The Secret of Spandau

by Peter Lovesey

  As he bent over the basin again, he sneaked a glance behind him. The gun was still trained on him. Nothing was happening.

  ‘Enough,’ said the chief warder in a bored voice. ‘Now we return to the cell.’

  Red used the tracksuit to dab himself dry and put it on, looking with increasing desperation for some signal from the warder. Surely nothing could be done until the Russian was overpowered and disarmed. They needed the help of the American warder. Where the hell was he?

  No clue was offered. ‘Put your hands on your head.’

  He was the least demonstrative Frenchman Red had ever encountered. Even when their eyes met briefly, he communicated nothing. The encouragement Red had derived from the pen and the paper cups was draining away like the water in the basin. He was beginning to suspect he had made a hideous error.

  A prod in the back from the gun, and he found himself retracing his steps along the corridor.

  What now? The opportunity to act was almost past. At the cell door, he paused and said, ‘Thanks for the coffee.’ Then, with slow emphasis, ‘Is there a chance of anything else?’

  The chief warder answered tonelessly, ‘You want something to eat? I will try to arrange it.’

  The Russian guard pressed the gun harder into Red’s back. He had his own way of communicating, and there wasn’t any ambiguity about it. Red sighed, stepped back into the cell and felt the rush of air as the door slammed behind him.

  The missed opportunity rankled so much that it was a moment before he responded to the sight of something in the cell that had not been there before: a neat pile of clothes at the end of the bed – dark blue in colour, with silver buttons. A warder’s uniform!

  He lifted the jacket from the bed. Under it were a white shirt, black tie, trousers and black shoes. He clenched his fists and all but shouted in elation. He shouldn’t have doubted the warders. This was brilliant, far more useful than anything he had dreamed up himself. The uniform was probably Cal’s. He must have kept one at the prison to change into from his jogging gear. It was an excellent fit. The feel of the clothes gave Red a lift. There were still hair-raising problems to be faced, but he was in with some kind of chance.

  Dressed up, he worked on his tousled hair with his fingers, trying to make it passably tidy. Then he waited in suspense, knowing that if he was summoned upstairs in the next few minutes, he was sunk. The sun had risen high enough for the first rays to streak through the barred windows. Red sat hunched on the edge of the bed, arms folded, staring at the stone floor.

  Then he got up.

  The bolts scraped and the key was turned. The door was pushed open slowly.

  ‘Your breakfast.’ The American warder entered with a tray bearing bread rolls and a bowl of cereal. He placed it on the table and made sure that the cell door was only slightly ajar. Outside, the chief warder was in conversation with the guard, occupying his attention.

  The American ran a critical eye over Red’s turn-out. ‘OK,’ he said in a subdued voice, speaking rapidly. ‘You step out of here and bolt the door, leaving me inside. The guard has the key. Walk right past him like you do it every day. Turn right, head for the stairway and go down to the next level. The warders’ room will be the first on your left. It’s standing open. Got that?’

  Red nodded.

  ‘Hope you make it.’ The American scooped the things off the tray and handed it to Red. ‘You’d better carry this.’

  Red didn’t attempt to thank him. There wasn’t anything adequate he could have said. It was an act of rare courage to sit locked in that cell and wait for the Russians to discover that they had been outsmarted.

  With the empty tray under his arm, Red opened the cell door, stepped outside, closed it, slammed home the bolt, turned past the chief warder and the guard and strode down the corridor at the measured pace he imagined warders used, wishing that the rubber-soled shoes didn’t give the impression of stealth, and trying to decide at which point it would be worth making a dash if he were challenged.

  Before he reached the stairs, he heard the key turn in the cell door. There was a change in the volume and tempo of the conversation behind him. It was the chief warder taking leave of the guard.

  Red took the stairs at a quicker rate and found himself in a green and white corridor that looked more used to habitation. He found the warders’ room and went inside. No one was there. It was furnished as a sitting-room, with a row of lockers, a fridge and a sink. The chief warder followed Red in. He pulled the door to and gestured to him to take a seat at the table.

