Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

I received some very interesting orders, and they involve YOU."

Luhr left the receiver dangling from the call box and dashed to his car.

He squealed down the Bachstrasse in a rage. "Damn that imbecile! How

could he be so lucky?" He screeched around a curve.

"It's all right," he assured himself, calming a little. "He hasn't

found Hauer or Apfel yet.

Or the Spandau papers. And that's what Phoenix wantswhat he's

frightened of. And that distinction will be mine."

In his fury, Luhr failed to notice the burly figure of Detective Julius

Schneider standing at a yellow call box four blocks from the one he had

used to place his own call. Unlike Luhr, Schneider wasn't about to try

to trace the mysterious phone number through normal channels.

An inquiry in his own name might draw unpleasant attention, possibly

even the prefect's, and Schneider didn't need that. Besides, he had

always believed in taking the shortest route between two points.

Reading the telephone number off the palm of his hand, he lifted the

receiver and punched in the digits. He heard five rings, then a click

followed by the familiar hiss and crackle of an automated answering

machine.

"This is Harry Richardson," said a metallic voice. "I'm out.

Friends can leave a message at the tone. If you're a salesperson, don't

call back. If it's a military matter, call my office. The previous

message will be repeated in German.

Thank you."

Schneider waited until the German version of the message had finished,

then hung up. His pulse, normally as steady as a hibernating bear's,

was racing. Schneider knew who Harry Richardson was. He'd even met him

once. American intelligence officers who took the time to cultivate

investigators of the Kriminalpolizei were rare enough to remember.

Schneider doubted if Richardson would remember him, but that didn't

matter. What mattered was that an American army officer was somehow

involved in what was fast shaping up to be an explosive murder case.

Schneider took several deep breaths and forced himself to think slowly.

He'd found Richardson's card outside the victim's house, but there had

been blood all around it. What did that mean? And what should he do?

He thought of the prefect's insolent aide, and the overly officious

manner that in Schneider's experience spelled coverup.

With sudden insight Schneider realized that he now stood at one of those

crossroads that can change a man's life forever.

He could get into his car and go home to his wife and his warm bed-a

course of action almost any sane German would choose-or he could make

the call that he suspected would pluck him from his old life like the

wind sweeps a seed from the ground.

"God," he murmured. "Godfrey Rose."

Schneider jumped into his car and fired the engine. Thirty minutes ago

he had been mildly intrigued by the night's events. Now his mind ran

wild with speculation, electrified by the smell of the kind of chase he

had become a detective for in the first place.

Squealing away from the curb, he made an illegal U-turn and headed east

on the Budapester Strasse, making for the Tiergarten station. He hoped

his English was up to the task.

CHAPTER TWELVE

12.'30 A.M. Veipke, FRG. Near the East German Border Professor

Natterman swung the rattling Audi back toward the frontier and pushed

the old sedan to 130 kilometers per hour. Now that the end of his

harrowing journey approached, he could not keep from rushing. The speed

was exhilarating; the protesting whine of the tires as he leaned the car

into the curves kept his fatigued mind alert. Thank God for old

friends, he thought. A boyhood churn had come through for him tonight,

providing the Audi with no questions asked.

Thankfully, the mysterious Englishman who had "accidentally" stumbled

into his compartment had disappeared.

Natterman hadn't seen him again on the train, nor at Helmstedt when the

few passengers disembarked. A few times during the last hour he had

caught sight of headlights in the blackness far behind him, but they

came and went so frequently that he wrote them off to nervousness.

As the Audi jounced over the railroad linking Gardelegan to Wolfsburg,

the professor spied the eerie, never-dimming glow of the sprawling

factory city to the west. The sight startled him still.

When he was a boy, Wolfsburg had been a tiny village of less than a

hundred, its few houses scattered hodgepodge around the old feudal

castle. But when the Volkswagen works came there in 1938, the village

had been transformed almost OVERNIGHT into an industrial metropolis.

He could scarcely believe his father's tiny cabin still remained in the

quiet forest northeast of the city.

It had been eleven months since he last visited the cabin, but he knew

that Karl Riemeck, a local laborer and old family retainer, would have

both the grounds and the house in fine shape. The thought of spending

some time in the old place had almost blotted out the wild theories

whirling through Natterman's weary brain. Almost. As he roared down

the narrow road cut through the deep forest, visions of notorious and

celebrated faces from the past flickered in his mind like pitted

newsreels. Hitler and Churchill ... the Duke of Windsor ... Stalin ...

Joseph P Kennedy, the American ambassador to wartorn Britain, a Nazi

appeaser and father of a future U. S. President. . . Lord Halifax, the

nerveless British foreign secretary and secret foe of Churchill ...

Those smiling faces now seemed to conceal uncharted worlds of deception,

worlds waiting to be mapped by an intrepid explorer. The thrill of

impending discovery coursed through the old historian's veins like a

powerful narcotic, infusing him with youthful vigor.

He eased off the gas as he crossed the Mittelland Canal bridge.

Again he had arrived at the impenetrable core of the mystery: what were

the British hiding? If Hess's double had flown to Britain to play a

diversionary role, what was he diverting attentionfrom? Why had the

real Hess flown to Britain? To meet Englishmen, of course, his mind

answered. But which Englishmen? With a pang of professional jealousy

Natterman thought of the Oxford historians who were documenting the

pro-Nazi sympathies of over thirty members of the wartime British

Parliament whom they believed had known about Hess's flight beforehand.

The gossip in academic circles was that the Oxford men believed these

MPs were Nazi appeasers, enemies of Churchill whom Hess had flown

secretly to Britain to meet. Natterman wasn't so sure.

He had no doubt that an apparently pro-Hitler clique of upper-class

Englishmen existed in 1941. The real question was, did those men really

intend to betray their country by forging an unholy alliance with Adolf

Hitler? Or was there a deeper, more noble motive for their behavior?

The answer to this lay in Hitler's war plans. The Fuhrer's ultimate

goal had always been the conquest of Russia-the acquisition of

Lebensraum for the German people-which made him very popular with

certain elements of British society. For despite being at war with

Germany, many Englishmen saw the Nazi state as an ideal buffer against

the spread of communism. Similarly, the Fuhrer had visions of Germany

and England united in an Aryan front against communist Russia. Hitler

had never really believed that the English would fight him. Yet when

Winston Churchill refused to accept the inevitable surrender to and