by Greg Iles
'Hitler diaries.' "
Hans's jaw dropped.
"The London Sunday Times went in for 400,000 pounds, and I think both
Time and Newsweek came close to getting stung." Weber smiled with a
touch of professional envy.
"Heidemann was pretty smart about it, really. He set the hook by
leaking a story that the diaries contained Hitler's version of Rudolf
Hess's flight to Britain. Of course every rag in the world was panting
to print a special edition solving the last big mystery of the war.
They shelled out millions. Careers were ruined by that fiasco."
The reporter laughed harshly. "Guten Abend, Sergeant. Call me next
time there's a kidnapping, eh?"
Weber trotted to the waiting Spyder, leaving Hans standing dumbfounded
in the doorway. He had called the reporter for information, and he had
gotten more than he'd bargained for. 3.7
million marks? Jesus!
"Make way, why don't you!" croaked a high-pitched voice.
Hans grunted as the tall janitor shouldered past him onto the sidewalk
and hobbled down the street. His broom was gone; now a worn leather bag
swung from his shoulder.
Hans followed the man with his eyes for a while, then shook his head.
Paranoia, he thought.
Looking up at the drab facade of his apartment building, he decided that
a walk through the city beat waiting for Ilse in the empty flat.
Besides, he always thought more clearly on the move. He started
walking. Just over a hundred meters long, the Liitzenstrasse was wedged
into a rough trapezoid between two main thoroughfares and a convergence
of elevated S-Bahn rail tracks. Forty seconds' walking carried Hans
from the dirty brown stucco of his apartment building to the polished
chrome of the Kurfiirstendamm, the showpiece boulevard of Berlin. He
headed east toward the center of the city, speaking to no one, hardly
looking up at the dazzling window displays, magisterial banks, open-air
cafes, art galleries, antique shops, and nightclubs of the Ku'damm.
Bright clusters of shoppers jostled by, gawking and laughing together,
but they yielded a wide path to the lone walker whose Aryan good looks
were somehow made suspect by his unshaven face and ragged clothing. The
tall, spare man gliding purposefully along behind Hans could easily have
been walking at his shoulder. The man no longer looked like a janitor,
but even if he had, it wouldn't have mattered; Hans was lost in heady
dreams of wealth beyond measure.
He paused at a newsstand and bought a pack of American cigarettes.
He really needed a smoke. As he sucked in the first potent drag, he
suddenly remembered something from the Spandau papers. The writer had
said he was the last ...
The last what? The last prisoner? And then it hit Hans like a bucket
of water in the face. The Spandau papers were signed Prisoner Number
Seven ... and Prisoner Number Seven was Rudolf Hess himself.
He felt the hand holding the cigarette start to shake. He tried to
swallow, but his throat refused to cooperate. Had he actually found the
journal of a Nazi war criminal? With Heini Weber's cynical comments
echoing in his head, he tried to recall what he could about Hess. All
he really knew was that Hess was Hitler's right-hand man, and that he'd
flown secretly to Britain sometime early in the war, and had been
captured. For the past few weeks the Berlin papers had been full of
sensational stories about Hess's death, but Hans had read none of them.
He did remember the Occasional feature from earlier years, though.
They invariably portrayed an infantile old man, a once-powerful soldier
'reduced to watching episodes of the American soap opera Dynasty on
television. Why was the pathetic old Nazi so important?
Hans wondered. Why should even a hint of information about his mission
drive the price of forged diaries into the millions?
Catching his reflection in a shop window, Hans realized that in his work
clothes he looked like a bum, even by the Ku'damrn's indulgent
standards. He stubbed out his cigarette and turned down a side street
at the first opportunity. He soon found himself standing before a small
art cinema. He gazed up at the colorful posters hawking films imported
from a dozen nations. On a whim he stepped up to the ticket window and
inquired about the matinee. The ticket girl answered in a sleepy
monotone.
"American western film today. John Wayne. Der Searchers.', "In
German?"
'Nein. English."
"Excellent. One ticket, please."
"Twelve DM," demanded the robot voice.
"Twelve! That's robbery."
"You want the ticket?"
Reluctantly, Hans surrendered his money and entered the theater.
He didn't stop for refreshments; at the posted prices he couldn't afford
to. No wonder Ilse and I never go to movies, he thought. Just before
he entered the screening room, he spied a pay phone near the restrooms.
He slowed his stride, thinking of calling in to the station, but then he
walked on. There isn't any rush, is there? he thought. No one knows
about the papers yet. As he seated himself in the darkness near the
screen, he decided that he might well have found the most anonymous
place in the city to decide what to do with the Spandau papers.
Six rows behind Hans, a tall, thin shadow slipped noiselessly into a
frayed theater seat. The shadow reached into a worn leather bag on its
lap and withdrew an orange. While Hans watched the tides roll, the
shadow peeled the orange and watched him.
