The Secret of Spandau

by Peter Lovesey

  The logic that had brought him this prize was pleasing to Julius. He was going to enjoy recounting it to his superiors. His man Valentin had learned through the girl Heidrun Kassner that Hess had been disturbed about a newspaper report of a fire in Munich. It was, of course, the fire that had destroyed Beer Verlag. Hess had become alarmed, believing, possibly, that the typescript of his book had been burned with the house, or even suspecting, if he were still capable of recognizing a KGB operation, that it was in Soviet hands. He had wanted to be reassured that the original manuscript was still safe in Switzerland. So he had asked the warder he trusted most, the American, Cal Moody, to visit Edda Zenk and check that all was well. This Moody had done, innocently leading the KGB to Fraulein Zenk, and so to Zurich, and the prize.

  But it would not be wise to spend too long enjoying this private moment of self-congratulation. The suitcase had to be closed again and prepared for its removal to Moscow Centre. For this, a well-tried but efficient stratagem had been prepared. Downstairs in a locked room, an open coffin was waiting. Julius had instructions personally to place the suitcase in the coffin and screw down the lid. Word had already been passed to the Swiss that one of the Soviet mission had suffered a fatal heart attack. The coffin was to be conveyed to Zurich Airport under the cloak of diplomatic immunity and put aboard an Aeroflot aircraft. Julius would oversee every stage of the loading and unloading. His responsibility did not end until the cargo was delivered to the top man at Moscow Centre, KGB General Vanin.

  He took care to replace the bundles exactly as he had found them. It took only a few seconds to re-engage the locks with his tie-pin. He unlocked the door of his bedroom, made sure the corridor was clear and then carried the suitcase down the back stairs and through a corridor that connected with the medical bay. He reached the room he wanted without meeting anyone.

  He let himself inside and went straight to the open coffin standing on trestles in the centre and swung the suitcase into position. It lodged snugly in the satin-padded interior, where the shoulders of a corpse would normally lie. He reached for the hinged coffin-lid and froze as a voice behind him said, ‘Not yet, Comrade Julius.’

  Footsteps crossed the stone floor. Julius turned and looked into a face he had only ever seen before in one studio portrait photo that appeared from time to time in Party newspapers and magazines: a broad, high-boned face with deceptively primitive features, almost the features of an Eskimo – slit eyes, thick brows and flat, wide-nostrilled nose.

  Julius swallowed, took a short, deep breath, and made a sort of bow. ‘Comrade General.’

  General Mikhail Vanin smiled and revealed a set of teeth the colour of a cornfield in Kazakhstan. He was clearly pleased to be recognized out of uniform. His blue suit had the sheen of an expensive Soviet-made cloth. ‘Yes, I decided to make a change in the arrangements,’ he announced with the air of a conjurer who has just materialised unexpectedly. ‘I have saved you a trip to Moscow. When I have checked that the contents of the suitcase are in order, you may consider your assignment completed. Hand me that tool, will you?’

  Julius picked a heavy-duty screwdriver off a chair beside the trestle. He felt sick at the thought that while he had sneaked his look at the Hess papers, the military head of the KGB was waiting for him downstairs. But General Vanin appeared not to suspect anything. He, too, was curious to see inside the suitcase, only his methods were more crude. He grasped the screwdriver like a dagger and thrust it downwards, ripping through the lid of the case and carving a long gash in the plastic material. Two more stabs, and he was able to tear most of the lid apart, like a lion eviscerating its prey. He drew out several bundles of Hess’s papers, glanced at them, wrenched off the string and let the pieces scatter in the coffin and on the floor.

  The savagery of the exercise came as a further shock to Julius. It was alien to everything he understood about the KGB. Its officers were trained to be efficient and dispassionate, ruthless but unemotional. Documents of any sort were treated with respect. Everything had a value of some sort to the service. Everything had to be indexed and filed and retained until it was required again. Yet General Vanin was attacking the Hess papers as if they were the Deputy Führer in person.

