Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

Before Hans could reply, Hauer vanished into the darkness. Even the

glow of his cigar had disappeared. Hans stood still for some moments;

then, shaking his head angrily, he hurried into the shadows and resumed

his patrol.

Time passed quickly now, the silence broken only by an occasional siren

or the roar of a jet from the British military airport at Gatow.

With the snow soaking into his uniform, Hans walked faster to take his

mind off the cold. He hoped he would be lucky enough to get home before

his wife, Ilse, left for work. Sometimes after a particularly rough

night shift, she would cook him a breakfast of Weisswurst and buns, even

if she was in a hurry.

He checked his watch. Almost 6:00 A.M. It would be dawn soon. He felt

better as the end of his shift neared. What he really wanted was to get

out of the weather for a while and have a smoke. A mountain of

shattered concrete near the rear of the lot looked as though it might

afford good shelter, so he made for it. The nearest soldier was

Russian, but he stood at least thirty meters from the pile. Hans

slipped through a narrow opening when the sentry wasn't looking.

He found himself in a comfortable little nook that shielded him

completely from the wind. He wiped off a slab of concrete, sat down,

and warmed his face by breathing into his cupped gloves. Nestled in

this dark burrow, he was invisible to the patrolling soldiers, yet he

still commanded a surprisingly wide view of the prison grounds. The

snow had finally stopped, and even the wind had fallen off a bit. In

the predawn silence, the demolished prison looked like pictures of

bombed-out Dresden he had seen as a schoolboy: motionless sentries

standing tall against bleak destruction, watching over nothing.

Hans took out his cigarettes. He was trying to quit, but he still

carried a pack whenever he went into a potentially stressful situation.

Just the knowledge that he could light up sometimes calmed his nerves.

But not tonight. Removing one glove with his teeth, he fumbled in his

jacket for matches. He leaned as far away as he could from the opening

to his little cave, scraped a match across the striking pad, then cupped

it in his palm to conceal the light. He held it to his cigarette,

drawing deeply. His shivering hand made the job difficult, but he soon

steadied it and was rewarded with a jagged rush of smoke.

As the match flame neared his fingers, a glint of white flashed against

the blackness of the chamber. When he flicked the match away, the

glimmer vanished. Probably only a bit of snow, he thought. But boredom

made him curious. Gauging the risk of discovery by the Russian, he lit

a second match. There. Near the floor of his cubbyhole he could see

the object clearly now-not glass but paper-a small wad stuck to a long

narrow brick. He hunched over and held the match nearer.

In the close light he could see that rather than being stuck to the

brick as he had first thought, the paper actually protruded from the

brick itself. He grasped the folded wad and tugged it gently from its

receptacle. The paper made a dry, scraping sound. Hans inserted his

index finger into the brick.

He couldn't feel the bottom. The second match died. He lit another.

Quickly spreading open the crinkled wad of onionskin, he surveyed his

find in the flickering light. It seemed to be a personal document of

some sort, a will or a diary perhaps, hand-printed in heavy blocked

letters. In the dying matchlight Hans read as rapidly as he could: This

is the testament of Prisoner #7. I am the last now, and I know that I

shall never be granted the freedom that I-more than any of those

released before me-deserve.

Death is the only freedom I will know. I hear His black wings beating

about me! While my child lives I cannot speak, but here I shall write.

I only pray that I can be coherent. Between the drugs, the questions,

the promises and the threats, I sometimes wonder if I am not already mad

I only hope that long after these 'events cease to have immediate

consequencest . n our insane world, someone will find these words and

learn the obscene truth, not only of Hammier, Heydrich, and the rest,

but of England-of those who would have sold her honor and ultimately her

existence forThe crunch of boot heels on snow jolted Hans back to

reality. Someone was coming! Jerking his head to the aperture in the

bricks, he closed his hand on the searing match and peered out into an

alien world.

Dawn had come. In its unforgiving light, Hans saw a Russian soldier

less than ten meters from his hiding place, moving slowly forward with

his AK-47 extended. The flare of the third match had drawn him. "Fool!"

Hans cursed himself. He jammed the sheaf of paper into his boot, then

he stepped boldly out of the niche and strode toward the advancing

soldier.

"Halt!" cried the Russian, emphasizing the command with a jerk of his

Kalashnikov.

"Versailles," Hans countered in the steadiest voice he could muster.

His calm delivery of the password took the Russian aback.

"What are you doing in there, Polizei?"lasked the soldier in passable

German.

"Smoke," Hans replied, extending the pack. "Having a smoke out of the

wind." He waved his sector map in a wide arc as if to take in the wind

itself.

"No wind," the Russian stated flatly, never taking his eyes from Hans's

face.

It was true. Sometime during the last few minutes the wind had died.

"Smoke, comrade," Hans repeated.

"Versailles! Smoke, tovarich!"

He continued to proffer the pack, but the soldier only cocked his head

toward his red-patched collar and spoke quietly. Hans caught his breath

when he spied the small transmitter clipped to the sentry's belt. The

Russians were in radio contact! In seconds the soldier's zealous

comrades would come running. Hans felt a hot wave of panic. A

surprisingly strong aversion to letting the Russians discover the papers

gripped him. He cursed himself for not leaving them in the little cave

rather than stuffing them into his boot like a naive shoplifter. He had

almost reached the point of blind flight when a shrill whistle pierced

the air in staccato bursts.

Chaos erupted all over the compound. The long, anxious night of

surveillance had strained everyone's nerves to the breaking point, and

the whistle blast, like a hair trigger, catapulted every man into the

almost sexual release of physical action. Contrary to orders, every

soldier and policeman on the lot abandoned his post to converge on the

alarm. The Russian whipped his head toward the noise, then back to

Hans. Shouted commands echoed across the prison yard, rebounding

through the broken canyons.

"Versailles!" Hans shouted. "Versailles, Comrade! Let's go!"

The Russian seemed confused. He lowered his rifle a little, wavering.

"Versailles," he murmured. He looked hard at Hans for a moment more;

then he broke and ran.

Rooted to the earth, Hans exhaled slowly. He felt cold sweat pouring

across his temples. With quivering hands, he pocketed his cigarettes,

then carefully refolded his sector map, realizing as he did so that the

paper he held was not his sector map at all, but the first page of the

papers he had found in the hollow brick. Like a fool he had been waving

under the Russian's nose the very thing he wanted to conceal! Thank God

that idiot didn't check it, he thought. He pressed the page deep into