Spandau Phoenix

The other popular theory held that the real Hess had reached England alive, but that the British government—for reasons of its own—had wanted him silenced. They supposedly killed Hess, then searched among German prisoners of war for a likely double, whom they brainwashed, bribed, or blackmailed into impersonating the Deputy Führer. Natterman considered this tripe of the lowest order. His researches indicated that a “brainwashed” man was little more than a zombie—certainly not capable of impersonating Hess for more than a few hours, much less for forty-six years. And as far as British bribes or blackmail, Natterman didn’t believe any German impersonator would sacrifice fifty years of his life for British money or even British threats.

Yet this theory, too, was partially based on fact. No informed historian doubted that the British government wanted the Hess affair buried. They had proved it time and again throughout the years, and Professor Natterman did not discount the possibility that the British had murdered Hess’s double just four weeks ago. It was also true that only a native German could have successfully impersonated Hess for so long. Not just any German, however, it would have to have been a German trained specifically by Nazis to impersonate Hess, and whose service was either voluntary, or motivated by the threat of some terrible penalty. A penalty like Sippenhaft.

Natterman felt a shiver of excitement. The author of the Spandau papers had satisfied all those requirements, and more. For the first time, someone had offered a credible—probably the only—answer to when and how the double had been substituted for the real Hess. If the papers were correct, he never had been. Hess and his double had flown to Britain in the same plane. It had been the double in British hands from the very first moment! Natterman recalled that a prominent British journalist had written a novel suggesting that, since the Messerschmitt 110 could carry two men, Hess might not have flown to Britain alone. But no one had ever suggested that Hess’s double could have been that passenger!

Natterman drummed his fingers compulsively as his brain shifted up to a higher plane of analysis. Facts were the province of history professors; motives were the province of historians. The ultimate question was not how the double had arrived in England, but why. Why was it necessary for both the double and the real Hess to fly to Britain, as the Spandau papers claimed they had? Whom did they fly there to meet? Why was it necessary for the double to remain in Spandau? Had he been murdered for the same reason? If so, who murdered him? Circumstantial evidence pointed to the British. Yet if the British killed the double, why had they done it now, after all these years? Publicly they had joined France and the United States in calling for Number Seven’s early release (though they knew full well they could rely on the Russians to veto it, as they had done every year before)—

My God, Natterman thought suddenly. Was that it? Had Mikhail Gorbachev, in the spirit of glasnost, proposed to release Hess at last? As Natterman scrawled this question in the margin of Dr. Rees’s book, the huge, bright yellow diesel engine disengaged its brakes with a hiss and lurched out of the great glass hall of Zoo Station, accelerating steadily toward the benighted fields of the DDR. In a few minutes the train would enter the narrow, fragile corridor linking the island of West Berlin to the Federal Republic of Germany. Natterman pulled the plastic shade down over his small window. There were ghosts outside—ghosts he had no wish to see. Memories he thought long laid to rest had been violently exhumed by the papers he now smuggled through communist Germany. God, he wondered, does it ever end? The deceit, the casualties? He touched the thin bundle beneath his sweater. The casualties … More were coming, he could feel it.

Yet he couldn’t give up the Spandau papers—not yet. Those nine thin sheets of paper were his last chance at academic resurrection. He had been one of the lions once, an academic demigod. A colleague once told Natterman that he had heard Willy Brandt quote from Natterman’s opus on Germany no less than three times during one speech in the Bundestag. Three times! But Natterman had written that book over thirty years ago. During the intervening years, he had managed to stay in print with “distinguished contributor” articles, but no publisher showed real interest in any further Natterman books. The great professor had said all he had to say in From Bismarck to the Bunker—or so they thought. But now, he thought excitedly, now the cretins will be hammering down my door! When he offered his explosive translation of The Secret Diary of Spandau Prisoner Number Seven—boasting the solution to the greatest mystery of the Second World War—they would beg for the privilege of publishing him!

Startled by a sharp knock at the compartment door, Natterman stuffed Dr. Rees’s book under his seat cushion and stood. Probably just Customs, he reassured himself. This was the very reason he had chosen this escape route from the city. Trains traveling between West Berlin and the Federal Republic did not stop inside East Germany, so passport control and the issue of visas took place during the journey. Still more important, there were no baggage controls.

