by Greg Iles
feet were tightly bound with telephone wire. His hands, too, were tied.
That was really unnecessary, he thought distantly, since his mangled
left hand and wrist had swollen to twice normal size. He heard the big
man speak angrily into the phone, then slam it down.
Schneider strode through the splintered bedroom door and looked down.
"You've got some friends coming to see you," he said. Then he walked
back to the womanand lid a comforting hand on her shoulder.
The next thilig Misha would remember was four men in white medical coats
lifting him onto a stretcher. He felt strangely comforted by this,
until he spied the olive-drab of American army uniforms beneath the @.
When he tried to rise, a strong hand pressed him firmly back onto the
stretcher. The hand belonged to Sergeant Clary. Misha's short, violent
career was over.
Just over a mile to the east of Eva Beers's apartment, Captain Dmitri
Rykov sprinted up to a phone box and punched in the number of KGB
headquarters in East Berlin. He got an answer after two rings.
"Is Colonel Kosov back yet?" he asked breathlessly.
"No. Who is this?"
"Rykov. Shut up and listen. Tell Kosov that Borodin followed Major
Richardson to his apartment-not just to it but into it! I'm outside
now, but I'm going back up. The building's in Wilmersdorf, about three
blocks north of the Fehrbelliner Platz. Zahringerstrasse, I think. It's
a really expensive building. Kosov can trace it. Sixth floor. Have
you got that?"
"I think so," replied a nervous voice. "But would you repeat it on
tape? I just got the recorder rolling."
"Christ!" Rykov repeated his message for the tape; then he dashed back
into the lobby of Harry Richardson's apartment building.
7.23 Pm. Hasiomere, Surrey, England
Swallow arrived at Michael Burton's tile-roofed cottage just as it
started to rain. She climbed out of the Ford Fiesta which she'd rented
at Gatwick Airport and puttered up the walk carrying a bright blue
umbrella. In her other arm was a clipboard and a large tin cup-the bona
fides of a charity worker. She rang the bell, but there was no answer.
Seeing no lights in the windows, she went round back, and there she
spied the yellow-lit hothouse that Burton had constructed from
second-hand lumber and thick sheets of clear painter's plastic.
The hothouse glowed like an island of summer in the chilly dusk.
Swallow walked right up to it and, finding the door open, stepped
inside.
It was incongruous somehow: the tall, rangy excommando standing among
the fragile orchids; the artificial warmth of the hothouse after the
bracing evening air. Humidifying heaters hummed somewhere out of sight.
Rain pattered on the plastic above their heads. The cloying scent of
orchids masked even Swallow's distinctive perfume. Burton looked up
suddenly, startled, but he relaxed when he realized that his visitor was
a woman, a village matron by the look of her, probably colleeting for
the orphans or something. He watched her shake off her umbrella and
lean it against a two-by-four stud.
"What can I do for you?" he asked in a kindly voice.
Swallow had meant to shoot him through her handbag, but when her hand
went into her purse, the ex-SAS man perceived what almost no one else
would, an involuntary narrowing of the eyes, a slight tensing of the arm
that suggested a shooting posture. Swallow was too far away for Burton
to attack her-whieh his training told him to do-so he spun away toward
the double-layered plastic wall of the hothouse.
He snatched up a sharp spade in his right hand as Swallow fired, hitting
him in the shoulder. He dropped behind the line of a planting table,
slashed open the plastic wall with the spade, and plunged through it
into the yard.
Swallow darted to the opening and knelt in a textbook shooting stance,
preparing to fire again as Burton fled across the lawn. But Burton did
not flee. Having judged it too long a mn over open ground, the
ex-commando stabbed the spade back through the plastic, missing
Swallow's throat by inches. Stunned, she aimed at his blurred
silhouette and shot him again, this time in the chest. The impact blew
Burton backward onto the glistening turf. Swallow stepped through the
rent in the plastic wall and stood over him. He was gasping, and she
could hear the pitiful wheeze of a sucking chest wound.
The last words Michael Burton spoke were not the names of his ex-wife,
his children, his mother, or his brother. In the gathering dusk he
raised his head, choked out, "Hess"; then he fell back and gurgled,
"Shaw, you bloody bastard." But only Swallow was there to hear him.
Four seconds later she shot him in the forehead, turned, and walked
calmly back across the lawn toward the cottage, leaving Burton lying in
the rain with potting soil on his fingers and.the smell of orchids
seeping out of the little hothouse like a soul.
