Spandau Phoenix

  “Did he have any idea where they were headed?” F asked.

  Rose grinned. “That ever-popular vacation spot, the Republic of South Africa. Travelling as father and son. The forger also made passports for two older guys who were with Hauer and Apfel, but travelling separately. He didn’t know their true identities or their destination, but he gave us the names and numbers on all four fake passports.”

  “Great. Who else knows that?”

  “If our luck is holding, almost nobody. I called the Berlin police presidium and used every authority short of the president to block the relay of that information to Abschnitt 53. I also let them know in no uncertain terms that I’d know if they tried.”

  Harry sat in silence for nearly a full minute. “South Africa,” he said finally. “Is there anything that connects any of what’s happened to South Africa in any way?”

  “As a matter of fact, there is. My little high-tech offensive included pulling the telephone toll records of certain West Berlin police facilities. We found several calls from the police presidium going out to different numbers in South Africa. Some of those calls were made from the office of the prefect himself.”

  “Holy shit. Do you have names to go with the numbers?”

  “I should have them within twenty-four hours. For once I happen to have an exotic contact—a major in the South African secret service.”

  “That’s not soon enough, Colonel.”

  “That’s as soon as we can get it, Major—and that’s if we’re lucky.”

  Harry stood. “You’ve got to get me down there, Colonel. Whatever’s going down, it’s going to happen there.”

  Rose shook his head. “I can’t send you, Harry.”

  “Why not?”

  “You heard me. That’s not our turf or even close. We can’t prove that this thing endangers South Africa, and we’re not too popular down there right now, in case you haven’t noticed. Not since sanctions were put into effect and half our industry pulled out of there. The Army’s not going to let me send you down from here just because the Soviets are interested.”

  “They kidnapped me, for Christ’s sake. There’s something big going on, Colonel, I can feel it. The reason you can’t find out anything about this Phoenix is that it isn’t based here. it must be in South Africa. This isn’t just some legacy from the past … Can’t you feel it?”

  “I feel it,” Detective Schneider said softly.

  Rose drained his second whiskey, stood, and laid his stubby hands flat on the desktop. “I feel it too, Harry, but my hands are tied. I’ve got half of Bonn and all of Berlin breathing down my neck to prevent any kind of international incident. Officially, I can’t do a thing.”

  Harry stared curiously at Rose. He sensed some implied communication, but he couldn’t quite pin it down. Suddenly the answer came clear as ice water. “Grant me two weeks leave, Colonel,” he said. “I’ve got it coming.”

  Rose grinned. “That you do, Major. That you do.”

  “Can you get me a military flight?”

  “Negative.”

  “But it’s probably a fifteen-hour flight by commercial carrier!”

  “Eleven on Lufthansa,” Rose corrected. “Fourteen via South African Air.”

  “That’s still too long!”

  “You’re lucky to get a flight at all, Harry. Most airlines only fly there once a week. Your flight leaves Frankfurt at two p.m. tomorrow.”

  Harry shook his head in exasperation, then grinned in spite of himself. “By the time I get there, I want some names tied to those telephone numbers.”

  “You’ll have ‘em.” Abruptly, Rose slammed an open hand down on his desk. His face showed puzzlement, exhaustion, frustration. “Goddammit Harry, what the hell is going on? Do the Russians really care, that much about something that happened fifty years ago?”

  Harry looked thoughtful. “I know what you mean. Gorbachev has a hell of a lot bigger things on his plate than fifty-year-old mysteries. I wouldn’t think the truth about Hess would help glasnost any.”

  “The Russian memory is long,” Schneider said gravely. “And Gorbachev has limited influence over KGB.”

  Harry glanced at the German. “Maybe. But we’re missing the forest here. We’re not talking ancient history. The Berlin police wouldn’t give two shits about something like that. We’re talking about a tie between the past—Hess’s past Spandau Phoenix and the present. The here and now. Maybe Zinoviev is connection.”

