Spandau Phoenix (12 page)

"The message, Colonel?" Sergeant Clary repeated.

"What? No, Sergeant. Dismissed."

"Sir." Clary beat a hasty retreat from the office, certain that his colonel would want to ponder this unpleasant development over a shot of the good stuff.

"Clary!" Rose's bark rattled the door. "Is Major Richardson still down the hall?"

The sergeant poked his head back into the office. "I'll run check, sir."

"Can't you just buzz him?"

"Uh ... the major doesn't always answer his pages, sir.

After five, that is. Says he can't stand to hear the phone while he's working."

"Who the hell can? Don't people just keep on ringing the damned thing when he doesn't answer?"

"Well, sir ... I think he's rigged some type of switch to his phone or something. He just shuts it off when he doesn't want to hear it."

Rose stuck out his bottom lip. "I see."

"Checking now, sir," said Clary, on the fly.

Since 1945, Berlin has been an island city. It is a political isiana, quadrisected by foreign conquerors, and a psychological island as insulated from the normal flow of German life as a child kidnapped from its mother. Berlin was an island before the Wall, during the Wall, and it will remain so long after the Wall has fallen. Kidnapped children can take years to recover.

The American community in Berlin is an island within that larger host.

It clusters around the U.S. Military Mission in the affluent district of Dahlem, a giant concrete block bristling with satellite dishes, radio antennae, and microwave transmitters. In this city of hastily built office towers, bomb-scarred churches, and drab concrete tenement blocks whose color accents are provided mostly by graffiti, the American housing area manages to look neat, midwestern, suburban, and safe. Known as "Little America," it is home to the sixty-six hundred servicemen, their wives, and children who comprise the symbolic U.S. presence in Berlin.

These families bustle between the U.S. Mission, the Officer's club, the well-stocked PX, the private Burger King and McDonald's, and their patio barbecues like suburbanites from Omaha or Atlanta. Only the razor wire that tops the fences surrounding the manicured lawns betrays the tension that underpins this bucolic scene.

Few Americans truly mix with the Berliners. They are more firmly tied to the United States than to the streets they walk and the faces they pass each day in Berlin. They are tied by the great airborne umbilical cord stretching from Tempelhof Airport to the mammoth military supply bases of America. Major Harry Richardson-the man Colonel Rose had sent Sergeant Clary to find-was an exception to this pattern. Richardson needed no umbilical cord in Berlin, or anywhere else. He spoke excellent German, as well as Russian-and not with the stilted State Department cadence of the middle and upper ranks of the army. He did not live in Dahlem or Zehlendorf, the ritzy addresses of choice, but in thoroughly German Wilmersdorf. He came from eL iiiuiieyed family, had attended both Harvard and Oxford, yet he had served in Vietnam and remained in the army after the war. His personal contacts ranged from TJ.S. senators to supply sergeants at distant Army outposts, from English peers to Scottish fishing guides, from Berlin senators to kabob-cooks in the Turkish quarter of Kreuzberg. And that, in Colonel Rose's eyes, made Harry Richardson one hell of an intelligence officer Harry saluted as he sauntered into Rose's office and collapsed into the colonel's infamous "hot seat." The chair dropped most people a head lower than Rose, but Harry stood six feet three inches without shoes.

His gray eyes met the stocky colonel's with the self-assured steadiness of an equal.

"Richardson," Rose said across the desk.

"Colonel."

Rose eyed Harry's uniform doubtfully. It was wrinkled and rather plain for a major. Harry had won the silver star in Vietnam, yet the only decoration he ever wore was his Combat Infantryman's Badge. Rose didn't like the wrinkles, but he liked the modesty. He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

"Bigwig Briggs is flying in from Bonn tomorrow," he announced.

Harry smiled wryly. "I thought he might."

"You did. Why's that?"

