Spandau Phoenix

One of the men chuckled quietly. They reached the bottom of the stairs and turned down a disused hallway, a repository of ancient files and broken furniture. When the initial shock and disorientation wore off, Hans realized that he had to fight back somehow. But how? In the darkest part of the corridor he suddenly let his body go limp, appearing to lose his will to resist.

“Scheisse!” one man cursed. “Dead weight.”

“He soon will be,” commented his partner.

Dead weight? With speed born of desperation Hans fired his elbow into a rib cage. He heard bone crack.

“Arrghh!” The man let go.

With his free hand Hans pummeled the other attacker’s head, aiming for his temple. The policeman held him fast.

“You bastard …” from the darkness.

Hans kept pounding the man’s skull. The grip on his arm was loosening—

An explosion that seemed to detonate behind his right eye paralyzed him.

Darkness.

Less than sixty feet away from Hans, Colonels Ivan Kosov and Grigori Zotin stood outside an idling East German transit bus in the central parking lot of the police station. Inside the bus, the Soviet soldiers from the Spandau patrol waited for their long-delayed return to East Berlin. Most were already fast asleep.

Zotin, a GRU colonel, did not particularly like Kosov, and he was deeply offended at the KGB colonel’s effrontery in donning the uniform of the Red Army. But what could he do? One couldn’t keep the KGB out of something this big, especially when higher powers wanted Kosov involved. Rubbing his hands together against the cold, Zotin tested the KGB man’s perception.

“Can you believe it, Ivan? They gave them all clean reports.”

“Of course,” Kosov growled. “What did you expect?”

“But one of them was certainly lying!”

“Certainly.”

“But how did they fake the polygraph readouts?”

Kosov looked bored. “We were six meters from the machine. They could have shown us anything.”

Grigori Zotin knew exactly which policeman had lied, but he wanted to keep the information from Kosov long enough to initiate inquiries of his own. He was aware of the Kremlin’s interest in the Hess case, and he knew his career could take a giant leap forward if he cracked it. He made a mental note to decorate the young GRU officer who had caught the German policeman searching and showed enough sense to tell only his immediate superior. “You’re right, of course,” Zotin agreed.

Kosov grunted.

“What, exactly, do you think was discovered? A journal perhaps? Do you think they found some proof of—”

“They found a hollow brick,” Kosov snapped. “Our forensic technicians say their tests indicate the brick held some type of paper for an unknown period of time. It could have been some kind of journal. It could also have been pages from a pornographic magazine. It could have been toilet paper! Never trust experts too much, Zotin.”

The GRU colonel sucked his teeth nervously. “Don’t you think we should have at least mentioned Zinoviev during the interrogation? We could have—”

“Idiot!” Kosov bellowed. “That name isn’t to be mentioned outside KGB! How do you even know it?”

Zotin stepped back defensively. “One hears things in Moscow.”

“Things that could get you a bullet in the neck,” Kosov warned.

Zotin tried to look unworried. “I suppose we should tell the general to turn up the pressure at the commandants’ meeting tomorrow.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” scoffed Kosov. “Too little, too late.”

“What about the trespassers, then? Why are you letting the Germans keep them?”

“Because they don’t know anything.”

“What do you suggest we do, then?” Zotin ventured warily.

Kosov snorted. “Are you serious? It was the second to last man—Apfel. He was lying through his Bosche teeth. Those idiots did exactly what we wanted. If they’d admitted Apfel was lying, he’d be in a jail cell now, beyond our reach. As it is, he’s at our mercy. The fool is bound to return home, and when he does”—Kosov smiled coldly—“I’ll have a team waiting for him.”

Zotin was aghast. “But how—?” He stifled his imprudent outburst with a cough. “How can you get a team over soon enough?” he covered.

“I have two teams here now,” Kosov snapped. “Get me to a damned telephone!”

Startled, the GRU colonel clambered aboard the bus and found a seat.

“And Zotin?” Kosov said, leaning over his rival.

“Yes?”

“Keep nothing from me again. It could be very dangerous for you.”

Zotin blanched.

“I want everything there is on this man Apfel. Everything. I suggest you ride your staff very hard on this. Powerful eyes are watching us.”

“How will you approach this policeman?”

“Approach him?” Kosov cracked a wolfish smile. “Break him, you mean. By morning I’ll know how many times that poor bastard peeked up his mother’s skirts.”

Hans awoke in a cell. There was no window. He’d been thrown onto a stack of damp cardboard boxes. One pale ray of light filtered down from somewhere high above. When he had focused his eyes, he sat up and gripped one of the steel bars. His face felt sticky. He put his fingers to his temple. Blood. The familiar slickness brought back the earlier events in a throbbing rush of confusion. The interrogation … his father’s stony silence … the struggle in the hallway. Where was he?

He tried to rise, but he collapsed into a narrow space between two boxes. Rotting cardboard covered almost the entire concrete floor. A cell full of boxes? Puzzled, Hans reached into one and pulled out a damp folder. He held it in the shaft of light. Traffic accident report, he thought. Typed on the standard police form. He found the date—1973. Flipping through the yellow sheaf of papers, he saw they were all the same, all traffic accident reports from 1973. He checked the station listed on several forms: Abschnitt 53 every case. Suddenly he realized where he was.

In the early 1970s, Abschnitt 53 had been partially renovated during a citywide wave of reform that lasted about eighteen months. There had been enough money to refurbish the reception area and overhaul the main cellblock, but the third floor, the basement, and the rear of the building went largely untouched. Hans was sure he’d been locked in the basement.

But why? No one had accused him of anything. Not openly, at least. Who were the policemen who had attacked him? Funk’s men? Were they even police officers at all? They had said he would soon be dead weight. It was crazy. Maybe they were protecting him from the Russians. Maybe this was the only way the prefect could keep him safe from them. That’s it! he thought with relief. It has to be.

A door slammed somewhere in the darkness above. Someone was coming—several people by the sound—and making no effort to hide it. Hans heard clattering and cursing on the stairs; then he saw who was making the noise. Outlined in the fluorescent light streaming down from the basement door, two husky uniformed men were wrestling a gurney off the stairs. Slowly they cleared a path to the cell through the heaps of junk covering the basement floor. Hans closed his eyes and lay motionless on the boxes where he’d been thrown.

“Looks like he’s still out,” said one man.

“I hope I killed the son of a bitch,” growled the other.

“That wouldn’t go over too well upstairs, Rolf.”