The Secret of Spandau

by Peter Lovesey

  He was hauled across a yard and into the main block, up one of the iron staircases and through a couple of rooms, his perceptions blurred by the agony in his leg. Dimly, he became aware of a door he recognized. The guards knocked first, and took him in. He was facing Colonel Klim, the Soviet Director. A chair was found and Red slumped into it.

  ‘Sit up!’ ordered Klim.

  He raised his head.

  ‘You have committed many breaches of prison regulations. You have conspired with prison warders to attack a Soviet guard and a Soviet warder. You have gained illegal entry to the inner cell-block and spoken with prisoner Number 7. These offences will be reported to the military authorities. In my capacity as director, I shall now invite Soviet General Vanin to take you into his custody for interrogation.’

  ‘Vanin?’ mumbled Red. ‘That bastard from the KGB?’

  He was immediately struck from behind, a vicious punch against his cheekbone that tore the soft flesh under his eye and sent blood coursing down his face. His hair was grabbed and wrenched back.

  He found himself looking upside down into a pale face dominated by bulging eyes, yellow and bloodshot at the edges. He avoided looking into them. Instead, he found himself watching a blob of saliva slowly form between slightly open, fleshy lips. He was helpless as it dropped between his eyes in a dribbling string of spittle, and slid across his face. It smelt of vodka.

  Klim said, ‘General Vanin speaks no English, but he can make himself understood.’

  ‘Sod off.’

  There was an exchange in Russian. Someone opened a door behind him and a lighter set of footsteps crossed the room. A woman?

  ‘Sit up,’ ordered Klim. ‘The lady wants a look at your ugly face.’

  Blood and spit were smearing Red’s vision, but he could see enough. It couldn’t have been worse. Heidrun Kassner was standing in front of him. They had brought her in to identify him. Dimly, his brain told him that she shouldn’t have been there. He had left her trussed up at Cal Moody’s apartment. Jane had been with her.

  God, what had happened to Jane?

  Heidrun’s eyes were directed downwards as if she preferred not to look at Red. Something was said in Russian. She raised her face briefly. Their eyes met. Hers were indifferent.

  Heidrun nodded and told the Russians, ‘Goodbody.’

  ‘My name or your opinion?’ said Red.

  Someone struck his head from behind.

  ‘Cow!’ said Red inadequately.

  With that, he was dragged off the chair and bundled out of the office. On the way, he had his first full glimpse of Vanin and it was in no way encouraging. The General was not in uniform, but wore a blue three-piece suit. Overweight and in his forties, with reddish hair that he probably tinted, he had the bloated look of an ex-boxer who has hit the vodka and neglected his fitness.

  The descent was agonizing. That left leg was throbbing from thigh to ankle and, handcuffed as Red was, he was prevented from using his arms to steady himself. At each step, the pain was like a chisel being turned in the wound. As they started down the second flight, an order was given and the guards supported his thighs and carried him the rest of the way. They hurried him along a corridor and out through the gates of the main prison block.

  A brown Lada limousine with diplomatic plates was waiting in the yard. The chauffeur got out and opened the rear door. Red was lifted in, while one of the guards kept him covered with his gun through the open door.

  After about three minutes, General Vanin emerged from the building with Heidrun. Vanin got into the back seat beside Red. He drew a small, silver automatic from inside his jacket, pressed it into Red’s ribs and spoke something in Russian.

  Heidrun was getting into the seat beside the driver. She said, ‘He is telling you to lie on the floor.

  ‘I don’t mind lying for the KGB,’ said Red, shifting forward to obey the order. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I’m not allowed to say. They want to interrogate you.’

  Red crouched on the space between the seats. Vanin gave an order and the car glided away, saluted by the guards.

  They drove slowly across the cobbled yard to the first set of gates. The NCO came out to check. Noticing Red’s blood-streaked face, he started to smirk; then, at a sharp word from Vanin, came smartly to the salute and gave the order for both sets of double gates to be unbolted. The Lada edged out of Spandau Prison and turned left on Wilhelmstrasse, towards the city and the Wall.

