Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

alliance with Germany, the Fuhrer got angry.

And there, Natterman believed, lay the basis of Rudolf Hess's mission.

Hitler had assigned himself a very strict timetable for Barbarossa-his

invasion of the Soviet Union.

He believed that if he did not invade Russia by 1941, Stalin's Red Army

would gain an overwhelming superiority over him in men and materiel.

That meant that to be successful, his invasion armies had to jump off

eastward by May of 1941 at the latest, before the snows melted and made

the effective use of tanks impossible. And the British, Natterman

remembered, had known this. An RAF group captain named F. W.

Winterbotham had worked it out in 1938. And this knowledge@orrectly

exploited@ould have given the British a peculiar kind of advantage.

For the longer they could fool Hitler into believing they wanted a

negotiated peace, the longer they could stave off an invasion of

Britain. And the nearer would draw the date when Hitler would have to

redeploy the bulk of his armies eastward. If Hitler could be fooled

long enough, England would be spared.

But had those "pro-Nazi" Englishmen understood that in 1941?

Natten-nan wondered. Were they altruistic patriots who had lured Rudolf

Hess to Britain on a fool's errand, and thus saved their homeland from

the Nazis? Or were they traitors who had decided Adolf Hitler was a man

they could deal with-a bit of a boor, perhaps, but with sound policies

vis-A-vis the communists and Jews? The answer seemed simple enough: If

a group of powerful Englishmen had merely pretended to treat with Hitler

in order to save Britain, they would be heroes and would require no

protection from public scrutiny, especially fifty years after the fact.

However, the well-documented efforts of the British government to

suppress the details of the Hess case tended to reinforce the opposite

theory: that those Englishmen really had been admirers of Hitler and

fascism.

The variable that confused this logic was a human wild card-Edward VIII,

Duke of Windsor, former Prince of Wales and abdicated King of England.

The duke's proGerman sympathies and contact with the Nazis-both before

and during the war-were documented and very embarrassing facts' At the

very least Windsor had made a fool of himself by visiting Hitler and all

the top Nazis in Germany, then trumpeting the Fuhrer's "achievements" to

a shocked world.

At worst he had committed treason against the country he was born to

rule. After his stormy abdication, the duke, living in neutral Spain,

had pined away for the throne he had so lightly abandoned.

Startling evidence unearthed in 1983

indicated that in July of 1940 Windsor had slipped secretly into neutral

Lisbon to meet a top Nazi, where they explored the option of Windsor's

return to the English throne. And that, Natterman thought excitedly,

was the core of it all! Because according to British historian Peter

Allen, the Nazi whom Windsor had sneaked into Portugal to meet had been

none other than Rudolf Hess!

Natterman gripped the wheel tighter. A clear picture had begun to

emerge from the blurred background of speculation. He could see it now:

while Hitler's "British sympathizers" may have been feigning sympathy

for the Nazis in order to save England, the Duke of Windsor most

definitely was not. And if Windsor had committed treason@r even come

close-that was the kind of royal "peccadillo" that the British secret

service would be forced to conceal, suppressing the entire Hess story,

the heroism as well as the treason.

Natterman felt his heart thump. A fourth and stunning possibility had

just occurred to him. What if the British "traitors" really were

pro-Nazi, but had been allowed to pursue their treachery by an even more

devious British Intelligence? That way the Nazis could not possibly

have picked up on any deception, because the conspirators themselves

would not have been aware that they were part of one!

Natterman's mind reeled at the implications. He tried to focus on that

uncertain time-the spring of 1941-but his memories seemed foggy, misted

at the edges somehow. His brain contained so many fragments of history

that he was no longer sure what he had merely read about and what he had

actually lived through. He had lived through so much.

More books, he thought. That's what I need now. Documentation.

I'll have Ilse stop at the university library on her way here.

I'll make a list as soon as I get to the house.

Churchill's memoirs, Speer's book, copies of Reich documents, a sample

of Hess's handwriting ... I'll need all that for even a preliminary

study of the document. And eventually the ink, the paper

itselfNatterman hit the brakes, bringing the Audi to a sliding stop.

He had reached the cabin. He turned slowly onto the narrow, snow-packed

lane that wound through the forest to the cabin. When the familiar

flicker of a lantern appeared in the darkness ahead, he smiled and

watched it wink in and out of sight as he negotiated the last few

curves.

As he pulled the car into the small turnaround beside the cabin, he

decided to invite Karl Riemeck up for a schnapps tomorrow. The old

caretaker had obviously taken the trouble to drive out here and light a

lamp for him, and Natterman suspected he would also find a good supply

of firewood laid by for his convenience. Deciding to retrieve his

suitcase later, he halted his heavy book satchel over his shoulder and

climbed out of the Audi- The cold practically pushed him up onto the

cabin porch, where he found a week's supply of oak logs stacked on a low

iron rack.

"Thank you, Karl," he murmured; "This is no night for old men like us to

go without heat." On impulse he tried the knob; the door swung open

soundlessly. "You think of everything, old friend," he said, shivering.

"I come to the door with a burden, and must I search for my key? No.

All, is prepared for me."

Switching on the electric lights-which the cabin had done without until

1982-he saw that the main room looked just as it always had. Not too

small, but cozy, lived in.

Natterman's father had liked it that way. No false opulence, just rough

comfort in the old ways. Built of birch and native oak, the cabin felt

more solid today than it had when Natterman was a boy. He tossed his

satchel on a worn leather chair and walked back out to the porch.

Adjusting his eyes to the darkness, he stared out through the& forest,

up the dark access road, searching for the glimmer of headlights, but he

saw none.

He gathered as much wood as he could hold, carried it into the cabin,

and stacked it carefully in the rack beside the fireplace. Then he

placed two well-split logs on the cast-iron rack, dropped to his knees,

and began to build a small pyramid of twigs beneath them, just as his

father had taught him to do six decades before. Though his brain still

simmered in anticipation of uninterrupted study of the Spandau papers,

the familiar ritual calmed him.

When his pyramid stood ready to be lit, he searched the hearth for

matches, but found none. Rising with a groan, he padded over to the

woodstove that occupied an entire alcove in the rear of the front room.

Along with a walk-in pantry, this antique constituted the cabin's

kitchen. Here also the professor had no luck. Muttering quietly, he

recrossed room and opened the bedroom door.

When he saw what lay beyond, his chest muscles contracted with a force