11:00 a.m. MV Casilda: Madagascar Channel, Off Mozambique
The laden helicopters lifted off the deck of the ship like pregnant birds, but they lifted. Juan Diaz, the pilot of the lead chopper, looked over to see that his compadre flying the second ship had taken off safely. He had. Diaz turned to the tanned Englishman sitting in the seat beside him.
“They’re up, English. Where we going?”
Alan Burton tossed a folded sheet of paper into the Cuban’s lap. A mineral survey map of Southern Africa. “First stop, Mozambique,” he said. “Just follow the lines on the map, sport.”
Burton turned and looked back at the two rows of Colombians who sat shoulder-to-shoulder against the cabin walls of the JetRanger. With their dark faces, scruffy beards, and bandolier ammunition belts, they looked like armed migrant workers. Sick ones, at that. The greenish cast of their skin suggested that by leaving the ship, they would merely exchange their seasickness for airsickness. Burton didn’t care what they looked like, as long as they could cause some commotion. He could do the job alone if someone provided a sufficient diversion. He was glad the end of the mission had finally arrived, not least because they were finally leaving the Casilda. He didn’t care if he never saw another ship in his life.
“I’m supposed to fly by these goddamn chicken scratches?” Juan Diaz complained, shaking the map in the Englishman’s face.
Burton gave the Cuban a black look. “That’s what you’re being paid for, sport. Now let’s move.”
“What about a flight plan?” Diaz asked. The two choppers still hovered over the old freighter.
‘You’re holding it,” said Burton. “I can show you the landmarks. Just watch for enemy aircraft.”
The Cuban narrowed his eyes. “How do I know who is the enemy?”
Burton grinned. “It’s everybody, sport. Simple enough?”
After a grim moment of reflection, Diaz nudged the stick, and as one the two JetRangers moved out over the ocean, toward the coastline, toward Africa.
11.25 a.m. Room 520: The Stanley House, Pretoria
Gadi Abrams let the drapes fall closed and turned back to Stern. “Still no sign of them, Uncle. No Hauer, no Apfel.”
Stern got up from one of the beds and rolled his shoulders. He had said little since last night’s fiasco at the Burgerspark Hotel. “They’re probably holed up in some cheap hotel, waiting for the rendezvous at the Voortrekker Monument.”
Professor Natterman was pacing out the far end of the room. “So why are we watching the Protea Hof?” he snapped.
“We can always intercept them at six at the Voortrekker Monument,” Stern replied. “But I think Hauer might return to the Protea Hof before then.”
Natterman snorted with contempt. “What about that woman?” he asked.
“Are you sure it was the same woman from the plane?”
“Absolutely,” Gadi said. “From the description you gave and the perfume I smelled in the hall, I have no doubt at all.”
“Who is she, then?” Natterman asked. “What does she want?”
“She wants me,” said Stern.
“What makes you say that?” Gadi broke in. “Nobody knows where you are.”
Stern half-smiled.
“Who wants you dead?” Professor Natterman asked.
“Who doesn’t?” said Gadi. “The Syrians want him, the Libyans, the Palestinians … you name it. That’s why he has to live where he does.”
Stern shot his nephew a warning glance; then his face softened. “I suppose it doesn’t matter,” he said. “Remember the kibbutz I described to you, Professor? My retirement home? Well, it’s no ordinary kibbutz.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s a special settlement for men like me. Retired field men. Men who have prices on their heads.”
Gadi grinned. “Uncle Jonas’s head carries the highest price in town.” Stern frowned.
“But Gadi said the woman on the plane was European, said Natterman. “Not Arabic.”
“Precisely,” said Stern. “And of the European countries, only one has agents who might want me dead.”
“England?” Natterman asked, his eyes alight.
Stern ran his hand across his chin. “I know who the Englishwoman is. Her name is Swallow. Or it was, many years ago. But right now she concerns me much less than the big fellow who checked in here this morning.”
“I say he’s a friend of Hauer’s,” Gadi declared. “Backup from Germany. He’s right beneath us, watching Hauer’s room.”
“Why do you insist he’s German?” Stern challenged.
