Читать книгу Spandau Phoenix - Greg Iles - Страница 17

A stubborn group of reporters huddled on the sidewalk in the freezing wind, hoping for a break in the Spandau Prison story or the weather. As Hans idled his Volkswagen past the front steps of the police station, he saw klieg lights and cameras leaning against a remote-broadcast truck, evidence of how seriously the Berlin media were taking the incident. He felt a nervous thrill when he realized that even now the press was driving up the asking price of the Spandau papers for him. He accelerated past the journalists before they could get a decent look at him or the car and swung into the rear lot of the station.

The unexpected summons had taken him by surprise, but upon reflection he wasn’t really worried. It made sense for the police brass to try to defuse the crisis before the Allied commandants got too involved—if they weren’t already. Nobody liked the Four Powers poking about in German affairs, even if Berlin still technically belonged to them.

As he unlocked the rear door of the station, he spied Erhard Weiss’s red coupe parked against the wall. A good sign, Hans thought. At least he hadn’t been singled out for questioning. He flicked his cigarette onto the snow and walked inside. The back hallway was usually empty, but tonight a pinch-faced young man he didn’t know waited behind a rickety wooden table. The unlikely sentry leapt to attention when he saw Hans.

“Identify yourself!” he ordered.

“What?”

“Your identification!”

“I’m Hans Apfel. I work here. Who are you?”

The little policeman shot Hans an exasperated look and reached for a piece of paper on his desk. It was apparently a list of some sort; he ran his finger down it like a prim schoolmaster.

“Sergeant Hans Apfel?”

“That’s right.”

“Report immediately to room six for interrogation.”

Under normal circumstances Hans would have challenged the man’s authority on general principles alone. Officers from other districts—especially snotty bureaucrats like this one—were treated coolly at Abschnitt 53 until they had proved their competence. Tonight, however, Hans didn’t feel quite confident enough to push. He walked on toward the stairs without comment.

The oppressive block of interrogation rooms lay on the second floor, out of the main traffic of the station. At least they chose number six, he thought. Slightly larger than the other questioning rooms, “six” held a long table on a dais, some straight-backed chairs and, mercifully, an electric heater. Emerging from the stairwell on the second floor, Hans saw another unfamiliar policeman standing guard between rooms six and seven. A silent alarm sounded in his head, but it was too late to turn back.

Suddenly a door further down the hall burst open. Two uniformed men with heavy beards bustled Erhard Weiss out of the room and down the hall away from Hans. Weiss’s feet seemed to be dragging behind him. He turned and gave Hans a dazed look; then he was gone. Hans slowed down. Something odd was happening here.

“Interrogation?” the guard queried, noticing him.

Hans nodded warily.

“Wait in room seven.”

Hans looked for a name tag on the man’s chest but saw none. “You from Wansee?” he asked. When the man didn’t answer, he tried again. “What’s going on in there, friend?”

“Room seven,” the man repeated.

“Seven,” Hans echoed softly. “All right, then.”

Taking a deep breath, he stepped through the door. There was only one man inside the smoky room—Kurt Steger, one of the four recruits from the Spandau assignment. Kurt jumped to his feet like a nervous puppy when he saw Hans.

“Thank God!” he cried. “What’s going on, Hans?”

Hans shook his head. “I’ve no idea. It looks like the whole place has been taken over by strangers. What have you seen?”

“Nichts, almost nothing. We started in here together—all of us from Spandau except you. One by one they call us into room six. Nobody comes back.”

Hans frowned. “They were practically dragging Weiss down the hall when I walked up. It didn’t look right at all.” He hated to ask the next question, but he needed the information. “Have you seen Captain Hauer, Kurt?”

“No. I think the prefect’s handling this.”

Hans considered this in silence.

“I haven’t been on the force very long,” said Kurt, “but I get the feeling Captain Hauer and the prefect aren’t too fond of each other.”

Hans nodded thoughtfully. “To say the least. They’ve been at each other’s throats since Funk took over eight years ago.”

“What’s the problem?”

“The problem is that Funk is an ass-kissing bureaucrat with no real police experience, and Hauer reminds him of it every chance he gets.”