  Like a consultant with an anxious patient, he took off his glasses to polish them and said in a measured, emollient tone, ‘Now would you tell me precisely what happened to Cal Moody?’

  Red stood gripping the chair-back. ‘For Christ’s sake, there isn’t time. They’re going to send for me and all hell’s going to break loose.’

  The chief warder said in his deadpan manner, ‘I insist. I have responsibilities. If you want me and my colleagues to break the prison regulations, you must convince me it is necessary.’

  Red’s nerves were stretched to the limit, but he knew he couldn’t do anything without the warders’ active support. So he picked out the crucial events of the past twenty-four hours and related them succinctly, expecting any second to hear the clatter of army boots along the corridor. ‘Now do you believe me?’ he asked earnestly when he was through.

  The chief warder had listened impassively. ‘It is asking a lot. I must be frank with you. I cannot understand why it is necessary for you to speak to the prisoner Hess.’

  Red had guessed this would be the sticking point. ‘Can’t you see? He’s in trouble. There’s something he wants the world outside to know, some secret he has guarded for over forty years. He put his trust in Cal Moody and asked him to get in touch with this woman, Edda Zenk, and now the KGB have killed them both. They beat up Edda Zenk before they shot her, so you can bet that they found out the secret. Hess doesn’t know this yet.’

  ‘That is probably true.’

  ‘You guys who have been close to the old man for years must have some regard for his well-being,’ Red hazarded. ‘Don’t you think he ought to be told what happened?’

  ‘Ought to be? No. In this matter, he has contravened the regulations.’

  ‘Sod the regulations!’ Red almost howled.

  ‘But I was going to add,’ the chief warder persisted staidly, ‘that we may feel a human obligation to tell him.’

  Red clenched his fist as if to trap that human obligation in his hand. ‘Right! Only who would Hess trust, now that Cal is dead? Another warder?’

  The question clearly made an impression, although the chief warder avoided answering it directly. ‘Why should he trust a total stranger?’

  Before Red could answer, the phone buzzed.

  The chief warder picked it up. He listened, and then responded in Russian. He frowned and changed the receiver to the other ear. His composure snapped at last. He protested angrily to the caller, gesticulating with his free hand. The to and fro continued for about a minute, at the end of which the caller must have put down the phone while the chief warder was still in full flow, because he suddenly stopped in mid-sentence, listened, held the receiver six inches from his face, stared at it, said, ‘Merde!’ and fairly thumped it down.

  He picked it up again, cradling the mouthpiece as he explained to Red, ‘Insufferable! Not only do the Russians flout the regulations by allowing this General Vanin to enter the prison without the agreement of all the directors, now they tell me he is already here and has a matter to discuss with Hess. I am ordered to escort Hess to the interview room. I will not do it without the consent of the other directors.’

  ‘Who is Vanin?’ asked Red. ‘The Soviet director spoke about him on the phone last night. He was practically shaking in his shoes.’

  ‘I think he is KGB.’ The chief warder impatiently rattled the contact-bar. ‘They won’t give me an outside line, blast them. I don’t mind who I speak
to – the Allied Commission, any one of the directors. I refuse to capitulate to these Russians with blood on their hands.’

  ‘I’ve got to go in and talk to Hess now,’ Red insisted.

  ‘Do you know? – I think the bastards have pulled the switches on me.’ The chief warder rattled the phone again, and then pushed it away from him. He was outraged to the point of revolt. ‘OK,’ he said tensely. ‘We will try, but it will be difficult. I will have to take you past two guards. There is the usual one on the inner cell-block door and an extra man who was posted outside the cell this morning. There is also Shaporenko, the Russian warder, on duty in the block.’

  Red took a deep breath. ‘A warder? Christ, he’ll know I’m a fake. Can you take care of him?’

  ‘I cannot promise. Straighten your tie.’