  “Whatever the connection is,” said Rose, “I’ve got a feeling it’s pretty goddamn dirty. I don’t have to tell you how many friggin’ Nazis our own government shielded from justice.”

  Harry looked hard at both men for a few moments; then he reached into his pocket, drew something out, and tossed it on Rose’s desk. The fragment of Goltz’s scalp landed upside-down with a plop, like a wet scab. Black flecks of blood stained the file on Rose’s desk. The colonel reached out to pick it up, then jerked back his hand in disgust. “What the fuck is that?”

  “Goltz,” Harry explained. “That was a shaved spot a little above and behind his right ear. Turn it over, Colonel.”

  Rose looked up at Harry with an expression that suggested he might be wondering if Harry kept a Vietcong ear necklace in his dresser at home. “I didn’t have a camera,” Harry muttered.

  Rose took a ballpoint pen from a stand and flicked the shrivelled swatch of skin over, revealing the tattoo it bore. He made no sound as he studied it, but Schneider sucked in his breath so sharply that both men turned to him. “You’ve seen this mark before?” Rose asked.

  The German nodded. “Yes. It’s hard to detect. Once the hair grows back in, the mark is invisible.”

  Harry looked curiously at the German.

  “What the hell’s it mean?” Rose demanded.

  Schneider shrugged. “Certain members of a semi-secret political group wear that mark. The group is called Der Bruderschaft—the Brotherhood. Quite a few policemen belong to it. I don’t know what the tattoo means. I always thought it was just a badge of membership. Now and then you’ll see a policeman with a bandage behind his ear. They always make some excuse, but after a while you realize what it is.”

  “Sounds like some kind of friggin’ cult thing,” Rose declared. “Is it like the Aryan Brotherhood in the States?”

  Harry shook his head. “The Aryan Brotherhood is made up of convicts, not police. They’re cop killers.”

  “How many Berlin cops have this mark? A dozen? A hundred?”

  “More than a hundred,” Schneider said thoughtfully. “But I never realized that it extended into the DDR. That’s very disturbing.”

  “You’re goddamn right it is,” Rose agreed.

  “Detective,” Harry said softly, “do all members of Der Bruderschaft have the tattoo? Or just a select few? A few who might belong to some truly secret group, for instance.”

  “Like Phoenix, you mean,” mused Schneider. “No, I don’t think all the members have the tattoo.”

  Rose was staring strangely at Schneider. When Harry realized why, he couldn’t help staring himself. The big German scowled back at them. “No, I don’t have a tattoo under my hair,” he growled. “And the first man who asks to look is going to spend the night in the hospital.”

  When Rose looked as if he might ask, Harry stood quickly. “Thanks again for saving my life, Detective. If you fellows don’t mind, I’m going to crash until takeoff time tomorrow.”

  Rose finally shifted his attention to Harry. “Just remember,” he warned, “you’ll be going in blind down there. What I told you about the British still holds: no contact at all, not even with your personal connections. No one’s above being manipulated by his government—especially ministers and lords.”

  “Not even me,” said Harry, and smiled wryly. “You worried about James Bond catching up with me, Colonel?”

  “No. I’m worried about some goddamn George Smiley type. A fat little guy with glasses who’s five steps ahead of us already. Somebody who
knows all about whatever happened back in Germany in 1941.”

  Harry ruminated on this for a moment. “By the way, Colonel, Ivan Kosov told me he’d like to collaborate on the Hess case.”

  “When hell freezes over,” Rose muttered. “We’ll get to the bottom of this well ourselves.”

  Harry grinned. “That’s what I told him you’d say.”

  Schneider stood and offered his prodigious hand. “Glück haben, Major.”

  “Danke, ” Harry replied.

  “Get the hell out of here,” Rose bellowed. “I’ll brief you before you fly out.”

  Harry sauntered out, returning Clary’s sharp salute as he passed through the outer office.

  “What do you think?” Rose asked, when Harry had gone.

  “I think I should go with him,” Schneider said bluntly.

