by Iles, Greg
“It’s Ilse!” Hans cried, grabbing for the receiver.
Hauer caught his wrist in a grip of steel. “If it is, I’ll give the phone straight to you.” He lifted the receiver as the raucous bell clanged for the third time.
Two hundred and forty kilometers away, locked in an interrogation room of Abschnitt 53, Prefect Wilhelm Funk nervously eyed a technician who sat before three Marantz PMD-430 tape recorders. Each tape deck was wired directly into the transmitter of Funk’s telephone. Two contained recordings of Ilse Apfel’s voice, recorded at gunpoint reading a script authored by Pieter Smuts, the Afrikaner known to Funk by the code name Guardian. The third deck maintained a constant level of background noise to mask the On/Off switching of the primary machines. Praying that the elaborate deception would work, Funk began his performance.
“I wish to speak to Sergeant Hans Apfel,” he hissed, trying to mask his distinctive growl.
“I know you, you bastard,” said Hauer.
Funk abandoned all pretense. “I know you too, Hauer. Fucking traitor. It’s Sippenhaft for you, just like your friend Steuben.”
Hauer closed his eyes, trying in vain to steel himself against the anguish. He had sent a man to his death. He had made a widow and orphans.
“If Apfel isn’t on the phone in ten seconds,” Funk warned, “I disconnect. Beginning now. Ten, nine, eight …”
Hans snatched the proffered phone. “This is Sergeant Apfel. Where is my wife?”
“Do not speak, Sergeant. In a moment your wife will read a prepared statement. After—”
“Ilse!” Hans shouted. “Ilse?”
“One more outburst like that, and this conversation will be terminated. After your wife finishes reading, you may ask questions, but keep them simple. She’s a bit under the weather.”
Hans swallowed hard.
“Hans, listen to me—” He clenched the phone with all his strength. Ilse’s usually musical voice quavered with fear and confusion, but he knew the sound like his own breathing. He clapped his hand to his forehead in relief, then balled it into a fist as the torment went on: “… the men who are holding me require only one thing in exchange for my freedom—the papers you discovered at Spandau. The papers belong to them. You have illegally stolen their property. Restitution is all that they seek. I do not know where I am. If you follow the instructions you are given exactly, we will be reunited. If you deviate from these instructions in any way, they will kill me. These men possess a machine which can detect whether photocopies of a document have been made. If copies have already been made, it’s important to get them now and bring all copies to the rendezvous. If you deny that copies have been made, but their machine proves otherwise, I will be shot. Follow every order exactly. They…”
At this point Ilse’s voice broke. She sobbed and spoke at the same time. “I saw them kill a man, Hans … a policeman. They killed him right in front of me. They cut his throat!”
In Berlin, the technician stopped the first tape machine. Ilse’s sobs seemed to fade into the familiar hiss of a poor long-distance connection. Hans could restrain himself no longer. “Ilse, they can have whatever they want! Tell them! The papers! Anything! Just tell me where to bring them!”
“Have any copies of the papers been made?” Funk asked.
Hans turned to Professor Natterman, who had appeared in the bedroom door. “Did you make any copies of the papers?”
Natterman saw a mental image of his Xerox machine flashing in his darkened office, but he banished it from his mind. “No,” he said, looking straight into Hans’s eyes, “I didn’t have enough time.”
“There are no copies,” said Hans, his eyes still on the old man.
“Noted,” said Funk. “Now, listen carefully to your instructions. Write them down. Error or delay will not be tolerated.”
Hans snatched a pen and notepad from Hauer, who had anticipated the need and procured the items from Professor Natterman’s book satchel. Across the top of the pad Hauer had scrawled: Stay calm. Agree to everything they ask.
“Drive to Frankfurt tomorrow morning,” Funk began. “There you will board the first available flight to Johannesburg, South Africa. Your final destination is Pretoria. It’s forty miles north of Johannesburg, but shuttle buses run constantly.” Hans scribbled as fast as he could. “Your wife informs us that you have no passport, but this will not be a problem if you use the South African Airways counter. Do you have that?”
