Spandau Phoenix
That the prefect of police, Wilhelm Funk, had moved out of the Police Presidium and set up a command post in Abschnitt 53, after which the station had taken on the demeanor of an SS barracks after Graf Stauffenberg’s briefcase exploded in Hitler’s bunker. That two Berlin policemen had been detained in a basement cell, then had either escaped or been killed. And that while the Russians had pulled out of Abschnitt 53 at eight, they had acted as if they might return at any time with T-72 tanks. All this in breathless gasps from a veteran policeman whom Harry had never seen get excited about anything other than the piano quartets of Brahms.
Harry dropped ten marks on the table and hurried out of the pub. Sixty seconds later he was on the Ku’damm, where he flagged down a taxi and gave the driver an address near the Tiergarten. The man who occupied the house there was one of Harry’s “private assets,” a rather high-strung German trade liaison named Klaus Seeckt. During Harry’s first year in Berlin, he had spotted Klaus at the Philharmonie, in the company of an arrogant and well-known KGB agent named Yuri Borodin. It hadn’t taken Harry long to establish that Klaus was using his semi-official cover to funnel restricted technology to Moscow. That had not interested Harry much; what had interested him—after a thorough investigation of Seeckt—was that while Klaus dealt directly with the KGB, he had no ties, voluntary or otherwise, to the East German secret police, the Stasi. And that was a very rare combination in Berlin.
Rather than arrest Klaus for the high-tech ripoff, Harry had opted to use his leverage whenever he needed a direct line into KGB operations. He never even filed a report on Klaus. Colonel Rose might have insisted that Harry push the German too hard, which would only have spooked him into fleeing the city. Men like Klaus had to be treated delicately. Harry cultivated the man’s ego, pretending to share with him the fraternal enjoyment of superior intellect, and applied pressure only when necessary.
Tonight was different. Eduard Lenhardt’s apprehensions were worming their way into Harry’s gut, and the checks he normally kept on his imagination began to erode as his mind raced through the possible implications of the events at Abschnitt 53. When the taxi reached the Tiergarten house, Harry tipped its driver enough to satisfy, but not enough to draw attention. And as he reached Klaus’s door, he decided that his sensitive East German would have to pay the remainder of his debt tonight.
10:10 P.M. The Bismarckstrasse
“Captain!” Hans warned. “Motorcycle patrol, three cars back!”
“I see him.” Hauer swung the Volkswagen smoothly around a corner just as the traffic signal changed, stranding the police cycle in the line of vehicles stopped at the light. “We’ve got to get off the street.”
“Where do we go? My apartment? Your house?”
“Think, Hans. They’ll be covering both places.”
“You’re right. Maybe—” He grabbed Hauer’s sleeve. “Jesus, Ilse’s at the apartment alone!”
“Easy, Hans, we’ll get her. But we can’t walk in there like lambs to the slaughter.”
“But Funk could have men there already!”
“Hold your water. Where are we, Bergstrasse? There should be a hotel four blocks south of us. The Steglitz. Just what we need.”
“A hotel?”
“Get in the backseat,” Hauer ordered, and stepped on the accelerator.
“What are you going to do?”
“Do it!”
As Hans climbed into the backseat, Hauer ripped the police insignia from his collar and spurred the VW into the Steglitz garage. The violent turn threw Hans against the side door. They squealed down the curving ramp to the parking sublevels below and into a tiny space between two large sedans.
“All right, Hans,” Hauer said. “Out with it. Everything. What really happened at Spandau this morning?”
Hans climbed awkwardly through the narrow gap between the seats. “I’ll tell you on the way to my apartment.”
Hauer shook his head. “We don’t move one meter until you talk.”
Hans bridled, but he could see that Hauer would not be swayed. “Look, I would have reported it if it hadn’t been for those damned Russians.”
“Reported what?”
“The papers. The papers I found at Spandau.”
“Christ, you mean the Russians were right?”
Hans nodded.
“Where did you find these papers? What did they say?”
Hauer looked strangely hungry. Hans looked out the window. “I found them in a pile of rubble. In a hollow brick, just like Schmidt asked me. What does it matter? I started reading them, but one of the Russians stumbled on me. I hid them without even thinking.” He turned to Hauer. “That’s it! That’s all I did! So why has everyone gone crazy?”