“Don’t give me that, Uncle. A Jew can smell a German, can’t he? No offense, Professor.”
“None taken. A German can smell a Jew just as well.”
Gadi glared at Natterman. “His name’s Schneider, which is German enough. We’ll know what he is for sure in an hour, in any case. Tel Aviv is checking him out. By the way, they told me Hauer was one of the sharpshooters at the Munich Olympics. How did you know that?”
Stern half-smiled. “I had one of my notorious intuitions when I read his police file. We might be able to use that somehow.”
“Could this Schneider be part of Phoenix?” asked Yosef Shamir. The young commando wore a large white bandage around his forehead. “Maybe he threw the grenade last night. Maybe he was the one who hit me with the door.”
“That was Hauer,” Stern said firmly.
“Who fired the gunshot?” asked Yosef. “I was only semiconscious in that stairwell, but I’m certain I heard a shot.”
“Nothing about it in this morning’s newspapers,” Gadi said. “There was no body in the stairwell. If our German cops shot at someone, they must have missed.”
Stern smiled. “I think it went this way: Swallow’s grenade panicked the Germans. They fled down the stairs, Apfel in front. They ran into trouble, Apfel panicked and fired his gun. I read Hauer’s police file. If he’d fired his gun, he wouldn’t have missed.”
“I’ll keep that in mind when we meet him,” Gadi said soberly.
“You’re not going to meet him!” Natterman flared. “He’s given you all the slip!”
Stern padded slowly over to the hotel window. “Hauer is coming back to the Protea Hof,” he declared, parting the drapes and staring across at the seven-story hotel. “I don’t know how I know it, but I do.”
One floor below the Israelis, Kripo Detective Julius Schneider held the telephone against his sweating cheek as he sat on the edge of the bed. Beside him lay his hat, half a sandwich, and two empty bottles of beer. Into his ear came the angry drawl of Colonel Godfrey Rose. “You too proud to take a tip from a Russian, Schneider?”
“No, Colonel.”
“Kosov gave me the name of the son of a bitch who mutilated Harry. I think he suspected it all along. He’s a Russian too, you believe that? Name’s Borodin, Yuri Borodin. Twelfth Department, KGB. According to Kosov, he’s a real hotshot. Renegade out for glory, that type. I guess that’s what Kosov meant about you watching your back.”
Schneider made a sound in his throat that was halfway between a growl and a sigh. “So, Borodin could have seen me leaving Major Richardson’s apartment. He could be following me now.”
“Could be, Schneider. Have you located Hauer and Apfel yet?”
“I’m watching their hotel room now. They aren’t in it, though.”
“Hmm. You decided how you’re gonna handle Hauer? You gonna try to take the papers?”
“I don’t know yet. Hauer may have better ideas than I do about crushing Phoenix.”
Rose was silent for a moment. “Yeah, well, the Russians are getting pretty itchy about Phoenix themselves. Kosov heard that a low-ranking Stasi agent cracked under torture this morning. Seems he’s a member of something called Bruderschaft der Phoenix. The Russians are already talking to the State Department about setting up a special inter-Allied commission to deal with the Rudolf Hess case, Phoenix, and all related affairs. Sort of an international Warren Commission.
”
“A what, Colonel?”
“Never mind, Schneider.” There was a sibilant rustle of paper in the background. “You want a quick rundown on Yuri Borodin’s file? Reads like the friggin’ Count of Monte Cristo.”
“Please.”
“Got a pencil?”
The German heaved his bulk back on the bed and closed his eyes. “I’m ready.”
2.02 p.m. Bronberrick Motel. South of Pretoria
The moment Hauer saw the note, he knew that Hans had tricked him. He knocked Hans’s abandoned Walther aside and read swiftly: I’m sorry, Captain. I’ve thought it through, and I feel the risks of an armed exchange are just too great. I couldn’t tell you before, but Ilse is carrying a child I didn’t want to lie about the time of the rendezvous, but I knew you’d never let me try it this way. Please don’t follow me. I’ll meet you back here when I’ve got Ilse. Here the name “Hans” had been signed, then scratched through. If it all goes bad, I want you to know I don’t blame you for anything in the past. We found each other in time. Your son, Hans.
