Spandau Phoenix

“I said is that all right with you, Sergeant?” Funk repeated testily.

Hans could see that both Hauer and Lieutenant Luhr had suddenly taken a keen interest in him. It took all his concentration to keep his facial muscles still. He cleared his throat again. “Yes, sir. No problem.”

“Good. The procedure is simple: Schmidt asks you a few calibration questions, then we get to it.” Funk sounded bored. “Hurry it up, Schmidt.”

As the polygrapher attached the electrodes to his fingers, Hans felt his earlier bravado draining away. Then came the blood-pressure cuff, fastened around his upper arm and pumped until he could feel his arterial blood throbbing against it like a tourniquet. Last came the chest bands—rubber straps stretched around his torso beneath his shirt—to monitor his respiration. Three separate sensing systems, cold and inhuman, now silently awaited the slightest signals of deception.

Hans wondered which vital sign would give him away: a trace of sweat translated into electrical resistance? His thudding heart? Or just his eyes? I must be crazy, he thought wildly. Why keep it up anyway? They’ll find me out in the end. For one mad moment he considered simply blurting out the truth. He could exonerate himself before Schmidt even asked the first stupid control question. He could—

“Are you Sergeant Hans Apfel?” Schmidt asked in a high, abrasive voice.

“I am.”

“Yes or no, please, Sergeant. Is your name Hans Apfel?”

“Yes.”

“Do you reside in West Berlin?”

“Yes.”

Hans watched Schmidt make some adjustments to his machine. The ferret’s shirt was soiled at the collar and armpits, his fingernails were long and grimy, and he smelled of ammonia. Suddenly, Schmidt pulled a red pen from his pocket and held it up for all to see.

“Is this pen red, Sergeant?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Schmidt made—or seemed to make—still more adjustments to his machine.

Nervously, Hans wondered how much Schmidt knew he knew about the polygraph test. Because Hans knew a good deal. The concept of the “lie detector” had always fascinated him. He had taken the Experimental Interrogation course at the police school at Hiltrup, and a close look at his personnel file would reveal that. As Schmidt tinkered with his machine, Hans marshaled what he remembered from the Hiltrup course. The first tenet of the polygrapher was that for test results to be accurate, the subject needed to believe the machine infallible. Polygraphers used various methods to create this illusion, but Hans knew that Schmidt favored the “card trick.” Schmidt would ask his subject to pick a playing card at random from a deck, then to lay it facedown on a table. Schmidt’s ability to name the hidden card after a few “yes or no” questions seemed to prove his polygraph infallible. Of course the subject always chose his card from a deck in which every card was identical, but he had no way of knowing that. Many skilled criminals had confessed their crimes immediately after Schmidt’s little parlor show, certain that his machine would eventually find them out.

Hans saw no deck of cards tonight. Maybe Schmidt thinks his reputation is enough to intimidate me, he thought nervously. And maybe he’s right. Already perspiring, Hans tried to think of a way to beat the little weasel’s machine. Some people had beaten the polygraph by learning to suppress their physiological stress reactions, but Hans knew he had no hope of this. The suppression technique took months to master, and right now he could barely hold himself in his chair.

He did have one hope, if he could keep a cool head: picking out the “control” questions. Most people thought questions like “Is this pen red?” were the controls. But Hans knew better. The real control questions were ones which would cause almost anyone asked them to lie. “Have you ever failed to report income on your federal tax return?” was a common control. Most people denied this almost universal crime, and by doing so provided Schmidt with their baseline “lie.” Later, when asked, “Did you cut your wife’s throat with a kitchen knife?” a guilty person’s lie would register far stronger than his baseline or “control” reference. Questions like “Is this pen red?” were asked simply to give a person’s vital signs time to return to normal between the relevant questions.

Hans knew if he could produce a strong enough emotional response to a control question, then an actual lie would appear no different to the polygraph than his faked control responses. Schmidt would be forced to declare him “innocent.” The best method to do this was to hide a thumbtack in your shoe, but Hans knew that an exaggerated response could also be triggered by holding your breath or biting your tongue. He decided to worry about method later. If he couldn’t pick out the control questions, method wouldn’t matter.

Schmidt’s voice jolted him back to reality.