  He was breathing rapidly as he addressed Julius again. ‘Comrade, you have done well. This is the end of Herr Hess’s literary enterprise. Do you like slivovitz? I have a bottle upstairs and I should like to drink with you.’

  ‘Shall I pick the paper off the floor?’ Julius offered.

  ‘Leave it. Filthy garbage. It will all go in the shredder.’

  ‘It’s not going to Moscow after all?’

  ‘Filth and lies are better destroyed where you find them, Comrade,’ answered the General. ‘I shall take care of it later.’

  Three minutes after, they stood in the carpeted luxury of the boardroom on the first floor. ‘We serve ourselves,’ the General explained, ‘because we have sensitive matters to discuss.’ He filled two cut-glass goblets with the liqueur and handed one to Julius. It would have been a generous helping of wine, let alone slivovitz. ‘To a successful operation, Comrade.’

  Julius touched glasses and drank deeply of the plum-flavoured drink, grateful for its warming properties as he prepared to discuss ‘sensitive matters’ with General Vanin. He felt more comfortable here than downstairs beside the coffin.

  ‘Sit down now, and give me your comprehensive account of the operation,’ said the General, pointing to a velvet-upholstered, horseshoe-backed chair. It was the finest chair in the room.

  Julius sat in it like a hero of the Soviet Union and told his story. His confidence grew as he recollected just how smoothly the whole operation had gone.

  General Vanin looked well pleased. He came over to top up Julius’s glass. ‘So. Thanks to you, Comrade Julius, we have acquired the only two copies of the Hess memoir. We have already destroyed the typescript, and now we shall deal with the manuscript itself. There will be no record that the book ever existed.’

  Even to a man as case-hardened as Julius, such destruction seemed regrettable and crude. Emboldened by the slivovitz, he said with deference, ‘If I may make an observation, Comrade General, would it not be profitable to retain the manuscript in Herr Hess’s own handwriting, expunging any passages detrimental to the honour of the Soviet State?’

  The General frowned. ‘Profitable in which sense, Comrade?’

  ‘Not as a money-making venture,’ Julius answered in a suitably shocked voice. ‘I meant profitable to the highest enterprises of the State. We have skilful craftsmen at our disposal who could edit certain sections of the manuscript. They would be undetectable by scholars.’

  ‘Which sections did you have in mind?’ enquired the General casually.

  Julius was not so far gone as to step into that morass. ‘Nothing I could name, Comrade General. I haven’t examined the script in detail myself. I simply anticipate the poisonous lies one must expect from an enemy of the State.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Don’t you agree, Comrade General, that an edited version of the Hess book might be put to the services of the State?’

  General Vanin shook his head. ‘Too dangerous. Every scrap of paper must be shredded.’

  Julius found himself wishing he had taken an opportunity to read the book in full. His thoughts went back to his meeting with Harald Beer, when the publisher had talked of the Russians going berserk when they read the book. When General Vanin had ripped the suitcase open, those words had seemed prophetic. The sensitive issue was the Polish soldiers liquidated in 1940, Julius recalled. He should have taken the trouble to read that chapter, if no others. But on reflection, perhaps he had been wise to remain ignorant.

  ‘I shall top up your glass,’ the General told him.

  ‘No more for me, I think,’ said Julius, putting his hand towards the goblet, but the General was already pouring.

  ‘We must finish the bottle,’ he said.

  Julius nodded in acquiescence. The drink was too fruity f
or his taste, and his head felt muzzy; but who argued with the head of the KGB?

  ‘Always finish everything,’ explained the General, still managing to sound remarkably lucid. ‘When I was a child, I didn’t need to be trained to eat everything on my plate. I was hungry. I have always endeavoured to finish everything I start.’

  ‘An excellent principle, Comrade General.’

  ‘Yes. One small matter that I should not like to overlook in this highly satisfactory operation is the girl who supplied information about the warder,’ the General confided.

  ‘Fraulein Heidrun Kassner,’ said Julius.

  The General nodded. ‘You didn’t meet her yourself?’

  ‘Comrade Valentin was her contact, Comrade General.’

