by Greg Iles
Less than sixty feet away from Hans, Colonels Ivan Kosov and Grigori Zotin stood outside an idling East German transit bus in the central parking lot of the police station. Inside the bus, the Soviet soldiers from the Spandau patrol waited for their long-delayed return to East Berlin. Most were already fast asleep.
Zotin, a GRU colonel, did not particularly like Kosov, and he was deeply offended at the KGB colonel’s effrontery in donning the uniform of the Red Army. But what could he do? One couldn’t keep the KGB out of something this big, especially when higher powers wanted Kosov involved. Rubbing his hands together against the cold, Zotin tested the KGB man’s perception.
“Can you believe it, Ivan? They gave them all clean reports.”
“Of course,” Kosov growled. “What did you expect?”
“But one of them was certainly lying!”
“Certainly.”
“But how did they fake the polygraph readouts?”
Kosov looked bored. “We were six metres from the machine. They could have shown us anything.”
Grigori Zotin knew exactly which policeman had lied, but he wanted to keep the information from Kosov long enough to initiate inquiries of his own. He was aware of the Kremlin’s interest in the Hess case, and he knew his career could take a giant leap forward if he cracked it. He made a mental note to decorate the young GRU officer who had caught the German policeman searching and showed enough sense to tell only his immediate superior. “You’re right, of course,” Zotin agreed.
Kosov grunted.
“What, exactly, do you think was discovered? A journal perhaps? Do you think they found some proof of—”
“They found a hollow brick,” Kosov snapped. “Our forensic technicians say their tests indicate the brick held some type of paper for an unknown period of time. It could have been some kind of journal. It could also have been pages from a pornographic magazine. It could have been toilet paper! Never trust experts too much, Zotin.”
The GRU colonel sucked his teeth nervously. “Don’t you think we should have at least mentioned Zinoviev during the interrogation? We could have.”
“Idiot!” Kosov bellowed. “That name, isn’t to be mentioned outside KGB! How do you even know it?”
Zotin stepped back defensively. “One hears things in Moscow.”
“Things that could get you a bullet in the neck,” Kosov warned.
Zotin tried to look unworried. “I suppose we should tell the general to turn up the pressure at the commandants’ meeting tomorrow.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” scoffed Kosov. “Too little, too late.”
“What about the trespassers, then? Why are you letting the Germans keep them?”
“Because they don’t know anything.”
“What do you suggest we do, then?” Zotin ventured warily.
Kosov snorted. “Are you serious? It was the second to last man—Apfel. He was lying through his Bosche teeth. Those idiots did exactly what we wanted. If they’d admitted Apfel was lying, he’d be in a jail cell now, beyond our reach. As it is, he’s at our mercy. The fool is bound to return home, and when he does”—Kosov smiled coldly—“I’ll have a team waiting for him.”
Zotin was aghast. “But how—?” He stifled his imprudent outburst with a cough. “How can you get a team over soon enough?” he covered.
“I have two teams here now,” Kosov snapped. “Get me to a damned telephone!”
Startled, the GRU colonel clambered aboard the bus and found a seat.
“And Zotin?” Kosov said, leaning over his rival.
“Yes?”
“Keep nothing from me again. It could be very dangerous for you.”
Zotin blanched.
“I want everything there is on this man Apfel. Everything. I suggest you ride your staff very hard on this. Powerful eyes are watching us.”
“How will you approach this policeman?”
“Approach him?” Kosov cracked a wolfish smile. “Break him, you mean. By morning I’ll know how many times that poor bastard peeked up his mother’s skirts.”
Hans awoke in a cell. There was no window. He’d been thrown onto a stack of damp cardboard boxes. One pale ray of light filtered down from somewhere high above. When he had focussed his eyes, he sat up and gripped one of the steel bars. His face felt sticky. He put his fingers to his temple. Blood. The familiar slickness brought back the earlier events in a throbbing rush of confusion. The interrogation … his father’s stony silence … the struggle in the hallway. Where was he?
