“What have I done? What do you want?”
Without a single word from Smuts, she had made the mental leap from resistance to abject servitude. She sought only to know what was required of her, and she would comply. Yet still the machine fired. Deeper than sound, she sensed a vibration barely, within the realm of human perception, the vibration of accelerated electrons focussed into a beam that, even when guided by healing hands, poured deadly poison into living cells. The sound came again and again, until finally, in a silence made deeper by Ilse’s utter despair, Smuts stepped around the shield, the cable trigger in his hand, and began to speak.
“Frau Apfel,” he said. “I don’t believe in messing about. Not where my job is concerned. You have certain information I need, and you are going to provide it.”
Ilse tried to nod beneath the head strap.
“During the past several minutes, I have exposed you to the maximum allowable three-year dosage of radiation for a nuclear plant worker. In an hour or so, you will probably experience some nausea and vomiting, but let us hope that is all you must endure. Far worse outcomes are still possible. Blindness, burns … other things.” Smuts held a finger in Ilse’s face. “What happens next, Frau Apfel, is up to you.”
Ilse stared with wild eyes, the Afrikaner crouched and laid the cable trigger on the floor. Then he stood, loosened a bolt on the housing above Ilse, and lowered the hammerhead barrel to a position six inches above her abdomen. He tightened the bolt again, locking it in place.
“Frau Apfel, I ain going to remove the gag now, and you will cooperate fully. I have focussed the X-ray beam on the approximate area of your ovaries. Radiation has an enhanced effect on such cells, cells that are still dividing, as it were. Exposure in this region could seriously jeopardize your chances of ever having children.” Smuts grinned. “Are you ready to talk?”
Ilse’s eyes widened in horror. Her baby! She began to shiver uncontrollably. Her urinary sphincter let go, flooding both her dress and the table. Smuts drew back from the pungent smell. As he reached for the handkerchief gag, tears welled up in Ilse’s eyes and streamed down onto the table.
“Listen,” said the Afrikaner, his voice slightly softer “As of this moment you are still all right. Only if you refuse to answer will you be injured. The dosage you have received so far would only be excessive for a woman already pregnant.”
Ilse’s body convulsed against the straps. She fought like an animal, expending every ounce of her remaining strength. Smuts—who had used this interrogation technique on many previous occasions—could not recall anyone resisting so fiercely once the prospect of escape had been offered. One never knew who the tough ones would be, he reflected. When Ilse finally went limp, he loosened the. strap at her head and carefully removed the gag.
“Now,” he said. “I need to know some things about your husband. Can you hear me?”
Ilse’s eyes opened. Slowly she focussed on Smuts’s face.
“Good. Your husband did not take the plane he was instructed to take to Johannesburg. Nor has he checked into the hotel he was ordered to stay in. By the terms of the agreement, he has already forfeited your life. Why would he do that? Doesn’t he want to save you?”
Ilse closed her eyes. More tears dribbled out. When she opened her eyes again, Smuts was shaking the cable trigger in her face. “Does your husband have any Jewish blood in his family?”
Ilse shook her head, her eyes blank in despair. Smuts stepped momentarily out of her field of vision, then reappeared with a damp rag. He squeezed a few drops of water into her mouth.
“Now,” he said. “No Jewish blood?”
“No,” Ilse coughed.
“What about friends? Does he have any Jewish friends? Has Hans ever been to Israel?”
Ilse shook her head.
“You’re sure? What about England? Or anywhere else in Britain?”
“What is your husband’s connection with Captain Dieter Hauer?”
Ilse hesitated. “Fr-friend,” she rasped. It was difficult to concentrate hard enough to lie, but she sensed that to reveal Hans’s blood relationship to Hauer might somehow be dangerous.
“Are you aware that Captain Hauer works with the German counter-terror unit GSG-9?”
Ilse silently mouthed the word no.
“Undoubtedly your husband is.” Smuts clucked his tongue thoughtfully. “I want you to tell me about the Spandau papers. Did your husband show them to anyone before you gave them to your grandfather?”
Ilse shook her head again.
“Do you understand these questions?”
She nodded.