“What did the papers say, Hans?”
“I don’t know. Gibberish, mostly. Ilse said it was Latin.”
“You showed them to your wife?”
“I didn’t intend to, but she found them. She understood more of it than I did, anyway. She said the papers had something to do with the Nazis. That they were dangerous.” He looked down at his lap. “God, was she right.”
“Tell me everything you remember, Hans.”
“Look, I hardly remember any of it. The German part sounded bitter, like a revenge letter, but … there was fear in it, too. The writer said he had written because he could never speak about what he knew. That others would pay the price for his words.”
Hauer hung on every syllable. “What else?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?”
“It was Latin, I told you! I couldn’t read it!”
“Latin,” Hauer mused, leaning back into his seat. “Who wrote the papers? Were they signed?”
Hans shrugged uncomfortably. “There wasn’t any name. Just a number.”
“A number?” Hauer’s eyes grew wide. “What number, Hans?”
“Seven, goddamnit! The lucky number. What a fucking joke. Now can we get out of here?”
Hauer shook his head slowly. “Hess,” he murmured. “It’s impossible. The restrictions, the endless searches. It can’t be.”
Hans ground his teeth angrily. “Captain, I know what you’re talking about, but right now I don’t care! I just want to know my wife is safe!”
Hauer laid a hand on his shoulder. “Where are these papers now?”
“At the apartment.”
“No! You made copies?”
“No, damn it! I don’t care about the papers anymore! We’re going to get Ilse now!”
Hauer pinned him against the seat with an arm of iron. “You saw Weiss, didn’t you? If you go charging into your apartment, the same thing could happen to you. And to Ilse.”
The memory of Weiss’s mutilated corpse brought a strange stillness over Hans. “What did happen to Weiss?”
Hauer sighed. “Someone got too impatient, pushed the doctor too far. Probably Luhr, Funk’s personal stormtrooper.” He shook his head. “Later tonight they’ll shoot his body full of cocaine and dump him in the Havel.”
“My God,” Hans breathed. “You saw it. You were there.” He balled his hands into fists.
“Hans! Get hold of yourself! I did not see Weiss tortured.”
“You knew about his chest!”
Hauer grimaced. “I overheard someone talking about it. It’s … it’s sort of a specialty of theirs. With certain Jews. Why did that boy join the department at all? You’d think a Jew would know better.”
Hans’s mouth fell open. “You’re saying it was Weiss’s fault someone mutilated him?”
“I’m saying if you’re a lamb you don’t run with the wolf pack!”
The memory of Weiss brought back the mark on Rolf’s head, the haunting eye from the Spandau papers. “What about the tattoo?” Hans asked quietly. “What does that mean?”
Hauer shook his head. “It’s complicated, Hans. The eye is a mark some people use—some very dangerous people. I’m not one of them. I just wanted you to remember the design.” He leaned his head across the seat. “Look behind my right ear. In the hair. If I had the tattoo, it would be there.”
Hans studied Hauer’s close-cropped scalp, but he saw no tattoo.
“I’m not one of them,” said Hauer, straightening up. “But until five minutes ago, they thought I was. We’ve got to find somewhere safe to hide, Hans, somewhere with a phone. Before we can get your wife, we’ve got to know what Funk and Luhr are up to. I’ve got a man inside the station I can call—”
“So let’s go upstairs! There are probably a dozen phones up in the lobby. I can call Ilse, warn her to get out!” Hans reached for the door handle, but Hauer stopped him again.
“We can’t, Hans. We’re in uniform. Everyone will be staring at the two beat-up cops using the pay phones. Funk’s men would find us in no time.”
Hans jerked his arm free. “Where, then? A friend’s house?”
“No. No friends, no family. It’s got to be untraceable. An empty house or … something.”
Slowly, almost mechanically, Hans removed his wallet from his pants pocket and took out a tattered white business card. He stared at it a moment, then handed it to Hauer.
“What’s this?” Hauer read aloud: “‘Benjamin Ochs, The Best Tailor in Berlin.’ You want to go to your tailor shop?”
“He’s not my tailor,” Hans said tersely.
“Eleven-fifty Goethestrasse. No one can trace you to this place?”
“Trust me.”
