Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

the Zinoviev notebook. "This volume is a treasure-a lost fragment of

history. Already I've learned things my colleagues would trade a limb

for."

Smuts shook his head slowly. "You're past it, old man.

You can't see anything, can you?"

"I see that this book is far more valuable than the rubbish Hans found

at Spandau."

"I'll tell you what that book is, Professor," Smuts snarled.

"It's your bloody death sentence. Only one man has read that book and

remained alive, and you've already met him."

Smuts reached for the doorknob. "Enjoy it while you can," he said, and

went out.

Stern stared at the closed door. He knew he could pick the lock again,

but the Afrikaner might be waiting for just such an attempt. He took a

deep breath and rubbed his temples.

He was sweating. Sixty seconds ago he had seen something so shocking it

had wiped the ghastly Nazi shrine room from his mind.

It was the book. Zinoviev's notebook. The moment he had opened it, the

moment before Pieter Smuts marched into his room, Stern had seen the

strange black characters marching like foreign soldiers down the page.

Cyrillic characters.

Paragraph after, paragraph of laboriously handwritten Russian covered

the left-hand page. And on the right-neatly typewritten on an old

German machine-Stern had seen what he prayed was a German translation of

the Russian handwriting. But what had so shocked him-what had blown

everything el e out of his mind-was his nearcertainty that the Cyrilslic

characters had been written by the same hand that wrote the "fire of

Armageddon" note warning of danger to Israel in 1967. The same note

which had said the secret of that danger could be found in Spandau.

Now he leafed quickly through the thin volume. The pages-twenty in

all-were merely sheets of heavy typing paper glued amateurishly into a

leather spine. The same strange configuration over and over: first

Russian, then German. Stern could not verify his intuition about the

author of the Spandau note. The note was in his leather bag, back in

Hauer's room at the Protea Hof But he did not need to verify anything.

He knew. He closed the black notebook and reread the name on the cover:

V V Zinoviev. Who was this mysterious Russian? How was he tied to the

Rudolf Hess case? If Zinoviev had warned Israel in 1967 of some

apocalyptic danger, had he voluntarily given this book to Alfred Horn?

Stern shivered with a sudden rush of deja vu. Alfred Horn.

The name buzzed in his brain like a swarm of bottleflies. Where had he

seen it before? In some intelligence report? On some tattered list of

Nazi sympathizers crossing a desk inTel Aviv?

He forced his mind away from the question. He forced himself to think

of the telephone, the phone that waited in the bizarre Nazi shrine room.

To think of Hauer and Gadi, waiting anxiously for his call. He had to

make contact with them. Yet in spite of Ilse's warning about a nuclear

weapon, in spite of his conviction that Israel actually was in danger,

Stern felt oddly certain that the key to the whole insane business-both

past and present-lay within the thin volume in his hand.

If the papers Hans Apfel found in Spandau Prison proved that Prisoner

Number Seven was not Rudolf Hess, what did this strange book reveal?

Horn had said-it related to May of 1941. Did this book, finally, reveal

the secret of Rudolf Hess's real mission to England? Did it name Hess's

British contacts? Did it reveal the full scope of the threat to Israel?

Could it silence the maddening hum at the back of Stern's brain when he

heard the name Alfred Horn?

This notebook, he thought, not the Spandau papers, is Professor

Natterman's Rosetta stone of 1941. I only hope I live to tell the

oldfool about it. Stern opened the black cover and began to read: I,

Valentin Vasilievich Zinoviev, here record for posterity thefacts of my

service to the German Reich, specifically my part in the special

operation undertaken in Great Britain in May 1941 known as "Plan

Mordred. " I do so at the request of the surviving Reich authorities,

to the best of my ability, adding or omitting nothing.

I was born in Moscow in 1895 to Vasili Zinoviev, a major in the army of

Alexander II. At seventeen I became a soldier like my father, but after

rising to the rank of sergeant I was recruited into the Okhrana, the

Tsar's secret police. I was promoted rapidly there. Some of my

colleagues criticized my methods as overly harsh, but no one denied the

results I achieved. Looking back on the bloodbath of 1917, I believe

many of those same colleagues would say that my methods were not harsh

enough. But they are dead now, and that is another story.

When I received word in 1918 that Tsar Nicholas II and his family had

been executed by the Bolsheviks, I decided to make my way to Germany.

Strange to choose the vanquished nation as my sanctuary, but I did. Of

all the Western nations, I had admired Prussia's military most. The

journey was a nightmare. Europe was a shambles, but by using Okhrana

contacts I finally managed to pass through the frontier into Poland.

From there I had little trouble.

Germany was in chaos. The people were starving. Armed gangs roamed the

streets at will, preying on the unwary and stripping returning soldiers

of their decorations. Chief among these gangs were the Spartacist

Communists. I could scarcely believe I had fled Lenin's revolution only

to find more of the same madness awaiting me. Quickly seeing how things

stood, I offered my services to a band of Friekorps, one of the groups

of German ex-officers and enlisted men who were trying to reestablish

order in their country. The Friekorps leadership appreciated my special

talents and put me to work immediately.

These were farsighted men. Even at that early stage they were planning

for the next war At their request I refrained from joining the Nazi

Party throughout Adolf Hitler's rise to power They preferred to use me

as a "cat"s paw" whenever actions were required where absolutely no risk

of being traced back to the Party could be tolerated.

Because the chief enemy of the Nazis was the Communist Party, I proved

invaluable, and soon came to the attention of Heinrich Himmler, Reichs

hrer of Hitler's newly created SS.

.M Though I never developed more than the most superficial personal

relationship with this strange character I admired his efficiency.

Himmler saw to it that some of my Okhrana methods were taught to members

of his counter intelligence unit-the SD. It was through these endeavors

that I came to know a promising young officer named Reinhard Heydrich.

Because of what happened later, I should mention my service in Spain. In

1936 I accompanied Germany's Condor Legion to Spain, to help

Generalissimo Franco in his struggle against the Republican Forres-which

were actually controlled by the Spanish communists and a few generals

borrowed from Stalin. I served as an interrogator, my chief

responsibility being interrogation of communist prisoners. It was this

eighteen-month period that would later rise up to thwart my greatest

mission, but who could foresee it then?

Back in Germany, I worked closely with Heydrich on a special program

which I had helped initiate after the 1919

communist uprisings in Germany. Because yet another world war seemed

inevitable, certain Nazi leaders expressed a desire that we should

infiltrate not only the German Communist Party, but the communist