Spandau Phoenix (47 page)

Harry's face showed disbelief. "No way."

Rose smiled thinly. "Old J. Fdgar himself. And J files cannot be accessed by anyone except the director."

"Christ. What does the FBI have to do with Rudolf HessT' "You're not gonna believe this, Harry. Remember the big Soviet defections of the sixties and seventies? Nosenko, Penkovsky and the rest? The CIA handled their debriefings, right? Naturally. But if you'll recall, the FBI wasn't always limited to operations within the Continental U.S.

During World War Two, Hoover couldn't stand seeing Bill Donovan's OSS

get all the glory, and the result-aside from a lot of political head-butting-was that the Bureau got involved in some pretty big espionage cases. So-after the CIA finished debriefing those big defectors, the FBI got themselves a little taste. They were given a very limited brief, of course, questions to be confined to KGB

recruitment methods on U.S. soil, et cetera."

Harry nodded slowly.

"However, when the FBI got their shot at these defectors, they took the chance to clean up some unfinished business.

They had quite a few unsolved cases from the war years, and Hoover had left instructions that they be pursued whenever possible. One of those cases happened to involve British collaboration with the Nazis-e.g the flight of Rudolf Hess."

Harry whistled long and low.

"The FBI questioning turned up a shitload of information, but as you might imagine, the Bureau wasn't anxious to reveal to the CIA how far outside their brief they had strayed. Anything that couldn't t)e confirmed by collateral evidence was buried in the basement of a file warehouse.

'Hardcopy Only,' get it? Apparently Zinovidv fell into that category."

Rose's eyes shone with excitement. '@, those files have been sitting in that warehouse for twenty-five years. My contact thinks our query is the first dung to turn up Zinoviev's name since it went to disk."

"Jesus. What kind of access do we haver' "Hess's file is out of the question. A team of MIT hackers couldn't break into a J file in a month." Rose suppressed a satisfied smile. "Zinoviev, on the other hand, we may get.

My buddy is constantly updating the Bureau files, and it seems he's got legitimate access to the warehouse where the 'Hardcopy Only' stuff is.

He's probably digging through Zinoviev's file right now."

Harry looked skeptical. "Colonel, you realize that there may be nothing on Zinoviev in that warehouse. If Zinoviev is cross-indexed to Hess, his real file probably has a J classification too."

"We'll find out soon enough," Rose concluded. "Let's get to the heart of this mess-the Spandau papers."

Harry glanced over at Schneider. "I assume the Berlin police have them?"

"Not exactly," said Rose. "Two Berlin police officers have them."

Rose consulted a file on his desk. "Hans Apfel, sergeant, age twenty-seven; Dieter Hauer, captain, age fifty-five. Schneider here thinks one of these two must have stumbled over the papers while they were guarding the prison. He says this guy Hauer's a real piece of workcounterterror training, the works. And he must be right. Not only have these two escaped the city, they've escaped Germany. They flew out of Frankfurt two hours ago."

"What? How do you know that?"

While Schneider listened in silence, Rose summarized his actions after receiving Harry's call. Rose had wanted to storm Abschnitt 53

with guns blazing, but Schneider had persuaded him to pursue a more discreet course. The colonel's compromise had been a city wide communications blanket of West Berlin, conducted by the Army Signal Corps under the reserve powers held by the Allies since the Second World War. Assets nominally dedicated to the Soviet target were reassigned to cover all police communications traffic entering or leaving Berlin. Rose was grinning as he revealed his b ou h.

"Six hours ago it paid off, Harry. We intercepted a call from the Wolfsburg police to West Berlin police HQ. A traffic unit stopped a man for speeding and reckless driving, and because they'd received reports of shooting in the forest to the south the night before, they made a routine search of the car. They hit the jackpot. The driver was a forger from Hamburg. Right away the guy starts screaming how he's just been blackmailed into manufacturing false passports for two West Berlin cops. Claimed he knew Hauer personally, and he described Apfel to a T."

-Did he have any idea where they were headed?" F asked.

Rose grinned. "That ever-popular vacation spot, the Republic of South Africa. Traveling as father and son. The forger also made passports for two older guys who were with Hauer and Apfel, but traveling separately. He didn't know their true identities or their destination, but he gave us the names and numbers on all four fake passports."

"Great. Who else knows that?"

"If our luck is holding, almost nobody. I called the Berlin police presidium and used every authority short of the president to block the relay of that information to Abschnitt 53.

I also let them know in no uncertain terms that I'd know if they tried."

Harry sat in silence for nearly a full minute. "South Africa," he said finally. "Is there anything that connects any of what's happened to South Africa in any wayt' "As a matter of fact, there is. My little high-tech offensive included pulling the telephone toll records of certain West Berlin police facilities. We found several calls from the police presidium going out to different numbers in South Africa. Some of those calls were made from the office Of the prefect himself."

"Holy shit. Do you have names to go with the numbers?"

"I should have them within twenty-four hours. For once I happen to have an exotic contact-a major in the South African secret service."

"That's not soon enough, Colonel."

"That's as soon as we can get it, Major And that's if we're lucky."

Harry stood. "You've got to get me down there, Colonel.

Whatever's going down, it's going to happen there."

Rose shook his head. "I can't send you, Harry."

"Why not?"

"You heard me. That's not our turf of even Close. We can't prove that this thing endangers @can Also, we're not too popular down there right now, in case you haven't noticed. Not since @ sanctions were put in effect and half our industry pulled out of @. @ Army's not going to let me send you down from here just because the Soviets are interested! They kidnapped me, for Christ's sake.

