Spandau Phoenix (90 page)

Hans's eyes grew wide. "Ilse, this must have been some kind of trick to get you to talk! What did you tell them?"

"Nothing, Hans. I don't understand it all, but Herr Stern came here wearing Opa's jacket, and the kidnappers plainly believe that he is my grandfather."

"My God. Where is my father now? Did this man Stern say?"

"He told me'that he left your father, Opa, and three Israeli commandos at a hotel in Pretoria. They're waiting for instructions from Stern right now."

"Israeli commandos?" Hans felt as if he had stumbled into a madhouse.

"Where is Stern now?"

"I don't know. They were holding us together, but we split up when we escaped."

"Who is this Stern?" Hans asked irritably. "How did he even become involved?"

"He's an Israeli. He met Opa at the cabin in Wolfsburg.

He is a good man, Hans, I could feel it."

"He told you he had commandos with him? How old a man is he?"

Ilse shrugged. "Somewhere around Opa's age, I guess."

"And this is the man who's going to get us out?"

"He's done more than anyone else."

That stung Hans's pride, but he tried not to show it. If Ilse could cling to her optimism, all the better. But might they really have a chance? Had his father somehow managed to organize some kind of rescue?

"Ilse," he said'softly. "How can this man Stern help us?"

"I don't know," she said thoughtfully. "But I think he will."

Jonas Stern closed the infirmary door and flattened himself against the wall. His heart beat like mad as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The astringent tang of isopropyl alcohol and disinfectant wrinkled his nose. He had been forced to wait almost seven hours before the guards outside his room finally left their posts. He had no idea if more would be sent to take their place, but he hadn't waited to find out. Even in the dark he could make out the high-tech gleam of stainless steel and glass. Hd eased forward.

After eight short steps, he felt for the interior doors he remembered.

Finding one cool metal knob, he turned it and hit the wall switch. He saw an empty hospital bed, oxygen bottles, telemetry wires, a dozen other gadgets. Wrong room. He killed the light and closed the door.

Sliding his hands up the facing of the second door, he found the warning sign he remembered: three inverted triangles, yellow over black.

Radiation . Stern's pulse quickened as he opened the door and slipped inside.

There was light here, the dim red glow of a darkroom safelight.

He moved quickly around the X-ray table to the file shelves. One way or the other, he thought, here would be the proof. He reached into the first compartment and pulled out a six-inch stack of fourteen-by-seventeen manila folders.

Then he crossed to the viewing screens and hit the switches.

Harsh fluorescent light flooded the room. While the viewers buzzed like locusts, be pulled an exposed X-ray film from the top file folder and clipped it against the screen. Chest X-ray. It took him a few moments to orient himself.

The spinal column and ribs showed clearly as strong, graceful white lines against the gray soft tissues and the almost burnt-black spaces of the body cavities. After that it got tougher. A dozen shades of gray overlapped one another in seeming chaos. Despite his initial confusion, Stern believed that what he sought should be reasonably apparent even to a layman. He tried to discern the subtle differences between the anatomical parts, then groaned as the outlines of two pendulous breasts emerged from the shadow of the internal organs.

"'It's a bloody woman!" he muttered.

Then he noticed the small radiopaque ID-plate image on the top left corner of the film. It read: Linah #004, 4-08-86.

Stern unclipped the film, ffimst it back into the folder and dropped it on the floor. The outside of the next folder read: Stanton, Robert B.

#005. He dropped it. Smuts, Pieter #002.

The next file also belonged to Smuts. After three more names he did not recognize, he returned to the storage shelves.

The first folder he pulled out measured an inch thick by itself.

The top-left corner read: Horn, Thomas Alfred #001.

With shaking hands Stern removed the top film from the file and clipped it to the viewing screen. It showed two views of a hand positioned to reveal a hairline fracture that Stern couldn't see and cared nothing about. He jerked the film from the screen and let it fall to the floor.

