Spandau Phoenix. Greg Iles

my group was broken up and sent to various locations to await duty. I was sent first to Gronau, where I was kept in isolation, then later to a remote airfield at Aalborg, Denmark. I repeatedly requested to be allowed to see my wife and daughter, but by this time Germany was at war and my requests were summarily rejected. I spent my time in solitude, reviewing my Hess materials and occasionally being visited by an SD officer. I did have access to newspapers, and from them I deduced that Hess’s position in the Nazi hierarchy seemed to have declined somewhat in favor of the generals since the outbreak of war. I took this to be the reason I had not yet been assigned a mission.

       I must admit that, in spite of the hardship of the duty, I was very proud of the degree to which I could impersonate the Deputy Führer. During my final interview with Hess at the school, he was so shocked by my proficiency that his reaction verged on disorientation. Actually, a few of the other “students” had honed their skills to a finer edge than my own, but what happened to them I have no idea …

      Natterman removed his spectacles, put the papers back into his briefcase, then closed and locked it. “A rather detailed story to be made up out of thin air, wouldn’t you say? And that’s only the first two pages.”

      Ilse was smiling with satisfaction. “Very detailed,” she agreed. “So detailed that it destroys your earlier argument. If this ‘double’ was so meticulously trained to imitate Hess, he certainly wouldn’t make factual mistakes as obvious as missing Hess’s birthday, or eating meat when Hess was a vegetarian. Would he?”

      Natterman met his granddaughter’s triumphant smile with one of his own. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about that since I first translated the papers. You’re quite right: a trained double wouldn’t make factual mistakes like that—not unless he did so on purpose.”

      Ilse’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

      “Just this. Since the double remained silent for all these years, he could only have done so for one of two reasons: either he was a fanatical Nazi right up until the end, which I don’t accept, or—and this is supported by the papers—the fear of some terrible retribution kept him from speaking out. If we accept that scenario, Number Seven’s ‘mistakes’ appear to me to be a cry for help—a quiet but desperate attempt to provoke skeptics to investigate his case and thus uncover the truth. And believe me, that cry was heard. Hundreds of scholars and authors have investigated the case. Dozens of books have been written, more every year.” Natterman held up an admonishing finger. “The more relevant question is this: Why would the real Hess make such mistakes?”

      “Because he was crazy!” Ilse retorted. “Everyone’s known that for years.”

      “Everyone has said that for years,” Natterman corrected. “Hitler and Churchill started that rumor, yet there’s not one scrap of evidence suggesting that Hess was unbalanced right up until the day he flew to Britain. He trained months for that mission. Can you seriously believe Hitler didn’t know that? Hess was eccentric, yes. But mad? It was the men he left behind who were mad!”

      “Hess could have written those papers himself,” she argued. “If Hess didn’t know Latin when he went into Spandau, he certainly could have learned it during his years of imprisonment.”

      “True,” Natterman admitted. “But unlikely. Did you note the quote from Ovid? High-flying language for a self-taught student. But that’s verifiable, in any case.”

      Ilse tasted her tea. It had gone cold. “Opa, you can’t really believe that the Allies kept the wrong man in prison all these years.”

      “Why not? Ilse, you should understand something. These papers do not exist in a vacuum. They merely confirm a body of evidence which has been accumulating for decades. Circumstantial evidence, testimonial evidence, medical evidence—”

      “What medical evidence?”

      The professor smiled; he loved nothing more than a willing student. “Evidence unearthed by a British army surgeon who examined Number Seven while he was in Spandau. He’s the man who really cracked this case open. My God, he’ll be ecstatic when he finds out about these papers.”

      “What evidence did he discover?”

      “A war wound. Or a lack of one, I should say. This surgeon was one of Hess’s doctors in Spandau, and in the course of his duties he came across Hess’s First World War record. Hess was wounded three times in that war—the worst wound being a rifle bullet through the lung. Yet when the surgeon examined Number Seven, he found no scars on the chest or back where that wound should have been. And after looking into the matter further—examining the prisoner’s X rays—he found no radiographic evidence of such a wound. There should have been scarring of the lung, caused by the force of the bullet and other organic particles tearing through it. But the surgeon found none. He had quite a bit of experience with gunshot wounds, too. He’d done a tour of duty in Northern Ireland.”

      Natterman chuckled at Ilse’s bewildered expression. “You’re surprised by my knowledge? You shouldn’t be. Any German or British historian could tell you as much.” He laughed. “I could give you twice as much speculation on who started the Reichstag fire!”

      “But the details,” she said suspiciously. “Dates, medical evidence … It’s almost as if you were studying the case when I called you.”

      The professor’s face grew grave. “My dear, you have obviously failed to grasp the monumental importance of this find. These papers could shake the world. The time period they describe—the forty-four days beginning with Rudolf Hess’s flight to Britain and ending with Hitler’s invasion of Russia—represents the turning point of the entire Second World War, of the entire twentieth century. In the spring of 1941, Adolf Hitler held the future of the world in his hands. Of all Europe, only England still held out against him. The Americans were still a year from entering the war. German U-boats ruled the seas. If Hitler had pressed home the attack against England with all his forces, the British wouldn’t have stood a chance. The Americans would have been denied their staging post for a European invasion, and Hitler could have turned his full might against Russia with his flanks protected.” Natterman held up a long, crooked finger. “But he didn’t invade England. And no one knows why.”

      The professor began pacing the kitchen, punctuating his questions by stabbing the air with his right forefinger. “In 1940 Hitler let the British Army escape at Dunkirk. Why? All through the fall of 1940 and the spring of ’41 he delayed invading Britain. Why? Operation Sea-Lion—the planned invasion of Britain—was a joke. Hitler’s best generals have admitted this. Churchill publicly taunted Hitler, yet still he delayed. Why? And then the core of the whole mad puzzle: On May tenth, Rudolf Hess flew to Britain on a secret mission. Scarcely a month later”—Natterman clapped his hands together with a crack—“Hitler threw his armies into the icy depths of Russia to be slaughtered. Ilse, that single decision doomed Nazi Germany. It gave Churchill the time he needed to rearm England and to draw Roosevelt into the war. It was military suicide, and Hitler knew it! For twenty years he had sworn he would never fight a two-front war. He had publicly proclaimed such a war unwinnable. So why did he do it?”

      Ilse blinked. “Do you know?”

      Natterman nodded sagely. “I think I do. There are dozens of complex theories, but I think the answer is painfully simple: Hitler had no choice. I don’t believe he ever intended to invade England. Russia was his target all along; his own writings confirm this. Hitler hated Churchill, but he had tremendous respect for the English as a people—fellow Nordics and all that. I think Hitler put off invading Britain because he believed—right up until it was too late—that England could be neutralized without firing a shot. I think certain elements of the British government were prepared to sign a peace treaty with Hitler, so that he would be free to destroy Communist Russia. And I believe Rudolf Hess was Hitler’s secret envoy to those Englishmen. The moment Hess’s presence in England was made public, Joseph Stalin accused the British of conspiring with Hitler.