Spandau Phoenix (16 page)

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 centimeter 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 willfocus 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 Jiirgen 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 staffed, 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 decisions 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@r 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 menThen 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 pummeled 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 looseningAn explosion that seemed to detonate behind his right eye paralyzed him.

Darkness.

Less than sixty feet away from Hans, Colonels Ivan Kosov and Grigori Zotin stood outside an idling East German transit bus in the central parking lot of the police station. Inside the bus, the Soviet soldiers from the Spandau patrol waited for their long-delayed return to -East Berlin.

Most were already fast asleep.

Zotin, a GRU colonel, did'not particularly like Kosov, and-he was deeply offended at the KGB colonel's effrontery in.

donning the uniform of the Red Army. But what could he do? One couldn't keep the KGB out of something this big, especially when higher powers wanted Kosov involved.

Rubbing his hands together against the cold, Zotin tested the KGB man's perception.

"Can you believe it, Ivan? They gave them all clean reports."

"Of course," Kosov growled. "What did you expect?"

"But one of them was certainly lying!"

"Certainly."

"But how did they fake the polygraph readouts?"

Kosov looked bored. "We were six meters from the machine. They could have shown us anything."

Grigori Zotin knew exactly which policeman had lied, but he wanted to keep the information from Kosov long enough to initiate inquiries of his own. He was aware of the Kremlin's interest in the Hess case, and he knew his career could take a giant leap forward if he cracked it.

He made a mental note to decorate the young GRU officer who had caught the German policeman searching and showed enough sense to tell only his immediate superior. "You're right, of course," Zotin agreed.

Kosov grunted.

"What, exactly, do you think was discovered? A journal perhaps?

Do you think they found some proof of@' "They found a hollow brick,"

Kosov snapped. "Our forensic technicians say their tests indicate the brick held some type of paper for an unknown period of time. It could have been some kind of journal. It could also have been pages from a pornographic magazine. It could have been toilet paper! Never trust experts too much, Zotin."

The GRU colonel sucked his teeth nervously. "Don't you think we should have at least mentioned Zinoviev during the interrogation? We could have-2' "Idiot!" Kosov bellowed. "That name, isn't to be mentioned outside KGB! How do you even know it?"

Zotin stepped back defensively. "One hears things in Moscow."

"Things that could get you a bullet in the neck," Kosov warned.

Zotin tried to look unworried. "I suppose we should tell the general to turn up the pressure at the commandants' meeting tomorrow."

"Don't be ridiculous," scoffed Kosov. "Too little, too late."

"What about the trespassers, then? Why are you letting the Germans keep them?"

"Because they don't know anything."

"What do you suggest we do, then?" Zotin ventured warily.

Kosov snorted. "Are you serious? It was the second to last man-Apfel.

He was lying through his Bosche teeth. Those idiots did exactly what we wanted. If they'd admitted Apfel was lying, he'd be in a jail cell now, beyond our reach. As it is, he's at our mercy. The fool is bound to return home, and when he does"-Kosov smiled coldly-"I'll have a team waiting for him."

Zotin was aghast. "But how-?" He stifled his imprudent outburst with a cough. "How can you get a team over soon enough?" he covered.

"I have two teams here now," Kosov snapped. "Get me to a damned telephone!"

Startled, the GRU colonel clambered aboard the bus and found a seat.

"And Zotin?" Kosov said, leaning over his rival.

"Yes?"

"Keep nothing from me again. It could be very dangerous for you."

Zotin blanched.

"I want everything there is on this man Apfel. Everything.

I suggest you ride your staff very hard on this. Powerful eyes are watching us."

"How will you approach this policeman?"

"Approach him?" Kosov cracked a wolfish smile. "Break him, you mean.

By morning I'll know how many times that poor bastard peeked up his mother's skirts."

Hans awoke in a cell. There was no window. He'd been thrown onto a stack of damp cardboard boxes. One pale ray of light filtered down from somewhere high above. When he had focused his eyes, he sat up and gripped one of the steel bars. His face felt sticky. He put his fingers to his temple.

Blood The familiar slickness brought back the earlier events in a throbbing rush of confusion. The interrogation ... his father's stony silence ... the struggle in the hallway. Where was he?

He tried to rise, but he collapsed into a narrow space tween two boxes.

Rotting cardboard covered almost the entire concrete floor. A cell full of boxes? Puzzled, Hans reached into one and pulled out a damp folder.

He held it in the shaft of light. Traffic accident report, he thought.

Typed on the standard police fonn-He found the date-1973. Flipping through the yellow sheaf of papers, he saw they were all the same, all traffic accident reports from 1973. He checked the station listed on several forms: Abschnitt 53 every case. Suddenly he realized where he was.

In the early 1970s, Abschnitt 53 had been partially renovated during a city wide wave of reform that lasted about eighteen months.

There had been enough money to refurbish the reception area and overhaul the main cellblock, but the third floor, the basement, and the rear of the building went largely untouched. Hans was sure he'd been locked in the basement.

But why? No one had accused him of anything. Not openly, at least. Who were the policemen who had attacked him? Funk's men? Were they even police officers at all?

They had said he would soon be dead weight. It was crazy.

Maybe they were protecting him from the Russians. Maybe this was the only way the prefect could keep him safe from them. That's it! he thought with relief. It has to be.

A door slammed somewhere in the darkness above. Someone was coming-several people by the sound-and making no effort to hide it.

Hans heard clattering and cursing on the stairs; then he saw who was making the noise. Outlined in the fluorescent light streaming down from the basement door, two husky uniformed men were wrestling a gurney off the stairs. Slowly they cleared a path to the cell through the heaps of junk covering the basement floor. Hans closed his eyes and lay motionless on the holes where he'd been thrown.

"Looks like he's still out," said one mdn.

"I hope I killed the son of a bitch," growled the other.

"That wouldn't go over too well upstairs, ROIL"

"Who gives a shit?

The bastard broke my ribs."

Hans heard a low chuckle. "Be more careful the next time. Come on, we've got to clear a space in there for this thing.

"Fuck it. Just throw this filthy Jew in on top of that one.

Not much left of him, anyway."

"Apfel isn't a Jew."

"Jew-lover, then."

"The doctor said leave this one on the gurney."

"Make him clear a space," said Rolf, pointing in at Hans.

"Sure. If you can wake him up."

Rolf picked up a rusted joint of pipe from the floor and rankled the bars with it. "Wake up, asshole!"