by Greg Iles
Weiss was doing his best to calm the shouting Russian, but he was obviously out of his depth. Captain Hauer was nowhere in sight, and while the other policemen stood behind Weiss looking resolute, Hans knew that their Walthers would be no match for the Soviet assault weapons if it came to a showdown.
The sergeants of the NATO detachments kept their men well clear of the argument. They knew political dynamite when they saw it. While the Soviets kept their rifles levelled at the wide-eyed captives—who looked as if they might collapse from shock at any moment—the Russian “sergeant” bellowed louder and louder in broken German, trying to bully the tenacious Weiss into giving up “his” prisoners. To his credit, Weiss stood firm. He refused to allow any action to be taken until Captain Hauer had been apprised of the situation. Hans stepped forward, hoping to interject some moderation into the dispute. Yet before he could speak, a black BMW screeched up to the curb and Captain Hauer vaulted from its rear door.
“What the hell, is this?” he shouted.
The screaming Russian immediately redirected his tirade at Hauer, but the German brusquely raised his hand, breaking the flood of words like a wave against a rock.
“Weiss!” he barked.
“Sir!”
“Explain.”
Weiss was so relieved to have the responsibility of the prisoners lifted from his shoulders that his words tumbled over themselves. “Captain, five minutes ago I saw two men moving suspiciously inside the perimeter. They must have slipped in somewhere between Willi and me. I flashed my light on them and shouted, ‘Halt!’ but they were startled and ran. They charged straight into one of the Russians, and before I could even blow my whistle, every Russian on the lot had surrounded them.”
“Radios,” Hauer muttered.
“Captain!” the Soviet “sergeant” bellowed. “These men are prisoners of the Soviet government! Any attempt to interfere—”
Without a word, Hauer strode past the Russian and into the deadly circle of automatic weapons. He began a rapid, professional interrogation of the prisoners, speaking quietly in German.
The black American sergeant whistled low. “That cop’s got balls,” he observed, loudly enough for all to hear. One of his men giggled nervously.
The terrified civilians were elated to be questioned by a fellow countryman. In less than a minute, Hauer extracted the relevant information from them, and his men relaxed considerably during the exchange. It revealed a familiar situation—distasteful perhaps, but thankfully routine. Even the Russians holding the Kalashnikovs seemed to have picked up on Captain Hauer’s casual manner. He patted the smaller of the two trespassers on the shoulder, then slipped out of the circle. A few of the rifles dropped noticeably as he stepped up to the Russian officer.
“They’re quite harmless, Comrade,” he explained. “A couple of homos, that’s all.”
Misunderstanding the slang, the Russian continued to scowl at Hauer. “What is their explanation?” he demanded stiffly.
“They’re homosexuals, Sergeant. Queers, Schweile … golden boys, I think you call them. Looking for a temporary love nest, that’s all. They’re all over Berlin.”
“No matter!” the Russian snapped, grasping Hauer’s meaning at last. “They have trespassed on Soviet territory, and they must be interrogated at our headquarters in East Berlin.” He motioned to his men. The rifles jerked back up instantly. He barked an order and started marching toward the parking area.
Hauer had no time to consult his superiors as to legalities, but he knew that allowing Russian soldiers to drag two of his fellow countrymen into the DDR without any semblance of a trial was something no West Berliner with an ounce of pride would do without a fight. Glancing around, he tried to gauge the sympathies of the NATO squads. The Americans looked as if they might be with him, but Hauer knew he couldn’t rely on that if it came to a fight. Force would probably be counterproductive in any case, he thought; it usually was. He’d have to try a different tack. Five steps carried him to the departing Russian. He grasped the burly man by his tunic and spun him around.
“Listen, Sergeant,” he whispered forcefully, “or Major or Colonel or whatever the hell you are. These man have committed no serious offense and they certainly pose no threat to the security of this site. I suggest we search them, then book them into one of our stations just like anybody else. That way we keep the press out of it, understand? Pravda? Izvestia? If you want to make an international incident out of this, you’re quite welcome to do it, but you take full responsibility. Am I clear?”
