The Secret of Spandau

by Peter Lovesey

  The Russian was unimpressed. ‘As you refuse to identify yourself correctly,’ he said stiffly, ‘we are obliged to search you. This way.’ He beckoned.

  Red hesitated. Unwisely, because another order was rasped out and he was grabbed and hustled across the guardroom by the two young soldiers who had held him. The dog snapped at his legs, disclosing, mercifully, that it was chained to the wall and just out of range.

  They dragged him struggling through a door at the back into a cell not more than seven feet square. There, they used their boots on his shins, kicking his legs from under him. Helpless, he rolled into a foetal position in one corner, but they soon had him flat to the floor and face down. One guard kneeled on his spine, while the other dragged the clothes from his body. Inside half a minute, he was stripped naked, his clothes tossed outside. They allowed him to lean against the back wall. But the ‘search’ didn’t end there, because one of the guards stood over Red with the stock of his sub-machine gun poised to brain him if he moved, while the other removed the sling from his gun and wound one end of it around his fist. The way they worked together had the makings of a well-drilled routine of sadism.

  Red felt a trickle of something against his inner thigh. He looked down at an involuntary jet of his own urine. The Russians pointed and cackled with amusement. Then the voice of the NCO broke in, bellowing some order. He materialised behind them in the doorway. The guards backed off at once.

  ‘Get up!’

  Red obeyed, using the wall as an extra support. He might have been standing on stumps, because all feeling in his shins and feet had gone. He didn’t care about the loss of dignity. He didn’t care that much about the pain. He was overwhelmed by the sense of failure, and that really hurt. Two good guys had died, and this was the best he had been able to achieve.

  The NCO appraised the work of his men, running a long look over Red’s suffering body. ‘Now you had better tell me who you are,’ he advised with heavy menace. ‘What is your true name?’

  Red simply shrugged.

  ‘There is a procedure for dealing with intruders,’ the Russian told him. ‘We are permitted to shoot them. The orders are categorical. These are orders that apply to the guards of each of the occupying powers. I quote for your benefit, so that you fully understand. A guard will fire his weapon against persons who have gained entrance into the courtyards by force or other illegal method. You have gained entrance illegally.’

  ‘According to you,’ commented Red.

  ‘We shall therefore take appropriate action. First, I shall inform the Soviet director. He may order me to interrogate you or he may simply give the order for you to be shot. Now do you wish to tell me your name?’ He waited a second, and then said, ‘Very well. Your underclothes will be returned to you and you will be locked in here until I receive my orders.’

  Red looked away.

  His tee-shirt and pants were slung into the cell and the door was slammed.

  43

  Jane had never felt so desolate as at that moment when she stood at the top of the iron stairs of Cal’s flat after Red had run off into the night. She had a horrid conviction that she would never see him again, whatever the outcome of his foolhardy scheme to get into Spandau Prison. She was angry with herself for having tamely acquiesced in the plan – if it deserved to be described as such. She had known from the day she met him that Red was his own worst enemy, a creature of impulse, destined for trouble. It wasn’t hard to see how vulnerable he was. Yet this evening she had let herself be dominated by the force of his character, when she knew it was insane to try what he proposed.

  It was no good pleading that the pressures of the past twenty-four hours had got to her, that she was mentally and physically exhausted. The man she felt herself to be in love with was putting his freedom, maybe his life, at risk. She should have done anything to stop him. She could only despise herself now. If her instincts were right and she had lost Red, it was because she didn’t deserve him.

  She turned and went back into the flat, mindful of those things that Red had asked her to do. Maybe it was inconsistent to collaborate in what he was attempting, but she couldn’t stop him now, so the best she could do was try and help. She was grateful for the chance to occupy herself. Thinking was too painful.

  Heidrun was shouting from the bedroom. They ought to have gagged her. Jane wished she could block her out of her mind, but she had to go in there to collect Red’s clothes off the floor where he had left them.

