Greg Iles - Spandau Phoenix

Hans found Heini Weber beside a battered red Fiat Spyder, bouncing up and down on his toes like a hyperactive child. A shaggy-haired youth with a Leica slung round his neck peered at Hans from the Fiat’s jump seat.

“So what’s the big story, Sergeant?” Weber asked.

“Over here,” said Hans, motioning toward the foyer of his building. He had seen nothing suspicious in the street, yet he could not shake the feeling that he was being watched—if not by hostile, at least by interested eyes. It’s just the photographer , he told himself. Weber followed him into the building and immediately resumed his nervous bouncing, this time against the dirty foyer wall.

“The meter’s running,” said the reporter.

“Before I tell you anything,” Hans said carefully, “I want some information.”

Weber scowled. “Do I look like a fucking librarian to you? Come on, out with it.”

Hans nodded solemnly, then played out his bait. “I may have a story for you, Heini, but … to be honest, I’m curious about what it might be worth.”

“Well, well,” the reporter deadpanned, “the police have joined the club. Listen, Sergeant, I don’t buy stories, I track them down for pay. That’s the news game, you know? If you want money, try one of the American TV networks.”

When Hans didn’t respond, Weber said, “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s your story? The mayor consorting with the American commandant’s wife? The Wall coming down tomorrow? I’ve heard them all, Sergeant. Everybody’s got a story to sell and ninety-nine percent of them are shit. What’s yours?”

Hans looked furtively toward the street. “What if,” he murmured, “what if I told you I’d got hold of something important from the war? From the Nazi period?”

“Something,” Weber echoed. “Like?”

Hans sighed anxiously. “Like papers, say. Like a diary.”

Weber scrutinized him for some moments; then his eyebrows arched cynically. “Like the diary of a Nazi war criminal, maybe?”

Hans’s eyes widened in disbelief. “How did you know?”

“ Scheisse! ” Weber cursed. He slapped the wall. “Is that what you got me over here for? Christ, where do they find you guys? That’s the oldest one in the book!”

Hans stared at the reporter as if he were mad. “What do you mean?”

Weber returned Hans’s gaze with something akin to pity; then he put a hand on his shoulder. “Whose diary is it, Sergeant? Mengele’s? Bormann’s?”

“Neither,” Hans snapped. He felt strangely defensive about the Spandau papers. “What the hell are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying that you probably just bought the German equivalent of the Brooklyn Bridge.”

Hans blinked, then looked away, thinking fast. He clearly wasn’t going to get any information without revealing some first. “This diary’s genuine,” he insisted. “And I can prove it.”

“Sure you can,” said Weber, glancing at his watch. “When Gerd Heidemann discovered the ‘Hitler diaries’ back in ’83, he even had Hugh Trevor-Roper swearing they were authentic. But they were crap, Sergeant, complete fakes. I don’t know where you got your diary, but I hope to God you didn’t pay much for it.”

The reporter was laughing. Hans forced himself to smile sheepishly, but what he was thinking was that he hadn’t paid one Pfennig for the Spandau papers. He had found them. And if Heini Weber knew where he had found them, the reporter would be begging him for an exclusive story. Hans heard the regular swish of a broom from the first-floor landing.

“Heini,” he said forcefully, “just tell me this. Have you heard of any missing Nazi documents or anything like that floating around recently? ”

Weber shook his head in amazement. “Sergeant, what you’re talking about—Nazi diaries and things—people were selling them ten-a-penny after the war. It’s a fixed game, a scam.” His face softened. “Just cut your losses and run, Hans. Don’t embarrass yourself.”

Weber turned and grabbed the door handle, but Hans caught him by the sleeve. “But if it were authentic?” he said, surprising himself. “What kind of money would we be talking about?”

Weber pulled his arm free, but he paused for a last look at the gullible policeman. The swish of the broom had stopped, but neither man noticed. “For the real thing?” He chuckled. “No limit, Sergeant. Stern magazine paid Heidemann 3.7 million marks for first rights to the ‘Hitler diaries.’”

Hans’s jaw dropped.

“The London Sunday Times went in for 400,000 pounds, and I think both Time and Newsweek came close to getting stung.” Weber smiled with a touch of professional envy. “Heidemann was pretty smart about it, really. He set the hook by leaking a story that the diaries contained Hitler’s version of Rudolf Hess’s flight to Britain. Of course every rag in the world was panting to print a special edition solving the last big mystery of the war. They shelled out millions. Careers were ruined by that fiasco.” The reporter laughed harshly. “ Guten Abend , Sergeant. Call me next time there’s a kidnapping, eh?”

Weber trotted to the waiting Spyder, leaving Hans standing dumbfounded in the doorway. He had called the reporter for information; and he had gotten more than he’d bargained for. 3.7 million marks? Jesus!

“Make way, why don’t you!” croaked a high-pitched voice.

Hans grunted as the tall janitor shouldered past him onto the sidewalk and hobbled down the street. His broom was gone; now a worn leather bag swung from his shoulder. Hans followed the man with his eyes for a while, then shook his head. Paranoia , he thought.

Looking up at the drab facade of his apartment building, he decided that a walk through the city beat waiting for Ilse in the empty flat. Besides, he always thought more clearly on the move. He started walking. Just over a hundred meters long, the Lützenstrasse was wedged into a rough trapezoid between two main thoroughfares and a convergence of elevated S-Bahn rail tracks. Forty seconds’ walking carried Hans from the dirty brown stucco of his apartment building to the polished chrome of the Kurfürstendamm, the showpiece boulevard of Berlin. He headed east toward the center of the city, speaking to no one, hardly looking up at the dazzling window displays, magisterial banks, open-air cafes, art galleries, antique shops, and nightclubs of the Ku’damm.

Bright clusters of shoppers jostled by, gawking and laughing together, but they yielded a wide path to the lone walker whose Aryan good looks were somehow made suspect by his unshaven face and ragged clothing. The tall, spare man gliding purposefully along behind Hans could easily have been walking at his shoulder. The man no longer looked like a janitor, but even if he had, it wouldn’t have mattered; Hans was lost in heady dreams of wealth beyond measure.

He paused at a newsstand and bought a pack of American cigarettes. He really needed a smoke. As he sucked in the first potent drag, he suddenly remembered something from the Spandau papers. The writer had said he was the last … The last what? The last prisoner? And then it hit Hans like a bucket of water in the face. The Spandau papers were signed Prisoner Number Seven … and Prisoner Number Seven was Rudolf Hess himself!

He felt the hand holding the cigarette start to shake. He tried to swallow, but his throat refused to cooperate. Had he actually found the journal of a Nazi war criminal? With Heini Weber’s cynical comments echoing in his head, he tried to recall what he could about Hess. All he really knew was that Hess was Hitler’s right-hand man, and that he’d flown secretly to Britain sometime early in the war, and had been captured. For the past few weeks the Berlin papers had been full of sensational stories about Hess’s death, but Hans had read none of them. He did remember the occasional feature from earlier years, though. They invariably portrayed an infantile old man, a once-powerful soldier reduced to watching episodes of the American soap opera Dynasty on television. Why was the pathetic old Nazi so important? Hans wondered. Why should even a hint of information about his mission drive the price of forged diaries into the millions?