by Greg Iles
Ten minutes later Professor Natterman was safely berthed in a first-class car, poring over a short volume by Dr JR. Rees, the British Army psychiatrist who had supervised the first
extensive examinations of “Rudolf Hess” after his famous flight. It made for tedious reading, and Natterman had trouble concentrating. His mind kept returning to the Spandau papers. He had no doubt that Prisoner Number Seven had told the truth—if only because, to date, the man had provided the only possible version of events that fit all the known facts.
The Rudolf Hess case, Natterman believed, shared one major similarity with the assassination of the American president John F Kennedy. There was simply too much information. A surfeit of facts, inconsistencies, myth, and conjecture. Everyone had his pet conspiracy theory. If one accepted the medical evidence that “Number Seven” was not Hess, then two general theories held popular sway. Natterman dismissed them both out of hand, but like most farfetched theories, each was based upon a tantalizing grain of truth.
The primary theory—put forward by the British surgeon who first uncovered the medical evidence—held that one of the top Nazis (either Heinrich Himmler or Hermann Göring) had wanted to supplant Hitler and had decided to use Hess’s wartime double to do it. To accomplish this, either Göring or Himmler (or both) would have to have ordered the real Hess shot down over the North Sea, then sent his double rushing on to England. There the double would supposedly have asked the British government if it might accept peace with Germany, if someone other than Hitler reigned in Berlin.
Natterman considered this pure fantasy. Both Nazi chieftains had possessed the power to give such orders, of course. And there was quite a body of evidence suggesting that both men had prior knowledge of Hess’s plan to fly to Britain. But the question Natterman could not ignore was why Himmler or Göring should have elected to murder Hess, then use his double for such a sensitive mission in the first place.
It was a harebrained scheme that would have carried tremendous risk of discovery by Hitler, and thus was totally out of character for both the prudent SS chief and the flamboyant but wily Luftwaffe commander. Only a week before Hess’s flight, Himmler had sent a secret envoy to Switzerland to discuss the possibility of an Anglo-German peace, with himself as chancellor of the Reich. That might not be so exciting as murder in the skies, but it was Himmler’s true style.
The other popular theory held that the real Hess had reached England alive, but that the British government—for reasons of its own—had wanted him silenced. They supposedly killed Hess, then searched among German prisoners of war for a likely double, whom they brainwashed, bribed, or blackmailed into impersonating the Deputy Führer.
Natterman considered this tripe of the lowest order. His researches indicated that a “brainwashed” man was little more than a zombie—certainly not capable of impersonating Hess for more than a few hours, much less for forty-six years. And as far as British bribes or blackmail, Natterman didn’t believe any German impersonator would sacrifice fifty years of his life for British money or even British threats.
Yet this theory, too, was partially based on fact. No informed historian doubted that the British government wanted the Hess affair buried. They had proved it time and again throughout the years, and Professor Natterman did not discount the possibility that the British had murdered Hess’s double just four weeks ago. It was also true that only a native German could have successfully impersonated Hess for so long. Not just any German, however, it would have to have been a German trained specifically by Nazis to impersonate Hess, and whose service was either voluntary, or motivated by the threat of some terrible penalty. A penalty like Sippenhaft.
Natterman felt a shiver of excitement. The author of the Spandau papers had satisfied all those requirements, and more. For the first time, someone had offered a credible—probably the only—answer to when and how the double had been substituted for the real Hess. If the papers were correct, he never had been. Hess and his double had flown to Britain in the same plane. It had been the double in British hands from the very
first moment!
Natterman recalled that a prominent British journalist had written a novel suggesting that, since the Messerschmitt 110 could carry two men, Hess might not have flown to Britain alone. But no one had ever suggested that Hess’s double could have been that passenger!
Natterman drummed his fingers compulsively as his brain shifted up to a higher plane of analysis. Facts were the province of history professors; motives were the province of historians. The ultimate question was not how the double had arrived in England, but why. Why was it necessary for both the double and the real Hess to fly to Britain, as the Spandau papers claimed they had? Whom did they fly there to meet? Why was it necessary for the double to remain in Spandau? Had he been murdered for the same reason? If so, who murdered him?
