Spandau Phoenix. Greg Iles

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СКАЧАТЬ Negev desert—something bilious had risen from his core and driven him to this place. Stern had not resisted. Such premonitions came infrequently, and experience had taught him they were not to be ignored.

      Watching the bulwarked prison being crushed into powder, he felt opposing waves of triumph and guilt roll through his chest. He had known—he knew—men and women who had passed through Spandau on their way to the death factories of Mauthausen and Birkenau. Part of him wished the prison could remain standing, as a monument to those souls, and to the punishment meted out to their murderers.

      Punishment, he thought, but not justice. Never justice.

      Stern reached into a worn leather bag at his side and withdrew an orange. He peeled it while he watched the demolition. The light was almost gone. In the distance a huge yellow crane backed too quickly across the prison courtyard. Stern tensed as the flagstones cracked like brittle bones.

      Ten minutes later the mechanical monsters ground to a screeching halt. While the senior British officer issued his dismissal orders, a pale yellow Berlin city bus rumbled up to the prison, headlights cutting through the lightly falling snow. The moment it stopped, twenty-four soldiers dressed in a potpourri of uniforms spilled into the darkening prison yard and broke into four groups of six. These soldiers represented a compromise typical of the farcical Four Power administration of Spandau. The normal month-long guard tours were handled by rota, and went off with a minimum of friction. But the destruction of the prison, like every previous disruption of routine, had brought chaos. First the Russians had refused to accept German police security at the prison. Then—because no Allied nation trusted any of its “allies” to guard Spandau’s ruins alone—they decided they would all do it, with a token detachment of West Berlin police along to keep up appearances. While the Royal Engineers boarded the idling bus, the NCO’s of the four guard details deployed their men throughout the compound.

      Near the shattered prison gate, a black American master sergeant gave his squad a final brief: “Okay, ladies. Everybody’s got his sector map, right?”

      “Sir!” barked his troops in unison.

      “Then listen up. This ain’t gate duty at the base, got it? The Germs have the perimeter—we got the interior. Our orders are to guard this wreckage. That’s ostensibly, as the captain says. We are here to watch the Russians. They watch us; we watch them. Same old same old, right? Only these Ivans probably ain’t grunts, dig? Probably GRU—maybe even KGB. So keep your pots on and your slits open. Questions?”

      “How long’s the gig, Sarge?”

      “This patrol lasts twelve hours, Chapman, six to six. If you’re still awake then—and you’d better be—then you can get back to your hot little pastry on the Bendlerstrasse.” When the laughter died, the sergeant grinned and barked, “Spread out, gentlemen! The enemy is already in place.”

      As the six Americans fanned out into the yard, a green-and-white Volkswagen van marked POLIZEI stopped in the street before the prison. It waited for a break in traffic, then jounced over the curb and came to rest before the command trailer steps. Instantly, six men wearing the dusty green uniform of the West Berlin police trundled out of its cargo door and lined up between the van and the trailer.

      Dieter Hauer, the captain in charge of the police contingent, climbed down from the driver’s seat and stepped around the van. He had an arresting face, with a strong jaw and a full military mustache. His clear gray eyes swept once across the wrecked prison lot. In the dusk he noticed that the foul-weather ponchos of the Allied soldiers gave the impression that they all served the same army. Hauer knew better. Those young men were a fragmented muster of jangling nerves and suspicion—two dozen accidents waiting to happen.

      The Germans call their police bullen—“bulls”—and Hauer personified the nickname. Even at fifty-five, his powerful, barrel-chested body radiated enough authority to intimidate men thirty years his junior. He wore neither gloves, helmet, nor cap against the cold, and contrary to what the recruits in his unit suspected, this was no affectation meant to impress them. Rather, as people who knew him were aware, he possessed an almost inhuman resilience against external annoyances, whether natural or man-made. Hauer called, “Attention!” as he stepped back around the van. His officers formed a tight unit beneath the command trailer’s harsh floodlamp.

      “I’ve told anyone who’d listen that we didn’t want this assignment,” he said. “Naturally no one gives a shit.”

      There were a few nervous chuckles. Hauer spat onto the snow. A hostage-recovery specialist, he plainly considered this token guard detail an affront to his dignity. “You should feel very safe tonight, gentlemen,” he continued with heavy sarcasm. “We have the soldiers of France, England, the United States, and Mother Russia with us tonight. They are here to provide the security which we, the West Berlin police, are deemed unfit to provide.” Hauer clasped his hands behind his back. “I’m sure you men feel as I do about this, but nothing can be done.

      “You know your assignments. Four of you will guard the perimeter. Apfel, Weiss—you’re designated rovers. You’ll patrol at random, watching for improper conduct among the regular troops. What constitutes ‘improper conduct’ here, I have not been told. I assume it means unsanctioned searches or provocation between forces. Everyone do your best to stay clear of the Russians. Whatever agencies those men out there serve, I doubt it’s the Red Army. If you have a problem, sound your whistle and wait. I’ll come to you. Everyone else hold your position until instructed otherwise.”

      Hauer paused, staring into the young faces around him. His eyes lingered on a reddish-blond sergeant with gray eyes, then flicked away. “Be cautious,” he said evenly, “but don’t be timid. We are on German soil, regardless of what any political document may say. Any provocation, verbal or physical, will be reported to me immediately. Immediately.”

      The venom in Hauer’s voice made it plain he would brook no insult from the Soviets or anyone else. He spoke as though he might even welcome it. “Check your sector maps carefully,” he added. “I want no mistakes tonight. You will show these soldier boys the meaning of professionalism and discipline. Go!”

      Six policemen scattered.

      Hans Apfel, the reddish-blond sergeant whom Hauer had designated one of the rovers, trotted about twenty meters, then stopped and looked back at his superior. Hauer was studying a map of the prison, an unlit cigar clamped between his teeth. Hans started to walk back, but the American sergeant suddenly appeared from behind the police van and engaged Hauer in quiet conversation.

      Hans turned and struck out across the snow, following the line of the Wilhemstrasse to his left. Angrily, he crushed a loose window pane beneath his boot. With no warning at all this day had become one of the most uncomfortable of his life. One minute he had been on his way out of the Friedrichstrasse police station, headed home to his wife; the next a duty sergeant had tapped him on the shoulder, said he needed a good man for a secret detail, and practically thrust Hans into a van headed for Spandau Prison. That in itself was a pain in the ass. Double shifts were hell, especially those that had to be pulled on foot in the snow.

      But that wasn’t the real source of Hans’s discomfort. The problem was that the commander of the guard detail, Captain Dieter Hauer, was Hans’s father. None of the other men on this detail knew that—for which Hans was grateful—but he had a strange feeling that might soon change. During the ride to Spandau, he had stared resolutely out of the van window, refusing to be drawn into conversation. He couldn’t understand how it had happened. He and his father had a long-standing arrangement—a simple agreement designed to deal with a complex family situation—and Hauer must have broken it. It was the only explanation. After a few СКАЧАТЬ