  “Well, you can’t. I need you here. You’ve got a lot do before you get any rest, mister.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as helping me rout out the scum that’s holed up in that police station.”

  Schneider smiled coldly. “Gut.”

  “But first I want you to get over to that police sergeant’s apartment. Apfel, right? Talk to the guy’s wife. We should’ve covered it hours ago, but I couldn’t spare you.” Schneider stepped to the door and pulled on his heavy wool overcoat. “And Schneider?”

  “Yes, Colonel?”

  “Sorry about that tattoo business. I’m on edge. If you stumble into trouble, don’t play hero, okay? I know you don’t like Americans messing around in your backyard, but solo’s no way to fly on something like this. You get me?”

  Schneider nodded, but as his broad back disappeared through the office door, Rose wondered how sincere the gesture really was.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  6.12 P.m. Soviet Sector. East Berlin, GDR

  In a black BMW parked two blocks from the red-and-white border posts of the Sonnenallee checkpoint, Colonel Ivan Kosov sat in silent rage while a man in a two-thousand dollar Savile Row suit berated him for blatant incompetence. The man was Yuri Borodin, himself a colonel and one of the brightest stars of the Twelfth Department of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB. Kosov hated everything about Borodin—his undisguised arrogance, his hand-tailored clothing, his aristocratic family background and manner of speech, his meteoric rise to high rank—everything. It made the situation all the more difficult to bear.

  “So you think your men can handle a simple surveillance job?” Borodin asked coldly.

  “Da,” Kosov grunted.

  Borodin looked out of the car window distractedly. “I’m afraid I do not share your faith. Major Richardson will go to US Army Headquarters for debriefing, then he’ll move. Wherever he goes, that is where the missing Polizei officers and your Spandau papers are. If indeed papers are what the young German found. If it is papers, I’d, bet my career that the Americans have them already.”

  I hope you do, thought Kosov “What makes you think the Americans have caught them?“‘he asked. “And what makes you think Major Richardson was even working on the Spandau case when my men captured him?”

  Borodin switched to an upper-class English accent. “Instinct, old boy,” he said primly.

  Kosov wrinkled his lip in disgust. “You sound like an Oxford professor with a pipe stuck up his ass.”

  “And how would you know what an Oxford professor sounds like?” Borodin needled. “I’m just practising the King’s English, Comrade. I’ll probably be needing it in the next few days.”

  Someone tapped on the smoked-glass window on the driver’s side of the BMW. Kosov cranked down the window. Captain Dmitri Rykov stuck his head into the window. “They’ve taken him to US headquarters,” Rykov informed them, eyeing Borodin with curiosity.

  “I’ll be off, then,” Borodin said lightly.

  “Where are you going?” asked Kosov.

  “To pick up Major Richardson when he leaves army headquarters. You don’t really think I trust your chaps to stay on him, do you? No offense intended, of course.”

  “But how will you get there?”

  Borodin smiled. “In this car, of course.”

  “But this is my personal car!” Kosov exploded.

  “Now, now, Comrade,” Borodin said. “Relax. This car belongs to the people, doesn’t it? I need a car—this one’s available. You’ll get it back eventually. Now, out of the car. I must be on my way.”

  Kosov hauled himself out of the vehicle and slammed the door behind him. Borodin didn’t even notice. He roared up to the checkpoint, not the slightest bit nervous about his false papers. Borodin was Twelfth Department, and Twelfth Department always got the best.

  Dmitri Rykov stared dumbfounded at his superior. He had never seen Ivan Kosov allow someone to run roughshod over him like that. “Who was that man, Colonel?”

  Kosov stared after his receding BMW. “Someone you will get to know very well in the next few days, Dmitri.” He turned to Rykov. “You still have your travel papers?”

  “Yes, Comrade Colonel.”

  “Good. I want you to cross into the American sector and go to US Army Headquarters. There you will find the man you just saw steal my BMW. You’re to follow him and report his every movement back to me. Do you have any credit cards?”

  Rykov nodded with enthusiasm.