Circumstantial evidence pointed to the British. Yet if the British killed the double, why had they done it now, after all these years? Publicly they had joined France and the United States in calling for Number Seven’s early release—though they knew full well they could rely on the Russians to veto it, as they had done every year before.
My God, Natterman thought suddenly. Was that it? Had Mikhail Gorbachev, in the spirit of glasnost, proposed to release Hess at last? As Natterman scrawled this question in the margin of Dr Rees’s book, the huge, bright yellow diesel engine disengaged its brakes with a hiss and lurched out of the great glass hall of Zoo Station, accelerating steadily toward the benighted fields of the DDR. In a few minutes the train would enter the narrow, fragile corridor linking the island of West Berlin to the Federal Republic of Germany. Natterman pulled the plastic shade down over his small window. There were ghosts outside—ghosts he had no wish to see. Memories he thought long laid to rest had been violently exhumed by the papers he now smuggled through communist Germany. God, he wondered, does it ever end? The deceit, the casualties? He touched the thin bundle beneath his sweater. The casualties … More were coming, he could feel it.
Yet he couldn’t give up the Spandau papers—not yet. Those nine thin sheets of paper were his last chance at academic resurrection. He had been one of the lions once, an academic demigod. A colleague once told Natterman that he had heard Willy Brandt quote from Natterman’s opus on Germany no less than three times during one speech in the Bundestag. Three times! But Natterman had written that book over thirty years ago. During the intervening years, he had managed to stay in print with “distinguished contributor” articles, but no publisher showed real interest in any further Natterman books. The great professor had said all he had to say in “From Bismarck to the Bunker”—or so they thought. But now, he thought excitedly, now the cretins will be hammering down my door! When he offered his explosive translation of The Secret Diary of Spandau Prisoner Number Seven—boasting the solution to the greatest mystery of the Second World War—they would beg for the privilege of publishing him!
Startled by a sharp knock at the compartment door, Natterman stuffed Dr Rees’s book under his seat cushion and stood. Probably just Customs, he reassured himself. This was the very reason he had chosen this escape route from the city. Trains travelling between
West Berlin and the Federal Republic did not stop inside East Germany, so passport control and the issue of visas took place during the journey. Still more important, there were no baggage controls.
“Yes?” he called. “Who is it?”
Someone fumbled at the latch; then the door shot open. A tall, wiry man with a dark complexion and bright eyes stared at the professor in surprise. A worn leather bag dangled from his left hand. “Oh, dear!” he said. “Dreadfully sorry.”
An upper-class British accent. Natterman looked the man up and down. At least my own age, he thought. Strong-looking fellow. Thin, tanned, beaked nose. Looks more Jewish than British, come to think of it. Which is ridiculous because Judaism isn’t a nationality and Britishness isn’t a religion—although the adherents of both sometimes treat them a
s such.
“I say there,” the intruder said, quickly scanning the room, “Stern’s my name. I’m terribly sorry. Can’t seem to find my berth.”
“What’s the number?” Natterman asked warily.
“Sixteen, just like it says on the door here.” Stern held out a key.
Natterman examined it. “Right number,” he said. “Wrong car, though. You want second class, next car back.”
Stern took the key back quickly. “Why, you’re right. Thanks, old boy. I’ll find it.”
“No trouble.” Natterman scrutinized the visitor as he backed out of the cabin. “You know, I thought I’d locked that door,” he said.
“Don’t think it was, really,” Stern replied. “Just gave it a shove and it opened right up.”
“Your key fit?”
“It went in. Who knows? They always use the oldest trains on the Berlin run. One key probably opens half the doors on the train.” Stern laughed. “Sorry again.”
For an instant the tanned stranger’s face came alive with urgent purpose, so that it matched his eyes, which were bright and intense. It was as if a party mask had accidentally slipped before midnight. Stern seemed on the verge of saying something; then his lips broadened into a sheepish grin and he backed out of the compartment and shut the door.
