by Greg Iles
exactly. Hans darted between the beds and snatched up the receiver.
"Hello?"
"Sergeant Apfel?" said a male voice.
"Yes!"
"You know the Voortrekker Monument?"
"What? Wait ... yes, the big brown thing. I saw it as I drove into
town."
"Be there tomorrow at ten A.M. Come alone. Ten A.M. Do you have that?
The Voortrekker Monument. Ten in the morning. Alone."
"What about my wife? Will Ilse be there?' "You be there. If you're not
alone, she dies."
The caller broke the connection.
Hans dropped the receiver onto the floor, @ face slack.
"Well?" said Hauer. 'What did they sayt' Hans stood silent for several
seconds. "They want me to meet them tomorrow," he said finally. "At
the Voortrekker -Monument."
Hauer nodded excitedly. "That's a good place for us. Very public.
That's where I'll lay out our terms for the exchange.
What time is the rendezvous?"
A strange calm seemed to settle over Hans. His eyes seemed unfocus@d.
He sat down hard on the bed.
"What time, Hans?" Hauer repeated softly, his eyes straying to the
door. "What time is the rendezvous?"
Hans looked up, straight into his father's eyes. "Six," he said in a
robotic voice. "Six Pm. at the Voortrekker Monument."
Down the hall and around the corner, Gadi Abrams shook his fist in
triumph. "The rendezvous is at six," he murmured, "at the Voortrekker
Monument. Apfel's off the line, but I didn't hear him hang up." Gadi
pressed the headphones to his dark head. "No phone ringing. Come on,
Professor -- ." Suddenly Gadi jumped up and pulled off the headphones.
"the professor can't get through! Apfel didn't hang up the phone!"
Stern forced himself to think clearly. His well-planned operation was
unraveling around him. Snatching up the phone, he tried to call Yosef
and the professor. "Busy," he said.
"They're still trying to reach Hauer. That means the stairs won't be
covered."
"Aaron has to stay at the elevator box," Gadi said quickly.
"You've got to keep trying to reach the professor. That leaves me to
cover the stairs." The young commando picked up his Uzi and started for
the door. He had not heard it open.
With the mute surprise of a man watching the earth split open at his
feet, Gadi watched a small round fragmentation grenade rolling toward
him through the foyer. The door slammed shut.
"Grenade!" he shouted.
While Stern-a veteran of three desert wars and countless guerilla
actions@over behind the far bed, Gadi Abrams proved the boast he had
made minutes before about the sayaret matkal commandos. With the
reflexes of a gifted soccer player, he stopped the grenade's forward
motion with his right foot, then kicked it sideways into the bathroom.
Then he hurled himself backward into the space between the two double
beds.
Hauer was leaning out of the door down the hall, straining his ears for
the slightest sound, when Swallow's grenade exploded in the bathroom of
room 820.
"Donnerwetter!" he roared. "What the hell was that?"
Reaching back blindly, Hauer wrenched Hans through the door.
"Stay with me!" he commanded. "And don't use your gun unless you
absolutely have to!"
Hauer dragged Hans toward the fire stairs, away from the explosion. They
crashed through the metal door at speed, careening headlong down
concrete steps like teenaged hoodlums. As they passed a large,
red-painted 5, Hauer caught hold of Hans's jacket.and pulled him against
the wall. He clapped a hand over Hans's mouth and listened for any
sound of pursuit. At first he heard only their own ragged gasps.
Then a slow creak, as of someone attempting to silently open a disused
fire door, echoed through the stairwell.
When the crash came, Hauer knew that their pursuer had given up all hope
of stealth. He shoved Hans downward and charged after him.
They took each flight in two leaps, only lightly touching the rails as a
guide. On the third-floor landing Hauer grabbed Hans and growled a
dozen words into his ear, then slipped through the fire door while Hans
continued downward. Hauer drew his stolen Walther-then he recalled his
warning to Hans. The explosion upstairs would draw all attention to the
eighth floor. If he fired the unsilenced Walther here, he would
certainly draw some attention to himself.
With a curse of frustration he slipped the Walther back into his pocket
and waited.
Four floors above him, Yosef Shamir flung himself down the stairs like a
man possessed. From the moment he'd gotten off the telephone with
Stern, the young commando had been hauling his instincts. Stern had
ordered him to stay put, but from what Natterman had told him, Yosef
feared that the woman with the machine pistol was now on her way up to
find Stern. Leaving Natterman to complete the call to the Germans on
his own, Yosef had raced upstairs to help Gadi and Stern. He had
reached the seventh floor.when he heard the door just above him crash
open. He slipped quietly through the seventh floor door just in time to
see Hauer and Hans rush past him down the stairs. With a sudden sick
feeling, Yosef realized he was probably -the sole remaining link to
Stern's quarry. The young Israeli bounded down the fire stairs with no
regard for safety, his mind only on regaining contact with the Germans.
When the steel edge of the fire door materialized in front of him like a
phantom, time slowed down. Yosef twisted his body to avoid the deadly
obstacle, but he simply couldn't move fast enough.