The Russian understood well enough, and for a moment he considered Hauer’s suggestion. But the situation was not so simple now. He had gone too far to back down in front of his men. Ignoring Hauer, he turned to his squad. “These men are suspected enemies of the Soviet Union! They will remain in Soviet custody until the objective of their mission has been determined! Corporal, put them aboard our bus!”
Furious but outgunned, Hauer thought quickly. He had dealt with Russian officers for more than twenty-five years, and all his experience had taught him one lesson: the communist system, inefficient as it was, had grown proficient at breeding one thing out of its citizens—individual initiative. This Russian had to be reminded that his actions could have serious international implications. With two fingers Hauer removed his Walther from its holster and handed it to an astonished Weiss with a theatrical flourish. Again, the Soviet riflemen paused uncertainly, their eyes rivetted on the unpredictable policeman.
“We have a stalemate, Comrade!” Hauer declared loudly. “You wish to keep these men in Soviet custody? Very well! You now stand on the only plot of Russian soil in West Berlin—an accident of history that will soon be rectified, I think. You may keep the prisoners here for as long as you wish—” The Russian slowed his march. “—however crossing into the DDR with two citizens of the Federal Republic is an entirely different matter—a political matter—and quite beyond my power or yours to authorize. The prisoners must remain here until we have contacted our superior officers! I shall accompany you to the command trailer, where we can make the necessary calls.” Hauer looked over his shoulder. “I would also suggest to the British sergeant that he join us, as we are in the British sector of the city.”
Hauer started toward the trailer. He didn’t intend to give the Russian time to argue. “Apfel!” he shouted. “Weiss! Drive everyone back to the station, then go home! I’ll handle the paperwork on this!”
“But Captain!” Weiss protested.
“Go! “
Hans grabbed Weiss’s sleeve and pulled him toward the van. The dazed recruits followed, their eyes on Hauer as he marched toward the trailer. The British sergeant, suddenly made aware of his responsibility, conferred with his men, a couple of whom restlessly fingered their Browning HiPower pistols.
Bristling with fury, the Russian ordered his men to follow Hauer with the prisoners. It made a strange parade. Hauer, unarmed, strode purposefully toward the command trailer, while the Russians—looking a bit sheepish in spite of being armed to the teeth—herded their rumpled prisoners along behind. The British brought up the rear.
The American master sergeant stood with his hands on his hips, shaking his head in amazement. “That Kraut is one smooth son of a bitch, gentlemen. I hope y’all were paying attention. He may be wearing a cop’s uniform, but that man is a soldier. Yes, sir, I’d bet my stripes on it!”
The American was right. As Hauer marched toward the trailer, every inch of his ramrod bearing bore the indelible stamp of military discipline. Nothing betrayed the turmoil he felt knowing that the only thing stopping the angry Russian from taking control of the prisoners was the ring of men and steel at the checkpoints leading out of the city—certainly not one headstrong police captain just six weeks from
retirement.
Inside the police van, Hans calmed down a little. He pulled into the Wilhelmstrasse, then wheeled onto the Heerstrasse, heading east. For a time no one spoke. Hauer’s actions had unnerved them all.
Finally Weiss broke the silence.
“Did you see that, Hans?”
“Of course,” he said tersely. The sheaf of papers felt like a kilo of heroin strapped to his leg.
“Old Hauer stepped in front of those machine guns like they weren’t even there,” said one of the younger men.
“I kind of got the feeling he’d done it before,” mused Weiss.
“He has,” Hans said flatly.
“When?” asked a chorus of surprised voices.
“Quite a few times, actually. He works Hostage Recovery for Special Tasks Division.”
“How do you know so much about him?”
Hans felt his face flush; he shrugged and looked out the window to cover it.
“I’m glad it happened,” Weiss said softly.
“Why?” asked one of the recruits.
“Showed those Russians what for, that’s why. Showed them West Berlin’s not a doormat for their filthy boots. They’ll have quite a little mess on their hands now, won’t they, Hans?”
“We all will, Erhard.”
