Spandau Phoenix

“Latin,” Hauer mused, leaning back into his seat. “Who wrote the papers? Were they signed?”

Hans shrugged uncomfortably. “There wasn’t any name. Just a number.”

“A number?” Hauer’s eyes grew wide. “What number, Hans?”

“Seven, goddamnit! The lucky number. What a fucking joke. Now can we get out of here?”

Hauer shook his head slowly. “Hess,” he murmured. “It’s impossible. The restrictions, the endless searches. It can’t be.”

Hans ground his teeth angrily. “Captain, I know what you’re talking about, but right now I don’t care! I just want to know my wife is safe!”

Hauer laid a hand on his shoulder. “Where are these papers now?”

“At the apartment.”

“No! You made copies?”

“No, damn it! I don’t care about the papers anymore! We’re going to get Ilse now!”

Hauer pinned him against the seat with an arm of iron. “You saw Weiss, didn’t you? If you go charging into your apartment, the same thing could happen to you. And to Ilse.”

The memory of Weiss’s mutilated corpse brought a strange stillness over Hans. “What did happen to Weiss?”

Hauer sighed. “Someone got too impatient, pushed the doctor too far. Probably Luhr, Funk’s personal stormtrooper.” He shook his head. “Later tonight they’ll shoot his body full of cocaine and dump him in the Havel.”

“My God,” Hans breathed. “You saw it. You were there.” He balled his hands into fists.

“Hans! Get hold of yourself! I did not see Weiss tortured.”

“You knew about his chest!”

Hauer grimaced. “I overheard someone talking about it. It’s … it’s sort of a specialty of theirs. With certain Jews. Why did that boy join the department at all? You’d think a Jew would know better.”

Hans’s mouth fell open. “You’re saying it was Weiss’s fault someone mutilated him?”

“I’m saying if you’re a lamb you don’t run with the wolf pack!”

The memory of Weiss brought back the mark on Rolf’s head, the haunting eye from the Spandau papers. “What about the tattoo?” Hans asked quietly. “What does that mean?”

Hauer shook his head. “It’s complicated, Hans. The eye is a mark some people use—some very dangerous people. I’m not one of them. I just wanted you to remember the design.” He leaned his head across the seat. “Look behind my right ear. In the hair. If I had the tattoo, it would be there.”

Hans studied Hauer’s close-cropped scalp, but he saw no tattoo.

“I’m not one of them,” said Hauer, straightening up. “But until five minutes ago, they thought I was. We’ve got to find somewhere safe to hide, Hans, somewhere with a phone. Before we can get your wife, we’ve got to know what Funk and Luhr are up to. I’ve got a man inside the station I can call—”

“So let’s go upstairs! There are probably a dozen phones up in the lobby. I can call Ilse, warn her to get out!” Hans reached for the door handle, but Hauer stopped him again.

“We can’t, Hans. We’re in uniform. Everyone will be staring at the two beat-up cops using the pay phones. Funk’s men would find us in no time.”

Hans jerked his arm free. “Where, then? A friend’s house?”

“No. No friends, no family. It’s got to be untraceable. An empty house or … something.”

Slowly, almost mechanically, Hans removed his wallet from his pants pocket and took out a tattered white business card. He stared at it a moment, then handed it to Hauer.

“What’s this?” Hauer read aloud: “‘Benjamin Ochs, The Best Tailor in Berlin.’ You want to go to your tailor shop?”

“He’s not my tailor,” Hans said tersely.

“Eleven-fifty Goethestrasse. No one can trace you to this place?”

“Trust me.”

Hauer looked skeptical.

Hans turned away. The stress of being treated like an animal, caged and hunted, was congealing into something cold and hard in the pit of his stomach. With a guttural groan he slammed his open hand against the dashboard. “Get this fucking car moving!”

Hauer looked hard into Hans’s eyes, gauging the mettle there. “Right,” he said finally. He fired the engine and roared out of the hotel garage with tires squealing, making for the Goethestrasse.

EIGHT (#ulink_8d3fdbbb-6cba-5ba2-bdc0-52083f91e2b1)

10:25P.M.Lützenstrasse: West Berlin

The men waiting within and without Ilse’s apartment building were not police. They were KGB agents sent to the Lützenstrasse by Colonel Ivan Kosov. Kosov himself waited impatiently in a second BMW parked at the end of the block. Kosov hated stakeouts. Long ago he had foolishly thought that once he attained sufficient rank he would be spared the monotony of these endless vigils. And perhaps one day he would. But tonight was one more in an endless series of proofs to the contrary. Exasperated, he reached for the radio microphone mounted on the auto’s dash.

“Report, One,” he said.

“The lobby’s clear,” crackled a metallic voice.

“Two?”

“Nothing in the hall. The door’s locked, no sound from inside.”

“Four?”

“Three’s with me. No sign of Apfel or the wife.”

“Stay awake,” Kosov said gruffly. “Out.”

Shit, he thought, how long will it take? Sitting in this ball-freezing cold, chattering over the short-range radios as if simply alternating frequencies could mask the Russian-accented commands ricocheting through the Berlin audio net like lines from a bad movie. He wished there were another way. But he knew there wasn’t.

Three floors above Kosov, the door to apartment 43 opened and two garishly made-up redheads stepped into the hallway. One locked the door while her young companion stared invitingly at the man standing at attention outside apartment 40. The young woman nudged her middle-aged companion, who chuckled and led the way over to the silent man.

“Na, mein Süsser,” Eva flirted in a husky voice. “All alone up here tonight?”

Taken aback by her directness, the Russian stared back in silence. She’s at least fifty, he thought, much too old for my taste. But you’re something else altogether, he thought, hungrily eyeing the younger woman’s cleavage. With a flash of surprise, he realized that she was the demure blonde he had seen enter apartment 43 twenty minutes earlier. He barely recognized her beneath the heavy makeup and wig. She can’t be more than twenty-five, he guessed, and breasts like a Georgian goddess …

“Guten Abend, Fräulein,” he said to the younger woman. “I think you looked much better before.”