“Sergeant Apfel, prior to discharging your Spandau assignment, did you communicate with any person other than the duty sergeant regarding that assignment?”

“No,” Hans replied. That was true. He hadn’t had time to discuss it with anyone.

“Is Captain Hauer a married man?”

Irrelevant question, Hans thought bitterly. To anyone except me. “No,” he answered.

Schmidt looked down at the notepad from which he chose his questions. “Have you ever stopped a friend or public official for a traffic violation and let them go without issuing a citation?”

Control question, Hans thought. Almost any cop who denied this would be lying. Keeping a straight face, he bit down on the tip of his tongue hard enough to draw blood. He felt a brief flush of perspiration pass through his skin. “No,” he said.

When Schmidt glanced up from the polygraph, Hans knew he had produced an exaggerated response. “Am I holding up two fingers?” Schmidt asked.

Irrelevant, thought Hans. “Yes,” he answered truthfully.

Schmidt came a step closer. “Sergeant Apfel, you’ve made several arrests for drug possession in the past year. Have you ever failed to turn the entire quantity of confiscated drugs over to the evidence officer?”

Control ques—Hans started to bite his tongue again; then he hesitated. If this was a control question, Schmidt had upped the stakes of the game. Giving an exaggerated response here would not be without serious consequences. Police corruption involving drugs was an epidemic problem, with accordingly severe punishment for those caught. The men at the table gave no indication that they saw this question as anything but routine, but Hans thought he detected a feral gleam in Schmidt’s eyes. The dirty little man knew his business.

“Sergeant?” Schmidt prodded.

Hans fidgeted. He did not want to appear guilty of a drug crime, but the Spandau questions still awaited. If he intended to keep the papers secret, he would have to give at least a partially exaggerated response to this question. In silent desperation he held his breath, counted to four, then answered, “No,” and exhaled slowly.

“Is your wife’s maiden name Natterman, Sergeant?”

Irrelevant. “Yes,” Hans replied.

Schmidt wiped his upper lip. “Were you the last man to arrive at the scene of the argument over custody of the trespassers at Spandau Prison?”

Relevant question. Hans glanced up at the panel. All eyes were on him now. Stay calm … “I don’t remember,” he said. “Things were so confused then. I really didn’t notice.”

“Yes or no, Sergeant!”

“I suppose I could have been.”

Exasperated, Schmidt looked to Funk for guidance. The prefect fixed Hans with his imperious stare. “Sergeant,” he said curtly, “one of your fellow officers told us you were the last man there. Would you care to answer the question again?”

“I’m sorry,” Hans said sheepishly, “I just don’t remember.” He looked at the floor. The Russian soldier who had caught him in the rubble pile could call him a liar right now, he knew, but for some reason the man hadn’t spoken up. Funk appeared satisfied with Hans’s answer, and told Schmidt to move along. There can’t be many more questions, Hans thought. Just a little longer—

“Sergeant Apfel?” Schmidt’s voice cut like slivers of glass. “Did you remove any documents from a hollow brick in the area of the cellblocks last occupied by the Nuremberg war criminals?”

Holy Mother of God! Hans choked down a scream. Every eye in the room burned upon his face. For the first time Hauer’s steely mask cracked. His probing eyes fixed Hans motionless in his chair, stripping away the pathetic layers of deception. But it was too late to come clean.

“No,” Hans said lamely.

“Specifically,” Schmidt bored in, “did you discover, remove, see, or even hear of documents pertaining to or written by Prisoner Number Seven—Rudolf Hess?”

Hans felt cold sweat running down his spine. His heart became an enemy within his chest, thumping out the tattoo of his guilt. And there stood Schmidt, lie-hungry, watching each centimeter of paper unspool from his precious machine. Looking at him now, Hans fancied he saw a mad doctor reading an electrocardiograph, a diabolical quack watching each fateful squiggle in the hope of witnessing a fatal heart attack. Hans felt his willpower ebbing away. The truth welled up in his throat, beyond his control. Just tell the truth, urged a voice in his head, tell it all and take whatever consequences come. Then this insanity will focus elsewhere. Yet as Hans started to do just that, Schmidt said:

“Sergeant, have you ever omitted an important piece of information from a job application?”