“Can’t the prefect fire whoever he wants?”

“Firing Hauer isn’t worth the controversy it would start.” Hans felt himself coloring as he went to the defense of the father he had accused of terrible things in the silence of his own mind. “He’s a decorated hero, one of the best cops in the city. He also works with GSG-9, the counterterror unit. Connections like that don’t hurt. Plus he’s only got one month before retirement. Funk’s been waiting for that day a long time. Now he’s almost rid of him.”

“What a bastard.” Kurt snapped his fingers anxiously. “You got any cigarettes? We smoked all we had.”

Hans handed over his pack and matches. “Have they said who’s handling the questions?”

Kurt’s hands shook slightly as he lit up. “They haven’t said anything. We’ve tried to listen through the wall, but it’s useless. They could beat a man to death in there and you’d never hear him scream.”

“Thanks a lot. I’ll remember that while I’m in there. What about the Russians?”

Kurt cut his eyes toward the door. “Weiss said he saw the very same bastard who tried to take the prisoners from us—”

The door banged open, silencing the young recruit. A bearded man wearing captain’s bars stared back and forth between Hans and Kurt, then pointed to Hans. “You,” he growled.

“But I’ve been here for two hours,” Kurt protested.

The captain ignored him and motioned for Hans to follow.

In the hall Hans saw another young officer being led around the corner toward the elevators, his arms pinned to his sides by two large policemen. Fighting a growing sense of unreality, Hans stepped into room six.

The scene unnerved him. The sparsely furnished interrogation room had been transformed into a courtroom. A single wooden chair faced a long, raised table from which five men stared solemnly as Hans entered. At the center of the table sat Wilhelm Funk, prefect of West Berlin police. He eyed Hans with the cold detachment of a hanging judge. A young blond man wearing lieutenant’s bars hovered at Funk’s left shoulder. Hans guessed he was Lieutenant Luhr, the aide who had summoned him by telephone. To the prefect’s right sat three men wearing Soviet Army uniforms. Hans recognized one as the “sergeant” who had bullied Weiss at Spandau, but the others—both colonels—he had never seen before. And to Funk’s left, a little apart from Lieutenant Luhr, sat Captain Dieter Hauer. Dark sacs hung under his gray eyes, and he regarded Hans with a Buddhalike inscrutability.

“Setzen sie sich,” Funk ordered, then looked down at a buff file open before him.

As Hans turned to sit, he saw more men behind him. Six Berlin policemen stood in a line to the left of the door. He knew them all slightly; all were from other districts. On the right side of the door stood the Russian soldiers from the Spandau detail. Their bloodshot eyes gave the lie to their freshly shaven faces, and the mud of the prison yard still caked their boots. Hans looked slowly from face to face. When his eyes met those of the Russian who had caught him in the rubble pile, Hans looked away first. He did not see the Russian nod almost imperceptibly to the “sergeant” at the table, nor did he see the “sergeant” softly touch the sleeve of one of the colonels as Funk began his interrogation.

“You are Sergeant Hans Apfel?” the prefect asked, still looking at the file before him. “Born Munich 1960, Bundeswehr service 1978 to 1980, two-year tour Federal Border Police, attached Munich municipal force 1983, transferred Berlin 1984, promoted sergeant May of ’84?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Speak up, Sergeant.”

Hans cleared his throat. “I am.”

“Better. I want you to listen to me, Sergeant. I have convened this informal hearing to save everyone—yourself included—a great deal of unnecessary trouble. Because of the publicity surrounding this morning’s events, the Allied commandants have scheduled a formal investigation into this matter, to commence at seven o’clock tomorrow morning. I want this matter cleared up long before then. The problem is that our Soviet friends”—Funk nodded deferentially to his right—“Oberst Zotin and Oberst Kosov, claim to have uncovered something rather disturbing at Spandau today. Their forensic people say they have evidence that something was removed from the area of the cellblocks last occupied by the Nuremberg war criminals.”

Hans’s stomach rolled. For a moment the room seemed to spin wildly. It righted itself when he focused on the immobile mask of Captain Hauer.