  Red followed him out, turning left, across the intersection of the main block and the wings. Ahead was the entrance to the cell-block where Hess had been held since 1947. No-one had ever entered there illegally. The Soviet guard on the door stiffened and scraped one of his boots on the stone floor.

  ‘Ignore him,’ muttered the chief warder. He walked up to the steel door, took out a bunch of keys attached to a chain and unlocked and unbolted it. They stepped past the guard and inside the inner cell-block.

  It was not markedly different from the rest of Spandau, though the dark green and cream paint was fresher and the floor buffed as in the guardroom. Some relics from the nineteenth century, a set of ornamental iron brackets picked out in a white gloss, supported the twelve-foot ceiling. Modernity was represented by hot water pipes and radiators and a fire-hose attached to the wall. There were two plain tables. Steel cell doors stretched ahead on either side.

  Red’s skin prickled. He had shed most of his fears. Now he felt a rush of exhilaration.

  This, he thought, is where it has all been leading. Jane, darling, you said it was crazy, I couldn’t walk into Spandau, but here I am, about to come face to face with old man Rudolf. If I get out – for God’s sake, when I get out – you’re going to have to admit that even if most of what I say is bullshit, one time, one never-to-be-forgotten time, it wasn’t.

  Keeping a yard behind the chief warder, partly to indicate respect and partly for reasons of cover, he started the thirty-metre walk to where the Soviet guard stood on duty at the far end of the corridor, beside an open door. To his right were the white-painted doors of cells once occupied by the seven war criminals. Hess, he knew, had been moved to the other side of the corridor in 1970, into a double cell knocked into one, which had formerly been used as a chapel.

  They had not gone more than a few paces when someone in warder’s uniform stepped out of a door midway along the block. The chief warder reacted quickly. ‘Ah, Shaporenko.’ He spoke in Russian, evidently giving some instruction.

  Red knew it was impossible to stay obscured behind the small Frenchman, so when Shaporenko caught his eye, he nodded sociably. There was an awkward hiatus. The Russian stared back, frowning, then moved past them to carry out the order.

  Now for the man on guard. They approached him casually. Like the other Soviet Army soldiers Red had met in Spandau, he was probably no older than twenty. He had both hands on his sub-machine gun, but his posture was relaxed. He must have been told that the men in blue uniforms were prison warders.

  Then it all happened.

  Shaporenko, his suspicion alerted, shouted something from the far end of the block. The chief warder wheeled around and shouted back. Red had no idea what was said, and he wasn’t waiting for a translation. He attacked the guard. He shoved the muzzle of his gun upwards with such force that it caught the man on the chin, jolting his head back. In the same movement, he swung his knee hard into the Russian’s groin. He felt the impact of bone against bone. Anything between made no impression, except on the soldier, who creased and fell towards him like wet wallpaper that had failed to stick.

  The man was conscious, but in no state to resist. Red tugged the gun away and trained it on Shaporenko, who raised his hands. ‘Lock him in one of the empty cells,’ he yelled to the chief warder, without taking his eyes off the Russian. ‘Tell him I won’t hesitate to shoot.’

  The chief warder crossed to one of the cell doors and unbolted it.

  Shaporenko made no trouble. He was thankful to be out of Red’s line of fire. The door slammed on him.

  ‘This one, too,’ said Red, eyeing the guard, who was trying to sit up. His face was bleeding where the gun had struck it.

  The chief warder opened a second cell and helped the soldier into it. He climbed onto the bed and was lying still when the door was shut.

  ‘Thank God!’ Red muttered.

  Turning slightly, he was conscious of a figure almost at his elbow. White-haired, in a white singlet and dark trousers, a man was standing in the cell doorway in the act of putting on his glasses.

  Rudolf Hess.

  46

  Jane sat alone with a mug of black coffee in an all-night café somewhere north of the city centre. She had asked the taxi-driver to find a place that was still open. On the floor at her feet was the sportsbag containing Red’s clothes. The gash in the side was proof that she had not been dreaming.