Hans felt like a spacewalker cut loose from his tether. Schmidt had asked another control question! Hadn’t he? But why hadn’t he triumphantly proclaimed Hans’s guilt to the tribunal? Hans had expected the little demon to dance a jig and scream: Him! Him! There is the liar!

“No—no, I haven’t,” Hans stammered.

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

While Hans sat stunned, Schmidt turned to Funk and shook his head. The prefect closed the file before him, then turned to the Soviet colonels and shrugged. “Any questions?” he asked.

The Russians looked like sleeping bears. When one finally shook his head to indicate the negative, the gesture seemed the result of a massive effort. Hans even sensed the soldiers in the back of the room relaxing. Only Captain Hauer and Lieutenant Luhr remained tense. For some reason it struck Hans just then that Jürgen Luhr was the kind of German who made Jews nervous. He was a racial type—the proto-Germanic man, tall and broad-shouldered, thin-lipped and square-headed—a mythical Aryan fiend passed down in whispered tales from mother to daughter and father to son.

“Thank you for your cooperation, Sergeant,” Funk said wearily. “We’ll contact you if we need any further details.” Then over Hans’s shoulder, “Bring in the last officer.”

Hans floundered. They had drawn him into the trap, yet failed to pounce for the kill. “Am I free to go?” he asked uncertainly.

“Unless you wish to stay with us all night,” Funk snapped.

“Excuse me, Prefect,” Lieutenant Luhr cut in. All eyes turned to him. “I’d like to ask the sergeant a question.”

Funk nodded.

“Tell me, Sergeant, did you notice Officer Weiss acting in a suspicious manner at any time during the Spandau assignment?”

Hans shook his head, remembering Weiss being dragged down the hall. “No, sir. No, I didn’t.”

Luhr smiled with understanding, but he had the watchful eyes of a police dog. “Officer Weiss is a Jew, isn’t he, Sergeant?”

One of the Russian colonels stirred, but his comrade laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.

“I believe that’s right,” Hans said tentatively. “Yes, he’s Jewish.”

Luhr gave a curt nod of the head, as if this new fact somehow explained everything.

“You may go, Sergeant,” Funk said.

Hans stood. They were telling him to go, yet he sensed that some unspoken understanding had passed between the men in the room. It was as if several decisions had been taken at once in some language unknown to him. He turned toward the soldiers and police at the back of the room and shuffled toward the door. No one moved to stop him. Why hadn’t Schmidt called him a liar? Why hadn’t the Russian who’d caught him searching called him a liar? And why did he feel compelled to keep lying, anyway?

Because of the Russians, he realized. If the prefect—or even Hauer—had only questioned him alone, he could have told them. Just as Ilse wanted him to. He would have told them …

A burly policeman held open the door. Hans walked through, hearing Funk’s tired voice resume behind him. He quickened his pace. He wanted to get out of the building as soon as possible. He entered the stairwell at a near trot, but slowed when he saw two beefy patrolmen ascending from the first floor. Nodding a perfunctory greeting, he slipped between the two men—

Then they took him.

Hans had no chance at all. The men used no weapons because they needed none. His arms were immobilized as if by steel bands; then the men reversed direction and began dragging him down the stairs.

“What is this!” Hans shouted. “I’m a police officer! Let me go!”

One of the men chuckled quietly. They reached the bottom of the stairs and turned down a disused hallway, a repository of ancient files and broken furniture. When the initial shock and disorientation wore off, Hans realized that he had to fight back somehow. But how? In the darkest part of the corridor he suddenly let his body go limp, appearing to lose his will to resist.

“Scheisse!” one man cursed. “Dead weight.”

“He soon will be,” commented his partner.

Dead weight? With speed born of desperation Hans fired his elbow into a rib cage. He heard bone crack.

“Arrghh!” The man let go.

With his free hand Hans pummeled the other attacker’s head, aiming for his temple. The policeman held him fast.

“You bastard …” from the darkness.

Hans kept pounding the man’s skull. The grip on his arm was loosening—

An explosion that seemed to detonate behind his right eye paralyzed him.

Darkness.

Less than sixty feet away from Hans, Colonels Ivan Kosov and Grigori Zotin stood outside an idling East German transit bus in the central parking lot of the police station. Inside the bus, the Soviet soldiers from the Spandau patrol waited for their long-delayed return to East Berlin. Most were already fast asleep.