Hauer looked skeptical.
Hans turned away. The stress of being treated like an animal, caged and hunted, was congealing into something cold and hard in the pit of his stomach. With a guttural groan he slammed his open hand against the dashboard. “Get this fucking car moving!”
Hauer looked hard into Hans’s eyes, gauging the mettle there. “Right,” he said finally. He fired the engine and roared out of the hotel garage with tires squealing, making for the Goethestrasse.
EIGHT
10:25 P.M. Lützenstrasse: West Berlin
The men waiting within and without Ilse’s apartment building were not police. They were KGB agents sent to the Lützenstrasse by Colonel Ivan Kosov. Kosov himself waited impatiently in a second BMW parked at the end of the block. Kosov hated stakeouts. Long ago he had foolishly thought that once he attained sufficient rank he would be spared the monotony of these endless vigils. And perhaps one day he would. But tonight was one more in an endless series of proofs to the contrary. Exasperated, he reached for the radio microphone mounted on the auto’s dash.
“Report, One,” he said.
“The lobby’s clear,” crackled a metallic voice.
“Two?”
“Nothing in the hall. The door’s locked, no sound from inside.”
“Four?”
“Three’s with me. No sign of Apfel or the wife.”
“Stay awake,” Kosov said gruffly. “Out.”
Shit, he thought, how long will it take? Sitting in this ball-freezing cold, chattering over the short-range radios as if simply alternating frequencies could mask the Russian-accented commands ricocheting through the Berlin audio net like lines from a bad movie. He wished there were another way. But he knew there wasn’t.
Three floors above Kosov, the door to apartment 43 opened and two garishly made-up redheads stepped into the hallway. One locked the door while her young companion stared invitingly at the man standing at attention outside apartment 40. The young woman nudged her middle-aged companion, who chuckled and led the way over to the silent man.
“Na, mein Süsser,” Eva flirted in a husky voice. “All alone up here tonight?”
Taken aback by her directness, the Russian stared back in silence. She’s at least fifty, he thought, much too old for my taste. But you’re something else altogether, he thought, hungrily eyeing the younger woman’s cleavage. With a flash of surprise, he realized that she was the demure blonde he had seen enter apartment 43 twenty minutes earlier. He barely recognized her beneath the heavy makeup and wig. She can’t be more than twenty-five, he guessed, and breasts like a Georgian goddess …
“Guten Abend, Fräulein,” he said to the younger woman. “I think you looked much better before.”
Ilse felt her throat tighten.
“I think he’s set on you, Helga,” Eva said, laughing. She patted the Russian on his rear. “Too bad, dearie, little Helga’s booked for tonight. But you’re in luck. I know a dozen tricks this child’s never even heard of. What do you say?”
Abashed by the old tart’s boldness, the Russian went temporarily blank.
“Oh, forget it,” Eva said, pulling Ilse down the hall. “If you don’t know what you want, we don’t have time to wait.”
Kosov’s young agent watched the middle-aged redhead follow her shapely companion into the elevator cage. Eva yanked the lever that started the slow descent and then, still holding eye contact with the guard, pumped her fist lewdly up and down the iron rod. When the Russian colored in embarrassment, she hiked her bright skirt over a well-preserved thigh and burst into laughter.
As soon as the cage sank below the line of the floor, Eva cut her voice to a whisper. “Here comes the hard part. We were lucky that time. The odds just went down.”
Ilse clutched her friend’s arm. “You shouldn’t have come with me!”
“You’d never have made it by yourself, darling.”
“But you’re in danger too!”
Eva plucked a gob of mascara out of her eye. “I’m glad to do it. If I hadn’t had you to talk to for the last three years, I’d have gone mad in that tiny apartment.”
“But all your men friends—”
Eva’s heavily rouged face wrinkled in disgust. “Don’t even mention those bums. Don’t act like you don’t know what I do. You and Hans have always known, and you’ve never treated me any different than family. So shut up and take some help. We’re not out of this yet.”
The elevator screeched to an uncertain stop. Eva yanked open the screen and stormed through the lobby, cursing the elevator and every other mechanical device ever invented. With Ilse struggling along behind on a pair of Eva’s four-inch heels, the old barmaid clacked past the two Russians at the building’s entrance as if they did not exist.
