by Greg Iles
Hans recognized one as the “sergeant” who had bullied Weiss at Spandau, but the others—both colonels—he had never seen before. And to Funk’s left, a little apart from Lieutenant Luhr, sat Captain Dieter Hauer. Dark sacs hung under his gray eyes, and he regarded Hans with a Buddha-like inscrutability.
“Setzen sie sich,” Funk ordered, then looked down at a buff file open before him.
As Hans turned to sit, he saw more men behind him. Six Berlin policemen stood in a line to the left of the door. He knew them all slightly; all were from other districts. On the right side of the door stood the Russian soldiers from the Spandau detail. Their bloodshot eyes gave the lie to their freshly shaven faces, and the mud of the prison yard still caked their boots. Hans looked slowly from face to face. When his eyes met those of the Russian who had caught him in the rubble pile, Hans looked away first. He did not see the Russian nod almost imperceptibly to the “sergeant” at the table, nor did he see the “sergeant’ softly touch the sleeve of one of the colonels as Funk began his interrogation.
“You are Sergeant Hans Apfel?” the prefect asked, still looking at the file before him. “Born Munich 1960, Bundeswehr service 1978 to 1980, two-year tour Federal Border Police, attached Munich municipal force 1983, transferred Berlin 1984, promoted sergeant May of ‘84?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Speak up, Sergeant.”
Hans cleared his throat. “I am.”
“Better. I want you to listen to me, Sergeant. I have convened this informal hearing to save everyone—yourself included—a great deal of unnecessary trouble. Because of the publicity surrounding this morning’s events, the Allied commandants have scheduled a formal investigation into this matter, to commence at seven o’clock tomorrow morning. I want this matter cleared up long before then. The problem is that our Soviet friends”—Funk nodded deferentially to his right—“Oberst Zotin and Oberst Kosov, claim to have uncovered something rather disturbing at Spandau today. Their forensic people say they have evidence that something was removed from the area of the cellblocks last
occupied by the Nuremberg war criminals.”
Hans’s stomach rolled. For a moment the room seemed to spin wildly. It righted itself when he focussed on the immobile mask of Captain Hauer.
“Of course I denied their request to question our officers directly,” Funk went on, “but for the sake of expediency I’ve agreed to act as the Soviets’ proxy. That way they can be quickly satisfied as to our lack of complicity in this matter. Thus, the whole mess is over before it really begins, you see, Sergeant? It’s really better all around.”
For the first time Hans noticed another man in the room. He had been hunched out of sight behind Hauer, but when Funk spoke again he moved.
“By the way, Sergeant,” Funk said casually, “in the interest of veracity I’ve agreed to monitor all responses by polygraph.
Hans felt a jolt of confusion. Polygraph test results were inadmissible as evidence in a German court. The Berlin Polizei were not even permitted to use the polygraph as an investigative tool. Or almost never, anyway. Buried in the budget of the Experimental Section of the Forensics Division was a small cadre of technicians devoted to the subtle art of lie detection. They were used only in crisis situations, where lives were at stake. The only explanation Hans could come up with for the use of a polygraph tonight was that the Russians had requested it.
“We’ll be using our own man, of course,” Funk said. “Perhaps you know Heinz Schmidt?”
Hans knew of Schmidt, and what he knew made his heart race. The ferret-like little polygrapher took perverse pleasure in wringing secrets out of people—criminals or not—no matter how trivial. He even moonlighted to satisfy his fetish, screening employees for industrial inns.
Funk’s inquisitor padded around Hauer’s corner of the table, pushing his precious polygraph before him on a wheeled cart like the head of a heretic. Ilse had been right, Hans realized. He should never have come here.
“I said is that all right with you, Sergeant?” Funk repeated testily.
Hans could see that both Hauer and Lieutenant Luhr had suddenly taken a keen interest in him. It took all his concentration to keep his facial muscles still. He cleared his throat again. “Yes, sir. No problem.”
“Good. The procedure is simple: Schmidt asks you a few calibration questions, then we get to it.” Funk sounded bored. “Hurry it up, Schmidt.”
