by Iles, Greg
He gathered as much wood as he could hold, carried it into the cabin, and stacked it carefully in the rack beside the fireplace. Then he placed two well-split logs on the cast-iron rack, dropped to his knees, and began to build a small pyramid of twigs beneath them, just as his father had taught him to do six decades before. Though his brain still simmered in anticipation of uninterrupted study of the Spandau papers, the familiar ritual calmed him. When his pyramid stood ready to be lit, he searched the hearth for matches, but found none. Rising with a groan, he padded over to the wood stove that occupied an entire alcove in the rear of the front room. Along with a walk-in pantry, this antique constituted the cabin’s kitchen. Here also the professor had no luck. Muttering quietly, he re-crossed room and opened the bedroom door. When he saw what lay beyond, his chest muscles contracted with a force he thought would burst his heart.
On the bed directly before him, bound to the brass bedframe with a thick leather belt, Karl Riemeck stared sightlessly ahead, his face contorted in a mask of rage, incomprehension, and pain. A huge freshly clotted stain of blood blossomed on the caretaker’s chest like an obscene flower. Natterman became as a child. His bowels boiled; urine dribbled into his trousers. He desperately wanted to run, but he had no idea where safety lay. He whirled back toward the main room. Empty and pristine as a magazine photograph. Unable to focus on Karl, he stumbled to the front door and locked it.
“My God, my God, my God,” he muttered, bending over and putting his hands on his knees. “My God!” His chant was a mantra. An incantation. A way to begin thinking. A way back to reality. Forcing down the wave of bile that struggled to erupt from his throat, the old professor stood erect and strode back into the bedroom to see if he could do anything for his friend. He ignored the gore that matted the shirt, and placed his hand directly over Karl’s heart. Still. Natterman had expected nothing. He knew death when he saw it.
Perhaps it was the shock of Karl’s death that dulled Natterman’s instincts, blinding him to further danger. Perhaps it was fatigue. But when the cold hand reached from beneath the bed and locked itself around his spindly ankle, he froze. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came. Again his brain shut itself off against reality. The iron claw jerked his feet from under him; he crashed to the floor like a sack of kindling, certain that his hip was broken. Moaning in pain and terror, he tried to crawl toward the doorway, but strong arms caught his shoulders and spun him onto his back. When his eyes focussed, a flashing silver blade filled almost his entire field of vision. Beyond it he saw only a mane of blond hair. He tried to breathe, but an anvil seemed to have settled on his chest. When the pressure eased slightly, then moved higher, he realized the anvil was a man’s knee.
“You have something I want, old man!”
The words were quick and angry, the voice flint against stone. The knee pressed down so hard into Natterman’s chest that he could not have spoken if he wanted to.
“Answer me!” the man screamed.
That’s not a British accent, Natterman thought with relief, his mind on the safety of the Spandau papers. Thank God! It’s only a robber—a robber who has killed Karl. The professor’s brain raced through its knowledge of languages, trying to place the unfamiliar accent, but to no avail. Dutch maybe?
The blond man flicked the blade back and forth in a lethal dance, then inserted the point deep into Natterman’s left nostril. “Don’t be stubborn like your friend, old man. It cost him what little life he had left. Now, talk.” The pressure eased a little.
“Take whatever you want!” Natterman rasped. “My God, poor Karl—”
“Pool Karl? You idiot! You know what I want! Speak! Where is it!”
For another moment Natterman’s mind resisted, then he knew. As impossible as it seemed, this murderer knew his secret. He knew about the Spandau papers, and he had managed to beat Natterman here—to his father’s house—to steal them!
“Oh God,” Natterman whispered. “Oh no.”
“No?” the blond man sneered.
“But I don’t know what—”
“Liar!” In a rage the killer jerked his knife up and outward, severing the old man’s left nostril in a spray of blood. Tears filled Natterman’s eyes, temporarily blinding him. A warm rush of blood flooded over his lips and chin. He coughed and gurgled, struggling for air.