  ‘How much did she know about the operation?’

  ‘Practically nothing,’ Julius declared confidently. ‘She was of no importance, except as a contact with the American warder. She can be paid and dismissed.’

  ‘I think she should be induced to leave West Berlin now,’ said the General.

  ‘I will arrange it,’ Julius affirmed.

  ‘No,’ said the General. ‘You will not.’ He smiled as if to soften the prohibition. ‘It will not be possible for you to perform that service, Comrade. You have another duty.’

  ‘What’s that, Comrade General?’

  There was a pause. General Vanin slipped his hand into his pocket and took out a white pillbox, which he passed to Julius. ‘In there, Comrade, you will find a cyanide capsule. Your duty is to swallow it.’ As Julius gaped in horror, the General raised his hand like a fighter acknowledging a low punch, but he didn’t apologise. He went on, ‘You will do it because you are a loyal servant of the State, a true hero of the Soviet Union. Your name will be honoured and your family, your aged mother and your unmarried sister in Leipzig, will be given a generous gratuity and an annuity for life.’

  Julius swayed in the chair. The room was beginning to reel. As if it mattered any more, he was suddenly afraid that his bowels would loosen. ‘Why?’ he managed to ask. ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because the secrets at stake are more precious than any one officer of the KGB, however valuable his services have been,’ the General explained. ‘You have become a security risk, Comrade Julius.’

  ‘And if I refuse?’ Julius shook his head. ‘All right. I know the answer to that.’ He sat staring into the middle distance. ‘You could trust me,’ he hazarded, then stopped and closed his eyes in resignation. After a moment, he opened them and asked, ‘What about the others – Valentin and the hit-man? They knew almost as much as I.’

  ‘They were taken care of in East Berlin this afternoon,’ said the General.

  ‘Taken care of …?’

  ‘By a man with a gas-gun.’

  Julius knew for certain that he had no alternative. ‘This is what you meant by finishing what you started.’

  ‘But I have offered you the means to finish it,’ the General pointed out.

  ‘What will happen afterwards, to my … body?’

  ‘Your death will be diagnosed correctly as due to cardiac failure and I shall make arrangements for your remains to be returned to your family for a dignified disposal. Why don’t you take the capsule now, Comrade? It is mercifully quick, as I am sure you know.’

  ‘The coffin downstairs …’

  ‘… is for you,’ murmured the General tolerantly.

  ‘Everything planned to the last detail,’ said Julius, mustering a smile. Before he closed his mouth, he had forced the capsule between his lips and bitten it.

  ‘Good man,’ said the General, raising his goblet.

  It is doubtful whether Julius heard the tribute. He had already collapsed, lolling over the arm of the chair, taking huge, stertorous breaths, which stopped before the General put down his glass.

  41

  Red had phoned for a taxi and it was waiting beside the derelict Volkswagon by the time he got downstairs with Heidrun and Jane. He sat beside the driver, leaving the women in uneasy proximity on the rear seat. The clock on the instrument panel showed 11.05 and the streets were quiet, except for a party of teenagers throwing beer-cans into the Havel from Juliusturm Bridge.

  Cal’s lodging in Old Spandau was over a small petrol station and repair garage, which probably kept the rent down in what an estate agent would have described as a much sought-after locality. Red settled the fare and they climbed the iron staircase at the back of the building and pressed the bell on Cal’s door. No lights showed in the flat and there was no response. The venetian blinds on the nearest window were in the open position, but it was too dark to see inside.

  It was a solid wooden door, not the sort that yields to a shoulder. ‘Keep your hand on the bell, love,’ Red told Jane. ‘I’ll be back in a tick.’ He clattered downstairs and into the garage, where he had noticed someone still working. ‘The tenant upstairs, the American, do you know him?’ he asked, crouching beside the feet projecting from under the chassis of a Volvo.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Seen him today?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘See anyone else go up there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll borrow this.’ Red picked a spare inspection-lamp off the floor. Consistent at least in his indifference, the mechanic carried on with his work while Red returned upstairs.