“Yes?” he called. “Who is it?”

Someone fumbled at the latch; then the door shot open. A tall, wiry man with a dark complexion and bright eyes stared at the professor in surprise. A worn leather bag dangled from his left hand. “Oh, dear!” he said. “Dreadfully sorry.”

An upper-class British accent. Natterman looked the man up and down. At least my own age, he thought. Strong-looking fellow. Thin, tanned, beaked nose. Looks more Jewish than British, come to think of it. Which is ridiculous because Judaism isn’t a nationality and Britishness isn’t a religion—although the adherents of both sometimes treat them as such—

“I say there,” the intruder said, quickly scanning the room, “Stern’s my name. I’m terribly sorry. Can’t seem to find my berth.”

“What’s the number?” Natterman asked warily.

“Sixteen, just like it says on the door here.” Stern held out a key.

Natterman examined it. “Right number,” he said. “Wrong car, though. You want second class, next car back.”

Stern took the key back quickly. “Why, you’re right. Thanks, old boy. I’ll find it.”

“No trouble.” Natterman scrutinized the visitor as he backed out of the cabin. “You know, I thought I’d locked that door,” he said.

“Don’t think it was, really,” Stern replied. “Just gave it a shove and it opened right up.”

“Your key fit?”

“It went in. Who knows? They always use the oldest trains on the Berlin run. One key probably opens half the doors on the train.” Stern laughed. “Sorry again.”

For an instant the tanned stranger’s face came alive with urgent purpose, so that it matched his eyes, which were bright and intense. It was as if a party mask had accidentally slipped before midnight. Stern seemed on the verge of saying something; then his lips broadened into a sheepish grin and he backed out of the compartment and shut the door.

Puzzled, and more than a little uncomfortable, Natterman sat down again. An accident? That fellow didn’t seem like the type to mix up his sleeping arrangements. Not one bit. And something about him looked familiar. Not his face … but his carriage. The loose, ready stance. He’d been unseasonably tanned for Berlin. Impossibly tanned, in fact. Retrieving Dr. Rees’s book from beneath the seat cushion, the professor tapped it nervously against his leg. A soldier, he thought suddenly. Natterman would have bet a year’s salary that the man who had stumbled into his compartment was an ex-soldier. And an Englishman, he thought, feeling his heart race. Or at least a man who had lived among the English long enough to imitate their accent to perfection. Natterman didn’t like the arithmetic of that “accident” at all if he was right. Not at all.

10:04 P.M. MI-5 Headquarters: Charles Street, London, England

Deputy Director Wilson knocked softly at Sir Neville Shaw’s door, then opened it and padded onto the deep carpet of the director general’s office. Shaw sat at his desk beneath the green glow of a banker’s lamp. He took no notice of the intrusion; he continued to pore over a thick, dog-eared file on the desk before him.

“Sir Neville?” Wilson said.

Shaw did not look up. “What is it? Your hard boys arrived?”

“No, sir. It’s something else. A bit rum, actually.”

Sir Neville looked up at last. “Well?”

“It’s Israeli Intelligence, sir. The head of the Mossad, as a matter of fact. He’s sent us a letter.”

Shaw blinked. “So?”

“Well, it’s rather extraordinary, sir.”

“Damn it, Wilson, how so?”

“The letter is countersigned by the Israeli prime minister. It was hand-delivered by courier.”

“What?” Sir Neville sat up. “What in God’s name is it about?” His ruddy face slowly tightened in dread. “Not Hess?”

Wilson quickly shook his head. “No, sir. It’s about an old intelligence hand of theirs. Chap named Stern. Seems he’s been holed up in the Negev for the past dozen years, but a couple of days ago he quietly slipped his leash.”

Shaw looked exasperated. “I don’t see what the devil that’s got to do with us.”

“The Israelis—their prime minister, rather—seem to think we might still hold a grudge against this fellow. That there might be a standing order of some type on him. A liquidation order.”

“That’s preposterous!” Shaw bellowed. “After all this time?”

