Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

hand on his shoulder.

"I believe that's right," Hans said tentatively. "Yes, he's Jewish."

Luhr gave a curt nod of the head, as if this new fact somehow explained

everything.

"You may go, Sergeant," Funk said.

Hans stood. They were telling him to go, yet he sensed that some

unspoken understanding had passed between the men in the room. It was

as if several decisions had been taken at once in some language unknown

to him. He turned toward the soldiers and police at the back of the

room and shuffled toward the door. No one moved to stop him. Why

hadn't Schmidt called him a liar? Why hadn't the Russian who'd caught

him searching called him a liar? And why did he feel compelled to keep

lying, anyway?

Because of the Russians, he realized. If the prefect@r even Hauer-had

only questioned him alone, he could have told them. Just as Ilse wanted

him to. He would have told them ...

A burly policeman held open the door. Hans walked through, hearing

Funk's tired voice resume behind him. He quickened his pace.

He wanted to get out of the building as soon as possible. He entered

the stairwell at a near trot, but slowed when he saw two beefy patrolmen

ascending from the first floor. Nodding a perfunctory greeting, he

slipped between the two menThen they took him.

Hans had no chance at all. The men used no weapons because they needed

none. His arms were immobilized as if by steel bands; then the men

reversed direction and began dragging him down the stairs.

"What is this!" Hans shouted. "I'm a police officer! Let me go!"

One of the men chuckled quietly. They reached the bottom of the stairs

and turned down a disused hallway, a repository of ancient files and

broken furniture. When the initial shock and disorientation wore off,

Hans realized that he had to fight back somehow. But how? In the

darkest part of the corridor he suddenly let his body go limp, appearing

to lose his will to resist.

"Scheisse!" one man cursed. "Dead weight."

"He soon will be," commented his partner.

Dead weight? With speed born of desperation Hans fired his elbow into a

rib cage. He heard bone crack.

"Arrghh!" The man let go.

With his free hand Hans pummeled the other attacker's head, aiming for

his temple. The policeman held him fast.

"You bastard . . . " from the darkness.

Hans kept pounding the man's skull. The grip on his arm was looseningAn

explosion that seemed to detonate behind his right eye paralyzed him.

Darkness.

Less than sixty feet away from Hans, Colonels Ivan Kosov and Grigori

Zotin stood outside an idling East German transit bus in the central

parking lot of the police station. Inside the bus, the Soviet soldiers

from the Spandau patrol waited for their long-delayed return to -East

Berlin.

Most were already fast asleep.

Zotin, a GRU colonel, did'not particularly like Kosov, and- he was

deeply offended at the KGB colonel's effrontery in.

donning the uniform of the Red Army. But what could he do? One

couldn't keep the KGB out of something this big, especially when higher

powers wanted Kosov involved.

Rubbing his hands together against the cold, Zotin tested the KGB man's

perception.

"Can you believe it, Ivan? They gave them all clean reports."

"Of course," Kosov growled. "What did you expect?"

"But one of them was certainly lying!"

"Certainly."

"But how did they fake the polygraph readouts?"

Kosov looked bored. "We were six meters from the machine. They could

have shown us anything."

Grigori Zotin knew exactly which policeman had lied, but he wanted to

keep the information from Kosov long enough to initiate inquiries of his

own. He was aware of the Kremlin's interest in the Hess case, and he

knew his career could take a giant leap forward if he cracked it.

He made a mental note to decorate the young GRU officer who had caught

the German policeman searching and showed enough sense to tell only his

immediate superior. "You're right, of course," Zotin agreed.

Kosov grunted.

"What, exactly, do you think was discovered? A journal perhaps?

Do you think they found some proof of@' "They found a hollow brick,"

Kosov snapped. "Our forensic technicians say their tests indicate the

brick held some type of paper for an unknown period of time. It could

have been some kind of journal. It could also have been pages from a

pornographic magazine. It could have been toilet paper! Never trust

experts too much, Zotin."

The GRU colonel sucked his teeth nervously. "Don't you think we should

have at least mentioned Zinoviev during the interrogation? We could

have-2' "Idiot!" Kosov bellowed. "That name, isn't to be mentioned

outside KGB! How do you even know it?"

Zotin stepped back defensively. "One hears things in Moscow."

"Things that could get you a bullet in the neck," Kosov warned.

Zotin tried to look unworried. "I suppose we should tell the general to

turn up the pressure at the commandants' meeting tomorrow."

"Don't be ridiculous," scoffed Kosov. "Too little, too late."

"What about the trespassers, then? Why are you letting the Germans keep

them?"

"Because they don't know anything."

"What do you suggest we do, then?" Zotin ventured warily.

Kosov snorted. "Are you serious? It was the second to last man-Apfel.

He was lying through his Bosche teeth. Those idiots did exactly what we

wanted. If they'd admitted Apfel was lying, he'd be in a jail cell now,

beyond our reach. As it is, he's at our mercy. The fool is bound to

return home, and when he does"-Kosov smiled coldly-"I'll have a team

waiting for him."

Zotin was aghast. "But how-?" He stifled his imprudent outburst with a

cough. "How can you get a team over soon enough?" he covered.

"I have two teams here now," Kosov snapped. "Get me to a damned

telephone!"

Startled, the GRU colonel clambered aboard the bus and found a seat.

"And Zotin?" Kosov said, leaning over his rival.

"Yes?"

"Keep nothing from me again. It could be very dangerous for you."

Zotin blanched.

"I want everything there is on this man Apfel. Everything.

I suggest you ride your staff very hard on this. Powerful eyes are

watching us."

"How will you approach this policeman?"

"Approach him?" Kosov cracked a wolfish smile. "Break him, you mean.

By morning I'll know how many times that poor bastard peeked up his

mother's skirts."

Hans awoke in a cell. There was no window. He'd been thrown onto a

stack of damp cardboard boxes. One pale ray of light filtered down from

somewhere high above. When he had focused his eyes, he sat up and

gripped one of the steel bars. His face felt sticky. He put his

fingers to his temple.

Blood The familiar slickness brought back the earlier events in a

throbbing rush of confusion. The interrogation ... his father's stony

silence ... the struggle in the hallway. Where was he?

He tried to rise, but he collapsed into a narrow space tween two boxes.

Rotting cardboard covered almost the entire concrete floor. A cell full

of boxes? Puzzled, Hans reached into one and pulled out a damp folder.

He held it in the shaft of light. Traffic accident report, he thought.

Typed on the standard police fonn- He found the date-1973. Flipping

through the yellow sheaf of papers, he saw they were all the same, all

traffic accident reports from 1973. He checked the station listed on

several forms: Abschnitt 53 every case. Suddenly he realized where he