“Listen, you Jew maggot! You’re nothing to me!” The killer put his lips to Natterman’s ear and lowered his voice to a deadly whisper. “If you don’t signal your agreement to cooperate in five seconds, I’m going to’ sever your carotid artery. Do you understand? That’s the pipeline to your addled brain.” To validate his threat the killer jabbed the point of his knife into the soft skin beneath Natterman’s left ear. Choking horribly on his own blood, Natterman tried to nod.
“You’ll show me where it’s hidden?”
Natterman nodded again, spitting up frothy red foam.
The killer hauled him to his feet as easily as he would a dead branch. He took out a white handkerchief and thrust it toward the professor’s streaming wound. “Direct pressure,” he muttered.
Natterman nodded, staunching the flow, surprised at even this small gesture of humanity. The man before him looked scarcely thirty. The long mane of blond hair gave him a starving-student look that the professor knew well. A handsome face lit by zealot’s eyes.
“Now,” the killer said softly, “show it to me.”
Natterman turned back to the bed where Karl’s body lay. He began to sob as the enormity of what had happened struck him.
“For God’s sake, old man, don’t fall apart on me! Your friend stuck himself into this business and wouldn’t clear off. He forced me. Come into the other room.”
Like a drone Natterman followed the killer into the front room. With his face partially masked by the bloody handkerchief, he tried frantically to think of a way out of his predicament. Chess, he thought suddenly. It’s just like a game of chess. But played to the death.
“Don’t think, you idiot! Show me where it is! Now!”
The blond killer stood two meters from Natterman, but when he thrust the knife forward he halved the distance with fearful effect. Natterman dropped the blood-soaked handkerchief on the floor and began to fumble with the buttons of his shirt.
“What are you doing, fool!”
“It’s taped to my back,” Natterman explained.
For a moment the man looked confused; then his face resumed its tight grimace. “Well, then,” he said uncertainly, “be quick about it.”
My God, thought Natterman, he doesn’t know what he’s looking for; he was sent … by someone else. Who? How did they connect me with Hans and the papers? Shaking with terror, the professor stripped the foil-wrapped bundle from his back. He felt as if three layers of skin had come up with the tape. I must survive, he told himself Survive to learn the truth. I must distract him…
“Now,” said the killer, “walk forward slowly and hand it to me.”
Natterman tossed the taped bundle across the room. It landed on the floor and slid partially under a heavy cabinet that stood in the corner.
“You cracked bastard! Pick it up and bring it here!”
Natterman hesitated for a moment, then slowly walked to the cabinet, bent over, retrieved the bundle. Just like chess, he thought. I move—he moves.
“Hand it to me.”
Natterman extended the packet, watching curiously as several drops of blood fell from his nose onto his twitching biceps. I must be in shock, he realized. I’m watching someone else…
Keeping his eyes on Natterman, the killer stripped the tape from the foil that the professor had used to protect the papers.
“Carefully,” Natterman pleaded. “They’re very delicate.”
“Is this all there is?”
Natterman shrugged. “That’s it.”
“Is this all, you filthy Yid?” The killer shook the papers in the air.
Afrikaans, blurted a voice in Natterman’s brain. The accent i
s Afrikaner, but … why does the animal think I’m Jewish?
“I swear that’s all there is,” he said. “Please be careful. That’s a very important document.”
As Natterman spoke, he let his eyes wander toward his book satchel. It lay exactly where he had tossed it when he came in—on the leather chair by the door. He stared for a moment, then looked quickly back at the intruder.
“Again you lie!” the Afrikaner cried. “If I find something else in that bag, old man, you’re dead.”
Natterman stood by the corner cabinet. Silently he willed the killer toward the satchel. Toward the chair. Holding his knife out in front of him, the Afrikaner backed slowly toward the satchel. Just a little further, Natterman thought, a little further …
The killer averted his eyes as he reached for the satchel. Now!