“Think carefully, Frau Apfel. Think about the names you saw in the Spandau papers. Did you see the name Alfred Horn?”
“No.”
“You didn’t recognize the name when Herr Horn introduced himself last night? You were staring at his eye-his artificial eye. Why were you so interested in that? Did you come here expecting to find a man with one eye?”
“I couldn’t help staring.”
“What names were in the Spandau papers?”
Ilse’s voice cracked as she spoke. “Hess, of course. Hitler. Hermann Göring. Reinhard Heydrich, I think.”
Smuts nodded. “Did you see the name Zinoviev?” he asked softly. “It’s a Russian name.”
Ilse thought a moment, shook her head.
“Helmut? Did you see that name?” Smuts shook the trigger in her face. “Did you?”
“No.”
“Frau Apfel,” he said coldly, “if you’re thinking of informing Herr Horn of what happened here this morning, I tell you now to abandon the idea. Whatever his reaction might be, I assure you that it is within my power to have you back on this table before anything could be done to me. Do you understand?”
“Oh God!” Ilse wailed, her voice choking into a sob. “You bastard! You’ve hurt my baby! You’ve killed my baby!”
Smuts’s eyes widened. “You are pregnant now?”
“You know that! I said so on the tape!” Ilse squeezed her swollen eyes shut in anguish. She did not feel Smuts unbuckling the leather straps; only when she felt herself lifted from the table did she look again. The Afrikaner carried her over to the lead shield, then behind it to where the tall, rectangular X-ray machine stood with its glowing dials and metres.
“Look!” he said angrily. “Look here!” His tanned hand pointed to a scalloped black knob. “This displays MA—milliamperes. It’s the measure of radiation.” He moved his bind to another dial. KV—Kilovolts. It’s the measure of power driving the tube. Look, woman!”
Ilse looked. Both dials were set at zero. She coughed and rubbed her eyes, fighting down waves of nausea.
“Do you understand?” Smuts asked. “I never heard the tape you made, but it doesn’t matter. You have received no radiation! You are all right. Your child is unhurt!”
Ilse looked into the Afrikaner’s eyes for deception, but saw none. “Why?” she stammered.
“I protect Herr Horn, Frau Apfel. At any cost. I had to know that you would tell the truth. And you did, didn’t you?”
Ilse nodded, wiping her face on her blouse.
“Good. Now get back to your room and clean yourself up. Herr Horn is not to see you like this.” His eyes fixed Ilse with frightening intensity. “But you remember what that table felt like. When Herr Horn asks you to do something, you do it, no matter how crazy it might sound. Especially at tonight’s meeting. Remember your child, Frau Apfel. I can have you back on that table any time I decide. Any time!”
Unable to restrain herself any longer, Ilse clenched her stomach with both hands, doubled over, and vomited on the Afrikaner’s boots.
Shaking with rage, Smuts stormed out and went in search of his Zulu driver, leaving Ilse coughing on the floor. He could not believe he had to put up with such outrages. Perhaps after tonight’s business had been concluded, Horn would see that the best policy was to kill the girl and be done with it. The husband could be killed as soon as he turned over the S
pandau papers, and the Berlin police could take care of the girl’s grandfather at their leisure. Things were so simple, if people would only focus on the facts. As Smuts passed through the spectacular gallery rooms, he tried in vain to ignore the stench rising from his boots.
9.58 a.m. Tempelhof Airport. American Sector, West Berlin, CRG
Detective Julius Schneider climbed out of the Iroquois helicopter gunship and shook his head in wonder. Colonel Rose, bundled to the eyeballs in a goosedown parka, stood on the tarmac beside a drab Army Ford. Sergeant Clary waited faithfully at the wheel. Rose’s face was clean shaven, but his eyes were red and swollen. He waved Schneider into the Ford. Pressing his hat to his head to keep the icy wind from blowing it off, the big German ran to the car and climbed in.
Rose skipped the formalities. “The shit has hit the fan, Schneider. Remember my FBI guy? The one who was going to get that Zinoviev file for us?”
Schneider nodded.
