Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

"There is one possible complication. He's only forty-eight.

Retired Special Air Service."

At this Swallow seemed to withdraw into herself for consultation with

whatever demon sustained her startlingly youthful appearance. At

length, she asked, "Does he have any family?"

"Divorced. There's a brother. Why do you ask?"

"Is he SAS also?"

Shaw shook his head. "Regular army. But he's out of the country

permanently. He lost his citizenship papers some years ago for

mercenary work. He won't be a problem."

"Would you want it to look like an accident?"

"Can you run up an accident in Haslemere by tonight?"

Swallow made a sound in her throat that Shaw heard as a dry chuckle. "I

doubt it. SAS men don't have accidents like that, as a rule. They're

trained not to. They can drive, swim, run, shoot@' "I don't care how

it's done, then," Shaw flared. "Just do it. What's your price?"

A satisfied smile touched the corners of Swallow's mouth.

She liked to see bureaucrats squirm. "My price is protection from the

Israelis after Stern is dead."

Christ!" Shaw exploded. "We can't babysit you forever. You kill Stern

at your own risk."

Swallow's eyes turned opaque. "Don't play coy with me, little knight.

Your hands are bloody too. By lulling Stern I'm only doing what you

want done. You picked me because you lmew if he had to be, liquidated,

you could- blame his death on my vendetta." She raised her chin

deflandy. "If you try @ the Israelis will certainly get me, but not

before I kill you." Shaw drew back unconsciously. "I'll kill your SAS

man for you," she went on, "but you'll cover for me on Stern.

Otherwise-I might warn this Mr. Burton instead."

"Condition accepted," Shaw snapped. "Now get out. All communication

from this point forward will be through cutouts. No further contact

between you and this office."

Swallow made a mock curtsey and backed out of the room.

That witch should have been code-named Medusa, Shaw thought angrily. She

makes my b@ skin crawl. When he closed Swallow's file, his eyes fell on

the Hess dossier lying open beneath it. He sighed heavily. There lay

the dreaded file, like a modern Domesday Book, a lexicon of heroism and

treason, the highest and lowest expression of the English soul. And

looking at it, Shaw's anger anger that had been building for a very long

time-finally boiled to the surface. For if the truth were told,

he'would prefer to turn Swallow loose on the smug quislings and their

moribund broods who for decades had cowered behind the shield of his

service. He had no part in their crimes, or their guilt, and he felt no

pity for them or their "honor." But what of England?

He did have a stake in her honor. He had been only a child during the

war, but in those heady years after Hitler was crushed, and all the

years since, he had allowed himself to feel a part of the grand

legend-what one British historian called the "Churchillian myth"-that in

the early desperate days of the war England, all alone, had stood

united, uncompromising, and unconquerable against the Nazis, and had

thus saved Western Civilization from the Hun and the Bolshevik.

But that, Shaw had learned to his eternal sadness, was not quite the

truth. Then the truth be damned! he thought bitterly. He understood

the protective urge of the aristocrats.

England had given the world so much; she deserved a little moral

charity. Part myth though Churchill's history might be, the craven

machinations of a few spineless lords (or, God forbid, a fool of a

prince) could not be allowed to tarnish it.

If a treacherous shadow dogged the House of Windsor, should it also

stain the legacies of Plantagenet and Tudor and Hanover? And what of

the good people in the war? The women who fought the fires in the

Blitz? The callow lads whose shattered Spitfires practically clogged

the Channel in 1940? The kids who crouched under the buzz bombs and the

V-2s? The martyred population of Coventry?

As he poured himself a large whiskey, Shaw recalled the famous quote

Churchill spoke after the Battle of Britain, but he twisted it to his

own secret knowledge: Never in the field of human conflict have so many

nearly lost so much because of so few. Shaw hated them! Hated them

all! Appeasers ...

knights without courage ... nobles without nobility. Because of them

good men had died, and more were soon to follow.

The man Swallow would kill tonight had but done his duty.

It was the familiar chorus of English history: the good men had died

while the scoundrels prospered. "Treason doth never prosper, what's the

reason?" Shaw muttered, quoting the old epigram, "For if it prosper,

none dare call it Treason." Yet in the midst of his furious meditation,

Shaw felt a glimmer of satisfaction. Because if all his Machiavellian

stratagems failed and the temple came tumbling down around his ears, the

Judases would finally be unmasked, and the most heroic chapter in the

history of his noble ser, would be brought to light at last.

Shaw drained his Scotch and fell instantly asleep with his head on his

desk blotter.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

6.-05 A.M. ThO N8if8rMB#7 Cabin.- Near Wollsbarg, FRG Hermann the forger

was gone. After forty nerve-racking minutes under the gaze of Professor

Natterman's shotgun, the bearish Hamburger had gathered up his equipment

and scampered out of the cabin without a word. The professor sat in his

chair, contemplating the night's events as the dawn filtered through the

shattered cabin door. He had never felt so impotent in his life. His

lifelong friend had been murdered, the Spandau papers had been taken

from him, his granddaughter had been kidnapped, and he had been unable

to prevent any of it from happening.

And now the two men who proposed to stop the madness had refused his

help!

Cradling the Mannlicher under one arm, he picked up his book satchel and

walked out of the cabin without looking back. His suitcase lay in the

slushy rut where the Audi had been parked. In their haste Hans and

Hauer had not even taken the time to bring it into the cabin.

The shot-riddled Jaguar waited behind the trunk of the old plane tree.

Natterman walked over and looked inside to make sure the keys were still

in the ignition. Tossing his satchel into the passenger seat, he

retrieved his suitcase, then wriggled into the car and turned the key.

In spite of the damage, the engine roared responsively.

He left the Jaguar idling and clumped through the snow to the rear of

the cabin. In the shade of a tall cedar, a juryrigged crucifix marked

the shallow grave of Karl Riemeck.

With bowed head Natterman laid the shotgun against the cross and softly

spoke a few lines from Heine over his friend. Then he shuffled back to

the rumbling Jaguar, jammed it into first gear, and sped up the access

road.

A

The morning sun had already transformed the twisted Iz into a morass of

slush and mud that threw the speeding car from one bank to another as it

approached the main road.

Two curves away from the intersection, the professor saw a black log

lying across the lane. When he swerved to avoid it, the Jaguar skidded

out of control and slammed nose first into some saplings. It rebounded

from their springlike trunks and coughed into silence.

He staggered out of the car and cautiously approached the log.

Just as he bent to drag it out of the lane, he heard a crack in the