Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

here to pick up the torch Harry Richardson had dropped. It made

Scfineider angry that the American thought he needed cheap theatrics to

motivate him. He had wanted to go to South Africa with Richardson all

along. Funk, Luhr, Goltz: these men were minions, corrupt servants of

an insidious power creeping into Germany from without. Stopping them

would be a temporary victory at best. Whoever they served was the true

enemy. To unite officers of the Stasi and the Polizei-sworn

enemies-would take a truly monstrous power. And to kill a monster,

Schneider knew, you cut off its head, not its hand.

With a glance back at Kosov's kneeling figure, he caught Rose by the

ar-rn and pulled him back into the room where Harry's corpse sat baking

in the dry heat.

"I'll go to South Ahica, Colonel," he growled. "But I don't like being

manipulated. You should have sent me in the first place. You want to

find two German cops? Send a German cop." Schneider jerked his thumb

toward the front room. "But I report to you, not him.

Understood? I trust you alone. Not your government, not Kosov, not his

government.

Just YOU."

"Agreed, Detective." Rose pulled Harry's airplane ticket from his

pocket and handed it to the German. "From now on, all expenses will be

paid out of my personal bank account." He lowered his voice. "Your

flight leaves at two Pm.

tomorrow. I'll brief you just before you leave. Now, if you don't

mind, I need to talk a little shop with my new Russian friend."

Schneider turned. Ivan Kosov stood motionless in the bedroom door, his

eyes riveted on Harry Richardson's mutilated head. He made no sound.

Schneider stuffed the plane ticket into his coat pocket and moved toward

the door. At the last moment, Kosov stepped aside.

Schneider paused, looked back at Harry, then looked into the Russian's

eyes lohg enough for Kosov to read the message there. I hate Russians

as much as you hate Germans, it said. I blinded your little black

assassin, and I haven't ruled you out as a suspect in this either

Schneider walked on. He understood Colonel Rose's motives: this was a

marriage of expediency, nothing more. Politics, as ever, made strange

bedfellows. Rose didn't TRUSt his Russian counterpart any more than

Schneider did, but the two professionals had much in common. They're

like a pair of fathers grieving over murdered sons, Schneider thought as

he trudged down the stairs. A pair of very dangerous fathers.

Kosov had looked even angrier than Rose, if that was possible.

Schneider only hoped the two men realized what they and he-were up

against. Eighteen hours ago Harry Richardson had practically scalped a

Stasi agent in an East Berlin street. Tonight he was slated for a

closed-casket funeral. The man who had done that to him, Schneider

reflected, was a man to be taken very seriously indeed.

Six floors below Harry's apartment, Yuri Borodin smiled with

satisfaction. His plan had worked after all. Ten minutes ago he'd been

furious. Richardson hadn't had the Spandau papers-as Borodin had

thought he might-and he had refused to discuss the two German policemen,

even under torture. Borodin hadn't intended to kill Richardson, but the

American had made him angry. And then Kosov's bumbling footpad had

blundered in during the interrogation. Borodin had shot Rykov from

reflex, without even knowing who he was. That had sealed Richardson's

fate. Borodin couldn't very well leave anyone alive to reveal what he

had done.

Even a Twelfth Department man could not kill a fellow KGB officer with

impunity.

Yet in the midst of adversity, inspiration had struck. Before leaving

Harry's apartment Borodin had planted two microtransmitters@ne in the

front room, one in the bedroom. Then he'd made an anonymous telephone

call to Colonel Rose. The harvest had been bountiful. Now he knew not

only the location of the two German policemen, but also the identity of

Rose's emissary to South Africa. The burly Kripo detective would lead

him straight to Hauer and Apfel, and ultimately to the Spandau papers.

And if that wasn't enough, he was now listening to Kosov and Rose hatch

a renegade operation that could smash both their careers. The only

oversight, Borodinconceded to himself, had been the writing on the

floor. The American had sneaked that past him. Richardson had been

trying to write Borodin, of course, but a bullet through his spinal cord

had apparently turned his o into something like an r The Anglophobic

Rose had already misread the one clue that could help him, though; and

Ivan Kosov wasn't likely to disabuse him of his fantasies!

As Schneider emerged from the front entrance of Harry's building, Yuri

Borodin laughed aloud.

Even in the dog days of glasnost, his job was sometimes more fun than

work.

7'31 Pm. Lufthanso Flight 417, Corsican Airspace

Dieter Hauer looked down at the shiny, wrinkled ball of aluminum foil in

his hand. It had taken four minutes of his best pickpocket technique to

remove the Spandau papers from Hans's trousers, but he had finally done

it. Hans sat in the airplane seat next to him, sleeping fitfully. Hauer

removed the foil wrapping the thin sheets as if it concealed an

archaeological treasure. Despite all that had happened, he had yet to

actually see the papers.

The first page looked just as Hans had described it: a paragraph

written in German, followed by a stream Of unintelligible gibberish.

Hauer scanned the German, but learned nothing new. Sighing, he pulled

the bottom page from the stack and looked for the signature.

There it was: Number 7. My God, he thought, to have been in prison so

long that you didn't even use your name. If the poor bastard remembered

it at all ... On the last page Hauer saw the carefully drawn eye. It

looked exactly like those he'd seen tattooed on at least a dozen scalps.

Whoever wrote the Spandau papers, he decided, had obviously been visited

at least once by someone with more than hair behind his right ear. Hauer

didn't realize that three of the pages were blank until he began

arranging them to repack them in the foil.

He rubbed his eyes vigorously, unwilling to accept what he saw, but the

truth was I plain to see. Three pages bore no ink at all.

The paper wasn't even the same! His first impulse was to shake Hans

awake and demand to know what he had done with the missing pages. Yet as

soon as he raised his hand, Hauer realized what had happened. The

substituted sheets told the story.

Professor Natterman had lied. The old man had held back after all ...

he'd kept some of the pages for himself! Hauer cringed as he recalled

Natterman slipping into the bathroom before laying the foil acket on

Hans's lap.

p Greedy bastard! he thought furiously. With yourfamily's lives at

stake! Pulling the bottom page out again, Hauer stared with grim

frustration. Angrily, he read the final note in German. The last bit

caught his eye:

Phoenix wields my precious daughter like a sword of fire!

If only they knew! Am I even a dim memory to my angel?

No. Better that she never knows. I have lived a life of madness, but

in the face of death I found courage ...

Better that she never knows. Those words resonated in Hauer's mind.

Better that you don't know, either he thought, looking at Hans's

sleeping face. You'll find out soon enough.

Hans's lank blond hair hung down across eyelids that quivered in