Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

"Hans, there are no absolutes in these situations.

You're like a doctor who must operate on his own wife. She has terminal

cancer. She's going to die unless you go in and cut out the tumor. But

there are risks. The knife

-ML,

things. You up the scalpel, then you hear a voice in your ear saying,

'Hey, you give me what I want, and I'll make this woman as healthy as

the day she was born.' " Hauer shook his head.

"It's a fucking lie, Hans. That voice is the devil, and he doesn't play

by your rules. He feels no obligation. It's your call, but no matter

how badly you want to believe that voice, Their's only one option.

Surgery."

Hans's cheek twitched involuntarily. He searched the depths of his

father's eyes, but he saw neither subterfuge nor hope of gain@nly the

indomitable will of a man ready to die in a quest he had made his own.

And from somewhere deep within himself, from a place he never knew

existed, a voice edged with steel rose into his throat.

"I'll do it."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

2.35 A.m. Soviet Sector. East Berlin, DDR Harry picked himself up out

of the shattered glass and sprinted for the courtyard wall. He heard no

shooting yet, but that didn't reassure him. The rough stone wall was

high.

Without breaking stride he planted his right shoe three feet up the face

of the wall and leaped. His fingers dug into the rough ledge.

He pulled with all his strength, both feet pedaling against the stone,

and scrambled over the top.

He found himself in a narrow walking space between two houses.

Dashing down the dark corridor, he paused where it opened onto a narrow

street. He saw no street signs nor any other landmarks he knew.

Unsure of where to run, he flattened his back against the wall outside

the alley's mouth, locked his hands together in a deadly double fist,

and waited.

Axel Goltz was fast, intelligent, and well-trained, but his desperation

made him careless. He came barreling down the narrow alley at top

speed, and rather than pause at its mouth as Harry had done, he leaned

into his sprint, blindly pursuing the man he thought to be at least a

block ahead of him by now. Harry's locked fists struck the, East German

in the center of the forehead and skidded down the right side of his

head. Goltz went down like an ox under the slaughterhouse hammer.

Harry heard the metallic ring of a gun hitting the concrete, but he saw

no gun. Goltz must have fallen on it. The Stasi agent lay motionless

on his stomach. As Harry stared down, he caught the dark glint of metal

protruding from beneath Goltz's waist. Cautiously he leaned down and,

snatched up the pistol. Goltz didn't move. Seeing no one else on the

street, Harry decided to question him. He held the pistol to Goltz's

head with his left hand and probed beneath the jaw with his right. There

was a pulse-weak, but steady.

As Harry opened his mouth to speak, he caught sight of the strange spot

behind Goltz's right ear. Hariy's blow had torn the bandage away.

He expected to see stitches, but ins@ he saw a perfectly round moon of

white flesh shining under the streetlight, marked at the center by what

looked like a spot of blood. Leaning closer, he saw what it was-a small

tattoo. A tattoo of an eye. A single, blood red eye, inked into the

scalp by a very talented needle. it reminded him of the eye on the

pyramid on the back of a one-dollar bill, but only a little.

This eye was less defined somehow, yet more piercing, more mystical.

As Harry stared, Axel Goltz flicked his head up from the pavement like a

slingshot and cracked him across the bridge of the nose. The next thing

Harry saw through stinging tears was the East German on his feet, moving

forward with a gleaming knife extended in his right hand.

Harry @ Goltz's pistol without thinking. The explosion of the

unsilenced weapon reverberated through the empty streets like a cannon

shot. The bullet blew Goltz off his feet.

He landed on his back in the street, sucking for air, a tiny hole in his

chest, a gaping hole in his back. Harry knelt quickly beside him and

said into his ear, "Why did you shoot the Russian? Why?"

Wide-eyed in shock, Goltz made a gurgling noise in his throat.

Harry lifted him roughly by his shirt front. "What is Phoenix?" he

asked sharply. "Goltz! What is PhoenixT' The German couldn't speak. A

froth of blood spilled over his lower lip. Harry racked his memory for

the Stasi man's rank. Lieutenant? "Was ist Phoenix, Herr Leutnant?" he

barked in the voice of a sergeant major.

A faint smile touched the corners of Goltz's mouth. "Der Tag kommt, "

he croaked. "For the Jews ... for the world."

He sighed once, then went limp.

HaM heard sirens in the distance. "Damn!" he cursed. He dropped Goltz

to the concrete and forced his head to the side. The blood red eye

stared upward. Harry didn't know what the mark meant, but he knew that

it was somehow important. Goltz had obviously been hiding it from Rykov

and his men; Harry saw no reason to let them find it now. He

264 GREG IL-ES

laid the pistol barrel against the German's skull, muzzle against the

tattoo. He pulled against the trigger, then stopped.

Without pausing to think, he jammed the pistol into his belt and pried

the knife from Goltz's clenched fist. He tried to grasp the bald circle

of Goltz's scalp between his thumb and forefinger, but it was

impossible. There was no hair to pull, and the skin was stretched too

tightly around the skull.

Ignoring the wailing sirens, Harry braced his knee firmly against the

right side of the Stasi man's head. He grasped the hair at the lower

edge of the shiny circle and tugged up a little hummock of flesh.

Then he jabbed the knifepoint into the scalp beneath the tattoo, deep

into the fascia. Goltz's body jerked when the point struck bone-from

reflex, Harry hoped. But then the bleeding started: little pulsing

waves that shimmered black-red beneath the streetlight. Goltz was

unconscious, but alive. Gritting his teeth together, Harry levered the

knife blade up, using the point as the fulcrum, and worked his left

thumb under the raised scalp. This accomplished, it took only a few

seconds of sawing to excise the half-dollar-sized swatch of skin that

bore the tattoo.

The sirens were much closer now. Harry stood and shoved the fragment of

scalp deep into his trouser pocket. Then he sprinted toward the nearest

intersection, wiping the blood from his hands as he ran. There were

street signs at the intersection, but he didn't recognize the names.

With no better option, he began running toward the brightest lights he

could see. He soon saw a sign he knew: Rosenthaler Strasse. High in

the sky to his left hovered the shining observation, sphere of the great

Femsehturm, the 1,215-foot television tower that rises needle-like from

the Alexanderplatz to dominate both East and West Berlin. Using the

tower as point zero, Harry visualized East Berlin from the air,

estimating distances and comparing the times it would take him to reach

different destinations.

Twelve blocks to the west stood the British Embassy.

Harry knew the ambassador, but he also knew that his chances of getting

through the gate unmolested were nil. If either Goltz or Rykov had

reached a telephone, the friendly embassies would be covered already.

Twenty blocks to the east was a French SDECE safehouse where Harry knew

he could find refuge, but the shortest route to it lay through one of