"Stands to reason, doesn't it? With the ham-fisted way the Soviets have handled the Spandau mess so far, I figured the negotiations would have to be bumped up a notch on both sides. Sir."

"Can the 'sir' crap, Harry. Just what do you think did happen last night?"

"Do you have anything that wasn't on TV?"

"Nothing substantive. Master Sergeant Jackson pretty much confirmed the press accounts of the incident, and the German police aren't saying squat. Christ, you'd think if the Russians wanted to file a complaint against the Army, they'd give it to us and not the goddamn State Department."

Harry rolled his eyes. "If it's got anything to do with Spandau, the State Department doesn't trust us, and you know why."

"Bird," Rose muttered. He sighed wearily. In 1972 the first U.S.

commandant of Spandau Prison, Lieutenant Colonel Eugene Bird, had been relieved of his duties for secretly bringing a tape recorder and camera into Spandau over a period of months and compiling a book on Rudolf Hess, which was published in 1974. The colonel's entrepreneurial spirit hadn't exactly improved the relationship between the Army and the State Department,.

"The point," Rose went on, "is that the ambassador will be here in the morning, and he'll want to grill me for breakfast. I want you with me when I talk to him, and I want to know everything he's going to say before he says it."

"No problem, Colonel."

"Okay, Harry, what's your read on this thing?"

"I'm not sure yet. I was over at Abschnitt 53 for a few minutes this morning-"

"You what?"

"I've got a friend over there," Harry explained.

"Naturally." Rose opened his bottom drawer and set the bottle of Wild Turkey between them on the desk. "Drink?"

he asked, already pouring two shots.

Harry accepted the glass, raised it briefly, then drank it off neat and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "As I was saying, Colonel, I dropped by there just to get a feel for what was going on.

The problem was, I couldn't even get near my guy's office. I got through the reporters okay, but inside the station it was wall-to-wall cops. There was a squad of Russian soldiers guarding the cellblock, and they weren't ceremonial roosters. One guy was wearing a sergeant's uniform, but he was no noncom. Wasn't even regular army. KGB down to his BVDS."

Rose groaned. "Is this the Hess thing again?"

Harry shook his head. "I don't think so, Colonel. They've run Hess into the ground already. Pardon the pun, but it's a dead issue."

"So, what is it?"

"I think this is a Russian territorial thing. Spandau was a Soviet foothold in West Berlin-small maybe, but they don't like giving it up."

"Hmm. What about the Russian accusations that someone murdered Hess?"

Harry sighed. "Colonel, I don't think the Russians ever believed Prisoner Number Seven was Hess. But if this is about Hess, I think we should stay out of it. Let the Russians knock themselves out. They've been obsessed with the case for years. But I don't think that's it. I think it's Russian paranoia, plain and simple."

"Jesus," Rose grumbled, "I thought'the goddamn Cold War was over."

Harry smiled wryly. "The reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated. Which reminds me, Colonel, I caught a glimpse of Ivan Kosov at that police station this morning."

"Kosov! What the hell was that old bear doing in our sector?"

Harry shrugged. "We'd better find out."

"Okay, what do you need?"

"Do you have a list of all personnel with access to the Spandau site last night? Ours and theirs?"

"I'll have Clary get Ray down here to crack the computer file."

"Don't bother, I'll get it."

"Ray's the only one with the codes, Harry. He buries that stuff deep."

Harry smiled thinly. "Just get me into his office."

Rose cocked an eye at Richardson, then pushed on.

"There's something else. I know you're pretty chummy with some of the Brits over here. Been fishing in Scotland with a few ministers and such. But on this thing-the Spandau thing-I'd like to keep the Brits out of it. Just for the time being. It's a matter of-"

"Understood, Colonel. You're not sure they've always played straight with us on the Hess affair."

"Exactly," Rose said, relieved. "Even if you're right about this not having anything to do with Hess, I'd feel better keeping it in-house for a while."

"No problem."