  Heidrun was making a strange sound, a shrill moan, so high-pitched that it was barely audible. To Jane’s ear, it was more blood-curdling than a full-throated scream. She approached the bed. She couldn’t ignore the impulse to find out what was wrong; there was no harm in looking, because Heidrun was still securely pinioned.

  Her face was flushed and contorted, her eyes shut tight.

  Jane bent closer. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  Heidrun kept her eyes closed. ‘The cramp. My right leg. I can’t bear it.’ She made that eerie sound of distress again.

  Once or twice in her life, Jane had suffered the excruciating pain of cramp. She knew that it could be brought on by restriction of the blood supply. Red had tied Heidrun’s legs at the ankles and just below the knees with strips of sheet. To Jane’s eye, the bonds certainly looked excessively tight against the thin fabric of the tracksuit.

  With Heidrun’s cry blocking out every other consideration, imploring relief from the agony, Jane took the humane decision. She loosened the knots at the knees. She would tie them again, securely, but less tightly. Even if the knots no longer held, Heidrun’s arms and ankles would remain firmly tied, and she would still be pinned to the bedstead by the broad strips around her body.

  She gently massaged the flesh above and below Heidrun’s knee. Heidrun groaned, but with less urgency, and gave a nod of thanks. Jane refastened the knots as well as she could without reactivating the constriction. Then she switched her attention to picking up Red’s clothes and putting them into a sportsbag she had found on a chair beside the bed.

  In a plaintive, little-girl voice that sounded grotesquely out of character, Heidrun asked. ‘Are you going to leave me here?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Jane matter-of-factly. Her sympathy had been used up. She transferred Red’s keys and money to her shoulder-bag. First she would make that phone call to Spandau.

  ‘I could be dead before I am found here,’ Heidrun said with more of her old aggression.

  ‘Yes,’ Jane agreed in a bored voice that conveyed what she thought of such melodramatics. She took a last look around the room. Then she picked up the bag, switched off the light in the hall and left the flat without another word, closing the door but leaving it unlocked. Someone would go in there and find Heidrun the next day.

  A strange city by night might have been intimidating to a solitary girl in other circumstances, but not for Jane tonight. She stepped out purposefully through the shadowy streets, oblivious of herself, her mind entirely taken up by the danger Red was in. At Altstadt Spandau U-Bahn Station, she located the phone booth and dialled the number Red had given her.

  It bleeped for a long time before a voice answered in German.

  She asked, ‘Please, do you understand English?’

  ‘But of course.’ He sounded French, and in those three words he managed to convey that he was intrigued to find himself speaking to a woman.

  To be certain she had got the right number, Jane asked, ‘Is that the chief warder?’

  ‘The duty warder. What can I do for you at this time of night, my darling?’

  The last thing she felt like was a risque conversation, but at least he was friendly. She spoke the message Red had asked her to deliver. The Frenchman thanked her for the information and asked if she was a friend of Cal’s. Just as Red had instructed, she said goodnight and put down the receiver. She leaned against the side of the booth and tried to breathe more evenly. She could have used a cigarette.
/>   Red had promised there would be a taxi. There were none waiting at the rank,so she crossed the street to look for one on the busier highway of Am Juliusturm. Her mind was still running over the things Red had asked her to do. She had collected his clothes, made the call to the prison and now she had only to find her way back to the flat in Haselhorst.

  Then she stopped in her tracks. There was something they had both overlooked: the inspection-lamp that Red had borrowed from the garage. It was still in Cal’s flat. The man in the garage would be wondering what had happened to it. He might easily go up there. He would find Cal lying dead there; and Heidrun. The police would be called. Spandau would be alerted.

  Jane stopped looking for a taxi. She knew what she had to do: retrace her journey through the streets to that place she had been so thankful to leave, into the room where Cal was lying dead. It was her duty to retrieve the lamp and return it to the garage. She crossed back to Breite Strasse.

  To her relief,when she got back to the garage the man was still working under the car. She hurried around the rear of the building and up the stairs, opened the door and switched on the light.