“Of course I denied their request to question our officers directly,” Funk went on, “but for the sake of expediency I’ve agreed to act as the Soviets’ proxy. That way they can be quickly satisfied as to our lack of complicity in this matter. Thus, the whole mess is over before it really begins, you see, Sergeant? It’s really better all around.”

For the first time Hans noticed another man in the room. He had been hunched out of sight behind Hauer, but when Funk spoke again he moved.

“By the way, Sergeant,” Funk said casually, “in the interest of veracity I’ve agreed to monitor all responses by polygraph.”

Hans felt a jolt of confusion. Polygraph test results were inadmissible as evidence in a German court. The Berlin Polizei were not even permitted to use the polygraph as an investigative tool. Or almost never, anyway. Buried in the budget of the Experimental Section of the Forensics Division was a small cadre of technicians devoted to the subtle art of lie detection. They were used only in crisis situations, where lives were at stake. The only explanation Hans could come up with for the use of a polygraph tonight was that the Russians had requested it.

“We’ll be using our own man, of course,” Funk said. “Perhaps you know Heinz Schmidt?”

Hans knew of Schmidt, and what he knew made his heart race. The ferretlike little polygrapher took perverse pleasure in wringing secrets out of people—criminals or not—no matter how trivial. He even moonlighted to sate his fetish, screening employees for industrial firms. Funk’s inquisitor padded around Hauer’s corner of the table, pushing his precious polygraph before him on a wheeled cart like the head of a heretic. Ilse had been right, Hans realized. He should never have come here.

“I said is that all right with you, Sergeant?” Funk repeated testily.

Hans could see that both Hauer and Lieutenant Luhr had suddenly taken a keen interest in him. It took all his concentration to keep his facial muscles still. He cleared his throat again. “Yes, sir. No problem.”

“Good. The procedure is simple: Schmidt asks you a few calibration questions, then we get to it.” Funk sounded bored. “Hurry it up, Schmidt.”

As the polygrapher attached the electrodes to his fingers, Hans felt his earlier bravado draining away. Then came the blood-pressure cuff, fastened around his upper arm and pumped until he could feel his arterial blood throbbing against it like a tourniquet. Last came the chest bands—rubber straps stretched around his torso beneath his shirt—to monitor his respiration. Three separate sensing systems, cold and inhuman, now silently awaited the slightest signals of deception.

Hans wondered which vital sign would give him away: a trace of sweat translated into electrical resistance? His thudding heart? Or just his eyes? I must be crazy, he thought wildly. Why keep it up anyway? They’ll find me out in the end. For one mad moment he considered simply blurting out the truth. He could exonerate himself before Schmidt even asked the first stupid control question. He could—

“Are you Sergeant Hans Apfel?” Schmidt asked in a high, abrasive voice.

“I am.”

“Yes or no, please, Sergeant. Is your name Hans Apfel?”

“Yes.”

“Do you reside in West Berlin?”

“Yes.”

Hans watched Schmidt make some adjustments to his machine. The ferret’s shirt was soiled at the collar and armpits, his fingernails were long and grimy, and he smelled of ammonia. Suddenly, Schmidt pulled a red pen from his pocket and held it up for all to see.

“Is this pen red, Sergeant?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Schmidt made—or seemed to make—still more adjustments to his machine.

Nervously, Hans wondered how much Schmidt knew he knew about the polygraph test. Because Hans knew a good deal. The concept of the “lie detector” had always fascinated him. He had taken the Experimental Interrogation course at the police school at Hiltrup, and a close look at his personnel file would reveal that. As Schmidt tinkered with his machine, Hans marshaled what he remembered from the Hiltrup course. The first tenet of the polygrapher was that for test results to be accurate, the subject needed to believe the machine infallible. Polygraphers used various methods to create this illusion, but Hans knew that Schmidt favored the “card trick.” Schmidt would ask his subject to pick a playing card at random from a deck, then to lay it facedown on a table. Schmidt’s ability to name the hidden card after a few “yes or no” questions seemed to prove his polygraph infallible. Of course the subject always chose his card from a deck in which every card was identical, but he had no way of knowing that. Many skilled criminals had confessed their crimes immediately after Schmidt’s little parlor show, certain that his machine would eventually find them out.