“South African Airways,” Hans said breathlessly.
“Your flight leaves at two p.m. Once in Pretoria, check into the Burgerspark Hotel. Any taxi driver can take you to it. A suite will be reserved for you. At eight p.m. you will be contacted and issued instructions as to how to exchange the papers for your wife.” Funk’s voice went cold. “If you are not in your room at the Burgerspark Hotel by eight p.m. on the day after tomorrow—with the Spandau papers—your wife will die. That is all, Sergeant.”
“Wait! My questions!”
There was a long silence. “Two questions,” Funk said finally.
Hans swallowed. “Liebchen, are you all right?” he stammered, not knowing what else to say.
In Berlin Funk held up his index finger. The technician pressed the PLAY button on machine 1. “Yes,” came Ilse’s quavering reply.
“Have they hurt you in any way?” This time Funk raised two fingers. “No, ” Ilse seemed to answer.
“Don’t be afraid,” Hans implored, trying to keep his voice steady. “No matter what. I’m going to get you back.”
“That is all, Sergeant,” Funk said sharply.
“Don’t hang up! Please—please let me speak to her again. I’m going to do everything you ask!”
While Hans pleaded, Funk held up two fingers. His assistant fast-forwarded to a preset location on tape 2 and depressed PLAY one last time. Ilse’s voice burned down the wires, cracking with emotion. Her words were an anguished cry of hope and despair captured during the session at the point of Luhr’s Walther. She had screamed them after seeing Josef Steuben murdered, believing that she would be killed herself when her taped statement was completed. Luhr had added it to the programme himself—the perfect diabolical touch.
“Oh God, Hans!” she wailed. “We did it! I’m going to have a baby!” She broke into sobs again.
Hans’s mouth went dry. For a moment he stood speechless, his face a graven image of horror. Then he howled from the depths of his soul. “You fucking swine! I’m coming for her! If she’s harmed you’ll die like pigs under the knife so help me God!”
Funk grinned, pleased by the suffering of the young man who had caused him so much trouble. “Tell Hauer…” he growled, “…tell him to remember Sippenhaft.”
The line went dead.
With shaking hands Hans set the receiver back in its cradle and turned to Natterman. “They have her,” he said hoarsely. “And they want the Spandau papers. Where are they, Professor?”
“Hans,” Natterman said uncomfortably, “you can’t make such a decision in a fit of anger. You must take time to think.”
Hans’s eyes had glazed. His mouth worked silently. “Just give me the papers,” he said finally.
With a desolate sigh the old historian dug the foil packet from his trouser pocket and turned it slowly in his hand.
“They killed another policeman,” Hans said in a robotic voice. “Ilse said they cut his throat right in front of her.”
Hauer’s big hands were balled into fists.
Hans reached out to Natterman for the papers, but as he did so a simple, terrible realization struck him. The men who had kidnapped Ilse were the same men who had gouged the Star of David into Erhard Weiss’s chest with a screwdriver. His stomach clenched in agony. Never until this moment had he known true fear.
Hauer’s lips had begun to tremble. His jaw muscles flexed furiously. “Wilhelm Funk is a dead man,” he vowed. “I swear that by Steuben’s children.”
“I’m afraid that won’t solve your problem,” Natterman ob
served, backing up a little. “Hans, please, you’ve got to try to think this thing through rationally. What do these men want you to do?”
Hans stared unseeing at the old man. A single vision floated behind his eyes, a searing memory of a Berlin dawn, two years before. A kidnapped girl … lithe and blond like Ilse … the daughter of a Bremerhaven shipping magnate. They’d fished her out of the Havel in the gray morning light, her naked body bloated and lifeless, her sightless eyes wide, her pubic hair matted with river slime. The kidnappers had thrown her alive into the river with her hands tied behind her. The thought that Ilse could end up like the wretched girl … Hans hadn’t eaten a full meal for almost twenty hours, but his stomach came up anyway. He bolted for the door, tripped over the dead Afrikaner, and fell retching on the floor.
Hauer tensed himself against the smell, hoping Hans would feel better after relieving his nausea. He didn’t. He rose slowly, wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve, and stepped toward Natterman, his hand outstretched.