The next three films showed a series of intestinal views enhanced by the ingestion of barium sulfate. These, too, Stern let fall. A comprehensive X-ray anthology followed: grossly arthritic knees, lumbar spine, cervical spine-Stern tossed them all onto the growing pile at his feet. Finally he found what he wanted-an X-ray of Alfred Horn's chest.

With mounting anticipation, he clipped the top edge of the film into the clamp and stepped back.

No breasts on this film. Stern began with what he clearly recognized-the spine. The ribs climbed both sides of the spine like curved white ladders. The lungs were the dark ovals behind them. A triangular white blob overlaid the spine. The heart, thought Stern. He knew the heart to be situated slightly left of center in the body-a fact he had learned during a silent killing course as a young man in Palestine. So the left lung should be... here. He touched the film with his right forefinger. Now... compare. Check each lung against the other until Ifind a discrepancy.

He immediately found several. Opaque disks the size of small coins seemed to float like celestial bodies in the dark lung spaces.

These disks were small scars left by a mild case of tuberculosis.

Stern did not know this, but he soon dismissed the disks as unrelated to what he sought. The first suspicious thing he saw was a kind of widening of two rib bones at one.spot in the left lung. They seemed thicker than the other ribs, more built up somehow, not quite as smooth.

Stern had an idea. Pulling another stack of films from Horn's folder, he rifled through them until he found what he wanted-an oblique X-ray of Horn's chest-a picture shot -from the side with both arms held above the head. When he pinned this film to the screen, the mark he sought jumped out at him like a contrail against the sky. He swallowed hard, raised a quivering finger to the film. Crossing the dark left lung in a hazy, transverse line was the scar of a rifle bullet. A rifle bullet fired seventy-one years ago. The opaque track diffused rapidly into the surrounding shadows, but the path of the old bullet fragments was plainly visible. With his heart pounding, Stern counted downward from the collarbone to the scarred area-one rib at a time.

... four ... five ... six ... seven."

He switched back to the first X-ray-the posterior/anterior view-and carefully counted down again, this time searching for'the ribs with the strange built-up areas.

". . . three ... four . . . five ... six"-Stern felt sweat dropping into his eyes- "seven."

"My God," he murmured, feeling a catch in his throat.

"Hess-is alive." Simultaneously a voice reverberated in his brain: The bomb for Tel Aviv is real!

Folding the two stiff chest X-rays in half, Stern thrust them inside his shirt between Zinoviev's notebook and his pounding heart.

He quickly gathered up the discarded films and folders from the floor, shoved them back into the shelves, then slipped quietly out of the X-ray room and into the dark hallway.

He sprinted to the library. In the musty darkness he tripped, picked himself up, then moved carefully on toward the tall bookshelves.

Feeling his way across them to the corner, he found the tiny brass knob.

He turned it. He had already resolved that if he found anyone other than Hess himself inside the secret shrine room, he would kill him.

The room was empty. Stern sat down behind the mahogany desk and breathed deeply. He wanted to slow his racing heart. Above him the bronze Phoenix screamed silently.

From the wall to his left a hundred Nazis gazed at him. As Stern reached for the phone to call Hauer at the Protea Hof, he froze.

Someone had been in the room since his visit.

Across from the desk-where there h-ad been only red drapes before-hung 4

gigantic oil painting-twice lifesize-of Adolf Hitler.

Rendered in muted greens and browns, the dictator gazed down with sullen intensity at the Jewish intruder. Someone had pulled back the drapes to admire the Fuhrer. Gooseflesh rose on Stern's neck. His left cheek began to twitch. After working his dry mouth furiously, the old Israeli spat a wad of mucus across the desk onto the canvas. It struck Hitler just above his groin. Stern raised his left arm, made a fist, and shook it at the portrait.

"Never again!" he vowed. He lifted the phone.

455 A.M. Protea Hof Hotel, Pretoria

Hauer came off the bed like a fighter pilot hearing a scramble alar-m.

Gadi and Aaron sat half-conscious against the foyer walls; Professor Natterman lay on the opposite bed, his right thigh wrapped in gauze, his eyes half-closed from the effect of the morphine.