Puzzled, and more than a little uncomfortable, Natterman sat down again. An accident? That fellow didn’t seem like the type to mix up his sleeping arrangements. Not one bit. And something about him looked familiar. Not his face … but his carriage. The loose, ready stance. He’d been unseasonably tanned for Berlin. Impossibly tanned, in fact.
Retrieving Dr Rees’s book from beneath the seat cushion, the professor tapped it nervously against his leg. A soldier, he thought suddenly. Natterman would have bet a year’s salary that the man who had stumbled into his compartment was an ex-soldier. And an Englishman, he thought, feeling his heart race. Or at least a man who had lived among the English long enough to imitate their accent to per cent. Natterman didn’t like the arithmetic of that “accident” at all, if he was right. Not at all.
10.04 pm. MI-5 Headquarters: Charles Street, London, England
Deputy Director Wilson knocked softly at Sir Neville Shaw’s door, then opened it and padded onto the deep carpet of the director general’s office.
Shaw sat at his desk beneath the green glow of a banker’s lamp. He took no notice of the intrusion; he continued to pore over a thick, dog-eared file on the desk before him.
“Sir Neville?” Wilson said.
Shaw did not look up. “What is it? Your hard boys arrived?”
“No, sir. It’s something else. A bit rum, actually.”
Sir Neville looked up at last. “Well?”
“It’s Israeli Intelligence, sir. The head of the Mossad, as a matter of fact. He’s sent us a letter.”
Shaw blinked. “So?”
“Well, it’s rather extraordinary, sir.”
“Damn it, Wilson, how so?”
“The letter is countersigned by the Israeli prime minister. It was hand-delivered by courier.”
“What?” Sir Neville sat up. “What in God’s name is it about?” His ruddy face slowly tightened in dread. “Not Hess?”
Wilson quickly shook his head. “No, sir. It’s about an old intelligence hand of theirs. Chap named Stern. Seems he’s been holed up in the Negev for the past dozen years, but a couple of days ago he quietly slipped his leash.”
Shaw looked exasperated. “I don’t see what the devil that’s got to do with us.”
“The Israelis—their prime minister, rather—seem to think we might still hold a grudge against this fellow. That there might be a standing order of some type on him. A liquidation order.”
“That’s preposterous!” Shaw bellowed. “After all this time?”
The deputy director smiled with forbearance. “It’s not so preposterous, Sir Neville. Our own Special Forces Club—which the Queen still visits occasionally, I’m proud to say—still refuses to accept Israeli members. They welcome elite troops from almost every democratic nation in the world, even the bloody Germans. Everyone but the Israelis, and they’re probably the best of the lot. And all because the older agents still hold a grudge for the murder of an SAS man by Zionists during the mandate.”
“Just a minute,” Shaw interrupted. “Stern, you said?”
“Yes, sir. Jonas Stern. I pulled his file.”
“Jonas Stern,” Shaw murmured. “By God, the Israelis ought to be concerned. One of our people has been after that old guerilla for better than thirty years.”
Wilson looked surprised. “One of our agents, sir?”
“Retired,” Shaw explained. “A woman, actually. Code name Swallow. A real harpy. You’d better pull her file, in fact. Just in case she’s still got her eye on this fellow.” Shaw nodded thoughtfully. “I remember Stern. He was a terrorist during the Mandate, not even twenty
at the time, I’ll bet. He swallowed his vinegar and fought for us during the war. It was the only way he could get at Hitler, I suppose. Did a spot of sticky business for us in Germany, as I recall.”
Wilson looked at Shaw in wonder. “That’s exactly what it says in the file!”
“Yes,” Shaw remembered, “he worked for LAKAM during the ‘sixties and ‘seventies, didn’t he? Safeguarding Israel’s nuclear development program.” Shaw smiled at his deputy’s astonishment. “No strings or mirrors, Wilson. Stern was a talented agent, but the reason I remember him so clearly is because of this Swallow business. I think she actually tried to assassinate him a couple of times. That’s why the Mossad sent that letter.”