Natterman groped in the space between the cabinet and the wall and closed his hand around the big Mannlicher shotgun that had stood there for over sixty years. The shotgun his father had always kept out of the way, yet within easy reach if a deer wandered into the clearing or poachers encroached on his land. The professor cocked both hammers as he brought the weapon up, and fired the moment the barrels cleared the back of the couch.
The killer dived for cover behind the leather chair, but not quickly enough. Twenty-four pellets of double-aught buck shot tore through his right shoulder, leaving his upper arm a mass of pulp and bone that hung from his torso by sinew alone. The bloody knife that had butchered Karl Riemeck clattered to the floor, its owner blown out of sight behind the chair.
“Bastard!” Natterman screamed. Never in his life had he wanted to kill another human being—not even in the war. But now a rage of terrifying power surged through him as his stinging eyes probed the outline of the chair for a clear shot.
The Afrikaner knelt motionless behind the chair, thinking. He had known pain before, and he knew that to give in to it meant death. Silently he seized the door handle with his good arm and jerked inward. His shattered shoulder seared with pain; his agonized scream filled the small cabin as he fought to stay conscious. An almost-forgotten voice shouted from the depths of his brain: Move soldier! Move! And move he did. In seconds he had scrambled alligator-style through the doorway, dragging his useless arm behind, pulling the door shut with his foot as he passed through. He flopped off the porch into the snow just as the second blast from Natterman’s shotgun splintered the lower quarter of the oak door.
I should have known! the Afrikaner thought furiously. Should have anticipated. I underestimated the old bastard. He had a 9mm automatic in his car, but he’d parked his car in the woods beyond the clearing. He’d never make it, not if the old man could see at all. In desperation he swept away a hummock of snow and rolled beneath the cabin into icy blackness.
Above him, Professor Natterman rooted hysterically through the cabinet in search of extra shotgun shells. Beneath an overturned wicker basket he found a full box of twelve-gauge shells. He broke the breech of the antique weapon, removed the empties, chambered two shells, jammed the gun closed, and cocked both hammers. Then he bolted the splintered oak door.
The papers! he thought suddenly. The Afrikaner had them! in a panic he searched the cabin for the onionskin pages, but saw none. No! his mind screamed. He cannot have them! Crazed with rage, he blasted another hole in the door, then unbolted it and shoved it open. Just outside, crumpled and matted in a huge smear of blood, lay six of the nine Spandau pages. Natterman darted outside and frantically gathered them up, then scanned the snow for the other pages. He saw none. Furious, he staggered back into the cabin and snatched up the tinfoil that had protected the papers. He wrapped it carefully back around the bloodstained pages, then stuffed the foil packet deep into his pocket.
The exertion had broken loose the clot in his nose. Blood poured down his bare chest. The animal must have a gun, he thought wildly. He must. He wouldn’t have come with just the knife. Natterman seized his shirt and jacket from the floor and stumbled into the bedroom, where Karl still stared sightless at the door.
“Aaarrrgh!” he roared in anguish. It took almost all his remaining strength to drag the linen chest from the foot of the bed and wedge it against the bedroom door. When he had blocked it as well as he could, he picked up the telephone beside the bed. Dead as Karl, he thought bitterly. Pinching his bloody nostrils closed, he surveyed the room. A washstand. A chair. An old pine armoire. His father’s bed beside the window. The window!
Even as Natterman realized his vulnerability, he saw a pale hand working just over the sill, trying to force the glass upward. He obliterated the window with a double-barreled blast, gibbering like a madman as he did. The stress had finally overcome him. Like a drunkard he staggered over to the armoire and heaved and pushed until finally it slid across the gaping window. Then he collapsed in a heap against it, not even trying to stop the blood that continued to plop onto his heaving chest. His last act before he fainted was to chamber two more rounds into the Mannlicher.