  He shone the lamp through the adjacent window, which turned out to be the kitchen. They could see a cut loaf, a coffee-mug and a magazine open on the table.

  He handed the lamp to Jane and climbed over the iron railing onto the window-ledge. It projected enough to give him a foothold if he held on to the shutters at the sides. He wanted to reach a second, larger window, probably part of the living-room.

  ‘Red, that’s dangerous!’

  ‘Just hand me the lamp when I say,’ he told Jane as he edged towards the second shutter. ‘OK.’ Gripping the top of the shutter with his right hand, he took the lamp in his left and continued the manoeuvre.

  He had to make an over-long stride to the second ledge, but with the help of the shutter he got there and shone the beam into the room.

  He had half-expected what he saw, but he still felt a sudden pricking of the skin and the nausea rising in his stomach.

  ‘Red, what is it?’ Jane called out.

  He didn’t answer. Close to the window, stretched across the floor in the fawn-coloured jacket he had been wearing that morning, was Cal, his head angled against the base of an armchair in a position that would have told anyone he was dead, even without the blood that had seeped from the exit-wounds at the back of his skull.

  Red swung the lamp hard at the sash-window and smashed a hole large enough to get his hand through and free the catch. He shoved the window upwards and climbed inside.

  Cal had been shot twice in the face, one bullet passing through the left eye and the other through the cheekbone, close to his nose. It must have happened hours ago, because the blood on his skin had dried and rigor mortis had tightened his jaw and neck.

  Red shook his head and said out loud, with crass inadequacy, but in genuine pity, ‘You didn’t deserve this, mate.’ He thought back to his last sight of Cal, waiting for a bus back to Spandau – with Valentin close behind him.

  Valentin. While the other two had murdered the old woman, Valentin must have followed Cal here and conned his way into the flat and gunned him down. Why? What had Cal done to be picked off by an assassination squad?

  The girls were shouting and ringing the bell. Red knew he must shake off the paralysing sense of outrage. He had seen gun-deaths before, in battlefronts and once on a hijack he had covered, but this was the first time he had personal knowledge of the victim. He picked a newspaper off the armchair and spread it over Cal’s mutilated face. He got up and switched on the light. Then he went to the front door and let them in. Jane peppered him with questions, but Heidrun tried to push past, so he grabbed her arm.

  ‘Listen to me, will you? Cal is dead, shot through the head. It
must have happened this morning.’

  Silence for a moment.

  ‘Who?’ mouthed Jane without saying the word.

  ‘Valentin.’

  ‘How can you be certain?’ asked Heidrun in her sing-song intonation, which suddenly sounded insufferably sanctimonious.

  ‘He was with the others who killed the old lady. He was tailing Cal when I last saw them.’ He took a tighter grip on Heidrun’s arm and asked her in German, ‘For the last time, what can you tell me about that guy?’

  She glared back at him defiantly and traded scorn for distrust. ‘Are you deaf, or something? I told you everything. I told you he was violent, but I didn’t think such a thing as this was possible. Let me pass, please. I want to see him.’

  She didn’t want to see him at all. She just wanted to evade more questions. It showed in her face. Red shoved her roughly against the wall and closed in, bringing his face up to hers. He was barely able to control the anger he felt. ‘Who’s behind Valentin?’

  She pressed her lips together until they whitened.

  ‘Answer me, whore!’

  She spat in his face, a frothy gob of spittle that stung his left eye.

  He slapped her hard across the face and back-handed the other cheek on the return.

  Behind him, Jane cried out in protest, speaking his name.

  A bead of blood formed on Heidrun’s lower lip and rolled down her chin. She bucked her knee hard into his groin, and the pain seared through his testicles. He shouted and swayed away. As she aimed another kick between his legs, he had the wit to grab her foot and twist it hard, jerking her off balance. She fell heavily.

  Then Jane acted. She threw herself on Heidrun like a wrestler and got an arm-lock on her, tightening it until she screamed with pain. Red couldn’t stand upright, but he crouched against the wall and gestured to Jane to ease the grip.