The Spandau Phoenix wwi-2

by Greg Iles

  wearing a hat and a rumpled raincoat waded into the pool of yellow light

  thrown off by a dim spotlight above the glass doors. The man stopped

  when he saw Luhr, taking in the silver lieutenant's bars, st@ched-flat

  uniform, and gleaming boots.

  "What can I do for you, Lieutenant?" he asked warily.

  "Detective Schneider, I presume?"

  The big man nodded.

  'I am here as the unofficial representative of the prefect.

  He has expressed an interest in this case As the murdered man apparently

  has some tie to the East German government, the prefect fears that there

  might be ... repercussions.

  You understand?"

  Detective Schneider waited for the lieutenant to ask what he had come

  outside to ask. He didn't like the way Luhr's arrogant little mouth

  softened his classic Nordic face. Or the eyes, he thought.

  Rapist's eyes.

  "The photographer tells me that you discovered a card on the premises. A

  card with only a telephone number. Where is this card now?"

  "I didn't actually find it," Schneider said, slipping his right hand

  into his trouser pocket. "Patrolman Ebert did."

  Schneider fingered the white card and watched Luhr's face.

  "I'm not sure where it is now. I had it, but I think Officer Beck asked

  me for it. He's still here, I believe."

  "What have you got in your pocket?" Luhr asked sharply.

  Schneider slowly withdrew his hand. He held the brass gorget plate and

  chain that identified him as a Kripo detective.

  With a hiss of frustration Luhr went in search of Officer Beck.

  As soon as he disappeared, Schneider pulled a ballpoint pen from his

  shirt pocket and copied the number from the card onto the palm of his

  hand. Then he followed Luhr into the house.

  "Lieutenant?" he called. "Herr Lieutenant!"

  Luhr barrelled back through the front door, his face flushed with anger.

  "I'm sorry, Lieutenant." Schneider shook his head as if he were a fool

  and knew it. "That card was in my coat pocket all the time. I could

  have sworn I gave it to Beck. Here you are."

  Luhr snatched the card. "Officer Beck says he never asked you for the

  card!"

  Schneider continued shaking his head. "Must have been somebody else. I

  tell you, past midnight and my mind just goes."

  "I suggest, Detective," Luhr said acidly, "that you either get more

  sleep or look for a new line of work. Have you had anyone trace this

  number yet?"

  "No, sir. Not yet."

  "I'll handle it, then."

  While Luhr stalked out to his unmarked Audi, Schneider stood in the

  foyer and scratched his large head. Something had felt wrong about this

  case from the moment he walked in the door. While everyone else had

  gone on about the sloppiness of the murder, Schneider had kept silent.

  Twenty minutes later the nameless card had turned up. And now this

  Nazi-looking lieutenant had appeared-the prefect's aide, no less-to

  spirit that card away.

  Schneider couldn't remember ever having seen Luhr at a crime scene

  before. That bothered him. He hurried past the few technicians left

  outside the house and climbed into his battered Opel Kadett.

  "Telephone," he murmured as he cranked the old car.

  Jiirgen Luhr had beat him to it. As Schneider rounded the corner of

  Levetzow and Bachstrasse, he spied the prefect's aide standing at a

  corner call box. Schneider slowed, then drove on, maddeningly shut out

  of the conversation passing through the wires just over his head.

  "Frau Funk?" Luhr asked, when a woman answered. "I'm sorry to disturb

  you so late. This is Jijrgen Luhr. Could I speak with the prefect,

  please? ... But he was leaving the station-" Luhr broke the connection

  and punched in the number of Abschnitt 53. "Berlin-Two," he snapped.

  "The prefect, immediately."

  A full minute passed before Funk came on the line, his voice smug and

  unruffled in contrast to, its earlier panic.

  "Yes, Jiirgen?"

  "I've found something odd at the Tiergarten house. A card with nothing

  but a phone number on it. We should trace it immediately. The crime

  looked very suspicious. Evidence of automatic weapons fire, conflicting

  signs of amateurishness and professionalism. I think our brothers in

  uniform may have, been there."

  "How interesting," said Funk. "Why don't you come back to the station

  and we'll discuss your theory."

  "What's the matter? Is someone with you?"

  A pause. "There was someone here, Jijrgen. Sergeant Ross just took her

  downstairs to her new accommodations."

  "Her? Who are you talking aboutt' "The wife of one of our 'brothers in

  uniform,' as you put it. A Frau Ilse Apfel. She walked into the

  station just after you left. She had a most interesting story to tell."

  "What? The sergeant's wife?"

  "That's right. I understand the situation much better after talking to

  her. I suggest you get back here, Jiirgen, if you want to be in on this

  at all. I've already spoken to Pretoria.

  I received some very interesting orders, and they involve YOU."

  Luhr left the receiver dangling from the call box and dashed to his car.

  He squealed down the Bachstrasse in a rage. "Damn that imbecile! How

  could he be so lucky?" He screeched around a curve.

  "It's all right," he assured himself, calming a little. "He hasn't

  found Hauer or Apfel yet.