The deputy director smiled with forbearance. “It’s not so preposterous, Sir Neville. Our own Special Forces Club—which the Queen still visits occasionally, I’m proud to say—still refuses to accept Israeli members. They welcome elite troops from almost every democratic nation in the world, even the bloody Germans. Everyone but the Israelis, and they’re probably the best of the lot. And all because the older agents still hold a grudge for the murder of an SAS man by Zionists during the Mandate—”

“Just a minute,” Shaw interrupted. “Stern, you said?”

“Yes, sir. Jonas Stern. I pulled his file.”

“Jonas Stern,” Shaw murmured. “By God, the Israelis ought to be concerned. One of our people has been after that old guerilla for better than thirty years.”

Wilson looked surprised. “One of our agents, sir?”

“Retired,” Shaw explained. “A woman, actually. Code name Swallow. A real harpy. You’d better pull her file, in fact. Just in case she’s still got her eye on this fellow.” Shaw nodded thoughtfully. “I remember Stern. He was a terrorist during the Mandate, not even twenty at the time, I’ll bet. He swallowed his vinegar and fought for us during the war. It was the only way he could get at Hitler, I suppose. Did a spot of sticky business for us in Germany, as I recall.”

Wilson looked at Shaw in wonder. “That’s exactly what it says in the file!”

“Yes,” Shaw remembered, “he worked for LAKAM during the ’sixties and ’seventies, didn’t he? Safeguarding Israel’s nuclear development program.” Shaw smiled at his deputy’s astonishment. “No strings or mirrors, Wilson. Stern was a talented agent, but the reason I remember him so clearly is because of this Swallow business. I think she actually tried to assassinate him a couple of times. That’s why the Mossad sent that letter.”

“Do you really think this woman might pose a danger to him?”

Shaw shook his head. “I doubt Stern’s in England. Or even in Europe, for that matter. He’s probably sunning himself on Mykonos, or something similar. Which reminds me—did you find that freighter for me?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Lloyd’s puts her off Durban; she rounded the cape three days ago.”

Shaw rummaged through the stack of papers on his desk until he found a map of southern Africa. “Durban,” he murmured, running his finger across the paper. “Twenty knots, twenty-five … two days … yes. Well.”

Shaw brushed the map aside and thumped the stack of papers before him. “This is the Hess file, Wilson. No one’s cleared to read it but me—did you know that? I tell you, there’s enough rotted meat between these covers to make you ashamed of being an Englishman.”

Wilson waited for an explanation, but Shaw provided none. “About the Israeli letter, sir?” he prompted. “It’s basically a polite request to leave this Stern alone. How should I reply?”

“What? Oh. The Israeli prime minister is an old terrorist himself, you know.” Sir Neville chuckled. “And still looking after his own, after all these years.” His smile turned icy. “No reply. Let him sweat for a while, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And hurry those hard boys along, would you? I thought I had it tough with the P.M. climbing my back. An hour ago I got a call from the bloody Queen-Mother herself. She makes the Iron Lady sound like a French nanny!”

As Wilson slipped out, Sir Neville huffed and went back to the Hess file. On top lay a very old eight-by-ten glossy photograph. Scarred and faded, it showed a man in his late forties with dark hair, a strong jaw, and a black oval patch tied rakishly across his left eye. Shaw jabbed his heavy forefinger down on the eye patch.

“You started it all, you sneaking bastard,” he muttered. He slammed the file closed and leaned back in his chair. “Sometimes I wonder if the damned knighthood’s worth the strain,” he said. “Protecting skeletons in the royal bloody chest.”

10:07 P.M. #30 Lützenstrasse

Outside the apartment another car rattled down the street without slowing. Number twelve. Ilse was counting. Wait until midnight, her grandfather had told her. If Hans isn’t home by then, get out. Sound advice, perhaps, but Ilse couldn’t imagine running for safety while Hans remained in danger. She fumed at her own obstinacy. How could she have let a stupid argument keep her from telling Hans about the baby? She had to find him. Find him and bring him to his senses.