“Halt!” yelled one of Kosov’s men as Ilse hurried past.
Ilse’s heart thudded in her chest.
The Russian caught hold of her elbow. “Hey, Fräulein,” he said, leaning close to her. “Why the hurry?”
Eva paused impatiently at the curb. She looked up and down the street, then walked back to the door. “Next time, sweetie,” she snapped, stepping protectively in front of Ilse. “We’ve got a party to go to.”
“It can wait,” said the young man, leering at his companion. “Stay here and keep us warm for a while. It’s cold out.”
“Colder by the minute, Arschloch,” Eva spat. “If we don’t get out of this wind in thirty seconds our tits will snap off.”
The Russian shed his smile like a snakeskin. His eyes glazed with a reptilian sheen. He took a step toward Eva.
“Forget it, Misha,” urged his companion. “They’re just whores.”
“Fucking filth,” the Russian muttered.
“Misha,” said his partner anxiously. “Remember Colonel Kosov.”
Misha took a long look at Eva as if to mark her for future retribution, then snorted and walked into the lobby. When he next looked outside, the two women were already across the street and halfway down the block, moving toward Colonel Kosov’s BMW.
Kosov had just lifted the microphone from the dash when he spied two prostitutes walking quickly up the Lützenstrasse.
“Report, One,” he said, half-watching them.
“Lobby still clear.”
“Two?”
“No movement inside the apartment.”
“Damn. Three and Four?”
“All clear here. No sign of him.”
The prostitutes reached the hood of the BMW, passed it.
“All positions,” said Kosov, “I have two women passing me from your direction. Anyone see where they entered the street?”
The radio squawked as three signals competed for reproduction. “Four here, sir. They came from the apartment building. Looked like two whores to us.”
Kosov felt a tic in his cheek. He turned away as the headlights of a passing car shone through the BMW. When he looked again he saw one of the women raise an arm and flag the car to a stop. That’s odd, he thought, a taxi here at this hour. And picking up a couple of streetwalkers …
“Two here,” crackled the radio. “Those prostitutes came from number forty-three, this floor. Opposite my position. One of them even propositioned me.”
Kosov struck the dash with his fist. “One of them is the wife! Misha, to the car! Two, enter number forty and proceed!” Kosov looked frantically for an alley in which to turn the BMW around. With cars parked both sides of the street he had no room to make a U.
Inside the taxi, Eva spoke rapidly. “Perfect timing, Ernst darling. Now zoom around the corner and stop as fast as you can.” She looked back over her shoulder. “Ilse, when he stops, you jump right out and get into the alley there. If they keep after me, you’ve made it. If they don’t—”
“Who were those men, Eva? Police?”
“Stinking Russians, sweetie. Didn’t you catch the name Misha?”
The taxi jounced onto the curb. “Eva, how can I thank—”
“Go!” Eva cried, squeezing Ilse’s hand. “Jump! Go!”
The screech of tires drowned Ilse’s reply as the taxi sped down the Gervinusstrasse. Ilse ducked into the alley just as Kosov’s BMW careened around the corner and surged after Eva and her cabbie friend. She collapsed against the cold concrete wall of an office building, her heart beating wildly.
Ten seconds later a second BMW raced after the first.
Turning her back to the icy wind, Ilse doffed the sluttish clothes Eva had given her and tossed the wig into an overflowing garbage bin. Now she wore the conservative casuals she’d had on when she first spotted the BMW. Habit made her hang on to one costume accessory Eva had thrust into her hand—a large plastic purse. As she debated whether to keep Eva’s flashy coat, Ilse heard the rumble of a heavy automobile engine. Seconds later a pair of headlights nosed into the far end of the alley.
Ilse snatched up the discarded clothes and climbed into the only hiding place she could see—the garbage bin. The smell was terrible, cloyingly sweet. She held her nose with one hand and covered her eyes with the other. The powerful purr of the BMW edged closer, a tiger trying to spook its prey. Ilse knotted herself into a tight ball and prayed. It took little imagination to guess how ruthless the men in the black autos must be. The young man who had propositioned her at the front door—the one called Misha—his eyes had glazed almost to sightlessness when Eva insulted him. Like fish eyes, Ilse thought. She shuddered.