  49

  At the edge of the Südpark in the Wilhelmstadt section of Spandau is a highrise block of flats with a clear view across Gatower Strasse to the Allied Prison. At a window on the twenty-fourth floor, Jane was standing with a pair of Zeiss binoculars focused on the main gate. It was 5.35 a.m. At her side, in a nightdress and curlers, was the hausfrau, a stout, cheerful person in her fifties, whose name she had not discovered. Things had happened too swiftly for social exchanges.

  Willi Becker had brought her here from his flat in Kreuzberg, driving one-eyed through the almost deserted city streets at speeds that had scared her, though she had tried not to show it.

  He had already alerted the people in the flat by phone, so the woman’s husband, a tall, bearded man called Alfred, had been dressed when they arrived. After a few words in German, both men had gone down by the lift to the car.

  ‘You are afraid?’ the woman asked Jane in halting English that sounded as if she had been putting it together for some time.

  Without lowering the glasses, Jane answered, ‘Yes, but not for myself. For someone else.’

  ‘Your lover?’

  For all her anxieties, Jane managed a faint smile. ‘Yes. My lover.’

  ‘Red?’

  ‘Yes. You know him?’

  ‘Of course. Willi and my Alfred.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Cold War, ja?’

  ‘Yes?’ responded Jane, not quite following.

  ‘Die Fluchthelfer?’

  She had heard the word, but where?

  ‘Die Mauer? Berlin Wall, ja? Willi, Alfred, Red help many peoples. Over, under.’

  Belatedly, it dawned on Jane, and she was angry with herself for being so obtuse. The shocks of the past twelve hours had dulled her brain. These were the people Red had written about in that series of articles she had read and admired: the escape-helpers, the daring or reckless men and women who secretly schemed the crossings of fugitives from the East. Over the beer on Saturday night in that weekend at Cedric’s, he had told story after story about them. The woman appeared to be saying Red had been one of them; and it was not too incredible, thinking back. His writing and his stories had burned with the passion and vigour of personal experience. And now the Fluchthelfer were scheming to help him.

  The knowledge warmed Jane like a brandy. The odds against rescuing Red were still enormous, but thank God the attempt would be made by an experienced team.

  Twenty minutes went by.

  Then Jane told the woman, ‘Something is happening down there.’

  There was movement at the prison entrance. A Soviet soldier came out of the small door in the blue double gates and moved forward under the arc-lamps, his gun levelled. He was followed by another.

  ‘Two guards,’ Jane reported. ‘They seem to be checking that no one is outside.’

  ‘I tell Willi.’ Her companion picked up the two-way radio the men had left her and spoke into it.

  Down below, they were opening the gates and a brown saloon car was visible under the turreted entrance. Jane trained the binoculars on the registration-plate as the light caught it and spoke the number aloud, adding, ‘A dark brown saloon, very large.’ Before the message was passed to Willi Becker, she had shifted her sights upwards to the windscreen. The car glided forward across the cobbles. For a moment, the faces inside were illuminated: a chauffeur in a dark uniform, not military; beside him, a girl in a close-fitting blue and white tracksuit-top – a pale, staring face, framed by short, dark hair. Heidrun.

  ‘Oh,
God! They must have got Red.’

  ‘Red?’ said the German woman. ‘You see him?’

  ‘No. Wait!’ Jane watched the car accelerate and swing across the carriageway. ‘One man in the back, not Red, I’m certain. Tell them Heidrun Kassner is in the car, but I can’t see Red.’

  Waiting in a narrow street between two blocks of flats off Wilhelmstrasse in his VW Golf, Willi Becker took the message and made his decision.

  He made radio contact with the third section of his team, giving them the description and registration number. ‘A Lada, I guess. Don’t miss it.’ To Alfred, seated beside him, he commented. ‘You can bet they’ve got Red in there somewhere. They wouldn’t make two trips.’ He turned the ignition and moved forward to the intersection to wait for the brown saloon.