He tried to rise, but he collapsed into a narrow space between two boxes. Rotting cardboard covered almost the entire concrete floor. A cell full of boxes? Puzzled, Hans reached into one and pulled out a damp folder. He held it in the shaft of light. Traffic accident report, he thought. Typed on the standard police form. He found the date—1973. Flipping through the yellow sheaf of papers, he saw they were all the same, all traffic accident reports from 1973. He checked the station listed on several forms: Abschnitt 53 in every case. Suddenly he realized where he was.
In the early 1970s, Abschnitt 53 had been partially renovated during a city wide wave of reform that lasted about eighteen months. There had been enough money to refurbish the reception area and overhaul the main cellblock, but the third floor, the basement, and the rear of the building went largely untouched. Hans was sure he’d been locked in the basement.
But why? No one had accused him of anything. Not openly, at least. Who were the policemen who had attacked him? Funk’s men? Were they even police officers at all?
They had said he would soon be dead weight. It was crazy. Maybe they were protecting him from the Russians. Maybe this was the only way the prefect could keep him safe from them. That’s it! he thought with relief. It has to be.
A door slammed somewhere in the darkness above. Someone was coming—several people by the sound—and making no effort to hide it. Hans heard clattering and cursing on the stairs; then he saw who was making the noise. Outlined in the fluorescent light streaming down from the basement door, two husky uniformed men were wrestling a gurney off the stairs. Slowly they cleared a path to the cell through the heaps of junk covering the basement floor. Hans closed his eyes and lay motionless on the holes where he’d been thrown.
“Looks like he’s still out,” said one man.
“I hope I killed the son of a bitch,” growled the other.
“That wouldn’t go over too well upstairs, Rolf.”
“Who gives a shit? The bastard broke my ribs.”
Hans heard a low chuckle. “Be more careful the next time. Come on, we’ve got to clear a space in there for this thing.”
“Fuck it. Just throw this filthy Jew in on top of that one. Not much left of him, anyway.”
“Apfel isn’t a Jew.”
“Jew-lover, then.”
“The doctor said leave this one on the gurney.”
“Make him clear a space,” said Rolf, pointing in at Hans.
“Sure. If you can wake him up.”
Rolf picked up a rusted joint of pipe from the floor and rankled the bars with it. “Wake up, asshole!”
Hans ignored him.
“Get up or we’ll kill you.”
Hans heard the metallic click of a pistol slide being jerked back. Christ … Slowly he rose to his feet.
“See,” said Rolf, “he’s not dead. Clear out a space in there, you. And be quick about it.”
Hans tried to see who lay on the gurney, but Rolf smashed the pipe against the bars near his face. It took him forty seconds to clear a space wide enough to accept the gurney.
“Get back against the wall,” Rolf ordered. “Go on!”
Hans watched the strange policemen roll the man on the gurney feet-first into the cleared space, then slam the door behind him.
“You stay away from this Jewboy, Sergeant,” Rolf warned. “Anything happens to him, it’s on your head.”
The pair hurried up the stairs, taking the shaft of light with them.
&nbs
p; Hans couldn’t make out the face of his new cellmate. He felt in his pocket for a match, then remembered he’d given them to Kurt in the waiting room upstairs. He put his hands on the unconscious man’s shoulders and stared downward, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the blackness, but they didn’t. Moving his hand tentatively, he felt something familiar. Shoulder patches. Surprised and a little afraid, Hans felt his way across the man’s chest like a blind man. Brass buttons … patch … collar pins … Hans felt his left hand brush an
empty leather holster. A police officer!
Shutting his eyes tight, he put his right hand on the man’s face and waited. When he opened his eyes again, he could just make out the lines of the face. My God, he thought, feeling a lump in his throat. Weiss! Erhard Weiss! For the second time tonight Hans felt cut loose from reality. Gripping his friend’s body like a life raft, he began trying to revive him. He spoke into Weiss’s ear, but heard no answer. He slapped the slack face hard several times. No response. Groping around in desperation, Hans crashed into the back wall of the cell.
His palms touched something moist and cold. Foundation stones. Condensation.
