Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

The Spandau Phoenix

Greg Iles

The North Sea lay serene, unusual for spring, but night would soon fall

on a smoking, broken continent reeling from the shock of war.

From the bloody dunes of Dunkirk to the bomb-shattered streets of

Warsaw, from the frozen tip of Norway to the deserted beaches of the

Mediterranean Europe was enslaved. Only England, beleaguered and alone,

stood against the massed armies of Hitler's Wehrmacht, and tonight

London was scheduled to die.

By fire. At 1800 hours Greenwich time the greatest single concentration

of Luftwaffe bombers ever assembled would unleash their fury upon the

unprotected city, and over seven hundred acres of the British capital

would cease to exist.

Thousands of incendiary bombs would rain down upon civilian and soldier

alike, narrowly missing St. Paul's Cathedral, gutting the Houses of

Parliament. History would record that strike against London as the

worst of the entire war, a holocaust. And yet ...

... all this-the planning, the casualties, the goliathan destruction-was

but the puff of smoke from a magician's gloved hand. A spectacular

diversion calculated to draw the eyes of the world away from a mission

so -daring and intricate that it would defy understanding for

generations to come. The man behind this ingenious plot was Adolf

Hitler, and tonight, unknown to a single member of his General Staff, he

would reach out from the Berghof and undertake the most ambitious

military feat of his life.

He had worked miracles before-the blitzkrieg of Poland, the penetration

of the "impassable" Ardennes-but this would be the crowning 'achievement

of his career. It would raise him at last above Alexander, Caesar, and

Napoleon. In one stunning blow, he would twist the balance of world

power inside out, transforming his mortal foe into an ally and

consigning his present ally to destruction. To succeed he would have to

reach into the very heart of Britain, but not with bombs or missiles.

Tonight he needed precision, and he had chosen his weapons accordingly:

treachery, weakness, envy, fanaticism-the most destructive forces

available to man. All were familiar tools in Hitler's hand, and all

were in place.

But such forces were unpredictable. Traitors lived in terror of

discovery; agents feared capture. Fanatics exploded without warning,

and weak men invited betrayal. To effectively utilize such resources,

Hitler knew, someone had to be on the scene-reassuring the agent,

directing the fanatic, holding the hand of the traitor and a gun to the

head of the coward. But who could handle such a mission? Who could

inspire both trust and fear in equal measure? Hitler knew such a man.

He was a soldier, a man of forty-eight, a pilot.

And he was already in the air.

Two thousand feet above Amsterdam, the Messerschmitt Bf-110 Zerstdrer

plowed through a low ceiling of cumulus clouds and burst into clear sky

over the glittering North Sea.

The afternoon sun flashed across the fighter's silver wings, setting off

the black-painted crosses that struck terror into the stoutest hearts

across Europe.

Inside the cockpit, the pilot breathed a sigh of relief. For the last

four hundred miles he had flown a tiring, highly restricted route,

changing altitude several times to remain within the Luftwaffe's

prescribed corridors of safety. Hitler's personal pilot had given him

the coded map he carried, and, with it, a warning. Not for amusement

were the safety zones changed daily, Hans Bahr had whispered; with

British Spitfires regularly penetrating Hermann Goering's "impenetrable"

wall of air defense, the danger was real, precautions necessary.

The pilot smiled grimly. Enemy fighters were the least of his worries

this afternoon. If he failed to execute the next step of his mission

perfectly, it would be a squadron of Messerschmitts, not Spitfires, that

shot him into the sea. At any moment the Luftwaffe flight controllers

expected him to turn back for Germany, as he had a dozen times before,

test flying the fighter lent to him personally by Willi Messerschmitt,

then returning home to his wife and child, his privileged life. But

this time he would not turn back.

Checking his airspeed against his watch, he estimated the point at which

he would fade from the Luftwaffe radar screens based on the Dutch island

of Terschelling. He'd reached the Dutch coast at 3:28 Pm. It was now

3:40. At 220 miles per hour, he should have put forty-four miles of the

North Sea behind him already. German radar was no match for its British

counterpart, he knew, but he would wait another three minutes just to

make sure. Nothing could be left to chance tonight.

Nothing.

The pilot shivered inside his fur-lined leather flying suit.

So much depended upon his mission: the fates of England and Germany,

very possibly the whole world. It was enough to make any man shiver.

And Russia, that vast, barbaric land infected by the cancer of

communism-his Fatherland's ancient enemy-if he succeeded tonight, Russia

would kneel beneath the swastika at last!

The pilot nudged the stick, dipping the Messerschmitt's left wing, and

looked down through the thick glass canopy.

Almost time. He looked at his watch, counting. Five ... four ...

three ... two ...

Now! Like a steel falcon he swooped toward the sea, hurtling downward

at over four hundred miles per hour. At the last instant he jerked the

stick back and leveled out, skimming the wave tops as he stormed north

toward Aalborg, the main Luftwaffe fighter base in Denmark. His

desperate race had begun.

Fighting through the heavy air at sea level, the Messerschmitt drank

fuel like water, but the pilot's main concern now was secrecy.

And finding the landing signal, he reminded himself. Two dozen training

flights had familiarized him with the aircraft, but the detour to

Denmark had been unexpected. He had never flown this far north without

visual references. He was not afraid, but he would feel much better

once he sighted the feords of Denmark to starboard.

It had been a long time since the pilot had killed. The battles of the

Great War seemed so vague now. He had certainly fired hundreds of

rounds in anger, but one was never really sure.about the killing.

Not until the charges came, anyway the terrible, bloody, heroically

insane assaults of flesh against steel. He had almost been killed-he

remembered that clearly enough-by a bullet in the left lung, one of

three wounds he'd taken while fighting in the famous List regiment.

But he had survived, that was the important thing. The dead in the

enemy trenches ... who knew, really?

He would kill tonight. He would have no choice. Checking the two

compasses strapped to his left thigh, he took a careful bearing, then

quickly returned his eyes to the horizon indicator. This close to the

surface of the sea, the water played tricks on the mind. Hundreds of

expert pilots had plowed into the waves simply by letting their

concentration falter for a few moments. Only six minutes to Aalborg, he

thought nervously. Why risk it? He climbed to one thousand feet, then

leveled out and craned his neck to survey the sea below.

Waveless, it receded before him with the gentle curve of the earth.

Except ... there ... dead ahead. He could see broken coastline ...

Denmark! He had done it!

Feeling a hot surge of adrenaline, he scanned the clouds for fighter