“Hauer ought to be prefect,” suggested an old hand of twenty-one. “He’s twice the man Funk is.”
“He can’t,” Hans said, in spite of himself.
“Why not?”
“Because of Munich.”
“Munich?”
Hans sighed and left the question unanswered. How could they understand? Every man in the van but him and Weiss had been toddlers at the time of the Olympic massacre. Turning onto the Friedrichstrasse, he swung the van into a space in front of the colossal police station and switched off the engine. He sensed them all—Weiss especially—watching him for a clue as to what to do next. Without a word he handed Weiss the keys, climbed out of the van, and started for his Volkswagen.
“Where are you going?” Weiss called.
“Exactly where Hauer told me to go, my friend! Home!”
“But shouldn’t we report this?”
“Do what you must!” Hans called, still walking. He could feel the papers in his boot, already damp, with nervous sweat. The sooner he was inside his own apartment, the better he would feel. Again he prayed silently that Ilse would be home when he got there.
After three unsuccessful attempts, he coaxed his old VW to life, and with the careful movements of a policeman who has seen too many traffic fatalities, he eased the car into the morning rush of West Berlin. The car that fell in behind him—a rental Ford—was just like a thousand others in the city. The man at the wheel was not. Jonas Stern rubbed his tired eyes and pushed his leather bag a little farther toward the passenger door. It simply would not do for a traffic policeman to see what lay on the seat beneath the bag. Not a gun, but a night-vision scope—a third-generation Pilkington, far superior to the one the American sergeant had been toying with. Definitely not standard tourist equipment. But worth its weight in gold, Stern decided, following Hans’s battered VW around a turn. In gold.
CHAPTER TWO
05.55 a.m. Soviet Sector. East Berlin, DDR
The KGB’s RYAD computer logged the Spandau call at 05:55:32 hours Central European Time. Such exactitude seemed to matter a great deal to the new breed of agent that passed through East Berlin on their training runs these days. They had cut their too-handsome teeth on microchips, and for them a case that could not be reduced to microbits of data to feed their precious machines was no case at all. But to Ivan Kosov—the colonel to whom such calls were still routed—high-tech accuracy without human judgment to exploit it meant nothing. Snorting once to clear his chronically obstructed sinuses, he picked up the receiver of the black phone on his desk.
“Kosov,” he growled.
The words that followed were delivered with such hysterical force that Kosov jerked the receiver away from his ear. The man on the other end of the phone was the “sergeant” from the Spandau guard detail. His actual rank was captain in the KGB, Third Chief Directorate—the KGB division responsible for spying on the Soviet army. Kosov glanced at his watch. He’d expected his man back by now. Whatever the flustered captain was screaming about must explain the delay.
“Sergei,” he said finally. “Start again and tell it like a professional. Can you do that?”
Two minutes later, Kosov’s hooded eyes opened a bit and his breathing grew laboured. He began firing questions at his subordinate, trying to determine if the events at Spandau had been accidental, or if some human will had guided them.
“What did the Polizei on the scene say? Yes, I do see. Listen to me, Sergei, this is what you will do. Let this policeman do just what he wants. Insist on accompanying him to the station. Take your men with you. He is with you now? What is his name?” Kosov scrawled Hauer, Polizei Captain on a notepad. “Ask him which station he intends to go to. Abschnitt 53?” Kosov wrote that down too, recalling as he did that Abschnitt 53 was in the American sector of West Berlin, on the Friedrichstrasse. “I’ll meet you there in an hour. It might be sooner, but these days you never know how Moscow will react. What? Be discreet, but if force becomes necessary, use it. Listen to me. Between the time the prisoners are formally charged and the time I arrive, you’ll probably have a few minutes. Use that time. Question each of your men about anything out of the ordinary they might have noticed during the night. Don’t worry, this is what you were trained for.” Kosov cursed himself for not putting a more experienced man on the Spandau detail. “And Sergei, question your men separately. Yes, now go. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Kosov replaced the receiver and searched his pocket for a cigarette. He felt a stab of incipient angina, but what could he expect? He had already outfoxed the KGB doctors far longer than he’d ever hoped to, and no man could live forever. The cigarette calmed him, and before he lifted the other phone—the red one that ran only east—he decided that he could afford sixty seconds to think this thing through properly. Trespassers at Spandau. After all these years, Moscow’s cryptic warnings had finally come true. Had Centre expected this particular incident? Obviously they had expected something, or they wouldn’t have taken such pains to have their stukatch on hand when the British levelled the prison. Kosov knew there was at least one informer on his Spandau team, and probably others he didn’t know about. The East German Security Service (Stasi) usually managed to bribe a@least one man on almost every KGB operation in Berlin. So much for fraternal socialism, he thought, reaching for a pencil.
