Spandau Phoenix (36 page)

he snapped. "What exactly are you after, Hauer?"

Hauer stiffened. In Germany, the cavalier omission of a man's rank or title is an open insult. He was moving forward when boots clattered loudly on the porch. The splintered door banged open.

"I need a knife," said Hans, his breath steaming as he closed the door.

He stamped his icy boots on the floorboards while he searched the kitchen alcove.

"How long will it take?" Hauer asked, his eyes still on Natterman.

"Less than a minute if I didn't have to, climb that goddamn pole.

It's covered with ice, and the bastard cut the wire at the top."

Hans found a sharp paring knife in a drawer and clomped out again.

"I'm waiting," said Hauer.

Natterman sighed. He would have to say something, he knew, but misdirecting a police captain shouldn't be too difficult. "All right, Captain," he said. "What Hans found at Spandau-what your son found-is a letter of sorts. A diary, if you will. A diary written in Latin by the man known to the world for almost fifty years as Rudolf Hess."

"Perfect," said Hauer. "A dead language from a dead

man.

The professor sniffed indignantly. "This diary happens to prove that that particular dead man was not Rudolf Hess."

Hauer's eyes narrowed. "You believe that?"

Natterman looked sanguine. "It's nothing new. You've heard all the theories, I'm sure. Himmler tricked Hess into becoming a pawn in his quest for Hitler's job; Goring had Hess shot down, then-"

"I've heard the theories," Hauer cut in. "And that's just what they are, theories. Bullshit."

"Your expert opinion notwithstanding," Natterman said, "I believe that the man who died last month in Spandau was never the Deputy Fuhrer of the Third Reich. And from what I saw on television today, I'd say the Russians believe that too.

Hauer snorted. "The Russians would hound a rat right up their backsides if they thought it endangered their precious Motherland.

What proof is there that the papers are authentic?"

Natterman bridled. "Why the diary itself, of course."

"You mean that it exists? That Hans found it where he did?"

The professor tugged at his silver beard. "No. Those things are significant, but it's the papers themselves that are the proof."

"How?"

"The language, Captain. You might think that Prisoner Number Seven wrote in Latin to conceal his words from the prison guards, or something similar. But that's not the case at all. Think, man. Here was a man who knew he was near death, who decided to leave a record of the truth.

Yet all proof that he ever lived had been wiped out long ago by Reinhard Heydrich. How could he prove who he was? I'll tell you. As Hess's trained double, Number Seven had studied everything about the Deputy Fuhrer. Yet no matter how much like Hess he became, he still possessed certain traits and abilities that Hess did not. And knowing those abilities better than anyone, he used one to prove his identity. Thus, he wrote his final record in Latin." Natterman's eyes flashed with triumph. "And so far as I have been able to determine, Rudolf Hess-though better educated than most of Hitler's inner circle-Aid not know more than twenty words of Latin, if any. "

"That proves nothing," Hauer argued. "In fact, that suggests to me that some crank wrote this diary."

"Why do you fight this so hard, Captain? Number Seven was the only prisoner."

"At the end. There were others before."

"Yes," Natterman admitted. "A few. But cranks? No. And the searches, Captain, there were thousands of them. The diary must have been written near the end."

"It could have been slipped in by a guard," Hauer suggested. But the cold ache in his chest belied his words.

Natterman shrugged. "It's not my job to convince you, Captain.

But given what's already occurred, I suggest we work on the assumption that the diary is genuine-at least until I can take further steps to authenticate it."

Hauer rummaged through his borrowed suit for a cigar.

"But what's the point of all this? The KGB and half the Berlin police force haven't gone mad over some scrap of history. What does the diary mean now?"

"Now?" Natterman smiled. "I suppose that depends on who you happen to be. Paradoxically enough, the answer to your question lies in the past.

That is why the diary is so important." The old man's voice climbed a semitone with repressed excitement. "It is a veritable tunnel into the past ...

into history."

Hauer walked to the front window of the cabin and stared out into the frozen darkness. "Professor," he said finally, "if this diary were real, is there any conceivable way it could be embarrassing enough to influence NATO? Possibly even the Soviet Union?"

Natterman raised an eyebrow. "Given the lengths to which certain countries have gone to suppress the Hess story, I would say yes. Of course it would depend on what one wanted to influence those nations to do."

Hauer nodded. "Suppose someone wanted to use the diary to make the superpowers more amenable to the idea of German reunification?"

Natterman's face darkened with suspicion. "I think I have answered enough questions, Captain. I think you should@' The splintered cabin door banged open again. When Hauer turned, he saw Hans hunched over, dragging something into the cabin.

It took him a moment to realize that it was a human body. Then he saw the hair-long, blond hair.

"Hans?" he said hoarsely.

Hans grunted and fell backward, breathing hard. The corpse's head thudded to the floor. Hauer walked slowly across the room and looked down at the body. It wasn't Ilse.

It was a man. A dead man with long blond hair. The right arm hung from the torso by a single cord of tendon; the shoulder had been blasted into mush by the professor's shotgun. But the most shocking sight was the throat. It had been expertly cut from ear to ear.

"A thorough job, Professor," said Hauer.

"I-I didn't do that," Natterman stammered. "Not the throat."

Hauer glanced furtively'at the windows.

"There's someone else out there!" Natterman cried.

Hauer watched in astonishment as the old man flew at the carcass like a grave robber. He rifled every pocket, then began groping beneath the frozen, blood-matted shirt.

"What are you doing, Professor!"

Natterman looked up, his eyes wild. "I-I'm trying to find out who he is."

"Any papers on him?"