“Well, he got it. He Fed-Exed a copy to me at nine-thirty this morning.” Rose shook his head. “Ten minutes later he was arrested on charges of espionage. His computer query on Zinoviev apparently rang some kind of warning bell at Langley, and that set the dogs on him. I guess the FBI computers aren’t as secure as the Bureau likes to think they are.”
“What was in this Zinoviev file?” Schneider asked.
“We won’t know till tomorrow when I get the file. If I get the file. If the FBI knows he shipped it, they can probably stop it before it gets here. If it does get here, I’ve got Ivan Kosov waiting to double-check what he can in the KGB files.”
Schneider scowled. “Why do you need Kosov?”
“When my buddy called, he told me a little about the Zinoviev file, Schneider. He said the file claims that the United States, Britain, and the Russians have all known for years that Prisoner Number Seven was not Rudolf Hess.”
Schneider’s eyes narrowed.
“I asked him why, if that was true, the Russians had kept quiet about it all these years. You know what he told me? He said it didn’t matter what the Russians knew about Hess, because in 1943 Winston Churchill blackmailed Stalin into silence.”
Schneider looked bewildered. “What do you mean? Blackmailed him with what?”
Rose shrugged. “My guy said it had to do with Zinoviev’s part in Hess’s mission, but that it was too complicated to explain on the phone. He said I wouldn’t believe it when I saw it, but that the Russians were the good guys in this mess. I told him I would believe it, and that I thought the Brits were still neck-deep in some kind of stinking coverup.” Rose’s eyes flickered. “He told me I might be right, Schneider. But I guess we’ll have to wait for our copy of the Zinoviev file to find out.”
“Where is your new partner now?” Schneider asked.
Rose hooked his thumb toward Tempelhof’s observation deck, eighty metres away. Above the rail Schneider saw a solitary figure wearing a hat and a raincoat, the only person braving the cold of the deck. “There he is,” Rose said. “A week ago I’d have considered it sacrilege to bring that bastard to the home of the Berlin Airlift. Today I trust him more than some of my own people.”
Schneider looked sceptical. “Why are you here now?”
“To give you a little tactical update, my friend. One hour ago Prefect Funk arrested one of your brother officers on espionage charges. Seems this guy was passing secret information to the British government.”
“Scheisse!”
Rose nodded in disgust. “You should regard everything we knew as of this morning—including the names on Hauer and Apfel’s false passports—as blown to the Brits. If you get anywhere near those cops, Schneider, you keep your eyes peeled for British spooks.”
Rose looked out the window at an F-16 fighter parked in a concrete revetment twenty metres away. “One more thing,” he said. “Kosov told me to tell you to watch your back. He wouldn’t tell me why. I think he’s in the same spot I am, Schneider. He doesn’t know who to trust. He wants to help me, but he’s being muzzled from above. I think he’s waiting for some kind of clearance to come clean with me.”
Schneider grunted. It wasn’t easy for a German to see any Russian in a positive light. “Don’t trust him too much, Colonel,” he said. “Kosov would sacrifice you without a thought.”
“You worry about your own ass,” Rose advised. “Kosov’s got enough to do without yanking my chain. Moscow went nuts when they found out about Axel Goltz’s mutiny. The KGB is interrogating every Stasi agent in Berlin, trying to figure out what’s going on. If they crack this Phoenix thing, they’ll be lining those tattooed bastards up against the Wall by the dozen and passing out blindfolds and cigarettes.”
Rose punched a stiff forefinger into Schneider’s barrel chest. “If you find Hauer and Apfel, you bring ‘em back here with the papers. Hauer’s probably the only guy who can straighten this mess out now. And those Spandau papers are the only thing that could buy my ass out of the sling. Oh yeah, one more thing. If you happen to find the guy who killed Harry Richardson”—Rose smacked the car window with the meaty end of his fist—“you have my permission to gut and skin the son of a bitch. Briefing concluded, Detective.”
Schneider smiled coldly. “Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Oberst.”