Hans saw no deck of cards tonight. Maybe Schmidt thinks his reputation is enough to intimidate me, he thought nervously. And maybe he’s right. Already perspiring, Hans tried to think of a way to beat the little weasel’s machine. Some people had beaten the polygraph by learning to suppress their physiological stress reactions, but Hans knew he had no hope of this. The suppression technique took months to master, and right now he could barely hold himself in his chair.

He did have one hope, if he could keep a cool head: picking out the “control” questions. Most people thought questions like “Is this pen red?” were the controls. But Hans knew better. The real control questions were ones which would cause almost anyone asked them to lie. “Have you ever failed to report income on your federal tax return?” was a common control. Most people denied this almost universal crime, and by doing so provided Schmidt with their baseline “lie.” Later, when asked, “Did you cut your wife’s throat with a kitchen knife?” a guilty person’s lie would register far stronger than his baseline or “control” reference. Questions like “Is this pen red?” were asked simply to give a person’s vital signs time to return to normal between the relevant questions.

Hans knew if he could produce a strong enough emotional response to a control question, then an actual lie would appear no different to the polygraph than his faked control responses. Schmidt would be forced to declare him “innocent.” The best method to do this was to hide a thumbtack in your shoe, but Hans knew that an exaggerated response could also be triggered by holding your breath or biting your tongue. He decided to worry about method later. If he couldn’t pick out the control questions, method wouldn’t matter.

Schmidt’s voice jolted him back to reality.

“Sergeant Apfel, prior to discharging your Spandau assignment, did you communicate with any person other than the duty sergeant regarding that assignment?”

“No,” Hans replied. That was true. He hadn’t had time to discuss it with anyone.

“Is Captain Hauer a married man?”

Irrelevant question, Hans thought bitterly. To anyone except me. “No,” he answered.

Schmidt looked down at the notepad from which he chose his questions. “Have you ever stopped a friend or public official for a traffic violation and let them go without issuing a citation?”

Control question, Hans thought. Almost any cop who denied this would be lying. Keeping a straight face, he bit down on the tip of his tongue hard enough to draw blood. He felt a brief flush of perspiration pass through his skin. “No,” he said.

When Schmidt glanced up from the polygraph, Hans knew he had produced an exaggerated response. “Am I holding up two fingers?” Schmidt asked.

Irrelevant, thought Hans. “Yes,” he answered truthfully.

Schmidt came a step closer. “Sergeant Apfel, you’ve made several arrests for drug possession in the past year. Have you ever failed to turn the entire quantity of confiscated drugs over to the evidence officer?”

Control ques—Hans started to bite his tongue again; then he hesitated. If this was a control question, Schmidt had upped the stakes of the game. Giving an exaggerated response here would not be without serious consequences. Police corruption involving drugs was an epidemic problem, with accordingly severe punishment for those caught. The men at the table gave no indication that they saw this question as anything but routine, but Hans thought he detected a feral gleam in Schmidt’s eyes. The dirty little man knew his business.

“Sergeant?” Schmidt prodded.

Hans fidgeted. He did not want to appear guilty of a drug crime, but the Spandau questions still awaited. If he intended to keep the papers secret, he would have to give at least a partially exaggerated response to this question. In silent desperation he held his breath, counted to four, then answered, “No,” and exhaled slowly.

“Is your wife’s maiden name Natterman, Sergeant?”

Irrelevant. “Yes,” Hans replied.

Schmidt wiped his upper lip. “Were you the last man to arrive at the scene of the argument over custody of the trespassers at Spandau Prison?”

Relevant question. Hans glanced up at the panel. All eyes were on him now. Stay calm … “I don’t remember,” he said. “Things were so confused then. I really didn’t notice.”

“Yes or no, Sergeant!”

“I suppose I could have been.”

Exasperated, Schmidt looked to Funk for guidance. The prefect fixed Hans with his imperious stare. “Sergeant,” he said curtly, “one of your fellow officers told us you were the last man there. Would you care to answer the question again?”

