Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

his wrinkled hands slipped from Misha's-throat. @ I The Russian gulped

in huge lungfuls of air and shook his head to clear it. He had not

expected this battle. Then suddenly, as the pillow slipped from the old

man's livid face, Ernst somehow summoned a last measure of energy and

cried out-not loudly, but it was enough. Misha looked see Eva's bedroom

door slam shut and hear the click of the bolt shooting home.

Cursing, he scrambled around the room's baseboards until he found the

telephone line running from the bedroom. He severed the black wire two

seconds after Eva picked up the receiver in her roomSheathing his knife

with a grin, he charged the bedwom door. The bolt did not give.

He stepped back and examined the door. it had a heavy frame with two

solid planks crossing with ur thinner sheets of in the middle, but it

was Paneled with an above wood. Aiming at a spot on the upper right P

el-just the knob-Misha kicked hard, splintering the brittle woodA second

kick opened the hole he wanted. He thrust his left hand through the

jagged opening, groping for the bolt.

With the sure eye of a seamstress, Eva drove the point of a brass letter

opener through the back of the Russian's ex@ hand. The shriek from the

other side of the door did not even sound human. Misha's spasming hand

jerked back through the splintered door panel, taidng the letter opener

with it.

,Devil's whore!" he screamed, wrenching the blade from his punctured

hand. "You're dead!"

Eva did not own a gun, and she was 'now truly terrified. Her attacker

launched his body repeatedly against the door, wwarning in animal rage.

Still the bolt refused to give.

Then, suddenly, the bloody hand reappeared through the hole and probed

for the bolt. The circular wound in its center made Eva think of the.

hand of C st. Hyste c ly, she hri ri al screamed some part of a

childhood, prayer and smashed a chair down on the bloody fingers.

The crack of bones made her shudder, but it renewed her hope for

survival.

Unbelievably, the hand tried for the bolt again. Again Eva brought the

chair down, this time on the wrist. Misha howled like a madman. Enraged

beyond feeling pain, he withdrew his shattered hand, backed up, and took

a flying kick at the spot where he judged the bolt to be. This time the

door crashed open.

With @ of terror streaming down her bandaged face, Eva backed toward the

bedroom wall, holding the small wooden chair in front of her like a lion

tamer. When she collided with her cluttered vanity table, she felt her

bladder let go. She froze there, transfixed by the predatory gleam in

the Russian's eyes. Then he moved toward her, breaking the spell. Eva

swung the little chair in desperation, but he parried it easily.

Laughing, he snatched the chair from her and tossed it aside.

The killing fever was on him now. He closed on the shivering woman, his

blood-slickened knife dancing like a cobra's head. Moaning in mortal

terror, Eva lunged blindly, hoping somehow to get past the Russian. She

had no chance.

Misha expertly channeled her momentum downward and pinned her against

the floor, his boot planted solidly between her shoulder blades. He

snatched her hair and jerked her head back, pressing the knife blade to

her throat. His fractured bones seared with agony, but he thought he

could hold the blade steady long enough to drag it across the stubborn

woman's throat. He dangled the bright blade before her rolling eyes.

"You know whose blood that is, woman?" he rasped in Russian.

"Go on, you bastard!" she screamed. "Do it!"

Misha pressed the blade against her throat, trying for a.

firmer grip with his wounded hand.

Suddenly, a roar like that of a Black Forest bear filled the room.

Misha looked up in surprise. A huge form blocked out the light as it

charged toward him. It was Schneider. The big detective had just

gotten off the elevator and started toward Ilse's flat when he heard

Misha kick down the bedroom door. He raced toward the noise, saw

Ernst's blood-soaked corpse on the sofa bed, and continued his headlong

charge into the bedroom.

Misha flung his arm up and tried to hold his knife steady, but

Schneider's momentum bowled him over like a child. He tumbled back

against the vanity and landed in a sitting position. Dazed, he

transferred his knife to his good hand and got up onto his knees.

Schneider backed off slightly, crouching in a classic knife fighter's

stance.

Eva scrambled unsteadily to her feet and stood a few'feet behind him.

"Run!" she shouted. "Here's the door behind you!"

"Get out!" Schneider ordered.

"I'll call the police!" Eva cried, searching hysterically for her

useless phone.

"Don't call anyone!" Schneider snapped. "Go downstairs!"

Having regained some of his faculties, Misha rose into a low crouch and

moved out from the vanity, smiling n "You should have brought a knife,"

he taunted in GerrnanSchneider snatched a sheet from the bed and twisted

it quickly around his left arm, as he had been taught to do against an

attacking dog. He circled carefully, waiting for the Russian's lunge.

He knew it would come soon.

With a cry Misha feinted left, then struck hard, driving the point of

the knife upward toward the Gerfnan's huge chest.

More like a mongoose than a bear, Schneider parried the outstretched

blade with his sheet-wrapped arm and darted out of danger; in the same

movement he rammed his mammoth right fist into Misha's eye socket as the

Russian's body followed his knife thrust.

The blow felled Kosov's assassin like a rotted oak.

When Misha regained consciousness four minutes later, his right eye had

swollen shut. A distant voice in his brain told him that he would soon

have his vision back, but the voice was wrong. Schneider's impacting

fist had so suddenly increased the pressure inside the Russian's eyeball

that it literally exploded at its weakest point-in Misha's case around

the optic nerve-scrambling the delicate contents into jelly.

With his good eye Misha saw the big German speaking into a telephone

beyond an open door. He heard the name Rose, but it meant nothing to

him. A disheveled blond woman with a white bandage on her face imelt

over a sofa, weeping softly. Misha tried to rise, but found that his

feet were tightly bound with telephone wire. His hands, too, were tied.

That was really unnecessary, he thought distantly, since his mangled

left hand and wrist had swollen to twice normal size. He heard the big

man speak angrily into the phone, then slam it down.

Schneider strode through the splintered bedroom door and looked down.

"You've got some friends coming to see you," he said. Then he walked

back to the womanand lid a comforting hand on her shoulder.

The next thilig Misha would remember was four men in white medical coats

lifting him onto a stretcher. He felt strangely comforted by this,

until he spied the olive-drab of American army uniforms beneath the @.

When he tried to rise, a strong hand pressed him firmly back onto the

stretcher. The hand belonged to Sergeant Clary. Misha's short, violent

career was over.

Just over a mile to the east of Eva Beers's apartment, Captain Dmitri

Rykov sprinted up to a phone box and punched in the number of KGB

headquarters in East Berlin. He got an answer after two rings.

"Is Colonel Kosov back yet?" he asked breathlessly.

"No. Who is this?"

"Rykov. Shut up and listen. Tell Kosov that Borodin followed Major