Rose smiled humorlessly. "Right. I'll just-"

"Shit," Harry muttered. "There is one problem. I've got a racquetball date this evening with a girl from the British embassy."

"Cancel it."

Harry looked thoughtful. "Colonel, I understand your thinking on this, but don't you think breaking the date might call more attention@', think!" Rose cut in with surprising "I'll tell you what force. "I think the goddamn Brits killed Hess! And during our goddamn guard month! How about that?" His face flushed. "You think I'm crazy, Major?"

Harry swallowed his surprise. "No, sir. I wouldn't say that scenario was outside the realm of possibility."

"Possibility! Ever since Gorbachev came out with the goddamn glasnost, the limeys have been quaking in their boots thinking the Russians would go soft and let Hess out to spill his guts to the world.

The Russians were the only ones vetoing his release those last few years, you know. The Brits knew if they ever had to step in and veto it, all the old questions would start again." Rose nodded angrily. "I think those smug sons-of-bitches slipped one of their ex-SAS killers over the wall last month, strangled that old Nazi, and left

us holding the goddamn bag! That's what I think about the

British, Major! And you will cancel your racquetball date as

of now. Is that clear?"

"Absolutely, Colonel."

"I want your report on my desk by oh-eight-hundred," Rose growled.

Harry stood, saluted, and marched out.

"Clary!" Rose's gruff baritone boomed through the open I

door.

"Yes, sir?"

"Let Major Richardson into Captain Donovan's office.

He's got a little work to do on the computer."

"Yes, sir."

"And Clary?"

"Sir?"

"I want one of those phone gadgets like Richardson's

got."

Grinning, Sergeant Clary backed out and pulled the door

shut.

Rose looked longingly at the Wild Turkey bottle, then

slipped it back into his bottom drawer. He closed his eyes,

leaned his chair all the way back and propped his legs up on f

the huge desk. That Richardson is one strange bird, he

thought. Damn near insubordinate sometimes. But he gets

the job done. Rose congratulated himself on a f me piece of

human resource management. Harry can handle the fairies

,from State, he thought with satisfaction, and I'll take care of

the,friggin' Russians. And if the Brits stick their stufft noses

into it, the devil take the hindmost.

6. 10 pm. mI-5 Headquarters. Charles Street, London, England Sir Neville Shaw looked up from the report with anger in his eyes. As director general of mI-5, he had witnessed his share of crises, but the one he now faced was one he had long prayed would remain buried in the ashes of history.

"This, cock-up started almost twelve hours ago!" he snapped.

"Yes, Sir Neville," admitted his deputy. "The unit on the scene reported it to General Bishop in Berlin. Bishop informed mI-6 but saw no reason to apprise us. The Russian complaint went to the Foreign Office, and the F.O. apparently felt as the general did. We've got one contact on the West Berlin police force; he's the only reason we got onto this at all. He can't tell us much, though, because he's stationed in our sector. These German trespassers were taken to a police station in the American sector. The thing's been on the telly over there since this afternoon."

"Good God," Sir Neville groaned. "One more bloody week and this would have been nothing but a minor flap."

"How do you mean, sir?"

Shaw rubbed his forehead to ease a migraine. "Forget it.

This was bound to happen sooner or later. Damned journalists and curiosity hounds poking at the story for years. Matter of time, that's all."

"Yes, sir," the deputy director commiserated.

"Who did we have at Spandau, anyway?"

"Regular military detail. The sergeant in charge said he knew nothing about any papers. He didn't have the foggiest idea of the implications."

"What monumental stupidity!" Shaw got to his feet, still staring at the report in his hands. "Can this Russian forensic report be relied upon?"

"Our technical section says the Soviets are quite good at that sort of thing, sir."

Sir Neville snorted indignantly. "Papers at Spandau-Good Christ.

Whatever has turned up over there, ten to one it's got something to do with Hess. We've got to get hold of it, Wilson, fast. Who else was at Spandau?"