1:42 AM The Northern Transvaal, Republic of South Africa
Alfred Horn sat hunched in his motorized wheelchair, his prehensile forearms pressing a leopardskin rug against his arthritic knees, and stared into the fire. As always, his mind raced back and forth between past and present, searching for causes and connections, cataloguing injustices to be avenged. Perhaps it was his advanced years, but to Horn the present seemed merely a small space between two doors— one leading back into a past he could not change—the other opening onto a future that, after five decades of planning and struggle and living with defeat, promised the fulfilment of ultimate destiny. Time was short, he knew, and growing shorter. Did he have a week or a month before his ability to leave his imprint upon the world was stolen from him? He needed a month. How ironic, he reflected, that his knowledge of the past posed the greatest threat to his plans for the future. But he was nearly ready. A soft knock sounded behind him. He answered without turning his gaze from the fire. “Yes?”
The door opened soundlessly. Smuts stood silently at attention.
“What news from Berlin, Pieter?”
“There’s a flurry of British and Russian intelligence activity, sir. I’m almost certain they have not located the papers. No sign so far of Israeli involvement.”
“But what of our two policemen, Pieter? They have the papers.”
“Sir, Berlin-One informs me that while he has not yet captured the young man whom he believes found the papers, he does have custody of the man’s wife.”
Horn pondered this intelligence. At length he said, “We shall have them all here. Bring the woman, the man will follow. Send a jet tonight.”
“I’ve already ordered it done, sir.”
“Good. Can the husband be reached by phone?”
Smuts cleared his throat. “We haven’t located him yet, sir.”
While Horn’s glass eye remained immobile, his good eye flickered with birdlike suspicion over his security chief’s lanky frame, finally settling on his craggy face. Under its unrelenting gaze, Smuts shifted his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other.
“Pieter?” Horn asked finally.
“Yes, sir?”
“Our two policemen have escaped from West Berlin, haven’t they?”
To Smuts’s credit, he did not dissimulate. “That appears likely, sir. The older man—Hauer—apparently has a great deal of influence in Berlin. We have a man waiting at their last known destination—a cabin near Wolfsburg—but he hasn’t reported in.”
Horn toyed with a poker in the stand. “These policemen are proving to be a credit to their race, Pieter. After you’ve drawn them here, we must see what our young friend has dug from the rubble of Spandau.”
“It will be done.”
“Tell me, how will you convince the young husband that you have his wife if you haven’t reached him by the time she’s airborne?”
Smuts suppressed a smile. Horn’s attention to the smallest details of an operation constantly surprised him. �
�A simple matter really, sir,” he explained. “Audio recordings on two separate tape machines. Prerecorded affirmatives and negatives to be used as needed, with a short statement to open the exchange. With adequate noise reduction the results are quite convincing.”
“Excellent, Pieter. I’m pleased.”
Smuts’s boot heels cracked like a muffled pistol shot.
Horn unconsciously picked at the stippled scar tissue around his glass eye. “I’ve been thinking, Pieter. I want you to shut down all our drug and weapons trading for the time being. I want no roads leading from the outside world to here.”
Smuts nodded. “Very good, sir. We do have that shipment of gold coming from Colombia, though, payment for our ether. Two million dollars in bullion. It’s coming by ship, and the ship is almost here.”
Horn considered this. “We’ll let her land, then. But everything else shuts down.”
“Yes, sir.”
“When the policeman’s wife arrives, bring her directly to me. It’s so seldom I get a chance to meet young Germans anymore. I should like very much to speak with her.”
“Meet her? But, sir, the risks—”
“Nonsense, Pieter. If you are present, what are the risks?”
Smuts nodded. “As you command.”
Horn eyed Smuts appraisingly. “Anything else?”
“Beg your pardon, sir?”
Horn frowned. “The radiation leak. You failed to update me on your progress.”
Smuts colored. “I’m sorry, sir. I’ve been meeting with the engineers about the runway extension.” He raised his fore arm and read the time from the inside of his wrist. “The leak was contained as of two hours ago. Minimal exposure to personnel, the basement lab is clean.”
“Any word on our cobalt case?”
“No, sir. I’m sorry.”
“All right, Pieter. Dismissed.”
“Sir!” Again the boots fired, and Smuts disappeared.
