Spandau Phoenix

Hans considered this in silence.

“I haven’t been on the force very long,” said Kurt, “but I get the feeling Captain Hauer and the prefect aren’t too fond of each other.”

Hans nodded thoughtfully. “To say the least. They’ve been at each other’s throats since Funk took over eight years ago.”

“What’s the problem?”

“The problem is that Funk is an ass-kissing bureaucrat with no real police experience, and Hauer reminds him of it every chance he gets.”

“Can’t the prefect fire whoever he wants?”

“Firing Hauer isn’t worth the controversy it would start.” Hans felt himself coloring as he went to the defense of the father he had accused of terrible things in the silence of his own mind. “He’s a decorated hero, one of the best cops in the city. He also works with GSG-9, the counterterror unit. Connections like that don’t hurt. Plus he’s only got one month before retirement. Funk’s been waiting for that day a long time. Now he’s almost rid of him.”

“What a bastard.” Kurt snapped his fingers anxiously. “You got any cigarettes? We smoked all we had.”

Hans handed over his pack and matches. “Have they said who’s handling the questions?”

Kurt’s hands shook slightly as he lit up. “They haven’t said anything. We’ve tried to listen through the wall, but it’s useless. They could beat a man to death in there and you’d never hear him scream.”

“Thanks a lot. I’ll remember that while I’m in there. What about the Russians?”

Kurt cut his eyes toward the door. “Weiss said he saw the very same bastard who tried to take the prisoners from us—”

The door banged open, silencing the young recruit. A bearded man wearing captain’s bars stared back and forth between Hans and Kurt, then pointed to Hans. “You,” he growled.

“But I’ve been here for two hours,” Kurt protested.

The captain ignored him and motioned for Hans to follow.

In the hall Hans saw another young officer being led around the corner toward the elevators, his arms pinned to his sides by two large policemen. Fighting a growing sense of unreality, Hans stepped into room six.

The scene unnerved him. The sparsely furnished interrogation room had been transformed into a courtroom. A single wooden chair faced a long, raised table from which five men stared solemnly as Hans entered. At the center of the table sat Wilhelm Funk, prefect of West Berlin police. He eyed Hans with the cold detachment of a hanging judge. A young blond man wearing lieutenant’s bars hovered at Funk’s left shoulder. Hans guessed he was Lieutenant Luhr, the aide who had summoned him by telephone. To the prefect’s right sat three men wearing Soviet Army uniforms. Hans recognized one as the “sergeant” who had bullied Weiss at Spandau, but the others—both colonels—he had never seen before. And to Funk’s left, a little apart from Lieutenant Luhr, sat Captain Dieter Hauer. Dark sacs hung under his gray eyes, and he regarded Hans with a Buddhalike inscrutability.

“Setzen sie sich,” Funk ordered, then looked down at a buff file open before him.

As Hans turned to sit, he saw more men behind him. Six Berlin policemen stood in a line to the left of the door. He knew them all slightly; all were from other districts. On the right side of the door stood the Russian soldiers from the Spandau detail. Their bloodshot eyes gave the lie to their freshly shaven faces, and the mud of the prison yard still caked their boots. Hans looked slowly from face to face. When his eyes met those of the Russian who had caught him in the rubble pile, Hans looked away first. He did not see the Russian nod almost imperceptibly to the “sergeant” at the table, nor did he see the “sergeant” softly touch the sleeve of one of the colonels as Funk began his interrogation.

“You are Sergeant Hans Apfel?” the prefect asked, still looking at the file before him. “Born Munich 1960, Bundeswehr service 1978 to 1980, two-year tour Federal Border Police, attached Munich municipal force 1983, transferred Berlin 1984, promoted sergeant May of ’84?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Speak up, Sergeant.”

Hans cleared his throat. “I am.”

“Better. I want you to listen to me, Sergeant. I have convened this informal hearing to save everyone—yourself included—a great deal of unnecessary trouble. Because of the publicity surrounding this morning’s events, the Allied commandants have scheduled a formal investigation into this matter, to commence at seven o’clock tomorrow morning. I want this matter cleared up long before then. The problem is that our Soviet friends”—Funk nodded deferentially to his right—“Oberst Zotin and Oberst Kosov, claim to have uncovered something rather disturbing at Spandau today. Their forensic people say they have evidence that something was removed from the area of the cellblocks last occupied by the Nuremberg war criminals.”

Hans’s stomach rolled. For a moment the room seemed to spin wildly. It righted itself when he focused on the immobile mask of Captain Hauer.

“Of course I denied their request to question our officers directly,” Funk went on, “but for the sake of expediency I’ve agreed to act as the Soviets’ proxy. That way they can be quickly satisfied as to our lack of complicity in this matter. Thus, the whole mess is over before it really begins, you see, Sergeant? It’s really better all around.”

For the first time Hans noticed another man in the room. He had been hunched out of sight behind Hauer, but when Funk spoke again he moved.

“By the way, Sergeant,” Funk said casually, “in the interest of veracity I’ve agreed to monitor all responses by polygraph.”

