by Iles, Greg
“Crack a window,” said Borodin. The driver did.
“Gentlemen, Captain Dieter Hauer is in the hotel on my right, the Protea Hof. With him are some scruffy fellows who look suspiciously like Jews.” Borodin clucked his tongue. “Germans and Jews … an often explosive combination.”
One of the gorillas chuckled appreciatively. Ah, Borodin thought, a rudimentary sense of humour.
“Across the street in the Stanley House,” he went on, “we have our restless German Kripo detective. He’s big, but he shouldn’t be much trouble. Two of you should be enough for him. When he’s dead, leave his ID but take his money.” Borodin took a Heckler and Koch MP-5 submachine gun from a leather attache case. “The rest of us will take room 604.” He singled out the leanest of the gorillas. “You know the window?”
The lean man lifted a Dragunov sniper rifle from his lap and zipped it into a soft case. “Sixth floor,” he said, “third window from the left.”
Borodin nodded and screwed a long silencer onto the muzzle of his MP-5. “Let’s go.”
3.42 Pm. Room 604: The Protea Hof Hotel, Pretoria
Jonas Stern would have verbally crucified Gadi and his men for their laxness, but had they not been so attuned to Stern’s absence, they might have defended themselves better. When the telephone rang, everyone turned toward it thinking it was Stern. Hauer turned from the window, Natterman from one of the beds, Yosef from the space between the other bed and the bathroom wall, and most importantly, Aaron from the foyer. No one heard the key turning softly in the door. Closest to the phone, Gadi Abrams snatched it up and said, “Hello? Hello? Uncle Jonas?”
In that instant of shared bewilderment, a rifle slug shattered the hotel room window, missing Hauer by a centimetre. Everyone whirled toward the crashing sound. A half second later one of Borodin’s gorillas charged through the foyer and bowled Aaron Haber over like a child. Hauer looked around wildly. His Walther lay on the bed six feet away. He started to dive for it; then the second gorilla came through the door with his pistol aimed at Hauer’s chest. Standing open-mouthed with the telephone to his ear, Gadi Abrams also was trapped in the newcomer’s line of fire. Only Yosef Shamir moved to counterattack. He had been toying with Hans’s crossbow in the narrow slot between the bed and the bath when the Russians burst in. With lightning speed he dropped the bow, drew his silenced .22 and fired three shots in rapid succession as the second gorilla emerged from the foyer and barrelled past him.
All three bullets embedded themselves high in the Russian’s broad back. He went down on top of his compadre who was wrestling with Aaron on the floor. The .22 caliber slugs only slowed the Russian giant, but that slowness saved his life. As Yosef stepped forward to finish him off, Yuri Borodin somersaulted through the foyer and shot the young Israeli through the throat. By the time Gadi got his hand on Hauer’s Walther, Borodin was covering the entire room. Faced with the deadly MP-5 submachine gun, Hauer, Gadi, and Aaron realized the futility of further resistance. They slowly raised their hands, their eyes locked on Yosef’s convulsing body.
It took the young commando forty seconds to die, and no one spoke while he did it. They had all seen death before, and knowing that no help would be called for, a solemn silence fell on both attackers and hostages.
Professor Natterman was the first to make a sound, chattering, “Why? Why?” to everyone and no one at the same time.
“You,” said Borodin, pointing his weapon at Hauer. Close the drapes.” Hauer didn’t move. Borodin checked his watch. “Close the drapes within five seconds or you will be shot by my sniper. Everyone against the window.”
Hauer obeyed. Gadi and Aaron backed against the closed drapes and stood beside Hauer. The gorilla that Yosef had shot was straining without success to reach the wounds on his back, and moaning like a dying ox. Borodin ordered the second gorilla to take him into the bathroom and see to his comrade’s wounds; then he casually seated himself on the bed nearest Hauer.
Natterman sat gibbering on the bed opposite, but the immaculately dressed Russian took no notice—took out a cigarette and lit it with great deliberation. “Gentlemen,“‘he said in English, “I have come for the papers found at Spandau Prison. Which one of you has them?”
“None of us,” Hauer replied in the same language.
Borodin took a drag from his cigarette. He had noticed the accent. “You are Captain Hauer, I take it?”