Natterman looked down at the foil packet, backed away a little. Hauer edged closer. He had seen the flash of hysteria behind Hans’s eyes, and he knew that at this moment Hans was capable of anything. He had moved just in time.
“Give me those papers!” Hans screamed. He lunged at the professor with both hands extended, his eyes white with fury. Hauer hesitated, timing his blow. As Hans’s head surged past, he fired off a right jab that caught him on the point of the chin, spinning him round. Hauer grabbed him as he fell, easing him stomach-down onto the floor. Before Natterman could speak, Hauer had handcuffed Hans and sat him up against the bedroom wall.
“He went mad!” cried Natterman, his eyes wide. “He’d have killed me for those papers!”
“Do you blame him?” Hauer asked, breathing heavily. He touched Hans’s bruised chin softly. Hauer felt a strange tightening in his throat. “He’ll come to in a minute, ” he said, and he coughed to cover the catch in his voice. “Just lay the papers on his lap. You won’t have to worry after that.”
Natterman obeyed, but he looked unconvinced. “Where did you get those handcuffs?”
“I always keep them with me. They’re the most underrated tool in the police arsenal.” Hauer looked Natterman dead in the eye. “Now, I’d like you to leave me alone with my son, please.”
The professor retreated into the bedroom without a word.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
2.07 AM Soviet Sector East Berlin, DDR
Harry Richardson woke to the sound of men shouting. His head still throbbed from the Russian’s pistol blow. Most of the duct tape had been removed from his body, but his hands and mouth were still bound. Unsure of the position of his captors, he kept his eyes closed. He soon realized that the voices were coming from an adjacent room. There seemed to be three men arguing, possibly four. He opened his eyes. Nothing. Then he discerned a thin horizontal line of dim light—beneath a door, he supposed. He recognized none of the voices, but they all spoke Russian. One man seemed to be having a great deal of difficulty speaking it.
“He can’t stay here any longer,” said the man with a heavy German accent. “Not an American. And certainly not this one. I know him. He’s one of Rose’s agents.”
“Relax, Goltz,” said a Russian voice. “This is the East, isn’t it? Ost—the heart of friendly territory. What can happen?”
Goltz. Harry recognized the name. Axel Goltz, East German Stasi …
“If you consider East Berlin friendly territory,” Goltz said, you should spend a day on the street here. The people hate us even more than they hate you.”
“You and your Stasi sisters have been letting things slide for too long over here,” Rykov said with contempt. “You don’t have the balls for anything rougher than blackmail.”
“You are a fool,” Goltz said, with surprising venom. “I command here—in this house at least—and I say the American goes. Take him to Moscow. if you wish, just get him out of Berlin. There are too many sharp eyes here for him to stay invisible.”
Rykov, thought Harry, finally making the connection. Rykov was the Russian captain from Klaus’s house. Suddenly the night’s events came rushing back to him. Klaus’s suicide, the silenced bullets thwacking into the wall beside the door, the argument between the young KGB officers about what to do with him.
A door slammed in the next room and the squabble ended instantly. “Where is the American?” asked a gruff voice.
“In the next room, Comrade Colonel. He’s unconscious.”
“Bring him in.”
Behind the wall, Harry tensed. Colonel, he thought. Which colonel? But as soon as he asked himself the question, he knew the answer. Who but Ivan Kosov—the colonel he’d seen early this morning at Abschnitt 53? A bright vertical bar of light stabbed his eyes.
“Wake up, Major!”
Harry got to his knees, then made an effort to stand. Rykov helped him.
“You hit me anyway, you bastard,” Harry muttered through the tape covering his mouth.
“Nothing personal. Just easier.”
Rykov seemed to be having difficulty walking. When Harry’s eyes sought the floor for balance, he spied a bloody tear below the knee of Rykov’s trousers, his souvenir from the checkpoint crossing. Harry looked up as he passed into the next room, and he immediately recognized four of the five men who awaited him. The gruff-voiced colonel was Kosov. He lounged in a comfortable chair opposite a portable television. Between Kosov and a door that Harry hoped led to the street stood a hard-looking young man dressed from head to toe in black. Axel Goltz, the Stasi agent, sat behind a deal table next to Andrei Ivanov, the corporal from Klaus’s house. Goltz had restless eyes and dark hair cropped close against his skull.
