Greg Iles - Spandau Phoenix

Ilse snatched up the discarded clothes and climbed into the only hiding place she could see—the garbage bin. The smell was terrible, cloyingly sweet. She held her nose with one hand and covered her eyes with the other. The powerful purr of the BMW edged closer, a tiger trying to spook its prey. Ilse knotted herself into a tight ball and prayed. It took little imagination to guess how ruthless the men in the black autos must be. The young man who had propositioned her at the front door—the one called Misha—his eyes had glazed almost to sightlessness when Eva insulted him. Like fish eyes, Ilse thought. She shuddered.

The BMW picked up speed as it approached the garbage bin, weaving occasionally to probe every inch of the alley with its halogen eyes. The walls of the trash bin vibrated from the noise. Ilse shivered from terror and bitter cold. She had no doubt that if the car engine were shut off, the Russians would find her by the chattering of her teeth.

Suddenly, with a scream of protesting rubber, the big black sedan roared out of the alley. Ilse scrambled up out of the garbage and dug into Eva’s purse for her shoes. Her hand closed over something soft and familiar. She peered into the bag. Folded into a thick wad at its bottom were three hundred Deutschemarks in small bills. Scrawled across the top banknote in red lipstick were the words: ILSE, USE IT!

Stuffing the bills back into the purse, Ilse climbed out of the bin and edged a little way down the alley. Damn all of this , she thought angrily. If Eva can get me this far, I can do the rest . In less than fifteen seconds she had analyzed her options and made a decision. She kicked off the stiletto heels Eva had loaned her, pulled on her own flats, and started running toward the hazy glow at the opposite end of the alley.

The moment Harry Richardson raised his hand to knock on Klaus Seeckt’s door, the door jerked open to the length of the chain latch. “Go away, Major!” said a voice from the dark crack.

The door slammed shut. Harry moved to the side of the door, out of the light. “Open the door, Klaus.”

“ Please go away, Harry!”

More puzzled than angry, Harry flattened himself against the wall. Normally he telephoned Klaus before coming over, but tonight he hadn’t wanted to give the East German a chance to postpone the meeting. Feeling exposed on the lighted stoop, he pounded his fist against the heavy oak. “I’m not in uniform, for God’s sake! Open up! Now! ”

The bolt shot back with a bang. Klaus pulled the door open but remained out of sight in the dark foyer.

“Take it easy,” Harry said. “We’ll play it as an official visit. However you want.”

Klaus’s voice dropped in volume but doubled in urgency. “Harry, get out of here! They’re watching us!”

As Harry’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he recognized the stubby barrel of a Makarov pistol in Klaus’s hand. The East German wore only his bathrobe, but his ashen face and the quivering pistol gave him a frighteningly lethal aspect. Harry glanced back at the street to try to spot watchers. He saw none, but he knew that didn’t mean anything.

“I tried to keep you out,” Klaus said resignedly. “Remember that.”

Writing off Klaus’s pistol to paranoia, Harry slipped past the East German and started toward the living room. With a hopeless sigh Klaus shut the door and locked it behind them.

When Harry reached the living room, he saw that Klaus was indeed being watched—but from inside the house, not out. Five men wearing dark business suits sat leisurely on sofas and chairs arranged around a glass-topped coffee table. Harry looked back over his shoulder at Klaus. The German hovered ghostlike in the shadows of the foyer, the Makarov slack against his leg. Harry considered bolting, but Klaus hadn’t tried it, so perhaps things weren’t so bad. Or perhaps , Harry thought uneasily, Klaus didn’t run because he knows the front door is covered from the outside .

Harry turned back to the living room. None of the men around the table looked older than thirty, and no one had said anything yet. Was that good or bad? Suddenly the oldest-looking of the group stood.

“Good evening, Major,” he said in heavily accented English. “What can we do for you?”

The young man’s accent was unmistakably Russian. There would be no attempt to pass these men off as other than what they were, Harry realized. A very bad sign. He cleared his throat. “And by what rank do I address you, Comrade?” he asked in flawless Russian.

The Russian smiled, seeming to relish the idea of a cat-and-mouse game. “You speak excellent Russian, Major. And I am but a lowly captain, to answer your question. Captain Dmitri Rykov.”

“What are you doing so far from home, Captain?”

“Am I so far from home?” Rykov asked gamely. “A debatable point. But I’m protecting the interests of my country, of course.”

The young man’s candor was an unveiled threat. “I see,” Harry said warily. “I also note that we have a mutual friend,” he observed, trying to shift the focus away from himself.

In the foyer Klaus turned deathly pale.

“Yes,” Rykov agreed, giving Klaus a predatory glance. “This is proving to be an enlightening evening. Take his gun, Andrei. No foolish heroics please, Klaus. It’s not your style.”

The East German slumped against the foyer wall, his pistol hanging slack. He looked broken, already resigned to the grisly fate that undoubtedly awaited him in Moscow. Corporal Andrei Ivanov moved to disarm him.

“As you can see, Major,” Rykov continued, “you’ve stumbled upon us at a most inopportune time. I’ll certainly speak to my superiors about it, but I suspect that your unfortunate timing may cost you your life—”

Before Andrei could reach the unfortunate Klaus, the East German raised the Makarov to his own temple and fired.

The sheer madness of the act stunned everyone, causing a moment of confusion. In desperation Harry bolted for the door. He had his fingers on the brass door handle when someone peppered the wall beside him with a burst from a silenced machine pistol.

“ Don’t move, Major! ” Captain Rykov ordered, his voice strained but even.

Harry let his fingers fall from the handle. He turned around slowly. In the time it had taken him to reach the door, the Russians behind him had been transformed from a quiet group of social acquaintances into a squad of paramilitary soldiers moving in concert to control the unexpected emergency. Two men knelt over Klaus’s body, checking for signs of life; two others covered the front and rear windows of the house. Rykov issued orders.

“Yuri, get the car. Major, move back into the room. Now! ” Rykov tapped the shoulder of a young man leaning over Klaus’s corpse. “Leave him, Andrei. Touch nothing. Klaus was a traitor; he deserved a coward’s death. Leave the gun in his hand. We couldn’t have set this up better ourselves.”

“Shouldn’t we take him along?” Andrei asked. “The Kriminalpolizei aren’t stupid.”

Rykov’s eyes gleamed. “Ideally, I suppose. But we won’t have room for him.”

“What about the weapons compartment?”

“The major will be in there.” Rykov turned to Harry. “You don’t want to spend the next hour hugging a corpse, do you, Major?”

Harry’s mind raced. If this Russian intended to kidnap an American army officer from the heart of tightly controlled West Berlin, something very big indeed was going on. And to Harry’s mind, that something could only be the events at Spandau Prison.