Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

anti-Semitic feelings still be thriving in some families in Britain?"

Stern's face burned red with anger. "Professor, I can't even think

about those days without feeling rage toward the British."

Natterman was staring at Stern with strange intensity.

"Tell me," he said softly. "Were you part of the Stern Gang?

Is that how you know all this? Or were you Irgun?"

Stern's eyes bored in on Natterman. "Neither, Professor.

A very long time ago-before LAKAM-I helped found the Haganah."

Stern glanced past Natterman, to the small window-square of cerulean

sky. "In the winter of 1935, I emigrated with my mother to Palestine.

My father refused to leave our homeland, which happened to be Germany.

Despite my youth, I did a bit of everything for the Haganah: foug4t

Arabs, procured illegal arms, set up radio links across the Arabian

peninsula, smuggled in Jews from Europe-but mostly I fought the

British." The Israeli's face hardened.

"But I was no terrorist. Haganah was a moral army, Pr sor. The moment

Israel declared nationhood, we emerged as her legitimate defense forces.

I've never believed in senseless violence to achieve political ends. I

saw too many men start out as patriots and end up as criminals." Stern's

eyes misted with some half-forgotten emotion.

"Terror is a tempting tool in war, Professor. The easiest short-term

solution is always to lash out-to murder. I know. I tried it once."

He sighed deeply. "But 'an eye for an eye' is no road map to a better

world."

In her seat near the staircase, Swallow clenched her trembling hands.

Jonas Stern's voice-his hypocritical, Zionist voice-had hurled her back

into the past, back to Palestine.

Swallow knew all about Jonas Stern's flirtation with revenge, and she

had a very different opinion about the merits of the concept. She could

no longer even think coherently about her pain. Her clearest memory was

of her time as a mathematics prodigy studying at Cambridge, her time as

Ann Gordon. She still remerhbered the stunned expressions of the dons

as she soared through the nether reaches of theoretical calculus at age

@ixteen. When the war broke out, British Intelligence had snatched her

up with the rest of the savants and whisked her into cryptography. Her

parents lived in London, but her two brothers were stationed abroad: the

elder an RAF bombardier on Malta, the younger-Ann's fraternal twin-a

military policeman in Palestine. Ann and her twin brother, Andrew, had

been inseparable as children, and they had danced with joy when fate

landed them both in the same theater of the war.

. The family had a splendid war-right up until the end. In 1944

both of Ann's parents were killed by one of the last V-rockets to fall

on London. Then her elder brother was shot down over Germany and

lynched by civilians while the Warren-SS looked on. That left only Ann,

decoding German signals in a stifling shed inTel Aviv, and Andrew,

caught in the escalating violence between Jews, Arabs, and the British

in Palestine. With the rest of the family dead, the twins had grown

closer than ever. They even shared a small apartment in the poor

quarter of Tel Aviv-until the night Andrew was blown into small pieces

as he sat on a toilet in the British police barracks. His brutal death

finally shattered Ann's Enghsh stoicism. During the long, desolate

months of anguish, her grief slowly metamorphosed into a dark,

implacable fury. The war with Germany ended, but she had found a new

war to fight.

With methodical fanaticism she set to work finding out who had killed

her twin brother. It didn't take long. The bomb that killed Andrew had

been a Zionist reprisal attack, revenge for some filthy Jews who had

died in a British deportation camp. And the name of the young firebrand

who had planned and carried out that reprisal? Jonas Stern.

It had taken Ann just two hours to learn everything the local

authorities knew about Stern. He had apparently helped the British

quite a bit during the war, but before and since, the young Zionist had

killed enough Englishmen to earn an unofFicial bounty of a thousand

pounds on his head. Ann Gordon didn't give a damn about the bounty.

All she cared about was avenging her dead brother.

The next day she volunteered for the operations side of British

Intelligence, and they accepted her. She was brilliant, tough, and best

of all an orphan. After rigorous training in England, they christened

her Swallow and put her to work.

As an assassin. The trouble was, she had no say in her choice of

assignments. She spent year after year luring IRA gunmen, Arab

terrorists, African communists, anti-British mercenaries and other hard

cases to their doom, instead of hunting down the Zionist demon from her

past. In all the years Swallow worked for British Intelligence, not

once did she manage to get within striking range of Jonas Stern. To her

everlasting fury, the young Zionist fanatic had evolved into a

singularly gifted field agent. And long before Swallow was pensioned

off, Stern himself had retired to a fortified haven in the Negev desert,

apparently never to emerge.

TWice since then Swallow had attempted to breach the defenses of Stern's

desert refuge. She had drawn Jewish blood on both occasions,.

but she had failed to reach her hated target. After that, the Mossad

had learned her identity and warned her off. For Swallow, crossing'into

the Holy Land meant certain death. And so she had returned to England.

And waited. Until yesterday. Yesterday, like a call from Olympus, Sir

Neville Shaw's summons had come. Something had drawn Jonas Stern out of

Israel at last. Out of his sanctuary ...

Swallow's eyes popped open as Professor Natterman's voice crackled in

her ear receiver, breaking her reverie.

"Can't you see it, Stern?" he said forcefully. "Somehow, for some

unknown reason, the past and present are coming toward some mysterious

meeting point ... a kin o completion. It's like the Bible. The sins of

the fathers, yes?

Or as the Buddhists teach, karma." The old professor raised a crooked

finger and shook it slowly. "You still think my suspicions about Rudolf

Hess are unfounded? If ghosts like Yitzhak Shamir can survive to haunt

the present, so can Hess. I tell you, Stern, the man is alive."

Stern closed a strong hand over Natterman's upraised finger, hard enough

to cause pain. It infuriated the professor, but it shut him up.

Stern leaned back in his seat and sighed.

"I do wonder sometimes who is pulling the strings of this invisible

cabal. Is it Lord Granville, the young Englishman? Is it some madman?

Some would-be Aryan Messiah? Is it another ghost from the past? Your

Helmut, perhaps?"

Natterman fixed the Israeli with a penetrating gaze. "Jonas," he said

gravely, using Stern's first name for the first time. "What will you do

if ... if we find that I am right? If we find living men who bear

direct responsibility for the Holocaust? Will you kill them?"

Stern ran a hand through his thinning hair. "If we were to find such

men alive," he said quietly, "I would take them back to Israel.

Take them to Israel for a public trial. That is the only end from which

justice can come."

Natterman scratched at his gray wisp of beard. "You're a strong man,

Jonas. It takes great strength to show restraint."

"I'm not that strong," Stern murmured. "If I couldn't get them back to

Israel, I would kill them without hesitation."