"Stern?" Hauer said.

"It's him!"

The young commandos leapt to their feet. Natterman tried to sit up, then lay back groaning.

"Get a pen and paper," Stern ordered. "Write down everything I tell you."

Hauer looked at Gadi Abrams, who stood ready to copy down every syllable he repeated. "We're ready," he said.

'Go ahead."

Stern spoke in a rapid whisper. "I'm being held at a private estate in the northern Transvaal. It's situated halfway between the Kruger National Park and a village called Giyani. Have you got that?"

"Got it."

"The house belongs to a man named Thomas Alfred Horn, H-O-R-N."

"H-O-R-N, Thomas Alfred Horn."

Behind Hauer, Professor Natterman gasped. His right arm shot out and caught Hauer's sleeve. "Captain!"

"Hold it, Stern. The professor-" "What did you say?" Natterman croaked." What name did you just say?"

Gadi read from his notes. "Horn, Thomas Alfred. H-O-R-N."

"Mother of God. It can't be."

"Go on, Stern," Hauer said angrily. "I think the professor is hallucinating."

"No, he recognizes the name."

"He's alive!" Natterman cried. "I was right! Hess is alive!"

Hauer pulled away from Natterman's grasp. "Stern, the professor's yelling about Rudolf Hess."

"You can tell the old fool he was right. Rudolf Hess is alive and reasonably well. He is also quite mad."

Natterman clawed at Hauer. "Give me the phone, Captain!"

Hauer held the receiver away. "Stern said to tell you that you were right, Professor. That Rudolf Hess is alive. I think you're both mad."

Natterman shook his head. "Perfectly sane, Captain. I understand it all now, every wretched bit of it. Alfred Horn was the name Hess'_

double gave the farmer when he first '@chuted into Scotland. My God, it's so obvious!"

"Hauer!" Stern snapped, his voice strained. "Forget about @,Hess.

We've got a crisis here."

"I'm listening."

"Mounting a rescue along the lines we discussed is no longer an option.

Whatever security forces Hess has here, they were sufficient to repel a determined attack by a force larger than yours. The stakes have gone up, Hauer, up beyond belief. Yesterday you a@ked me what I was after.

Well, I've found it. Last night Frau Apfel witnessed negotiations between Hess and a group of Arabs for a nuclear weapon."

Hauer's eyes met Gadi's. The young Israeli was watching him like a cat.

"I haven't seen the weapon myself," Stern continued, "but I have no doubt whatsoever that it exists."

"What about HansT' Hauer asked. "And Ilse. Are they still alive?"

"They are. But if you want to see your son alive again 40 Captain, this is what you must do. Go to the Union Building-that's the huge government building on the hill in central Pretoria. It's floodlit every night. On the diird floor you will find the office of General Jaap Steyn, chief of the National Intelligence Service. That's S-T-E-Y-N. Jaap Steyn is a friend to me and to Israel. Explain the situation in the way you think best, but you tell him he needs to mount an assault of sufficient strength to reduce a fortified position.

You're at least four hours away from me now, so you'll need to move fast. And keep Hess's name out of this altogether, From this moment on we speak only of Alfred Horn."

"Just a damned minute," Hauer protested. "You think T.

can waltz into the offices of South African Intelligence and demand a paramilitary operation on the basis of wild accusations?

They'll laugh me out of the building. If they don't clap me in irons first."

"They'll have no choice but to cooperate," Stern said evenly. "My name should be sufficient to get Jaap Steyn moving, but in case it's not, I'm going to give you some information that will ensure his cooperation.

Write down every single word of this."

Hauer signaled Gadi to hand over the pen and paper.

Stern spoke slowly. "There now exists between the Republic of South Africa and the State of Israel a secret military contingency plan called Aliyah Beth-Gadi can spell it for you later. In Hebrew, Aliyah Beth means 'going up to Zion.' This plan mandates the clandestine removal of ..." 1