The Secret of Spandau (38 page)

Red followed him out, turning left, across the intersection of the main block and the wings. Ahead was the entrance to the cell-block where Hess had been held since 1947. No-one had ever entered there illegally. The Soviet guard on the door stiffened and scraped one of his boots on the stone floor.

‘Ignore him,' muttered the chief warder. He walked up to the steel door, took out a bunch of keys attached to a chain and unlocked and unbolted it. They stepped past the guard and inside the inner cell-block.

It was not markedly different from the rest of Spandau, though the dark green and cream paint was fresher and the floor buffed as in the guardroom. Some relics from the nineteenth century, a set of ornamental iron brackets picked out in a white gloss, supported the twelve-foot ceiling. Modernity was represented by hot water pipes and radiators and a fire-hose attached to the wall. There were two plain tables. Steel cell doors stretched ahead on either side.

Red's skin prickled. He had shed most of his fears. Now he felt a rush of exhilaration.

This, he thought, is where it has all been leading. Jane, darling, you said it was crazy, I couldn't walk into Spandau, but here I am, about to come face to face with old man Rudolf. If I get out – for God's sake,
when
I get out – you're going to have to admit that even if most of what I say is bullshit, one time, one never-to-be-forgotten time, it wasn't.

Keeping a yard behind the chief warder, partly to indicate respect and partly for reasons of cover, he started the thirty-metre walk to where the Soviet guard stood on duty at the far end of the corridor, beside an open door. To his right were the white-painted doors of cells once occupied by the seven war criminals. Hess, he knew, had been moved to the other side of the corridor in 1970, into a double cell knocked into one, which had formerly been used as a chapel.

They had not gone more than a few paces when someone in warder's uniform stepped out of a door midway along the block. The chief warder reacted quickly. ‘Ah, Shaporenko.' He spoke in Russian, evidently giving some instruction.

Red knew it was impossible to stay obscured behind the small Frenchman, so when Shaporenko caught his eye, he nodded sociably. There was an awkward hiatus. The Russian stared back, frowning, then moved past them to carry out the order.

Now for the man on guard. They approached him casually. Like the other Soviet Army soldiers Red had met in Spandau, he was probably no older than twenty. He had both hands on his sub-machine gun, but his posture was relaxed. He must have been told that the men in blue uniforms were prison warders.

Then it all happened.

Shaporenko, his suspicion alerted, shouted something from the far end of the block. The chief warder wheeled around and shouted back. Red had no idea what was said, and he wasn't waiting for a translation. He attacked the guard. He shoved the muzzle of his gun upwards with such force that it caught the man on the chin, jolting his head back. In the same movement, he swung his knee hard into the Russian's groin. He felt the impact of bone against bone. Anything between made no impression, except on the soldier, who creased and fell towards him like wet wallpaper that had failed to stick.

The man was conscious, but in no state to resist. Red tugged the gun away and trained it on Shaporenko, who raised his hands. ‘Lock him in one of the empty cells,' he yelled to the chief warder, without taking his eyes off the Russian. ‘Tell him I won't hesitate to shoot.'

The chief warder crossed to one of the cell doors and unbolted it.

Shaporenko made no trouble. He was thankful to be out of Red's line of fire. The door slammed on him.

‘This one, too,' said Red, eyeing the guard, who was trying to sit up. His face was bleeding where the gun had struck it.

The chief warder opened a second cell and helped the soldier into it. He climbed onto the bed and was lying still when the door was shut.

‘Thank God!' Red muttered.

Turning slightly, he was conscious of a figure almost at his elbow. White-haired, in a white singlet and dark trousers, a man was standing in the cell doorway in the act of putting on his glasses.

Rudolf Hess.

Jane sat alone with a mug of black coffee in an all-night café somewhere north of the city centre. She had asked the taxi-driver to find a place that was still open. On the floor at her feet was the sportsbag containing Red's clothes. The gash in the side was proof that she had not been dreaming.

Two shabbily-dressed, middle-aged men occupied other tables. They probably took Jane for another of the city's homeless. There was no point in returning to Haselhorst. The mental agony would be worse in Red's place, surrounded by his things, knowing she had failed him.

