Spandau Phoenix (43 page)

Kosov felt a thrill of triumph. Here was the mysterious Zinoviev at last! And sent to him by the chairman himself!

Yet Kosov's triumph was tempered by puzzlement and uneasiness.

Zinoviev an officer of the Okhrana? What in God's name could the Okhrana have to do with this case? It was a ghost from an even more distant past than Rudolf Hess.

The Okhrana was the tsar's dreaded secret police force-the most ruthless enemy the communists had ever known.

Kosov scratched his grizzled head. With a sharp sense of frustration, he realized what was eating at him. Without quite knowing it, he had been expecting Zinoviev to turn out to be the mysterious oneeyed man.

It only made sense. For 7

268 years he'd had a name with no face to go with it, and a oneeyed man without a name. Why couldn't they be one and the same?

Maybe they are, he thought suddenly, staring at the photo again.

The hard-faced young officer in the photo had two living eyes-of that Kosov had no doubt. They stared out from the picture like smoldering lumps of coal. You are very young here, little tiger Kosov thought.

Plenty of time yet to lose an eye. Especially in yourjob, eh?

Most Okhrana officers had lost more than their eyes after Tsar Nicholas was overthrown.

'Telephone, Comrade Colonel!" interrupted a secretary.

"Urgent Startled out of his reverie, Kosov snatched up the receiver.

When he heard Captain Rykov eiplain what had happened at the Stasi safehouse, he felt the blood leave his head in a rush. "My God," he muttered. "My God! Get back here any way you can, you idiot!"

Kosov slammed down the phone and charged into the communications room.

"Close off the Western embassies!"

he shouted. "Use our own people-no East Germans!"

Several astonished young faces appeared at the doors.

"The fugitive is an American army major," he said more slowly, his voice barely under control. "He's out of uniform and he speaks perfect Russian. Probably perfect German too.

If he's apprehended, I want him brought here immediately."

Kosov ground his teeth furiously. "Any East German who attempts to get close to him is to be shot. That is a direct order. Shoot any East German who interferes. I want the full staff here in twenty minutes.

And get me the chief of the Stasi on the phone! Now!"

Sagging against a desk, Kosov tried to ignore the pounding in his head.

It seemed inconceivable,that Axel Goltz had been working for the Americans. The man was practically a Nazi. Why would he turn on his Russian masters? Especially since he could have no doubt that his action would be suicidal. Kosov sighed hopelessly. He could do little else until his department heads arrived. Slowly he walked back into his office, closed the door, and sat at his desk. Borodin will throw me to the dogs for this, he lamented. But not before I strain Axel Goltz through a razor-wire sieve. Shoving the grainy photograph of Zinoviev out of his way, he swallowed four aspirin without water, pressed his forehead to the cold desktop, and waited for the phone to ring.

4:35 A.M. The Natterman Cabin: Near WoifsbUrg, FRG

The forger arrived two hours after Hauer's call. Professor Natterman's explosion occurred two hours after that. Hauer and Hans had buried the dead caretaker and his Afrikaner killer in the snow behind the cabin, while Natterman stripped the bloody bedclothes and scrubbed away the blood from the cabin's interior. The only remaining signs of trouble were the shattered windows and door, and the Jaguar wrapped around the plane tree out front.

Hauer's forger was astute enough to ignore all these signs.

Immensely fat and normally jovial, Hermann Rascher aPpeered to be in mortal dread of Hauer. He lost no time in setting up his equipment.

A white screen and chair placed in front of the shattered window and an assortment of chemicals laid out in the bathroom quickly converted the bedroom into a small photographic studio.

Consistent with his plan of keeping Natterman in the dark until the last minute, Hauer instructed the forger to shoot a passport picture of the professor as if he too were to be given false papers.