Hauer stood rock still as waves of anger and panic swept over him. He dug the foil packet from his pocket and ripped it open. The negatives he had taken at the Protea Hof were there, but the Spandau papers were gone. In their place lay five sheets of crumpled motel stationery. Hauer tried to breathe calmly. Hans had struck out on his own to meet the kidnappers. He had to accept that. It wasn’t hard to understand. Not if the hostage was your wife, and she was carrying your child. Yet Hans was his son. Ilse was his daughter-in-law. And the child she was carrying—Hauer felt a thick lump in his throat—that child was his grandchild, his blood their. Hauer sat down hard on the bed. For the last twenty years he had lived alone, resigned to a solitary life. Yet in the past forty-eight hours he had been given not only a son, but a family. And now he had lost that family. He read the note again.
Your son, Hans.
“Fool,” he muttered.
It took him twenty minutes to reach the Voortrekker Monument. All the way he cursed himself for leaving Hans alone. He had known something like this might happen, that Hans had been walking an emotional razor edge. This morning, while zeroing-in his rifle scope, he had almost packed up the gun and driven straight back to the motel. But he hadn’t. He had finished with the rifle, then gone ahead and scouted for an exchange location. And he’d found one, an empty soccer stadium. Perfect. Damn!
Hauer saw no sign of Hans at the Voortrekker Monument. For an hour he circled the base of the dun-coloured building on foot, but he knew it was hopeless. Hans was gone—maybe dead already. Faced with this heart-numbing reality, Hauer realized he had but one slim chance to save his son’s life. When the kidnappers realized that the Spandau papers were incomplete, they would demand answers. And when they got them, they might just might come looking for Captain Dieter Hauer. He would make it very easy for them to find him.
In the Ford again, he checked his map. Then he swung east and headed back toward the Protea Hof Hotel. He pulled straight up to the main entrance, removed a long leather case from the Ford’s trunk, and tipped the doorman to park the car. The hunting rifle felt heavy but reassuring against his leg as he strode toward the elevators. In a European city the oddly shaped case might have attracted unwelcome attention, but in South Africa rifles are as common golf clubs.
Their room looked just as they’d left it yesterday. In a shaft of light leaking through the drawn drapes, Hauer saw the clothes and food they had bought still lying in crumpled shopping bags on the beds. Hans’s loaded crossbow leaned in the corner space between the near bed and the bathroom wall. Hauer laid his rifle on the bed. Then he felt the hairs on his neck stiffen. There was someone else in the room. He turned very naturally, as if unaware of any danger. There. Sitting in the chair by the window. A thin shadow silhouetted against the dark drapes.
Hauer jerked his Walther from his waistband and dived behind the bed, pulling back the slide as he hit the carpet.
“Don’t be alarmed, Captain,” said a deep, familiar voice. “It’s only me. I managed to get here in spite of you.”
Hauer thrust his pistol over the top of the mattress, put two pounds of pressure on the trigger, then slowly lifted his eyes above the edge of the bed. Sitting in a narrow shaft of light coming through the drapes was Professor Georg Natterman.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
2.25 p.m. The Northern Transvaal
One mile, northeast of the village of Giyani, the Zulu pulled the Range Rover onto the gravel shoulder and climbed out. Hans stayed put. The Zulu shielded his eyes and stared back down the long highway. Lean as an impala, he looked as if he were scanning the veld for game herds. Whenever a car or truck whizzed past, he stared into the vehicle as if searching for someone he knew.
Hans was getting angry. They had been on the road for hours, and they had stopped like this twice before. After a quick glance at the Zulu, Hans climbed out of the Rover on the shoulder side and looked around. Back toward Pretoria, the sun burned down relentlessly, shimmering like a layer of oil just above the road. To the north, however, Hans saw a vast wall of slate gray clouds. Beneath the leaden ceiling, sheets of rain rolled south toward the Rover.
“In,” the Zulu commanded, scampering back into the driver’s seat.
When Hans climbed into the backseat, he found a thin black arm dangling a long black cloth before his eyes. “No,” he said.
The Zulu dropped the blindfold in Hans’s lap and turned back to the windshield. His posture told Hans that unless he obeyed, the vehicle would not move one inch further toward his wife. Hans cursed and tied the scarf around his eyes. “Now,” he muttered, “move your ass.”
The next thirty minutes felt like a G-force test. The Zulu swung off the road immediately, and the bone-crashing ride that followed would have totalled a vehicle less sturdy than the Range Rover. Hans peeked around the blindfold when he could, trying to maintain some rough idea of their progress, but taking accurate directional bearings was impossible. By the time they finally levelled out, his head had taken several vicious knocks and the Zulu’s goal of disorienting him had been well and truly achieved.
The road surface felt like rock scrabble now, but that didn’t help Hans. All he could do was press himself into the rear seat and wait for journey’s end. Thirty minutes later the Rover stopped and the Zulu ordered him out. When Hans’s feet hit the ground, the Zulu pushed him against the side of the vehicle and searched him. He immediately discovered the knife taped to Hans’s ribs, and ripped it away from the skin. He told Hans to wait.
When Hans heard receding footsteps, he pulled off the blindfold. He stood before an enormous building unlike any he had ever seen. Before he could examine it in any detail, however, a great teak door opened and a tall blond man stepped out, his well-tanned arm extended in greeting.
“Sergeant Apfel?” he said. “I’m Pieter Smuts. I hope the ride wasn’t too rough. Come inside and we’ll see about getting you more comfortable.”
“My wife,” Hans said awkwardly, holding his ground. “I’ve come for my wife.”
“Of course. But inside, please. Everything in good time.”
Hans followed the Afrikaner into a majestic reception hall and down a long corridor. In a cul-de-sac full of shadows, they stopped beside two doors. Smuts turned to him. “The Spandau papers,” he said softly.
“Not until I see my wife,” Hans retorted, raising himself to his full height—which was about eye-level with the Afrikaner.
“First things first, Sergeant. That was our agreement. When we are satisfied that no copies exist, you will be reunited with your wife.”
Hans made no move to comply.
A brittle edge crept into the Afrikaner’s voice. “Do you intend to break our agreement?”
Hans held his breath, struggling to cling to the illusion that he had entered Horn House with bargaining power. It was now painfully clear that he had not. He had probably made the worst mistake of his life by coming here. He had gone agains
t the advice of the one man who might have been able to help him, and now Ilse would pay the price for his stupidity.
Smuts saw Hans’s pain as clearly as if he had burst into tears. He opened a door and motioned for Hans to enter the small bedroom beyond. “The papers,” he repeated. Like a zombie Hans withdrew the tightly folded pages. Smuts did not even look at them. He slipped the wad into his pants like pocket change, then nodded curtly. “I’ll be back soon,” he said. “Get some rest.”
“But my wife!” Hans cried. “You’ve got to take me to her! I’ve done everything you asked!”
“Not quite everything,” Smuts admonished. “But enough, I think.”
He closed the door solicitously, like a well-tipped bellman.
“Wait!” Hans shouted, but the Afrikaner’s footsteps faded into silence.
Hans tried the door, but it was locked. It’s out of my hands now, he thought hopelessly. He wondered how long the procedure to detect photocopying would take. He was still wondering when the countless hours without sleep finally overpowered him. He collapsed onto the small bed, his mouth moving silently as exhaustion shut down his frazzled brain. For the first time since childhood, Hans Apfel fell asleep with a prayer on his lips.
When the Afrikaner jerked him awake ten minutes later, Hans knew that his desperate gamble had failed. Smuts’s eyes burned with feral fire, and though he spoke even more quietly than before, violence crackled through his every syllable like static electricity.
“You have made a grave mistake, Sergeant. I will ask you only once. Your wife’s life depends upon your answer. Where are the three missing pages?”
Hans felt as if he had suddenly been sucked high into the stratosphere. His ears seemed to stop up. He couldn’t breathe. “I-I don’t understand,” he said stupidly.
Smuts turned and reached for the doorknob.
“Wait!” Hans cried. “It’s not my fault! I don’t have the other pages!” “Dieter Hauer has them,” Smuts said in a flat voice. “Doesn’t he?”