Thirty blocks away in the Liitzenstrasse, Ilse Apfel set her market
basket down in the uncarpeted hallway and let herself into apartment 40.
The operation took three keys-one for the knob and two for the heavy
deadbolts Hans insisted upon. She went straight to the kitchen and put
away her grocenes, singing tunefully all the while.
The song was an old one, Walking on the Moon by the Police. Ilse always
sang when she was happy, and today she was ecstatic. The news about the
baby meant far more than fulfillment of her desire to have a family. It
meant that Hans might finally agree to settle permanently in Berlin. For
the past five months he had talked of little else but his desire to try
out for Germany's elite counterteffor force, the Grenzschutzgruppe-9
(GSG-9), oddly enough, the unit whose marksmen his estranged father
coached. Hans claimed he was tired of routine police work, that he
wanted something more exciting and meaningful.
Ilse didn't like this idea at all. For on@ thing, it would seriously
disrupt her career. Policemen in Berlin made little money; most police
wives worked as hairdressers, secretaries, or even
housekeepers-low-paying jobs, but jobs that could be done anywhere.
Ilse was different. Her parents had died when she was very young, and
she had been raised by her grandfather, an eminent history professor and
author.
She'd practically grown up in the Free University and hadtaken degrees
in both Modern Languages and Finance. She'd
T
even spent a semester in th
e United States, studying French and teaching
German. Her job as interpreter for a prominent brokerage house gave
Hans and her a more comfortable life than most police families. They
were not rich, but their life was good.
If Hans qualified for GSG-9, however, they would have to move to one of
the four towns that housed the active GSG-9
units: Kassel, Munich, Hannover, or Kiel. Not exactly financial meccas.
Ilse knew she could adapt to a new city if she had to, but not to the
heightened danger. Assignment to a GSG-9 unit virtually guaranteed that
Hans would be put into life-threatening situations.
GSG-9 teams were Germany's forward weapon in the battle against
hijackers, assassins, and God only knew what other madmen. Ilse didn't
want that kind of life for the father of her child, and she didn't
understand how Hans could either. She despised amateur psychology, but
she suspected that Hans's reckless impulse was driven by one of two
things: a desire to prove something to his father, or his failure to
become a father himself.
No more conversations about stun grenades and storming airplanes, she
told herself. Because she was finally pregnant, and because today was
just that kind of day. Returning to work from the doctor's office,
she'd it)und that her boss had realized a small fortune for his clients
that morning by following a suggestion she had made before leaving. Of
course by market close the cretin had convinced himself that the clever
bit of arbitrage was entirely his own idea. And who really cares? she
thought. When I open my brokerage house, he'll be carrying coffee to my
assistants!
Ilse stepped into the bedroom to change out of her business clothes. The
first thing she saw was the half-eaten plate of Weisswurst on the unmade
bed. Melted ice and dirt from Hans's uniform had left the sheets a
muddy mess. Then she saw the uniform itself, draped over the boots in
the corner.
That's odd, she thought. Hans was as human as the next man, but he
usually managed to keep his dirty clothes out of sight. In fact, it was
odd not to find him sleeping off the fatigue of night duty.
Ilse felt a strange sense of worry. And then suddenly she knew.
At work there had been a buzz about a breaking news story-something
about Russians arresting two West Berliners at Spandau Prison. Later,
in her car, she'd half-heard a radio announcer say something about
Russians at one of the downtown police stations. She prayed that Hans
hadn't got caught up in that mess. A bureaucratic tangle like that
could take all night.
She frowned. Telling Hans about the baby while he was in a bad mood
wasn't what she had had in mind at all. She would have to think of a
way to put him in a good mood- first.
One method always worked, and she smiled thinking of it.
For the first time in weeks the thought of sex made her feel genuinely
excited. It seemed so long since she and Hans had made love with any
other goal than pregnancy. But now that she had conceived, they could
forget all about charts and graphs and temperatures and rediscover the
intensity of those nights when they hardly slept at all.
She had already planned a celebratory dinner-not a health-conscious
American style snack like those her yuppie colleagues from the
Yorckstrasse called dinner, but a real Berlin feast: Eisben, sauerkraut,
and Pease pudding. She'd made a special trip to the food floor of the
KaDeWe and bought everything ready-made. It was said that anything
edible in the world could be purchased at the KaDeWe, and Ilse believed
it. She smiled again. She and Hans would share a first-class supper,
and for dessert he could have her-as healthy a dish as any man could
want. Then she would tell him about the baby.
Ilse tied her hair back, then she took the pork from the refrigerator
and put it in the oven. While it heated, she went into the bedroom to
strip the soiled sheets. She laughed softly. A randy German woman
might happily make love on a forest floor, but on dirty linens? Never!