As the polygrapher attached the electrodes to his fingers, Hans felt his earlier bravado draining away. Then came the blood-pressure cuff, fastened around his upper arm and pumped until he could feel his arterial blood throbbing against it like a tourniquet. Last came the chest bands—rubber straps stretched around his torso beneath his shirt—to monitor his respiration. Three separate sensing systems, cold and inhuman, now silently awaited the slightest signals of deception. Hans wondered which vital sign would give him away: a trace of sweat translated into electrical resistance? His thudding heart? Or just his eyes? I must be crazy, he thought wildly. Why keep it up anyway? They’ll find me out in the end. For one mad moment he considered simply blurting out the truth. He could exonerate himself before Schmidt even asked the first stupid control question. He could–
“Are you Sergeant Hans Apfel?” Schmidt asked in a high, abrasive voice.
“I am.”
“Yes or no, please, Sergeant. Is your name Hans Apfel?”
“Yes.”
“Do you reside in West Berlin?”
“Yes.”
Hans watched Schmidt make some adjustments to his machine. The ferret’s shirt was soiled at the collar and armpits, his fingernails were long and grimy, and he smelled of ammonia. Suddenly, Schmidt pulled a red pen from his pocket and held it up for all to see.
“Is this pen red, Sergeant?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Schmidt made—or seemed to make—still more adjustments to his machine.
Nervously, Hans wondered how much Schmidt knew he knew about the polygraph test. Because Hans knew a good deal. The concept of the “lie detector” had always fascinated him. He had taken the Experimental Interrogation course at the police school at Hiltrup, and a close look at his personnel file would reveal that. As Schmidt tinkered with his machine, Hans marshalled what he remembered from the Hiltrup course. The first tenet of the polygrapher was that for test results to be accurate, the subject needed to believe the machine infallible. Polygraphers used various methods to create this illusion, but Hans knew that Schmidt favoured the card trick. Schmidt would ask his subject to pick a playing card at random from a deck, then to lay it face down on a table. Schmidt’s ability to name the hidden card after a few “yes or no” questions seemed to prove his polygraph infallible.
Of course the subject always chose his card from a deck in which every card was identical, but he had no way of knowing that. Many skilled criminals had confessed their crimes immediately after Schmidt’s little parlour show, certain that his machine would eventually find them out. Hans saw no deck of cards tonight. Maybe Schmidt thinks his reputation is enough to intimidate me, he thought nervously. And maybe he’s right.
Already perspiring, Hans tried to think of a way to beat the little weasel’s machine. Some people had beaten the polygraph by learning to suppress their physiological stress reactions, but Hans knew he had no hope of this. The suppression technique took months to master, and right now he could barely hold himself in his chair. He did have one hope, if he could keep a cool head picking out the “control” questions. Most people thought questions like “Is this pen red?” were the controls. But Hans knew better. The real control
questions were ones which would cause almost anyone asked them to lie.
“Have you ever failed to report income on your federal tax return?” was a common control. Most people denied this almost universal crime, and by doing so provided Schmidt with their baseline “lie.” Later, when asked, “Did you cut your wife’s throat with a kitchen knife?” a guilty person’s l
ie would register far stronger than his baseline or “control” reference. Questions like “Is this pen red?” were asked simply to give a person’s vital signs time to return to nominal between the relevant questions. Hans knew if he could produce a strong enough emotional response to a control question, then an actual lie would appear no different to the polygraph than his faked control responses. Schmidt would be forced to declare him “innocent.”
The best method to do this was to hide a thumbtack in your shoe, but Hans knew that an exaggerated response could also be triggered by holding your breath or biting your tongue. He decided to worry about method later. If he couldn’t pick out the control questions, method wouldn’t matter.
Schmidt’s voice jolted him back to reality.
“Sergeant Apfel, prior to discharging your Spandau assignment, did you communicate with any person other than the duty sergeant regarding that assignment?”
“No,” Hans replied. That was true. He hadn’t had time to discuss it with anyone.
“Is Captain Hauer a married man?”