  The early morning traffic, was already starting to build. When the Lada cruised past, Becker swung the Volkswagon smoothly on to Wilhelmstrasse behind it. They travelled in the fast lane for about a kilometre, Becker driving one-handed and speaking instructions into his handset. Then the traffic slowed. Unusually for this time of day, there was a hold-up ahead, a short way before the junction with Pichelsdorfer Strasse. The cars were actually stationary and three men in bright yellow safety-jackets were moving forward, stooping to speak to the drivers.

  The Lada drew up behind a petrol tanker.

  Becker brought the VW to a smooth halt, and said calmly, ‘Guns.’

  Alfred had two loaded sub-machine guns ready on his lap. He passed one to Becker.

  They waited for one of the yellow-jacketed men to approach the Lada. As the chauffeur wound down his window, the other men in safety-jackets moved fast to the rear of the car. One of them looked through the rear window and raised his arm in a signal to Becker.

  ‘Now!’ said Becker, thrusting open the door of the Golf.

  In the same split-second, a shot was fired from inside the Lada. The man who had made the first approach keeled back and crashed over the bonnet of another vehicle.

  The Lada’s engine roared as the chauffeur swung the wheel and bumped the big car over the raised strip of grass that formed the central reservation. A container lorry in the slow lane of the opposite carriageway was forced to veer on to the cycle-way with a shriek of tyres. The Lada completed its U-turn and raced away from the ambush.

  Becker crouched on the grass and fired a volley of shots. One of them must have pierced a front tyre, because fifty metres down the street the Lada careered into the fast lane, almost jumping the reservation again.

  ‘Come on!’

  Becker was back in the Golf with Alfred, over the grass, into the fast lane and in pursuit. Ahead, the Lada was under some kind of control, but clearly too handicapped to burn off the VW.

  ‘They’re trying to make it back to the prison,’ Becker told Alfred.

  The prison wasn’t far ahead. They were already past the red-brick barrack-blocks and approaching the trees that partly screened the entrance. The limping Lada slewed off Wilhelmstrasse on to the cobbles.

  As the Golf skidded to a stop a few metres away, Becker saw that the doors of the Lada were open and the passengers were already heading for the blue prison gates. Two men and a girl. One of the men was trying to resist.

  ‘It’s Red,’ Becker shouted as he snatched his gun and leapt from the car.

  A shot screamed past him and smashed into the side of the Golf. The Russian chauffeur was behind the Lada, trying to give cover. Alfred peppered the brown saloon with gunfire and the chauffeur fell.

  Becker raced forward a few paces and then had to take cover behind the Lada. The KGB officer who had been in the back was brandishing a silver automatic.

  They had reached the prison gates. Heidrun was shouting into the grille. Suddenly Red broke loose and threw himself against the KGB man. They both fell. The gun clattered across the cobbles.

  Heidrun started forward to recover it. Becker pulled the trigger and picked her off. Her body thudded against the prison gates as the bullets ripped into her flesh.

  The KGB man struggled upright and was hit by the same volley. His hands clawed at the prison door.

  Becker sprinted forward and grabbed Red. There was shouting from inside the prison gate. With Alfred’s help, he hauled Red across the cobbles and thrust him into the back of the Golf.

  Soviet guards streamed out of the prison gate and stepped over the bleeding bodies to fire at the accelerating Golf as the Fluchthelfer made their getaway.

  ‘So you’re back in Berlin?’ Becker remarked conversationally to Red.

  50

  The following afternoon, Red and Jane took a taxi to Rominter Allee to see Hess’s adjutant, Leischner. Red was using a walking-stick. The doctor who had removed the bullet and dressed his leg had promised him that the muscle-fibre would not take long to heal. The soreness in both legs from the kicking the guards had given him had left him needing the stick anyway. He also had a cracked rib and a cut eye that had required stitching.

  The shooting incident outside the prison was headlined in most of the morning papers. General Vanin and Heidrun, erroneously described as an un-named Soviet diplomat and his German interpreter, were dead. The chauffeur was in intensive care. There were close-up pictures of bullet holes in the prison gates. No one appeared to know the purpose of the shooting, and the Russians were making no statement. There was heavy speculation about the group responsible. Some papers plumped for neo-Nazis, while others guessed at Soviet dissidents based in the West.

