Читать книгу Spandau Phoenix - Greg Iles - Страница 14

Colonel Godfrey A. “God” Rose reached into the bottom drawer of his mammoth Victorian desk, withdrew a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon, and gazed fondly at the label. For five exhausting hours the U.S. Army’s West Berlin chief of intelligence had sifted through the weekly reports of his “snitches”—the highly paid but underzealous army of informers that the U.S. government maintains on its shadow payroll to keep abreast of events in Berlin—and discovered nothing but the usual sordid list of venalities committed by the host of elected officials, bureaucrats, and military officers of the city he had come to regard as the Sodom of Western Europe. The colonel had a single vice—whiskey—and he looked forward to the anesthetic burn of the Kentucky bourbon with sublime anticipation.

Pouring the Turkey into a Lenox shot glass, Rose glanced up and saw his aide, Sergeant Clary, silhouetted against the leaded glass window of his office door. With customary discretion the young NCO paused before knocking, giving his superior time to “straighten his desk.” By the time Clary tapped on the glass and stepped smartly into the office, Colonel Rose appeared to be engrossed in an intelligence brief.

Clary cleared his throat. “Colonel?”

Rose looked up slowly. “Yes, Sergeant?”

“Sir, Ambassador Briggs is flying in from Bonn tomorrow morning. State just informed us by courier.”

Rose frowned. “That’s not on my calendar, is it?”

“No, sir.”

“Well?”

“Apparently the Soviets have filed some sort of complaint against us, sir. Through the embassy.”

“Us?”

“The Army, sir. It’s something to do with last night’s detail at Spandau Prison. That’s all I could get out of Smitty—I mean the courier, sir.”

“Spandau? What about it? Christ, we’ve watched the damned coverage all day, haven’t we? I’ve already filed my report.”

“State didn’t elaborate, sir.”

Rose snorted. “They never do, do they.”

“No, sir. Care to see the message?”

Rose gazed out of his small window at the Berlin dusk and wondered about the possible implications of the ambassador’s visit. The American diplomatic corps stayed in Bonn most of the time—well out of Rose’s area of operations—and he liked that just fine.

“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 island, 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 Officers’ 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 a moneyed 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 U.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—”

“I’ll tell you what I think!” Rose cut in with surprising 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 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 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 fine 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 stuffy noses into it, the devil take the hindmost.