Spandau Phoenix. Greg Iles
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meet you out front. I can give you five minutes.”
“Good enough.” Hans hung up and took a deep breath. This move carried some risk. In Berlin, all police contact with the press must be officially cleared beforehand. But he intended to get information from a reporter, not to give it. Without pausing to shower or shave, he stripped off his dirty uniform and threw on a pair of cotton pants and the old shirt he wore whenever he made repairs on the VW. A light raincoat and navy scarf completed his wardrobe.
The Spandau papers still lay beneath the rumpled mattress. He retrieved them, scanning them again on the off chance that he’d missed something before. At the bottom of the last page he found it: several hastily written passages in German, each apparently a separate entry:
The threats stopped for a time. Foolishly, I let myself hope that the madness had ended. But it started again last month. Can they read my thoughts? No sooner do I toy with the idea of setting down my great burden, than a soldier of Phoenix appears before me. Who is with them? Who is not? They show me pictures of an old woman, but the eyes belong to a stranger. I am certain my wife is dead.
My daughter is alive! She wears a middle-aged face and bears an unknown name, but her eyes are mine. She is a hostage roaming free, with an invisible sword hanging above her head. But safe she has remained. I am strong! The Russians have promised to find my angel, to save her, if I will but speak her name. But I do not know it! It would be useless if I did. Heydrich wiped all trace of me from the face of Germany in 1936. God alone knows what that demon told my family!
My British warders are stern like guard dogs, very stupid ones. But there are other Englanders who are not so stupid. Have you found me out, swine?
And a jagged entry: Phoenix wields my precious daughter like a sword of fire! If only they knew! Am I even a dim memory to my angel? No. Better that she never knows. I have lived a life of madness, but in the face of death I found courage. In my darkest hours I remember these lines from Ovid: “It is a smaller thing to suffer punishment than to have deserved it. The punishment can be removed, the fault will remain forever.” My long punishment shall soon cease. After all the slaughtered millions, the war finally ends for me. May God accept me into His Heaven, for I know that Heydrich and the others await me at the gates of Hell.
Surely I have paid enough.
Number 7
A car horn blared outside. Strangely shaken, Hans folded the pages into a square and stuffed them back under the mattress. Then he tugged on a pair of old sneakers, locked the front door, and bounded into the stairwell. He bumped into a tall janitor on the third floor landing, but the old man didn’t even look up from his work.
Hans found Heini Weber beside a battered red Fiat Spyder, bouncing up and down on his toes like a hyperactive child. A shaggy-haired youth with a Leica slung round his neck peered at Hans from the Fiat’s jump seat.
“So what’s the big story, Sergeant?” Weber asked.
“Over here,” said Hans, motioning toward the foyer of his building. He had seen nothing suspicious in the street, yet he could not shake the feeling that he was being watched—if not by hostile, at least by interested eyes. It’s just the photographer, he told himself. Weber followed him into the building and immediately resumed his nervous bouncing, this time against the dirty foyer wall.
“The meter’s running,” said the reporter.
“Before I tell you anything,” Hans said carefully, “I want some information.”
Weber scowled. “Do I look like a fucking librarian to you? Come on, out with it.”
Hans nodded solemnly, then played out his bait. “I may have a story for you, Heini, but … to be honest, I’m curious about what it might be worth.”
“Well, well,” the reporter deadpanned, “the police have joined the club. Listen, Sergeant, I don’t buy stories, I track them down for pay. That’s the news game, you know? If you want money, try one of the American TV networks.”
When Hans didn’t respond, Weber said, “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s your story? The mayor consorting with the American commandant’s wife? The Wall coming down tomorrow? I’ve heard them all, Sergeant. Everybody’s got a story to sell and ninety-nine percent of them are shit. What’s yours?”
Hans looked furtively toward the street. “What if,” he murmured, “what if I told you I’d got hold of something important from the war? From the Nazi period?”
“Something,” Weber echoed. “Like?”
Hans sighed anxiously. “Like papers, say. Like a diary.”
Weber scrutinized him for some moments; then his eyebrows arched cynically. “Like the diary of a Nazi war criminal, maybe?”
Hans’s eyes widened in disbelief. “How did you know?”
“Scheisse!” Weber cursed. He slapped the wall. “Is that what you got me over here for? Christ, where do they find you guys? That’s the oldest one in the book!”
Hans stared at the reporter as if he were mad. “What do you mean?”
Weber returned Hans’s gaze with something akin to pity; then he put a hand on his shoulder. “Whose diary is it, Sergeant? Mengele’s? Bormann’s?”
“Neither,” Hans snapped. He felt strangely defensive about the Spandau papers. “What the hell are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying that you probably just bought the German equivalent of the Brooklyn Bridge.”
Hans blinked, then looked away, thinking fast. He clearly wasn’t going to get any information without revealing some first. “This diary’s genuine,” he insisted. “And I can prove it.”
“Sure you can,” said Weber, glancing at his watch. “When Gerd Heidemann discovered the ‘Hitler diaries’ back in ’83, he even had Hugh Trevor-Roper swearing they were authentic. But they were crap, Sergeant, complete fakes. I don’t know where you got your diary, but I hope to God you didn’t pay much for it.”
The reporter was laughing. Hans forced himself to smile sheepishly, but what he was thinking was that he hadn’t paid one Pfennig for the Spandau papers. He had found them. And if Heini Weber knew where he had found them, the reporter would be begging him for an exclusive story. Hans heard the regular swish of a broom from the first-floor landing.
“Heini,” he said forcefully, “just tell me this. Have you heard of any missing Nazi documents or anything like that floating around recently?”
Weber shook his head in amazement. “Sergeant, what you’re talking about—Nazi diaries and things—people were selling them ten-a-penny after the war. It’s a fixed game, a scam.” His face softened. “Just cut your losses and run, Hans. Don’t embarrass yourself.”
Weber turned and grabbed the door handle, but Hans caught him by the sleeve. “But if it were authentic?” he said, surprising himself. “What kind of money would we be talking about?”
Weber pulled his arm free, but he paused for a last look at the gullible policeman. The swish of the broom had stopped, but neither man noticed. “For the real thing?” He chuckled. “No limit, Sergeant. Stern magazine paid Heidemann 3.7 million marks for first rights to the ‘Hitler diaries.’”
Hans’s jaw dropped.
“The London Sunday Times went in for 400,000 pounds, and I think both Time and Newsweek came close to getting stung.” Weber smiled with a touch of professional envy. “Heidemann was pretty smart about it, really. He set the hook by leaking a story that the diaries contained Hitler’s version of Rudolf Hess’s flight to Britain. Of course every rag in the world was panting to print a special edition solving the last big mystery of the war. They shelled out millions.