Spandau Phoenix (80 page)

Schneider did not struggle, not even when Gadi took the pistol from his pocket.

Hauer stepped forward and checked the scalp behind both of Schneider's ears. Satisfied, he stepped back and motioned for the Israelis to release him.

"I don't have the damned tattoo," Schneider muttered.

In the awkward silence that followed, Hauer finally noticed the weak moaning coming from somewhere inside the room. He walked around and looked on the floor between the beds. Professor Natterman lay there, deathly white, both hands clutching his side. "Captain ... ?"

he whispered uncertainly.

Hauer knelt and examined the old man. The professor had been lying on the bed when Schneider burst in, and he had been too, slow to seek cover. Two bullets from Borodin's final spray had struck him.

One had nicked the flesh above his left hip, the other grazed his left thigh. Hauer could see that the wounds were superficial, but the professor obviously believed he was in danger of dying. He raised his quivering arms to Hauer's collar and pulled him down to his face.

"There really is ... a copy, Captain," he rasped. "A copy of the Spandau papers."

Hauer pulled himself free of the old man's grasp. "What did you say?"

"Tell Stern to remember the copy I made in Berlin!"

"What?"

Natterman nodded weakly. "Stern ... was following me.

He saw me do it. I made a copy of the Spandau papers before I ever left Berlin for the cabin. I mailed it to one of my old teaching assistants for safekeeping. Kurt Rossman. If ...

if you get to Ilse, don't worry about the papers. Just get Ilse out.

Tell Stern to get Ilse out!"

Hauer sat stunned. He couldn't believe that through all the warnings against photocopying the Spandau papers, Natterman had risked Ilse's life by not admitting that he had already done so. As he opened his mouth to rebuke the old man, Aaron Haber appeared at his side with a canvas overnight bag. The young commando withdrew a kit containing @yne, Xylocaine, sutures, syringes, gauze bandages, a blood-pressure indicator, morphine, and a cornucopia of emergency drugs. "We came prepared for casualties," he said. He propped Natterman's legs on some pillows to max the flow of blood to his brain.

Hauer stood up and gave his full attention to Schneider.

"What's your story, Detective?"

Schneider produced a handkerchief and wiped some blood from his face.

"I've come here to help you, Captain. You are in a great deal of trouble in Berlin. Both you and Sergeant Apfel are wanted for murder there."

"I'm no murderer," Hauer said gruffly.

"I didn't say you were. I know all about the Spandau papers, Captain. I know about Phoenix. I'm working with the Americans, with Colonel Rose of the U.S. Army. That's how I traced you."

"I suppose you want the Spandau papers?"

Schneider shrugged. "Only if they can help to crush Phoenix."

Hauer digested this slowly. "Why did you kill that Russian?"

"He killed an American intelligence officer named Richardson.

Richardson was the man who discovered that Phoenix extends into East Germany as well as West Berlin."

"I've known that for months."

"Then why didn't you report it?"

Hauer snorted. "Report it? Phoenix has men in the police department, the BND, the West Berlin Senate, the federal - government in Bonn, and all the states. If I'd reported what I knew to the wrong person, you and your Kripo friends would have been visiting me at the morgue twelve hours later."

Schneider nodded slowly. "The Americans can help you, Captain.

Colonel Rose will help."

"You said this Russian here already killed one American officer.

That kind of help I don't need." Hauer studied the big German.

"Why do you think I should trust you?"

"Because I saved your life."

Hauer shrugged. "Anyone from Phoenix would have killed those Russians just as quickly as. you did. They can't afford to let the Russians know what Phoenix truly exists for. Not yet."

Schneider met Hauer's eyes. "Come back with me to Berlin, Captain. Help us root out Funk and his men. Colonel Rose would like nothing better than to order an assault on Abschnitt 53. But his hands are tied. His superiors are holding him back because of the Hess business, and he doesn't.

have nearly enough evidence against Prefect Funk. You could provide that evidence, Captain. You must trust me.