Rubbing his hands across the stones until they were sufficiently wet, he returned to Weiss and laved the cool liquid over his forehead. Still Weiss lay silent.
Alarmed, Hans pressed both forefingers against Weiss’s carotid arteries. He felt pulse beats, but very faint and unbelievably far apart. Weiss was alive, but just. The jailers had mentioned a doctor, Hans remembered. What kind of doctor would send a man to a cell in this condition? The obscenity of the situation drove him into a rage as he stood by the cadaverous body of his friend. Someone would answer for this outrage! Lurching to the front of the cell, Hans began screaming at the top of his lungs. He screamed until he had no voice left, but no one came. Slipping to the floor in exhaustion, he realized that the stacks of boxes in the basement must be deadening the sound of his voice. He doubted anyone upstairs had heard even a whimper.
Suddenly Hans bolted to his feet in terror. Someone had screamed! It took him a moment to realize that the scream had come from inside the cell. He shivered as it came again, an animal shriek of agony and terror. Erhard Weiss—who had lain like a corpse through all
Hans’s attempts to revive him—now fought the straps that held him as if the gurney were on fire. As Hans tried to restrain the convulsing body, the screaming suddenly ceased. It was as if a great stone had been set upon Weiss’s chest. The young policeman’s right arm shot up and gripped Hans’s shoulder like a claw, quivered desperately, then, after a long moment, relaxed.
Hans checked for a pulse. Nothing. He hadn’t expected one. Erhard Weiss was dead. Hans had seen this death before—a heart attack, almost certainly. He had seen several similar cases during the last few years—young, apparently healthy men whose hearts had suddenly stopped, exploded, or fibrillated wildly and fatally out of control. In each case there had been a common factor—drugs. Cocaine usually, but other narcotics too. This case appeared no different. Except that Weiss never used drugs. He was a fitness enthusiast, a swimmer. On several occasions he and his fiancee had dined with Hans and Ilse at a restaurant, Hans remembered, and once in their apartment. In their home. And now Weiss was dead. Dead. The young man who had argued so tenaciously to keep two fellow Berliners—strangers, at that—out of the clutches of the Russians.
In one anguished second Hans’s exhaustion left him. He sprang to the front of the cell and stuck his arm through the bars, frantically searching the floor with his right hand.
There—the iron pipe Rolf had brandished! Steadily Hans began pounding the pipe against the steel bars. The sting of the blows rattled his entire body, but he ignored the pain. He would hammer the bars until they came for Weiss—until they came for his friend or he stopped dead. At that moment he did not care.
CHAPTER SIX
8.12 pm. #30 Lützenstrasse, British Sector West Berlin
Seated at the kitchen table in apartment 40, Professor Emeritus of History Georg Natterman hunched over the Spandau papers like a gnome over a treasure map. His thick reading glasses shone like silver pools in the lamplight as he ran his hand through his thinning hair and silver beard.
“What is it, Opa?” Ilse asked. “Is it dangerous?”
“Patience, child,” the professor mumbled without looking up.
Knowing that further questions were useless until her grandfather was ready to speak, she opened a cupboard and began preparing tea. Perhaps Hans would get back in time to have some, she hoped; he’d been gone too long already. Ilse had told her grandfather as little as possible on the telephone, and by doing so she had failed to communicate the depth of her anxiety. Professor Natterman lived only twelve blocks away, but it had taken him over an hour to arrive. He understood the gravity of the situation now. He hadn’t spoken a word since first seeing the Spandau papers and brusquely questioning Ilse as to how they came into her possession. As she poured the tea, he stood suddenly, pulled off his reading glasses, and locked the nine pages into his ancient briefcase.
“My dear,” he said, “this is simply unbelievable. That this … this document should have come into my hands after all these years. It’s a miracle.” He wiped his spectacles with a handkerchief. “You were quite right to call me. ‘Dangerous’ does not even begin to describe this find.”
“But what is it, Opa? What is it really?”
Natterman shook his head. “In terms of World War Two history, it’s the Rosetta stone.”
Ilse’s eyes widened. “What? Are you saying that the papers are real?”
“Given what I’ve seen so far, I would have to say yes.”
