The Spandau Phoenix wwi-2

by Greg Iles

  being taken care of. TWO or @ days at the most."

  "A lot could happen in thine days, Neville. We want every loose end

  snipped, every @ erased.".

  "It's being done," Shaw insisted.

  "Are there any complications we should know aboutt' Shaw thought of

  Jonas Stern, and of Swallow waiting just outside his door. "No," he

  lied.

  "Keep us posted, then." The caller rang off.

  Shaw exhaled a great blast of air and began to massage his temples with

  his fingertips. He badly needed sleep. He had spent five of the past

  six hours on the telephone. Across London, in places like the India

  Club, the House of Lords, and the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet

  Clu@d across Britain in the ramshackle palaces and crumbling stone

  castle outposts of the aristocracy-privileged men and women both young

  and old were gathering in quiet councils.

  Like ripples spreading outward from the epicenter of Buckingham Palace,

  waves of apprehension rolled through this most rarefied level of

  society; and all, Shaw reflected, because one little stone had dropped

  far away in the atrophied heart of Berlin. Slowly but surely, those

  frightened men and women were bringing a great deal of pressure to bear

  on Sir Neville Shaw. For Shaw, like his predecessors before him, was

  not only the possessor but also the protector of their dark secret. Most

  of the calls had been like the previous one-a bit of carrot, bags of

  stick. Shaw was about to rise and go to his liquor cabinet for a

  medicinal Glenfiddich when his office door opened and Wilson ushered in

  the woman code-named Swallow.

  Sir Neville was stunned. The woman standing before him looked nothing

  like the photo in the file he'd been studying.

  "Ah ... Miss Gordon, isn't it?" he stammered as Wilson withdrew from

  the office.

  Swallow did not respond.

  "I'm told you insisted on, seeing me personally," he tried again.

  "Mind telling me why?"

  Still Swallow held her silence. She obviously felt the burden of

  explanation lay on the man who had called for her services. Thoroughly

  discomfited, Shay looked down at the file. The woman in the photo

  looked like a grandmother, a blue-rinsed clubwoman who spent her Sundays

  baking biscuits for the church. The woman who stood before him now

  looked like ... well, Shaw had never quite seen the analogue that would

  describe her. Swallow had iron gray hair cropped &lose against her

  skull, perfect for wearing wigs. She carried none of the excess fat

  that weighted most women her age and there Shaw paused. For looking at

  Swallow now, he couldn't quite get his mind round the fact that she had

  been in the war. She'd been practically a child, of course, but It was

  downright eerie. The file put her at sixty-one, but she looked nearer

  fifty. As he stared, the scent of perfume wafted to him; this single

  acknowledgment of femininity surprised him. He couldn't name the

  fragrance, but it smelled expensive and vaguely French. To be honest,

  Shaw mused, he might have been attracted to Swallow if it wasn't for

  what he knew about her. No, he decided, even if he'd imown nothing of

  her fiendish work, her eyes would have put him off. They were like

  stones. Dull, flat stones. Not that they communicated intellectual

  dullness-quite the contrary.

  They were rather like slate lids on a blast furnace, protecting those

  outside from the fierce hatred that burned behind them. That hatred had

  probably served Swallow well through the years, Shaw reflected, for by

  trade she was an assassin.

  "Yes, well," he began again, "did Wilson tell you this regards Jonas

  Stern?"

  Swallow nodded soberly.

  "What I'd like is for you to follow him, see what he's up to. His last

  known location was Berlin, but he's probably on the move. He's

  traveling under his own name, which seems odd, so he must not feel he's

  in any danger."

  Swallow smiled at that.

  "As soon as we pick him up, we'll put you onto him. We think he's

  trying to get hold of something ... something that we'd prefer the Jews

  didn't get hold of. Understood?"

  "Perfectly," said Swallow. She had, after all, done her part against

  the Zionist terrorists of Palestine.

  Shaw cleared his throat. "Yes, well, what kind of payment would you

  want? Would twenty thousand pounds cover it?"

  Swallow's eyes hooded over at this. It struck Shaw just then that, from

  Swallow's perspective, they had come to the point of the meeting. "What

  I want," she said in a toneless voice, "is Jonas Stern.

  When your little operation is over, I want a free hand with him."

  Shaw had no illusions as to what this meant. Swallow wanted official

  permission to kill an Israeli citizen. He knew the answer to his next

  question, but he asked it anyway.

  "What was it, exactly, that Stern did to you?"

  "Killed my brother," she replied in a voice that could have come from a

  corpse.

  "That was quite some time ago, wasn't it?" Shaw commented.

  "And every year since, my brother has lain in his grave."

  The furnace heat behind Swallow's eyes flashed at the edges.

  "They scarcely found enough of him to bury. Bloody Jews."

  Shaw nodded with appropriate solemnity. "Yes, well ...

  your condition is accepted." He drummed his fingers on his desk.

  "Tell me, what's your feeling about Stern as an agent?"

  "He's the best I ever saw. If he wasn't, he'd have been dead long ago.