  “American Express?”

  “Gold Card.”

  Kosov scowled. “Captain Rykov, I am authorizing you to spend whatever is necessary to follow that man wherever he goes.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Anywhere in the world,” Kosov added.

  Rykov’s chest swelled as he absorbed the import of Kosov’s words. This had to be something big. Something that could make a career.

  “His name,” said Kosov quietly, “is Yuri Borodin. He’s a colonel in the Twelfth Department.”

  Rykov paled.

  “Do you wish me to find someone else, Captain?”

  Rykov cleared his throat. “Nyet, Comrade Colonel. Dmitri Rykov is your man.”

  “Then get your ass over to the checkpoint and find out what cover Borodin used to cross. I’ll call a car for you.” Kosov laid a hand on Rykov’s shoulder. “Keep your eyes open for someone named Zinoviev. He’s either a very old man or a very dead one. Call me as often as you can. I’ll have more information on Borodin for you.”

  “Thank you, Comrade Colonel!”

  “And Dmitri … about that tattoo. The eye on Goltz’s head?” Kosov lowered his voice. “It is the symbol of a one-eyed man. I don’t know his name, but whoever he is, he’s at the centre of this case. The Americans don’t know anything about him, and I don’t think Borodin does either. So if you happen to meet a man with one eye—a glass eye, or even a patch—you are to call me immediately. If you even hear of a one-eyed man involved with this case, you call me.”

  Rykov looked confused, but he nodded.

  “Now go!

  Ignoring his bruised leg, Rykov sprinted after the BMW.

  Kosov lit a Camel cigarette and took a deep drag. He held in the acrid smoke for a long time before he exhaled. He felt better now. Much better. When he smiled, the expression made him look even uglier than he was.

  6.30 P.m. #30 Lützenstrasse

  Ivan Kosov’s black-clad assassin padded softy into Ilse’s apartment building and slipped into the stairwell. He was looking forward to paying back the German whore who had taunted him yesterday, and he knew a hundred ways to extract his pound of flesh. He only hoped that the old tart’s young companion would be home with her. She could prove very entertaining before she died. It never ceased to amaze Misha how cooperative women became after only the briefest acquaintance with his knife.

  Three floors above him, Eva Beers leaned toward her bathroom mirror and pulled a stained bandage away from her cheek. The laceration looked considerably worse than it had twelve hours before. The skin hung slack in spite of her best attempts to smile or grimace. Last night, when she had first got back to her apartment, she?
??d discovered that the lower half of her left cheek did not seem to be moving normally. It disturbed her, but she put the problem down to shock. Eva had been in her share of bar brawls, and drawing on this experience she did a fair job of patching the deep gash inflicted by the young Russian. But now she worried. The bleeding had long since stopped, but the stubborn flesh to the left of her mouth still hung lifeless, like that of a stroke victim.

  Replacing the bandage, she decided to ignore Kosov’s warning and seek proper medical assistance. She slipped on a housecoat and walked out to the front room of her modest apartment to check on Ernst. The tough old cabbie lay snoring on the sofa. He had taken a bad beating and needed a doctor almost as badly as Eva did. She leaned over him, listening to his irregular breaths. His bruised and battered face made her furious again. She had expected the Russians to come back for her as soon as they realized she had lied about Ilse, but they hadn’t. Lucky for them, too, she thought. Because for the remainder of last night and most of today, some of her heavily built friends from her Ratskeller days had hung around the apartment just in case the Russians showed up. An hour ago Eva had thanked them and sent them on their way, glad that no further trouble had visited.

  Kissing Ernst lightly on his forehead, she went back to her bedroom and pulled the door shut. In her bureau drawer she found the number of an old general practitioner who not so long ago had run a quiet practice catering to smugglers, addicts, and young girls in trouble. I hope he’s still in business, she thought. She had no patience with emergency rooms—too many forms to fill out, too many questions to answer. She left the doctor’s number on the bureau and went into the bathroom to make up her face.