Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

lap and withdrew an orange. While Hans watched the tides roll, the

shadow peeled the orange and watched him.

Thirty blocks away in the Liitzenstrasse, Ilse Apfel set her market

basket down in the uncarpeted hallway and let herself into apartment 40.

The operation took three keys-one for the knob and two for the heavy

deadbolts Hans insisted upon. She went straight to the kitchen and put

away her grocenes, singing tunefully all the while.

The song was an old one, Walking on the Moon by the Police. Ilse always

sang when she was happy, and today she was ecstatic. The news about the

baby meant far more than fulfillment of her desire to have a family. It

meant that Hans might finally agree to settle permanently in Berlin. For

the past five months he had talked of little else but his desire to try

out for Germany's elite counterteffor force, the Grenzschutzgruppe-9

(GSG-9), oddly enough, the unit whose marksmen his estranged father

coached. Hans claimed he was tired of routine police work, that he

wanted something more exciting and meaningful.

Ilse didn't like this idea at all. For on@ thing, it would seriously

disrupt her career. Policemen in Berlin made little money; most police

wives worked as hairdressers, secretaries, or even

housekeepers-low-paying jobs, but jobs that could be done anywhere.

Ilse was different. Her parents had died when she was very young, and

she had been raised by her grandfather, an eminent history professor and

author.

She'd practically grown up in the Free University and hadtaken degrees

in both Modern Languages and Finance. She'd

T

even spent a semester in the United States, studying French and teaching

German. Her job as interpreter for a prominent brokerage house gave

Hans and her a more comfortable life than most police families. They

were not rich, but their life was good.

If Hans qualified for GSG-9, however, they would have to move to one of

the four towns that housed the active GSG-9

units: Kassel, Munich, Hannover, or Kiel. Not exactly financial meccas.

Ilse knew she could adapt to a new city if she had to, but not to the

heightened danger. Assignment to a GSG-9 unit virtually guaranteed that

Hans would be put into life-threatening situations.

GSG-9 teams were Germany's forward weapon in the battle against

hijackers, assassins, and God only knew what other madmen. Ilse didn't

want that kind of life for the father of her child, and she didn't

understand how Hans could either. She despised amateur psychology, but

she suspected that Hans's reckless impulse was driven by one of two

things: a desire to prove something to his father, or his failure to

become a father himself.

No more conversations about stun grenades and storming airplanes, she

told herself. Because she was finally pregnant, and because today was

just that kind of day. Returning to work from the doctor's office,

she'd it)und that her boss had realized a small fortune for his clients

that morning by following a suggestion she had made before leaving. Of

course by market close the cretin had convinced himself that the clever

bit of arbitrage was entirely his own idea. And who really cares? she

thought. When I open my brokerage house, he'll be carrying coffee to my

assistants!

Ilse stepped into the bedroom to change out of her business clothes. The

first thing she saw was the half-eaten plate of Weisswurst on the unmade

bed. Melted ice and dirt from Hans's uniform had left the sheets a

muddy mess. Then she saw the uniform itself, draped over the boots in

the corner.

That's odd, she thought. Hans was as human as the next man, but he

usually managed to keep his dirty clothes out of sight. In fact, it was

odd not to find him sleeping off the fatigue of night duty.

Ilse felt a strange sense of worry. And then suddenly she knew.

At work there had been a buzz about a breaking news story-something

about Russians arresting two West Berliners at Spandau Prison. Later,

in her car, she'd half-heard a radio announcer say something about

Russians at one of the downtown police stations. She prayed that Hans

hadn't got caught up in that mess. A bureaucratic tangle like that

could take all night.

She frowned. Telling Hans about the baby while he was in a bad mood

wasn't what she had had in mind at all. She would have to think of a

way to put him in a good mood- first.

One method always worked, and she smiled thinking of it.

For the first time in weeks the thought of sex made her feel genuinely

excited. It seemed so long since she and Hans had made love with any

other goal than pregnancy. But now that she had conceived, they could

forget all about charts and graphs and temperatures and rediscover the

intensity of those nights when they hardly slept at all.

She had already planned a celebratory dinner-not a health-conscious

American style snack like those her yuppie colleagues from the

Yorckstrasse called dinner, but a real Berlin feast: Eisben, sauerkraut,

and Pease pudding. She'd made a special trip to the food floor of the

KaDeWe and bought everything ready-made. It was said that anything

edible in the world could be purchased at the KaDeWe, and Ilse believed

it. She smiled again. She and Hans would share a first-class supper,

and for dessert he could have her-as healthy a dish as any man could

want. Then she would tell him about the baby.

Ilse tied her hair back, then she took the pork from the refrigerator

and put it in the oven. While it heated, she went into the bedroom to

strip the soiled sheets. She laughed softly. A randy German woman

might happily make love on a forest floor, but on dirty linens? Never!

She knelt beside the bed and gathered the bedclothes into a ball. She

was about to rise when she saw something white sticking out from under

the mattress. Automatically, she pulled it out and found herself

holding a damp sheaf of papers.

What in the world? She certainly didn't remember putting any papers

under the mattress. It must have been Hans. But what would he hide

from her? Bewildered, she let the bedclothes fall, stood up, and

unfolded the onionskin pages.

Heavy, hand-printed letters covered the paper. She read the first

paragraph cursorily, her mind more on the circumstances of her discovery

than on the actual content of the papers. The second paragraph,

however, got her attention. It was written in Latin of all things.

Shivering in the chilly ai'r, she walked into the kitchen and stood by

the warm stove.

She concentrated on the word endings, trying to decipher the carefully

blocked letters. it was almost painful, like trying to recall formulas

from gymnasium physics. Her specialty was modern languages; Latin she

could hardly remember. Ilse went to the kitchen table and spread out

the thin pages, anchoring each corner with a piece of flatware.

There were nine. She took a pen and notepad from the telephone stand,

went back to the first paragraph of Latin, and began recording her

efforts. After ten minutes she had roughed out the first four

sentences. When she read straight through what she had written, the

pencil slipped from her shaking hand.

"Mein Gott, " she breathed. "This cannot be."

Hans exited the cinema into the gathering dusk. He couldn't believe the

afternoon had passed so quickly. Huddling against the cold, he

considered taking the U-Bahn home, then decided against it.