"I want the same thing you do-to clean those scum out of Berlin."

Schneider turned his broad hands upward. "I know you don't know me, but you must have known my father.

Max Schneider. He was a Kripo investigator too. Big like me.

Hauer searched Schneider's face for a full minute. Two rivulets of blood trickled down from the sweatband of Schneider's hat. Behind Schneider, Gadi was moving the dead Russians into the bathroom, while Aaron worked on the professor. The professor's revelation that he had made a copy of the Spandau papers pulsed in the back of Hauer's brain like a second heartbeat. The situation had changed.

Profoundly. A copy of the Spandau papers, combined with the evidence he and Steuben had already compiled, meant that direct action in Berlin might now be possible. Things were moving too quickly here in South Africa. Hans's betrayal, Stern's sudden appearance, the Russian assault, Schneider's unexpected rescue. Schneider ...

"Your father wore a hat like yours," Hauer said absently.

"You did know him," said Schneider.

Hauer turned and stared pensively out the window. "You say you're working with the Americans?", "Yes. Colonel Godfrey Rose, of Military Intelligence."

"Can you get him on the phone?"

'Yes.

"Do it."

4.00 P.M. The Voortrokker Monument, Pretoria

After forty-five minutes of lying blindfolded in the backseat of the speeding Range Rover, Jonas Stern had lost all sense of direction.

The Zulu driver who had met him at the Voortrekker Monument drove with the windowsdown, and Stern could smell rain on the wind. He had peeked around his blindfold once, and it seemed to him that night had fallen early. In fact the darkness was caused by the thick ceiling of storm clouds Hans had earlier seen rolling in from the north. It was part of a front that had blown in from the Indian Ocean; it stretched southward from the Mozambique border almost to PretoriaStern tensed as the Range Rover swerved onto a rocky shoulder and shuddered to a stop.

He heard the driver's door open and close. Stern pulled off the blindfold and looked around. Down the highway, he saw a small speck of light. It shone from the direction they had come. Yet as he tried to focus on the yellow glimmer, it winked out. The Zulu driver turned to Stern, the whites of his eyes flashing angrily. He jabbed a finger toward the blindfold. Pulling the black scarf back around his eyes, Stern heard@r thought he heard-the sound of an automobile engine in the distance.

The Zulu clambered back into the Range Rover and screeched onto the highway, accelerating to a ridiculous speed. He raced on that way for three or four minutes; then he geared down and turned off the highway again. When the Rover finally stopped, he leaped out and ran away.

Stern moved the blindfold enough to see his surroundings.

The Rover had stopped at some type of roadside park. A knot of brightly dressed Africans lounged around the single building. Several held liquor bottles in their hands. Their focus seemed to be a public telephone mounted on a wall. One of their number was talking into it.

Stern watched as his Zulu driver approached the men. Rather than slow down, the Zulu swiped the air with a broad sweep of his arm. The tribesmen scattered like frightened children. They knew the Zulu, Stern thought.

The Zulu shouted into the telephone for a minute or so, bobbing his head up and down like a bird. Abruptly he ceased this motion and looked back down the highway. Stern followed his gaze. The light was there again, but larger now-and it was no longer one light, but two.

Hauer Stern thought suddenly. Damn him!

As the Zulu came running back to the Rover, Stern stiffened, fearing the bullet that had been promised if anyone followed the pickup vehicle.

None came. The driver's door slammed shut; then the Rover roared out of the park and accelerated to 150 kilometers per hour.

Over the edge of his blindfold Stern saw the Zulu checking his rearview mirror every few seconds. So Hauer's still there, he thought.

How the hell did he get past Gadi?

The engine screamed as the Zulu pushed the Rover to a frightening speed.

Stern wondered if the driver really expected to shake Hauer by this simple tactic. On a paved highway Hauer's rented Ford could overtake the Range Rover without much trouble.