  He's got the instincts of a bloody clairvoyant."

  "Any ideas on his motive? Why he would leave Israel now?"

  Swallow considered this. "To protect it," she said at length.

  "Israel is his weakness. He must believe the country is in imminent

  danger."

  "I see."

  "Is Israel in danger?"

  "Not that I'm aware of," Shaw replied thoughtfully. "Not any more than

  usual."

  As Swallow stood thinking, Shaw noticed that she stood with a vaguely

  military bearing-not tensely, but with a relaxed kind of readiness,

  rather like some Special Forces types he had known. They had all been

  men, of course.

  "Is there anything else, then?" she asked.

  Shaw flipped through the files on his desk with exaggerated casualness.

  "There is, as a matter of fact. Another job.

  A small one. Domestic job, actually. I thought you might take care of

  it for us. But it's a rush job. It must be done by tonight."

  Swallow's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Who is it?"

  "Chap named Burton. Michael Burton. Retired. Lives in a cottage

  outside Haslemere in Surrey. Raises orchids, I believe. I'm afraid he

  knows too much for his own good." Sir Neville cleared his throat again.

  "There is one possible complication. He's only forty-eight.

  Retired Special Air Service."

  At this Swallow seemed to withdraw into herself for consultation with

  whatever demon sustained her startlingly youthful appearance. At

  length, she asked, "Does he have any family?"

  "Divorced. There's a brother. Why do you ask?"

  "Is he SAS also?"

  Shaw shook his head. "Regu
lar army. But he's out of the country

  permanently. He lost his citizenship papers some years ago for

  mercenary work. He won't be a problem."

  "Would you want it to look like an accident?"

  "Can you run up an accident in Haslemere by tonight?"

  Swallow made a sound in her throat that Shaw heard as a dry chuckle. "I

  doubt it. SAS men don't have accidents like that, as a rule. They're

  trained not to. They can drive, swim, run, shoot@' "I don't care how

  it's done, then," Shaw flared. "Just do it. What's your price?"

  A satisfied smile touched the corners of Swallow's mouth.

  She liked to see bureaucrats squirm. "My price is protection from the

  Israelis after Stern is dead."

  Christ!" Shaw exploded. "We can't babysit you forever. You kill Stern

  at your own risk."

  Swallow's eyes turned opaque. "Don't play coy with me, little knight.

  Your hands are bloody too. By lulling Stern I'm only doing what you

  want done. You picked me because you lmew if he had to be, liquidated,

  you could- blame his death on my vendetta." She raised her chin

  deflandy. "If you try @ the Israelis will certainly get me, but not

  before I kill you." Shaw drew back unconsciously. "I'll kill your SAS

  man for you," she went on, "but you'll cover for me on Stern.

  Otherwise-I might warn this Mr. Burton instead."

  "Condition accepted," Shaw snapped. "Now get out. All communication

  from this point forward will be through cutouts. No further contact

  between you and this office."

  Swallow made a mock curtsey and backed out of the room.

  That witch should have been code-named Medusa, Shaw thought angrily. She

  makes my b@ skin crawl. When he closed Swallow's file, his eyes fell on

  the Hess dossier lying open beneath it. He sighed heavily. There lay

  the dreaded file, like a modern Domesday Book, a lexicon of heroism and

  treason, the highest and lowest expression of the English soul. And

  looking at it, Shaw's anger anger that had been building for a very long

  time-finally boiled to the surface. For if the truth were told,

  he'would prefer to turn Swallow loose on the smug quislings and their

  moribund broods who for decades had cowered behind the shield of his

  service. He had no part in their crimes, or their guilt, and he felt no

  pity for them or their "honor." But what of England?

  He did have a stake in her honor. He had been only a child during the

  war, but in those heady years after Hitler was crushed, and all the

  years since, he had allowed himself to feel a part of the grand

  legend-what one British historian called the "Churchillian myth"-that in

  the early desperate days of the war England, all alone, had stood

  united, uncompromising, and unconquerable against the Nazis, and had

  thus saved Western Civilization from the Hun and the Bolshevik.

  But that, Shaw had learned to his eternal sadness, was not quite the

  truth. Then the truth be damned! he thought bitterly. He understood

  the protective urge of the aristocrats.

  England had given the world so much; she deserved a little moral

  charity. Part myth though Churchill's history might be, the craven

  machinations of a few spineless lords (or, God forbid, a fool of a

  prince) could not be allowed to tarnish it.

  If a treacherous shadow dogged the House of Windsor, should it also

  stain the legacies of Plantagenet and Tudor and Hanover? And what of

  the good people in the war? The women who fought the fires in the

  Blitz? The callow lads whose shattered Spitfires practically clogged

  the Channel in 1940? The kids who crouched under the buzz bombs and the

  V-2s? The martyred population of Coventry?

  As he poured himself a large whiskey, Shaw recalled the famous quote

  Churchill spoke after the Battle of Britain, but he twisted it to his

  own secret knowledge: Never in the field of human conflict have so many

  nearly lost so much because of so few. Shaw hated them! Hated them

  all! Appeasers ...

  knights without courage ... nobles without nobility. Because of them

  good men had died, and more were soon to follow.