Ilse looked incredulous. “What did you mean, the papers are like the Rosetta stone?”
“I mean,” Natterman sniffed, “that they are likely to change profoundly the way we view the world.” He squinted his eyes, and a road map of lines crinkled his forehead. “How much do you know about Rudolf Hess, Ilse?”
She shrugged. “I’ve read the recent newspaper stories. I looked him up in your book, but you hardly even mentioned his flight.”
The professor glanced over to the countertop, where a copy of his acclaimed “Germany: from Bismarck to the Bunker” lay open. “I didn’t feel the facts were complete,” he explained, “so I omitted that part of the story altogether.”
“Was I right about the papers? Do they claim that Prisoner Number Seven was not really Hess?”
“Oh, yes, yes indeed. Very little doubt about that now. It looks as though the newspapers have got it right for once. The wrong man in prison for nearly fifty years … very embarrassing for a lot of people.”
Ilse watched her grandfather for any hint of a smile, but she saw none. “You’re joking with me, aren’t you? How could that even be possible?”
“Oh, it’s quite possible. The use of lookalikes was standard procedure during the war, on both sides. Patton had one. Erwin Rommel also. Field Marshal Montgomery used an actor who could even imitate his voice to perfection. That’s the easiest part of this story to accept.”
Ilse looked sceptical. “Maybe during* the war,” she conceded. “From a distance. But what about the years in Spandau? What about Hess’s family?”
Natterman smiled impishly. “What about them? Prisoner Number Seven refused to see Hess’s wife and son for the first twenty-eight years of his captivity.” He savoured Ilse’s perplexed expression. “The factual discrepancies go on and on. Hess was a fastidious vegetarian, Prisoner Number Seven devoured meat like a tiger. Number Seven failed to recognize Hess’s secretaries at Nuremberg. He twice gave the British wrong birth dates for Hess, and he missed by two years. And on and on ad nauseam.”
Ilse sat quietly, trying to take it all in. Beneath her thoughts, her anxiety for Hans buzzed like a low-grade fever.
“Why don’t I let Number Seven speak for himself?” Natterman suggested. “Would you like to hear my translation?”
Ilse forced herself not to look at the kitchen c
lock. He’s all right, she told herself, just wait a little longer. “Yes, please,” she said.
Putting his reading glasses back on, the professor opened his briefcase, cleared his throat, and began to read in the resonant tones of the born teacher:
I, Prisoner Number Seven, write this testament in the language of the Caesars for one reason: I know with certainty that Rudolf Hess could not do so. I learned Latin and Greek at university in Munich from 1920 to 1923, but I learned that Hess did not know Latin at the most exclusive “school” in the world—Reinhard Heydrich’s Institute for Practical Deception—in 1936. At this “institute”—an isolated barracks compound outside Dessau—I also learned every other known fact about Hess: his childhood; military service; Party record; relationship with the Führer; and, most importantly, his personal idiosyncrasies.
Ironically, one of the first facts I learned was that Hess had attended university in Munich at the same time I had, though I do not remember meeting him.
I did not serve as a pilot in the First World War, but I joined one of Hermann Göring’s “flying clubs” between the wars. It was during an aerial demonstration in 1935 that the Reichsmarschall first noticed my remarkable resemblance to Deputy-Führer Hess. At the time I did not make much of the encounter—comrades had often remarked on this resemblance—but seven months later I was visited at the factory where I worked by two officers of Heydrich’s SD. They requested me to accompany them on a mission of special importance to the Reich. From Munich I was flown to the “Practical School” building outside Dessau.
I never saw my wife and daughter again.
During the first week at the school I was completely isolated from my fellow students. I received my “orientation” from Standartenführer Ritter Graf, headmaster of the Institute. He informed me that I had been selected to fulfill a mission of the highest importance to the Führer My period of training—which would be lengthy and arduous, he said—was to be carried out in total secrecy.
I soon learned that this meant total separation from my family. To alleviate the stress of this separation, Graf showed me proof that my salary from the factory had been doubled, and that the money was being forwarded to my wife.