The door caught the side of his forehead, opening a three-inch gash and
dropping him like a stone on the landing.
Hauer threw his weight against the third-floor fire door and forced
Yosef's unconscious body out of the way, then knelt to examine him. He
didn't recognize the face, but he hadn't expected to. Yosef's pockets
were empty. No wallet, no coins, no clue to his name or nationality.
Even his clothes had no labels. On impulse Hauer took hold of Yosef's
head and lifted it to search for the tattooed eye ...
A scream of agony rebounded up through the stairwell. A man's scream.
Then a pistol shot exploded.
"Jesus!" Hauer cried. He dropped Yosef's head on the concrete and
raced down the steps after Hans.
As Gadi Abrams came to his knees and leveled his Uzi at the smoke-filled
foyer, the first spray of bullets from Swallow's Ingrain tore into room
820. Gadi hit the floor and cursed in fury. Either the gunman was
using a silencer, or the grenade had blown out his eardrums.
Beneath the far bed he saw Stern speaking into his walkie-talkie.
"Aaron, this is Jonas. We are pinned down here. Please respond."
Stern waited while Gadi rose up and peppered the door with a burst from
his silenced Uzi. "Aaron!" Stern tried again. "Please respond!"
"He can't hear you!" Gadi shouted. "Too much concrete between him and
us! We've got to storm our way out, Uncle! We're going to lose the
Germans otherwise. It's the only way!" The young comm
ando leapt to his
feet.
Feeling a surge of adrenaline unlike any since the '73 war in Sinai,
Jonas Stern clutched his own Uzi, rose up, and followed his shouting,
blasting nephew'into the smoke of battle.
Hauer found Hans on the garage landing, standing silently over a corpse.
The body was blond and fair-skinned and looked about thirty-five. Its
right hand gripped a pistol.
"I told you not to use your gun!"
"I didn't!" Hans shot back.
Then Hauer saw the knife. The German knife from sporting goods store.
It was buried to the hilt in the d man's left side. "I'll be damned,"
he said.
He fell to his knees and searched the dead man's clothes.
He immediately found a British passport-which he placed in his own
pocket-and a wallet, from which he removed the money. Robbery was the
most plausible option under the circumstances. He glanced quickly
behind the dead man's ears for the Phoenix tattoo, but saw no mark. It
took a considerable effort to dislodge Hans's knife. Hauer wiped it
clean on the corpse's jacket, then slipped the knife into his belt.
"Who is he?" Hans murmured.
"Worry about it later. Let's go."
As Hauer turned and grabbed the door handle, he felt motion behind him.
He turned again, then froze. Hans had snatched up the corpse by the
collar and he was screaming, screaming in German at the top of his
lungs: "Where is she, gotidamn you? Where is my wife?"
Gadi and Stern burst out of room 8@O to find an empty hallway. A
strange, cloying scent lingered in the air. Perfume.
"Who the hell was that?" Gadi shouted. 'The Germans?
They must be in one of these rooms."
"They're gone!" Stern called from the door of suite 811.
"Come on!"
Together they raced to the elevator. As the doors slid shut, Stern
tried again to reach Aaron at the elevator-control box.
"Aaron!" he cried. "Forget the elevator! Try to stop the Germans!
Aaron!"
In the concrete basement of the hotel, Aaron Haber heard Stern's
crackling commands as: "Aaron! ... elevator! ...
-stop the Germans!" Dutifully, the young Israeli threw the switch that
stopped the elevator between the fourth and third floors.
When the car jolted to a stop, Stern and Gadi stared at each other with
ashen faces. Gadi punched the button to @:open the door, but got no
response. He tried to pry the doors "Open with his Uzi, but they
wowdn't budge. Whirling around in fury, he saw no one. Stern had sat
down on the :floor of the elevator and leaned against the veneer wall,
his eyes closed.
"Chfld's play," he said softly. "Isn't that what you said?"
Hauer wrenched the rented Toyota over to the curb in front of a
government sandstone office building. He leavt out of the car, ran to
the left front wheel well, and crouched down. Eight seconds later he
was back beside Hans, holding a heavy paper packet covered with duct
tape. The packet held the Spandau papers and the photos Hauer had shot
during the afternoon.
"So much for the Burgerspark," Hauer said. "We're not going back to the
Protea Hof, either. Our passports are obviously blown."
Hans rocked back and forth in the passenger seat.
"That explosion sounded like a grenade," said Hauer.
"Who in hell could have thrown it? The kidnappers?"
"We got out," Hans muttered. "That's all that matters. We just have to
stay alive until the rendezvous tomorrow."
"We need cover," said Hauer. "This time we ignore our friendly cabbie's
advice, though. This time we're going to a real fleabag.
Somewhere we won't need any identification at all."
Hans nodded. "How do we find that?"
"Just like we would in Berlin."