  Or the Spandau papers. And that's what Phoenix wantswhat he's

  frightened of. And that distinction will be mine."

  In his fury, Luhr failed to notice the burly figure of Detective Julius

  Schneider standing at a yellow call box four blocks from the one he had

  used to place his own call. Unlike Luhr, Schneider wasn't about to try

  to trace the mysterious phone number through normal channels.

  An inquiry in his own name might draw unpleasant attention, possibly

  even the prefect's, and Schneider didn't need that. Besides, he had

  always believed in taking the shortest route between two points.

  Reading the telephone number off the palm of his hand, he lifted the

  receiver and punched in the digits. He heard five rings, then a click

  followed by the familiar hiss and crackle of an automated answering

  machine.

  "This is Harry Richardson," said a metallic voice. "I'm out.

  Friends can leave a message at the tone. If you're a salesperson, don't

  call back. If it's a military matter, call my office. The previous

  message will be repeated in German.

  Thank you."

  Schneider waited until the German version of the message had finished,

  then hung up. His pulse, normally as steady as a hibernating bear's,

  was racing. Schneider knew who Harry Richardson was. He'd even met him

  once. American intelligence officers who took the time to cultivate

  investigators of the Kriminalpolizei were rare enough to remember.

  Schneider doubted if Richardson would remember him, but that didn't

  matter. What mattered was that an American army officer was somehow

  involved in what was fast shaping up to be an explosive murder case.

  Schneider took several deep breaths and forced himself to think slowly.

  H
e'd found Richardson's card outside the victim's house, but there had

  been blood all around it. What did that mean? And what should he do?

  He thought of the prefect's insolent aide, and the overly officious

  manner that in Schneider's experience spelled coverup.

  With sudden insight Schneider realized that he now stood at one of those

  crossroads that can change a man's life forever.

  He could get into his car and go home to his wife and his warm bed-a

  course of action almost any sane German would choose-or he could make

  the call that he suspected would pluck him from his old life like the

  wind sweeps a seed from the ground.

  "God," he murmured. "Godfrey Rose."

  Schneider jumped into his car and fired the engine. Thirty minutes ago

  he had been mildly intrigued by the night's events. Now his mind ran

  wild with speculation, electrified by the smell of the kind of chase he

  had become a detective for in the first place.

  Squealing away from the curb, he made an illegal U-turn and headed east

  on the Budapester Strasse, making for the Tiergarten station. He hoped

  his English was up to the task.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  12.'30 A.M. Veipke, FRG. Near the East German Border Professor

  Natterman swung the rattling Audi back toward the frontier and pushed

  the old sedan to 130 kilometers per hour. Now that the end of his

  harrowing journey approached, he could not keep from rushing. The speed

  was exhilarating; the protesting whine of the tires as he leaned the car

  into the curves kept his fatigued mind alert. Thank God for old

  friends, he thought. A boyhood churn had come through for him tonight,

  providing the Audi with no questions asked.

  Thankfully, the mysterious Englishman who had "accidentally" stumbled

  into his compartment had disappeared.

  Natterman hadn't seen him again on the train, nor at Helmstedt when the

  few passengers disembarked. A few times during the last hour he had

  caught sight of headlights in the blackness far behind him, but they

  came and went so frequently that he wrote them off to nervousness.

  As the Audi jounced over the railroad linking Gardelegan to Wolfsburg,

  the professor spied the eerie, never-dimming glow of the sprawling

  factory city to the west. The sight startled him still.

  When he was a boy, Wolfsburg had been a tiny village of less than a

  hundred, its few houses scattered hodgepodge around the old feudal

  castle. But when the Volkswagen works came there in 1938, the village

  had been transformed almost OVERNIGHT into an industrial metropolis.

  He could scarcely believe his father's tiny cabin still remained in the

  quiet forest northeast of the city.

  It had been eleven months since he last visited the cabin, but he knew

  that Karl Riemeck, a local laborer and old family retainer, would have

  both the grounds and the house in fine shape. The thought of spending

  some time in the old place had almost blotted out the wild theories

  whirling through Natterman's weary brain. Almost. As he roared down

  the narrow road cut through the deep forest, visions of notorious and

  celebrated faces from the past flickered in his mind like pitted

  newsreels. Hitler and Churchill ... the Duke of Windsor ... Stalin ...

  Joseph P Kennedy, the American ambassador to wartorn Britain, a Nazi

  appeaser and father of a future U. S. President. . . Lord Halifax, the

  nerveless British foreign secretary and secret foe of Churchill ...

  Those smiling faces now seemed to conceal uncharted worlds of deception,

  worlds waiting to be mapped by an intrepid explorer. The thrill of

  impending discovery coursed through the old historian's veins like a

  powerful narcotic, infusing him with youthful vigor.

  He eased off the gas as he crossed the Mittelland Canal bridge.

