The Spandau Phoenix wwi-2 Read online

  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

  riveted 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@ertainly not one headstrong police captain just six weeks from

  retirement.

  inside the police van Hans calmed down a little. He pulled into the

  Wilheimstrasse, 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 dr himself.

  "@y 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

  5.'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 labored. 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. Lis ten 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 leveled

  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 forfraternal 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 Chainnan'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 rumors 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 Germanys 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 in responses.

  to Rudolf Hess which mandated certa' 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.

  6.-25 A.M. British Sector. West Berlin

  The warm apartment air hit Hans in a wave, flushing his skin, enfolding

  him like a cocoon. Ilse had already left, he knew it instinctively.

  There was no movement in the kitchen, no sound of appliances, no running

  shower, nothing. Still jumpy, and half-starved, he walked hopefully

  into the kitchen. He found a note on the refrigerator door, written in

  Ilse's hurried hand: Wurst in the oven. I love YOU. Back by

  18:00-Thank you, Liebchen, he thought, catching the pungent aroma of

  Weisswurst- Using one of his gloves as a potholder, he removed the hot

  dish from the oven and placed it on the counter to cool. Then he took a

  deep breath, bent over, rolled up his pants leg and dug the sheaf of

  onionskin out of his boot. His pulse quickened as he unfolded the pages

  in the light. He backed against the stove for heat, plopped a chunk of

  white sausage into his mouth, and picked up reading where the Russian

  soldier had surprised him.

  ... I only hope that long after these events cease to have immediate

  consequences in our insane world, someone will find these words and

  learn the obscene truth not only of Himmler, Heydrich, and the rest, but

  of England@f those who would have sold her honor and ultimately her

  existence for a chance to sit at Hitler's blood-drenched table. The

  facts are few, but I have had more time to ponder them than most men

  would in ten lifetimes. I know how this mission was accomplished, but I

  do not know why. That is for someone else to learn. I can only point

  the way. You must follow the Eye.

  The Eye is the key to it all!

  Hans stopped chewing and held the paper closer to his face.

  Sketched below this exhortation was a single, stylized eye.

  Gracefully curved, with a lid but no lashes, it stared out from the

  paper with a strange intensity. It seemed neither masculine nor

  feminine. It looked mystical somehow. Even a little creepy. He read

  on: Whatfollows is my story, as best I can remember it.

  Hans blinked his eyes. At the beginning of the next paragraph, the

  narrative suddenly switched to a language he could not understand.

  He didn't even recognize it. He stared in puzzlement at the

  painstakingly blocked characters. Portuguese? he wondered. Italian

  maybe? He couldn't tell. A few words of German were sprinkled through

  the gibberish-names mostly-but not enough to get any meaning from.