized,

  because Rudolf Hess was the double's cover name! After his failure to

  swallow the cyanide pill, after his bloodcurdling first-time parachute

  jump, the confused pilot had given the farmer his real name. And his

  real name was Alfred Horn!

  Stuffing the Zinoviev book under his shirt, Stern snatched the broken

  dinner fork from beneath his mattress and went to work on the door lock.

  Thirty seconds later, he switched off the light and peeked outside. Two

  soldiers wearing khaki uniforms and carrying South African R-5 assault

  I'll guarded both ends of the dark corridor. Apparently the tive attack

  held prompted Pieter'Smuts to post sentries against anyone who might

  have leaked through his defenses.

  Or perhaps, Stern thought desperately, perhaps Horn's Arab friends are

  scheduled to return sooner than I thought. With his chest pounding, he

  eased the door shut and slumped against it. He had to find a way out!

  He knew exactly where he wanted to go, and it wasn't to the basement in

  search of Frau Apfel's alleged nuclear weapon. Nor was it to the shrine

  room telephone to call Hauer. All he could think about was something

  Professor Natterman had reminded him of during the flight from Israel.

  Something he had known for so long that he had forgotten it ...

  Something about Rudolf Hess.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  11.40 Pm. Horn House Hans and Ilse lay in darkness in the opulent main

  guest room of Horn House. They left the light off, for they knew each

  other better without it. Ilse's face, wet with tears, nuzzled in the

  hollow of Hans's neck, Piled upon the tortures she had already endured,

  killing Lord Granville had caused Ilse's brain to spin a protective

  cocoon around itself. After a time, though, the barrier began to thin

  and stretch. Whin it finally broke, the tears had come, and she began

  to answer Hans's questions. His first was about the baby, and Ilse's

  confirmation of what he had been too frightened to believe engendered a

  deep and dangerous tension within him. His left hand stroked Ilse's

  cheek, but his right fist clenched and unclenched at his side.

  "Don't worry," she whispered from the darkness. "Herr Stern is going to

  help us."

  Hans went still. "Who?"

  "Herr Stern. I thought you knew about him. He came here impersonating

  Opa. He's come to help us."

  "What?" Hans rolled out of the bed, stumbled over to the wall and found

  the light. "Ilse, what have you done?"

  She sat up. "Nothing. Hans, my Oandfather is here in South Africa.

  He'
s with your father in Pretoria. Herr Stern is working with your

  father."

  Hans's eyes grew wide. "Ilse, this must have been some kind of trick to

  get you to talk! What did you tell them?"

  "Nothing, Hans. I don't understand it all, but Herr Stern came here

  wearing Opa's jacket, and the kidnappers plainly believe that he is my

  grandfather."

  "My God. Where is my father now? Did this man Stern say?"

  "He told me'that he left your father, Opa, and three Israeli commandos

  at a hotel in Pretoria. They're waiting for instructions from Stern

  right now."

  "Israeli commandos?" Hans felt as if he had stumbled into a madhouse.

  "Where is Stern now?"

  "I don't know. They were holding us together, but we split up when we

  escaped."

  "Who is this Stern?" Hans asked irritably. "How did he even become

  involved?"

  "He's an Israeli. He met Opa at the cabin in Wolfsburg.

  He is a good man, Hans, I could feel it."

  "He told you he had commandos with him? How old a man is he?"

  Ilse shrugged. "Somewhere around Opa's age, I guess."

  "And this is the man who's going to get us out?"

  "He's done more than anyone else."

  That stung Hans's pride, but he tried not to show it. If Ilse could

  cling to her optimism, all the better. But might they really have a

  chance? Had his father somehow managed to organize some kind of rescue?

  "Ilse," he said'softly. "How can this man Stern help us?"

  "I don't know," she said thoughtfully. "But I think he will."

  Jonas Stern closed the infirmary door and flattened himself against the

  wall. His heart beat like mad as he waited for his eyes to adjust to

  the darkness. The astringent tang of isopropyl alcohol and disinfectant

  wrinkled his nose. He had been forced to wait almost seven hours before

  the guards outside his room finally left their posts. He had no idea if

  more would be sent to take their place, but he hadn't waited to find

  out. Even in the dark he could make out the high-tech gleam of stainless

  steel and glass. Hd eased forward.

  After eight short steps, he felt for the interior doors he remembered.

  Finding one cool metal knob, he turned it and hit the wall switch. He

  saw an empty hospital bed, oxygen bottles, telemetry wires, a dozen

  other gadgets. Wrong room. He killed the light and closed the door.

  Sliding his hands up the facing of the second door, he found the warning

  sign he remembered: three inverted triangles, yellow over black.

  Radiation . Stern's pulse quickened as he opened the door and slipped

  inside.

  There was light here, the dim red glow of a darkroom safelight.

  He moved quickly around the X-ray table to the file shelves. One way or

  the other, he thought, here would be the proof. He reached into the

  first compartment and pulled out a six-inch stack of

  fourteen-by-seventeen manila folders.

  Then he crossed to the viewing screens and hit the switches.

  Harsh fluorescent light flooded the room. While the viewers buzzed like

  locusts, be pulled an exposed X-ray film from the top file folder and

  clipped it against the screen. Chest X-ray. It took him a few moments

  to orient himself.

  The spinal column and ribs showed clearly as strong, graceful white

  lines against the gray soft tissues and the almost burnt-black spaces of

  the body cavities. After that it got tougher. A dozen shades of gray

  overlapped one another in seeming chaos. Despite his initial confusion,

  Stern believed that what he sought should be reasonably apparent even to

  a layman. He tried to discern the subtle differences between the

  anatomical parts, then groaned as the outlines of two pendulous breasts

  emerged from the shadow of the internal organs.

