Spandau Phoenix. Greg Iles

if we need any further details.” Then over Hans’s shoulder, “Bring in the last officer.”

      Hans floundered. They had drawn him into the trap, yet failed to pounce for the kill. “Am I free to go?” he asked uncertainly.

      “Unless you wish to stay with us all night,” Funk snapped.

      “Excuse me, Prefect,” Lieutenant Luhr cut in. All eyes turned to him. “I’d like to ask the sergeant a question.”

      Funk nodded.

      “Tell me, Sergeant, did you notice Officer Weiss acting in a suspicious manner at any time during the Spandau assignment?”

      Hans shook his head, remembering Weiss being dragged down the hall. “No, sir. No, I didn’t.”

      Luhr smiled with understanding, but he had the watchful eyes of a police dog. “Officer Weiss is a Jew, isn’t he, Sergeant?”

      One of the Russian colonels stirred, but his comrade laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.

      “I believe that’s right,” Hans said tentatively. “Yes, he’s Jewish.”

      Luhr gave a curt nod of the head, as if this new fact somehow explained everything.

      “You may go, Sergeant,” Funk said.

      Hans stood. They were telling him to go, yet he sensed that some unspoken understanding had passed between the men in the room. It was as if several decisions had been taken at once in some language unknown to him. He turned toward the soldiers and police at the back of the room and shuffled toward the door. No one moved to stop him. Why hadn’t Schmidt called him a liar? Why hadn’t the Russian who’d caught him searching called him a liar? And why did he feel compelled to keep lying, anyway?

      Because of the Russians, he realized. If the prefect—or even Hauer—had only questioned him alone, he could have told them. Just as Ilse wanted him to. He would have told them …

      A burly policeman held open the door. Hans walked through, hearing Funk’s tired voice resume behind him. He quickened his pace. He wanted to get out of the building as soon as possible. He entered the stairwell at a near trot, but slowed when he saw two beefy patrolmen ascending from the first floor. Nodding a perfunctory greeting, he slipped between the two men—

      Then they took him.

      Hans had no chance at all. The men used no weapons because they needed none. His arms were immobilized as if by steel bands; then the men reversed direction and began dragging him down the stairs.

      “What is this!” Hans shouted. “I’m a police officer! Let me go!”

      One of the men chuckled quietly. They reached the bottom of the stairs and turned down a disused hallway, a repository of ancient files and broken furniture. When the initial shock and disorientation wore off, Hans realized that he had to fight back somehow. But how? In the darkest part of the corridor he suddenly let his body go limp, appearing to lose his will to resist.

      “Scheisse!” one man cursed. “Dead weight.”

      “He soon will be,” commented his partner.

      Dead weight? With speed born of desperation Hans fired his elbow into a rib cage. He heard bone crack.

      “Arrghh!” The man let go.

      With his free hand Hans pummeled the other attacker’s head, aiming for his temple. The policeman held him fast.

      “You bastard …” from the darkness.

      Hans kept pounding the man’s skull. The grip on his arm was loosening—

      An explosion that seemed to detonate behind his right eye paralyzed him.

       Darkness.

      Less than sixty feet away from Hans, Colonels Ivan Kosov and Grigori Zotin stood outside an idling East German transit bus in the central parking lot of the police station. Inside the bus, the Soviet soldiers from the Spandau patrol waited for their long-delayed return to East Berlin. Most were already fast asleep.

      Zotin, a GRU colonel, did not particularly like Kosov, and he was deeply offended at the KGB colonel’s effrontery in donning the uniform of the Red Army. But what could he do? One couldn’t keep the KGB out of something this big, especially when higher powers wanted Kosov involved. Rubbing his hands together against the cold, Zotin tested the KGB man’s perception.

      “Can you believe it, Ivan? They gave them all clean reports.”

      “Of course,” Kosov growled. “What did you expect?”

      “But one of them was certainly lying!”

      “Certainly.”

      “But how did they fake the polygraph readouts?”

      Kosov looked bored. “We were six meters from the machine. They could have shown us anything.”

      Grigori Zotin knew exactly which policeman had lied, but he wanted to keep the information from Kosov long enough to initiate inquiries of his own. He was aware of the Kremlin’s interest in the Hess case, and he knew his career could take a giant leap forward if he cracked it. He made a mental note to decorate the young GRU officer who had caught the German policeman searching and showed enough sense to tell only his immediate superior. “You’re right, of course,” Zotin agreed.

      Kosov grunted.

      “What, exactly, do you think was discovered? A journal perhaps? Do you think they found some proof of—”

      “They found a hollow brick,” Kosov snapped. “Our forensic technicians say their tests indicate the brick held some type of paper for an unknown period of time. It could have been some kind of journal. It could also have been pages from a pornographic magazine. It could have been toilet paper! Never trust experts too much, Zotin.”

      The GRU colonel sucked his teeth nervously. “Don’t you think we should have at least mentioned Zinoviev during the interrogation? We could have—”

      “Idiot!” Kosov bellowed. “That name isn’t to be mentioned outside KGB! How do you even know it?”

      Zotin stepped back defensively. “One hears things in Moscow.”

      “Things that could get you a bullet in the neck,” Kosov warned.

      Zotin tried to look unworried. “I suppose we should tell the general to turn up the pressure at the commandants’ meeting tomorrow.”

      “Don’t be ridiculous,” scoffed Kosov. “Too little, too late.”

      “What about the trespassers, then? Why are you letting the Germans keep them?”

      “Because they don’t know anything.”

      “What do you suggest we do, then?” Zotin ventured warily.

      Kosov snorted. “Are you serious? It was the second to last man—Apfel. He was lying through his Bosche teeth. Those idiots did exactly what we wanted. If they’d admitted Apfel was lying, he’d be in a jail cell now, beyond our reach. As it is, he’s at our mercy. The fool is bound to return home, and when he does”—Kosov smiled coldly—“I’ll have a team waiting for him.”

      Zotin was aghast. “But how—?” He stifled his imprudent outburst with a cough. “How can you get a team over soon enough?” he covered.

      “I have two teams here now,” Kosov snapped. “Get me to a damned telephone!”

      Startled, the GRU colonel clambered aboard the bus and found a seat.

      “And Zotin?” Kosov said, leaning over his rival.

      “Yes?”

      “Keep nothing from me again. It could be very dangerous for you.”

      Zotin blanched.

      “I