She despised herself. She had screwed everything up. She had to hold the mug with both hands to stop it from spilling, she was in such a state. Whatever illusions she had had about herself as a frontline journalist were shattered. At the first flurry of action, she had caved in. She had read about violence often enough and watched it on the screen, deeply moved by the suffering, but without ever understanding what it is like to be involved. The act of grappling with Heidrun, twisting her arm, helping Red to tie her to the bed, now filled her with revulsion. And the moment of terror when Heidrun had come at her with the knife would stay with her for ever.

But what was that to the violence coming to Red because of her stupidity? That bitch Heidrun had crossed the border to shop Red to the Russians.

‘Oh, God. God help me!'

One of the shabby men stared across at her, and then back at his newspaper. He would probably not have given a glance if she had spoken in German. It was nothing remarkable to hear someone talking to God in an all-night café.

Jane had a vivid picture of Red risking his life to bluff his way to Hess, actually getting into the prison, only to be betrayed by a phone call from the KGB. What would they do to him?

She was going to vomit. She retched.

The café owner pointed to the door marked
Damen
. No one else looked up.

When she came back, one of the men had gone, and so had the bag with Red's clothes. She ran to the door and looked up the street. It was deserted.

‘Bastard!'

But her head was more clear and her brain was functioning better. There was something else Red had told her to do. She ran over to the counter.

‘Where is Der Chamissoplatz?'

‘Chamissoplatz? That is Kreuzberg. Near Tempelhof, the airport. You know?'

‘How far from here?'

‘A taxi-ride. You want me to call one?'

‘Please. And do you have a telephone directory?'

He was positively eager to help, no doubt wanting to be rid of her. He turned to the shelf behind him. ‘What name?'

‘Becker. Willi Becker.'

‘Plenty of Beckers in Berlin.'

‘But in Chamissoplatz?'

In twenty minutes, a taxi was setting her down in a spacious, poorly-illuminated square formed by a children's playground surrounded by trees. Five-storey blocks with darkened windows and arched entrances loomed up on each side. She looked for numbers, found the entrance she wanted and went upstairs. Willi Becker's name was on the door.

Jane pressed the bell, conscious that this was some ungodly hour of the morning and she spoke almost no German. She had to press it twice more before she heard the click of a light-switch inside. The door opened a fraction.

‘Ja?'

‘
Herr Becker? Sprechen Sie Englisch?
Please, Red told me to come.'

‘Red?'

‘Red Goodbody.'

‘Ah … Red!' A spluttering cough turned into a laugh and he came out with a passable impression of Red. ‘Now pull the other one, darling.'

Willi Becker opened the door to admit her. Short, dark, almost bald, in his forties if not older, he had only one good eye. Where the other should have been was a depression overlaid with loose skin. He was wrapped in a brown duvet. She had expected him to be a pressman, but there was a bright yellow jacket hanging in the hall, the sort worn by people who work on the roads.

‘You look all used up,' said Becker. ‘Want to get some sleep?'

Jane shook her head. ‘I need help.'

‘Give me two minutes, then.'

She walked into a cheaply-furnished room that smelt of tobacco. There was a framed photo in black and white over the fireplace of Becker and his bride, a slight, dark-haired girl in a sixties-style, calf-length dress. Jane could hear no voices from the room where Becker had gone to dress, and the place didn't give the impression of a woman's presence, so she assumed that the girl had died.

He came back in green cords and a black sweater. He had put in an artificial eye which didn't match the bloodshot look of the real one. Despite his unshaven face, creased from interrupted sleep, he still managed to look approachable, a sympathetic listener.

‘So who are you and what sort of trouble are you in?'

Just as Red had suggested, she told him everything.

Occasionally Becker interrupted the narrative to say affectionately, almost in admiration, ‘He's a bloody madman, you know.'

By the end, she knew he would do anything in his power to help, but the process of telling the story had brought home to her the realisation that there was little anyone could do now. Willi Becker was a reassuring listener, a comfort in adversity, but he was in no position to influence events inside the walls of Spandau Prison.

