Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

"I don't know," she said thoughtfully. "But I think he will."

Jonas Stern closed the infirmary door and flattened himself against the

wall. His heart beat like mad as he waited for his eyes to adjust to

the darkness. The astringent tang of isopropyl alcohol and disinfectant

wrinkled his nose. He had been forced to wait almost seven hours before

the guards outside his room finally left their posts. He had no idea if

more would be sent to take their place, but he hadn't waited to find

out. Even in the dark he could make out the high-tech gleam of stainless

steel and glass. Hd eased forward.

After eight short steps, he felt for the interior doors he remembered.

Finding one cool metal knob, he turned it and hit the wall switch. He

saw an empty hospital bed, oxygen bottles, telemetry wires, a dozen

other gadgets. Wrong room. He killed the light and closed the door.

Sliding his hands up the facing of the second door, he found the warning

sign he remembered: three inverted triangles, yellow over black.

Radiation . Stern's pulse quickened as he opened the door and slipped

inside.

There was light here, the dim red glow of a darkroom safelight.

He moved quickly around the X-ray table to the file shelves. One way or

the other, he thought, here would be the proof. He reached into the

first compartment and pulled out a six-inch stack of

fourteen-by-seventeen manila folders.

Then he crossed to the viewing screens and hit the switches.

Harsh fluorescent light flooded the room. While the viewers buzzed like

locusts, be pulled an exposed X-ray film from the top file folder and

clipped it against the screen. Chest X-ray. It took him a few moments

to orient himself.

The spinal column and ribs showed clearly as strong, graceful white

lines against the gray soft tissues and the almost burnt-black spaces of

the body cavities. After that it got tougher. A dozen shades of gray

overlapped one another in seeming chaos. Despite his initial confusion,

Stern believed that what he sought should be reasonably apparent even to

a layman. He tried to discern the subtle differences between the

anatomical parts, then groaned as the outlines of two pendulous breasts

emerged from the shadow of the internal organs.

"'It's a bloody woman!" he muttered.

Then he noticed the small radiopaque ID-plate image on the top left

corner of the film. It read: Linah #004, 4-08-86.

Stern unclipped the film, ffimst it back into the folder and dropped it

on the floor. The outside of the next folder read: Stanton, Robert B.

#005. He dropped it. Smuts, Pieter #002.

The next file also belonged to Smuts. After three more names he did not

recognize, he returned to the storage shelves.

The first folder he pulled out measured an inch thick by itself.

The top-left corner read: Horn, Thomas Alfred #001.

With shaking hands Stern removed the top film from the file and clipped

it to the viewing screen. It showed two views of a hand positioned to

reveal a hairline fracture that Stern couldn't see and cared nothing

about. He jerked the film from the screen and let it fall to the floor.

The next three films showed a series of intestinal views enhanced by the

ingestion of barium sulfate. These, too, Stern let fall. A

comprehensive X-ray anthology followed: grossly arthritic knees, lumbar

spine, cervical spine-Stern tossed them all onto the growing pile at his

feet. Finally he found what he wanted-an X-ray of Alfred Horn's chest.

With mounting anticipation, he clipped the top edge of the film into the

clamp and stepped back.

No breasts on this film. Stern began with what he clearly

recognized-the spine. The ribs climbed both sides of the spine like

curved white ladders. The lungs were the dark ovals behind them. A

triangular white blob overlaid the spine. The heart, thought Stern. He

knew the heart to be situated slightly left of center in the body-a fact

he had learned during a silent killing course as a young man in

Palestine. So the left lung should be... here. He touched the film

with his right forefinger. Now... compare. Check each lung against the

other until Ifind a discrepancy.

He immediately found several. Opaque disks the size of small coins

seemed to float like celestial bodies in the dark lung spaces.

These disks were small scars left by a mild case of tuberculosis.

Stern did not know this, but he soon dismissed the disks as unrelated to

what he sought. The first suspicious thing he saw was a kind of

widening of two rib bones at one.spot in the left lung. They seemed

thicker than the other ribs, more built up somehow, not quite as smooth.

Stern had an idea. Pulling another stack of films from Horn's folder,

he rifled through them until he found what he wanted-an oblique X-ray of

Horn's chest-a picture shot -from the side with both arms held above the

head. When he pinned this film to the screen, the mark he sought jumped

out at him like a contrail against the sky. He swallowed hard, raised a

quivering finger to the film. Crossing the dark left lung in a hazy,

transverse line was the scar of a rifle bullet. A rifle bullet fired

seventy-one years ago. The opaque track diffused rapidly into the

surrounding shadows, but the path of the old bullet fragments was

plainly visible. With his heart pounding, Stern counted downward from

the collarbone to the scarred area-one rib at a time.

... four ... five ... six ... seven."

He switched back to the first X-ray-the posterior/anterior view-and

carefully counted down again, this time searching for'the ribs with the

strange built-up areas.

". . . three ... four . . . five ... six"-Stern felt sweat dropping

into his eyes- "seven."

"My God," he murmured, feeling a catch in his throat.

"Hess- is alive." Simultaneously a voice reverberated in his brain: The

bomb for Tel Aviv is real!

Folding the two stiff chest X-rays in half, Stern thrust them inside his

shirt between Zinoviev's notebook and his pounding heart.

He quickly gathered up the discarded films and folders from the floor,

shoved them back into the shelves, then slipped quietly out of the X-ray

room and into the dark hallway.

He sprinted to the library. In the musty darkness he tripped, picked

himself up, then moved carefully on toward the tall bookshelves.

Feeling his way across them to the corner, he found the tiny brass knob.

He turned it. He had already resolved that if he found anyone other

than Hess himself inside the secret shrine room, he would kill him.

The room was empty. Stern sat down behind the mahogany desk and

breathed deeply. He wanted to slow his racing heart. Above him the

bronze Phoenix screamed silently.

From the wall to his left a hundred Nazis gazed at him. As Stern

reached for the phone to call Hauer at the Protea Hof, he froze.

Someone had been in the room since his visit.

Across from the desk-where there h-ad been only red drapes before-hung 4

gigantic oil painting-twice lifesize-of Adolf Hitler.

Rendered in muted greens and browns, the dictator gazed down with sullen

intensity at the Jewish intruder. Someone had pulled back the drapes to

admire the Fuhrer. Gooseflesh rose on Stern's neck. His left cheek

began to twitch. After working his dry mouth furiously, the old Israeli

spat a wad of mucus across the desk onto the canvas. It struck Hitler

just above his groin. Stern raised his left arm, made a fist, and shook