Hans felt a jolt of confusion. Polygraph test results were inadmissible as evidence in a German court. The Berlin Polizei were not even permitted to use the polygraph as an investigative tool. Or almost never, anyway. Buried in the budget of the Experimental Section of the Forensics Division was a small cadre of technicians devoted to the subtle art of lie detection. They were used only in crisis situations, where lives were at stake. The only explanation Hans could come up with for the use of a polygraph tonight was that the Russians had requested it.

“We’ll be using our own man, of course,” Funk said. “Perhaps you know Heinz Schmidt?”

Hans knew of Schmidt, and what he knew made his heart race. The ferretlike little polygrapher took perverse pleasure in wringing secrets out of people—criminals or not—no matter how trivial. He even moonlighted to sate his fetish, screening employees for industrial firms. Funk’s inquisitor padded around Hauer’s corner of the table, pushing his precious polygraph before him on a wheeled cart like the head of a heretic. Ilse had been right, Hans realized. He should never have come here.

“I said is that all right with you, Sergeant?” Funk repeated testily.

Hans could see that both Hauer and Lieutenant Luhr had suddenly taken a keen interest in him. It took all his concentration to keep his facial muscles still. He cleared his throat again. “Yes, sir. No problem.”

“Good. The procedure is simple: Schmidt asks you a few calibration questions, then we get to it.” Funk sounded bored. “Hurry it up, Schmidt.”

As the polygrapher attached the electrodes to his fingers, Hans felt his earlier bravado draining away. Then came the blood-pressure cuff, fastened around his upper arm and pumped until he could feel his arterial blood throbbing against it like a tourniquet. Last came the chest bands—rubber straps stretched around his torso beneath his shirt—to monitor his respiration. Three separate sensing systems, cold and inhuman, now silently awaited the slightest signals of deception.

Hans wondered which vital sign would give him away: a trace of sweat translated into electrical resistance? His thudding heart? Or just his eyes? I must be crazy, he thought wildly. Why keep it up anyway? They’ll find me out in the end. For one mad moment he considered simply blurting out the truth. He could exonerate himself before Schmidt even asked the first stupid control question. He could—

“Are you Sergeant Hans Apfel?” Schmidt asked in a high, abrasive voice.

“I am.”

“Yes or no, please, Sergeant. Is your name Hans Apfel?”

“Yes.”

“Do you reside in West Berlin?”

“Yes.”

Hans watched Schmidt make some adjustments to his machine. The ferret’s shirt was soiled at the collar and armpits, his fingernails were long and grimy, and he smelled of ammonia. Suddenly, Schmidt pulled a red pen from his pocket and held it up for all to see.

“Is this pen red, Sergeant?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Schmidt made—or seemed to make—still more adjustments to his machine.

Nervously, Hans wondered how much Schmidt knew he knew about the polygraph test. Because Hans knew a good deal. The concept of the “lie detector” had always fascinated him. He had taken the Experimental Interrogation course at the police school at Hiltrup, and a close look at his personnel file would reveal that. As Schmidt tinkered with his machine, Hans marshaled what he remembered from the Hiltrup course. The first tenet of the polygrapher was that for test results to be accurate, the subject needed to believe the machine infallible. Polygraphers used various methods to create this illusion, but Hans knew that Schmidt favored the “card trick.” Schmidt would ask his subject to pick a playing card at random from a deck, then to lay it facedown on a table. Schmidt’s ability to name the hidden card after a few “yes or no” questions seemed to prove his polygraph infallible. Of course the subject always chose his card from a deck in which every card was identical, but he had no way of knowing that. Many skilled criminals had confessed their crimes immediately after Schmidt’s little parlor show, certain that his machine would eventually find them out.

Hans saw no deck of cards tonight. Maybe Schmidt thinks his reputation is enough to intimidate me, he thought nervously. And maybe he’s right. Already perspiring, Hans tried to think of a way to beat the little weasel’s machine. Some people had beaten the polygraph by learning to suppress their physiological stress reactions, but Hans knew he had no hope of this. The suppression technique took months to master, and right now he could barely hold himself in his chair.

He did have one hope, if he could keep a cool head: picking out the “control” questions. Most people thought questions like “Is this pen red?” were the controls. But Hans knew better. The real control questions were ones which would cause almost anyone asked them to lie. “Have you ever failed to report income on your federal tax return?” was a common control. Most people denied this almost universal crime, and by doing so provided Schmidt with their baseline “lie.” Later, when asked, “Did you cut your wife’s throat with a kitchen knife?” a guilty person’s lie would register far stronger than his baseline or “control” reference. Questions like “Is this pen red?” were asked simply to give a person’s vital signs time to return to normal between the relevant questions.

Hans knew if he could produce a strong enough emotional response to a control question, then an actual lie would appear no different to the polygraph than his faked control responses. Schmidt would be forced to declare him “innocent.” The best method to do this was to hide a thumbtack in your shoe, but Hans knew that an exaggerated response could also be triggered by holding your breath or biting your tongue. He decided to worry about method later. If he couldn’t pick out the control questions, method wouldn’t matter.