  The man Swallow would kill tonight had but done his duty.

  It was the familiar chorus of English history: the good men had died

  while the scoundrels prospered. "Treason doth never prosper, what's the

  reason?" Shaw muttered, quoting the old epigram, "For if it prosper,

  none dare call it Treason." Yet in the midst of his furious meditation,

  Shaw felt a glimmer of satisfaction. Because if all his Machiavellian

  stratagems failed and the temple came tumbling down around his ears, the

  Judases would finally be unmasked, and the most heroic chapter in the

  history of his noble ser, would be brought to light at last.

  Shaw drained his Scotch and fell instantly asleep with his head on his

  desk blotter.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  6.-05 A.M. ThO N8if8rMB#7 Cabin.- Near Wollsbarg, FRG Hermann the forger

  was gone. After forty nerve-racking minutes under the gaze of Professor

  Natterman's shotgun, the bearish Hamburger had gathered up his equipment

  and scampered out of the cabin without a word. The professor sat in his

  chair, contemplating the night's events as the dawn filtered through the

  shattered cabin door. He had never felt so impotent in his life. His

  lifelong friend had been murdered, the Spandau papers had been taken

  from him, his granddaughter had been kidnapped, and he had been unable

  to prevent any of it from happening.

  And now the two men who proposed to stop the madness had refused his

  help!

  Cradling the Mannlicher under one arm, he picked up his book satchel and

  walked out of the cabin without looking back. His suitcase lay in the

  slushy rut where the Audi had been parked. In their haste Hans and

  Hauer had not even taken the time to bring it into the cabin.

  The shot-riddled Jaguar waited behind the trunk of the old plane tree.

  Natterman walked over and looked inside to make sure the keys were still

  in the ignition. Tossing his satchel into the passenger seat, he

  retrieved his suitcase, then wriggled into the car and turned the key.

  In spite of the damage, the engine roared responsively.

  He left the Jaguar idling and clumped through the snow to the rear of

  the cabin. In the shade of a tall cedar, a juryrigged crucifix marked

  the shallow grave of Karl Riemeck.

  With bowed head Natterman laid the shotgun against the cross and softly

  spoke a few lines from Heine over his friend. Then he shuffled back to

  the rumbling Jaguar, jammed it into first gear, and sped up the access

  road.

  A

  The morning sun had already transformed the twisted Iz into a morass of

  slush and mud that threw the speeding car from one bank to another as it

  approached the main road.

  Two curves away from the intersection, the professor saw a black log

  lying across the lane. When he swerved to avoid it, the Jaguar skidded

  out of control and slammed nose first into some saplings. It rebounded

  from their springlike trunks and coughed into silence.

  He staggered out of the car and cautiously approached the log.

  Just as
he bent to drag it out of the lane, he heard a crack in the

  trees behind him. ke? he wondered. No. He stumbled back, thinking he

  would get the Mannlicher from the car. Then he remembered dropping it

  at Karl's grave.

  With panic knotting inside his chest, he scrambled toward the Jag,

  planning to drive around or even over the log to get to the main road.

  He had one leg inside the car when a voice froze him motionless.

  "Herr Professor?"

  Natterman whirled, but saw nothing.

  "Herr Professor! May I speak with you for a moment?"

  Again! Where had the voice come from? The brush on the opposite side

  of the road? The trees further on? Natterman tried to calm himself.

  Might a neighbor have come out to investigate last night's shots in the

  light of morning? These days even country people left such things to

  the police.

  Backing against the Jaguar, he called, "Who's out there?

  What do you want?"

  "Only to speak with you!" the voice replied. "I mean you no harm."

  "Come out, then! Why do you hide yourselp."

  A tall dark-skinned man stepped noiselessly from the trees twenty meters

  up the road. "One has to be careful," he said, and then he smiled. "I

  wouldn't want to wind up like your Afrikaner friend."

  Natterman stared fearftilly at the stranger. He felt he knew the man

  from somewhere. Suddenly he had it. "You're the man from the train!"

  he cried. "Stern!"

  The Israeli smiled. "You have an excellent memory, Professor."

  "My God! Did you follow me here?" Natterman took a step back toward

  the Jaguar. "Are you in league with the Afrikaner?"

  I

  7-284 "Yes, I followed you here. No, I'm not in league with the

  Afiikaner. I'm here to help you, Professor."

  Natterman pointed a finger at the Israeli. "What happened to your

  British accent?"

  Stern chuckled. "It comes, it goes."

  "You must have been here last nigh.. Why didn't you help me?"

  "I did help you. I stopped that Al-tikaner from going back inside the

  cabin and killing you. By the time I'd finished dealing with him, your

  Polizei friends had arrived."

  "Why didn't you come forward then?"

  "For all I knew, Professor, you had come here specifically to meet that

  Afrikaner. The same holds true for your friends.

  I needed certain assurances about your motives."

  "You're mad," Natterman declared. "Who the devil are you?"