He climbed out of the Ford and clambered into the waiting gunship. He was still 150 miles from Frankfurt Airport, and thirteen air-hours away from South Africa. Plenty of time left to figure out how he was going to find Hauer, and plenty of time to figure out what he was going to say when he did. The questions he could not get out of his mind were the ones Rose had barely touched on. What was Phoenix, really? Was it a secret subsect of Der Bruderschaft? If so, if it was a neo-fascist group that had penetrated both the police and political hierarchies, Schneider feared not only for his police department, but for Germany itself. The primary goal of all neo-Nazis was German reunification—it was easy enough to see that a premature grab for that goal could suit their goals, but it would mean catastrophe for Germany. Russia might be flirting with glasnost and perestroika, but faced with the spectre of two fascist-led Germanies pressing for reunification, the nation that had lost twenty million citizens to Hitler’s armies might respond with unimaginable force and fury.
Kosov’s warning to Colonel Rose about “watching his back” brought Schneider back to more immediate concerns. Who besides Kosov even knew that he was involved in the Phoenix case? Schneider remembered Harry Richardson’s mutilated corpse baking in the overheated, apartment. Did Kosov know the animal who had killed him? Schneider thought of the mysterious B written in Richardson’s blood. Had Kosov been able to read its significance? If so, why couldn’t he give Rose a name to go with his warning? Could Harry Richardson have been killed by a Russian only an hour after Kosov released him at the Wall? Schneider knew Colonel Rose saw the British as the villains in this case, but he suspected it was somehow more complicated than that.
As a homicide detective, he had found that 99 percent of all the simplest mysteries could be solved by reasoning out explanations for any event. But this mystery—he had felt from the beginning—fell into the 1 percent category.
10.29 a.m. Frankfurt Main International Airport
Twelfth Department agent Yuri Borodin sat eating a Wienerschnitzel in the large restaurant overlooking the main runway of Flughafen Frankfurt. Every two minutes a huge jet would swoop down from left to right across the giant picture window and settle silently onto the tarmac. Borodin had seen everything from Japan Airlines 747s to Aeroflot airliners to US Air Force C-130s.
To the right of Borodin’s Wienerschnitzel lay a red file a half inch thick. It contained a concise summation of the KGB file on Rudolf Hess, a multi-volume collection of data amassed over fifty years. A courier from Moscow had delivered the file to Borodin at the Frankfurt Airport-Sheraton thirty minutes ago. Borodin had scanned its contents with only desultory interest. The file described a convoluted plot to kill the British heads of state during World War Two, a plot involving high-ranking Brit
ish Nazi sympathizers, the British royal family, and a British communist cadre manipulated by a tsarist Russian named Zinoviev and a young German agent named Helmut Steuer. It told of the KGB’s certainty that Spandau’s Prisoner Number Seven was not Rudolf Hess but his wartime double, and of that double’s murder just five weeks ago. KGB Chairman Zemenek stated his belief that the killing had been done by an assassin paid by Sir Neville Shaw of Britain’s MI-5. Borodin admired the nerve and resourcefulness shown by Vasili Zinoviev and Helmut Steuer, but the rest of the story essentially bored him.
Except for the part about the blackmail. When Borodin saw how Churchill had forced Joseph Stalin to keep silent about the Hess affair, he had come instantly alert. Because he saw then how important the recently discovered Spandau papers could be to KGB Chairman Zemenek. The Spandau papers could conceivably clear the way for the Kremlin to tell the world what it knew about British collaboration with the Nazis during the war, and thus force them to share responsibility for the Holocaust. Borodin also saw that if he were the man who recovered those papers, his already advanced career would take a critical leap forward.
He had only one problem. At the end of the Hess file he had found a message inserted by the chairman of the KGB. It said:
Borodin: General Secretary Gorbachev currently exploring possibility of collaborating with US State Department regarding joint disclosure of the truth about Hess’s mission. Do nothing to antagonize any US operatives you may encounter in pursuit of the Spandau papers. British operatives fair game. Zemenek
Yuri Borodin wiped his mouth with his napkin, shoved his empty plate aside, and pulled the file to him. He reread Chairman Zemenek’s note. At this point, he reflected, another agent in his position might have trouble digesting the meal, since less than eighteen hours ago he had tortured and executed an American Army Intelligence major. But Borodin wasn’t worried. The Hess file had told him one thing: if he returned to Moscow with the Spandau papers, no one would ask whom he had killed to get them.