But where to start? The police station? The nightclub district? Hans might meet a reporter anywhere. Rising from her telephone vigil, she went to the bedroom to put on some outdoor clothes. Outside, a long low groan built slowly to a rattling roar as a train passed on the elevated S-Bahn tracks up the street. During the day trains passed every ten minutes or so; at night, thank God, the intervals were longer. As Ilse tied a scarf around her hair, yet another automobile clattered down the Lützenstrasse, coughing and wheezing in the cold. Unlike the others, however, this one sputtered to a stop near the front entrance of the building. Please, she prayed, rushing to the window, please let it be Hans.

It wasn’t. Looking down, she saw a shiny black BMW sedan, not Hans’s Volkswagen. She let her forehead fall against the freezing pane. The cold eased the throb of the headache that had begun an hour earlier. She half-watched as the four doors of the BMW opened simultaneously and four men in dark business suits emerged. They grouped together near the front of the car. One man pointed toward the apartment building and waved in a circle. Another detached himself from the group and disappeared around the corner. Curious, Ilse watched the first man turn his face toward the upper floors and begin counting windows. His bobbing arm moved slowly closer to her window. How odd, she thought. Who would be out counting apartment windows at midnight in—?

She jumped back from the window. The men below were looking for her. Or for Hans—for what he’d found. She groped for the light switch to turn it off, then thought better of it. Instead she ran into the living room, opened the door, and peered cautiously down the hall. Empty. She dashed down the corridor and around the corner to a window that overlooked the building’s rear entrance. Three men huddled there, speaking animatedly. Ilse wondered if they might be plainclothes police. Suddenly two of them entered the building, while the third took up station in the shadow of some garbage bins near the exit.

The metallic groan of the ancient elevator jolted Ilse from the window. Too late to run. They would reach her floor in seconds. With her back to the corridor wall, she inched toward the corner that led back to her apartment. She felt a tingling numbness in her hands as she peeked around it. A tall young man in a dark suit stood outside her door. Remembering the fire stairs, she started in the other direction, but the echo of ascending steps made her thought redundant.

Hopelessly trapped, she decided to try to bluff her way out. Feeling adrenaline suffuse her body, she stepped around the corner as if she owned the building and marched toward the man outside her apartment. She cocked her chin arrogantly upward, intending to walk right past him and into the lift that would take her to the lobby. After all, she had appeared from another part of the floor—she might be anybody. If she could only reach the lobby …

The man looked up. He began to stare. First at Ilse’s legs, then at her breasts, then her face.

I can’t do it! she thought. I’ll never make it past him—

In a millisecond she saw her chance. Stay calm, she told herself. Steady … Fifteen feet away from her apartment she stopped and withdrew her apartment key from her purse. She smiled coolly at the guard, then turned her back to him and bent over the door handle of apartment 43. Be here, Eva! she screamed silently. For God’s sake, be here! Ilse scratched her key against the knob to imitate the sound of an unlocking door, then she said one last prayer and turned the knob.

It opened! Like a reprieved prisoner, she backed into her friend’s apartment, smiling once at the guard before she shut and locked the door. After shooting home the bolt, she sagged against the door, her entire body quivering in terror. For an unsteady moment she thought she might actually collapse, but she forced down her fear and padded up the narrow hall to her friend’s bedroom door. A crack of light shone faintly beneath it. Ilse knocked, but heard no answer.

“Eva?” she called softly. “Eva, it’s Ilse.”

Too anxious to wait, she opened the door and stepped into the room. From behind the door a hand shot out and caught her hair, then jerked her to the floor. She started to struggle, but froze when she felt a cold blade press into the soft flesh of her throat. “Eva!” she rasped. “Eva, it’s me—Ilse!”

The hand jerked harder on her hair, drawing her head back. The blade did not relent. Then, suddenly, she was free.

“Ilse!” Eva hissed. “What the hell are you doing here? I might have killed you. I would have. I thought you were a rapist. Or worse.”

The remark threw Ilse off balance. “What’s worse than a rapist?”

“A faggot, dearie,” Eva answered, bursting into laughter. She folded the straight razor back into its handle.

Ilse’s panic finally overcame her. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she sobbed as her middle-aged friend hugged her wet face to a considerable bosom and stroked her hair like a mother comforting her child.