“I’m sorry,” Hans said sheepishly, “I just don’t remember.” He looked at the floor. The Russian soldier who had caught him in the rubble pile could call him a liar right now, he knew, but for some reason the man hadn’t spoken up. Funk appeared satisfied with Hans’s answer, and told Schmidt to move along. There can’t be many more questions, Hans thought. Just a little longer—

“Sergeant Apfel?” Schmidt’s voice cut like slivers of glass. “Did you remove any documents from a hollow brick in the area of the cellblocks last occupied by the Nuremberg war criminals?”

Holy Mother of God! Hans choked down a scream. Every eye in the room burned upon his face. For the first time Hauer’s steely mask cracked. His probing eyes fixed Hans motionless in his chair, stripping away the pathetic layers of deception. But it was too late to come clean.

“No,” Hans said lamely.

“Specifically,” Schmidt bored in, “did you discover, remove, see, or even hear of documents pertaining to or written by Prisoner Number Seven—Rudolf Hess?”

Hans felt cold sweat running down his spine. His heart became an enemy within his chest, thumping out the tattoo of his guilt. And there stood Schmidt, lie-hungry, watching each centimeter of paper unspool from his precious machine. Looking at him now, Hans fancied he saw a mad doctor reading an electrocardiograph, a diabolical quack watching each fateful squiggle in the hope of witnessing a fatal heart attack. Hans felt his willpower ebbing away. The truth welled up in his throat, beyond his control. Just tell the truth, urged a voice in his head, tell it all and take whatever consequences come. Then this insanity will focus elsewhere. Yet as Hans started to do just that, Schmidt said:

“Sergeant, have you ever omitted an important piece of information from a job application?”

Hans felt like a spacewalker cut loose from his tether. Schmidt had asked another control question! Hadn’t he? But why hadn’t he triumphantly proclaimed Hans’s guilt to the tribunal? Hans had expected the little demon to dance a jig and scream: Him! Him! There is the liar!

“No—no, I haven’t,” Hans stammered.

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

While Hans sat stunned, Schmidt turned to Funk and shook his head. The prefect closed the file before him, then turned to the Soviet colonels and shrugged. “Any questions?” he asked.

The Russians looked like sleeping bears. When one finally shook his head to indicate the negative, the gesture seemed the result of a massive effort. Hans even sensed the soldiers in the back of the room relaxing. Only Captain Hauer and Lieutenant Luhr remained tense. For some reason it struck Hans just then that Jürgen Luhr was the kind of German who made Jews nervous. He was a racial type—the proto-Germanic man, tall and broad-shouldered, thin-lipped and square-headed—a mythical Aryan fiend passed down in whispered tales from mother to daughter and father to son.

“Thank you for your cooperation, Sergeant,” Funk said wearily. “We’ll contact you if we need any further details.” Then over Hans’s shoulder, “Bring in the last officer.”

Hans floundered. They had drawn him into the trap, yet failed to pounce for the kill. “Am I free to go?” he asked uncertainly.

“Unless you wish to stay with us all night,” Funk snapped.

“Excuse me, Prefect,” Lieutenant Luhr cut in. All eyes turned to him. “I’d like to ask the sergeant a question.”

Funk nodded.

“Tell me, Sergeant, did you notice Officer Weiss acting in a suspicious manner at any time during the Spandau assignment?”

Hans shook his head, remembering Weiss being dragged down the hall. “No, sir. No, I didn’t.”

Luhr smiled with understanding, but he had the watchful eyes of a police dog. “Officer Weiss is a Jew, isn’t he, Sergeant?”

One of the Russian colonels stirred, but his comrade laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.

“I believe that’s right,” Hans said tentatively. “Yes, he’s Jewish.”

Luhr gave a curt nod of the head, as if this new fact somehow explained everything.

“You may go, Sergeant,” Funk said.