But this ruse went for nothing. Despite Hauer's injunction against discussing their plans, Natterman badgered him every moment that the forger spent in his temporary darkroom. Before Rascher arrived Hauer had probed the professor for his speculations on what the vital secret of the Spandau papers might be, but Natterman had refused to be drawn out. Now, though, Natterman was vigorously attempting to convince Hauer it would be foolish to bait a rescue trap with the authentic papers.

"The kidnappers have obviously never seen the papers," he insisted, "so it would be impossible for them to know they were being fooled. Captain, I simply cannot agree to any plan which needlessly risks losing such an important artifact."

Hauer had had enough. He walked to the bedroom door to make sure the forger was closed inside the bathroom; then he turned back to Natterman.

"You don't have to agree, Professor," he said evenly.

"Because you're not coming to South Africa."

Natterman looked as if someone had emptied a bedpan in his face.

Too stunned to speak, he looked to Hans for support, but found none.

Hauer kept the initiative. "You're wounded, you can't move faster than a slow walk, and you're over seventy, for God's sake."

Too angry to marshal logical arguments, Natterman raged like a thwarted child. "You can't keep me out of this, you ... you fascist!"

While he ranted on, Hans walked to the window and tried to shut out the argument. The snow was falling again. He shivered, realizing that somewhere out there beyond the trees, beyond the road and the pristine German fields, beyond the Alps, beyond a great sea and a vast, dark continent, ]Ilse waited, frightened and alone. With a hollow coldness in his chest, he wondered again about her last, anguished cry.

Could she really be pregnant at last? Or had the kidnappers somehow twisted that desperate maternal hope out of her to use as extra LEVERAGE

I e? He banished the thought from his mind. That snake could eat its tail forever, and his sanity with it. It had no bearing at all on the rescue plan. He would keep that secret to himself. Whatever had passed between him and his father in the last few hours, Hauer had no claim on that knowledge yet "Hans, listen to thisi" the professor shrieked.

"Hauer said it himself.- The police only get ten percent of hostages back alive! Remember Munich, Hans? The 'seventy-two Olympics? It was Hauer and his stortntwpers who opened up on the Arabs while the hostages were tied inside the helicopters. The Jews were blown to bits! Have you forgotten that?

TWO days ago you hated this man. He deserted you and your mother! Now you trust him to bring our Ilse back alivet' At the mention of Munich a strange stillness came over Hauer. It was as if a ghost had touched him with icy fingers.

His gray eyes turned opaque as they fixed on Natterman. His voice went cold and flat. "I didn't see you on @ airfield that day."

Natteman started to reply, but when he recognized the glacial coldness in Hauer's eyes the sound died in his throat.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I shouldn't have said that. But you don't understand, Captain. The key to this situation isn't guns and tactics, it's the Spandau papers. And you can't even read them! We're not dealing with Arab terrorists or crazed students here-we're dealing with the legacy of Adolf Hitler! The key to this whole mystery is in the and I am the only man who can unravel it!"

Hauer sighed. "Professor, why don't you admit that the reason you want so badly to come is that you can't bear to let those papers out of your sight for one moment."

"Liar!" Natterman exploded.

"You didn't argue against forcible rescue until I said I wasn't including you in the plan. Do you deny that?"

"How dare you!" Spittle flew from the old man's lips.

"You fool! You're not qualified to handle this alone! You think you're chasing a neoNazi group called Phoenix? Then how do you explain the tattooed eye? The Phoenix is a bird rising from the flames, not an eye.

Phoenix is the Greek name of the Egyptian god Bennu. The tattooed Eye is also Egyptian-it's the Guarding Eye, the All-Seeing Eye, the Eye of God from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Explain that to me, Captain!"

Hauer shrugged. "The Nazis used all kinds of rituals and mythology."

"Yes! But Teutonic and Arthurian mythology almost exclusively!

So, how do you explain the Egyptian symbols?"

Hauer remained silent while he digested Natterman's revelations.

"Professor," he said finally, "if you care about your granddaughter you will write down everything you just told me, and you will stay by the telephone so that you can provide us with any other information we need."