Irrelevant question, Hans thought bitterly. To anyone except me. “No,” he answered.
Schmidt looked down at the notepad from which he chose his questions. “Have you ever stopped a friend or public official for a traffic violation and let them go without issuing a citation?”
Control question, Hans thought. Almost any cop who denied this would be lying. Keeping a straight face, he bit down on the tip of his tongue hard enough to draw blood. He felt a brief flush of perspiration pass through his skin. “No,” he said.
When Schmidt glanced up from the polygraph, Hans knew he had produced an exaggerated response.
“Am I holding up two fingers?” Schmidt asked.
Irrelevant, thought Hans. “Yes,” he answered truthfully.
Schmidt came a step closer. “Sergeant Apfel, you’ve made several arrests for drug possession in the past year. Have you ever failed to turn the entire quantity of confiscated drugs over to the evidence officer?”
Hans started to bite his tongue again; then he hesitated. If this was a control question, Schmidt had upped the stakes of the game. Giving an exaggerated response here would not be without serious consequences. Police corruption involving drugs was an epidemic
problem, with accordingly severe punishment for those caught.
The men at the table gave no indication that they saw this question as anything but routine, but Hans thought he detected a feral gleam in Schmidt’s eyes. The dirty little man knew his business.
“Sergeant?” Schmidt prodded.
Hans fidgeted. He did not want to appear guilty of a drug crime, but the Spandau questions still awaited. If he intended to keep the papers secret, he would have to give at least a partially exaggerated response to this question. In silent desperation he held his breath, counted to four, then answered, “No,” and exhaled slowly.
“Is your wife’s maiden name Natterman, Sergeant?”
Irrelevant. “Yes,” Hans replied.
Schmidt wiped his upper lip. “Were you the last man to arrive at the scene of the argument over custody of the trespassers at Spandau Prison?”
Relevant question. Hans glanced up at the panel. All eyes were on him now. Stay calm … “I don’t remember,” he said. “Things were so confused then. I really didn’t notice.”
“Yes or no, Sergeant!”
“I suppose I could have been.”
Exasperated, Schmidt looked to Funk for guidance. The prefect fixed Hans with his imperious stare. “Sergeant,” he said curtly, “one of your fellow officers told us you were the last man there. Would you care to answer the question again?”
“I’m sorry,” Hans said sheepishly, “I just don’t remember.” He looked at the floor. The Russian soldier who had caught him in the rubble pile could call him a liar right now, he knew, but for some reason the man hadn’t spoken up.
Funk appeared satisfied with Hans’s answer, and told Schmidt to move along. There can’t be many more questions, Hans thought.
“Just a little longer, Sergeant Apfel.” Schmidt’s voice cut like slivers of glass. “Did you remove any documents from a hollow brick in the area of the cellblocks last occupied by the Nuremberg war criminals?”
Holy Mother of God! Hans choked down a scream. Every eye in the room burned upon his face. For the first time Hauer’s steely mask cracked. His probing eyes fixed Hans motionless in his chair, stripping away the pathetic layers of deception. But it was too late to come clean. “No,” Hans said lamely.
“Specifically,” Schmidt bored in, “did you discover, remove, see, or even hear of documents pertaining to or written by Prisoner Number Seven—Rudolf Hess?”
Hans felt cold sweat running down his spine. His heart became an enemy within his chest, thumping out the tattoo of his guilt. And there stood Schmidt, lie-hungry, watching each centimetre of paper unspool from his precious machine. Looking at him now, Hans fancied he saw a mad doctor reading an electrocardiograph, a diabolical quack watching each fateful squiggle in the hope of witnessing a fatal heart attack.
Hans felt his willpower ebbing away. The truth welled up in his throat, beyond his control.
Just tell the truth, urged a voice in his head, tell it all and take whatever consequences come. Then this insanity will focus elsewhere. Yet as Hans started to do just that, Schmidt said, “Sergeant, have you ever omitted an important piece of information from a job application?”