  Red told Jane, ‘We’ve got to make sure when we write this thing up that people like Dick and Cal are given the credit they deserve.’

  ‘And Edda Zenk,’ added Jane.

  ‘Right. And that guy of Willi’s who was shot in the ambush.’

  ‘So many,’ Jane said, shaking her head. She was silent for a moment and then told him gravely, ‘And you’re still terribly at risk. Red, they won’t give up.’

  ‘The KGB?’

  ‘And the others.’

  ‘Our lot?’

  ‘The lot who murdered Dick. MI5, SIS or some other group we’ve never even heard of. Dick didn’t crash accidentally. They were tailing us in England and they followed him to France.’

  Red agreed. ‘He found something. We know from Hess that de Gaulle was a key to the secret.’

  ‘But why did Dick have to be killed? Just to preserve the fiction that Churchill and the British establishment wouldn’t have any truck with Hitler?’

  ‘Not only that, love. There’s another fiction that every British government since the war has connived at.’

  Jane nodded, sighing. ‘You mean that the Russians are the only ones who want to keep him in Spandau.’

  ‘It’s the proverbial can of worms,’ said Red. ‘Everyone wants to keep the lid on – our lot, the Russians, the diplomats and the secret service.’

  ‘Which is just the point I was making!’ Jane said in desperation. ‘You’re on their hit-list.’

  ‘Not for long, love. Once we’re in print, nobody will care a monkey’s about Red Goodbody.’

  ‘So why aren’t you in a safe place with a typewriter?’

  ‘I promised the old man.’

  ‘Isn’t it just inviting more trouble?’

  ‘I told him if I got out, I’d deliver it.’ He turned Hess’s ring thoughtfully on his finger. ‘What a jerk! Who else but me would get an exclusive with the most famous prisoner in the world and come out with nothing on tape? Not so much as a signed statement. Just a bloody ring.’

  She summoned a smile. ‘Why don’t you give it a rub and see what happens?’

  ‘I’m trying to keep a low profile.’

  His self-reproach was really meant, so Jane reminded him, ‘You got the facts on Churchill’s dealings with Hitler. That’s the biggest story you or I will ever handle.’

  ‘Most of the facts. I wish I’d got the names of the right-wing rebels who plotted to overthrow Churchill.’ He grinned. ‘I’ve known easier interviews.’

  ‘Will
there be any repercussions for Hess?’

  ‘He’ll stand a better chance of getting out when the story has broken.’

  ‘I mean in the short term.’

  Red shook his head. ‘Reading between the lines, everyone is covering up like hell in Spandau, pretending nothing happened. He’ll play along. He’s wise to the game.’

  The taxi drew up at the U-Bahn station. They settled the fare and started slowly along Rominter Allee. Red put his free hand around Jane’s shoulder.

  Hauptmann Leischner was expecting them, although Red hadn’t mentioned Hess’s gold ring when he phoned. The purpose of the visit was ostensibly to pass on a convivial message from an old comrade in arms. So they were admitted to an old-fashioned living-room with oak furniture, family portraits and a collection of ornamental beer-mugs. They sat side by side on a leather sofa. A black shepherd-dog pricked its ears and watched them from its basket.

  Leischner must have been around sixty-five, but he looked spry enough for ten years less, with thick silver hair and blue eyes that gave nothing away when Red filled him in on the background to the visit. He was civil, reserved and alert. Even the news that Red had penetrated Spandau’s security system and talked to Hess appeared not to impress him unduly.

  There was no reason to prolong the suspense, so Red slipped the ring off his finger and handed it to Leischner. ‘He asked me to give you this.’

  The blue eyes narrowed. Leischner took the ring and examined it closely. He went to the window to get more light on it. ‘So everything you have told me is true,’ he said, after an interval. ‘In that case …’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Lumpi!’

  The dog rose from its basket and trotted towards him. For a frightening moment, Jane thought it was being turned on them. She saw Red’s hand feel for his stick. But at a signal from its master, Lumpi lowered itself and settled on the carpet.