Spandau Phoenix

Number 7

A car horn blared outside. Strangely shaken, Hans folded the pages into a square and stuffed them back under the mattress. Then he tugged on a pair of old sneakers, locked the front door, and bounded into the stairwell. He bumped into a tall janitor on the third floor landing, but the old man didn’t even look up from his work.

Hans found Heini Weber beside a battered red Fiat Spyder, bouncing up and down on his toes like a hyperactive child. A shaggy-haired youth with a Leica slung round his neck peered at Hans from the Fiat’s jump seat.

“So what’s the big story, Sergeant?” Weber asked.

“Over here,” said Hans, motioning toward the foyer of his building. He had seen nothing suspicious in the street, yet he could not shake the feeling that he was being watched—if not by hostile, at least by interested eyes. It’s just the photographer, he told himself. Weber followed him into the building and immediately resumed his nervous bouncing, this time against the dirty foyer wall.

“The meter’s running,” said the reporter.

“Before I tell you anything,” Hans said carefully, “I want some information.”

Weber scowled. “Do I look like a fucking librarian to you? Come on, out with it.”

Hans nodded solemnly, then played out his bait. “I may have a story for you, Heini, but … to be honest, I’m curious about what it might be worth.”

“Well, well,” the reporter deadpanned, “the police have joined the club. Listen, Sergeant, I don’t buy stories, I track them down for pay. That’s the news game, you know? If you want money, try one of the American TV networks.”

When Hans didn’t respond, Weber said, “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s your story? The mayor consorting with the American commandant’s wife? The Wall coming down tomorrow? I’ve heard them all, Sergeant. Everybody’s got a story to sell and ninety-nine percent of them are shit. What’s yours?”

Hans looked furtively toward the street. “What if,” he murmured, “what if I told you I’d got hold of something important from the war? From the Nazi period?”

“Something,” Weber echoed. “Like?”

Hans sighed anxiously. “Like papers, say. Like a diary.”

Weber scrutinized him for some moments; then his eyebrows arched cynically. “Like the diary of a Nazi war criminal, maybe?”

Hans’s eyes widened in disbelief. “How did you know?”

“Scheisse!” Weber cursed. He slapped the wall. “Is that what you got me over here for? Christ, where do they find you guys? That’s the oldest one in the book!”

Hans stared at the reporter as if he were mad. “What do you mean?”

Weber returned Hans’s gaze with something akin to pity; then he put a hand on his shoulder. “Whose diary is it, Sergeant? Mengele’s? Bormann’s?”

“Neither,” Hans snapped. He felt strangely defensive about the Spandau papers. “What the hell are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying that you probably just bought the German equivalent of the Brooklyn Bridge.”

Hans blinked, then looked away, thinking fast. He clearly wasn’t going to get any information without revealing some first. “This diary’s genuine,” he insisted. “And I can prove it.”

“Sure you can,” said Weber, glancing at his watch. “When Gerd Heidemann discovered the ‘Hitler diaries’ back in ’83, he even had Hugh Trevor-Roper swearing they were authentic. But they were crap, Sergeant, complete fakes. I don’t know where you got your diary, but I hope to God you didn’t pay much for it.”

The reporter was laughing. Hans forced himself to smile sheepishly, but what he was thinking was that he hadn’t paid one Pfennig for the Spandau papers. He had found them. And if Heini Weber knew where he had found them, the reporter would be begging him for an exclusive story. Hans heard the regular swish of a broom from the first-floor landing.

“Heini,” he said forcefully, “just tell me this. Have you heard of any missing Nazi documents or anything like that floating around recently?”

Weber shook his head in amazement. “Sergeant, what you’re talking about—Nazi diaries and things—people were selling them ten-a-penny after the war. It’s a fixed game, a scam.” His face softened. “Just cut your losses and run, Hans. Don’t embarrass yourself.”

Weber turned and grabbed the door handle, but Hans caught him by the sleeve. “But if it were authentic?” he said, surprising himself. “What kind of money would we be talking about?”

Weber pulled his arm free, but he paused for a last look at the gullible policeman. The swish of the broom had stopped, but neither man noticed. “For the real thing?” He chuckled. “No limit, Sergeant. Stern magazine paid Heidemann 3.7 million marks for first rights to the ‘Hitler diaries.’”

Hans’s jaw dropped.

“The London Sunday Times went in for 400,000 pounds, and I think both Time and Newsweek came close to getting stung.” Weber smiled with a touch of professional envy. “Heidemann was pretty smart about it, really. He set the hook by leaking a story that the diaries contained Hitler’s version of Rudolf Hess’s flight to Britain. Of course every rag in the world was panting to print a special edition solving the last big mystery of the war. They shelled out millions. Careers were ruined by that fiasco.” The reporter laughed harshly. “Guten Abend, Sergeant. Call me next time there’s a kidnapping, eh?”

Weber trotted to the waiting Spyder, leaving Hans standing dumbfounded in the doorway. He had called the reporter for information; and he had gotten more than he’d bargained for. 3.7 million marks? Jesus!

“Make way, why don’t you!” croaked a high-pitched voice.

Hans grunted as the tall janitor shouldered past him onto the sidewalk and hobbled down the street. His broom was gone; now a worn leather bag swung from his shoulder. Hans followed the man with his eyes for a while, then shook his head. Paranoia, he thought.