Hauer nodded. “Who are you?”
Borodin ignored the question and smiled, revealing a dazzling set of Swiss dental work. “Once again, Captain, which of you has the papers?”
“How did you find us?” Gadi asked, stalling.
Borodin laughed softly. “A fat Kripo detective named Schneider lead me right to you. I assume he’s a friend of yours. Of course the detective is dead now, Captain. As you will be if you don’t give up the papers.”
“I told you before, we don’t have them.”
Borodin’s smile stretched to a grimace. He called one of the gorillas back from the bathroom and barked several phrases at him in rapid Russian. Of the captives, only Aaron Haber—the son of a Lithuanian Jew—understood the exchange, but the colour draining from his face told the others all they needed to know. The big Russian jerked Aaron away from the curtained window and kicked his legs out from under him. When the young Israeli tried to rise, the Russian locked a thick forearm around his neck and pressed the barrel of a silenced Browning 9mm pistol into his ear.
“The foreplay is over, gentlemen,” Borodin said. His voice had not risen a single decibel, yet it had lost all trace of humanity. Everyone in the room knew that the Russian would not hesitate to order Aaron’s execution. Yet the young commando made no sound. He left his fate entirely in the hands of Gadi Abrams, who had been designated senior officer by Stern just before he left to rendezvous with the kidnappers.
“At the risk of sounding melodramatic,” Borodin went on, “I’m going to count to five. If I do not have the Spandau papers when I reach that number, my loyal assistant will transform this young man’s brain into kosher caviar.”
“We don’t have them,” Hauer said again.
Borodin counted quickly. “One, two, three, four—”
“Stop !” Professor Natterman cried, surprising everyone. “In God’s name stop! Listen to me, you barbarian! Hauer is telling the truth. Hans Apfel has the original diary. Most of it, anyway. The Jew who left here a few minutes ago has the rest. My granddaughter has been kidnapped. We’ve come to exchange the papers for her life. Surely even you can understand that?”
Borodin stared at the historian. “How does that help me, old man? I need results, not excuses.”
“There is a copy,” Natterman explained. “A copy of the papers. Photographs. You’re Russian, correct? If you want to expose the truth about Rudolf Hess, that’s all you need.” Natterman pointed across the room at Hauer. “He has them. I’m sorry, Captain, those papers mean far more to me than to you, but they’re simply not worth this boy’s life.”
Hauer stared at the old man with incredulity. This did not sound at all like the fame-obsessed professor he had come to know. Borodin raised the MP-5 to Hauer’s face. “The photographs, Captain.” Hauer didn’t move.
“Kill the Jew,” Borodin said calmly.
“Bastard,” Hauer muttered. He jerked the envelope from his hip pocket and tossed it onto the bed. Borodin held the negatives up to the overhead light, examined them briefly, then slipped them into his inside coat pocket. “I assume that none of you know the location of the people to whom your friend is trading the original papers?”
“That’s right,” Natterman said.
Borodin chuckled. “I thought not. If you did, this wonderful little commando unit wouldn’t be sitting on its collective ass in a hotel room.”
In spite of the gun at his temple, Aaron cursed and tried to lash out at the Soviet agent. Borodin merely stepped aside and called to one of the residency men, “Dmitri! Leave their weapons, but take their ammunition!”
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Two minutes later Borodin stood smirking in the foyer, flanked by his gorillas. The Russian who had not been wounded held a pillowcase weighted with Uzi ammunition clips, boxes of shells and loose .22 rounds.
“This soiree is over, gentlemen,” Borodin said. “I’ll take my leave now.” He accented his farewells with a broad flourish of his hand. “Do svidanya! Shalom! Auf Wiedersehen!” Borodin burst into laughter, then motioned for one of the gorillas to open the door.
The moment the Russian holding the pillowcase turned the doorknob, the door burst open and knocked him back ward against his wounded comrade. From the window, Hauer gaped as the back of the wounded man’s head exploded. The second Russian groped at his belt for his pistol, but two bullets hit him low in the stomach and severed his spinal cord. Borodin backpedalled out of the foyer and spun toward the window, while Hauer and the Israelis dropped to the carpet as slugs from his MP-5 peppered the bed and the wall and the ceiling. Hauer looked up just as two bright red flowers blossomed on Borodin’s shoulders.