He jotted a quick list of the calls he would have to make: KGB chairman Zemenek at Moscow Centre; the Soviet commandant for East Berlin; and of course the prefect of West Berlin police. Kosov would enjoy the call to West Berlin. It wasn’t often he could make demands of the arrogant West Germans and expect to be accommodated, but today would be one of those days. The Moscow call, on the other hand, he would not enjoy at all. It might mean anything from a medal to expulsion from service without a word of explanation.
This was Kosov’s fear. For the past ten years, operationally speaking, Berlin had been a dead city. The husk of its farmer romance clung to it, but the old Cold War urgency was gone. Pre-eminence had moved to another part of the globe, and Kosov had no Japanese or Arabic. His future held only mountains of paperwork and turf battles with the GRU and the Stasi. Kosov didn’t give a damn about Rudolf Hess. Chairman Zemenek might be obsessed with Nazi conspiracies, but what was the point? The Soviet empire was leaking like a sieve, and Moscow was worried about some intrigue left over from the Great Patriotic War? The Chairman’s Obsession. That’s what the KGB chiefs in Berlin had called Rudolf Hess ever since the Nuremberg trials, when he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Spandau.
Four weeks ago Kosov had thought he had received his last call about Spandau’s famous Prisoner Number Seven. That was when the Americans had found the old Nazi dead, a lamp cord wrapped around his neck. Suicide, Kosov remembered with a chuckle. That’s what the Allied board of inquiry had ruled it. Kosov thought it a damned remarkable suicide for a ninety-three-year-old man. Hess had supposedly hanged himself from a rafter, yet
all his doctors agreed that the arthritic old Nazi couldn’t lift his arms any higher than his shoulders. The German press had screamed murder, of course. Kosov didn’t give a damn if it was murder. One less German in the world made for a better world, in his view. He was just grateful the old man hadn’t died during a Soviet guard month. Another sharp chest pain made Kosov wince. It was thinking about the damned Germans that caused it. He hated them. The fact that both his father and his grandfather had been killed by Germans probably had something to do with it, but that wasn’t all. Behind the Germans’ arrogance, Kosov knew, lurked a childish insecurity, a desperate desire to be liked. But Kosov never gratified it. Because beneath that insecurity seethed something else, something darker. An ancient, tribal desire—a warlike need to dominate. He’d heard the rumours that Gorbachev was softening on the reunification issue, and it made him want to puke. As far as Kosov was concerned, the day the spineless politicians in Moscow decided to let the Germans reunite was the day the Red army should roll across both Germanies like a tidal wave, smashing everything in its path.
Thinking about Moscow brought Kosov back to Hess. Because on that subject, Moscow Centre was like a shrewish old woman. The Rudolf Hess case held a security classification unique in Kosov’s experience; it dated all the way back to the NKVD. And in a bureaucracy where access to information was the very lifeblood of survival, no one he had ever met had ever seen the Hess file. No one but the chairman. Kosov had no idea why this was so. What he did have was a very short list—a list of names and potential events relating to Rudolf Hess which mandated certain responses. One of those events was illegal entry into Spandau Prison; and the response: immediate notification of the chairman. Kosov felt sure that the fact that Spandau now lay in ruins did not affect his orders at all. He glanced one last time at the scrawled letters on his pad: Hauer, Polizei Captain. Then he stubbed out his cigarette and lifted the red phone.