The BMW picked up speed as it approached the garbage bin, weaving occasionally to probe every inch of the alley with its halogen eyes. The walls of the trash bin vibrated from the noise. Ilse shivered from terror and bitter cold. She had no doubt that if the car engine were shut off, the Russians would find her by the chattering of her teeth.
Suddenly, with a scream of protesting rubber, the big black sedan roared out of the alley. Ilse scrambled up out of the garbage and dug into Eva’s purse for her shoes. Her hand closed over something soft and familiar. She peered into the bag. Folded into a thick wad at its bottom were three hundred Deutschemarks in small bills. Scrawled across the top banknote in red lipstick were the words: ILSE, USE IT!
Stuffing the bills back into the purse, Ilse climbed out of the bin and edged a little way down the alley. Damn all of this, she thought angrily. If Eva can get me this far, I can do the rest. In less than fifteen seconds she had analyzed her options and made a decision. She kicked off the stiletto heels Eva had loaned her, pulled on her own flats, and started running toward the hazy glow at the opposite end of the alley.
10:30 P.M. Tiergarten District: West Berlin
The moment Harry Richardson raised his hand to knock on Klaus Seeckt’s door, the door jerked open to the length of the chain latch. “Go away, Major!” said a voice from the dark crack.
The door slammed shut. Harry moved to the side of the door, out of the light. “Open the door, Klaus.”
“Please go away, Harry!”
More puzzled than angry, Harry flattened himself against the wall. Normally he telephoned Klaus before coming over, but tonight he hadn’t wanted to give the East German a chance to postpone the meeting. Feeling exposed on the lighted stoop, he pounded his fist against the heavy oak. “I’m not in uniform, for God’s sake! Open up! Now!”
The bolt shot back with a bang. Klaus pulled the door open but remained out of sight in the dark foyer.
“Take it easy,” Harry said. “We’ll play it as an official visit. However you want.”
Klaus’s voice dropped in volume but doubled in urgency. “Harry, get out of here! They’re watching us!”
As Harry’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he recognized the stubby barrel of a Makarov pistol in Klaus’s hand. The East German wore only his bathrobe, but his ashen face and the quivering pistol gave him a frighteningly lethal aspect. Harry glanced back at the street to try to spot watchers. He saw none, but he knew that didn’t mean anything.
“I tried to keep you out,” Klaus said resignedly. “Remember that.”
Writing off Klaus’s pistol to paranoia, Harry slipped past the East German and started toward the living room. With a hopeless sigh Klaus shut the door and locked it behind them.
When Harry reached the living room, he saw that Klaus was indeed being watched—but from inside the house, not out. Five men wearing dark business suits sat leisurely on sofas and chairs arranged around a glass-topped coffee table. Harry looked back over his shoulder at Klaus. The German hovered ghostlike in the shadows of the foyer, the Makarov slack against his leg. Harry considered bolting, but Klaus hadn’t tried it, so perhaps things weren’t so bad. Or perhaps, Harry thought uneasily, Klaus didn’t run because he knows the front door is covered from the outside.
Harry turned back to the living room. None of the men around the table looked older than thirty, and no one had said anything yet. Was that good or bad? Suddenly the oldest-looking of the group stood.
“Good evening, Major,” he said in heavily accented English. “What can we do for you?”
The young man’s accent was unmistakably Russian. There would be no attempt to pass these men off as other than what they were, Harry realized. A very bad sign. He cleared his throat. “And by what rank do I address you, Comrade?” he asked in flawless Russian.
The Russian smiled, seeming to relish the idea of a cat-and-mouse game. “You speak excellent Russian, Major. And I am but a lowly captain, to answer your question. Captain Dmitri Rykov.”
“What are you doing so far from home, Captain?”
“Am I so far from home?” Rykov asked gamely. “A debatable point. But I’m protecting the interests of my country, of course.”
The young man’s candor was an unveiled threat. “I see,” Harry said warily. “I also note that we have a mutual friend,” he observed, trying to shift the focus away from himself.
In the foyer Klaus turned deathly pale.
“Yes,” Rykov agreed, giving Klaus a predatory glance. “This is proving to be an enlightening evening. Take his gun, Andrei. No foolish heroics please, Klaus. It’s not your style.”