Hauer and Gadi were on their feet by the time Borodin’s body hit the floor. Standing in the doorway, his shoulders stretching from post to post, was a very large man holding a Walther pistol in his hand. A gray hat was pressed down over his bloody head, and a brass gorget plate hung from his neck. On it was a capital K, the emblem of the Berlin Kriminalpolizei. “Captain Hauer?” Schneider said. Hauer stepped forward and nodded. Schneider put his gun in his pocket. “I need to talk to you.”
Gadi Abrams crouched over Borodin, who lay pale and shaking on the carpet. He rifled Borodin’s pocket for Hauer’s envelope, found it, and tossed the negatives to Hauer. Then he leaned down over Borodin’s face. “Where is your sniper?” he shouted. “Where!”
Borodin smiled. “Fuck you, Jew.”
Gadi snatched up a pillow, crushed it over Borodin’s face and punched him hard on his wounded shoulder. The muffled howl that followed did not sound human. Gadi pulled the pillow away. “Across … across the street,” Borodin croaked. “Room 528 … the Stanley … House.”
Gadi closed his brown hands around Borodin’s throat and began to squeeze. “For Yosef,” he said softly.
Detective Schneider crossed the room and shouldered Gadi off of the Russian. He crouched down beside him. “Are you Yuri Borodin?” he asked tersely. “Are you the man who killed Major Harry Richardson?”
Borodin stared up with glassy eyes. He saw little chance of leaving this room alive. His pale face wrinkled into a sneer. “The Swastika was a nice touch … don’t you think?”
Schneider sighed heavily. In his mind he saw the dim, overheated bedroom where he and Colonel Rose had examined Harry’s mutilated corpse. In the close South African heat, it wasn’t hard to recall. “I should let you bleed to death,” he growled.
“Fuck you too, you stinking German.”
While Hauer and the Israelis watched in disbelief, Schneider closed one huge hand around Borodin’s throat and squeezed with the remorseless force of a root cracking concrete. Schneider did not see Hauer signal to Gadi, or the two Israelis approach him from behind. The moment Borodin’s legs stopped thrashing, the Israeli commandos seized him.
Schneider did not struggle, not even when Gadi took the pistol from his pocket.
Hauer stepped forward and checked the scalp behind both of Schneider’s ears. Satisfied, he stepped back and motioned for the Israelis to release him.
“I don’t have the damned tattoo,” Schneider muttered.
In the awkward silence that followed, Hauer finally noticed the weak moaning coming from somewhere inside the room. He walked around and looked on the floor between the beds. Professor Natterman lay there, deathly white, both hands clutching his side. “Captain … ?” he whispered uncertainly.
Hauer knelt and examined the old man. The professor had been lying on the bed when Schneider burst in, and he had been too slow to seek cover. Two bullets from Borodin’s final spray had struck him. One had nicked the flesh above his left hip, the other grazed his left thigh. Hauer could see that the wounds were superficial, but the professor obviously believed he was in danger of dying. He raised his quivering arms to Hauer’s collar and pulled him down to his face. “There really is … a copy, Captain,” he rasped. “A copy of the Spandau papers.”
Hauer pulled himself free of the old man’s grasp. “What did you say?”
“Tell Stern to remember the copy I made in Berlin!”
“What?”
Natterman nodded weakly. “Stern … was following me. He saw me do it. I made a copy of the Spandau papers before I ever left Berlin for the cabin. I mailed it to one of my old teaching assistants for safekeeping. Kurt Rossman. If … if you get to Ilse, don’t worry about the papers. Just get Ilse out. Tell Stern to get Ilse out!”
Hauer sat stunned. He couldn’t believe that through all the warnings against photocopying the Spandau papers, Natterman had risked Ilse’s life by not admitting that he had already done so. As he opened his mouth to rebuke the old man, Aaron Haber appeared at his side with a canvas overnight bag. The young commando withdrew a kit containing a blood-pressure monitor, sutures, syringes, gauze bandages, morphine, Xylocaine and a cornucopia of other emergency drugs. “We came prepared for casualties,” he said. He propped Natterman’s legs on some pillows to maximise the flow of blood to his brain.
