Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

They took each flight in two leaps, only lightly touching the rails as a

guide. On the third-floor landing Hauer grabbed Hans and growled a

dozen words into his ear, then slipped through the fire door while Hans

continued downward. Hauer drew his stolen Walther-then he recalled his

warning to Hans. The explosion upstairs would draw all attention to the

eighth floor. If he fired the unsilenced Walther here, he would

certainly draw some attention to himself.

With a curse of frustration he slipped the Walther back into his pocket

and waited.

Four floors above him, Yosef Shamir flung himself down the stairs like a

man possessed. From the moment he'd gotten off the telephone with

Stern, the young commando had been hauling his instincts. Stern had

ordered him to stay put, but from what Natterman had told him, Yosef

feared that the woman with the machine pistol was now on her way up to

find Stern. Leaving Natterman to complete the call to the Germans on

his own, Yosef had raced upstairs to help Gadi and Stern. He had

reached the seventh floor.when he heard the door just above him crash

open. He slipped quietly through the seventh floor door just in time to

see Hauer and Hans rush past him down the stairs. With a sudden sick

feeling, Yosef realized he was probably -the sole remaining link to

Stern's quarry. The young Israeli bounded down the fire stairs with no

regard for safety, his mind only on regaining contact with the Germans.

When the steel edge of the fire door materialized in front of him like a

phantom, time slowed down. Yosef twisted his body to avoid the deadly

obstacle, but he simply couldn't move fast enough.

The door caught the side of his forehead, opening a three-inch gash and

dropping him like a stone on the landing.

Hauer threw his weight against the third-floor fire door and forced

Yosef's unconscious body out of the way, then knelt to examine him. He

didn't recognize the face, but he hadn't expected to. Yosef's pockets

were empty. No wallet, no coins, no clue to his name or nationality.

Even his clothes had no labels. On impulse Hauer took hold of Yosef's

head and lifted it to search for the tattooed eye ...

A scream of agony rebounded up through the stairwell. A man's scream.

Then a pistol shot exploded.

"Jesus!" Hauer cried. He dropped Yosef's head on the concrete and

raced down the steps after Hans.

As Gadi Abrams came to his knees and leveled his Uzi at the smoke-filled

foyer, the first spray of bullets from Swallow's Ingrain tore into room

820. Gadi hit the floor and cursed in fury. Either the gunman was

using a silencer, or the grenade had blown out his eardrums.

Beneath the far bed he saw Stern speaking into his walkie-talkie.

"Aaron, this is Jonas. We are pinned down here. Please respond."

Stern waited while Gadi rose up and peppered the door with a burst from

his silenced Uzi. "Aaron!" Stern tried again. "Please respond!"

"He can't hear you!" Gadi shouted. "Too much concrete between him and

us! We've got to storm our way out, Uncle! We're going to lose the

Germans otherwise. It's the only way!" The young commando leapt to his

feet.

Feeling a surge of adrenaline unlike any since the '73 war in Sinai,

Jonas Stern clutched his own Uzi, rose up, and followed his shouting,

blasting nephew'into the smoke of battle.

Hauer found Hans on the garage landing, standing silently over a corpse.

The body was blond and fair-skinned and looked about thirty-five. Its

right hand gripped a pistol.

"I told you not to use your gun!"

"I didn't!" Hans shot back.

Then Hauer saw the knife. The German knife from sporting goods store.

It was buried to the hilt in the d man's left side. "I'll be damned,"

he said.

He fell to his knees and searched the dead man's clothes.

He immediately found a British passport-which he placed in his own

pocket-and a wallet, from which he removed the money. Robbery was the

most plausible option under the circumstances. He glanced quickly

behind the dead man's ears for the Phoenix tattoo, but saw no mark. It

took a considerable effort to dislodge Hans's knife. Hauer wiped it

clean on the corpse's jacket, then slipped the knife into his belt.

"Who is he?" Hans murmured.

"Worry about it later. Let's go."

As Hauer turned and grabbed the door handle, he felt motion behind him.

He turned again, then froze. Hans had snatched up the corpse by the

collar and he was screaming, screaming in German at the top of his

lungs: "Where is she, gotidamn you? Where is my wife?"

Gadi and Stern burst out of room 8@O to find an empty hallway. A

strange, cloying scent lingered in the air. Perfume.

"Who the hell was that?" Gadi shouted. 'The Germans?

They must be in one of these rooms."

"They're gone!" Stern called from the door of suite 811.

"Come on!"

Together they raced to the elevator. As the doors slid shut, Stern

tried again to reach Aaron at the elevator-control box.

"Aaron!" he cried. "Forget the elevator! Try to stop the Germans!

Aaron!"

In the concrete basement of the hotel, Aaron Haber heard Stern's

crackling commands as: "Aaron! ... elevator! ...

-stop the Germans!" Dutifully, the young Israeli threw the switch that

stopped the elevator between the fourth and third floors.

When the car jolted to a stop, Stern and Gadi stared at each other with

ashen faces. Gadi punched the button to @:open the door, but got no

response. He tried to pry the doors "Open with his Uzi, but they

wowdn't budge. Whirling around in fury, he saw no one. Stern had sat

down on the :floor of the elevator and leaned against the veneer wall,

his eyes closed.

"Chfld's play," he said softly. "Isn't that what you said?"

Hauer wrenched the rented Toyota over to the curb in front of a

government sandstone office building. He leavt out of the car, ran to

the left front wheel well, and crouched down. Eight seconds later he

was back beside Hans, holding a heavy paper packet covered with duct

tape. The packet held the Spandau papers and the photos Hauer had shot

during the afternoon.

"So much for the Burgerspark," Hauer said. "We're not going back to the

Protea Hof, either. Our passports are obviously blown."

Hans rocked back and forth in the passenger seat.

"That explosion sounded like a grenade," said Hauer.

"Who in hell could have thrown it? The kidnappers?"

"We got out," Hans muttered. "That's all that matters. We just have to

stay alive until the rendezvous tomorrow."

"We need cover," said Hauer. "This time we ignore our friendly cabbie's

advice, though. This time we're going to a real fleabag.

Somewhere we won't need any identification at all."

Hans nodded. "How do we find that?"

"Just like we would in Berlin."

Hauer let in the clutch and pulled onto Prince's Park Straat, then

turned southwest onto R-27. He slowed at each intersection and peered

down the side streets. He knew what he wanted: garish neon, street

people, liquor advertisements, the howl of bar music. The universal

siren song that draws the lonely and the bored and the hunted to the

dark marrow of every city in the world. From what Hauer had learned

already, he suspected it would be easier to find such a place in

Johannesburg than in Pretoria. But he knew that anonymity could he had

anywhere for a price.

With Hans watching the streets fanning north, he drove on.

826 Pm. Horn House: The Northern Transvaal