Zotin, a GRU colonel, did not particularly like Kosov, and he was deeply offended at the KGB colonel’s effrontery in donning the uniform of the Red Army. But what could he do? One couldn’t keep the KGB out of something this big, especially when higher powers wanted Kosov involved. Rubbing his hands together against the cold, Zotin tested the KGB man’s perception.

“Can you believe it, Ivan? They gave them all clean reports.”

“Of course,” Kosov growled. “What did you expect?”

“But one of them was certainly lying!”

“Certainly.”

“But how did they fake the polygraph readouts?”

Kosov looked bored. “We were six meters from the machine. They could have shown us anything.”

Grigori Zotin knew exactly which policeman had lied, but he wanted to keep the information from Kosov long enough to initiate inquiries of his own. He was aware of the Kremlin’s interest in the Hess case, and he knew his career could take a giant leap forward if he cracked it. He made a mental note to decorate the young GRU officer who had caught the German policeman searching and showed enough sense to tell only his immediate superior. “You’re right, of course,” Zotin agreed.

Kosov grunted.

“What, exactly, do you think was discovered? A journal perhaps? Do you think they found some proof of—”

“They found a hollow brick,” Kosov snapped. “Our forensic technicians say their tests indicate the brick held some type of paper for an unknown period of time. It could have been some kind of journal. It could also have been pages from a pornographic magazine. It could have been toilet paper! Never trust experts too much, Zotin.”

The GRU colonel sucked his teeth nervously. “Don’t you think we should have at least mentioned Zinoviev during the interrogation? We could have—”

“Idiot!” Kosov bellowed. “That name isn’t to be mentioned outside KGB! How do you even know it?”

Zotin stepped back defensively. “One hears things in Moscow.”

“Things that could get you a bullet in the neck,” Kosov warned.

Zotin tried to look unworried. “I suppose we should tell the general to turn up the pressure at the commandants’ meeting tomorrow.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” scoffed Kosov. “Too little, too late.”

“What about the trespassers, then? Why are you letting the Germans keep them?”

“Because they don’t know anything.”

“What do you suggest we do, then?” Zotin ventured warily.

Kosov snorted. “Are you serious? It was the second to last man—Apfel. He was lying through his Bosche teeth. Those idiots did exactly what we wanted. If they’d admitted Apfel was lying, he’d be in a jail cell now, beyond our reach. As it is, he’s at our mercy. The fool is bound to return home, and when he does”—Kosov smiled coldly—“I’ll have a team waiting for him.”

Zotin was aghast. “But how—?” He stifled his imprudent outburst with a cough. “How can you get a team over soon enough?” he covered.

“I have two teams here now,” Kosov snapped. “Get me to a damned telephone!”

Startled, the GRU colonel clambered aboard the bus and found a seat.

“And Zotin?” Kosov said, leaning over his rival.

“Yes?”

“Keep nothing from me again. It could be very dangerous for you.”

Zotin blanched.

“I want everything there is on this man Apfel. Everything. I suggest you ride your staff very hard on this. Powerful eyes are watching us.”

“How will you approach this policeman?”

“Approach him?” Kosov cracked a wolfish smile. “Break him, you mean. By morning I’ll know how many times that poor bastard peeked up his mother’s skirts.”

Hans awoke in a cell. There was no window. He’d been thrown onto a stack of damp cardboard boxes. One pale ray of light filtered down from somewhere high above. When he had focused his eyes, he sat up and gripped one of the steel bars. His face felt sticky. He put his fingers to his temple. Blood. The familiar slickness brought back the earlier events in a throbbing rush of confusion. The interrogation … his father’s stony silence … the struggle in the hallway. Where was he?

He tried to rise, but he collapsed into a narrow space between two boxes. Rotting cardboard covered almost the entire concrete floor. A cell full of boxes? Puzzled, Hans reached into one and pulled out a damp folder. He held it in the shaft of light. Traffic accident report, he thought. Typed on the standard police form. He found the date—1973. Flipping through the yellow sheaf of papers, he saw they were all the same, all traffic accident reports from 1973. He checked the station listed on several forms: Abschnitt 53 every case. Suddenly he realized where he was.