Looking up at the drab facade of his apartment building, he decided that a walk through the city beat waiting for Ilse in the empty flat. Besides, he always thought more clearly on the move. He started walking. Just over a hundred meters long, the Lützenstrasse was wedged into a rough trapezoid between two main thoroughfares and a convergence of elevated S-Bahn rail tracks. Forty seconds’ walking carried Hans from the dirty brown stucco of his apartment building to the polished chrome of the Kurfürstendamm, the showpiece boulevard of Berlin. He headed east toward the center of the city, speaking to no one, hardly looking up at the dazzling window displays, magisterial banks, open-air cafes, art galleries, antique shops, and nightclubs of the Ku’damm.

Bright clusters of shoppers jostled by, gawking and laughing together, but they yielded a wide path to the lone walker whose Aryan good looks were somehow made suspect by his unshaven face and ragged clothing. The tall, spare man gliding purposefully along behind Hans could easily have been walking at his shoulder. The man no longer looked like a janitor, but even if he had, it wouldn’t have mattered; Hans was lost in heady dreams of wealth beyond measure.

He paused at a newsstand and bought a pack of American cigarettes. He really needed a smoke. As he sucked in the first potent drag, he suddenly remembered something from the Spandau papers. The writer had said he was the last … The last what? The last prisoner? And then it hit Hans like a bucket of water in the face. The Spandau papers were signed Prisoner Number Seven … and Prisoner Number Seven was Rudolf Hess himself!

He felt the hand holding the cigarette start to shake. He tried to swallow, but his throat refused to cooperate. Had he actually found the journal of a Nazi war criminal? With Heini Weber’s cynical comments echoing in his head, he tried to recall what he could about Hess. All he really knew was that Hess was Hitler’s right-hand man, and that he’d flown secretly to Britain sometime early in the war, and had been captured. For the past few weeks the Berlin papers had been full of sensational stories about Hess’s death, but Hans had read none of them. He did remember the occasional feature from earlier years, though. They invariably portrayed an infantile old man, a once-powerful soldier reduced to watching episodes of the American soap opera Dynasty on television. Why was the pathetic old Nazi so important? Hans wondered. Why should even a hint of information about his mission drive the price of forged diaries into the millions?

Catching his reflection in a shop window, Hans realized that in his work clothes he looked like a bum, even by the Ku’damm’s indulgent standards. He stubbed out his cigarette and turned down a side street at the first opportunity. He soon found himself standing before a small art cinema. He gazed up at the colorful posters hawking films imported from a dozen nations. On a whim he stepped up to the ticket window and inquired about the matinee. The ticket girl answered in a sleepy monotone.

“American western film today. John Wayne. Der Searchers.”

“In German?”

“Nein. English.”

“Excellent. One ticket, please.”

“Twelve DM,” demanded the robot voice.

“Twelve! That’s robbery.”

“You want the ticket?”

Reluctantly, Hans surrendered his money and entered the theater. He didn’t stop for refreshments; at the posted prices he couldn’t afford to. No wonder Ilse and I never go to movies, he thought. Just before he entered the screening room, he spied a pay phone near the restrooms. He slowed his stride, thinking of calling in to the station, but then he walked on. There isn’t any rush, is there? he thought. No one knows about the papers yet. As he seated himself in the darkness near the screen, he decided that he might well have found the most anonymous place in the city to decide what to do with the Spandau papers.

Six rows behind Hans, a tall, thin shadow slipped noiselessly into a frayed theater seat. The shadow reached into a worn leather bag on its lap and withdrew an orange. While Hans watched the titles roll, the shadow peeled the orange and watched him.

Thirty blocks away in the Lützenstrasse, Ilse Apfel set her market basket down in the uncarpeted hallway and let herself into apartment 40. The operation took three keys—one for the knob and two for the heavy deadbolts Hans insisted upon. She went straight to the kitchen and put away her groceries, singing tunefully all the while. The song was an old one, Walking on the Moon by the Police. Ilse always sang when she was happy, and today she was ecstatic. The news about the baby meant far more than fulfillment of her desire to have a family. It meant that Hans might finally agree to settle permanently in Berlin. For the past five months he had talked of little else but his desire to try out for Germany’s elite counterterror force, the Grenzschutzgruppe-9 (GSG-9), oddly enough, the unit whose marksmen his estranged father coached. Hans claimed he was tired of routine police work, that he wanted something more exciting and meaningful.

Ilse didn’t like this idea at all. For one thing, it would seriously disrupt her career. Policemen in Berlin made little money; most police wives worked as hairdressers, secretaries, or even housekeepers—low-paying jobs, but jobs that could be done anywhere. Ilse was different. Her parents had died when she was very young, and she had been raised by her grandfather, an eminent history professor and author. She’d practically grown up in the Free University and had taken degrees in both Modern Languages and Finance. She’d even spent a semester in the United States, studying French and teaching German. Her job as interpreter for a prominent brokerage house gave Hans and her a more comfortable life than most police families. They were not rich, but their life was good.

If Hans qualified for GSG-9, however, they would have to move to one of the four towns that housed the active GSG-9 units: Kassel, Munich, Hannover, or Kiel. Not exactly financial meccas. Ilse knew she could adapt to a new city if she had to, but not to the heightened danger. Assignment to a GSG-9 unit virtually guaranteed that Hans would be put into life-threatening situations. GSG-9 teams were Germany’s forward weapon in the battle against hijackers, assassins, and God only knew what other madmen. Ilse didn’t want that kind of life for the father of her child, and she didn’t understand how Hans could either. She despised amateur psychology, but she suspected that Hans’s reckless impulse was driven by one of two things: a desire to prove something to his father, or his failure to become a father himself.