As she drove back toward Gatwick-where she had a seat reserved on the
next flight to Tel Aviv-4t struck Swallow why Sir Neville Shaw had
wanted Michael Burton dead. No doubt it had been Burton who four weeks
ago had slipped over the wall of Spandau Prison during the American
watch month, stuffed a forged suicide note into Rudolf Hess's pocket,
and strangled him with an electrical cord. But Swallow had no interest
in this, unless at some future date it might give her leverage over
Shaw. To her the man who murdered Rudolf Hess was merely a way station
on the road that led to Jonas Stern.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
7.30 Pv. Zahringerstrasse, west Berlin Julius Schneider wished he'd
taken the stairs. The elevator war, an old hydraulic model, slower than
walking. When the doors finally opened, he hurried into the green
carpeted hallway and toward the corner that led to apartment 62@e number
Colonel Rose had given him over the phone. The colonel had said
little-no more than a choked command to appear at this address as soon
as humanly possibleWhen Schneider rounded the corner, he saw Sergeant
Clary standing guard outside the door to apartment 62.
Clary's right hand rested on the butt of the .45 in his belt.
His taut face revealed nothing. Schneider remembered the young man only
an hour before at Eva Beers's flat, grinning with satisfaction at taking
a KGB killer into custody. Clary looked like he couldn't grin now if he
wanted to.
"Inside, sir," he said as Schneider approached.
"Danke, " the German replied, and passed through the door.
Even if the corpse had not been lying in the foyer, Schneider would have
felt the presence of death in the apartment.
He smelled gunpowder, and burmt flesh. The overheated air hung with
that foul stillness that Schneider had long ago learned to breathe only
shallowly when exposed to it. Too much of that reek could poison a
man's soul. But the corpse was there, lying on its stomach. A small
bullet holeprobably an entrance wound-stained a dark spot between the
shoulder blades. Without hesitation Schneider rolled the body over.
Dmitri Rykov
stared up with sightless eyes.
"Well?" said a strained voice.
Schneider looked up at Colonel Godfrey Rose- The American had an unlit
cigar clamped between his teeth. His face was gray and haggard.
"Isn't he the Russian from the Sonnenallee checkpoint?"
Schneider asked.
"Yeah. Clary got a telephoto shot of him standing outside the customs
booth."
Schneider nodded. "Is this why you called me here?"
Rose shook his head, then turned and disappeared down a short dark
hallway. The German followed, the familiar weight of mortality in his
belly. When he saw what awaited in the bedroom, a cold dread began to
seep outward from his heart.
Harry Richardson sat wide-eyed in a wooden chair, facing the bedroom
door. He was naked. The chair sat in a pool of blood. Thin nylon
ropes bound Harry's arms and legs to the chair. A pair of navy blue
dress socks had been stuffed into his mouth. Schneider immediately
noticed the cluster of small red circular marks on Richardson's chest.
Cigarette burns. Schneider had worked his share of child abuse cases.
Just below the burns, three lateral slashes trisected the abdomen, not
deep, but bloody and probably unbearably painful.
But the head was the worst. Carved into Harry Richardson's high
forehead was a jagged red swastika. Rivulets of sticky blood streaked
down from the arms of the broken cross, into Harry's open eyes, across
his lips. Schneider had to remind himself to start breathing again.
"What happened?" he asked in. German.
Colonel Rose stood in the far corner of the room, his legs slightly
apart, planted as firmly as trees in the earth. He held his arms folded
across his chest. "You tell me," he said, his voice distant, almost
nonhuman. "That's why I called you."
"Goddamn it," Schneider muttered, "why haven't you closed his eyes?"
"You're the homicide detective. I wanted you to see the crime scene
before we touched him. Maybe you'll see something I don't."
Schneider looked around the room. It had been torn to pieces by someone
who knew how to conduct a rapid search.
"What about your people?"
Rose's eyes narrowed. "You said you wanted to help me, Schneider.
Here's your chance."
The German squinted at Rose, then shook his big head slowly. "Colonel, a
homicide investigation is a team proce I need fingerprint men,
photographers, forensic technicians.
"I don't care about all that crap," Rose retorted. "I could have
high-tech coming out the wazoo if I wanted it. I'm interested in your
gut. Your trieb, remember?"
With a surreal sense of dislocation, Schneider walked a slow circle
around the room, keeping his eyes on Richardson's naked body all the
time. He noted several facts at once-the obvious. But Schneider was a
great mistruster of the obvious. Too often plain facts concealed more
subtle truths. The cause of death seemed plain enough: a bullet hole in
the back of the neck, small caliber, fired into the fragile bones of the
cervical spine. An execution. That Harry had resisted death was also
plain; his skin had been burned by the ropes that held him fast.
Schneider's eyes found Harry's lifeless gray orbs just once, and he
looked away quickly.
There was nothing to be found there but the frozen moment of stunned
horror-more animal than human-that Schneider had seen more times than
any man should.
Last came the message-if message it was. Drawn in the pool of blood
beneath Harry's right foot, like a child's fingerpainting, was a small
but clear capital B. Harry's right great toe was stained'scarlet, like a
blunt pen dipped in a well of blood. After the B came a curved line
that could have been the start of another letter-perhaps a lower-case
rebut in the midst of forming it Harry must have been shot, for a
tangential line arced sharply outward, as if the foot drawing it had
been flung wide in spasm.