  Again he had arrived at the impenetrable core of the mystery: what were

  the British hiding? If Hess's double had flown to Britain to play a

  diversionary role, what was he diverting attentionfrom? Why had the

  real Hess flown to Britain? To meet Englishmen, of course, his mind

  answered. But which Englishmen? With a pang of professional jealousy

  Natterman thought of the Oxford historians who were documenting the

  pro-Nazi sympathies of over thirty members of the wartime British

  Parliament whom they believed had known about Hess's flight beforehand.

  The gossip in academic circles was that the Oxford men believed these

  MPs were Nazi appeasers, enemies of Churchill whom Hess had flown

  secretly to Britain to meet. Natterman wasn't so sure.

  He had no doubt that an apparently pro-Hitler clique of upper-class

  Englishmen existed in 1941. The real question was, did those men really

  intend to betray their country by forging an unholy alliance with Adolf

  Hitler? Or was there a deeper, more noble motive for their behavior?

  The answer to this lay in Hitler's war plans. The Fuhrer's ultimate

  goal had always been the conquest of Russia-the acquisition of

  Lebensraum for the German people-which made him very popular with

  certain elements of British society. For despite being at war with

  Germany, many Englishmen saw the Nazi state as an ideal buffer against

  the spread of communism. Similarly, the Fuhrer had visions of Germany

  and England united in an Aryan front against communist Russia. Hitler

  had never really believed that the English would fight him. Yet when

  Winston Churchill refused to accept the inevitable surrender to and

  alliance with Germany, the Fuhrer got angry.

  And there, Natterman believed, lay the basis of Rudolf Hess's mission.

  Hitler had assigned himself a very strict timetable for Barbarossa-his

  invasion of the Soviet Union.

  He believed that if he did not invade Russia by 1941, Stalin's Red Army

  would gain an overwhelming superiority over him in men and materiel.

  That meant that to be successful, his invasion armies had to jump off

  eastward by May of 1941 at the latest, before the snows melted and made

  the effective use of tanks impossible. And the British, Natterman

  remembered, had known this. An RAF group captain named F. W.

  Winterbotham had worked it out in 1938. And this knowledge@orrectly

  exploited@ould have given the British a peculiar kind of advantage.

  For the longer they could fool Hitler into believing they wanted a

  negotiated peace, the longer they could stave off an invasion of

  Britain. And the nearer would draw the date when Hitler would have to

  redeploy the bulk of his armies eastward. If Hitler could be fooled

  long enough, England would be spared.

  But had those "pro-Nazi" Englishmen understood that in 1941?

  Natten-nan wondered. Were they altruistic patriots who had lured Rudolf

  Hess to Britain on a fool's errand, and thus saved their homeland from

  the Nazis? Or were they traitors who had decided Adolf Hitler was a man

  they could deal with-a bit of a boor, perhaps, but with sound policies

  vis-A-vis the communists and Jews? The answer seemed simple enough: If

  a group of powerful Englishmen had merely pretended to treat with Hitler

  in order to save Britain, they would be heroes and would require no

  protection from p
ublic scrutiny, especially fifty years after the fact.

  However, the well-documented efforts of the British government to

  suppress the details of the Hess case tended to reinforce the opposite

  theory: that those Englishmen really had been admirers of Hitler and

  fascism.

  The variable that confused this logic was a human wild card-Edward VIII,

  Duke of Windsor, former Prince of Wales and abdicated King of England.

  The duke's proGerman sympathies and contact with the Nazis-both before

  and during the war-were documented and very embarrassing facts' At the

  very least Windsor had made a fool of himself by visiting Hitler and all

  the top Nazis in Germany, then trumpeting the Fuhrer's "achievements" to

  a shocked world.

  At worst he had committed treason against the country he was born to

  rule. After his stormy abdication, the duke, living in neutral Spain,

  had pined away for the throne he had so lightly abandoned.

  Startling evidence unearthed in 1983

  indicated that in July of 1940 Windsor had slipped secretly into neutral

  Lisbon to meet a top Nazi, where they explored the option of Windsor's

  return to the English throne. And that, Natterman thought excitedly,

  was the core of it all! Because according to British historian Peter

  Allen, the Nazi whom Windsor had sneaked into Portugal to meet had been

  none other than Rudolf Hess!

  Natterman gripped the wheel tighter. A clear picture had begun to

  emerge from the blurred background of speculation. He could see it now:

  while Hitler's "British sympathizers" may have been feigning sympathy

  for the Nazis in order to save England, the Duke of Windsor most

  definitely was not. And if Windsor had committed treason@r even come

  close-that was the kind of royal "peccadillo" that the British secret

  service would be forced to conceal, suppressing the entire Hess story,

  the heroism as well as the treason.

  Natterman felt his heart thump. A fourth and stunning possibility had

  just occurred to him. What if the British "traitors" really were

  pro-Nazi, but had been allowed to pursue their treachery by an even more

  devious British Intelligence? That way the Nazis could not possibly

  have picked up on any deception, because the conspirators themselves

  would not have been aware that they were part of one!

  Natterman's mind reeled at the implications. He tried to focus on that