In the early 1970s, Abschnitt 53 had been partially renovated during a citywide wave of reform that lasted about eighteen months. There had been enough money to refurbish the reception area and overhaul the main cellblock, but the third floor, the basement, and the rear of the building went largely untouched. Hans was sure he’d been locked in the basement.

But why? No one had accused him of anything. Not openly, at least. Who were the policemen who had attacked him? Funk’s men? Were they even police officers at all? They had said he would soon be dead weight. It was crazy. Maybe they were protecting him from the Russians. Maybe this was the only way the prefect could keep him safe from them. That’s it! he thought with relief. It has to be.

A door slammed somewhere in the darkness above. Someone was coming—several people by the sound—and making no effort to hide it. Hans heard clattering and cursing on the stairs; then he saw who was making the noise. Outlined in the fluorescent light streaming down from the basement door, two husky uniformed men were wrestling a gurney off the stairs. Slowly they cleared a path to the cell through the heaps of junk covering the basement floor. Hans closed his eyes and lay motionless on the boxes where he’d been thrown.

“Looks like he’s still out,” said one man.

“I hope I killed the son of a bitch,” growled the other.

“That wouldn’t go over too well upstairs, Rolf.”

“Who gives a shit? The bastard broke my ribs.”

Hans heard a low chuckle. “Be more careful the next time. Come on, we’ve got to clear a space in there for this thing.”

“Fuck it. Just throw this filthy Jew in on top of that one. Not much left of him, anyway.”

“Apfel isn’t a Jew.”

“Jew-lover, then.”

“The doctor said leave this one on the gurney.”

“Make him clear a space,” said Rolf, pointing in at Hans.

“Sure. If you can wake him up.”

Rolf picked up a rusted joint of pipe from the floor and rankled the bars with it. “Wake up, asshole!”

Hans ignored him.

“Get up or we’ll kill you.”

Hans heard the metallic click of a pistol slide being jerked back. Christ … Slowly he rose to his feet.

“See,” said Rolf, “he’s not dead. Clear out a space in there, you. And be quick about it.”

Hans tried to see who lay on the gurney, but Rolf smashed the pipe against the bars near his face. It took him forty seconds to clear a space wide enough to accept the gurney.

“Get back against the wall,” Rolf ordered. “Go on!”

Hans watched the strange policemen roll the man on the gurney feet-first into the cleared space, then slam the door behind him.

“You stay away from this Jew-boy, Sergeant,” Rolf warned. “Anything happens to him, it’s on your head.”

The pair hurried up the stairs, taking the shaft of light with them. Hans couldn’t make out the face of his new cellmate. He felt in his pocket for a match, then remembered he’d given them to Kurt in the waiting room upstairs. He put his hands on the unconscious man’s shoulders and stared downward, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the blackness, but they didn’t. Moving his hand tentatively, he felt something familiar. Shoulder patches. Surprised and a little afraid, Hans felt his way across the man’s chest like a blind man. Brass buttons … patch … collar pins … Hans felt his left hand brush an empty leather holster. A police officer! Shutting his eyes tight, he put his right hand on the man’s face and waited. When he opened his eyes again, he could just make out the lines of the face.

My God, he thought, feeling a lump in his throat. Weiss! Erhard Weiss! For the second time tonight Hans felt cut loose from reality. Gripping his friend’s body like a life raft, he began trying to revive him. He spoke into Weiss’s ear, but heard no answer. He slapped the slack face hard several times. No response. Groping around in desperation, Hans crashed into the back wall of the cell. His palms touched something moist and cold. Foundation stones. Condensation. Rubbing his hands across the stones until they were sufficiently wet, he returned to Weiss and laved the cool liquid over his forehead. Still Weiss lay silent.

Alarmed, Hans pressed both forefingers against Weiss’s carotid arteries. He felt pulse beats, but very faint and unbelievably far apart. Weiss was alive, but just. The jailers had mentioned a doctor, Hans remembered. What kind of doctor would send a man to a cell in this condition? The obscenity of the situation drove him into a rage as he stood by the cadaverous body of his friend. Someone would answer for this outrage! Lurching to the front of the cell, Hans began screaming at the top of his lungs. He screamed until he had no voice left, but no one came. Slipping to the floor in exhaustion, he realized that the stacks of boxes in the basement must be deadening the sound of his voice. He doubted anyone upstairs had heard even a whimper.