  Heidrun stood facing her, holding a carving-knife. The strips of sheet lay about the floor of the hall and in the kitchen doorway where she had cut them away. There was blood on one of her wrists. She must have squirmed free and dragged herself to the kitchen.

  Jane took a step backwards towards the door. She didn’t dare turn away. Her hand groped for the handle and found nothing. Light flashed on the knife-blade as Heidrun twisted it threateningly in front of her. She began to move forward.

  ‘No!’ said Jane, still feeling for the door handle. ‘We didn’t harm you.’

  Heidrun sneered. ‘We didn’t harm you,’ she echoed, mocking Jane’s voice. ‘The famous English sense of fair play. I don’t give a fart for fair play. I’m going to cut you up.’ She advanced on Jane with the knife extended. Then she thrust it towards her.

  Jane still had the sportsbag in her left hand. She swung it at the knife as Heidrun lunged and felt it take the force of the blade. She tried to move aside, but there was no room in the narrow passage. She staggered, tripped and fell, striking her head on the door-handle she had failed to locate. Heidrun stepped over her, opened the door and was away down the staircase.

  Jane watched the ceiling blur and spin. She was losing consciousness. She wanted to fight it, but she couldn’t move a muscle.

  How long she lay there, she had no idea at the time, although in retrospect it was probably not much over five minutes. She was aware only of a searing headache and limbs that felt encased in plaster. She dragged herself into a sitting position. In a moment, she was able to crawl through the door and get some air at the top of the staircase.

  By degrees, the urge to get away from the place overcame the lethargy in her body. She hauled herself upright, went in and collected the bag. The carving-knife clattered on the hall floor, revealing a six-inch split in the sportsbag.

  The rest of that night was confused. Later she decided that she must have suffered some concussion. She had a faint recollection of finding her way back to Breite Strasse. Whether it actually happened, she never discovered, but she retained a persistent image of Heidrun ahead of her in the street, leaving the telephone booth and hailing a taxi; of herself getting into the taxi behind and asking the driver to follow; of being driven at speed through lighted streets towards the city centre and beyond, to the wall, with its graffiti scrawls; of stopping somewhere because Heidrun had got out of her taxi; and of being told by the taxi-driver that it was no use trying to follow Heidrun because that was the checkpoint for German nationals, and she, as a foreigner, could not use it; and of the sense of helplessness and bitter, bitter failure.

  44

  Time was difficult to estimate in the darkness of the cell, and Red had no watch. Certainly two hours, and maybe as many as three, had passed before he heard the bolts being moved. He hauled himself stiffly off the concrete floor, knowing he was defenceless, but feeling marginally less so on his feet.

  The light that streaked in from the guardroom was painful to his eyes. He was aware of a figure outlined in the doorway, then of something tossed in towards him, landing at his feet.

  ‘Put on your clothes.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked in amazement. ‘What’s going to happen to me?’

  ‘Just do what you’re told. Quickly.’

  He didn’t argue. The cell had been like an ice-box.

  The clothes were the ones he had arrived in – Cal’s tracksuit and trainers – no longer of interest, apparently, to the Russian guards. Even the cap was there. He put them on gratefully, at a loss to understand what could have prompted such clemency.

  The guard watched him from the doorway. ‘Now put your hands on your head and step out here.’

  He obeyed. Two guards moved close with their sub-machine guns levelled.

  The same granite-featured Russian NCO was standing by the desk. He looked Red up and down as if it were a uniform-inspection. ‘Are these the clothes you were wearing when you entered the prison illegally?’

  Red gave a nod. ‘Are you going to release me?’

  There was a gleam of malice in the grey eyes, but no response.

  ‘You want to question me?’

  Still nothing.

  So Red waited in silence, wary of antagonizing his captors with further questions. After about two minutes, the NCO picked up the phone, dialled a number and spoke in Russian. His eyes didn’t leave Red. He put down the receiver. ‘You will come this way now.’