Hans stood. They were telling him to go, yet he sensed that some unspoken understanding had passed between the men in the room. It was as if several decisions had been taken at once in some language unknown to him. He turned toward the soldiers and police at the back of the room and shuffled toward the door. No one moved to stop him. Why hadn’t Schmidt called him a liar? Why hadn’t the Russian who’d caught him searching called him a liar? And why did he feel compelled to keep lying, anyway?

Because of the Russians, he realized. If the prefect—or even Hauer—had only questioned him alone, he could have told them. Just as Ilse wanted him to. He would have told them …

A burly policeman held open the door. Hans walked through, hearing Funk’s tired voice resume behind him. He quickened his pace. He wanted to get out of the building as soon as possible. He entered the stairwell at a near trot, but slowed when he saw two beefy patrolmen ascending from the first floor. Nodding a perfunctory greeting, he slipped between the two men—

Then they took him.

Hans had no chance at all. The men used no weapons because they needed none. His arms were immobilized as if by steel bands; then the men reversed direction and began dragging him down the stairs.

“What is this!” Hans shouted. “I’m a police officer! Let me go!”

One of the men chuckled quietly. They reached the bottom of the stairs and turned down a disused hallway, a repository of ancient files and broken furniture. When the initial shock and disorientation wore off, Hans realized that he had to fight back somehow. But how? In the darkest part of the corridor he suddenly let his body go limp, appearing to lose his will to resist.

“Scheisse!” one man cursed. “Dead weight.”

“He soon will be,” commented his partner.

Dead weight? With speed born of desperation Hans fired his elbow into a rib cage. He heard bone crack.

“Arrghh!” The man let go.

With his free hand Hans pummeled the other attacker’s head, aiming for his temple. The policeman held him fast.

“You bastard …” from the darkness.

Hans kept pounding the man’s skull. The grip on his arm was loosening—

An explosion that seemed to detonate behind his right eye paralyzed him.

Darkness.

Less than sixty feet away from Hans, Colonels Ivan Kosov and Grigori Zotin stood outside an idling East German transit bus in the central parking lot of the police station. Inside the bus, the Soviet soldiers from the Spandau patrol waited for their long-delayed return to East Berlin. Most were already fast asleep.

Zotin, a GRU colonel, did not particularly like Kosov, and he was deeply offended at the KGB colonel’s effrontery in donning the uniform of the Red Army. But what could he do? One couldn’t keep the KGB out of something this big, especially when higher powers wanted Kosov involved. Rubbing his hands together against the cold, Zotin tested the KGB man’s perception.

“Can you believe it, Ivan? They gave them all clean reports.”

“Of course,” Kosov growled. “What did you expect?”

“But one of them was certainly lying!”

“Certainly.”

“But how did they fake the polygraph readouts?”

Kosov looked bored. “We were six meters from the machine. They could have shown us anything.”

Grigori Zotin knew exactly which policeman had lied, but he wanted to keep the information from Kosov long enough to initiate inquiries of his own. He was aware of the Kremlin’s interest in the Hess case, and he knew his career could take a giant leap forward if he cracked it. He made a mental note to decorate the young GRU officer who had caught the German policeman searching and showed enough sense to tell only his immediate superior. “You’re right, of course,” Zotin agreed.

Kosov grunted.

“What, exactly, do you think was discovered? A journal perhaps? Do you think they found some proof of—”

“They found a hollow brick,” Kosov snapped. “Our forensic technicians say their tests indicate the brick held some type of paper for an unknown period of time. It could have been some kind of journal. It could also have been pages from a pornographic magazine. It could have been toilet paper! Never trust experts too much, Zotin.”

The GRU colonel sucked his teeth nervously. “Don’t you think we should have at least mentioned Zinoviev during the interrogation? We could have—”

“Idiot!” Kosov bellowed. “That name isn’t to be mentioned outside KGB! How do you even know it?”

Zotin stepped back defensively. “One hears things in Moscow.”

“Things that could get you a bullet in the neck,” Kosov warned.

Zotin tried to look unworried. “I suppose we should tell the general to turn up the pressure at the commandants’ meeting tomorrow.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” scoffed Kosov. “Too little, too late.”

“What about the trespassers, then? Why are you letting the Germans keep them?”

“Because they don’t know anything.”