Natterman shook his head violently, afraid for a moment that Hauer had asked about the missing diary pages. But he doesn't know they're missing, he reassured himself, getting to his feet. He doesn't know ...

Hauer said, "It's a good thing he didn't get hold of the Spandau papers.

There's no telling where they might be now."

"You have the papers?" Hans asked in surprise.

My God, Natterman thought wildly. Where are those pages? "Ilse gave them to me," he said.

"The question," Hauer mused, "is who finished this bastard off?"

With a grunt he crouched over the body and heaved it onto its stomach.

The half-severed head flopped over last. Hauer probed the thick blond hair behind the corpse's right ear. "Well, well," he said, "at least we know who sent this one. Look."

Hans and the professor knelt and examined the spot Hauer had exposed with his fingertips. Beneath the roots of the dead man's hair was a mark just under two centimeters long.

It was an eye. A single, blood red eye.

"Phoenix," Hauer muttered.

Natterman jerked as if he had been stunned with electricity.

"It's the eye from the Spandau papers! The exact design!

The All-Seeing Eye. What does it mean there? On this man's head?"

Hauer stood. "It means that Funk's little cabal sent this fellow.

Or his masters did."

"You said 'Phoenix.' You haven't read the Spandau papers. What do you know about the word Phoenix?"

"Not nearly enough."

"But who killed him?" Hans asked. "Whoever it was ...

it's almost as if he's helping us. Maybe he knows something about Ilse."

Hans darted toward the door, but Hauer caught him by the sleeve.

"Hans, whoever killed this man did it to get the papers, not to help us.

You were outside for ten minutes and no one talked to you.

Obviously no one wanted to. Whoever's out there could cut your throat as easily as he did this fellow's, so forget it." He kept hold of Hans's sleeve. "Did you fix the telephone?"

Hans looked longingly at the door. "The wire's spliced," he said in a monotone.

"Good. I'll call Steuben at the station. If something's changed in Berlin, we just might be able to slip back in before morning."

Hauer knew it was a lie when he said it. They wouldn't be going back to Berlin. Not until they had followed the Spandau diary wherever it led-until they had traveled the professor's "tunnel into the past" to its bitter end. One look at the mangled carcass at his feet told him it was going to be a bloody journey.

"We'd better stand watches," he said. "Whoever killed our tattooed friend may still be out there. You're up first, Hans."

Thirty meters from the cabin, a tall @@ntinel stood in the deep snow beneath the dripping trees. In one hand he held three bloodstained sheets of onionskin paper, in the other a knife. By holding the blade at a certain angle, he could illuminate the pages by reflecting light from the cabin windows.

But it was no use. He spoke three languages fluently, but he could not read Latin. As he watched the silhouettes moving across the yellow-lit windows, he envied the old man's education . Not that it made any difference. He had known what the papers said ever since he'd stood outside the door of the Apfel apartment and listened to the arguments inside. Stuffing the pages into his coat pocket, he murmured a few words in Hebrew. Then he squatted down on his haunches in the deep snow. He had lived in the burning desert for the past twelve years, but the cold was nothing to him. Jonas Stern knew he could outwait anybody.

Especially Germans.

mI-5 Headquarters Charles Street, London, England

Sir Neville Shaw jerked his head up from the Hess file; he'd been poring over it so long that he had dropped into a kind of half-sleep.

He snapped out of it when Wilson, his deputy, barged into his dim office without knocking, something he was forbidden to do on pain of bloodcurdling punishments.

"What the devil!" Shaw snapped.

"I'm sorry, sir," Wilson panted. "I think we've got a problem."

"Well?"

"We finally got something on Spandau-from a Ukrainian in the technical section of KGB East Berlin. It seems the KGB shot pictures of everyone who gathered to watch the destruction of the prison. He didn't know why they took the pictures, but he slipped us the list of names their computers matched to the photos. They actually turned up a couple of old SS men-"

"Get to the point!" Shaw barked.

"It's Stern, sir. Jonas Stern. The Israeli that the Mossad wrote us about. He was at Spandau Prison on the day we tore it down!"

Only a steady whitening of Shaw's, knuckles on the desktop revealed how shocked he was. He rocked slowly back and forth for nearly a full minute; then he looked up at Wilson, his eyes bright with purpose. "Did you pull the file on the woman I told you about?"

"Swallow? Yes, sir. Ann Gordon is her real name."

"Is she living in England?"

"In a little hamlet about thirty miles west of London."

Shaw nodded contentedly. "I'll need to speak to her. I don't want her coming here, though. Set up a secure line so that I can brief her by phone."

Wilson's brow knit with confusion. "But I don't understand, Sir Neville. Swallow is retired."

"I seriously doubt that. But even if she is, she'll come running when she hears Stern's name."

"Do you mean to reactivate this woman, sir?"

Shaw ignored the question. "I don't know how Jonas Stern is tied into the Hess case, but he can't be allowed to get near those papers.

If papers are what's been found."

"But why use Swallow at all? She's ... she's an old woman. My lads can handle any situation with twice the reliability."

Shaw laughed quietly. "Wilson, we tread shadowy paths, but there are deeds done in this world that should never see the light of day.

Swallow has done more than her share of them. I'll bet your four best men couldn't sandbag that old harridan."

Wilson looked indignant. "Sir Neville, this seems terribly irregular.

Going out of school like this-"

"That's exactly the point," Shaw snapped. "Swallow is absolutely, totally deniable. If something embarrassing were to happen-if she happened to kill Stern, say-all could be blamed on this old vendetta.

Even the Israelis couldn't fault us. Their letter practically exonerates us before the fact. It proves Stern was at risk the moment he left Israel."