Hans felt like a spacewalker cut loose from his tether. Schmidt had asked another control question! Hadn’t he? But why hadn’t he triumphantly proclaimed Hans’s guilt to the tribunal? Hans had expected the little demon to dance a jig and scream: Him! Him! There is the liar!
“No—no, I haven’t,” Hans stammered.
“Thank you, Sergeant.”
While Hans sat stunned, Schmidt turned to Funk and shook his head.
The prefect closed the file before him, then turned to the Soviet colonels and shrugged. “Any questions?” he asked.
The Russians looked like sleeping bears. When one finally shook his head to indicate the negative, the gesture seemed the result of a massive effort. Hans even sensed the soldiers in the back of the room relaxing. Only Captain Hauer and Lieutenant Luhr remained tense. For some reason it struck Hans just then that Jürgen Luhr was the kind of German who made Jews nervous. He was a racial type—the proto-Germanic man, tall and broad-shouldered, thin-lipped and square-headed—a mythical Aryan fiend passed down in whispered tales from mother to daughter and father to son.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Sergeant,” Funk said wearily.
“We’ll contact you if we need any further details.”
Then over Hans’s shoulder, “Bring in the last officer.”
Hans floundered. They had drawn him into the trap, yet failed to pounce for the kill. “Am I free to go?” he asked uncertainly.
“Unless you wish to stay with us all night,” Funk snapped.
“Excuse me, Prefect,” Lieutenant Luhr cut in. All eyes turned to him. “I’d like to ask the sergeant a question.”
Funk nodded.
“Tell me, Sergeant, did you notice Officer Weiss acting in a suspicious manner at any time during the Spandau assignment?”
Hans shook his head, remembering Weiss being dragged down the hall. “No, sir. No, I didn’t.”
Luhr smiled with understanding, but he had the watchful eyes of a police dog. “Officer Weiss is a Jew, isn’t he, Sergeant?”
One of the Russian colonels started to say something, but his comrade laid a restraining
hand on his shoulder.
“I believe that’s right,” Hans said tentatively. “Yes, he’s Jewish.”
Luhr gave a curt nod of the head, as if this new fact somehow explained everything.
“You may go, Sergeant,” Funk said.
Hans stood. They were telling him to go, yet he sensed that some unspoken understanding had passed between the men in the room. It was as if several d
ecisions had been taken at once in some language unknown to him. He turned toward the soldiers and police at the back of the room and shuffled toward the door. No one moved to stop him. Why hadn’t Schmidt called him a liar? Why hadn’t the Russian who’d caught him searching called him a liar? And why did he feel compelled to keep lying, anyway?
Because of the Russians, he realized. If the prefect—or even Hauer—had only questioned him alone, he could have told them. Just as Ilse wanted him to. He would have told them …
A burly policeman held open the door. Hans walked through, hearing Funk’s tired voice resume behind him. He quickened his pace. He wanted to get out of the building as soon as possible. He entered the stairwell at a near trot, but slowed when he saw two beefy patrolmen ascending from the first floor. Nodding a perfunctory greeting, he slipped between the two men. Then they took him.
Hans had no chance at all. The men used no weapons because they needed none. His arms were immobilized as if by steel bands; then the men reversed direction and began dragging him down the stairs.
“What is this!” Hans shouted. “I’m a police officer! Let me go!”
One of the men chuckled quietly. They reached the bottom of the stairs and turned down a disused hallway, a repository of ancient files and broken furniture. When the initial shock and disorientation wore off, Hans realized that he had to fight back somehow. But how? In the darkest part of the corridor he suddenly let his body go limp, appearing to lose his will to resist.
“Scheisse!” one man cursed. “Dead weight.”
“He soon will be,” commented his partner.
Dead weight? With speed born of desperation Hans fired his elbow into a rib cage. He heard bone crack.
“Arrghh!” The man let go.
With his free hand Hans pummelled the other attacker’s head, aiming for his temple. The policeman held him fast.
“You bastard …” from the darkness.
Hans kept pounding the man’s skull. The grip on his arm was loosening. An explosion that seemed to detonate behind his right eye paralysed him. Darkness.