Hauer stood up and gave his full attention to Schneider. “What’s your story, Detective?”
Schneider produced a handkerchief and wiped some blood from his face. “I’ve come here to help you, Captain. You are in a great deal of trouble in Berlin. Both you and Sergeant Apfel are wanted for murder there.”
“I’m no murderer,” Hauer said gruffly.
“I didn’t say you were. I know all about the Spandau papers, Captain. I know about Phoenix. I’m working with the Americans, with Colonel Rose of the US Army. That’s how I traced you.”
“I suppose you want the Spandau papers?”
Schneider shrugged. “Only if they can help to crush Phoenix.”
Hauer digested this slowly. “Why did you kill that Russian?”
“He killed an American intelligence officer named Richardson. Richardson was the man who discovered that Phoenix extends into East Germany as well as West Berlin.”
“I’ve known that for months.”
“Then why didn’t you report it?”
Hauer snorted. “Report it? Phoenix has men in the police department, the BND, the West Berlin Senate, the federal government in Bonn, and all the states. If I’d reported what I knew to the wrong person, you and your Kripo friends would have been visiting me at the morgue twelve hours later.”
Schneider nodded slowly. “The Americans can help you, Captain. Colonel Rose will help.”
“You said this Russian here already killed one American officer. That kind of help I don’t need.” Hauer studied the big German. “Why do you think I should trust you?”
“Because I saved your life.”
Hauer shrugged. “Anyone from Phoenix would have killed those Russians just as quickly as. you did. They can’t afford to let the Russians know what Phoenix truly exists for. Not yet.”
Schneider met Hauer’s eyes. “Come back with me to Berlin, Captain. Help us root out Funk and his men. Colonel Rose would like nothing better than to order an assault on Abschnitt 53. But his hands are tied. His superiors are holding him back because of the Hess business, and he doesn’t have nearly enough evidence against Prefect Funk. You could provide that evidence, Captain. You must trust me. I want the same thing you do—to clean those scum out of Berlin.”
Schneider turned his broad hands upward. “I know you don’t know me, but you must have known my father. Max Schneider. He was a Kripo investigator too. Big like me.”
Hauer searched Schneider’s face for a full minute. Two rivulets of blood trickled down from the sweatband of Schneider’s hat. Behind Schneider, Gadi was moving the dead Russians into the bathroom, while Aaron worked on the professor. The p
rofessor’s revelation that he had made a copy of the Spandau papers pulsed in the back of Hauer’s brain like a second heartbeat. The situation had changed. Profoundly. A copy of the Spandau papers, combined with the evidence he and Steuben had already compiled, meant that direct action in Berlin might now be possible. Things were moving too quickly here in South Africa. Hans’s betrayal, Stern’s sudden appearance, the Russian assault, Schneider’s unexpected rescue. Schneider …
“Your father wore a hat like yours,” Hauer said absently.
“You did know him,” said Schneider, smiling.
Hauer turned and stared pensively out the window. “You say you’re working with the Americans?”
“Yes. Colonel Godfrey Rose, of Military Intelligence.”
“Can you get him on the phone?”
“Yes.”
“Do it.”
4.00 p.m. The Voortrekker Monument, Pretoria
After forty-five minutes of lying blindfolded in the backseat of the speeding Range Rover, Jonas Stern had lost all sense of direction. The Zulu driver who had met him at the Voortrekker Monument drove with the windows down, and Stern could smell rain on the wind. He had peeked around his blindfold once, and it seemed to him that night had fallen early. In fact the darkness was caused by the thick ceiling of storm clouds Hans had seen earlier, rolling in from the north. It was part of a front that had blown in from the Indian Ocean; it stretched southward from the Mozambique border almost to Pretoria.
Stern tensed as the Range Rover swerved onto a rocky shoulder and shuddered to a stop. He heard the driver’s door open and close. Stern pulled off the blindfold and looked around. Down the highway, he saw a small speck of light. It shone from the direction they had come. Yet as he tried to focus on the yellow glimmer, it winked out. The Zulu driver turned to Stern, the whites of his eyes flashing angrily. He jabbed a finger toward the blindfold. Pulling the black scarf back around his eyes, Stern heard—or thought he heard—the sound of an automobile engine in the distance.
