Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

ransom, tie closed the packet and stuffed it into his trouser pocket.

He refused to meet Hauer's eyes, keeping his own focused on the

handcuffs.

Hauer stood up. He st@ to speak again, to marshal the reasons Hans

should set aside his fear and do what he himself would do. But as he

stared, he began to see with different eyes. He saw that his son,

though like himself in many ways, was profoundly different in others.

Hans was not yet thirty, still young enough that he defined himself more

by his job and his friends than by his inner self. And with the family

situation he had-a mother he despised and a father he had hated until

tonight-Hans probably drew more emotional sustenance from his wife than

he would ever understand. In the span of eight hours, he had seen his

job unmasked as a travesty, his friend brutally murdered, and his wife

torn from his side.

Little wonder, Hauer reflected, that he lacked the resolve to punch

through the blinding red wall of emotion and act.

Hauer had seen this type of paralysis before, and inexperience was not

always the root of it. Hans's internal compass, Ww that of so many

Germans, gravitated toward a magnetic north-the gilded scaffolding of

official authority. With that mffolding shattered and himself branded a

fugitive, he was a man adrift. Hauer felt no such confusion. His

internal compass pointed to the true nordi of his spirit. He had lost

his illusions very young, and through the trials of finding his way in

the world alone, he had learned to exalt the essence, not the trappings,

of his work. He took a most un-German approach to his skill as a

marksman: in unexpected moments he found himself viewing the world

through his rifle scope-not in a limited, but a profoundly focused way.

All existence compressed into the tube- of polished lenses, the smallest

movement magnified a hundredfold, melding him with the target a thousand

yards away: the six-inch red paper circle, the tawny fur beneath the

stag's shoulder, the pale forehead of a man. When he led men-in the

army, on the GSG-9 firing range, in the streets'of Berlin-he led not by

virtue of his rank, but by example. In situations like this one, cut

off from command, the fire inside Hauer burned all the brighter,

spurring him to action, driving him toward resolution.

As he watched Hans now, he felt an awful powerlessness.

What Hans needed was a new allegiance, a fixed star that the spinning

needle in his soul could lock bnto. If Hauer could not provide that, if

he could not ' lead the son who had returned to him like a prodigal,

then he would truly have failed as a father, as all that he had believed

himself to be.

He started suddenly. Professor Natterman was speaking.

"Your father is right," the old man was saying. "Give in to Nazis and

they crush you. Exterminate you. We can't surrender the papers, we've

got to take Ilse back."

"Nazis?" Hans groaned. "You're both crazy! Crazy old men! What does

that have to do with getting Ilse back? With today? It's ancient

history!"

You're right," Hauer said quickly. He squatted dow his haunches, his

face a foot from Hans's own. "Forget all that crap. What matters is

Ilse. But unless you force yourself to look at this objectively, Hans,

your emotion is going to kill her. You have never faced this thing you

are facing now.

You've seen brutality, and you've seen death. But you have never faced

pure evil. That is what you are facing now. Call it Nazism or Phoenix

or whatever you want, it's all the same. It is a thing as mindless and

as ravenous as a cancer.

It perceives only what it wants, obstacles to getting what it wants, and

threats to its existence. Right now it wants those papers.

The papers are a dream. You have them, Ilse has read them, so both of

you are also threats. Killing her, killing you-this is less than

nothing. Remember Weiss, Hans, think of Steuben. I tried to kid myself

about it, but Steuben was a dead man the moment I saved your life."

Hans flinched at that. Already he blamed himself for Weiss, and for so

much more. He looked up into his father's face, pleading silently for

him to stop, but Hauer would not.

"If you get on that plane with those papers, you will never return to

Germany. Phoenix's men can kill you on the plane, in the airport,

anywhere. The South African police can murder you in jail. They do it

all the time. If we have Der Bonderschaft in our department, what do

they have diere?

The moment Phoenix has the papers, you will die. You'll die.

You'll, never see your wife again. You'll never see me again. 19

Hans scrambled to his feet. He slipped past Hauer to the shattered

bedroom window and rested his cuffed hands on a knife-edge of glass.

Even in the bitter cold he was sweating.

Haner's words had pierced the fog of dread that surrounded him, yet the

rush of nightmare images would not stop. They rifpped through him like

a ragged strip of film, unspoofing from his heart, catching in his @

flashing behind his eyes. He tried to speak, to express the confusion

he felt, but his voice broke. Tears pooled in his eyes as he stared out

into the frozen forest.

Hauer couldn't see Hans's face, but he heard the sob and imew that his

words had had their effect. He stood up slowly and took something from

his pocket. A key. He walked to the window, removed the cuffs from

Hans's wrists, and put them in his pocket.

"I don't think you understand," he said. "I want you to take the papers

to South Africa."

Natterman cleared his throat. "Surely you can't mean that, Captain?"

Hauer snapped his head around and gave the old man a withering glare. "I

mean to use the Spandau diary to draw the kidnappers into the open. To

force them to expose Ilse."

Hans threw up his hands. "But what can you do then? You don't have one

of your GSG-9 teams-no twenty-man unit with state-of-the-art weapons and

communications."

Hauer spoke with cold-blooded confidence. "You know what I can do,

Hans. You're all the team I need."

"And me," Natterman put in.

Hauer ignored him. He had no intention of taking the professor to South

Africa, but now was not the time to tell him that.

Hans walked a few steps away from Hauer. It was almost impossible to

argue with the man when he brought the power of his personality to bear.

Yet Hans feared so much more than Ilse's deadi. He sensed her terror

like a snake twisted around his spine. Not terror for herself, but for

the child she was carrying. Of course he remembered her doctor's

appointment now. He'd fallen asleep after the Spandau detail and missed

it. But why hadn't she told him about the baby when he got home? Yet

he knew the answer to that too.

Because he had come home acting like a total lunatic, a money-crazed

bastard. And hadn't she tried in spite of.him?

He could still hear her voice: I've got a secret too ... And then the

phone call from Funk's man, Jiirgen Luhr. And then Weiss. And Steuben.

And Ilse ...

"Look, I don't have a passport," he said sharply. "The kidnappers were

right about that. The only way I can get to South Africa is by the

route they've set up."

"I can have a forger here in three hours," Hauer said quickly.

"I'm not giving those bastards a shot at you on the plane."

"Damn it, they said any deviation from the instructions and they'd kill

her."

Sensing Hans's growing resolve, Hauer pressed down his exasperation.