“What do you suggest we do, then?” Zotin ventured warily.

Kosov snorted. “Are you serious? It was the second to last man—Apfel. He was lying through his Bosche teeth. Those idiots did exactly what we wanted. If they’d admitted Apfel was lying, he’d be in a jail cell now, beyond our reach. As it is, he’s at our mercy. The fool is bound to return home, and when he does”—Kosov smiled coldly—“I’ll have a team waiting for him.”

Zotin was aghast. “But how—?” He stifled his imprudent outburst with a cough. “How can you get a team over soon enough?” he covered.

“I have two teams here now,” Kosov snapped. “Get me to a damned telephone!”

Startled, the GRU colonel clambered aboard the bus and found a seat.

“And Zotin?” Kosov said, leaning over his rival.

“Yes?”

“Keep nothing from me again. It could be very dangerous for you.”

Zotin blanched.

“I want everything there is on this man Apfel. Everything. I suggest you ride your staff very hard on this. Powerful eyes are watching us.”

“How will you approach this policeman?”

“Approach him?” Kosov cracked a wolfish smile. “Break him, you mean. By morning I’ll know how many times that poor bastard peeked up his mother’s skirts.”

Hans awoke in a cell. There was no window. He’d been thrown onto a stack of damp cardboard boxes. One pale ray of light filtered down from somewhere high above. When he had focused his eyes, he sat up and gripped one of the steel bars. His face felt sticky. He put his fingers to his temple. Blood. The familiar slickness brought back the earlier events in a throbbing rush of confusion. The interrogation … his father’s stony silence … the struggle in the hallway. Where was he?

He tried to rise, but he collapsed into a narrow space between two boxes. Rotting cardboard covered almost the entire concrete floor. A cell full of boxes? Puzzled, Hans reached into one and pulled out a damp folder. He held it in the shaft of light. Traffic accident report, he thought. Typed on the standard police form. He found the date—1973. Flipping through the yellow sheaf of papers, he saw they were all the same, all traffic accident reports from 1973. He checked the station listed on several forms: Abschnitt 53 every case. Suddenly he realized where he was.

In the early 1970s, Abschnitt 53 had been partially renovated during a citywide wave of reform that lasted about eighteen months. There had been enough money to refurbish the reception area and overhaul the main cellblock, but the third floor, the basement, and the rear of the building went largely untouched. Hans was sure he’d been locked in the basement.

But why? No one had accused him of anything. Not openly, at least. Who were the policemen who had attacked him? Funk’s men? Were they even police officers at all? They had said he would soon be dead weight. It was crazy. Maybe they were protecting him from the Russians. Maybe this was the only way the prefect could keep him safe from them. That’s it! he thought with relief. It has to be.

A door slammed somewhere in the darkness above. Someone was coming—several people by the sound—and making no effort to hide it. Hans heard clattering and cursing on the stairs; then he saw who was making the noise. Outlined in the fluorescent light streaming down from the basement door, two husky uniformed men were wrestling a gurney off the stairs. Slowly they cleared a path to the cell through the heaps of junk covering the basement floor. Hans closed his eyes and lay motionless on the boxes where he’d been thrown.

“Looks like he’s still out,” said one man.

“I hope I killed the son of a bitch,” growled the other.

“That wouldn’t go over too well upstairs, Rolf.”

“Who gives a shit? The bastard broke my ribs.”

Hans heard a low chuckle. “Be more careful the next time. Come on, we’ve got to clear a space in there for this thing.”

“Fuck it. Just throw this filthy Jew in on top of that one. Not much left of him, anyway.”

“Apfel isn’t a Jew.”

“Jew-lover, then.”

“The doctor said leave this one on the gurney.”

“Make him clear a space,” said Rolf, pointing in at Hans.

“Sure. If you can wake him up.”

Rolf picked up a rusted joint of pipe from the floor and rankled the bars with it. “Wake up, asshole!”

Hans ignored him.

“Get up or we’ll kill you.”

Hans heard the metallic click of a pistol slide being jerked back. Christ … Slowly he rose to his feet.

“See,” said Rolf, “he’s not dead. Clear out a space in there, you. And be quick about it.”