She knelt beside the bed and gathered the bedclothes into a ball. She
was about to rise when she saw something white sticking out from under
the mattress. Automatically, she pulled it out and found herself
holding a damp sheaf of papers.
What in the world? She certainly didn't remember putting any papers
under the mattress. It must have been Hans. But what would he hide
from her? Bewildered, she let the bedclothes fall, stood up, and
unfolded the onionskin pages.
Heavy, hand-printed letters covered the paper. She read the first
paragraph cursorily, her mind more on the circumstances of her discovery
than on the actual content of the papers. The second paragraph,
however, got her attention. It was written in Latin of all things.
Shivering in the chilly ai'r, she walked into the kitchen and stood by
the warm stove.
She concentrated on the word endings, trying to decipher the carefully
blocked letters. it was almost painful, like trying to recall formulas
from gymnasium physics. Her specialty was modern languages; Latin she
could hardly remember. Ilse went to the kitchen table and spread out
the thin pages, anchoring each corner with a piece of flatware.
There were nine. She took a pen and notepad from the telephone stand,
went back to the first paragraph of Latin, and began recording her
efforts. After ten minutes she had roughed out the first four
sentences. When she read straight through what she had written, the
pencil slipped from her shaking hand.
"Mein Gott, " she breathed. "This cannot be."
Hans exited the cinema into the gathering dusk. He couldn't believe the
afternoon had passed so quickly. Huddling against the cold, he
considered taking the U-Bahn home, then decided against it.
It would mean changing trains at Fehrbelliner-Platz, and he would still
have some distance to walk. Better to walk the whole way and use the
time to decide how to tell Ilse about the Spandau papers. He started
west with a loping stride, moving away from the crowded Ku'damm. He
knew he was duty-bound to hand the papers over to his superiors, and he
felt sure that the mix-up with the Russians had been straightened out by
now. Yet as he walked, he was aware that his mind was not completely
clear about turning in the papers. For some irritating reason, when he
thought of doing that, his father's face came into his mind. But there
was something else in his brain. Something he soon recognized as Heini
Weber's voice saying: "Three point seven million Deutschemarks -- ."
Hans had already done the calculations. At his salary it would take 150
years to earn that much money, and that represented the offer of a
single magazine for the "Hitler diaries." That was a powerful
temptation, even for an honest man.
As Hans reached the mouth of the side street, a dark shape disengaged
itself from the gloom beneath the cinema awning and fell into step
behind him. It neither hurried nor tarried, but moved through the
streets as effort
lessly as a cloud's shadow.
CHAPTER FOUR
5.'50 Pm. American Sector. West Berlin Colonel Godfrey A. "God" Rose
reached into the bottom drawer of his mammoth Victorian desk, withdrew a
halfempty bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon, and gazed fondly at the label.
For five exhausting hours the U.S. Army's West Berlin chief of
intelligence had sifted through the weekly reports of his "snitches"-the
highly paid but underzealous army of informers that the U.S. government
maintains on its shadow payroll to keep abreast of events in Berlin-and
discovered nothing but the usual sordid list of venalities committed by
the host of elected officials, bureaucrats, and military officers of the
city he had come to regard as the Sodom of Western Europe. The colonel
had a single vice-whiskey-and he looked forward to the anesthetic burn
of the Kentucky bourbon with sublime anticipation.
Pouring the Turkey into a Lenox shot glass, Rose glanced up and saw his
aide, Sergeant Clary, silhouetted against the leaded glass window of his
office door. With customary discretion the young NCO paused before
knocking, giving his superior time to "straighten his desk." By the
time Clary tapped on the glass and stepped smartly into the office,
Colonel Rose appeared to be engrossed in an intelligence brief.
Clary cleared his throat. "Colonel?"
Rose looked up slowly. "Yes, Sergeant?"
"Sir, Ambassador Briggs is flying in from Bonn tomorrow morning.
State just informed us by courier."
Rose frowned. "That's not on my calendar, is it?"
"No, sir."
"Well?"
"Apparently the Soviets have filed some sort of complaint against us,
sir. Through the embassy."
"Us?"
"The Army, sir. It's something to do with last night's detail at
Spandau Prison. That's all I could get out of Smitty-I mean the
courier, sir."
"Spandau? What about it? Christ, we've watched the damned coverage all
day, haven't we? I've already filed my report."
"State didn't elaborate, sir."
Rose snorted. "They never do, do they."
"No, sir. Care to see the message?"
Rose gazed out of his small window at the Berlin dusk and wondered about
the possible implications of the ambassador's visit. The American
diplomatic corps stayed in Bonn most of the time-well out of Rose's area
of operationsand he liked that just fine.