There's something big going on, Colonel, I can feel it. The reason you can't find out anything about this Phoenix is that it isn't based here.

it must be in South Africa. This isn't just some legacy from the past ... Can't you feel it?"

"I feel it," Detective Schneider said softly.

Rose drained his second whiskey, stood, and laid his stubby hands flat on the desktop. "I feel it too, Harry, but my hands are tied.

I've got half of Bonn and all of Berlin breathing down my neck to prevent any kind of international incident. Officially, I can't do a thing."

Harry stared curiously at Rose. He sensed some implied communication, but he couldn't quite pin it down. Suddenly the answer came clear as ice water. "Grant me two weeks leave, Colonel," he said.

"I've got it coming."

Rose grinned. "That you do, Major. That you do."

"Can you get me a military flight?"

"Negative."

"But it's probably a fifteen-hour flight by commercial carrier!"

"Eleven on Lufthansa," Rose corrected. "Fourteen via South African Air."

"That's still too long!"

"You're lucky to get a flight at all, Harry. Most airlines only fly there once a week. Your flight leaves Frankfurt at two Pm.

tomorrow."

Harry shook his head in exasperation, then grinned in spite of himself.

"By the time I get there, I want some names tied to those telephone numbers."

"You'll have 'em." Abruptly, Rose slammed an open hand down on his desk. His face showed puzzlement, exhaustion, frustration.

"Goddamnit Harry, what the hell is going on?

Do the Russians really ' care, that much about something that happened fifty years ago?"

Harry looked thoughtful. "I know what you mean.

Gorbachev has a hell of a lot bigger things on his plate than fifty-year-old mysteries. I wouldn't think the truth about Hess would help glasnost any."

"The Russian memory is long," Schneider said gravely.

"And Gorbachev has limited influence over KGB."

Harry glanced at the German. "Maybe. But we're missing the forest here. We're not talking ancient history. The Berlin police wouldn't give two shits about something like that.

We're talking about a tie between the past-Hess's past SPANDAU PHOENIX

and the present. The here and now. Maybe Zinoviev is connection."

"Whatever the connection is," said Rose, "I've got a feeling it's pretty goddamn dirty. I don't have to tell you how many friggin' Nazis our own government shielded from justice."

Harry looked hard at both men for a few moments; then ..he reached into his pocket, drew something out, and tossed it on Rose's'desk. The fragment of Goltz's scalp landed upside-down with a plop, like a wet scab. Black flecks of blood stained the file on Rose's desk. The colonel reached out to pick it up, then jerked back his hand in disgust.

"What the fuck is that?"

"Goltz," Harry explained. "That was a shaved spot a little above and behind his right ear. Turn it over, Colonel."

Rose looked up at Harry with an expression that suggested he might be wondering if Harry kept a VietCong ear necklace in his dresser at home.

"I didn't have a camera," Harry muttered.

Rose took a ballpoint pen from a stand and flicked the shriveled swatch of skin over, revealing the tattoo it bore.

He made no sound as he studied it, but Schneider sucked in his breath so sharply that both men turned to him.

"You've seen this mark before?" Rose asked.

The German nodded. "Yes. It's hard to detect. Once the hair grows back in, the mark is invisible."

Harry looked curiously at the German.

"What the hell's it mean?" Rose demanded.

Schneider shrugged. "Certain members of a semisecret political group wear that mark. The group is called Der Bruderschaft-the Brotherhood.

Quite a few policemen belong to it. I don't know what the tattoo means.

I always thought it was just a badge of membership.

Now and then you'll see a policeman with a bandage behind his ear.

They always make some excuse, but after a while you realize what it is."

"Sounds like some kind of friggin' cult thing," Rose declared.

"Is it like the Aryan Brotherhood in the States?"

Harry shook his head. "The Aryan Brotherhood is made up of convicts, not police. They're cop killers."

"How many Berlin cops have this mark? A dozen? A hundred?"

"More than a hundred," Schneider said thoughtfully. "But I never realized that it extended into the DDR. That's very disturbing."

"You're goddamn right it is," Rose agreed.

"Detective," Harry said softly, "do all members of Der Bniderschaft have the tattoo? Or just a select few? A few who might belong to some truly secret group, for instance."

"Like Phoenix, you mean," mused Schneider. "No, I don't think all the members have the tattoo."

Rose was staring strangely at Schneider. When Harry realized why, he couldn't help staring himself.

The big German scowled back at them. "No, I don't have a tattoo under my hair," he growled. "And the first man who asks to look is going to spend the night in the hospital."

When Rose looked as if he might ask, Harry stood quickly. "Thanks again for saving my life, Detective. If you fellows don't mind, I'm going to crash until takeoff time tomorrow."

Rose finally shifted his attention to Harry. "Just remember," he warned, "you'll be going in blind down there. What I told you about the British still holds: no contact at all, not even with your personal connections. No one's above being manipulated by his government-especially ministers and lords."

"Not even me," said Harry, and smiled wryly. "You worried about James Bond catching up with me, ColoneIT' "No. I'm worried about some goddamn George Smiley type. A fat little guy with glasses who's five steps ahead of us already. Somebody who knows all about whatever happened back in Germany in 1941."

Harry ruminated on this for a moment. "By the way, Colonel, Ivan Kosov told me he'd like to collaborate on the Hess case."

"When hell freezes over," Rose muttered. "We'll get to the bottom of this well ourselves."

Harry grinned. "That's what I told him you'd say."

Schneider stood and offered his prodigious hand. "Gluck haben, Major."

"Danke, " Harry replied.

"Get the hell out of here," Rose bellowed. "I'll brief you before you fly out."

Harry sauntered out, returning Clary's sharp salute as he passed through the outer office.

"What do you think?" Rose asked, when Harry had gone.