Suddenly the Zulu savagely twisted the wheel, dirow the Rover into a two-wheeled skid that hurled it down a shallow slope onto the hard, rolling veld. The vehicle decelerated rapidly, but the torturous terrain more than made up for the reduction in speed. No conventional automobile could catch them now. Stern tried to keep his head from slamming into the roof as the Rover vaulted humps, leaped ditches.

When the Rover finally shuddered to a halt, Stern collapsed against the door and tried to catch his breath.

The Zulu wrenched the door open, jerked Stern out and I ripped off the blindfold. On all sides Stern saw the seemingly limitless veld, lit by an eerie blue light filtering through the storm clouds above. The first heavy drops of African rain smacked against the roof of the Rover. Then the clouds opened with a crash. Following the Zulu's line of sight, Stern spotted the fast-approaching headlights, now jinking wildly up and down as if manipulated by some mad puppeteer. The African raised his face to the dark clouds as if beseeching some native god to lift him up and away from his pursuer. While Stern stared through the rain, hypnotized by the dancing headlights, a new sound rumbled into his, ears. At first he thought it was rolling thunder.

Then the engine of the pursuing car. But the sound grew nearer much faster than the headlights. Soon it was a buffeting roar' terrifying in intensity. When Stern finally looked up, he saw that the roar had blotted out the sky. He crouched beneath the blast of the rotors and shielded his eyes against the whipping rain, but the Zulu jerked him up and into the gaping maw of the helicopter as it hovered briefly-near the earth.

As they lifted away from the hurricane below, Stern heard another sound cutting through the din of the rotors-a higher sound, like the rim of a crystal goblet singing. Then it came to him-the brief whine punctuated by the dull thwackbullets! Two more slugs punctured the thin aluminum skin of the chopper but miraculously missed the vitals of the machine-the cabling, hydraulics, and precious rotors.

The helicopter yawed at a sickening angle as it climbed, but the Zulu held Stern fast. Far below, Stern saw the pursuer's headlights, spinning and shrinking to unreality. The chase car had stopped now.

It merged with the Rover, a tiny bright speck against the rain-swept veld. Stern thought of Hauer, of how angry he must be at this unexpected tactic. He pictured the furious German kicking the Rover or even firing a few slugs into it for good measure. He couldn't help but smile.

But the man below was not kicking the Range Rover, of stupidly firing his pistol into the lifeless steel hulk. For the man below was not a man at all, but a woman. An Englishwoman smelling of powder and expensive perfume. Cia-re de Lune. And if Jonas Stern had known that, he would not have been smiling.

4:10 Pm. Room 604 The Protea Hof Hotel, Pretoria

Hauer and Schneider sat facing each other across the narrow space between the two double beds. Hauer held his Walther loosely in his hand; Schneider's hands were empty. Gadi sat by the window, hands clenched around his Uzi. After piling the dead Russians in the bathroom, he had gone over to the Stanley House to try to capture Borodin's sniper, but the sniper had disappeared. Professor Natterman lay asleep on the bed, his thigh and his side wrapped in gauze. Aaron Haber guarded the door. There would be no more surprise entries.

"Do you believe me now?" Schneider asked.

Hauer had spent five minutes on the phone with Colonel Rose. "I believe you," he said. "But not because of what the American said."

"Why, then?"

"Your father. He was an investigator during the student riots in the sixties. Back then a lot of police officers would just as soon have shot a student as talked to one. Your father was different."

Schneider nodded.

"Unless the acorn fell a long way from the tree, you're not part of Phoenix. Besides, why would Funk need to send you? Phoenix must have an army here in South Africa."

"Will you come back to Berlin with me?"

Hauer shook his head. "Right now I care about only one thing-saving my son's life. After that's done, I'll remember that I need to care about cleaning Funk and his stortntroopers out of Berlin.

But by then it may be too late."

Hauer stood. "I've got a feeling I may not be coming back from this trip, Detective. So I'm going to trust you to handle, Berlin. I have to trust you."