Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

the busiest sections of East Berlin. Even at night it would be risky.

Harry started walking. He crossed two deserted corners, then passed a

row of yellow phone boxes where an ill-kempt young man stood shouting

into a telephone. On impulse Harry turned and walked back to the phone

boxes. He took hold of the boy's jacket with one hand and broke the

connection with the other.

"Hey!" the boy snapped. "Arschloch! Let go!"

"Coins!" Harry demanded, pointing to the phone.

"Pragen' I "

"Fick Dich in Knie!" the German cursed.

Harry grabbed the tangled mane of blond hair and twisted until the boy's

eyeball rested against the telephone's coin slot. "Pragen! " he

hissed.

Snarling, the youth pulled thirty Pfennig from his jacket and dropped

the jangling coins onto the sidewalk. Harry jerked him out of the phone

box and shoved him down the street. "Beat it!" he growled.

"Haue ah!" The boy backed off cursing, then turned and shuffled on.

Harry dialed an East Berlin number from memory and waited. He could

still hear the siren, but fainter.

"British Embassy," said a sleepy ferri@le voice, after a dozen rings.

"I have an urgent message for Ambassador Brougham," Harry said

breathlessly. "The code is Trafalgar. Am I being recorded?"

"Yes, sir!" The crisis code had worked its-magic.

Harry paused, remembering Colonel Rose's warning not to tell the British

anything about the Spandau case. He understood the caution, but under

these circumstances he might be captured and silenced long before he got

through to Colonel Rose.

"Are you there, @ir?" asked the Englishwoman.

"Message to God," Harry said, using.Rose's nickname.

"Zinoviev, repeat, Zinoviev. Break. Phoenix, repeat, Phoenix.

Break. Message to Ambassador Brougham: This is Major Harry Richardson,

U.S. Army. I was abducted, repeat, abducted into East Berlin tonight.

I have escaped and I'm on my way to your embassy for asylum."

Harry heard a hiccup of astonishment. "I'm on foot, and I should be

there in about seven minutes. Get those gates open!"

Harry slammed down the phone and looked westward to ward the British

Embassy. Then he started east toward the safehouse.

2.36 A.M. KGO headquarters SOVIOT Sedor, Berlin. DDH

Ivan Kosov sat thoughtfully in his Swiss-made office chair and gazed at

a four-by-five-inch file photograph of Harry Richardson. It was a

telephoto shot, long and grainy, but the expression on the American's

face looked as cocksure as it had when he picked the name Zinoviev from

the three Kosov had tossed out. Kosov muttered an oath and slid the

photo aside.

Now he looked into the piercing eyes of Rudolf Hess.

This picture was an eight-by-ten, sharp and clear, of the Deputy Famr

during his prime. The heavy-brewed Aryan face radiated authority and

self-assurance. Beneath this photo lay a smaller shot of Hess as a

First World War pilot.

His eyes looked younger, brighter somehow-unfreighted with the knowledge

of immeasurable death and destruction.

Kosov had stared at these photos of Hess for years, wontiering why

Moscow was still obsessed with the old Nazi's mission. 'They had proof

that Prisoner Number Seven was an impostor@r so Kosov had heard from

several Dzerzhinsky Square old-timers that he trusted. Yet if Centre

had such proof, why didn't they expose him long ago? They're waiting,

the old-timers said. Waiting for what? Corroboration, they said. Was

Zinoviev that corroboration? Whoever Zinoviev was? 'Was there really

some hidden purpose in Hess's flight, or was this simply one more

conspiracy theory Vawned in the murky corridors of Moscow Centre?

Kosov had the feeling he was about to find out at last.

The computers had tracked Yuri Borodin to London.

Kosov had sent a query straight on to the embassy, and while he waited

for the reply, he'd ordered a printout of Harry Richardson's file. Kosov

envied the freedom Borodin enjoyed. Twelfth Department agents, for all

practical purposes, "stationed" themselves. A far cry from the

deskbound life Kosov had led for the past decade.

Suddenly Kosov's printer began to chatter. Not bad, he thought.

Borodin must have been at the embassy when the message came through.

He read the reply as his printer spat

'A

it out, thankful that the days when he had to decode his own messages

were long past.

TO KOSOV- 07611457

2:39 A.M. GMT London In response to query-YES I know agent in question.

NO I have no relationship with him other than ADVERSARIAL Subject is

valuable resource. Hold him there until I arrive.

ETA tomorrow. CANCEI-TODAY A.M.

BORODIN

Kosov slammed a horny hand down on his desk. The American had lied

after all! But while this knowledge delighted Kosov, Borodin's

intention to come to Berlin did not.

"I've caught the golden goose," he said bitterly, "and this prima donna

wants to come take the credit. We'll see about that."

While Kosov grumbled, his printer began to chatter again.

What emerged this time was not a message, but a digital facsimile

photograph, a study in grays and black. It showed four uniformed young

men in their early twenties, standing shoulder to shoulder against the

famous Borovitsky Gate of the Kremlin. Kosov didn't recognize the

uniforms, but the young men were obviously officers. A hand-penciled

arrow pointed to the face of the second man from the left. The photo

was very grainy, but Kosov recognized the hardness in the eyes and

around the mouth of that face. Those eyes have seen much death, he

thought. At the bottom of the photo was a handwritten caption: V V

Zinoviev: Awarded Okhrana Captaincy 1917. Beneath the photo-typed-were

the words: Message follows by courier-Zemenek.

Kosov felt a thrill of triumph. Here was the mysterious Zinoviev at

last! And sent to him by the chairman himself!

Yet Kosov's triumph was tempered by puzzlement and uneasiness.

Zinoviev an officer of the Okhrana? What in God's name could the

Okhrana have to do with this case? It was a ghost from an even more

distant past than Rudolf Hess.

The Okhrana was the tsar's dreaded secret police force-the most ruthless

enemy the communists had ever known.

Kosov scratched his grizzled head. With a sharp sense of frustration,

he realized what was eating at him. Without quite knowing it, he had

been expecting Zinoviev to turn out to be the mysterious one-eyed man.

It only made sense. For 7

268 years he'd had a name with no face to go with it, and a oneeyed man

without a name. Why couldn't they be one and the same?

Maybe they are, he thought suddenly, staring at the photo again.

The hard-faced young officer in the photo had two living eyes-of that

Kosov had no doubt. They stared out from the picture like smoldering

lumps of coal. You are very young here, little tiger Kosov thought.

Plenty of time yet to lose an eye. Especially in yourjob, eh?

Most Okhrana officers had lost more than their eyes after Tsar Nicholas

was overthrown.

'Telephone, Comrade Colonel!" interrupted a secretary.

"Urgent Startled out of his reverie, Kosov snatched up the receiver.

When he heard Captain Rykov eiplain what had happened at the Stasi

safehouse, he felt the blood leave his head in a rush. "My God," he

muttered. "My God! Get back here any way you can, you idiot!"

Kosov slammed down the phone and charged into the communications room.

"Close off the Western embassies!"

he shouted. "Use our own people-no East Germans!"