  "'It's a bloody woman!" he muttered.

  Then he noticed the small radiopaque ID-plate image on the top left

  corner of the film. It read: Linah #004, 4-08-86.

  Stern unclipped the film, ffimst it back into the folder and dropped it

  on the floor. The outside of the next folder read: Stanton, Robert B.

  #005. He dropped it. Smuts, Pieter #002.

  The next file also belonged to Smuts. After three more names he did not

  recognize, he returned to the storage shelves.

  The first folder he pulled out measured an inch thick by itself.

  The top-left corner read: Horn, Thomas Alfred #001.

  With shaking hands Stern removed the top film from the file and clipped

  it to the viewing screen. It showed two views of a hand positioned to

  reveal a hairline fracture that Stern couldn't see and cared nothing

  about. He jerked the film from the screen and let it fall to the floor.

  The next three films showed a series of intestinal views enhanced by the

  ingestion of barium sulfate. These, too, Stern let fall. A

  comprehensive X-ray anthology followed: grossly arthritic knees, lumbar

  spine, cervical spine-Stern tossed them all onto the growing pile at his

  feet. Finally he found what he wanted-an X-ray of Alfred Horn's chest.

  With mounting anticipation, he clipped the top edge of the film into the

  clamp and stepped back.

  No breasts on this film. Stern began with what he clearly

  recognized-the spine. The ribs climbed both sides of the spine like

  curved white ladders. The lungs were the dark ovals behind them. A

  triangular white blob overlaid the spine. The heart, thought Stern. He

  knew the heart to be situated slightly left of center in the body-a fact

  he had learned during a silent killing course as a young man in

  Palestine. So the left lung should be... here. He touched the film

  with his right forefinger. Now... compare. Check each lung against the

  other until Ifind a discrepancy.

  He immediately found several. Opaque disks the size of small coins

  seemed to float like celestial bodies in the dark lung spaces.

  These disks were small scars left by a mild case of tuberculosis.

  Stern did not know this, but he soon dismissed the disks as unrelated to

  what he sought. The first suspicious thing he saw was a kind of

  widening of two rib bones at one.spot in the left lung. They seemed

  thicker than the other ribs, more built up somehow, not quite as smooth.

  Stern had an idea. Pulling another stack of films from Horn's folder,

  he rifled through them until he found what he wanted-an oblique X-ray of

  Horn's chest-a picture shot -from the side with both arms held above the

  head. When he pinned this film to the screen, the mark he sought jumped

  out at him like a contrail against the sky. He swallowed hard, raised a

  quivering finger to the film. Crossing the dark left lung in a hazy,

  transverse line was the scar of a rifle bullet. A rifle bullet fired

  seventy-one years ago. The opaque track diffused rapidly into the

  surrounding shadows, but the path of the old bullet fragments was

  plainly visible. With his heart pounding, Stern counted downward from

  the collarbone to the scarred area-one rib at a time.

  ... four ... five ... six ... seven."

  He switched back to the first X-ray-the posterior/anterior view-and

  carefully counted down again, this time searching for'the ribs with the

&
nbsp; strange built-up areas.

  ". . . three ... four . . . five ... six"-Stern felt sweat dropping

  into his eyes- "seven."

  "My God," he murmured, feeling a catch in his throat.

  "Hess- is alive." Simultaneously a voice reverberated in his brain: The

  bomb for Tel Aviv is real!

  Folding the two stiff chest X-rays in half, Stern thrust them inside his

  shirt between Zinoviev's notebook and his pounding heart.

  He quickly gathered up the discarded films and folders from the floor,

  shoved them back into the shelves, then slipped quietly out of the X-ray

  room and into the dark hallway.

  He sprinted to the library. In the musty darkness he tripped, picked

  himself up, then moved carefully on toward the tall bookshelves.

  Feeling his way across them to the corner, he found the tiny brass knob.

  He turned it. He had already resolved that if he found anyone other

  than Hess himself inside the secret shrine room, he would kill him.

  The room was empty. Stern sat down behind the mahogany desk and

  breathed deeply. He wanted to slow his racing heart. Above him the

  bronze Phoenix screamed silently.

  From the wall to his left a hundred Nazis gazed at him. As Stern

  reached for the phone to call Hauer at the Protea Hof, he froze.

  Someone had been in the room since his visit.

  Across from the desk-where there h-ad been only red drapes before-hung 4

  gigantic oil painting-twice lifesize-of Adolf Hitler.

  Rendered in muted greens and browns, the dictator gazed down with sullen

  intensity at the Jewish intruder. Someone had pulled back the drapes to

  admire the Fuhrer. Gooseflesh rose on Stern's neck. His left cheek

  began to twitch. After working his dry mouth furiously, the old Israeli

  spat a wad of mucus across the desk onto the canvas. It struck Hitler

  just above his groin. Stern raised his left arm, made a fist, and shook

  it at the portrait.

  "Never again!" he vowed. He lifted the phone.

  455 A.M. Protea Hof Hotel, Pretoria

  Hauer came off the bed like a fighter pilot hearing a scramble alar-m.

  Gadi and Aaron sat half-conscious against the foyer walls; Professor

  Natterman lay on the opposite bed, his right thigh wrapped in gauze, his

  eyes half-closed from the effect of the morphine.

  "Stern?" Hauer said.

  "It's him!"

  The young commandos leapt to their feet. Natterman tried to sit up,