"But I can go with you!" Natterman insisted. "I can keep UP !"

"Enough!" Hans cried, turning from the window. He stabbed a finger at Natterman. "My decision's made. We're taking Ilse back, and my father is in command from this point forward."

Natterman opened his mouth to continue, but the corpulent forger flung open the bedroom door and waddled into the room. "All done," he announced. "Excellent work, if I do say so myself" Natterman stared at Hauer in silent fury, then he stormed into the bedroom and slammed the door.

The forger held the fruits of his labor beneath the overhead light for Hauer's inspection. The passport bore two excellent frontal shots of Hans and Hauer, taken against the screen in the bedroom. Both wore fashionable jackets provided by the forger and looked every inch wealthy business M GREG ILE'S men. At Hermann's suggestion Hauer had shaved his mustache; it was the first time he had seen himself without it in twenty years. He looked ten years younger. With an artist's eye, Hermann had quickly noted the resemblance between Hans and Hauer and had suggested they travel as father and son. That way, he'd said, they would only have to remember one surname-Weber.

"They are good," Hauer agreed.

"The best you'll find, east of Brussels," Hermann assured him.

"You're lucky Germans don't need visas for South Africa. I didn't have one to work from."

"Start the car, Hans," Hauer commanded.

Hans was gone in an instant. Hauer picked up the passports and slipped them into his coat pocket. "Aren't you forgetting something?"

he said to the forger.

Hermann made a painful grimace. It was bad enough being forced to work for it-ee, but to be robbed. The mind simply boggled. The consequences of refusal, however, were unthinkable. Eight years ago Hauer had sent the forger to Berlin's Moabit Prison, where he had endured six years of living hell. Upon release he had resettled in Hamburg to escape Hauer's prying eyes, but it hadn't worked. Hauer had kept abreast of his current activities, and he'd made it painfully clear tonight that one phone call to Hamburg could put Hermann right back into prison for another stretch. What the hell? Hermann rationalized. Ten thousand marks isn't too high a price forfreedom.

He could make back the money on just four passports. He walked to the sofa, reached into his leather camera bag, and brought out a stuffed manila envelope.

After counting the banknotes, Hauer slipped them into his pocket.

"Nice doing business with you again, Hermann," he said. "Now I want you to wait for me right here."

He slipped into the bedroom and closed the door. Professor Natterman sat fuming on the strip@ mattress, holding his hand against his bandaged nose. "Professor," said Hauer, "here is where we make our peace. I'm going to South Africa to bring back your granddaughter. I could simply walk out of here, but I realize that would be stupid. You know things that could help me. The question is, will you?"

Natterman said nothing; Hauer went on anyway. He needed the professor's information, but he also wanted to leave the old man some dignity. "I don't trust that forger," he said. "I need an hour's head start on him.

I want yo, make sure he stays here at least that long. Once he's gone, shut the cabin, take your things, and drive that Jaguar back to Berlin.

The car belongs to a man nwned Ochs. Here's his card.

"That car's shot to pieces!" Natterman protested.

-You shot it," Hauer reminded him. "Just get it back to him.

He's a Jew, he'll understand. After you've delivered the car, stock up on enough food to last a week, then get hold of any research materials you'll need to answer questions about Prisoner Number Seventhe Egyptian god Bennu, South Africa, and anything else you think might be relevant.

Ten hours from now I want you by your office telephone continuously.

Sleep by it. I've got to know I can count on you. 19

Outside, the borrowed Audi rumbled to life. With a last look at Natterman, Hauer left the old man sitting on the bed.

He glared at the forger as he passed through the front room.

"Don't get anxious and try to leave too soon, Hermann."

The forger's eyes bulged. Hauer turned. Behind him stood Professor Natterman, the double-barreled Mannlicher in his hands.

Hauer offered his hand. "Auf Wiederse@n, Professor. Be careful, eh?"