“Do you really think this woman might pose a danger to him?”
Shaw shook his head. “I doubt Stern’s in England. Or even in Europe, for that matter. He’s probably sunning himself on Mykonos, or something similar. Which reminds me—did you find that freighter for me?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Lloyd’s puts her off Durban; she rounded the cape three days ago.”
Shaw rummaged through the stack of papers on his desk until he found a map of southern Africa. “Durban,” he murmured, running his finger across the paper. “Twenty knots, twenty-five … two days … yes. Well.” Shaw brushed the map aside and thumped the stack of papers before him. “This is the Hess file, Wilson. No one’s cleared to read it but me—did you know that? I tell you, there’s enough rotted meat between these covers to make you ashamed of being an Englishman.”
Wilson waited for an explanation, but Shaw provided none. “About the Israeli letter, sir?” he prompted. “It’s basically a polite request to leave this Stern alone. How should I reply?”
“What? Oh. The Israeli prime minister is an old terrorist himself, you know.” Sir Neville chuckled. “And still looking after his own, after all these years.” His smile turned icy. “No reply. Let him sweat for a while, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And hurry those hard boys along, would you? I thought I had it tough with the P.m. climbing my back. An hour ago I got a call from the bloody Queen-Mother herself. She makes the Iron Lady sound like a French nanny!”
As Wilson slipped out, Sir Neville went back to the Hess file. On top lay a very old eight-by-ten glossy photograph. Scarred and faded, it showed a man in his late forties with dark hair, a strong jaw, and a black oval patch tied rakishly across his left eye. Shaw jabbed his heavy forefinger down on the eye patch. “You started it all, you sneaking bastard,” he muttered. He slammed the file closed and leaned back in his chair. “Sometimes I wonder if the damned knighthood’s worth the strain,” he said. “Protecting skeletons in the royal bloody chest.
10.07 P.m. #30 Lützenstrasse
Outside the apartment another car rattled down the street without slowing. Number twelve. Ilse was counting. Wait until midnight, her grandfather had told her. If Hans isn’t home by then, get out. Sound advice, perhaps, but Ilse couldn’t imagine running for safety while Hans remained in danger. She fumed at her own obstinacy. How could
she have let a stupid argument keep her from telling Hans about the baby? She had to find him. Find him and bring him to his senses. But where to start? The police station? The nightclub district? Hans might meet a reporter anywhere.
Rising from her telephone vigil, she went to the bedroom to put on some outdoor clothes. Outside, a long low groan built slowly to a rattling roar as a train passed on the elevated S-Bahn tracks up the street. During the day trains passed every ten minutes or so; at night, thank God, the intervals were longer. As Ilse tied a scarf around her hair, yet another automobile clattered down the Lützenstrasse , coughing and wheezing in the cold. Unlike the others, however, this one sputtered to a stop near the front entrance of the building. Please, she prayed, rushing to the window, please let it be Hans.
It wasn’t. Looking down, she saw a shiny black BMW sedan, not Hans’s Volkswagen. She let her forehead fall against the freezing pane. The cold eased the throb of the headache that had begun an hour earlier. She half-watched as the four doors of the BMW opened simultaneously and four men in dark business suits emerged. They grouped together near the front of the car. One man pointed toward the apartment building and waved in a circle. Another detached himself from the group and disappeared around the corner.
Curious, Ilse watched the first man turn his face toward the upper floors and begin counting windows. His bobbing arm moved slowly closer to her window. How odd, she thought. Who would be out counting apartment windows at midnight? She jumped back from the window. The men below were looking for her. Or for Hans—for what he’d found. She groped for the light switch to turn it off, then thought better of it. Instead she ran into the living room, opened the door, and peered cautiously down the hall. Empty. She dashed down the corridor and around the corner to a window that overlooked the building’s rear entrance. Three men huddled there, speaking animatedly. Ilse wondered if they might be plain-clothes police. Suddenly two of them entered the building, while the third took up station in the shadow of some garbage bins near the exit.
