Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

roaring, the wind a screaming, living thing that struggled to pluck the

men from their tiny tube of steel. Above it all, the pilot shouted,

"We're over the gap now, Herr Reichminister! Go! Go!"

Suddenly Hess looked into his lap. Empty. He had forgotten to ditch

his papers! No sign of them in the cockpit; they must have been sucked

out the moment the canopy opened.

He prayed they had found their way down to the sea, and not to the

island below.

"Jump, Herr Reichminister!"

Hess struggled into a crouch and faced the lethal tail fins

of the Zersts'rer. The time for niceties had passed. He reached behind

him and jerked the pilot's head back.

"Hauptmann!" he shouted. "Heydrich only ordered those drop tanks

fitted to make sure you came this far! They are empty! No matter what

happens, you cannot turn back! You have no choice but to follow orders!

If I succeed, your actions really won't matter! But if I fail, you

cannot! You know the price of failure-Sippenhaft! Never forget that!

Sippenhaft binds us both! Now climb! Give me some draft!"

The Messerschmitt's nose pitched up, momentarily creating a small space

shielded from the wind. With a defiant yell Hess hurled himself up and

backward. A novice, he pulled the ripcord the moment he cleared the

plane. The tightfolded silk tore open with a ripping sound, then

quickly blossomed into a soft white mushroom that circled lazily down

through the mist toward the Scottish earth below.

Cursing, the pilot struggled to secure the canopy. Without help it was

twice as difficult, but Hess's final words had chilled him to the core.

Only a sheet of curved glass could now separate him from the terrifying

destiny he had been ordered to face. With the desperate strength of a

condemned man, he slammed it shut.

He dipped his left wing.@d glanced backward. There was the descending

chute, soft and distant and peaceful. Barring a catastrophic landing,

the Reichminister would at least begin his mission safely. It heartened

the pilot to know that a novice could actually clear the plane, but

something deeper in him recoiled in dread.

They had tricked him! The bastards had lured him into a suicidal

mission by letting him think he would have a way out! After all his

training, they hadn't even trusted him to carry out his orders! Empty

auxiliary tanks. The swine! They had known he would have sole control

of the plane after Hess jumped, and they had made sure he wouldn't have

enough fuel to turn back if the mission went bad. And as if that

weren't enough ... Hess had threatened him with Sippenhaft!

Sippenhaft! The word caused the pilot's breath to come in quick gasps.

He had heard tales of the Nazis' ultimate penalty for betrayal, but he

hadn't really believed them.

Sippenhaft dictated that not only a traitor's life but the lives of his

entire family became forfeit when judgment was rendered against him.

Children, parents, the aged and infirm none were spared. There was no

appeal, and the sentence, once decreed, was swiftly executed.

With a guttural scream the pilot cursed God for giving him another man's

face. In that moment, he felt it was a surer death sentence than a

cancer of the brain. Setting his mouth in a grim line, he hurled the

plane into a screaming dive, not pulling up until the rocky Scottish

earth seemed about to shatter the nose of his aircraft. Then-as Hess

had suggested-he ran like hell, opening the Zerstdrer up to 340 miles

per hour over the low stone villages and patchwork fields. In other

circumstances, the heart-stopping, groundlevel flight might have been an

exhilarating experience. Tonight it felt like a race against death.

It was. A patrolling Boulton Paul Defiant had answered a scramble call

from the RAF plotting room at Inverness. The Messerschmitt pilot never

even saw it. Oblivious, he stormed across the darkening island like a

banshee, sixteen feet above the earth. With the twin-engined

Messerschmitt's tremendous speed advantage, the pursuing British fighter

was outpaced like a sparrow behind a . hunting hawk.

Dun avel Hill rose in the distance. Height.-45

9 8 meters: the information chattered into the pilot's brain like a

ticker tape. "There it is," he muttered, spying the silhouette of

Dungavel Castle. "My part of this insane mission." The castle flashed

beneath his fuselage. With one hand he checked the radio set near his

right knee. Working. Please call, he thought. Please ...

He heard nothing. Not even static. With shaking hands he touched the

stick and hopped over a line of trees bisecting a sheep pasture.

He saw fields ... a road ... more trees ...

then the town of Kilmamock, sprawled dark across the road.

He swept on. A patch of mist, then fog, the sea!

Like a black arrow he shot out oVer the western coast of Scotland,

climbing fast. To his left he sighted his turning landmark, a giant

rock jutting 120 meters into the sky, shining pale in the moonlight.

As if drawn by a magnet, his eyes locked onto the tiny face of his newly

acquired watch.

Thirty minutes gone and no signal. Ten minutes from now his fate would

be sealed. If you receive no signal in forty minutes, Hauptmann, you

will turn out to sea and swallow your cyanide capsule ... He wondered if

he would be dead before his plane plowed into the icy depths of the

North Atlantic.

Christ in Heaven! his mind screamed. What mad bastard dreamed this one

up? But he knew-Reinhard Heydrichthe maddest bastard of them all.

Steeling himself against panic, he banked wide to the south and flew

parallel to the coast, praying that Hess's signal would come. His eyes

flicked across the instrument panel. Altimeter, airspeed, compass,

fuel-the tanks! Without even looking down he jerked a lever next to his

seat. Two auxiliary fuel tanks tumbled down through the darkness. One

would be recovered from the Clyde estuary the next day by a British

drifter, empty.

The radio stayed silent. He checked it again. Still working.

His watch showed thirty-nine minutes gone. His throat went dry.

Sixty seconds to zero hour, Sixty seconds to suicide. Here you are, sir

one cyanide cocktailfor the glory of the Reich! For the last time the

pilot looked longingly down upon the dark mirror of the sea. His left

hand crept into his flying suit and touched the cyanide capsule taped

against his breast. Then, with frightening clarity, an image of his

wife and daughter came into his mind. "It's not fair!" he shouted in

desolation. "It's the fucking nobodies who do the dying!"

In one violent flash of terror and outrage, the pilot jerked the stick

to port and headed the roaring fighter back inland.

His tear-filled eyes pierced the Scottish mist, searching out the

landmarks he had studied so long in Denmark. With a shudder of hope, he

spied the first-railroad tracks shining like quicksilver in the night.

Maybe the signal will still come, he hoped desperately. But he knew it

wouldn't. His eyes scoured the earth for his second landmark-a small

lake to the south of Dungavel Castle. There ...

The Messerschmitt streaked across the water. Like a mirage the small

village of Eaglesham appeared ahead. The fighter thundered across the

rooftops, wheeling in a high, climbing circle over Dungavel Castle. He

had done it! Like an intravenous blast of morphine, the pilot.felt a

sudden rush of exhilaration, a wild joy cascading through him. Ignited