  Two shabbily-dressed, middle-aged men occupied other tables. They probably took Jane for another of the city’s homeless. There was no point in returning to Haselhorst. The mental agony would be worse in Red’s place, surrounded by his things, knowing she had failed him.

  She despised herself. She had screwed everything up. She had to hold the mug with both hands to stop it from spilling, she was in such a state. Whatever illusions she had had about herself as a frontline journalist were shattered. At the first flurry of action, she had caved in. She had read about violence often enough and watched it on the screen, deeply moved by the suffering, but without ever understanding what it is like to be involved. The act of grappling with Heidrun, twisting her arm, helping Red to tie her to the bed, now filled her with revulsion. And the moment of terror when Heidrun had come at her with the knife would stay with her for ever.

  But what was that to the violence coming to Red because of her stupidity? That bitch Heidrun had crossed the border to shop Red to the Russians.

  ‘Oh, God. God help me!’

  One of the shabby men stared across at her, and then back at his newspaper. He would probably not have given a glance if she had spoken in German. It was nothing remarkable to hear someone talking to God in an all-night café.

  Jane had a vivid picture of Red risking his life to bluff his way to Hess, actually getting into the prison, only to be betrayed by a phone call from the KGB. What would they do to him?

  She was going to vomit. She retched.

  The café owner pointed to the door marked Damen. No one else looked up.

  When she came back, one of the men had gone, and so had the bag with Red’s clothes. She ran to the door and looked up the street. It was deserted.

  ‘Bastard!’

  But her head was more clear and her brain was functioning better. There was something else Red had told her to do. She ran over to the counter.

  ‘Where is Der Chamissoplatz?’

  ‘Chamissoplatz? That is Kreuzberg. Near Tempelhof, the airport. You know?’

  ‘How far from here?’

  ‘A taxi-ride. You want me to call one?’

  ‘Please. And do you have a telephone directory?’

  He was positively eager to help, no doubt wanting to be rid of her. He turned to the shelf behind him. ‘What name?’

  ‘Becker. Willi Becker.’

  ‘Plenty of Beckers in Berlin.’

  ‘But in Chamissoplatz?’

  In twenty minutes, a taxi was setting her down in a spacious, poorly-illuminated square formed by a children’s playground surrounded by trees. Five-storey blocks with darkened windows and arched entrances loomed up on each side. She looked for numbers, found the entrance she wanted and went upstairs. Willi Becker’s name was on the door.

&
nbsp; Jane pressed the bell, conscious that this was some ungodly hour of the morning and she spoke almost no German. She had to press it twice more before she heard the click of a light-switch inside. The door opened a fraction.

  ‘Ja?’

  ‘Herr Becker? Sprechen Sie Englisch? Please, Red told me to come.’

  ‘Red?’

  ‘Red Goodbody.’

  ‘Ah … Red!’ A spluttering cough turned into a laugh and he came out with a passable impression of Red. ‘Now pull the other one, darling.’

  Willi Becker opened the door to admit her. Short, dark, almost bald, in his forties if not older, he had only one good eye. Where the other should have been was a depression overlaid with loose skin. He was wrapped in a brown duvet. She had expected him to be a pressman, but there was a bright yellow jacket hanging in the hall, the sort worn by people who work on the roads.

  ‘You look all used up,’ said Becker. ‘Want to get some sleep?’

  Jane shook her head. ‘I need help.’

  ‘Give me two minutes, then.’

  She walked into a cheaply-furnished room that smelt of tobacco. There was a framed photo in black and white over the fireplace of Becker and his bride, a slight, dark-haired girl in a sixties-style, calf-length dress. Jane could hear no voices from the room where Becker had gone to dress, and the place didn’t give the impression of a woman’s presence, so she assumed that the girl had died.

  He came back in green cords and a black sweater. He had put in an artificial eye which didn’t match the bloodshot look of the real one. Despite his unshaven face, creased from interrupted sleep, he still managed to look approachable, a sympathetic listener.

  ‘So who are you and what sort of trouble are you in?’

  Just as Red had suggested, she told him everything.