  Red followed him across the red-tiled floor to a different door from the one he had come in by, leading, if his sense of direction could still be relied on, to the courtyard that separated the buildings at the entrance from the main cell-block. He was at a loss to understand why. This was exactly the way he would have taken if he had been able to bluff his way past the guards. He would have crossed the yard to the building where Cal worked, and Rudolf Hess was held.

  And now they were allowing him to go there. One of the guards had opened the door. The open courtyard lay ahead. Across it, some forty yards away, the lighted windows of the main cell-block. The NCO stepped aside and gestured his prisoner through. It couldn’t have been from politeness.

  Only then was Red seized with the suspicion that he was about to take a death-walk. Some words came back to him, the orders so precisely recited by the NCO: A guard will fire his weapon against persons who have gained entrance into the courtyards by force or other illegal method. The Russians, meticulous in their observance of the regulations, were about to carry out his execution. They had given him back the clothes he had arrived in because they meant to shoot him. A corpse in false clothes riddled with bullets would convince the other powers that he was an impostor, shot in the act of penetrating the security system.

  He had seen diagrams of the yard. He didn’t have a chance. The sides were walled. He would be picked out by the searchlights and shot.

  But not without a fight. As he reached the doorway, he wheeled round, reached for the top of the door-frame, gripping it with his fingers, and kicked with both feet at the chest of the guard behind him. The man staggered back. Red hurled himself forward to grab the sub-machine gun.

  There was never much chance that he would succeed. As he fell on the guard, another gun crunched into his ribs and something smashed across his shoulders. He was pinned facedown on the floor with army-boots pressing on his arms and legs.

  ‘Shoot me now, you bastards!’ he yelled through the pain.

  But no gun was placed to his head. There was just a bedlam of shouting in Russian, and it didn’t seem to be directed at him. Recriminations, threats, fresh orders – Red didn’t care. He waited angrily for the beating that would now precede his execution.

  It didn’t occur. Instead, he was lifted up by his arms and dragged backwards through the door and into the yard. Fully expecting to be dumped in the centre and left for the snipers on the wa
tchtowers to pick off, he made no resistance, trying to conserve what strength he had left for a dash to one of the darker corners.

  Again, he had miscalculated. The guards didn’t leave him. They frogmarched him right across the yard to the main cell-block, up some steps to a door that he heard being unbolted, and straight inside. Then he was hauled up an iron spiral staircase, his heels scraping against the steps. Each of his trainers came off, but someone collected them and, with a mystifying show of consideration, slipped them back onto his feet at the top of the staircase. There, he was faced towards the front and led across the landing to a door marked in Russian, French and English, ‘PRISON DIRECTOR’.

  A meeting with the man in charge. Why?

  The NCO came up the stairs last and looked Red up and down again, walking right around him and stopping once to rub some dustmarks off his shoulder. He said in a low voice, ‘Colonel Klim, the prison director, has indicated that he wishes to interview you.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me over there, for God’s sake?’ Red asked. ‘It would have saved some hassle all round, wouldn’t it?’

  The Russian went on as if Red hadn’t spoken, ‘Whatever he decides to do with you, he will require me to execute the order. I would like to make something clear to you before we go in. Any injuries you have sustained, any rough handling you have been given, was of your own making. You had to be restrained. The Colonel will not wish to hear about it. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Transparently,’ answered Red.

  ‘Then we will go in.’ He knocked and opened the door.

  Colonel Klim, small, sallow, distinctly oriental in feature, was standing by the arched window trying to operate the blind. He was wearing a Soviet army raincoat over bottle-green pyjamas. He must have come specially from his quarters. His neat toes peeped out of leather sandals. He seemed to have been caught unprepared. Giving up his struggle with the blind, he glided behind the director’s desk, a teak and metal status-symbol, massive enough to serve as a screen for a man of his size. He gave an order in Russian to the two guards who had entered the room with Red. They saluted and withdrew, leaving only the NCO in attendance.