Hans tried to see who lay on the gurney, but Rolf smashed the pipe against the bars near his face. It took him forty seconds to clear a space wide enough to accept the gurney.

“Get back against the wall,” Rolf ordered. “Go on!”

Hans watched the strange policemen roll the man on the gurney feet-first into the cleared space, then slam the door behind him.

“You stay away from this Jew-boy, Sergeant,” Rolf warned. “Anything happens to him, it’s on your head.”

The pair hurried up the stairs, taking the shaft of light with them. Hans couldn’t make out the face of his new cellmate. He felt in his pocket for a match, then remembered he’d given them to Kurt in the waiting room upstairs. He put his hands on the unconscious man’s shoulders and stared downward, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the blackness, but they didn’t. Moving his hand tentatively, he felt something familiar. Shoulder patches. Surprised and a little afraid, Hans felt his way across the man’s chest like a blind man. Brass buttons … patch … collar pins … Hans felt his left hand brush an empty leather holster. A police officer! Shutting his eyes tight, he put his right hand on the man’s face and waited. When he opened his eyes again, he could just make out the lines of the face.

My God, he thought, feeling a lump in his throat. Weiss! Erhard Weiss! For the second time tonight Hans felt cut loose from reality. Gripping his friend’s body like a life raft, he began trying to revive him. He spoke into Weiss’s ear, but heard no answer. He slapped the slack face hard several times. No response. Groping around in desperation, Hans crashed into the back wall of the cell. His palms touched something moist and cold. Foundation stones. Condensation. Rubbing his hands across the stones until they were sufficiently wet, he returned to Weiss and laved the cool liquid over his forehead. Still Weiss lay silent.

Alarmed, Hans pressed both forefingers against Weiss’s carotid arteries. He felt pulse beats, but very faint and unbelievably far apart. Weiss was alive, but just. The jailers had mentioned a doctor, Hans remembered. What kind of doctor would send a man to a cell in this condition? The obscenity of the situation drove him into a rage as he stood by the cadaverous body of his friend. Someone would answer for this outrage! Lurching to the front of the cell, Hans began screaming at the top of his lungs. He screamed until he had no voice left, but no one came. Slipping to the floor in exhaustion, he realized that the stacks of boxes in the basement must be deadening the sound of his voice. He doubted anyone upstairs had heard even a whimper.

Suddenly Hans bolted to his feet in terror. Someone had screamed! It took him a moment to realize that the scream had come from inside the cell. He shivered as it came again, an animal shriek of agony and terror. Erhard Weiss—who had lain like a corpse through all Hans’s attempts to revive him—now fought the straps that held him as if the gurney were on fire. As Hans tried to restrain the convulsing body, the screaming suddenly ceased. It was as if a great stone had been set upon Weiss’s chest. The young policeman’s right arm shot up and gripped Hans’s shoulder like a claw, quivered desperately, then, after a long moment, relaxed.

Hans checked for a pulse. Nothing. He hadn’t expected one. Erhard Weiss was dead. Hans had seen this death before—a heart attack, almost certainly. He had seen several similar cases during the last few years—young, apparently healthy men whose hearts had suddenly stopped, exploded, or fibrillated wildly and fatally out of control. In each case there had been a common factor—drugs. Cocaine usually, but other narcotics too. This case appeared no different. Except that Weiss never used drugs. He was a fitness enthusiast, a swimmer. On several occasions he and his fiancée had dined with Hans and Ilse at a restaurant, Hans remembered, and once in their apartment. In their home. And now Weiss was dead. Dead. The young man who had argued so tenaciously to keep two fellow Berliners—strangers, at that—out of the clutches of the Russians.

In one anguished second Hans’s exhaustion left him. He sprang to the front of the cell and stuck his arm through the bars, frantically searching the floor with his right hand. There—the iron pipe Rolf had brandished! Steadily Hans began pounding the pipe against the steel bars. The shock of the blows rattled his entire body, but he ignored the pain. He would hammer the bars until they came for Weiss—until they came for his friend or he dropped dead. At that moment he did not care.