“The major needs a chair,” said Kosov. “Misha?”
The black-clad Russian moved lithely to the table, lifted one of the armless wooden chairs and placed it opposite Kosov. Rykov shoved Harry into the chair, then ripped the tape from his mouth. The sudden pain brought tears to his eyes, but passed quickly. He held out his hands to Misha, who looked questioningly at Kosov.
“No!” Rykov objected. “He doesn’t need his hands.”
“One gentleman to another,” said Harry, his eyes on Kosov.
Kosov chuckled, then nodded to Misha, who brought out his stiletto and cut through the sticky mess like tissue paper. Rykov laid a hand on the Skorpion machine pistol in his belt.
“Now that you’re comfortable,” said Kosov in heavily accented English, “what have you to tell me?”
“What do you want to know?”
“What you were doing at Klaus Seeckt’s house.”
“Routine debriefing,” Harry said offhandedly. “Twice monthly.”
“He’s lying!” Rykov snapped in Russian. “He almost broke down the door trying to get in!”
Kosov looked to Corporal Ivanov for corroboration. “He’s right,” Andrei admitted grudgingly. “Nothing routine about it. The major also speaks excellent Russian.”
“You see, Major?” Kosov said. “There’s no point in trying to deceive me. I regret that my men brought you here at all, of course. I asked for a German policeman, I got back an American major. An unfortunate accident. But now that the mistake has been made, I intend to use the opportunity to ask you a few questions. You would do the same, I think.”
Harry shrugged.
“I simply wish to know the details of your relationship with Klaus Seeckt. Then I can make arrangements for your safe return to West Berlin.”
Harry almost laughed. Mistake or not, the Russians had kidnapped him. To return him now would be admitting it, and they wouldn’t do that. Even if Colonel Rose had known he was going to Klaus’s house—which Rose hadn’t—he would have no way of knowing Harry had been taken into the DDR. He might eventually suspect it, but by then the chances of getting Harry back would be slim. And if the Russians moved him any father east, the odds fell to zero. This situation required desperate measures. Shock tactics. Looking straight at Kosov, Harry
crossed his legs and began to speak flawless, aristocratic Russian. “You’d better write this down, Kosov. If you bungle this, Chairman Zemenek will have you back in the Fifth Chief Directorate so fast you won’t have time to pack your shorts. You’ll be chasing filthy Tartars for the rest of your life.”
Kosov started, both at the perfection of Richardson’s Russian and the reference to his old job. “What do you know about me, Major?” he asked warily.
“Only what’s necessary. Which isn’t much, I’m afraid. Ivan Leonidovich Kosov: Born Moscow 1943, entered service 1962, excelled at repression in the provinces—notably Azerbaijan—for the Second Chief Directorate. That and your father-in-law’s influence got you transferred to Directorate ‘K’ in 1971, stationed Yugoslavia. A little more competent than the average K-man, you obtained a posting to the East Berlin Rezidentura in 1978, where you’ve performed adequately for the past ten years.”
“Leave us,” Kosov told his men.
Axel Goltz spoke up angrily. “But Colonel!”
“Now!” bellowed Kosov. “Only Misha remains.” When the others had left the room, Kosov said, “Your Russian is excellent, Major. You have a good memory. So what? You think I don’t know as much about you?”
Harry looked over at the predatory Misha standing motionless in the shadows. “No, Colonel, I don’t. There is a gap in your … ‘consciousness,’ shall we say?”
Kosov grunted. “What kind of gap?”
“The fact that we occasionally work for the same team. Broadly speaking. I went to Klaus Seeckt’s house tonight to deliver a message.”
“Come now, Major, I would know if you had any connection with KGB.”
Harry snorted. “You think you’re made aware of everything that happens in Berlin? Perhaps you are a fool, Kosov.”