Hauer let in the clutch and pulled onto Prince's Park Straat, then
turned southwest onto R-27. He slowed at each intersection and peered
down the side streets. He knew what he wanted: garish neon, street
people, liquor advertisements, the howl of bar music. The universal
siren song that draws the lonely and the bored and the hunted to the
dark marrow of every city in the world. From what Hauer had learned
already, he suspected it would be easier to find such a place in
Johannesburg than in Pretoria. But he knew that anonymity could he had
anywhere for a price.
With Hans watching the streets fanning north, he drove on.
826 Pm. Horn House: The Northern Transvaal
Alfred . Horn sat beneath the greenish glow of a banker's lamp in his
dark study. Opposite him, immersed in shadow, Pieter Smuts awaited his
questions.
"They're gone?" Horn said quietly.
"They're gone."
"Comments?"
Smuts glowered from the shadows. "I don't like Major Karami. I don't
trust him. I think it was a mistake to show him the plutonium.
It was a mistake to show him the Phoenix mark."
Horn laughed softly. "Is there anyone you do trust, Pieter?"
"Myself. You. No one else."
"You must have a little faith in human greed, Pieter. The Arabs want
the weapon too desperately to risk losing it through treachery.
Now, what of the cobalt case?"
"Can't be done, sir. Not in ten days."
Horn let out a sigh of exasperation. "What about using a standard
cobalt jacket?"
Smuts shrugged. "It would work, but the Libyans would reallize what
they were dealing with. They'd probably reive the jacket before the
strike. The only way we can fool them is by having the bomb case itself
seeded with cobalt.
And our metallurgists are having serious problems. We had ays getting
the cobalt itself, and the casting is far from pie. It's the rush, sir.
If we could slow down a bit, go back to the original plan-" "Out of the
question!" Horn snapped. "I may be dead in twenty days.
The British are coming for me, I'm certain of that." What will the bomb
do without the cobalt?"
"To be honest, sir, the short-term damage will be just as severe without
it. And with the prevailing winds in Israel at is time of year, a
direct forty-kiloton strike on Tel Aviv ay well take out most of the
population of Jerusalem with radiation alone."
Horn nodded slowly.
muts reached out of the shadows and laid four videocases in the pool of
light on Horn's desk. "There," he said ;efully, "is the proof of Libyan
involvement with the ib. I must ask again, sir. Why trust the Arabs at
all? My and I can place the weapon inTel Aviv ourselves, and can use a
standard cobalt jacket. Your original goal will be accomplished with
half the risk and twice the likelihood of success."
Horn shook his head. "Not half the risk, Pieter. You would be at risk.
I cannot allow that. Besides, Israeli Intelligence is very good.
This must be a genuine Arab attack. Only that'll bring about the
outcome I want. If the Libyans fail, you will get your chance. But
we'll speak of that no more for now.
Tell me, what of our German policeman?"
"I made the call myself. Sergeant Apfel took it. I think Hauer might
be with him, but it doesn't matter. One of m
y men is meeting Apfel
tomorrow morning at the Voortrekker Monument. We'll kill Hauer there if
he shows up, and we'll have both Apfel and the papers here by tomorrow
after-, noon."
Horn toyed with his eyepatch. "And what has dear Lord.
Granville been up to?"
Smuts wrinkled his nose in disgust. "He's spoken to no@ one outside the
house. I'm monitoring all the phones -to @ .
make sure. He's got his eye on Sergeant Apfel's wife, though, I can
tell you that."
Horn's face hardened. "See that he makes no trouble for her."
"I'll see he makes no trouble for anyone ever again."
"Not yet, Pieter," Horn said gently. "We're not sure of anything yet."
"He asked me again if he could go up in the tower."
Horn smiled wryly. "Robert is a good boy, Pieter, but he's mixed up.
We don't want him to know all ou we?"
Smuts snorted. "Have you seen that runny nose? I think he's using what
he's selling." The Afrikaner drew a short, double-edged dagger from his
belt and light. "I tell you, one false step and I'll cut his balls off
and feed them to him with parsley."
Horn cackled softly. "Gute Nacht, Pieter."
Smuts stood and sheathed his knife. "Good night, sir." As the
Afrikaner passed Ilse's bedroom, he listened at the door. He heard
nothing. Had the hall light been on, he might, have noticed the dark
bloodstains on the carpet. But it wasn't, and he didn't. He moved on.
He had a treat waiting in his room. A village girl from Giyani-a
virgin, if the headman could be believed-no more than thirteen, and
black as coal dust. Alfred Horn's Aryan princess could sleep the night
in peace; Smuts knew what he liked: kajftr girl with the smell of coal
smoke still on her. When he first came into the bedroom, he liked to
ask if they'd brought their passes with them. Sometime ones were so
scared they broke down and cried good way to set the tone for the
evening.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
5.'56 A. M. Jan Smuts Airport.' Johanne$bUrg The South'African Airways
747 landed with the dawn.
Asthejettaxieduptothetenninal,KripodetectiveJulius Schneider collected
his flight bag from the overhead compartment and prepared to deplane as
quickly as possible.
TWelve hours was too long to sit in a seat booked for a dead man.
Schneider edged his bulk into the crush of honeymooners, big-game
hunters, and businessmen jamming the aisle, -all the while wishing that