‘This Heidrun Kassner. You're sure she is working for the Soviets?'

‘Red is just as sure as I am.'

‘And you are certain she has gone over?'

‘I watched her go.'

Becker shook his head. ‘Let's face it – Red is finished. Don't blame yourself. He was a crazy idiot. Cigarette?'

‘But he said if I came to you …' Jane sobbed, and couldn't go on.

‘I would try to help, huh? Because I'm a crazy idiot also?' He put a cigarette to his lips and reached for a lighter. ‘I have to be crazy to go on smoking these things.' He lit up and exhaled. ‘Would you pass me the phone? Let's see who else is out of his mind in this crazy schizoid city.'

He had the look of a man who has heard a disturbance on his doorstep and comes outside to see who is responsible. Frowning, peering through his plastic lenses, he took in the scene. His face and forearms, tanned from the hours he spent each day in the garden, were differentiated sharply from his lily-white upper arms and shoulders, lank where the muscle had wasted. He seemed conscious of the exposure, and crossed his arms. Age had given him a slight stoop, but had left him with a good head of soft, white hair. Few traces remained of the stiff-backed, brown-uniformed figure with the swastika arm-band pictured so often at Hitler's side or on the rostrum at party rallies.

Red scrutinised the face. Among the many strange theories about Hess was the elaborate one that this man was a fake, a lookalike substitute for the real Deputy Führer. Allowing that the old man had not yet put in his dentures, it was difficult to form an opinion, but it was possible to recognize an unusual characteristic of the man pictured in pre-war photographs: the width and angularity of his jawbone below the ears, tapering to a short, neat chin.

For Red, the features that fixed this aged man in carpet slippers beyond any doubt as the
Stellvertreter
were the eyes. Cavernous under still-dark, still-thick brows, they surveyed the scene without a flicker, penetrating and analytical. To be the object of their scrutiny, even briefly, was disturbing. Red was made to feel an unwelcome intruder into the humiliation of a man of high rank who had not entirely lost his pride. He resisted the impulse to back off.

Rudolf Hess didn't speak. He turned and shuffled back into his cell without a word. Presumably, he had taken stock, formed his judgement, and retired. In his long imprisonment, he had seen and experienced a variety of human behaviour – cruelties and kindnesses, loyalties and betrayals. He was obliged to take whatever was handed out, but not always in silence. If the accounts were true, no one had protested as forcibly or as persistently as he about every aspect of the regime: food he regarded as poisonous, work in the garden growing tobacco ‘for the slaves of nicotine', insensitivities from the warders and the other prisoners. Latterly, he had given up complaining. He had detached himself mentally, fatalistic, expecting nothing and accepting everything.

Unusually, Red hesitated. There was precious little time, but so much rested on getting this right.

The chief warder was at his side. ‘You see what I mean? He has been here so long that he's become a brick wall himself.'

‘He thinks I'm a warder. Could you tell him I'm not one of the warders?'

‘Let him put his teeth in first.'

There was sense in that. Allow the old man some self-respect.

The chief warder glanced at the sub-machine gun and shook his head reproachfully. ‘You shouldn't have attacked the guard. It means trouble.'

‘I was in trouble already. He would have shot me, wouldn't he? Shaporenko would have buggered off and raised the bloody alarm.'

‘It won't be long before the bloody alarm is raised, anyway,' the chief warder pointed out. ‘I'm supposed to be taking Hess to the interview room. Russian generals don't like to be kept waiting.'

‘Jesus, I'd forgotten the bloody general. Can we lock ourselves in?'

‘No. The locks are on the outsides of the doors.'

‘We've got the gun.'

‘I cannot agree to use the gun.'

‘Thanks. I needed some encouragement.' Red started unbuttoning the tunic. ‘What's your name, squire?'

‘Petitjean.'

‘OK, I'm Red Goodbody. Will you go in now and tell Hess I'm not a warder, I'm a journalist from England with important news for him? Then I'll take over.'