Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

Gadi's accuracy was startling. Fully aware that the South Africans wore

body armor, he fired two consecutive bursts straight through the black

gas masks, killing both men instantly. General Steyn groped for the

pistol at his belt. Gadi put one round through the general's left

shoulder, spinning him around and knocking him to the floor. Then he

darted back into position behind Stern and pointed his carbine at the

rest of the group.

Dr. Sabri's face had gone white. Smuts was grinning. Ilse was still

screaming, but Stern shouted above her: "Everyone stay calm! He had no

choice!"

"No choice!" Hans cried. "He murdered them!"

General Steyn struggled slowly to his feet, his face flushed with pain

and outrage. Hauer had already relieved him of his pistol. "You will

pay for this, Jonas," he vowed.

"Israel will pay! And you know South Africa can make it pay!"

"Yes," Stern acknowledged. "The problem is, some of you were already

planning to make us pay."

"A few fanatics!" General Steyn spat. "You've gone too far!"

Stern spoke in a monotone. "We are talking about the survival of

Israel, Jaap. If these weapons explode here in the Transvaal, it will

be a disaster, to be sure. But if only one of these bombs were to

explode over Israel, our tiny state would cease to exist, and the entire

world might be sucked into the vortex of war. It's a devil's choice,

but it's that simple. Tragedy versus a worldwide holocaust."

There was a high-pitched cackle from the far wall. "An excellent choice

of words, Jew!" Even in his helpless position, Rudolf Hess wore an

expression of triumph. "A holocaust is exactly what is going to happen!

Just as the Fuhrer planned! Even if you could persuade these cowards to

allow you to detonate the weapons, you don't have the knowledge to do

it. I have won!"

Gadi Abrams pointed his R5 at Hess's face.

"No, Gadi!" Stern cried. "God, I wanted so badly to take him back to

Israel for trial! To see him forced to tell the world his vile story.

To tell what he knows about the British."

"I'll tell you now," Hess coughed. "You'll all be dead within minutes,

anyway. I might as well entertain you while we wait for Major Karami."

"Shut up!" Stern snapped in German. "No one cares anymore!"

"Let him talk," Hauer said. "If we're going to die, I want to know why.

I want to know what this Nazi bastard had planned for Germany."

Hess smiled defiantly. "I think I'll keep that to myself, Captain. But

I will tell you about the British."

Hans stepped forward. "Maybe there is another way out of here, Captain.

Why don't we search the lab?"

Pieter Smuts laughed dryly. "Sorry, Sergeant. One way in, one way out.

That's the best security there is. You're going to die where you

stand."

"You'll die before I do," Hans shot back.

Ilse reached out and squeezed Hans's arm. "I want to hear Hess's story,

Hans. I want to know why an innocent man rotted in Spandau all those

years, and why the Allies kept silent about it. My grandfather came

here to find those answers.

He thought they were very important. I want to learn them, if I can."

Hess signaled for Smuts to set him up straighter. The gesture silenced

everyone in the room. In spite of the Libyan commandos who would soon

hammer through the protective shields above, in spite of the

incomprehensible danger that lay between them all like coals delivered

up from hell, every person in the basement crowded silently around the

old man propped against the steel wall.

"The Jew knows most of it already," Hess rasped. "What he doesn't

know-what nobody knows-is what my part of the mission was. For so long

the furor has focused on my flight to Scotland. The simple truth is

that my flight was only a small part of the plan." Hess's voice gained

strength.

"Our goal was to replace the government of England. No one in England

wanted another war, yet any idiot could see that Churchill would never

make peace with the Fuhrer. So, the answer was simple-get rid of

Churchill. The Americans and the Soviet Union did the same thing many

times after the war.

Coup d'etat is the fashionable term, yes? The Fuhrer was always years

ahead of his time." Hess scratched at a wisp of beard on his chin.

"It makes me laugh now, all that rot about how the valiant British saved

the world from Hitler. Ha! There were dozens of powerful Englishmen

ready to throw Churchill out and put a right-thinking man in Downing

Street. And I don't mean radicals. They were lords and ladies, members

of Parliament, knights of the realm.

They understood that the only,way to stop communism was to ally England

with the Reich. So they tried it! They got word to the Fuhrer that if

Churchill and his gang could be got out, they had men ready to step in.

If the king could be eliminated, they could fill his shoes also. Of

course the Fuhrer agreed immediately. While he made arrangements to

have Churchill and the king liquidated, his English friends prepared to

fill the coming power vacuum. Windsor was to take his younger brother's

place on the throne."

Hess's voice gained strength. "It was to happen on the tenth of May-the

anniversary of our victorious attack on Western Europe. My mission was

simple. The Englishmen behind the coup demanded absolute proof that the

Fuhrer would live up to his end of the bargain-that he would actually

make peace with Britain, cease the terror bombing of London and so

forth." Hess's eyes glazed with lost glory.

"So the Fuhrer asked Rudi-his faithful deputy and lifelong friend-to be

his emissary to his British friends!"

"But why was your double sent?" Ilse asked.

Hess smiled cagily. "British Intelligence learned that I was planning

to fly to Britain. They had informers everywhere. They expected me to

land near Dungavel Castlewhich was my original plan-but two weeks before

my flight, Reinhard Heydrich discovered that mI-5 knew about the

Dungavel meeting. Rather than cancel it, however, Heydrich simply

changed the actual rendezvous to the beach opposite Holy Island." Hess

nodded admiringly. "It was Heydrich's idea to send my double on to

Dungavel. To act as if nothing had changed, you see! The double's

mission was to dupe mI-5 into believing they had captured me, but just

long enough for me to complete my real mission. It was never intended

that he do what he did!"

"But you didn't complete your mission," Hauer pointed out. "Why not?"

Hess sighed. "Because by the time I jumped out of the plane over Holy

Island, mI-5 had found out about that rendezvous as well. Another

informer had betrayed us. When I landed-several hundred meters off

target, by the way-I heard shooting. I quickly realized that something

had gone wrong. When I moved closer to the firing, I saw that British

agents had already stormed the rendezvous site-which consisted of a

half-dozen autos parked on a shingle of beach.

There was a gun battle between some mI-5 operatives and my contacts."

Hess grimaced as if at some private pain. "It was there I received the

wound that eventually took my eye.

A stray bullet." He shrugged. "My part of the mission had failed. I

knew the name of a German agent who maintained a radio link to Occupied

France from a nearby coastal village, and I made my way to his house on

a stolen motorbike.

The rest is unimportant."

"But what of the plan to kill Churchill?" Ilse asked.

Hess looked tired now. "Ask the Jew."