“Ilse, darling,” Eva murmured. “What’s happened? You’re beside yourself.”

“Eva, I’m sorry I came here, but it was the only place I could go! I don’t know what’s happening—”

“Shh, be quiet now. Catch your breath and tell Eva all about it. Did Hans do something naughty? He didn’t hit you?”

“No … nothing like that. This is madness. Crazy. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you!”

Eva chuckled. “I’ve seen things in this city that would drive a psychiatrist mad, if you could find one who isn’t already. Just tell me what’s wrong, child. And if you can’t tell me that, tell me what you need. I can at least help you out of trouble.”

Ilse wiped her face on her blouse and tried to calm down. Despite the presence of the men outside, she felt better already. Eva Beers had a way of making any problem seem insignificant. A barmaid and tavern singer for most of her fifty-odd years, she had worked the rough-and-tumble circuit in most of the capitals of western Europe. She had returned home to Berlin three years ago, to “live out my days in luxury,” as she jokingly put it. Hans sometimes commented that Eva was only semiretired, for the frequent pilgrimage of well-dressed and ever-changing old gentlemen to her door seemed to indicate that something slightly more profitable than conversation went on inside number 43. But that was Eva’s business; Hans never asked any questions. She was a cheerful and discreet neighbor who often did favors for the young couple, and Ilse had grown very close to her.

“Eva, we’re in trouble,” Ilse said. “Hans and I.”

“What kind of trouble? Hans is Polizei. What can’t he fix?”

Ilse fought the urge to blurt out everything. She didn’t want to involve Eva any more than she already had. “I don’t know, Eva, I don’t know. Hans found something. Something dangerous!”

“It’s drugs, isn’t it?” Eva wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Hashish or something, right?”

“I told you, I don’t know. But it’s bad. There’s a man in the hall right now and he’s waiting for Hans to get home. There are three more men outside by the doors!”

“What? Outside here? Who do you mean, child? Police?”

Ilse threw up her hands. “I don’t know! All I know is that Hans’s station said he left hours ago. I’ve got to get out of here, Eva. I’ve got to warn Hans.”

“How can you warn him if you don’t know where he is?”

Ilse wiped a wet streak of mascara from her cheek. “I don’t know,” she said, trying to stop her tears. “But first I’ve got to get past those men outside.”

As the old barmaid watched Ilse’s mascara run, a hot wave of anger flushed her cheeks. “You dry those tears,” she said. “There hasn’t been a man born to woman that Mama Eva can’t handle.”

10:10 P.M. Europa Center, Breitscheid Platz: West Berlin

Major Harry Richardson stared curiously at the receding back of Eduard Lenhardt, his contact in Abschnitt 53. In seconds the policeman disappeared into the crush of bodies crowding the bar of the imitation Irish pub in the basement of the Europa Center, West Berlin’s answer to the American megamall. This twenty-two-story tower housed dozens of glitzy shops, bars, restaurants, banks, travel agencies, and even a hotel—all of whose goods and services seemed to be priced for the Japanese tourist. Harry had chosen it for its crowds.

He swallowed the last of an excellent Bushmill’s and tried to gather his thoughts. Eduard Lenhardt was only the third in a chain of personal contacts Harry had spoken with tonight. Contrary to Colonel Rose’s orders, Harry had kept his racquetball date. And by so doing, he had learned that Sir Neville Shaw, director of Britain’s MI-5, had ordered British embassy personnel to burn the midnight oil in West Berlin. Shortly after that, Harry had called a State Department contact in Bonn, an old college buddy, who had let it slip that the Russian complaint filed against the U.S. Army specified papers taken from Spandau Prison as the primary object of Soviet concern. The British and the French had received the same complaint. Harry could well imagine the British consternation at such an allegation. After the phone call, Harry had finally gained an audience with his reluctant contact from Abschnitt 53—Lieutenant Eduard Lenhardt.

Lenhardt had revealed information to Harry in three ways: by what he’d said, by what he hadn’t said, and simply by how he’d looked. In Harry’s professional opinion, the policeman had looked scared shitless. What he had not said was anything about papers found in Spandau Prison. What he had said was this: