The Spandau Phoenix

and another-guarded by Rykovleading outside.

The three agents glowered at each other as if they had been arguing in

the other room.

"You fellows find a lot to talk about back there?" Harry asked in

Russian, his tone insulting.

Andrei scowled, but Rykov only smiled and leaned against the outside

door, resting his injured leg.

Suddenly Axel Goltz spoke up. "What is Kosov doing, Comrades?"

When the Russians didn't respond, Goltz scratched thoughtfully behind

his right ear. "What did the major tell him that weakened his resolve?"

"Relax," said Rykov. "We have everything under control."

Goltz's nostrils flared. "Under control? You don't even know what's

going on! I know this man Richardson, he's a skilled agent. I can't

believe Kosov fell for his tricks."

"The colonel knows what he's doing," Rykov said evenly.

He curled his lip in distaste. "Stop scratching your head, Goltz.

You look like a mangy old hound."

The East German flushed. "It's a wound," he said. He cocked his head

to the side, exposing a small white bandage behind his ear. "A skinhead

threw a brick in a riot. Four stitches to close it."

Rykov snorted with contempt. "Probably a Jew! They'll revenge

themselves on you Germans yet!"

Goltz ground his teeth furiously.

"What tricks of mine were you referring,to?" Harry cut in.

"Perhaps you, like Kosov, are unaware of certain important facts."

"Find another fool, Major," Goltz snapped. "Be glad I'm not in charge

of you."

Harry kept smiling, but inside he shivered. He had always believed the

Stasi far superior to the KGB in all areas of intelligence work, and he

was glad to see Goltz in the minority tonight. Rykov tacitly admined

this with his next question.

"What would you do with him, Goltz, if you were in command?"

"Kill him. Simplest for all parties concerned."

Harry felt a tremor of fear.

"You're a cold one," Rykov observed.

Goltz shrugged.

"What about his intelligence value?"

The Stasi man pulled a wry face. "I don't think he knows a damned thing

about Spandau."

"He might."

"Drug him senseless, then. But he's got to disappear."

"Goltz is right," Harry agreed. "]Leave it to the Germans to come up

with the most efficient solution."

"What the hell does that mean?" Andrei asked from the table.

Now we're getting somewhere, Harry thought. "Just what it seems to

mean, Corporal. That ever since the Second World War, the East Germans

have run rings around their Russian masters."

Goltz bowed his head slightly, acknowledging a selfevident truth.

Andrei flushed axid rose from the table.

"Pay no attention to him, Andrei," R@kov said. "He's only trying to

provoke us."

"That's right, Corporal," Harry taunted. "Follow your captain's

example. I insult him, and what does he do? Lies back and takes it,

like a good Russian."

Andrei charged from the table. Harry darted out of the chair and

sidestepped him. "Now, now, Corporal, I advise you to treat me with

discretion. When Kosov returns, he'll enlighten you as to my privileged

status within your organization."

"My God!" Goltz cried. "He's insufferable! He insults your homeland

to your face, then tells,you that he secretly serves it? Are you

complete fools?"

"It's Kosov's responsibility," Rykov said slowly. "He'll be back soon."

The Russian captain squinted at Harry. "And while we wait, Major

Richardson is going to tell us exactly what was found at Spandau last

night."

Harry caught a sudden, furtive alertness in Axel Goltz's eyes. "I just

might do that, Captain," he @d lightly, his eye on the But German.

Goltz stiffet".

"Tell you what," Harry went on, "get me something to drink, and I'll

tell you boys part of a very interesting story."

Axel Goltz had compressed his muscles like steel springs.

Harry sensed it like a hunter senses his dog straining to break cover.

He rechecked everyone's position: Goltz stood by the table, Rykov still

blocked the door. But Andrei stood only a single step from Harry's

chair, his eyes smoldering.

He had to be moved.

"I'll take Scotch, if you have it," Harry said.

"Get him a vodka, Andrei," Rykov ordered.

Thank you God! Harry flexed his calf muscles. s th Andrei started to

obey his captain, but after two step , e resentment he'd been nursing

since the argument at Klaus's house finally surfaced. He stopped and

turned back to his commander. "Get it yourself," he said deflandyRykov

went pale at this public challenge to his authority.

He stood erect and laid a hand on the machine pistol in his belt.

"You mutinous bastard!" he said, stepping forward.

Harry's heart pounded. Jesus, this is it ... Andrei now stood five feet

away from him, facing Rykov in fury. It's now or neverThen Harry saw

something so unexpected that it froze him in his chair. Axel Goltz

silently brought a Heckler & Koch PSP pistol out of his jacket and aimed

it not at Harry, but at Dmitri Rykov's astonished face.

"Back against the wall, you Russian bastard!" he shouted.

"Throw your gun on the floor!"

Andrei whirled, then froze. Rykov dropped his Skorpion on the floor.

"Have you gone mad?" he asked, an incredulous smile on his face.

Goltz grinned scornfully. "Are you surprised, my little Russian

puppies? Surprised that a German is about to blow your puny brains

out?"

"You crazy fucking German," said Rykov, still unbelieving.

"You're a dead man. No matter what you do now, Kosov will hunt you

down. That demon Misha will slice your throat like a bratwurst."

Goltz spoke over his shoulder. "Stand up, Major. You and I are going

to take a short ride together. You're about to find out what a real

interrogation is like. AGe.nnan interrogation."

"You won't get away with this," Rykov said uselessly.

Goltz laughed coldly. "Of course I will. Corporal Ivanov has already

reasoned out my alibi. I left here to attend to other business, you two

quarreled, and Major Richardson managed to kill you both and escape.

With two idiots like you, Kosov will be the first to believe it."

"But why?" asked Rykov, fascinated by Goltz's apparently suicidal

impulse. "Do you work for the Americans?"

I'm afraid he doesn't, Harry thought with a sinking head.

Raising his chin proudly, Goltz spoke his next words in German.

"If I die," he said softly, "I die for Germany. For Phoenix."

His voice dropped still lower. "Der tag kommt. "

"The day approaches," Harry echoed softly. What the hell?

At that moment Corporal Andrei Ivanov chose to die a soldier's death.

With no weapon but his hands he charged a man who was pointing a

semi-automatic pistol at him.

Stunned by this display of courage, Goltz hesitated for a split-instant,

then fired. Andrei took a round in the chest, but he kept coming.

Rooted to his chair, Harry watched the doomed charge with hypnotic

fascination. Goltz's third bullet killed the Russian, but the

corporal's furious momentum bowled the Stasi agent over backward.

Shaken to the core, Harry wrenched his mind back to reality. He knew he

couldn't beat a bullet to the door; with a cry he hurled himself from

the chair and crashed headlong through the window, trailing the curtains

after him into the darkness.

Axel Goltz heaved Andrei's bleeding body off him and wmmbled to his

feet. Rykov was nowhere to be seen. Cursing, Goltz darted to the

window and hit a switch that flooded the courtyard with light. He saw

only a sparkling jigsaw.of shattered glass. Taking three steps back, he

rushed the jagged window and leaped through. He tumbled across the

glass-covered bricks in an expert parachutist's roll and came to his

feet at a run. The glass cut him badly, but he uttered no sound as he

disappeared into the darkness after Harry.

226 A.M. The NaHerman Cabin Near Wollsbiirg, FRG

"Stop tying to change my mind!" Hans shouted. He lashed out with his

cuffed hands, missing Hauer's face by inches.

Hauer didn't flinch. They sat opposite each other on the cabin floor,

Hans with his back set against the wan, the foil packet containing the

Spandau papers in his lap. Behind Hans's eyes swirled a thousand

currents of rage and tension.

"Listen," Hauer pressed, "you're reacting just like every relative of

every kidnap victim I've ever seen. No one wants police

involved-they'll try anything to get their loved one back. Anything but

the right thing. You know better, Hans.

You know how many kidnap victims we get back alive: ninety percent of

hostages are dead before the ransom call ever comes. You've already

been lucicy- You can get Ilse back, but you're going to have to take

her."

Hans glowered at the floor. Statistics meant nothing to him now.

All he could see was the nightmare image of the girl dredged from the

Havel, leached gray by the oily river ...

Hauer watched him silently. For the fifteen minutes since Hans regained

consciousness, Hauer had tried in vain to convince him that Ilse's only

chance lay in rescue. In his mind there was no other option. Bitter

experience had taught him that the real hostages in a kidnapping were

the family members left behind, not the victim In @ years Hauer had seen

them all: the shattered mothers who served coffee to the police in

zombie-like traces of sedation; the raging fathers who refused to sleep

until they collapsed from exhaustion; the wives who could not stop

crying, or who could not cry at all; and the husbands, like Hans, who

toughed it out in stoic silence until helplessness and despair finally

unmanned them. Hans had to be saved from himself.

Hauer watched as, despite the handcuffs, Hans worked open the foil

packet containing the Spandau papers. Hans examined the first page-the

scrawled German that switched to carefully blocked Latin-md then,

apparently satisfied that Natterman had not tried to steal the precious

ransom, tie closed the packet and stuffed it into his trouser pocket.

He refused to meet Hauer's eyes, keeping his own focused on the

handcuffs.

Hauer stood up. He st@ to speak again, to marshal the reasons Hans

should set aside his fear and do what he himself would do. But as he

stared, he began to see with different eyes. He saw that his son,

though like himself in many ways, was profoundly different in others.

Hans was not yet thirty, still young enough that he defined himself more

by his job and his friends than by his inner self. And with the family

situation he had-a mother he despised and a father he had hated until

tonight-Hans probably drew more emotional sustenance from his wife than

he would ever understand. In the span of eight hours, he had seen his

job unmasked as a travesty, his friend brutally murdered, and his wife

torn from his side.

Little wonder, Hauer reflected, that he lacked the resolve to punch

through the blinding red wall of emotion and act.

Hauer had seen this type of paralysis before, and inexperience was not

always the root of it. Hans's internal compass, Ww that of so many

Germans, gravitated toward a magnetic north-the gilded scaffolding of

official authority. With that mffolding shattered and himself branded a

fugitive, he was a man adrift. Hauer felt no such confusion. His

internal compass pointed to the true nordi of his spirit. He had lost

his illusions very young, and through the trials of finding his way in

the world alone, he had learned to exalt the essence, not the trappings,

of his work. He took a most un-German approach to his skill as a

marksman: in unexpected moments he found himself viewing the world

through his rifle scope-not in a limited, but a profoundly focused way.

All existence compressed into the tube- of polished lenses, the smallest

movement magnified a hundredfold, melding him with the target a thousand

yards away: the six-inch red paper circle, the tawny fur beneath the

stag's shoulder, the pale forehead of a man. When he led men-in the

army, on the GSG-9 firing range, in the streets'of Berlin-he led not by

virtue of his rank, but by example. In situations like this one, cut

off from command, the fire inside Hauer burned all the brighter,

spurring him to action, driving him toward resolution.

As he watched Hans now, he felt an awful powerlessness.

What Hans needed was a new allegiance, a fixed star that the spinning

needle in his soul could lock bnto. If Hauer could not provide that, if

he could not ' lead the son who had returned to him like a prodigal,

then he would truly have failed as a father, as all that he had believed

himself to be.

He started suddenly. Professor Natterman was speaking.

"Your father is right," the old man was saying. "Give in to Nazis and

they crush you. Exterminate you. We can't surrender the papers, we've

got to take Ilse back."

"Nazis?" Hans groaned. "You're both crazy! Crazy old men! What does

that have to do with getting Ilse back? With today? It's ancient

history!"

You're right," Hauer said quickly. He squatted dow his haunches, his

face a foot from Hans's own. "Forget all that crap. What matters is

Ilse. But unless you force yourself to look at this objectively, Hans,

your emotion is going to kill her. You have never faced this thing you

are facing now.

You've seen brutality, and you've seen death. But you have never faced

pure evil. That is what you are facing now. Call it Nazism or Phoenix

or whatever you want, it's all the same. It is a thing as mindless and

as ravenous as a cancer.

It perceives only what it wants, obstacles to getting what it wants, and

threats to its existence. Right now it wants those papers.

The papers are a dream. You have them, Ilse has read them, so both of

you are also threats. Killing her, killing you-this is less than

nothing. Remember Weiss, Hans, think of Steuben. I tried to kid myself

about it, but Steuben was a dead man the moment I saved your life."

Hans flinched at that. Already he blamed himself for Weiss, and for so

much more. He looked up into his father's face, pleading silently for

him to stop, but Hauer would not.

"If you get on that plane with those papers, you will never return to

Germany. Phoenix's men can kill you on the plane, in the airport,

anywhere. The South African police can murder you in jail. They do it

all the time. If we have Der Bonderschaft in our department, what do

they have diere?

The moment Phoenix has the papers, you will die. You'll die.

You'll, never see your wife again. You'll never see me again. 19

Hans scrambled to his feet. He slipped past Hauer to the shattered

bedroom window and rested his cuffed hands on a knife-edge of glass.

Even in the bitter cold he was sweating.

Haner's words had pierced the fog of dread that surrounded him, yet the

rush of nightmare images would not stop. They rifpped through him like

a ragged strip of film, unspoofing from his heart, catching in his @

flashing behind his eyes. He tried to speak, to express the confusion

he felt, but his voice broke. Tears pooled in his eyes as he stared out

into the frozen forest.

Hauer couldn't see Hans's face, but he heard the sob and imew that his

words had had their effect. He stood up slowly and took something from

his pocket. A key. He walked to the window, removed the cuffs from

Hans's wrists, and put them in his pocket.

"I don't think you understand," he said. "I want you to take the papers

to South Africa."

Natterman cleared his throat. "Surely you can't mean that, Captain?"

Hauer snapped his head around and gave the old man a withering glare. "I

mean to use the Spandau diary to draw the kidnappers into the open. To

force them to expose Ilse."

Hans threw up his hands. "But what can you do then? You don't have one

of your GSG-9 teams-no twenty-man unit with state-of-the-art weapons and

communications."

Hauer spoke with cold-blooded confidence. "You know what I can do,

Hans. You're all the team I need."

"And me," Natterman put in.

Hauer ignored him. He had no intention of taking the professor to South

Africa, but now was not the time to tell him that.

Hans walked a few steps away from Hauer. It was almost impossible to

argue with the man when he brought the power of his personality to bear.

Yet Hans feared so much more than Ilse's deadi. He sensed her terror

like a snake twisted around his spine. Not terror for herself, but for

the child she was carrying. Of course he remembered her doctor's

appointment now. He'd fallen asleep after the Spandau detail and missed

it. But why hadn't she told him about the baby when he got home? Yet

he knew the answer to that too.

Because he had come home acting like a total lunatic, a money-crazed

bastard. And hadn't she tried in spite of.him?

He could still hear her voice: I've got a secret too ... And then the

phone call from Funk's man, Jiirgen Luhr. And then Weiss. And Steuben.

And Ilse ...

"Look, I don't have a passport," he said sharply. "The kidnappers were

right about that. The only way I can get to South Africa is by the

route they've set up."

"I can have a forger here in three hours," Hauer said quickly.

"I'm not giving those bastards a shot at you on the plane."

"Damn it, they said any deviation from the instructions and they'd kill

her."

Sensing Hans's growing resolve, Hauer pressed down his exasperation.

"Hans, there are no absolutes in these situations.

You're like a doctor who must operate on his own wife. She has terminal

cancer. She's going to die unless you go in and cut out the tumor. But

there are risks. The knife

-ML,

things. You up the scalpel, then you hear a voice in your ear saying,

'Hey, you give me what I want, and I'll make this woman as healthy as

the day she was born.' " Hauer shook his head.

"It's a fucking lie, Hans. That voice is the devil, and he doesn't play

by your rules. He feels no obligation. It's your call, but no matter

how badly you want to believe that voice, Their's only one option.

Surgery."

Hans's cheek twitched involuntarily. He searched the depths of his

father's eyes, but he saw neither subterfuge nor hope of gain@nly the

indomitable will of a man ready to die in a quest he had made his own.

And from somewhere deep within himself, from a place he never knew

existed, a voice edged with steel rose into his throat.

"I'll do it."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

2.35 A.m. Soviet Sector. East Berlin, DDR Harry picked himself up out

of the shattered glass and sprinted for the courtyard wall. He heard no

shooting yet, but that didn't reassure him. The rough stone wall was

high.

Without breaking stride he planted his right shoe three feet up the face

of the wall and leaped. His fingers dug into the rough ledge.

He pulled with all his strength, both feet pedaling against the stone,

and scrambled over the top.

He found himself in a narrow walking space between two houses.

Dashing down the dark corridor, he paused where it opened onto a narrow

street. He saw no street signs nor any other landmarks he knew.

Unsure of where to run, he flattened his back against the wall outside

the alley's mouth, locked his hands together in a deadly double fist,

and waited.

Axel Goltz was fast, intelligent, and well-trained, but his desperation

made him careless. He came barreling down the narrow alley at top

speed, and rather than pause at its mouth as Harry had done, he leaned

into his sprint, blindly pursuing the man he thought to be at least a

block ahead of him by now. Harry's locked fists struck the, East German

in the center of the forehead and skidded down the right side of his

head. Goltz went down like an ox under the slaughterhouse hammer.

Harry heard the metallic ring of a gun hitting the concrete, but he saw

no gun. Goltz must have fallen on it. The Stasi agent lay motionless

on his stomach. As Harry stared down, he caught the dark glint of metal

protruding from beneath Goltz's waist. Cautiously he leaned down and,

snatched up the pistol. Goltz didn't move. Seeing no one else on the

street, Harry decided to question him. He held the pistol to Goltz's

head with his left hand and probed beneath the jaw with his right. There

was a pulse-weak, but steady.

As Harry opened his mouth to speak, he caught sight of the strange spot

behind Goltz's right ear. Hariy's blow had torn the bandage away.

He expected to see stitches, but ins@ he saw a perfectly round moon of

white flesh shining under the streetlight, marked at the center by what

looked like a spot of blood. Leaning closer, he saw what it was-a small

tattoo. A tattoo of an eye. A single, blood red eye, inked into the

scalp by a very talented needle. it reminded him of the eye on the

pyramid on the back of a one-dollar bill, but only a little.

This eye was less defined somehow, yet more piercing, more mystical.

As Harry stared, Axel Goltz flicked his head up from the pavement like a

slingshot and cracked him across the bridge of the nose. The next thing

Harry saw through stinging tears was the East German on his feet, moving

forward with a gleaming knife extended in his right hand.

Harry @ Goltz's pistol without thinking. The explosion of the

unsilenced weapon reverberated through the empty streets like a cannon

shot. The bullet blew Goltz off his feet.

He landed on his back in the street, sucking for air, a tiny hole in his

chest, a gaping hole in his back. Harry knelt quickly beside him and

said into his ear, "Why did you shoot the Russian? Why?"

Wide-eyed in shock, Goltz made a gurgling noise in his throat.

Harry lifted him roughly by his shirt front. "What is Phoenix?" he

asked sharply. "Goltz! What is PhoenixT' The German couldn't speak. A

froth of blood spilled over his lower lip. Harry racked his memory for

the Stasi man's rank. Lieutenant? "Was ist Phoenix, Herr Leutnant?" he

barked in the voice of a sergeant major.

A faint smile touched the corners of Goltz's mouth. "Der Tag kommt, "

he croaked. "For the Jews ... for the world."

He sighed once, then went limp.

HaM heard sirens in the distance. "Damn!" he cursed. He dropped Goltz

to the concrete and forced his head to the side. The blood red eye

stared upward. Harry didn't know what the mark meant, but he knew that

it was somehow important. Goltz had obviously been hiding it from Rykov

and his men; Harry saw no reason to let them find it now. He

264 GREG IL-ES

laid the pistol barrel against the German's skull, muzzle against the

tattoo. He pulled against the trigger, then stopped.

Without pausing to think, he jammed the pistol into his belt and pried

the knife from Goltz's clenched fist. He tried to grasp the bald circle

of Goltz's scalp between his thumb and forefinger, but it was

impossible. There was no hair to pull, and the skin was stretched too

tightly around the skull.

Ignoring the wailing sirens, Harry braced his knee firmly against the

right side of the Stasi man's head. He grasped the hair at the lower

edge of the shiny circle and tugged up a little hummock of flesh.

Then he jabbed the knifepoint into the scalp beneath the tattoo, deep

into the fascia. Goltz's body jerked when the point struck bone-from

reflex, Harry hoped. But then the bleeding started: little pulsing

waves that shimmered black-red beneath the streetlight. Goltz was

unconscious, but alive. Gritting his teeth together, Harry levered the

knife blade up, using the point as the fulcrum, and worked his left

thumb under the raised scalp. This accomplished, it took only a few

seconds of sawing to excise the half-dollar-sized swatch of skin that

bore the tattoo.

The sirens were much closer now. Harry stood and shoved the fragment of

scalp deep into his trouser pocket. Then he sprinted toward the nearest

intersection, wiping the blood from his hands as he ran. There were

street signs at the intersection, but he didn't recognize the names.

With no better option, he began running toward the brightest lights he

could see. He soon saw a sign he knew: Rosenthaler Strasse. High in

the sky to his left hovered the shining observation, sphere of the great

Femsehturm, the 1,215-foot television tower that rises needle-like from

the Alexanderplatz to dominate both East and West Berlin. Using the

tower as point zero, Harry visualized East Berlin from the air,

estimating distances and comparing the times it would take him to reach

different destinations.

Twelve blocks to the west stood the British Embassy.

Harry knew the ambassador, but he also knew that his chances of getting

through the gate unmolested were nil. If either Goltz or Rykov had

reached a telephone, the friendly embassies would be covered already.

Twenty blocks to the east was a French SDECE safehouse where Harry knew

he could find refuge, but the shortest route to it lay through one of

the busiest sections of East Berlin. Even at night it would be risky.

Harry started walking. He crossed two deserted corners, then passed a

row of yellow phone boxes where an ill-kempt young man stood shouting

into a telephone. On impulse Harry turned and walked back to the phone

boxes. He took hold of the boy's jacket with one hand and broke the

connection with the other.

"Hey!" the boy snapped. "Arschloch! Let go!"

"Coins!" Harry demanded, pointing to the phone.

"Pragen' I "

"Fick Dich in Knie!" the German cursed.

Harry grabbed the tangled mane of blond hair and twisted until the boy's

eyeball rested against the telephone's coin slot. "Pragen! " he

hissed.

Snarling, the youth pulled thirty Pfennig from his jacket and dropped

the jangling coins onto the sidewalk. Harry jerked him out of the phone

box and shoved him down the street. "Beat it!" he growled.

"Haue ah!" The boy backed off cursing, then turned and shuffled on.

Harry dialed an East Berlin number from memory and waited. He could

still hear the siren, but fainter.

"British Embassy," said a sleepy ferri@le voice, after a dozen rings.

"I have an urgent message for Ambassador Brougham," Harry said

breathlessly. "The code is Trafalgar. Am I being recorded?"

"Yes, sir!" The crisis code had worked its-magic.

Harry paused, remembering Colonel Rose's warning not to tell the British

anything about the Spandau case. He understood the caution, but under

these circumstances he might be captured and silenced long before he got

through to Colonel Rose.

"Are you there, @ir?" asked the Englishwoman.

"Message to God," Harry said, using.Rose's nickname.

"Zinoviev, repeat, Zinoviev. Break. Phoenix, repeat, Phoenix.

Break. Message to Ambassador Brougham: This is Major Harry Richardson,

U.S. Army. I was abducted, repeat, abducted into East Berlin tonight.

I have escaped and I'm on my way to your embassy for asylum."

Harry heard a hiccup of astonishment. "I'm on foot, and I should be

there in about seven minutes. Get those gates open!"

Harry slammed down the phone and looked westward to ward the British

Embassy. Then he started east toward the safehouse.

2.36 A.M. KGO headquarters SOVIOT Sedor, Berlin. DDH

Ivan Kosov sat thoughtfully in his Swiss-made office chair and gazed at

a four-by-five-inch file photograph of Harry Richardson. It was a

telephoto shot, long and grainy, but the expression on the American's

face looked as cocksure as it had when he picked the name Zinoviev from

the three Kosov had tossed out. Kosov muttered an oath and slid the

photo aside.

Now he looked into the piercing eyes of Rudolf Hess.

This picture was an eight-by-ten, sharp and clear, of the Deputy Famr

during his prime. The heavy-brewed Aryan face radiated authority and

self-assurance. Beneath this photo lay a smaller shot of Hess as a

First World War pilot.

His eyes looked younger, brighter somehow-unfreighted with the knowledge

of immeasurable death and destruction.

Kosov had stared at these photos of Hess for years, wontiering why

Moscow was still obsessed with the old Nazi's mission. 'They had proof

that Prisoner Number Seven was an impostor@r so Kosov had heard from

several Dzerzhinsky Square old-timers that he trusted. Yet if Centre

had such proof, why didn't they expose him long ago? They're waiting,

the old-timers said. Waiting for what? Corroboration, they said. Was

Zinoviev that corroboration? Whoever Zinoviev was? 'Was there really

some hidden purpose in Hess's flight, or was this simply one more

conspiracy theory Vawned in the murky corridors of Moscow Centre?

Kosov had the feeling he was about to find out at last.

The computers had tracked Yuri Borodin to London.

Kosov had sent a query straight on to the embassy, and while he waited

for the reply, he'd ordered a printout of Harry Richardson's file. Kosov

envied the freedom Borodin enjoyed. Twelfth Department agents, for all

practical purposes, "stationed" themselves. A far cry from the

deskbound life Kosov had led for the past decade.

Suddenly Kosov's printer began to chatter. Not bad, he thought.

Borodin must have been at the embassy when the message came through.

He read the reply as his printer spat

'A

it out, thankful that the days when he had to decode his own messages

were long past.

TO KOSOV- 07611457

2:39 A.M. GMT London In response to query-YES I know agent in question.

NO I have no relationship with him other than ADVERSARIAL Subject is

valuable resource. Hold him there until I arrive.

ETA tomorrow. CANCEI-TODAY A.M.

BORODIN

Kosov slammed a horny hand down on his desk. The American had lied

after all! But while this knowledge delighted Kosov, Borodin's

intention to come to Berlin did not.

"I've caught the golden goose," he said bitterly, "and this prima donna

wants to come take the credit. We'll see about that."

While Kosov grumbled, his printer began to chatter again.

What emerged this time was not a message, but a digital facsimile

photograph, a study in grays and black. It showed four uniformed young

men in their early twenties, standing shoulder to shoulder against the

famous Borovitsky Gate of the Kremlin. Kosov didn't recognize the

uniforms, but the young men were obviously officers. A hand-penciled

arrow pointed to the face of the second man from the left. The photo

was very grainy, but Kosov recognized the hardness in the eyes and

around the mouth of that face. Those eyes have seen much death, he

thought. At the bottom of the photo was a handwritten caption: V V

Zinoviev: Awarded Okhrana Captaincy 1917. Beneath the photo-typed-were

the words: Message follows by courier-Zemenek.

Kosov felt a thrill of triumph. Here was the mysterious Zinoviev at

last! And sent to him by the chairman himself!

Yet Kosov's triumph was tempered by puzzlement and uneasiness.

Zinoviev an officer of the Okhrana? What in God's name could the

Okhrana have to do with this case? It was a ghost from an even more

distant past than Rudolf Hess.

The Okhrana was the tsar's dreaded secret police force-the most ruthless

enemy the communists had ever known.

Kosov scratched his grizzled head. With a sharp sense of frustration,

he realized what was eating at him. Without quite knowing it, he had

been expecting Zinoviev to turn out to be the mysterious one-eyed man.

It only made sense. For 7

268 years he'd had a name with no face to go with it, and a oneeyed man

without a name. Why couldn't they be one and the same?

Maybe they are, he thought suddenly, staring at the photo again.

The hard-faced young officer in the photo had two living eyes-of that

Kosov had no doubt. They stared out from the picture like smoldering

lumps of coal. You are very young here, little tiger Kosov thought.

Plenty of time yet to lose an eye. Especially in yourjob, eh?

Most Okhrana officers had lost more than their eyes after Tsar Nicholas

was overthrown.

'Telephone, Comrade Colonel!" interrupted a secretary.

"Urgent Startled out of his reverie, Kosov snatched up the receiver.

When he heard Captain Rykov eiplain what had happened at the Stasi

safehouse, he felt the blood leave his head in a rush. "My God," he

muttered. "My God! Get back here any way you can, you idiot!"

Kosov slammed down the phone and charged into the communications room.

"Close off the Western embassies!"

he shouted. "Use our own people-no East Germans!"

Several astonished young faces appeared at the doors.

"The fugitive is an American army major," he said more slowly, his voice

barely under control. "He's out of uniform and he speaks perfect

Russian. Probably perfect German too.

If he's apprehended, I want him brought here immediately."

Kosov ground his teeth furiously. "Any East German who attempts to get

close to him is to be shot. That is a direct order. Shoot any East

German who interferes. I want the full staff here in twenty minutes.

And get me the chief of the Stasi on the phone! Now!"

Sagging against a desk, Kosov tried to ignore the pounding in his head.

It seemed inconceivable,that Axel Goltz had been working for the

Americans. The man was practically a Nazi. Why would he turn on his

Russian masters? Especially since he could have no doubt that his

action would be suicidal. Kosov sighed hopelessly. He could do little

else until his department heads arrived. Slowly he walked back into his

office, closed the door, and sat at his desk. Borodin will throw me to

the dogs for this, he lamented. But not before I strain Axel Goltz

through a razor-wire sieve. Shoving the grainy photograph of Zinoviev

out of his way, he swallowed four aspirin without water, pressed his

forehead to the cold desktop, and waited for the phone to ring.

4:35 A.M. The Natterman Cabin: Near WoifsbUrg, FRG

The forger arrived two hours after Hauer's call. Professor Natterman's

explosion occurred two hours after that. Hauer and Hans had buried the

dead caretaker and his Afrikaner killer in the snow behind the cabin,

while Natterman stripped the bloody bedclothes and scrubbed away the

blood from the cabin's interior. The only remaining signs of trouble

were the shattered windows and door, and the Jaguar wrapped around the

plane tree out front.

Hauer's forger was astute enough to ignore all these signs.

Immensely fat and normally jovial, Hermann Rascher aPpeered to be in

mortal dread of Hauer. He lost no time in setting up his equipment.

A white screen and chair placed in front of the shattered window and an

assortment of chemicals laid out in the bathroom quickly converted the

bedroom into a small photographic studio.

Consistent with his plan of keeping Natterman in the dark until the last

minute, Hauer instructed the forger to shoot a passport picture of the

professor as if he too were to be given false papers.

But this ruse went for nothing. Despite Hauer's injunction against

discussing their plans, Natterman badgered him every moment that the

forger spent in his temporary darkroom. Before Rascher arrived Hauer

had probed the professor for his speculations on what the vital secret

of the Spandau papers might be, but Natterman had refused to be drawn

out. Now, though, Natterman was vigorously attempting to convince Hauer

it would be foolish to bait a rescue trap with the authentic papers.

"The kidnappers have obviously never seen the papers," he insisted, "so

it would be impossible for them to know they were being fooled. Captain,

I simply cannot agree to any plan which needlessly risks losing such an

important artifact."

Hauer had had enough. He walked to the bedroom door to make sure the

forger was closed inside the bathroom; then he turned back to Natterman.

"You don't have to agree, Professor," he said evenly.

"Because you're not coming to South Africa."

Natterman looked as if someone had emptied a bedpan in his face.

Too stunned to speak, he looked to Hans for support, but found none.

Hauer kept the initiative. "You're wounded, you can't move faster than

a slow walk, and you're over seventy, for God's sake."

Too angry to marshal logical arguments, Natterman raged like a thwarted

child. "You can't keep me out of this, you ... you fascist!"

While he ranted on, Hans walked to the window and tried to shut out the

argument. The snow was falling again. He shivered, realizing that

somewhere out there beyond the trees, beyond the road and the pristine

German fields, beyond the Alps, beyond a great sea and a vast, dark

continent, ]Ilse waited, frightened and alone. With a hollow coldness

in his chest, he wondered again about her last, anguished cry.

Could she really be pregnant at last? Or had the kidnappers somehow

twisted that desperate maternal hope out of her to use as extra LEVERAGE

I e? He banished the thought from his mind. That snake could eat its

tail forever, and his sanity with it. It had no bearing at all on the

rescue plan. He would keep that secret to himself. Whatever had passed

between him and his father in the last few hours, Hauer had no claim on

that knowledge yet "Hans, listen to thisi" the professor shrieked.

"Hauer said it himself.- The police only get ten percent of hostages

back alive! Remember Munich, Hans? The 'seventy-two Olympics? It was

Hauer and his stortntwpers who opened up on the Arabs while the hostages

were tied inside the helicopters. The Jews were blown to bits! Have

you forgotten that?

TWO days ago you hated this man. He deserted you and your mother! Now

you trust him to bring our Ilse back alivet' At the mention of Munich a

strange stillness came over Hauer. It was as if a ghost had touched him

with icy fingers.

His gray eyes turned opaque as they fixed on Natterman. His voice went

cold and flat. "I didn't see you on @ airfield that day."

Natteman started to reply, but when he recognized the glacial coldness

in Hauer's eyes the sound died in his throat.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I shouldn't have said that. But you don't

understand, Captain. The key to this situation isn't guns and tactics,

it's the Spandau papers. And you can't even read them! We're not

dealing with Arab terrorists or crazed students here-we're dealing with

the legacy of Adolf Hitler! The key to this whole mystery is in the and

I am the only man who can unravel it!"

Hauer sighed. "Professor, why don't you admit that the reason you want

so badly to come is that you can't bear to let those papers out of your

sight for one moment."

"Liar!" Natterman exploded.

"You didn't argue against forcible rescue until I said I wasn't

including you in the plan. Do you deny that?"

"How dare you!" Spittle flew from the old man's lips.

"You fool! You're not qualified to handle this alone! You think you're

chasing a neo-Nazi group called Phoenix? Then how do you explain the

tattooed eye? The Phoenix is a bird rising from the flames, not an eye.

Phoenix is the Greek name of the Egyptian god Bennu. The tattooed Eye

is also Egyptian-it's the Guarding Eye, the All-Seeing Eye, the Eye of

God from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Explain that to me, Captain!"

Hauer shrugged. "The Nazis used all kinds of rituals and mythology."

"Yes! But Teutonic and Arthurian mythology almost exclusively!

So, how do you explain the Egyptian symbols?"

Hauer remained silent while he digested Natterman's revelations.

"Professor," he said finally, "if you care about your granddaughter you

will write down everything you just told me, and you will stay by the

telephone so that you can provide us with any other information we

need."

"But I can go with you!" Natterman insisted. "I can keep UP !"

"Enough!" Hans cried, turning from the window. He stabbed a finger at

Natterman. "My decision's made. We're taking Ilse back, and my father

is in command from this point forward."

Natterman opened his mouth to continue, but the corpulent forger flung

open the bedroom door and waddled into the room. "All done," he

announced. "Excellent work, if I do say so myself" Natterman stared at

Hauer in silent fury, then he stormed into the bedroom and slammed the

door.

The forger held the fruits of his labor beneath the overhead light for

Hauer's inspection. The passport bore two excellent frontal shots of

Hans and Hauer, taken against the screen in the bedroom. Both wore

fashionable jackets provided by the forger and looked every inch wealthy

business M GREG ILE'S men. At Hermann's suggestion Hauer had shaved

his mustache; it was the first time he had seen himself without it in

twenty years. He looked ten years younger. With an artist's eye,

Hermann had quickly noted the resemblance between Hans and Hauer and had

suggested they travel as father and son. That way, he'd said, they

would only have to remember one surname-Weber.

"They are good," Hauer agreed.

"The best you'll find, east of Brussels," Hermann assured him.

"You're lucky Germans don't need visas for South Africa. I didn't have

one to work from."

"Start the car, Hans," Hauer commanded.

Hans was gone in an instant. Hauer picked up the passports and slipped

them into his coat pocket. "Aren't you forgetting something?"

he said to the forger.

Hermann made a painful grimace. It was bad enough being forced to work

for it-ee, but to be robbed. The mind simply boggled. The consequences

of refusal, however, were unthinkable. Eight years ago Hauer had sent

the forger to Berlin's Moabit Prison, where he had endured six years of

living hell. Upon release he had resettled in Hamburg to escape Hauer's

prying eyes, but it hadn't worked. Hauer had kept abreast of his

current activities, and he'd made it painfully clear tonight that one

phone call to Hamburg could put Hermann right back into prison for

another stretch. What the hell? Hermann rationalized. Ten thousand

marks isn't too high a price forfreedom.

He could make back the money on just four passports. He walked to the

sofa, reached into his leather camera bag, and brought out a stuffed

manila envelope.

After counting the banknotes, Hauer slipped them into his pocket.

"Nice doing business with you again, Hermann," he said. "Now I want you

to wait for me right here."

He slipped into the bedroom and closed the door. Professor Natterman

sat fuming on the strip@ mattress, holding his hand against his bandaged

nose. "Professor," said Hauer, "here is where we make our peace. I'm

going to South Africa to bring back your granddaughter. I could simply

walk out of here, but I realize that would be stupid. You know things

that could help me. The question is, will you?"

Natterman said nothing; Hauer went on anyway. He needed the professor's

information, but he also wanted to leave the old man some dignity. "I

don't trust that forger," he said. "I need an hour's head start on him.

I want yo, make sure he stays here at least that long. Once he's gone,

shut the cabin, take your things, and drive that Jaguar back to Berlin.

The car belongs to a man nwned Ochs. Here's his card.

"That car's shot to pieces!" Natterman protested.

-You shot it," Hauer reminded him. "Just get it back to him.

He's a Jew, he'll understand. After you've delivered the car, stock up

on enough food to last a week, then get hold of any research materials

you'll need to answer questions about Prisoner Number Seventhe Egyptian

god Bennu, South Africa, and anything else you think might be relevant.

Ten hours from now I want you by your office telephone continuously.

Sleep by it. I've got to know I can count on you. 19

Outside, the borrowed Audi rumbled to life. With a last look at

Natterman, Hauer left the old man sitting on the bed.

He glared at the forger as he passed through the front room.

"Don't get anxious and try to leave too soon, Hermann."

The forger's eyes bulged. Hauer turned. Behind him stood Professor

Natterman, the double-barreled Mannlicher in his hands.

Hauer offered his hand. "Auf Wiederse@n, Professor. Be careful, eh?"

After a moment's hesitation, the old historian took Hauer's hand and

squeezed hard. "You bring my granddaughter back, Captain."

"You have my word."

"And you bring back those papers!"

Hauer nodded once, then he ducked out of the cabin.

Natterman heard a car door slam, then the roar of the Audi as it raced

up the access road. Hermann Rascher stared at the old man, mystified by

the scene he had just witnessed.

"You know, Professor," he said, "there's really no reason for us to hang

around here while@' Natterman jabbed the shotgun into the fat man's

belly.

"Sit down, swine!"

Hermann sat.

5.00 A.Al. U.S. Army Headquarters. West Berlin Colonel Rose stared

into the expectant faces of Sergeant Clary and Detective Schneider.

Clary nodded once, indicating that the tape reels were turning. Rose

spoke into the telephone.

"This is Colonel Rose. Go ahead."

"Colonel, this is Blueblood calling. Repeat, Blueblood."

Rose gasped. "It's Harry! Where the hell are you?"

"Don't say anything, sir. Nothing. This call will terminate in fifty

seconds. In our office,computer you'll find a file coded 'East'-that's

Echo-Alpha-Sierra-Tango. In that file is a list of safe locations in

the DDR. I am now at location four, repeat, four. I don't think I can

get out on my own, Colonel, it's too tight. I suggest you threaten your

opposite number here, and if that doesn't work, roll up network seven,

repeat, seven, and make a trade. I was dead wrong about Hess. This

does have something to do with him. Also with someone or something

called Phoenix. But the key name is Zinoviev, repeat,

Zulu-India-November-OscarVictor-India-Echo-Victor.

Find him and we'll be on track."

Harry took a deep breath. "You've got to get me out, Colonel.

This is big. If I don't hear from you in twenty-four hours, I'm going

to try it on my own. That's all."

"Wait!" Rose shouted.

"He's disconnected, sir," Clary said in a monotone, his eyes on a

voltage-measuring device.

Rose stood and pounded his fist on the desk. "Clary!"

"Sir!"

"You get a squad of uniformed MPs down here now!

Make sure every one has a rifle!"

"What are you going to do?" Schneider asked, alarmed by the American's

hair-trigger temper.

"You heard the man, Detective! I'm rolling up network seven!"

"But he suggested that you threaten the KGB first@ Rose's face reddened.

"Schneider, I don't make threats unless I can back 'em up.

It's a ftiggin' waste of time. When I tell Ivan Kosov that I'll arrest

one of his precious networks if he doesn't let my boy out, those slimy

bastards will be in a holding cell in my stockade! Clary!"

"MPs on the way, sir!"

"Damn straight!" Rose bellowed, reaching into the bottom drawer for his

bottle of Wild Turkey. "Damn straight."

He filled his Lenox shot glass and poured the whiskey down his throat,

feeling his eyes water when it hit bottom.

"Friggin' Rudolf Hess," he muttered. "And Zinoviev. Who the hell is

Zinoviev?"

"I beg your pardon, Colonel?" Schneider asked. "Who are you talking

about?"

"Nobody," Rose mumbled. "Some commie sonofabitch."

He could not have been further from the truth.

5. 19 A. m. mI-5 Headquarters Charles Street, London, England The door

to Sir Neville Shaw's office shook with the force of Wilson's knock.

"One moment, your lordship," Shaw said into the telephone. "What is it,

Wilson?"

The deputy director stuck his head into the office. "It's that woman,"

he sniffed, meaning Swallow. "She said she'd wait one more minute and

then she's leavin

I 9

"Tell her I won't be a moment."

Wilson sighed with exasperation and withdrew.

I'm sorry, your lordship," Shaw apologized. "Where were we?9?

"Your career," replied a deep voice with a vintage Oxbridge accent. Shaw

was briefly reminded of Alec Guinness"It is felt, Neville, in some

quarters, that you have bungled this whole affair from the beginning. It

was nearly a year ago that some of us suggested that you act to prevent

just this sort of mess."

Sir Neville bridled. "If they'd torn the bloody prison down last year,

the very same thing would have happened. I couldn't control what the

man wrote, for God's sake."

This riposte was met with ri-osty silence. "Yes," the voice said

finally. "Well. What about the African end of the problemT' "It's

being taken care of. TWO or @ days at the most."

"A lot could happen in thine days, Neville. We want every loose end

snipped, every @ erased.".

"It's being done," Shaw insisted.

"Are there any complications we should know aboutt' Shaw thought of

Jonas Stern, and of Swallow waiting just outside his door. "No," he

lied.

"Keep us posted, then." The caller rang off.

Shaw exhaled a great blast of air and began to massage his temples with

his fingertips. He badly needed sleep. He had spent five of the past

six hours on the telephone. Across London, in places like the India

Club, the House of Lords, and the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet

Clu@d across Britain in the ramshackle palaces and crumbling stone

castle outposts of the aristocracy-privileged men and women both young

and old were gathering in quiet councils.

Like ripples spreading outward from the epicenter of Buckingham Palace,

waves of apprehension rolled through this most rarefied level of

society; and all, Shaw reflected, because one little stone had dropped

far away in the atrophied heart of Berlin. Slowly but surely, those

frightened men and women were bringing a great deal of pressure to bear

on Sir Neville Shaw. For Shaw, like his predecessors before him, was

not only the possessor but also the protector of their dark secret. Most

of the calls had been like the previous one-a bit of carrot, bags of

stick. Shaw was about to rise and go to his liquor cabinet for a

medicinal Glenfiddich when his office door opened and Wilson ushered in

the woman code-named Swallow.

Sir Neville was stunned. The woman standing before him looked nothing

like the photo in the file he'd been studying.

"Ah ... Miss Gordon, isn't it?" he stammered as Wilson withdrew from

the office.

Swallow did not respond.

"I'm told you insisted on, seeing me personally," he tried again.

"Mind telling me why?"

Still Swallow held her silence. She obviously felt the burden of

explanation lay on the man who had called for her services. Thoroughly

discomfited, Shay looked down at the file. The woman in the photo

looked like a grandmother, a blue-rinsed clubwoman who spent her Sundays

baking biscuits for the church. The woman who stood before him now

looked like ... well, Shaw had never quite seen the analogue that would

describe her. Swallow had iron gray hair cropped &lose against her

skull, perfect for wearing wigs. She carried none of the excess fat

that weighted most women her age and there Shaw paused. For looking at

Swallow now, he couldn't quite get his mind round the fact that she had

been in the war. She'd been practically a child, of course, but It was

downright eerie. The file put her at sixty-one, but she looked nearer

fifty. As he stared, the scent of perfume wafted to him; this single

acknowledgment of femininity surprised him. He couldn't name the

fragrance, but it smelled expensive and vaguely French. To be honest,

Shaw mused, he might have been attracted to Swallow if it wasn't for

what he knew about her. No, he decided, even if he'd imown nothing of

her fiendish work, her eyes would have put him off. They were like

stones. Dull, flat stones. Not that they communicated intellectual

dullness-quite the contrary.

They were rather like slate lids on a blast furnace, protecting those

outside from the fierce hatred that burned behind them. That hatred had

probably served Swallow well through the years, Shaw reflected, for by

trade she was an assassin.

"Yes, well," he began again, "did Wilson tell you this regards Jonas

Stern?"

Swallow nodded soberly.

"What I'd like is for you to follow him, see what he's up to. His last

known location was Berlin, but he's probably on the move. He's

traveling under his own name, which seems odd, so he must not feel he's

in any danger."

Swallow smiled at that.

"As soon as we pick him up, we'll put you onto him. We think he's

trying to get hold of something ... something that we'd prefer the Jews

didn't get hold of. Understood?"

"Perfectly," said Swallow. She had, after all, done her part against

the Zionist terrorists of Palestine.

Shaw cleared his throat. "Yes, well, what kind of payment would you

want? Would twenty thousand pounds cover it?"

Swallow's eyes hooded over at this. It struck Shaw just then that, from

Swallow's perspective, they had come to the point of the meeting. "What

I want," she said in a toneless voice, "is Jonas Stern.

When your little operation is over, I want a free hand with him."

Shaw had no illusions as to what this meant. Swallow wanted official

permission to kill an Israeli citizen. He knew the answer to his next

question, but he asked it anyway.

"What was it, exactly, that Stern did to you?"

"Killed my brother," she replied in a voice that could have come from a

corpse.

"That was quite some time ago, wasn't it?" Shaw commented.

"And every year since, my brother has lain in his grave."

The furnace heat behind Swallow's eyes flashed at the edges.

"They scarcely found enough of him to bury. Bloody Jews."

Shaw nodded with appropriate solemnity. "Yes, well ...

your condition is accepted." He drummed his fingers on his desk.

"Tell me, what's your feeling about Stern as an agent?"

"He's the best I ever saw. If he wasn't, he'd have been dead long ago.

He's got the instincts of a bloody clairvoyant."

"Any ideas on his motive? Why he would leave Israel now?"

Swallow considered this. "To protect it," she said at length.

"Israel is his weakness. He must believe the country is in imminent

danger."

"I see."

"Is Israel in danger?"

"Not that I'm aware of," Shaw replied thoughtfully. "Not any more than

usual."

As Swallow stood thinking, Shaw noticed that she stood with a vaguely

military bearing-not tensely, but with a relaxed kind of readiness,

rather like some Special Forces types he had known. They had all been

men, of course.

"Is there anything else, then?" she asked.

Shaw flipped through the files on his desk with exaggerated casualness.

"There is, as a matter of fact. Another job.

A small one. Domestic job, actually. I thought you might take care of

it for us. But it's a rush job. It must be done by tonight."

Swallow's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Who is it?"

"Chap named Burton. Michael Burton. Retired. Lives in a cottage

outside Haslemere in Surrey. Raises orchids, I believe. I'm afraid he

knows too much for his own good." Sir Neville cleared his throat again.

"There is one possible complication. He's only forty-eight.

Retired Special Air Service."

At this Swallow seemed to withdraw into herself for consultation with

whatever demon sustained her startlingly youthful appearance. At

length, she asked, "Does he have any family?"

"Divorced. There's a brother. Why do you ask?"

"Is he SAS also?"

Shaw shook his head. "Regular army. But he's out of the country

permanently. He lost his citizenship papers some years ago for

mercenary work. He won't be a problem."

"Would you want it to look like an accident?"

"Can you run up an accident in Haslemere by tonight?"

Swallow made a sound in her throat that Shaw heard as a dry chuckle. "I

doubt it. SAS men don't have accidents like that, as a rule. They're

trained not to. They can drive, swim, run, shoot@' "I don't care how

it's done, then," Shaw flared. "Just do it. What's your price?"

A satisfied smile touched the corners of Swallow's mouth.

She liked to see bureaucrats squirm. "My price is protection from the

Israelis after Stern is dead."

Christ!" Shaw exploded. "We can't babysit you forever. You kill Stern

at your own risk."

Swallow's eyes turned opaque. "Don't play coy with me, little knight.

Your hands are bloody too. By lulling Stern I'm only doing what you

want done. You picked me because you lmew if he had to be, liquidated,

you could- blame his death on my vendetta." She raised her chin

deflandy. "If you try @ the Israelis will certainly get me, but not

before I kill you." Shaw drew back unconsciously. "I'll kill your SAS

man for you," she went on, "but you'll cover for me on Stern.

Otherwise-I might warn this Mr. Burton instead."

"Condition accepted," Shaw snapped. "Now get out. All communication

from this point forward will be through cutouts. No further contact

between you and this office."

Swallow made a mock curtsey and backed out of the room.

That witch should have been code-named Medusa, Shaw thought angrily. She

makes my b@ skin crawl. When he closed Swallow's file, his eyes fell on

the Hess dossier lying open beneath it. He sighed heavily. There lay

the dreaded file, like a modern Domesday Book, a lexicon of heroism and

treason, the highest and lowest expression of the English soul. And

looking at it, Shaw's anger anger that had been building for a very long

time-finally boiled to the surface. For if the truth were told,

he'would prefer to turn Swallow loose on the smug quislings and their

moribund broods who for decades had cowered behind the shield of his

service. He had no part in their crimes, or their guilt, and he felt no

pity for them or their "honor." But what of England?

He did have a stake in her honor. He had been only a child during the

war, but in those heady years after Hitler was crushed, and all the

years since, he had allowed himself to feel a part of the grand

legend-what one British historian called the "Churchillian myth"-that in

the early desperate days of the war England, all alone, had stood

united, uncompromising, and unconquerable against the Nazis, and had

thus saved Western Civilization from the Hun and the Bolshevik.

But that, Shaw had learned to his eternal sadness, was not quite the

truth. Then the truth be damned! he thought bitterly. He understood

the protective urge of the aristocrats.

England had given the world so much; she deserved a little moral

charity. Part myth though Churchill's history might be, the craven

machinations of a few spineless lords (or, God forbid, a fool of a

prince) could not be allowed to tarnish it.

If a treacherous shadow dogged the House of Windsor, should it also

stain the legacies of Plantagenet and Tudor and Hanover? And what of

the good people in the war? The women who fought the fires in the

Blitz? The callow lads whose shattered Spitfires practically clogged

the Channel in 1940? The kids who crouched under the buzz bombs and the

V-2s? The martyred population of Coventry?

As he poured himself a large whiskey, Shaw recalled the famous quote

Churchill spoke after the Battle of Britain, but he twisted it to his

own secret knowledge: Never in the field of human conflict have so many

nearly lost so much because of so few. Shaw hated them! Hated them

all! Appeasers ...

knights without courage ... nobles without nobility. Because of them

good men had died, and more were soon to follow.

The man Swallow would kill tonight had but done his duty.

It was the familiar chorus of English history: the good men had died

while the scoundrels prospered. "Treason doth never prosper, what's the

reason?" Shaw muttered, quoting the old epigram, "For if it prosper,

none dare call it Treason." Yet in the midst of his furious meditation,

Shaw felt a glimmer of satisfaction. Because if all his Machiavellian

stratagems failed and the temple came tumbling down around his ears, the

Judases would finally be unmasked, and the most heroic chapter in the

history of his noble ser, would be brought to light at last.

Shaw drained his Scotch and fell instantly asleep with his head on his

desk blotter.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

6.-05 A.M. ThO N8if8rMB#7 Cabin.- Near Wollsbarg, FRG Hermann the forger

was gone. After forty nerve-racking minutes under the gaze of Professor

Natterman's shotgun, the bearish Hamburger had gathered up his equipment

and scampered out of the cabin without a word. The professor sat in his

chair, contemplating the night's events as the dawn filtered through the

shattered cabin door. He had never felt so impotent in his life. His

lifelong friend had been murdered, the Spandau papers had been taken

from him, his granddaughter had been kidnapped, and he had been unable

to prevent any of it from happening.

And now the two men who proposed to stop the madness had refused his

help!

Cradling the Mannlicher under one arm, he picked up his book satchel and

walked out of the cabin without looking back. His suitcase lay in the

slushy rut where the Audi had been parked. In their haste Hans and

Hauer had not even taken the time to bring it into the cabin.

The shot-riddled Jaguar waited behind the trunk of the old plane tree.

Natterman walked over and looked inside to make sure the keys were still

in the ignition. Tossing his satchel into the passenger seat, he

retrieved his suitcase, then wriggled into the car and turned the key.

In spite of the damage, the engine roared responsively.

He left the Jaguar idling and clumped through the snow to the rear of

the cabin. In the shade of a tall cedar, a juryrigged crucifix marked

the shallow grave of Karl Riemeck.

With bowed head Natterman laid the shotgun against the cross and softly

spoke a few lines from Heine over his friend. Then he shuffled back to

the rumbling Jaguar, jammed it into first gear, and sped up the access

road.

A

The morning sun had already transformed the twisted Iz into a morass of

slush and mud that threw the speeding car from one bank to another as it

approached the main road.

Two curves away from the intersection, the professor saw a black log

lying across the lane. When he swerved to avoid it, the Jaguar skidded

out of control and slammed nose first into some saplings. It rebounded

from their springlike trunks and coughed into silence.

He staggered out of the car and cautiously approached the log.

Just as he bent to drag it out of the lane, he heard a crack in the

trees behind him. ke? he wondered. No. He stumbled back, thinking he

would get the Mannlicher from the car. Then he remembered dropping it

at Karl's grave.

With panic knotting inside his chest, he scrambled toward the Jag,

planning to drive around or even over the log to get to the main road.

He had one leg inside the car when a voice froze him motionless.

"Herr Professor?"

Natterman whirled, but saw nothing.

"Herr Professor! May I speak with you for a moment?"

Again! Where had the voice come from? The brush on the opposite side

of the road? The trees further on? Natterman tried to calm himself.

Might a neighbor have come out to investigate last night's shots in the

light of morning? These days even country people left such things to

the police.

Backing against the Jaguar, he called, "Who's out there?

What do you want?"

"Only to speak with you!" the voice replied. "I mean you no harm."

"Come out, then! Why do you hide yourselp."

A tall dark-skinned man stepped noiselessly from the trees twenty meters

up the road. "One has to be careful," he said, and then he smiled. "I

wouldn't want to wind up like your Afrikaner friend."

Natterman stared fearftilly at the stranger. He felt he knew the man

from somewhere. Suddenly he had it. "You're the man from the train!"

he cried. "Stern!"

The Israeli smiled. "You have an excellent memory, Professor."

"My God! Did you follow me here?" Natterman took a step back toward

the Jaguar. "Are you in league with the Afrikaner?"

I

7-284 "Yes, I followed you here. No, I'm not in league with the

Afiikaner. I'm here to help you, Professor."

Natterman pointed a finger at the Israeli. "What happened to your

British accent?"

Stern chuckled. "It comes, it goes."

"You must have been here last nigh.. Why didn't you help me?"

"I did help you. I stopped that Al-tikaner from going back inside the

cabin and killing you. By the time I'd finished dealing with him, your

Polizei friends had arrived."

"Why didn't you come forward then?"

"For all I knew, Professor, you had come here specifically to meet that

Afrikaner. The same holds true for your friends.

I needed certain assurances about your motives."

"You're mad," Natterman declared. "Who the devil are you?"

Stern seemed to search for words. "Call me a concerned citizen," he

said finally. "I'm retired, but I keep myself wellinformed in the area

that you've stumbled into with such dire consequences for yourself and

your family."

"And what area is that?"

"The security of the State of Israel."

"What?" Natterman gaped. "Are you a Nazi-hunter?"

"You're not a historian!"

Stern laughed again. "Professional jealousy, Professor?

Don't worry. I'm a historian of sorts, but not like you.

You've studied history all your life-I have lived it."

Natterman scowled. "And what have you accomplished, my arrogant

friend?"

"Not enough, I'm afraid."

"What do you want from me?"

'Everything you know about the document that Sergeant Apfel discovered

in the ruins of SpandEiu Prison."

Natterman paled. "But-how do you know?"

Stern glanced at his watch. "Professor, I haven't been more than five

hundred meters from those papers since they were discovered. I know the

British-and the Russians are searching like mad for them. I know about

Hauer, Apfel, and your granddaughter. I know you made a copy of the

papers in your office at the Free University, which you mailed to a

friend for safekeeping. I know that Hauer and Apfel have taken away the

six pages which were not stolen by the rikaner. I know-"

"Stop!" cried Natterman. "Where are the other three pages9' "In'my

pocket.. Our Afrikaner friend was kind enough to give them to me, after

a little friendly persuasion."

Natterman shivered, realizing that Stern meant torture.

But ambition overpowered his fear. "Give them back to me," he demanded.

"They're mine."

Stern smiled. "I hope you haven't deluded yourself into believing that.

These papers belong to no single man. Now, Professor, I'd like to ask

you some questions."

Natterman recoiled. "Why should I tell you anything?"

"Because you have no choice."

"That's what everyone keeps telling me," Natterman grumbled.

"I assure you, Professor, if I'd wanted the papers, I could have taken

them any time in the last sixteen hours."

Natterman felt a flash of anger, but something told him Stern was

telling the truth. The same instinct told him that to resist the

Israeli would be pointless, that this man who had materialized out of

the snow like a ghost would get the information he wanted, one way or

another. "All right," he said grudgingly, "Prisoner Number Seven,"

Stern said brusquely. "The papers prove he was not Hess?"

"I believe they do," the old historian said warily.

"Where was the double substituted?"

"Hess picked up the double in Denmark. They flew to Britain together.

The double was part of the plan all along' Hess bailed out the moment

they reached the Scottish coast, over a place called Holy Island."

Stern digested this quickly. "And his mission?"

"The double didn't know Hess's mission, only his own.

After Hess bailed out, the double was to fly on toward Dungavel Castle

and await some sort of radio signal from Hess. If he received it, he

was to parachute down and impersonate Hess for as long as he could."

Stern's eyes narrowed. "And if he didn't receive the signal?"

Natterman smiled wryly. "He was to fly out to sea, take cyanide, and

ditch the plane. Standard SS procedure."

Stern smiled cynically. "Nazi melodrama. Few Occidentals have the

nerve or the fanatical loyalty required to sacrifice themselves in cold

blood." The Israeli's eyes moved restlessly as he pieced the rest of

the story together. "So when the double turned back and jumped, he was

disobeying orders. He went ahead and impersonated Hess as if he had

received the signal ... and the British believed him."

Natterman listened to these deductions in silence. "Or perhaps they

didn't believe him," Stern mused. "It doesn't really matter. What

matters is this: Who did the real Hess fly there to see? And why in

God's name should anyone in South Africa give a damn about it?"

"Now that you know what the papers say," said Natterman, "what do you

intend to do?"

"I told you, Professor, my interest is not in the Hess case."

Stern's hand slipped into his trouser pocket, fingered something there.

"Long before the death of Prisoner Number Seven, I had reason to

investigate Spandau. My mmon had nothing to do with Hess@everything to

do with the safety of Israel. But until Number Seven's death, gaining

access to Spandau was virtually impossible." Stern paused, apparently

conducting some debate with himself "Tell me, Professor," he said

suddenly, "does the Spandau diary mention weapons or scientific

materials of any type?"

Natterman blinked in confusion. "Weapons? Herr Stern, the Spandau

diary has nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of weapons."

"Are you positive?"

"Absolutely. What is it, suddenly? First Hauer badgers me about

reunification, now you ask me about weapon@' "Reunification?" Stern

asked sharply.

"Oh, it's nonsense," Natterman said. "These papers deal only with the

Hess case. They are going to expose those who share responsibility for

the scars on Germany's national pride.Stern's suspicious face hardened.

"I'm afraid there's new infection festering beneath those old scars," he

saidd coldly.

"What the devil do you mean?"

"Professor, I don't care if you're after academic fame, or if you want

to ease Germany's national guilt." The Israeli waved away Natterman's

protests. "I care about the past only insofar as it impacts the present

NW the -future. The people who are after these papers are worried about

a lot more than history books. I tried to interrogate that Afrikaner.

protect som Professor. He had the crazy eyes, did you notice? With only

one arm he fought like a tiger, and before he died he screamed something

very startling at me. It was in Afrikaans-which I don't speak-but I

knew enough Dutch to translate it. Roughly, it was 'Death to. Israel!

Death to Zion!"' Stern paused. "He didn't even know I was Jewish."

Natterman looked thoughtful. "He said something similar to me in the

cabin. He called me a 'Jew maggot,' I believe."

Stern raised an eyebrow. "You don't find that curious?

Why should a South African have some fixation on Jews?

Or on Israel?"

"I never considered it until now."

Stern glanced back toward the main road as the drone of a heavy truck

filled the woods. "Tell me," he said, "are Hauer and Apfel flying

directly to South Africa?"

Natterman's eyes grew wide. "You know their destination?"

"Answer me!"

Natterman held out but a moment more. "Yes!" he blurted. "My

granddaughter is being held prisoner there. The kidnappers instructed

Hans by phone to leave today from Frankfurt."

"With the Spandau papers as ransom?"

"Yes, but Hauer has some kind of rescue plan up his sleeve."

Stern looked off into the dark forest. Frozen limbs cracked in the

slowly rising sun. Icicles stretched earthward, reaching it one drop at

a time. "The diary is incomplete now," he murmured. "Who is aware of

that' "No one," Nanerman confessed. "Only you and I."

Stern turned and eyed the professor appraisingly. "That is good for us,

but very dangerous for your granddaughter. Tell me, what kind of man is

this Captain Hauer?"

"Tough. Very tough."

"And the boy?"

"Angry ... frightened to death. Untested."

Stern nodded. "One thing has puzzled me from the beginning, Professor.

Why has Captain Hauer-a man nearing retirement, a man whose own

personnel file shows him to be a member of a neofascist police

organization-sacrificed his pension and possibly his life to help this

apparently innocent young sergeant?"

Natterman smiled at the irony. -Hauer is Hans's father.

It's a complicated family matter. Very few people know about it."

Stern took a deep, satisfying breath, as if this last bit of information

had completed some circle in his mind.

'You must tell me who you are," Natterman demanded.

"Are you a spy? Are you really an Israeli?" To the professor's

amazement, Stern turned suddenly on his heel and without a word marched

down the lane toward the main road.

"Where are you going?" Natterman cried.

"South Africa, Professor! Get that log out of the road if you want to

come!"

Natterman's jaw dropped in astonishment. "But I have no "in an hour you

shall!" Stern caUed, then he disappeared amnd the curve.

As the huffing professor wresded the rotted tree trunk over a snowdrift

at the lane's edge, he heard the sound of an approaching engine. Seconds

later, a big blue Mercedes rounded the curve from the direction of the

main road and stopped beside him. At the wheel sat Jonas Stern. In the

backseat, laid out and trussed like a Christmas turkey, Hermann the

forger jerked his head back and forth in impotent rage.

"Get in," said Stern. "I thought this fellow might come in handy, so I

invited him to stay for a while."

Too surprised to speak, Natterman climbed into the car and stared back

at Hermann as they drove back to the cabin.

"Is the cabin phone still working?" Stern asked.

Natterman nodded.

"I've quite a few calls to make, but soon we shall be on a plane bound

for Israel. And from there, South Africa."

"Why Israel? Why not fly straight to South Africa?"

Stern skidded to a stop before the battered cabin. "We have some

packages to pick up. Now, untie that fool while I get his equipment.

I have much to arrange before we can be on our way."

Like a dazed recruit of eighteen, the old historian followed the

Israeli's orders, a little afraid, but grateful to be part of the chase

at last.

555 Pm. Sonnonalloo Checkpoint.

American Sedor, West Berlin Harry Richardson walked slowly toward the

barrier post on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall. In spite of

Kosov's assurances to Colonel Rose, Harry still half-expected to be

arrested at the checkpoint. He walked quickly past the Fmt German

documents-control booth, then stopped as instructed at the

currency-check station. Glancing right, he saw two pale faces peering

out of the warmly lit observation window.

One hovered above the red shoulder boards of a KGB colonel: Ivan Kosov.

The other, angrier face belonged to Captain Dmitri Rykov. A bad week

altogether for the young chekist, Harry thought. He tipped his head at

Rykov, then walked on.

The gray sky had darkened. Harry could just make out the U.S, Army Ford

waiting on the American side of the Wall, parked beyond the harsh glow

of the checkpoint area, motor running. Beside the Ford, a restless line

of cars and lorries waited to pass through the blocked checkpoint. Fifty

yards closer, the door to the West Berlin customs booth opened suddenly

and a young border policeman stepped out. Behind him emerged Colonel

Rose, wearing a long olive-drab greatcoat. Then came two men wearing

civilian clothes and handcuffs, followed by Sergeant Clary, who carried

a Colt .45 in his right hand.

Harry heard footsteps behind him, then felt Kosov's hand grip his upper

arm. Twenty seconds later, seven men stood awkwardly around the

white-painted line that marked the absolute boundary between East and

West Berlin-five on the American side, two on the Soviet. Tonight

protocols were few. With a nod Kosov signaled the . two handcuffed

Soviet illegals to step over the line. As they did, he released his

grip on Harry's arm- Harry stepped across the line. He breathed a

heartfelt sigh of relief when Clary clapped him on the back in welcome.

Kosov looked at Rose. "I commend your nerve in negotiating this

exchange, Colonel. Your pragmatic style is somewhat surprising in an

American. Next time, however@' Rose turned and marched away without a

word. Sergeant Clary and the border policeman followed him. Before

Harry could turn, however, Kosov reached out and caught hold of his arm.

"Axel Goltz is dead," he growled.

"Does that bother you?"

"What bothers me is that I don't understand why he did what he did.

Since you killed him, I doubt very much that he worked for you.

And given that, I must begin to take seriously the nationalistic drivel

he spouted off before he shot Corporal Ivanov. He mentioned something

called Phoenix, I believe? Have you heard of this?"

Harry shrugged. "Sure. It's about a hundred miles south of Tucson,

isn't it?"

Kosov smiled coldly. "Have it your way, Major. I would prefer that our

two services collaborate on the Hess case. All my country wants is for

the truth to be exposed to the world.

When Germany begins to stir, even traditional enemies must join forces."

"Someone should have told Stalin that in 1939," Harry observed.

"Guten Abend, Colonel." He turned and jogged to the waiting Ford.

While Kosov fumed, Rykov emerged from the customs booth, trailed

noiselessly by a lean figure dressed from head to toe in black.

"Misha," Kosov muttered, his voice hoarse with fury.

The young killer pricked up his ears like a hungry panther.

"I think it's time you paid a visit to the whore who showed us such

disrespect. Show her that we keep our promises."

Misha nodded, and then, with a swiftness that astonished Rykov, he

melted into the gray dusk of the Sonnenallee.

"What now, Colonel?" asked Rykov.

"We wait," Kosov replied, still staring after the Americans. "I'm

expecting a visitor."

Fifty meters away, Harry climbed into the Army Ford and found a bearish

man wearing a hat and civilian clothes waiting in the backseat.

He looked familiar, but Rose made no introductions.

Sergeant Clary swept across West Berlin with the subtlety of a fire

truck. Harry let his head fall back on the seat, intending to savor his

newfound freedom, but Rose gave him no respite. The colonel heaved a

beefy forearm back over the passenger seat and grinned.

"Okay, Harry, what did you find out over there?"

Harry answered with his eyes closed. "I found out that whatever is in

those Spandau papers is important enough for a Stasi agent to kill a KGB

officer over it."

"Axel Goltz," said Rose. "Did you kill him?"

"He didn't leave me any choice."

The colonel nodded. " ' Our East German sources said Kosov went berserk

when he found out he couldn't interrogate Goltz. He arrested every

ranking Stasi officer he could lay his hands on."

Harry shook his head. "Colonel, Goltz was no more afraid of Kosov than

a rabid dog would have been. He acted as if he expected Heinz

Guderian's tanks to roll out of the Black Forest any minute and chase

the Russians right out of Germany."

"It'd take more than that," Rose muttered. "Every T-72

tank in the DDR is on the move. They're running civilian vehicles right

off the roads. Someone in Moscow has decided that the Germans need a

lesson in humility."

"Maybe they do," Harry said softly. "Did you pick up anything on the

names I gave you? Zinoviev or Phoenix?"

"Yes and no." Rose shared a glance with the unidentified passenger in

the backseat- "In the office, Harry."

Harry nodded slowly. "Okay."

In the silence that followed, it became impossible for Harry to ignore

the man on the seat beside him. Finally, Rose acknowledged the

stranger. "Harry, meet Detective Julius Schneider of the Berlin

Kriminalpolizei. He's gonna be working with us for a while. He's the

guy who saved your ass. Says he knows you."

"A pleasure, Detective." Harry shook Schneider's bearlike paw.

"I thought you looked familiar. I owe you a very tall "It is not

necessary," said the German.

"Okay, okay," Rose grumbled. "Let's adjourn this mutual admiration

society and get up to my office."

The car had arrived in Clay Allee, the thoroughly American boulevard

named for the first U.S. commandant of West Berlin. While Sergeant

Clary returned the Ford to the motor pool, Rose, Schneider, and

Richardson made their way to the fourth floor. Rose took a seat behind

his huge desk. poured whiskeys all around, and waited for Clary to take

up his post outride the door H&" opened the discussion. "So what's the

big secret, guys? Who's Comrade Zinoviev? He isn't Lenin's Zinoviev,

is he?"

Rose gave Schneider a sidelong glance. "H@y, Harry.

We don't know exactly who Zinoviev is, or was. We don't know if he's

dead or alive. But I can guarantee you that 'comrade' wasn't his

preferred manner of address."

Harry drummed his fingers impatiently. "Christ, tell me something."

Rose took a pull from his Wild Turkey. "Our computers didn't have squat

on Zinoviev, Harry, zero. I was tempted to put in a coded request to

Langley-you know, can we run a name through your sacred database, blah,

blah? But I never liked using those guys. To me it's kind of like

going to the Mafia. They're a little too greasy for my taste. So what

I ended up doing was calling an old buddy of mine stateside.

Programs computers for the FBI. He ran it through their setup for me,

and you wouldn't believe what their machine spit out."

"Surprise me."

Rose smiled, knowing that for once he would. "V.V.

Zinoviev was a captain in the Okhrana. Ring any bells?"

Harry looked bewildered. "The tsar's secret police?"

"Give the boy an apple," Rose quipped. "The Okhrana were the world's

original anti-communists. They make Joe McCarthy and his pals look like

a pack of church ladies. The question is, What could a hitman for Tsar

Nicholas possibly have in common with Rudolf Hess?"

"Well," Harry reflected, "for one thing, the Okhrana carried out massive

pogroms against the Jews in Russia."

Both Rose and Schneider looked stunned.

"Look, Colonel," said Harry, "you're way ahead of me on this. Why don't

you just back up and give me the Reader's Digest version?"

"Okay. My FBI buddy punches Zinoviev into the Bureau computers, right?

Well, up comes a file. It gives the Okhrana reference, Zinoviev's date

of birth, but no death date. It says he disappeared from sight in 1941,

which was@' "The year Hess flew to Scotland," Harry finished.

"Right. Well, in Zinoviev's file was a code-HCOwhich I'm told stands

for 'Hardcopy Only.' There was also a cross-index to another file."

"Hess?"

"You got it. So my buddy goes for the Hess file, right?

And what does he find? A bunch of crap you can get from Encyclopaedia

Britannica. But he also finds a notation showing a special addendum to

Hess's file, with what the Bureau calls a J classification. Want to

guess what the J is for?"

Harry's face showed disbelief. "No way."

Rose smiled thinly. "Old J. Fdgar himself. And J files cannot be

accessed by anyone except the director."

"Christ. What does the FBI have to do with Rudolf HessT' "You're not

gonna believe this, Harry. Remember the big Soviet defections of the

sixties and seventies? Nosenko, Penkovsky and the rest? The CIA

handled their debriefings, right? Naturally. But if you'll recall, the

FBI wasn't always limited to operations within the Continental U.S.

During World War Two, Hoover couldn't stand seeing Bill Donovan's OSS

get all the glory, and the result-aside from a lot of political

head-butting-was that the Bureau got involved in some pretty big

espionage cases. So-after the CIA finished debriefing those big

defectors, the FBI got themselves a little taste. They were given a

very limited brief, of course, questions to be confined to KGB

recruitment methods on U.S. soil, et cetera."

Harry nodded slowly.

"However, when the FBI got their shot at these defectors, they took the

chance to clean up some unfinished business.

They had quite a few unsolved cases from the war years, and Hoover had

left instructions that they be pursued whenever possible. One of those

cases happened to involve British collaboration with the Nazis-e.g the

flight of Rudolf Hess."

Harry whistled long and low.

"The FBI questioning turned up a shitload of information, but as you

might imagine, the Bureau wasn't anxious to reveal to the CIA how far

outside their brief they had strayed. Anything that couldn't t)e

confirmed by collateral evidence was buried in the basement of a file

warehouse.

'Hardcopy Only,' get it? Apparently Zinovidv fell into that category."

Rose's eyes shone with excitement. '@, those files have been sitting in

that warehouse for twenty-five years. My contact thinks our query is

the first dung to turn up Zinoviev's name since it went to disk."

"Jesus. What kind of access do we haver' "Hess's file is out of the

question. A team of MIT hackers couldn't break into a J file in a

month." Rose suppressed a satisfied smile. "Zinoviev, on the other

hand, we may get.

My buddy is constantly updating the Bureau files, and it seems he's got

legitimate access to the warehouse where the 'Hardcopy Only' stuff is.

He's probably digging through Zinoviev's file right now."

Harry looked skeptical. "Colonel, you realize that there may be nothing

on Zinoviev in that warehouse. If Zinoviev is cross-indexed to Hess,

his real file probably has a J classification too."

"We'll find out soon enough," Rose concluded. "Let's get to the heart

of this mess-the Spandau papers."

Harry glanced over at Schneider. "I assume the Berlin police have

them?"

"Not exactly," said Rose. "Two Berlin police officers have them."

Rose consulted a file on his desk. "Hans Apfel, sergeant, age

twenty-seven; Dieter Hauer, captain, age fifty-five. Schneider here

thinks one of these two must have stumbled over the papers while they

were guarding the prison. He says this guy Hauer's a real piece of

workcounterterror training, the works. And he must be right. Not only

have these two escaped the city, they've escaped Germany. They flew out

of Frankfurt two hours ago."

"What? How do you know that?"

While Schneider listened in silence, Rose summarized his actions after

receiving Harry's call. Rose had wanted to storm Abschnitt 53

with guns blazing, but Schneider had persuaded him to pursue a more

discreet course. The colonel's compromise had been a city wide

communications blanket of West Berlin, conducted by the Army Signal

Corps under the reserve powers held by the Allies since the Second World

War. Assets nominally dedicated to the Soviet target were reassigned to

cover all police communications traffic entering or leaving Berlin. Rose

was grinning as he revealed his b ou h.

"Six hours ago it paid off, Harry. We intercepted a call from the

Wolfsburg police to West Berlin police HQ. A traffic unit stopped a man

for speeding and reckless driving, and because they'd received reports

of shooting in the forest to the south the night before, they made a

routine search of the car. They hit the jackpot. The driver was a

forger from Hamburg. Right away the guy starts screaming how he's just

been blackmailed into manufacturing false passports for two West Berlin

cops. Claimed he knew Hauer personally, and he described Apfel to a T."

-Did he have any idea where they were headed?" F asked.

Rose grinned. "That ever-popular vacation spot, the Republic of South

Africa. Traveling as father and son. The forger also made passports

for two older guys who were with Hauer and Apfel, but traveling

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 wayt' "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 of even Close. We can't prove that

this thing endangers @can Also, we're not too popular down there right

now, in case you haven't noticed. Not since @ sanctions were put in

effect and half our industry pulled out of @. @ 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 Pm.

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.

"Goddamnit 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 shriveled 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 semisecret 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 Bniderschaft 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, ColoneIT' "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. "Gluck 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 blun ,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.

kpfel, 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

612 P.M. SOViOt Sector. EB$t Berlin, ODR 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 U.S. 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 fiichardson 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 practicing 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 U.S. 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."

Koso hauled himself out of the vehicle and slammed the v d 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 U.S. 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'shead."

Kosov lowered his voice. "It is the symbol of a oneeyed man. I don't

know his name, but whoever he is, he's at the center 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 wa's.

630 pm. #30 Ldtzenstrasse

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

roomstoo 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.

In the hallway outside the apartment, Misha inserted an@e-thin tOOl

into the door lock and picked it with ease.

Eva had carelessly left the bolt unshot when her friends left but she

had fastened the chain. Misha put his deceptively' narrow shoulder

against the door and leaned into it hard, yanidng the chain's

anchor-plate from the doo@amb.

The noise of the screws pulling loose was minimal, but enough to make

the sleeping cabbie shift on the sofa.

Misha's ears detected the rustle, and after his eyes adjusted to the

darkness, he discerned the supine form. He crossed the room silently

and stared down. Bruises and a badly blackened eye distorted Ernst's

face, but Misha recognized the old man who had fought so tenaciously

outside his taxi on the previous night. As Misha stared, Ernst's eyes

flut@ open. With the dreadful clarity of nightmares the old cabbie

recognized the Russian above him. He opened his mouth to scream a

warning to Eva, but Misha snatched a threadbare pillow from the couch

and slammed it over Ernst's contorted face, pressing down with all his

strength.

In the bathroom Eva heard nothing. The battle being fought in her front

room was desperate but soundless. Just when Misha felt the old man's

struggles begin to subside, a hand shot upward and locked around his

throat in a maniacal death grip. The Russian struggled to hold the

smothering pillow in place, not believing the old man's strength. The

bony fingers clutching his throat seemed to be probing for some hollow

place where they could gain sufficient purchase to crush his windpipe.

Misha had had enough. The pillow had seemed a good idea at first, but

it was obviously too slow for this old lion.

Fighting to breathe, he held the @illow in place with his right hand and

drew his stiletto from its ankle sheath with his left.

A veteran of the streets, Ernst the cabbie knew what the snick of spring

and steel meant, but he rould fight no harder than he was already. He

felt the cold blade pierce his chest just below the sternum. Misha

expertly twisted the blade across the midline marking the passage of the

aorta; the old man felt ice turn to fire. He jerked spasmodically, then

his wrinkled hands slipped from Misha's-throat. @ I The Russian gulped

in huge lungfuls of air and shook his head to clear it. He had not

expected this battle. Then suddenly, as the pillow slipped from the old

man's livid face, Ernst somehow summoned a last measure of energy and

cried out-not loudly, but it was enough. Misha looked see Eva's bedroom

door slam shut and hear the click of the bolt shooting home.

Cursing, he scrambled around the room's baseboards until he found the

telephone line running from the bedroom. He severed the black wire two

seconds after Eva picked up the receiver in her roomSheathing his knife

with a grin, he charged the bedwom door. The bolt did not give.

He stepped back and examined the door. it had a heavy frame with two

solid planks crossing with ur thinner sheets of in the middle, but it

was Paneled with an above wood. Aiming at a spot on the upper right P

el-just the knob-Misha kicked hard, splintering the brittle woodA second

kick opened the hole he wanted. He thrust his left hand through the

jagged opening, groping for the bolt.

With the sure eye of a seamstress, Eva drove the point of a brass letter

opener through the back of the Russian's ex@ hand. The shriek from the

other side of the door did not even sound human. Misha's spasming hand

jerked back through the splintered door panel, taidng the letter opener

with it.

,Devil's whore!" he screamed, wrenching the blade from his punctured

hand. "You're dead!"

Eva did not own a gun, and she was 'now truly terrified. Her attacker

launched his body repeatedly against the door, wwarning in animal rage.

Still the bolt refused to give.

Then, suddenly, the bloody hand reappeared through the hole and probed

for the bolt. The circular wound in its center made Eva think of the.

hand of C st. Hyste c ly, she hri ri al screamed some part of a

childhood, prayer and smashed a chair down on the bloody fingers.

The crack of bones made her shudder, but it renewed her hope for

survival.

Unbelievably, the hand tried for the bolt again. Again Eva brought the

chair down, this time on the wrist. Misha howled like a madman. Enraged

beyond feeling pain, he withdrew his shattered hand, backed up, and took

a flying kick at the spot where he judged the bolt to be. This time the

door crashed open.

With @ of terror streaming down her bandaged face, Eva backed toward the

bedroom wall, holding the small wooden chair in front of her like a lion

tamer. When she collided with her cluttered vanity table, she felt her

bladder let go. She froze there, transfixed by the predatory gleam in

the Russian's eyes. Then he moved toward her, breaking the spell. Eva

swung the little chair in desperation, but he parried it easily.

Laughing, he snatched the chair from her and tossed it aside.

The killing fever was on him now. He closed on the shivering woman, his

blood-slickened knife dancing like a cobra's head. Moaning in mortal

terror, Eva lunged blindly, hoping somehow to get past the Russian. She

had no chance.

Misha expertly channeled her momentum downward and pinned her against

the floor, his boot planted solidly between her shoulder blades. He

snatched her hair and jerked her head back, pressing the knife blade to

her throat. His fractured bones seared with agony, but he thought he

could hold the blade steady long enough to drag it across the stubborn

woman's throat. He dangled the bright blade before her rolling eyes.

"You know whose blood that is, woman?" he rasped in Russian.

"Go on, you bastard!" she screamed. "Do it!"

Misha pressed the blade against her throat, trying for a.

firmer grip with his wounded hand.

Suddenly, a roar like that of a Black Forest bear filled the room.

Misha looked up in surprise. A huge form blocked out the light as it

charged toward him. It was Schneider. The big detective had just

gotten off the elevator and started toward Ilse's flat when he heard

Misha kick down the bedroom door. He raced toward the noise, saw

Ernst's blood-soaked corpse on the sofa bed, and continued his headlong

charge into the bedroom.

Misha flung his arm up and tried to hold his knife steady, but

Schneider's momentum bowled him over like a child. He tumbled back

against the vanity and landed in a sitting position. Dazed, he

transferred his knife to his good hand and got up onto his knees.

Schneider backed off slightly, crouching in a classic knife fighter's

stance.

Eva scrambled unsteadily to her feet and stood a few'feet behind him.

"Run!" she shouted. "Here's the door behind you!"

"Get out!" Schneider ordered.

"I'll call the police!" Eva cried, searching hysterically for her

useless phone.

"Don't call anyone!" Schneider snapped. "Go downstairs!"

Having regained some of his faculties, Misha rose into a low crouch and

moved out from the vanity, smiling n "You should have brought a knife,"

he taunted in GerrnanSchneider snatched a sheet from the bed and twisted

it quickly around his left arm, as he had been taught to do against an

attacking dog. He circled carefully, waiting for the Russian's lunge.

He knew it would come soon.

With a cry Misha feinted left, then struck hard, driving the point of

the knife upward toward the Gerfnan's huge chest.

More like a mongoose than a bear, Schneider parried the outstretched

blade with his sheet-wrapped arm and darted out of danger; in the same

movement he rammed his mammoth right fist into Misha's eye socket as the

Russian's body followed his knife thrust.

The blow felled Kosov's assassin like a rotted oak.

When Misha regained consciousness four minutes later, his right eye had

swollen shut. A distant voice in his brain told him that he would soon

have his vision back, but the voice was wrong. Schneider's impacting

fist had so suddenly increased the pressure inside the Russian's eyeball

that it literally exploded at its weakest point-in Misha's case around

the optic nerve-scrambling the delicate contents into jelly.

With his good eye Misha saw the big German speaking into a telephone

beyond an open door. He heard the name Rose, but it meant nothing to

him. A disheveled blond woman with a white bandage on her face imelt

over a sofa, weeping softly. Misha tried to rise, but found that his

feet were tightly bound with telephone wire. His hands, too, were tied.

That was really unnecessary, he thought distantly, since his mangled

left hand and wrist had swollen to twice normal size. He heard the big

man speak angrily into the phone, then slam it down.

Schneider strode through the splintered bedroom door and looked down.

"You've got some friends coming to see you," he said. Then he walked

back to the womanand lid a comforting hand on her shoulder.

The next thilig Misha would remember was four men in white medical coats

lifting him onto a stretcher. He felt strangely comforted by this,

until he spied the olive-drab of American army uniforms beneath the @.

When he tried to rise, a strong hand pressed him firmly back onto the

stretcher. The hand belonged to Sergeant Clary. Misha's short, violent

career was over.

Just over a mile to the east of Eva Beers's apartment, Captain Dmitri

Rykov sprinted up to a phone box and punched in the number of KGB

headquarters in East Berlin. He got an answer after two rings.

"Is Colonel Kosov back yet?" he asked breathlessly.

"No. Who is this?"

"Rykov. Shut up and listen. Tell Kosov that Borodin followed Major

Richardson to his apartment-not just to it but into it! I'm outside

now, but I'm going back up. The building's in Wilmersdorf, about three

blocks north of the Fehrbelliner Platz. Zahringerstrasse, I think. It's

a really expensive building. Kosov can trace it. Sixth floor. Have

you got that?"

"I think so," replied a nervous voice. "But would you repeat it on

tape? I just got the recorder rolling."

"Christ!" Rykov repeated his message for the tape; then he dashed back

into the lobby of Harry Richardson's apartment building.

7.23 Pm. Hasiomere, Surrey, England

Swallow arrived at Michael Burton's tile-roofed cottage just as it

started to rain. She climbed out of the Ford Fiesta which she'd rented

at Gatwick Airport and puttered up the walk carrying a bright blue

umbrella. In her other arm was a clipboard and a large tin cup-the bona

fides of a charity worker. She rang the bell, but there was no answer.

Seeing no lights in the windows, she went round back, and there she

spied the yellow-lit hothouse that Burton had constructed from

second-hand lumber and thick sheets of clear painter's plastic.

The hothouse glowed like an island of summer in the chilly dusk.

Swallow walked right up to it and, finding the door open, stepped

inside.

It was incongruous somehow: the tall, rangy excommando standing among

the fragile orchids; the artificial warmth of the hothouse after the

bracing evening air. Humidifying heaters hummed somewhere out of sight.

Rain pattered on the plastic above their heads. The cloying scent of

orchids masked even Swallow's distinctive perfume. Burton looked up

suddenly, startled, but he relaxed when he realized that his visitor was

a woman, a village matron by the look of her, probably colleeting for

the orphans or something. He watched her shake off her umbrella and

lean it against a two-by-four stud.

"What can I do for you?" he asked in a kindly voice.

Swallow had meant to shoot him through her handbag, but when her hand

went into her purse, the ex-SAS man perceived what almost no one else

would, an involuntary narrowing of the eyes, a slight tensing of the arm

that suggested a shooting posture. Swallow was too far away for Burton

to attack her-whieh his training told him to do-so he spun away toward

the double-layered plastic wall of the hothouse.

He snatched up a sharp spade in his right hand as Swallow fired, hitting

him in the shoulder. He dropped behind the line of a planting table,

slashed open the plastic wall with the spade, and plunged through it

into the yard.

Swallow darted to the opening and knelt in a textbook shooting stance,

preparing to fire again as Burton fled across the lawn. But Burton did

not flee. Having judged it too long a mn over open ground, the

ex-commando stabbed the spade back through the plastic, missing

Swallow's throat by inches. Stunned, she aimed at his blurred

silhouette and shot him again, this time in the chest. The impact blew

Burton backward onto the glistening turf. Swallow stepped through the

rent in the plastic wall and stood over him. He was gasping, and she

could hear the pitiful wheeze of a sucking chest wound.

The last words Michael Burton spoke were not the names of his ex-wife,

his children, his mother, or his brother. In the gathering dusk he

raised his head, choked out, "Hess"; then he fell back and gurgled,

"Shaw, you bloody bastard." But only Swallow was there to hear him.

Four seconds later she shot him in the forehead, turned, and walked

calmly back across the lawn toward the cottage, leaving Burton lying in

the rain with potting soil on his fingers and.the smell of orchids

seeping out of the little hothouse like a soul.

As she drove back toward Gatwick-where she had a seat reserved on the

next flight to Tel Aviv-4t struck Swallow why Sir Neville Shaw had

wanted Michael Burton dead. No doubt it had been Burton who four weeks

ago had slipped over the wall of Spandau Prison during the American

watch month, stuffed a forged suicide note into Rudolf Hess's pocket,

and strangled him with an electrical cord. But Swallow had no interest

in this, unless at some future date it might give her leverage over

Shaw. To her the man who murdered Rudolf Hess was merely a way station

on the road that led to Jonas Stern.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

7.30 Pv. Zahringerstrasse, west Berlin Julius Schneider wished he'd

taken the stairs. The elevator war, an old hydraulic model, slower than

walking. When the doors finally opened, he hurried into the green

carpeted hallway and toward the corner that led to apartment 62@e number

Colonel Rose had given him over the phone. The colonel had said

little-no more than a choked command to appear at this address as soon

as humanly possibleWhen Schneider rounded the corner, he saw Sergeant

Clary standing guard outside the door to apartment 62.

Clary's right hand rested on the butt of the .45 in his belt.

His taut face revealed nothing. Schneider remembered the young man only

an hour before at Eva Beers's flat, grinning with satisfaction at taking

a KGB killer into custody. Clary looked like he couldn't grin now if he

wanted to.

"Inside, sir," he said as Schneider approached.

"Danke, " the German replied, and passed through the door.

Even if the corpse had not been lying in the foyer, Schneider would have

felt the presence of death in the apartment.

He smelled gunpowder, and burmt flesh. The overheated air hung with

that foul stillness that Schneider had long ago learned to breathe only

shallowly when exposed to it. Too much of that reek could poison a

man's soul. But the corpse was there, lying on its stomach. A small

bullet holeprobably an entrance wound-stained a dark spot between the

shoulder blades. Without hesitation Schneider rolled the body over.

Dmitri Rykov stared up with sightless eyes.

"Well?" said a strained voice.

Schneider looked up at Colonel Godfrey Rose- The American had an unlit

cigar clamped between his teeth. His face was gray and haggard.

"Isn't he the Russian from the Sonnenallee checkpoint?"

Schneider asked.

"Yeah. Clary got a telephoto shot of him standing outside the customs

booth."

Schneider nodded. "Is this why you called me here?"

Rose shook his head, then turned and disappeared down a short dark

hallway. The German followed, the familiar weight of mortality in his

belly. When he saw what awaited in the bedroom, a cold dread began to

seep outward from his heart.

Harry Richardson sat wide-eyed in a wooden chair, facing the bedroom

door. He was naked. The chair sat in a pool of blood. Thin nylon

ropes bound Harry's arms and legs to the chair. A pair of navy blue

dress socks had been stuffed into his mouth. Schneider immediately

noticed the cluster of small red circular marks on Richardson's chest.

Cigarette burns. Schneider had worked his share of child abuse cases.

Just below the burns, three lateral slashes trisected the abdomen, not

deep, but bloody and probably unbearably painful.

But the head was the worst. Carved into Harry Richardson's high

forehead was a jagged red swastika. Rivulets of sticky blood streaked

down from the arms of the broken cross, into Harry's open eyes, across

his lips. Schneider had to remind himself to start breathing again.

"What happened?" he asked in. German.

Colonel Rose stood in the far corner of the room, his legs slightly

apart, planted as firmly as trees in the earth. He held his arms folded

across his chest. "You tell me," he said, his voice distant, almost

nonhuman. "That's why I called you."

"Goddamn it," Schneider muttered, "why haven't you closed his eyes?"

"You're the homicide detective. I wanted you to see the crime scene

before we touched him. Maybe you'll see something I don't."

Schneider looked around the room. It had been torn to pieces by someone

who knew how to conduct a rapid search.

"What about your people?"

Rose's eyes narrowed. "You said you wanted to help me, Schneider.

Here's your chance."

The German squinted at Rose, then shook his big head slowly. "Colonel, a

homicide investigation is a team proce I need fingerprint men,

photographers, forensic technicians.

"I don't care about all that crap," Rose retorted. "I could have

high-tech coming out the wazoo if I wanted it. I'm interested in your

gut. Your trieb, remember?"

With a surreal sense of dislocation, Schneider walked a slow circle

around the room, keeping his eyes on Richardson's naked body all the

time. He noted several facts at once-the obvious. But Schneider was a

great mistruster of the obvious. Too often plain facts concealed more

subtle truths. The cause of death seemed plain enough: a bullet hole in

the back of the neck, small caliber, fired into the fragile bones of the

cervical spine. An execution. That Harry had resisted death was also

plain; his skin had been burned by the ropes that held him fast.

Schneider's eyes found Harry's lifeless gray orbs just once, and he

looked away quickly.

There was nothing to be found there but the frozen moment of stunned

horror-more animal than human-that Schneider had seen more times than

any man should.

Last came the message-if message it was. Drawn in the pool of blood

beneath Harry's right foot, like a child's fingerpainting, was a small

but clear capital B. Harry's right great toe was stained'scarlet, like a

blunt pen dipped in a well of blood. After the B came a curved line

that could have been the start of another letter-perhaps a lower-case

rebut in the midst of forming it Harry must have been shot, for a

tangential line arced sharply outward, as if the foot drawing it had

been flung wide in spasm.

Schneider crouched and examined the first letter. There was no

mistaking it: it was a B or nothing. With a long last look at the

second letter, the big German stood, carefully closed Harry's eyelids,

and walked back to the front room.

The air was breathable there. Rose's marching feet echoed behind him.

,what do you make of it?" Rose asked. "Dead Russian, dead American,"

Schneider replied.

"None of my business."

"I'm making it your business. Who do you think did it?"

"Someone in a hurry."

"I'm not in the mood for games, Schneider."

The German took a huge breath, exhaled. "All right.

Someone broke in here, surprised Richardson, tortured him for

information, and was surprised by the Russian in the front. The Russian

tried to run; the killer shot him in the back.

After getting his information@r not getting it-the killer executed

Richardson and left." Schneider sighed.

"How did you find out about it?"

"Anonymous call. Guy had a British accent. Clary and I hauled ass over

here, found Harry, and sealed the place off."

Schneider digested this in silence.

"What about that swastika?" Rose asked.

Schneider shrugged.

"A bullet in the neck is a Dachau-style execution," Rose pointed out.

"SS-style."

"They do it the same way in Lubyanka."

"Yeah," Rose muttered. "So you don't think it's the Germans? Not

Phoenix, or the Brotherhood, or whatever neoNazi wackos Harry pissed off

when he killed Goltz?"

"Why would Germans do dais?" Schneider asked. "Even Der Bruderschaft?

Or if they did, why would they leave a swastika? Why not the red eye?

Why leave anything at all?

They would know you Americans would go mad with rage.

How could that help them? If you implemented one-fourth of your reserve

powers, Berlin would become Beirut."

"Why this, why that' Rose grumbled. 'Why would the fucking Stasi kill

a KGB officer and bring the whole weight of the KGB down on their heads?

Nothing makes sense since yesterday, Schneider. Maybe they want us to

crack down on Berlin. Maybe they think that would spark big protests

against continued occupation." Rose rubbed his forehead anxiously. "The

scary thing is, I can't do a damned thing about this.

Five minutes before that anonymous call, I received an order to cease

and desist all investigations pertaining to Spandau Prison or Rudolf

Hess."

A faint smile touched the corners of Schneider's lips.

"Who gave you that order, Colonel?"

"It came from on high, my friend. What we call Echelons Beyond Reality.

If you ask me, Washington's covering for the goddamn Brits."

"You mean the letters on the floor?"

"Damn right. Harry was obviously trying to tell us who did this.

And it seems to me that B and r are the first two letters of British."

Schneider sucked in his breath. "Colonel, I'm not sure that second

letter is an r It could be a c or even an o. If it is an r, Richardson

could have been trying to wr Bruderschaft-the Brotherhood. Phoenix."

"Maybe, Rose admitted. "But you just told me you didn't think Germans

did it. Make up your mind, will you?"

He paused in thought. "No, that swastika is just too goddamn obvious.

This case revolves around Spandau, and Hess. We've got a dead Russian

and a dead American. In my book that leaves the Brits, not the

Germans."

Schneider raised an eyebrow. "An anonymous caller using a British

accent is just as obvious as that swastika. Also, we can't discount the

possibility that the murderer himself drew those letters in the blood.

To mislead us." The German sighed uncomfortably. "Colonel, is it

possible that men from

your own government could have done this?" is

Rose looked up sharply. "Schneider, I've been in this man,s army all my

life. But if I believed what you just suggested, I'd take this story

straight to the fucking New York Times."

Schneider believed him. "So what are you going to do? If your own

people won't help you on the Hess case, you're stuck."

,you ought to know me better than that by now," Rose countered.

He lifted an arm and pointed back down the hall.

"I liked that man back there," he said soffly- "He served his country in

war, and he served it in what the politicians like to call peace."

Rose's cheek twitched with the intensity of his anger.

"Whoever did that to him-Brit, German, whoever-he and his bosses are

going to pay like they never dreamed in all their worthless goddamn

lives. I won't rest until they do."

Just then Clary knocked twice quickly on the door, then opened it.

Schneider's mouth fell open. Silhouetted in Harry Richardson's

apartment door was the stocky, trenchcoated figure of Colonel Ivan

Kosov. The Russian took two steps into the foyer and bent over the body

of, Dmitri Rykov.

When he looked up, Schneider saw points of black fire flickering in his

eyes. Fury crackled off him like static electricity.

Stunned, Schneider turned to Rose for an explanation.

"I called him," Rose confessed. "if my own people won't help me, by

God, I'll take help where I can find it."

Schneider peered into Rose's eyes. "Why am I really here, Colonel?" he

asked quietly. And then suddenly he knewRose had been forbidden to

pursue the Spandau case using his own men, so he had called Schneider

here to pick up the torch Harry Richardson had dropped. It made

Scfineider angry that the American thought he needed cheap theatrics to

motivate him. He had wanted to go to South Africa with Richardson all

along. Funk, Luhr, Goltz: these men were minions, corrupt servants of

an insidious power creeping into Germany from without. Stopping them

would be a temporary victory at best. Whoever they served was the true

enemy. To unite officers of the Stasi and the Polizei-sworn

enemies-would take a truly monstrous power. And to kill a monster,

Schneider knew, you cut off its head, not its hand.

With a glance back at Kosov's kneeling figure, he caught Rose by the

ar-rn and pulled him back into the room where Harry's corpse sat baking

in the dry heat.

"I'll go to South Ahica, Colonel," he growled. "But I don't like being

manipulated. You should have sent me in the first place. You want to

find two German cops? Send a German cop." Schneider jerked his thumb

toward the front room. "But I report to you, not him.

Understood? I trust you alone. Not your government, not Kosov, not his

government.

Just YOU."

"Agreed, Detective." Rose pulled Harry's airplane ticket from his

pocket and handed it to the German. "From now on, all expenses will be

paid out of my personal bank account." He lowered his voice. "Your

flight leaves at two Pm.

tomorrow. I'll brief you just before you leave. Now, if you don't

mind, I need to talk a little shop with my new Russian friend."

Schneider turned. Ivan Kosov stood motionless in the bedroom door, his

eyes riveted on Harry Richardson's mutilated head. He made no sound.

Schneider stuffed the plane ticket into his coat pocket and moved toward

the door. At the last moment, Kosov stepped aside.

Schneider paused, looked back at Harry, then looked into the Russian's

eyes lohg enough for Kosov to read the message there. I hate Russians

as much as you hate Germans, it said. I blinded your little black

assassin, and I haven't ruled you out as a suspect in this either

Schneider walked on. He understood Colonel Rose's motives: this was a

marriage of expediency, nothing more. Politics, as ever, made strange

bedfellows. Rose didn't TRUSt his Russian counterpart any more than

Schneider did, but the two professionals had much in common. They're

like a pair of fathers grieving over murdered sons, Schneider thought as

he trudged down the stairs. A pair of very dangerous fathers.

Kosov had looked even angrier than Rose, if that was possible.

Schneider only hoped the two men realized what they and he-were up

against. Eighteen hours ago Harry Richardson had practically scalped a

Stasi agent in an East Berlin street. Tonight he was slated for a

closed-casket funeral. The man who had done that to him, Schneider

reflected, was a man to be taken very seriously indeed.

Six floors below Harry's apartment, Yuri Borodin smiled with

satisfaction. His plan had worked after all. Ten minutes ago he'd been

furious. Richardson hadn't had the Spandau papers-as Borodin had

thought he might-and he had refused to discuss the two German policemen,

even under torture. Borodin hadn't intended to kill Richardson, but the

American had made him angry. And then Kosov's bumbling footpad had

blundered in during the interrogation. Borodin had shot Rykov from

reflex, without even knowing who he was. That had sealed Richardson's

fate. Borodin couldn't very well leave anyone alive to reveal what he

had done.

Even a Twelfth Department man could not kill a fellow KGB officer with

impunity.

Yet in the midst of adversity, inspiration had struck. Before leaving

Harry's apartment Borodin had planted two microtransmitters@ne in the

front room, one in the bedroom. Then he'd made an anonymous telephone

call to Colonel Rose. The harvest had been bountiful. Now he knew not

only the location of the two German policemen, but also the identity of

Rose's emissary to South Africa. The burly Kripo detective would lead

him straight to Hauer and Apfel, and ultimately to the Spandau papers.

And if that wasn't enough, he was now listening to Kosov and Rose hatch

a renegade operation that could smash both their careers. The only

oversight, Borodinconceded to himself, had been the writing on the

floor. The American had sneaked that past him. Richardson had been

trying to write Borodin, of course, but a bullet through his spinal cord

had apparently turned his o into something like an r The Anglophobic

Rose had already misread the one clue that could help him, though; and

Ivan Kosov wasn't likely to disabuse him of his fantasies!

As Schneider emerged from the front entrance of Harry's building, Yuri

Borodin laughed aloud.

Even in the dog days of glasnost, his job was sometimes more fun than

work.

7'31 Pm. Lufthanso Flight 417, Corsican Airspace

Dieter Hauer looked down at the shiny, wrinkled ball of aluminum foil in

his hand. It had taken four minutes of his best pickpocket technique to

remove the Spandau papers from Hans's trousers, but he had finally done

it. Hans sat in the airplane seat next to him, sleeping fitfully. Hauer

removed the foil wrapping the thin sheets as if it concealed an

archaeological treasure. Despite all that had happened, he had yet to

actually see the papers.

The first page looked just as Hans had described it: a paragraph

written in German, followed by a stream Of unintelligible gibberish.

Hauer scanned the German, but learned nothing new. Sighing, he pulled

the bottom page from the stack and looked for the signature.

There it was: Number 7. My God, he thought, to have been in prison so

long that you didn't even use your name. If the poor bastard remembered

it at all ... On the last page Hauer saw the carefully drawn eye. It

looked exactly like those he'd seen tattooed on at least a dozen scalps.

Whoever wrote the Spandau papers, he decided, had obviously been visited

at least once by someone with more than hair behind his right ear. Hauer

didn't realize that three of the pages were blank until he began

arranging them to repack them in the foil.

He rubbed his eyes vigorously, unwilling to accept what he saw, but the

truth was I plain to see. Three pages bore no ink at all.

The paper wasn't even the same! His first impulse was to shake Hans

awake and demand to know what he had done with the missing pages. Yet as

soon as he raised his hand, Hauer realized what had happened. The

substituted sheets told the story.

Professor Natterman had lied. The old man had held back after all ...

he'd kept some of the pages for himself! Hauer cringed as he recalled

Natterman slipping into the bathroom before laying the foil acket on

Hans's lap.

p Greedy bastard! he thought furiously. With yourfamily's lives at

stake! Pulling the bottom page out again, Hauer stared with grim

frustration. Angrily, he read the final note in German. The last bit

caught his eye:

Phoenix wields my precious daughter like a sword of fire!

If only they knew! Am I even a dim memory to my angel?

No. Better that she never knows. I have lived a life of madness, but

in the face of death I found courage ...

Better that she never knows. Those words resonated in Hauer's mind.

Better that you don't know, either he thought, looking at Hans's

sleeping face. You'll find out soon enough.

Hans's lank blond hair hung down across eyelids that quivered in

troubled sleep. Carefully, Hauer refolded the aluminum foil around the

pages and slipped them back into Hans's pocket. And what will you do,

he wondered, when you finally learn that your grandfather-in-law has

condemned your wife to death? For without the Spandau papers to trade

to the kidnappers, intact, Hauer knew the chance of bringing Ilse out of

Africa alive dropped by at least 50 percent. How could that bastard do

that to his ownflesh and blood?

And then Hauer knew. The old man had not stolen the missing pages-he'd

lost them! Lost them to the Afrikaner who attacked him.

And the Afrikaner had lost them to whoever had attacked him! That was

why Natterman had frantically searched the carcass that Hans dragked

into the cabin; he'd been looking for the missing pages. And he had

found nothing! My God, Hauer thought, feeling acid flood his stomach,

someone else has those pages!

As the DC-10 roared south toward the bottom of the un world, Hauer

wondered who could possibly have 0 Natterman's cabin before he and Hans.

Funk's men? Ilse had obviously been forced to give the cabin telephone

number to her kidnappers. Had she also given them the cabin's location?

How early had she been captured? Who else was hunting for the papers

now? Hauer had seen some rather English-looking young men hovering

around the ticket d'Hans had slipped counters at Frankfurt Airport, but

he an by them on the strength of their false passports.

If Hauer had only known-really known-who had the missing pages, he might

have felt less like a shepherd leading a lamb to the slaughter.

But he didn't know. And as he closed his eyes to the sound of the

roaring turbines, one word cycled endlessly through his mind.

Who?

7.40pm. E-35Motorway, Frankfurt, FRG Jonas Stern took his eyes from the

motorway long enough to glare at Natterman in the passenger seat. "We're

going to Israel to pick up some packages, and that's all I'll bloody say

about it!"

"But what kind of packages?"

"You'll find out soon enough."

"But you were on the phone for hours," Natterman persisted. "You wasted

a whole day."

"Klap kop in vant!" Stern snapped in Yiddish. "So the Messiah comes a

day later! You don't order these packages like a pizza pie, Professor.

You told me yourself that the rendezvous with the kidnappers isn't until

tomorrow night.

We'll make Pretoria in plenty of time."

Natterman sulked in his seat. "Why were you talking to an air force

general?"

Stern exploded. "You were listening to my calls!"

"Only one," Natterman lied. "I just want to know what's going on.

Where's the harm in that?"

"You'll know all you need to know," Stern said, scowling.

"When you need to know it, not before. If you'd put your precious

career aside for a moment and tell me all you know about Hess's mission,

I might see fit to reciprocate."

Natterman put an age-spotted hand to his mouth and bit his thumbnail. He

looked like a gold prospector deciding whether or not to reveal the

location of his big strike to a stranger whose help he needs. With

sudden gravity, he reached across the seat and took hold of Stern's arm.

"I'll tell you what I think about Hess's mission," he said excitedly. "I

think Rudolf Hess is still alive. " Stern turned and caught Natterman's

eye; then he looked back at the wide motorway.

He chuckled softly. "I know you do, Professor. And I wish it were so

easy. But you watch too many movies."

"Then you don't think Hess is alive?" Natterman asked incredulously.

Stern grinned. "Sure. He's set up housekeeping with Martin Bormann and

Josef Mengele. Amelia Earhart is the housemaid and Elvis Presley

provides the dinner entertainment."

Natterman ignored the levity. "Then you're really not hunting Hess?" he

said suspiciously.

-.'

Stern shook his head. "I told you, Professor, I'm no Nazihunter.

I'm more of a gamekeeper. And the preserve I protect is Israel."

"Hess is alive," Natterman insisted. "I know he is. It's completely

conceivable. His double died only four weeks ago, and the medical care

at Spandau was atrocious. "

Natten-nan folded his arms defiantly. "Rudolf Hess is alive and I'm

going to find him."

Stern grunted skeptically.

"Since you're not hunting him," Natterman said in a superior tone, "I

suppose I can tell you how I know he's alive."

"Enlighten me, 0 Master," Stern said with mock gravity.

Natterman scowled. "Laugh if you like. I'll bet you don't laugh at

this. Remember the tattooed eye that I showed you on the Afrikaner's

head? That's the constant in this whole mess, the one unifying symbol.

The Spandau papers said the eye was the key, and the fascist members of

the Berlin police have the eye tattooed on their scalps beneath the

hair.

Hauer told me so. But what Hauer doesn't know, Stern, is what that

symbol means. I do. It's an Egyptian symbol-the All-Seeing Eye, the

Guarding Eye of God." Natterman nodded knowingly. "Hauer also told me

that the police fascists protect something or someone called Phoenix.

Are you familiar with the Phoenix, Stern?"

"Of course. It's the mythological bird of flames that rises from its

own ashes every five hundred years."

"Very good. Now, 'Phoenix' is a Greek word, but the Greeks did not

invent the Phoenix myth. Phoenix is but the Greek name of the Egyptian

god Bennu-the bird who rises from the ashes of its own destruction. Do

you see?"

"What I see," said Stern irritably, "is a history professor who has lost

touch with reality."

Natterman cackled. "That's because you're blind, Stern!

Blind like all the rest! Blind to history! I told Hauer that the key

to this mystery lay in the past, but the arrogant fool didn't believe

me!"

"What in God's name are you babbling about?"

"Egypt, Stern, Egypt. Don't you see? All these mystical signs and

symbols, they lead ultimately to one man: Rudolf Hess!"

"How?" Stern snapped.

"Because," Natterman explained, "Rudolf Hess was born and raised in

Egypt! He went to school in Alexandria until he was fourteen years

old!"

Stern sat in stunned silence. "That's true," he murmured finally.

"I remember now."

Natterman was nodding with nervous energy. "I'm going to find him,

Stern. I'm going to deliver that Nazi bastard into the modern world. It

will be the academic coup of the century!"

"Take it easy, Professor. I think you're letting your imagination run

away with you. That eye could mean any number of things. And the name

Phoenix has been used to name everything from cities to cars to condoms.

You're stretching logic too far. So Hess was raised in Egypt ... I'

presume he attended a German school there, and he was still only a. boy

when he emigrated to Germany."

"He did attend a German school," Natterman admitted.

"But fourteen is not so young. And childhood impressions are often the

most vivid of our lives. The treasures and mysteries of Egypt's past

would have fascinated any European boy. No, Stern, I don't think I'm

stretching logic. It's simple deductive reasoning."

Stern looked thoughtful. "Think what you wish, Professor.

I will say this: I'm not so sure Hess's original mission is over yet"-he

smiled-"I just don't think Hesr, is running it."

Natterman looked anxious. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that Hess flew to Britain to arrange an AngloGerman peace.

I accept that as fact. Whatever delusions Hess may have had, the

strongest correction, the only real foundation for such a peace was the

widespread belief in England that Germany represented the last and

strongest possible barrier against an expansionist-minded Russia.

Against communism."

"That's freshman history," said Natteirinan. "What's your point?"

"My point is that things may not be so different now. The Soviet Union

is disintegrating, Professor. The heart of the military colossus is

economic chaos; the great warrior is starving inside his armor.

Russia's provinces and satellites seethe with resentment and sedition.

One day not so long from now, Professor, the Soviet Union could

explode."

"And?"

"And I'm not the only fool who knows that! I'm saying

It

that some people may still believe that Germany represents the best

natural barrier against Russia, the unstable colossus."

"Germany? As a barrier to Russia?"

Stern smiled coldly. "Not Germany as you know it. But a Germany

reunited. Reunited and armed with nuclear weapons. Its own nuclear

weapons."

"No," Natterman breathed. "That can't be true. If we Germans wanted

nuclear weapons, we could have developed them ourselves long ago. We

invented the ballistic missile, for God's sake!"

Stern snorted. "It's no more fantastic than your fairy tale about

Rudolf Hess."

"Hess is alive!" Natterman insisted. "I know it!"

Stern's face hardened. "Whether he is or he isn't, Professor, I don't

want you mentioning his name in front of anyone from this moment

forward. You understand? No one. Not friends, not family. Fantasies

like yours can produce hysterical responses in some people."

"But not in you," Natterman said, eyeing the Israeli closely.

"Since you think Hess is alive, Professor," Stern said gamely, "tell me

this. If Hess survived his mission to England, why didn't he return to

Germany? To his beloved Fuhrer?"

Natterman opened his mouth to speak, then realized that he did not have

an answer. "I won't know that until I know what Hess's real mission

was," he said. "Until we find Hess himself."

Stern swung onto the access road for Frankfurt-Main International

Airport. "Professor," he said, "we are after two different things.

You're obsessed with the past, I fight in the present. But the Hess

case links us. We're on a road we cannot see, and at the end of it, I

fear, lies something as evil as human beings can devise. I believe that

the danger that exists now came out of the past. But I can't rip away

the curtain of time and see what ill-begotten proposition Rudolf Hess

carried to England forty-seven years ago."

Stern flicked his lights and passed a slow-moving BMW. "So you know

what I think? I think maybe having a German history professor along

with me is the next best thing. Even if he is an ambitious,

close-mouthed goyim who thinks he's Simon Wiesenthal."

Stern swung the car into the TICKETING/CHF-CK-IN lane.

When he had parked, Natterman climbed out and looked at him across the

car's roof. "I just hope you're not condemning my granddaughter to

death by making this stupid side nip to Israel," he growled.

Stern bunched his coat collar higher around his neck.

"This mystery has waited half a century to be solved, Professor.

It can wait one more day."

He turned and hurried into the terminal.

I wonder, Natterman asked himself, walking toward the huge glass doors.

I wonder if it can.

THE PLAN NAZI He is insane. He is the Dove of Peice. He is Messiah. He

is Hitler's prince.

He is the one ckan honest man they've got He is the worst assassin of

the la He has a mission to preserve mankind Hes non@ohouc. He was a

"b@" He has been dotty since the age of ten.

But all the dine was top of Hitlers men ...

"Hess, the Deputy Fuhrer"

By A.P. HERBERT, 1.941

after Hess par"huted into England

CHAPTER TWENTY

January 7, 1941, The Berghot The Bavarian Alps Rudolf Hess stood alone

before the great picture window of Adolf Hitler's Alpine headquarters

and waited for his Fuhrer. Hess was a big man, with an addete's

body-broad across the shoulders and, even at forty-seven, narrow through

the waist-yet Hitler's window dwarfed him. Like all things designed by

or for the Fuhrer, it was the largest in the world.

Silhouetted against its Olympian panorama, Hess looked like a tiny extra

in the corner of a movie screen.

Deep in the valley below him, the village of Berchtesgaden slept

peacefully. Beyond it the magnificent Untersberg rose skyward, covered

with fresh January snow. Far to the north Hess could just see the

rooftops of Salzburg. He could understand why the Fuhrer retreated to

this mountain eyrie when the pressures of the war became too onerous.

This was one of those times. As Hess stared out at the mountain, a

stabbing pain pierced his stomach. He bent double, clenching his

abdomen with his heavy-muscled forearms until the agony abated. He had

endured these attacks for three weeks now, each in stoic silence. For

he knew it was no organic toxin that caused the pain, but anxiety-a

terrible, withering apprehension. The first,attack had struck him on

December 18, less than twelve hours after Hitler issued his secret

Directive Number 21. In that order the Fuhrer had commanded that all

preparations for plan Barbarossa-the full-scale invasion of Soviet

Russia-be completed by May 15 of this year.

Hess regarded Directive 21 as insanity, and he was not alone.

Some of the Wehrmacht's most gifted generals felt the same. Hess felt

no moral qualms about betraying Stalin or attacking Russia. If a few

million Russians had to die to create new living space for Germans, so

be it. But to attempt the invasion now, while England remained unbeaten

in the west? Madness!

Hess had a single hope. If peace with England could somehow be secured

before Barbarossa was launched, suicidal tragedy might yet be averted.

Just six months ago Hitler had offered peace to the British from the

floor of the Reichstag, and Winston Churchill had immediately answered

with a resounding "No!" Yet that had not discouraged Hess.

With the help of Professor Karl Haushofer, a family friend, he had sent

a sub-rosa letter to England proposing a secret meeting in Lisbon

between himself and Douglas Hamilton, the Premier Duke of Scotland.

The subject to be discussed: AngloGerman peace. The Duke of Hamilton

was renowned as the first man to fly over Mount Everest, and Hess liked

the idea of dealing with a fellow flyer. He himself had won the

dangerous air race around the Zugspitze, Germany's highest peak.

Hess had met Hamilton briefly at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, and the

dashing young duke had seemed just the type of fellow who could

short-circuit the tedious process of diplomacy and bring Churchill to

his senses.

Yet three months had passed since the peace letter began its circuitous

journey to England, and still Hess had received no answer.

For the first few weeks he hadn't worried too much; Hitler had given

tacit consent to the peace feeler, and gratefully he hadn't seemed too

disappointed when the effort did not immediately pan out.

Even as weeks turned to months-while Hess grew more agitated with each

passing day-Hitler seemed unconcerned. Then on December 18, Hess, to

his horror, discovered the reason for the Fuhrer's uncharacteristic

patience. Hitler meant to invade Russia whether peace with England had

been secured or not! From that day forward Hess had prayed despqrately

that an answer from the Duke of Hamilton might still arrive-that peace

negotiations could still be arranged. He hoped that he had been

summoned to the Berghof today to discuss that very event.

Wiping the sweat from his brow, he took another long look out at the

great mountain across the valley. Legend told that the Emperor

Charlemagne slept beneath the Untersberg, that one day he would rise up

to restore the lost glory of the German Empire. Hess had often boasted

that Adolf Hitler was the fulfillment of that prophecy. Now he was not

so sure. No man was more faithful to the Fuhrer than he, but lately he

had begun to think back to the old days, to the Great War. Hess had

been Hitler's company commander then, and young Hitler only a dispatch

runner, one more mustard-gassed soldier betrayed by the Jewish

financiers.

Hess caught his breath as another stab of agony twisted his stomach. He

shut his eyes against the pain, yet even as he did, a horrifying vision

filled his mind. He saw the frozen, limitless steppes of Russia

stretching away before him, league after league, drenched in blood.

German blood.

When the pain finally eased, he pressed his sweaty palms to the great

sheet of glass, fingers outspread, and looked out at the Untersberg in

silent invocation: If ever there was a time for you to rise, emperor, it

is now! What the Fuhrer plans was beyond even Napoleon, and I fear that

without some miracle, the task he set us is too great"Rudi!" Adolf

Hitler called across the richly appointed salon. "Come here! Let me

see you!" w, he felt a jolt of asWhen Hess turned from the windo

tonishment. The effusive welcome had not surprised him; Hitler often

complained that his senior staff did not visit the Berghof frequently

enough. But his clothes ... Hess was startled speechless. For some

time now Hitler had worn dark business suits during the day, and dressed

with particular severity around the time of military conferences. But

today-with a major war conference scheduled in a matter of hours-he

looked just as he had during the early thirties, wearing a blue linen

sport jacket, white shirt, and a yellow tie to top it all off. Hitler

strode forward and clapped Hess on the back, then led him away from the

window.

"I've had historic news today, Rudi," he said, his voice quavering with

excitement. "Prophetic news."

Hess braced himself for whatever revelation might follow this ominous

preface. "What has happened, my Fuhrer?"

"All in good time," Hitler said cryptically. "Tell me, how are your

training flights progressing?" two a week since Hess shrugged.

"I've managed one or October."

"Good, good. Anyone taking an unusual interest in your activities?"

thought he had seen the Fuhrer wink, For a moment Hess but he banished

the thought. "I don't believe so."

"Not Goring? Or Himmler?"

Hess frowned. "Not directly, no."

Hitler's eyes flickered. "Indirectly?"

"Well ..." Hess looked thoughtful. "Last fall Himmler lent me his

personal masseur, to see if he could relieve my stomach pains-" "Felix

Kersten?"

"Kersten, yes. He was a bit more inquisitive than I thought proper at

the time. Is he one of Himmler's spies?"

"Notorious!" Hitler cackled.

Hess was perplexed. He had not seen the Fuhrer in such a mood since

Compiegne, after the French surrender. He watched Hitler clasp his

hands behind his blue-jacketed back, then pace across the room and stop

before a magnificent Titian nude.

"I have a destination for you, Rudi," Hitler said to the painting.

"At last. Would you like to guess it?"

Hess felt a tightening in his chest. He had played these games before,

and he knew Hitler would say nothing more until he had guessed at least

twice. "Lisbon?" he tried impatiently.

'No.

"Switzerland?"

"No!"

Hess could hear the laughter in Hitler's voice. This really was

intolerable, even from the Fuhrer. Just as Hess started to say

something he might regret, Hitler turned to him with an expression that

could freeze molten steel. "England," he said softly.

Hess thought he had misheard. "I beg your pardon, my FuhrerT' "England,

" Hitler enunciated, his eyes flashing.

With a sudden surge of elation Hess understood. "We've had an answer

from the Duke of Hamilton! Professor Haushofer's letter has done it!"

Hitler waved his hand irritably. "No,'no, Rudi, don't be silly.

Haushofer and his son are merely decoys-diversions meant to confuse

British Intelligence."

Hess opened his mouth to protest, but no words came out.

"I know Haushofer is an old friend of yours, but his dilettante son is a

member of the German resistance, for God's sake. But for you, I'd have

had him shot months ago."

Hess was dumbfounded. To hear that all his peace efforts to date had

been in vain was bad enough, but the revelation that his old friend's

son was a traitor ... it was beyond belief!

hrer? There is no "And the Duke of Hamilton, my Ffi chance that he

might still help us?" n is as loyal an EnHitler snorted. "The Duke of

Hamilton englishman as you could find, Rudi. of course, that doesn't

mean the duke can't prove useful." there

"England," Hess murmured, trying to will away another stomach cramp.

"Would my visit be in an official capacity?"

"of course-not," Hitler scoffed. "That kind of play-acting I leave to

blusterers like Ribbentrop- Your mission will be all substance, Rudi. A

master stroke of statesmanship!"

Hess stood silently for some moments. "Do you ... do you mean that you

have a plan to secure peace from the British?" be th isfaction. "That

is exactly what Hitler amed wi self-sat I mean. Fate has answered us in

our hour of need. Peace and, Rudi, and Russia is within our with

Britain is at h grasp."

Apropos of nothing, Hitler launched into a critical assessthe Russian

stePPes, haries XII's campaigns on ment of C ru ut Mussolini's arrothen

segued ah ptly into a harangue abo gant nephew Ciano. From years of

practice Hess managed to look attentive while ignoring the entire

monologue- His mind was filled by an image of himself flying

hell-forleather over the English Channel on an errand to see GOd only

knew what Englishmen. Finally his anxiety got the better of him, and,

quite out of character, he interrupted Hitler.

,You wish me to fly to London, my Fuhrer?"

on yet," Hitler rep "I'm not sure of the exact destinati lied, ignoring

the interruption. "But certainly not London. MY God, they'd throw you

in the Tower before you got a chance to speak to anyone!"

"Undoubtedly," Hess agreed. asy, R@0i. What is it)"

Hitler frowned. "You seem une ,Well ... England. I mean, it's not

neutral We're still at war. If I were to be captured there, the results

could be catastrophic." Hess saw Hitler's face darken, as it always did

at the slightest hint of opposition. "I'm not worried for myself, of

course' " he said quickly, "but with all that I know ...

the Russian invasion ... Barbarossa."

ks Hitler snapped. "But there "I'm well aware of the ris " is no

alternative, Rudi- We must have peace with England now, no matter what

the cost. I have considered every option. I even thought of sending

your double in your place.

He hasn't done anything but sit on his backside in Denmark since we

trained him."

Hess felt a jolt of surprise. He had almost forgotten he had a double.

The Fuhrer obviously had not.

"But it would never work," Hitler declared. "The English will be

looking for a trick, and they know you too well. A simple check for

your war wounds would unmask any impostor." Hitler chuckled. "I'm

afraid you're almost as famous now as I am, old friend. And that's what

makes you perfect for this mission."

Hess cleared his throat. "What exactly is the mission, my Fuhrer?"

Hitler began pacing out the room. "The operation will be called

Mordred. But for the time being, the less you know the better. I only

tell you your destination now because I must know you can reach England

on the given night. Whatever @ning or navigational practice you need to

ensure success on such a flight, you must do it." Hitler stopped pacing

and looked into Hess's deep-set eyes. "Can you fly alone to England,

Rudi? Alone in the darkness?"

Hess nodded crisply. "Absolutely, my Fuhrer."

Hitler nodded. "Do you have any parachute training?"

Hess's eyes widened. "No."

Hitler clucked his tongue. "I thought not. You probably won't need it,

anyway. I'm told the Duke of Hamilton has a landing strip right beside

his castle."

Hess felt more confused than ever. "But you said that the Duke of

Hamilton was a loyal En lishman!"

Hitler smiled enigmatically. "That is quite irrelevant." His eyes

twinkled. "Do you remember The Scarlet Pimpernel, Rudi?"

Hess's heavy black eyebrows bunched in puzzlement. "I ...

I believe you showed the film here at'the Berghof, didn't you?"

"That's right, just last year. The Pimpernel was the daring English

nobleman who made fools of the French during the Reign of Terror."

"What has that to do with me?"

Hitler's eyes flashed with wicked glee. "Everything, Rudi! You know I

have always admired the English. They are fellow Aryans. They are

great empire-builders, as we Germans are. But"-Hitler stabbed a stiff

finger into the air-"they have allowed themselves to be deluded by

Churchill.

Dangerously deluded. Look what happened when I spared their pathetic

Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk! I halted Guderian's tanks, blamed the

British escape on Goring and the Luftwaffe"-Hitler's face reddened in

anger-"and then Churchill had the nerve to call Dunkirk a British

victory! The English people must be freed from the influence of that

warmonger!" cross his broad chest.

Utterly adrift, Hess folded his arms a "But this Pimpernel business, my

Fuhrer. How does it relate to me?" "Don't you see , Rudi? You're my

Scarlet Pimernel!"

Hess stepped back in disbelief.

Hitler nodded excitedly. ,yes! You are the exact opposite of what you

appear to be! Since the war heated up, everyone has written you off as

merely a loyal bureaucrat who wastes his time on Party administration.

All my officers think I've forgotten you." Hitler shook his head

bitterly. "How can they have forgotten, Rudi? From the beginning you

fought beside me, took wounds meant for me. And now, you will be the

man who receives my most sacred charge, the responsibility of the most

sensitive mission in 'the history of the Reich. Together we shall prove

yet again what fools they all are!"

Hitler's eyes went cold. "In such times as these, Rudi, we learn who

our real friends are. I'm afraid that some of our oldest and most

trusted comrades may have decided that the time has come to explore

alternatives to the road I have chosen for Germany. They seem to think

my decision to invade at Russia is a symptom Of madness. Imbeciles!

To imagine that thirst neutral I-Adolf Hitler-would invade Russia wi out

f izing England!" th th Hess looked guiltily at e floor. For the past

mon he had subscribed to the very same heresy. Yet the Fuhrer had

obviously had his own peace plan in the works all along. Of course! It

was only natural that the Fuhrer should inspire powerful allies in

England! So many questions thundered in Hess's brain that he could not

decide which to ask first.

Before he could say anything, however, Hitler transfixed him with a

zealot's stare and began to speak with quiet conviction.

"Every man has his hour, Rudi, his time upon the world's stage.

Your hour has come. Some men-men like myself-play their part in public,

like stars flashing across the sky.

Others must play their part in shadow. It is to such a role I call you

now. Take heed, old friend. There are traitors all around us. From

the moment you leave this room you will be in mortal danger.

But you are a soldier, Rudi, the embodiment of the true Nazi. I do not

exaggerate when I say that the very future of the Reich rests upon your

success!"

Hess felt his chest swell with burning pride. He did not yet understand

his role in Operation Mordred, but if the Fuhrer was ready to gamble the

future of the Reich on him, he was ready to lay down his life without

question. What German could do less?

Hess started when, after a perfunctory knock, Reichleiter Martin

Bortnann marched loudly into the salon.

"General Halder has arrived, my Fuhrer," he announced.

As a courtesy, Hitler waited for Hess to dismiss Bormann.

The thickset, unctuous Bonnann was Hess's deputy, after all.

"Dismissed!" Hess barked.

Bonnann saluted and backed reluctantly out of the salon.

Hess felt better immediately. Lately he spent most of his time in his

Munich office, and he had reluctantly come to depend more and more on

Bormann for satisfying the daily whims of the Fuhrer. Bonnann was an

able assistant, but he possessed many traits Hess detested. He was

cruel and merciless to his subordinates, yet fawning and obsequious to

his superiors. No one liked him much@xcept Hitler-but everyone

respected his proximity to the epicenter of power.

"A good man," Hitler said with some embarrassment.

"But it's not like having you around, Rudi. Not like the old days.

Remember Landsberg?"

For a moment Hess thought back to the months in Landsberg Prison, where

he had edited the manuscript of Mein Kampf while Hitler dictated it.

He_s had done his best to force the fevered ideas into intelligible

progressions of words. In those days he had been the apple of the

Fuhrer's eye. it seemed a thousand years ago now. Or it had until five

minutes ago.

"I remember," he said softly.

Hitler crossed to the fireplace, reached up to the mantel, and took down

a long manila envelope. He tapped it against the palm of his left hand.

"On this envelope, Rudi, is written the name of the man I have chosen to

help you carry your mission."

Hitler extended the envelope. Hess accepted it, and held it at belt

level while he read the large blocked letters: REINHARD HEYDRICH:

OBERGRUPPENFOHRER SD.

Hitler had written the words himself; Hess recognized the hand from the

endless nights in Landsberg.. He also recognized the name.

Heydrich was commander of the feared SD-the counter intelligence arm of

the SS-and second-incommand toSS Reichsfiihrer Himmler. Hess

half-recalled an unpleasant story he had once heard about Heydrich-a man

so ruthless that even the brutal SS had christened him the "blond

beast"-but the Fuhrer's voice broke his train of thought.

"Himmler is to know nothing of this," he said. "Heydrich keeps an

office in the Prinz-Albrechtstrasse, but you're not to deliver it

there."

"Deliver it?" Hess said incredulously.

Hitler was pacing again, faster now. He spoke as if dictating to one of

his secretaries. "As soon as you get back to Munich, wire Heydrich that

you must see him on a matter of Reich security. Include the word

MordredThis will prevent him from informing Himmler.

Heydrich spends a good deal of time at the SD offices in the

Wilheimstrasse. Deliver it there-not Prinz-Albrechtstrasse. You can

log the trip as another training flight. Make some small talk for a

half hour, then return to Munich." Hitler pursed his lips. "You will

have no further contact with Heydrich, Rudi. But rest assured, he will

be working with you. Besides myself, he will be your only ally."

Hitler paused by the door, his fingers on the handle. "Any questions?"

Hess cleared his throat. "Only one, my Fuhrer."

One question was more than Hitler liked, but he forced himself to smile.

"What is it?"

"When do I leave for England?"

Hitler let his hand drop and walked back to Hess. He reached up, laid a

hand on the powerful shoulder, and gazed into Hess's earnest eyes. "From

the filthy trenches of France," he said softly, "we have risen up and

conquered all Europe. We have avenged the outrage of Versailles- Now we

stand poised to invade Russia itself. Russia itself!" Hitler paused,

his eyes burning. "Such a step is not to be taken without an awareness

of destiny, Rudi- On what day did we begin our glorious westward march

to the Channel?"

Mystified, Hess groped for the date. "The tenth of May, 1940?"

"Yes! And what day is our eastward invasionBarbarossa-to begin?"

"May fifteenth," Hess replied more confidently, recalling the date from

Directive 21.

"No! Our tanks will roll on the fifteenth, but the invasion of Soviet

Russia be ins with your mission, Rudi! On the tenth of May!

One year to the day after we marched on France! Just as before!"

Hess felt a wild thrill of foreboding, a tangible sense of destiny, as

if Fate herself had materialized in the room.

"It is all preordained!" Hitler cried, flinging his arms toward the

ceiling. His mesmerizing voice filled the salon, brimming with the

conviction of a prophet. "On the tenth of May you will secure our

western flank, and on the fifteenth we shall wipe the plague of

communism from the planet! By Christmas of this year, Greater Germany

will extend from the English Channel to the Ural Mountains and it will

be settled by pure German stock!"

Hess's ears roared with excitement. Only slowly did he become aware of

an insistent knocking at the door. It might have been going on for a

full minute. He slipped the manila envelope into his coat pocket as

Hitler opened the door.

it was Bormann again, but this time Hess's deputy hesitated in the

doorway. Hitter smoothed his black forelock and looked into Hess's

eyes. "You will take care of that today, Rudi?"

"Immediately."

"Excuse me, my Fuhrer," Bonnann interrupted, "General Halder is

waiting."

"Let him wait!" Hitler bellowed. "Escort the Deputy Fuhrer to his car,

Bonnann."

"Heil Hitler!" Bormann clicked his jackboots together, turned, and

marched down the hall.

"I'm going up to change clothes, Rudi," Hitler said softly.

"I cannot let my generals see me like this. They'll think they can run

right over me in the conference."

Hitler looked embarrassed by the confidence. Hess grinned and waved him

out. It had been good to see the old Hitler for a few the old spring

jacket and tie could not revoke a the steps they had taken in the

intervening years. T se steps were written in blood and fire, and they

could only be erased by more of the same.

Bormann waited like a Dachshund at the end of the hall.

Hess felt a new and powerful sense of purpose in his tread as he

followed his deputy out of the Berghof. "How are the children, Martin?"

he asked. Just now Hess could not have cared less, but since Bormann

had seen fit to name his offspring after Hess and his wife, he felt

obliged to ask.

"Rudi is strong as a bull," Bonnann bragged over his shoulder.

"And Ilse is the very flower of German womanhood!"

Hess smiled wanly.

Outside, Bormann held open the door of Hess's brown Mercedes.

Hess sensed a kind of animal exultance in him now that the

interloper-Hess-was leaving. Unreasonably irritated, he cranked his

Mercedes and goosed the pedal a few times. The engine roared

responsively.

,is there anything I can do for you, Herr Reichminister?"

Bormann asked.

Hess considered ordering his deputy to call ahead and have his

Messer_chmitt readied, then thoukht better of it. He shifted into first

gear, all the while looking hard into Bormann's eyes. He could see the

arrogance lurking just behind the peasant face. Bormann wore power

clumsily, like all men unaccustomed to it. But the little rat was

learning.

By all reports, he was setting himself up as lord of Obersalzburg,

strengthening his position by acting as sole conduit between Hitler and

the outside world. One of Hess's secretaries had actually heard Frau

Goebbels whisper that Bormann's star had eclipsed Hess's in the Nazi

firmament.

"I see you still haven't finished the construction up here, Martin,"

Hess said breezily. He waved his hand toward a half-finished concrete

bunker.

"The Fuhrer's needs expand every day," Bormann said proudly. "I can

barely keep up with the demand, but I do my best."

Hess forced a smile. 'There is something you can do for me, if you get

the time."

"Anything," said Bormann, with a nod of false obeisance.

With a casual motion Hess reached out of the car and caught Bormann by

the collar. one flex of his thickly muscled arm brought the shocked

Reichsleiter to his knees in the snow. Hess could feel the softness in

Bonnann, the boorish strength dissipated by alcohol and gluttony.

Bormann's piggish eyes bulged in terror.

"Never," Hess said harshly, "never forget who you are, Bormann.

You are my deputy, and as long as I live, that is all you will ever be."

Hess roared away, leaving his stunned subordinate kneeling in the noon

snowmelt. He skidded to a stop at the inner perimeter gate.

"How long to call Munich?" he barked at a surprised SS private.

"We have a direct line, Herr Reichministert" Hess reeled off the number

of his office telephone.

"And the message, Herr Reichminister?"

Hess said nothing. To the sentry he seemed lost in a world of his own,

but the SS man was not about to rush the Deputy Fuhrer of the Reich.

Hess's brain was spinning. All the dark misgivings of the past few

months were lifting from his mind like bad dreams at the coming of dawn.

The road to Moscow would soon be open, and he was the man Adolf Hitler

had chosen to open it! Yet the vision Hess saw now was no epic scene of

conquest, not German legions crossing their Russian Rubicon.

He saw a very small section of a shadowy Munich street, in 1919.

It was on that street, and a hundred others like it, that the seeds of