Schneider crouched and examined the first letter. There was no
mistaking it: it was a B or nothing. With a long last look at the
second letter, the big German stood, carefully closed Harry's eyelids,
and walked back to the front room.
The air was breathable there. Rose's marching feet echoed behind him.
,what do you make of it?" Rose asked. "Dead Russian, dead American,"
Schneider replied.
"None of my business."
"I'm making it your business. Who do you think did it?"
"Someone in a hurry."
"I'm not in the mood for games, Schneider."
The German took a huge breath, exhaled. "All right.
Someone broke in here, surprised Richardson, tortured him for
information, and was surprised by the Russian in the front. The Russian
tried to run; the killer shot him in the back.
After getting his information@r not getting it-the killer executed
Richardson and left." Schneider sighed.
"How did you find out about it?"
"Anonymous call. Guy had a British accent. Clary and I hauled ass over
here, found Harry, and sealed the place off."
Schneider digested this in silence.
"What about that swastika?" Rose asked.
Schneider shrugged.
"A bullet in the neck is a Dachau-style execution," Rose pointed out.
"SS-style."
"They do it the same way in Lubyanka."
"Yeah," Rose muttered. "So you don't think it's the Germans? Not
Phoenix, or the Brotherhood, or whatever neoNazi wackos Harry pissed off
when he killed Goltz?"
"Why would Germans do dais?" Schneider asked. "Even Der Bruderschaft?
Or if they did, why would they leave a swastika? Why not the red eye?
Why leave anything at all?
They would know you Americans would go mad with rage.
How could that help them? If you implemented one-fourth of your reserve
powers, Berlin would become Beirut."
"Why this, why that' Rose grumbled. 'Why would the fucking Stasi kill
a KGB officer and bring the whole weight of the KGB down on their heads?
Nothing makes sense since yesterday, Schneider. Maybe they want us to
crack down on Berlin. Maybe they think that would spark big protests
against continued occupation." Rose rubbed his forehead anxiously. "The
scary thing is, I can't do a damned thing about this.
Five minutes before that anonymous call, I received an order to cease
and desist all investigations pertaining to Spandau Prison or Rudolf
Hess."
A faint smile touched the corners of Schneider's lips.
"Who gave you that order, Colonel?"
"It came from on high, my friend. What we call Echelons Beyond Reality.
If you ask me, Washington's covering for the goddamn Brits."
"You mean the letters on the floor?"
"Damn right. Harry was obviously trying to tell us who did this.
And it seems to me that B and r are the first two letters of British."
Schneider sucked in his breath. "Colonel, I'm not sure that second
letter is an r It could be a c or even an o. If it is an r, Richardson
could have been trying to wr Bruderschaft-the Brotherhood. Phoenix."
"Maybe, Rose admitted. "But you just told me you didn
't think Germans
did it. Make up your mind, will you?"
He paused in thought. "No, that swastika is just too goddamn obvious.
This case revolves around Spandau, and Hess. We've got a dead Russian
and a dead American. In my book that leaves the Brits, not the
Germans."
Schneider raised an eyebrow. "An anonymous caller using a British
accent is just as obvious as that swastika. Also, we can't discount the
possibility that the murderer himself drew those letters in the blood.
To mislead us." The German sighed uncomfortably. "Colonel, is it
possible that men from
your own government could have done this?" is
Rose looked up sharply. "Schneider, I've been in this man,s army all my
life. But if I believed what you just suggested, I'd take this story
straight to the fucking New York Times."
Schneider believed him. "So what are you going to do? If your own
people won't help you on the Hess case, you're stuck."
,you ought to know me better than that by now," Rose countered.
He lifted an arm and pointed back down the hall.
"I liked that man back there," he said soffly- "He served his country in
war, and he served it in what the politicians like to call peace."
Rose's cheek twitched with the intensity of his anger.
"Whoever did that to him-Brit, German, whoever-he and his bosses are
going to pay like they never dreamed in all their worthless goddamn
lives. I won't rest until they do."
Just then Clary knocked twice quickly on the door, then opened it.
Schneider's mouth fell open. Silhouetted in Harry Richardson's
apartment door was the stocky, trenchcoated figure of Colonel Ivan
Kosov. The Russian took two steps into the foyer and bent over the body
of, Dmitri Rykov.
When he looked up, Schneider saw points of black fire flickering in his
eyes. Fury crackled off him like static electricity.
Stunned, Schneider turned to Rose for an explanation.
"I called him," Rose confessed. "if my own people won't help me, by
God, I'll take help where I can find it."
Schneider peered into Rose's eyes. "Why am I really here, Colonel?" he
asked quietly. And then suddenly he knewRose had been forbidden to
pursue the Spandau case using his own men, so he had called Schneider
here to pick up the torch Harry Richardson had dropped. It made
Scfineider angry that the American thought he needed cheap theatrics to
