Spandau Phoenix. Greg Iles

The dazed recruits followed, their eyes on Hauer as he marched toward the trailer. The British sergeant, suddenly made aware of his responsibility, conferred with his men, a couple of whom restlessly fingered their Browning Hi-Power pistols.

      Bristling with fury, the Russian ordered his men to follow Hauer with the prisoners. It made a strange parade. Hauer, unarmed, strode purposefully toward the command trailer, while the Russians—looking a bit sheepish in spite of being armed to the teeth—herded their rumpled prisoners along behind. The British brought up the rear.

      The American master sergeant stood with his hands on his hips, shaking his head in amazement. “That Kraut is one smooth son of a bitch, gentlemen. I hope y’all were paying attention. He may be wearing a cop’s uniform, but that man is a soldier. Yes, sir, I’d bet my stripes on it!”

      The American was right. As Hauer marched toward the trailer, every inch of his ramrod bearing bore the indelible stamp of military discipline. Nothing betrayed the turmoil he felt knowing that the only thing stopping the angry Russian from taking control of the prisoners was the ring of men and steel at the checkpoints leading out of the city—certainly not one headstrong police captain just six weeks from retirement.

      Inside the police van Hans calmed down a little. He pulled into the Wilhelmstrasse, then wheeled onto the Heerstrasse, heading east. For a time no one spoke. Hauer’s actions had unnerved them all. Finally Weiss broke the silence.

      “Did you see that, Hans?”

      “Of course,” he said tersely. The sheaf of papers felt like a kilo of heroin strapped to his leg.

      “Old Hauer stepped in front of those machine guns like they weren’t even there,” said one of the younger men.

      “I kind of got the feeling he’d done it before,” mused Weiss.

      “He has,” Hans said flatly.

      “When?” asked a chorus of surprised voices.

      “Quite a few times, actually. He works Hostage Recovery for Special Tasks Division.”

      “How do you know so much about him?”

      Hans felt his face flush; he shrugged and looked out the window to cover it.

      “I’m glad it happened,” Weiss said softly.

      “Why?” asked one of the recruits.

      “Showed those Russians what for, that’s why. Showed them West Berlin’s not a doormat for their filthy boots. They’ll have quite a little mess on their hands now, won’t they, Hans?”

      “We all will, Erhard.”

      “Hauer ought to be prefect,” suggested an old hand of twenty-one. “He’s twice the man Funk is.”

      “He can’t,” Hans said, in spite of himself.

      “Why not?”

      “Because of Munich.”

      “Munich?”

      Hans sighed and left the question unanswered. How could they understand? Every man in the van but him and Weiss had been toddlers at the time of the Olympic massacre. Turning onto the Friedrichstrasse, he swung the van into a space in front of the colossal police station and switched off the engine. He sensed them all—Weiss especially—watching him for a clue as to what to do next. Without a word he handed Weiss the keys, climbed out of the van, and started for his Volkswagen.

      “Where are you going?” Weiss called.

      “Exactly where Hauer told me to go, my friend! Home!”

      “But shouldn’t we report this?”

      “Do what you must!” Hans called, still walking. He could feel the papers in his boot, already damp with nervous sweat. The sooner he was inside his own apartment, the better he would feel. Again he prayed silently that Ilse would be home when he got there. After three unsuccessful attempts, he coaxed his old VW to life, and with the careful movements of a policeman who has seen too many traffic fatalities, he eased the car into the morning rush of West Berlin.

      The car that fell in behind him—a rental Ford—was just like a thousand others in the city. The man at the wheel was not. Jonas Stern rubbed his tired eyes and pushed his leather bag a little farther toward the passenger door. It simply would not do for a traffic policeman to see what lay on the seat beneath the bag. Not a gun, but a night-vision scope—a third-generation Pilkington, far superior to the one the American sergeant had been toying with. Definitely not standard tourist equipment.

      But worth its weight in gold, Stern decided, following Hans’s battered VW around a turn. In gold.

       TWO

      5:55 A.M. Soviet Sector: East Berlin, DDR

      The KGB’s RYAD computer logged the Spandau call at 05:55:32 hours Central European Time. Such exactitude seemed to matter a great deal to the new breed of agent that passed through East Berlin on their training runs these days. They had cut their too-handsome teeth on microchips, and for them a case that could not be reduced to microbits of data to feed their precious machines was no case at all. But to Ivan Kosov—the colonel to whom such calls were still routed—high-tech accuracy without human judgment to exploit it meant nothing. Snorting once to clear his chronically obstructed sinuses, he picked up the receiver of the black phone on his desk.

      “Kosov,” he growled.

      The words that followed were delivered with such hysterical force that Kosov jerked the receiver away from his ear. The man on the other end of the phone was the “sergeant” from the Spandau guard detail. His actual rank was captain in the KGB, Third Chief Directorate—the KGB division responsible for spying on the Soviet Army. Kosov glanced at his watch. He’d expected his man back by now. Whatever the flustered captain was screaming about must explain the delay.

      “Sergei,” he said finally. “Start again and tell it like a professional. Can you do that?”

      Two minutes later, Kosov’s hooded eyes opened a bit and his breathing grew labored. He began firing questions at his subordinate, trying to determine if the events at Spandau had been accidental, or if some human will had guided them.

      “What did the Polizei on the scene say? Yes, I do see. Listen to me, Sergei, this is what you will do. Let this policeman do just what he wants. Insist on accompanying him to the station. Take your men with you. He is with you now? What is his name?” Kosov scrawled Hauer, Polizei Captain on a notepad. “Ask him which station he intends to go to. Abschnitt 53?” Kosov wrote that down too, recalling as he did that Abschnitt 53 was in the American sector of West Berlin, on the Friedrichstrasse. “I’ll meet you there in an hour. It might be sooner, but these days you never know how Moscow will react. What? Be discreet, but if force becomes necessary, use it. Listen to me. Between the time the prisoners are formally charged and the time I arrive, you’ll probably have a few minutes. Use that time. Question each of your men about anything out of the ordinary they might have noticed during the night. Don’t worry, this is what you were trained for.” Kosov cursed himself for not putting a more experienced man on the Spandau detail. “And Sergei, question your men separately. Yes, now go. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

      Kosov replaced the receiver and searched his pocket for a cigarette. He felt a stab of incipient angina, but what could he expect? He had already outfoxed the KGB doctors far longer than he’d ever hoped to, and no man could live forever. The cigarette calmed him, and before he lifted the other phone—the red one that ran only east—he decided that he could afford sixty seconds to think this thing through properly.

      Trespassers at Spandau. After all these years, Moscow’s cryptic warnings had finally come true. Had Centre expected this particular incident? Obviously they