Читать книгу Spandau Phoenix - Greg Iles - Страница 24

“Captain!” Hans warned. “Motorcycle patrol, three cars back!”

“I see him.” Hauer swung the Volkswagen smoothly around a corner just as the traffic signal changed, stranding the police cycle in the line of vehicles stopped at the light. “We’ve got to get off the street.”

“Where do we go? My apartment? Your house?”

“Think, Hans. They’ll be covering both places.”

“You’re right. Maybe—” He grabbed Hauer’s sleeve. “Jesus, Ilse’s at the apartment alone!”

“Easy, Hans, we’ll get her. But we can’t walk in there like lambs to the slaughter.”

“But Funk could have men there already!”

“Hold your water. Where are we, Bergstrasse? There should be a hotel four blocks south of us. The Steglitz. Just what we need.”

“A hotel?”

“Get in the backseat,” Hauer ordered, and stepped on the accelerator.

“What are you going to do?”

“Do it!”

As Hans climbed into the backseat, Hauer ripped the police insignia from his collar and spurred the VW into the Steglitz garage. The violent turn threw Hans against the side door. They squealed down the curving ramp to the parking sublevels below and into a tiny space between two large sedans.

“All right, Hans,” Hauer said. “Out with it. Everything. What really happened at Spandau this morning?”

Hans climbed awkwardly through the narrow gap between the seats. “I’ll tell you on the way to my apartment.”

Hauer shook his head. “We don’t move one meter until you talk.”

Hans bridled, but he could see that Hauer would not be swayed. “Look, I would have reported it if it hadn’t been for those damned Russians.”

“Reported what?”

“The papers. The papers I found at Spandau.”

“Christ, you mean the Russians were right?”

Hans nodded.

“Where did you find these papers? What did they say?”

Hauer looked strangely hungry. Hans looked out the window. “I found them in a pile of rubble. In a hollow brick, just like Schmidt asked me. What does it matter? I started reading them, but one of the Russians stumbled on me. I hid them without even thinking.” He turned to Hauer. “That’s it! That’s all I did! So why has everyone gone crazy?”

“What did the papers say, Hans?”

“I don’t know. Gibberish, mostly. Ilse said it was Latin.”

“You showed them to your wife?”

“I didn’t intend to, but she found them. She understood more of it than I did, anyway. She said the papers had something to do with the Nazis. That they were dangerous.” He looked down at his lap. “God, was she right.”

“Tell me everything you remember, Hans.”

“Look, I hardly remember any of it. The German part sounded bitter, like a revenge letter, but … there was fear in it, too. The writer said he had written because he could never speak about what he knew. That others would pay the price for his words.”

Hauer hung on every syllable. “What else?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“It was Latin, I told you! I couldn’t read it!”

“Latin,” Hauer mused, leaning back into his seat. “Who wrote the papers? Were they signed?”

Hans shrugged uncomfortably. “There wasn’t any name. Just a number.”

“A number?” Hauer’s eyes grew wide. “What number, Hans?”

“Seven, goddamnit! The lucky number. What a fucking joke. Now can we get out of here?”

Hauer shook his head slowly. “Hess,” he murmured. “It’s impossible. The restrictions, the endless searches. It can’t be.”

Hans ground his teeth angrily. “Captain, I know what you’re talking about, but right now I don’t care! I just want to know my wife is safe!”

Hauer laid a hand on his shoulder. “Where are these papers now?”

“At the apartment.”

“No! You made copies?”

“No, damn it! I don’t care about the papers anymore! We’re going to get Ilse now!”

Hauer pinned him against the seat with an arm of iron. “You saw Weiss, didn’t you? If you go charging into your apartment, the same thing could happen to you. And to Ilse.”

The memory of Weiss’s mutilated corpse brought a strange stillness over Hans. “What did happen to Weiss?”

Hauer sighed. “Someone got too impatient, pushed the doctor too far. Probably Luhr, Funk’s personal stormtrooper.” He shook his head. “Later tonight they’ll shoot his body full of cocaine and dump him in the Havel.”

“My God,” Hans breathed. “You saw it. You were there.” He balled his hands into fists.

“Hans! Get hold of yourself! I did not see Weiss tortured.”

“You knew about his chest!”

Hauer grimaced. “I overheard someone talking about it. It’s … it’s sort of a specialty of theirs. With certain Jews. Why did that boy join the department at all? You’d think a Jew would know better.”

Hans’s mouth fell open. “You’re saying it was Weiss’s fault someone mutilated him?”

“I’m saying if you’re a lamb you don’t run with the wolf pack!”

The memory of Weiss brought back the mark on Rolf’s head, the haunting eye from the Spandau papers. “What about the tattoo?” Hans asked quietly. “What does that mean?”

Hauer shook his head. “It’s complicated, Hans. The eye is a mark some people use—some very dangerous people. I’m not one of them. I just wanted you to remember the design.” He leaned his head across the seat. “Look behind my right ear. In the hair. If I had the tattoo, it would be there.”

Hans studied Hauer’s close-cropped scalp, but he saw no tattoo.

“I’m not one of them,” said Hauer, straightening up. “But until five minutes ago, they thought I was. We’ve got to find somewhere safe to hide, Hans, somewhere with a phone. Before we can get your wife, we’ve got to know what Funk and Luhr are up to. I’ve got a man inside the station I can call—”

“So let’s go upstairs! There are probably a dozen phones up in the lobby. I can call Ilse, warn her to get out!” Hans reached for the door handle, but Hauer stopped him again.

“We can’t, Hans. We’re in uniform. Everyone will be staring at the two beat-up cops using the pay phones. Funk’s men would find us in no time.”

Hans jerked his arm free. “Where, then? A friend’s house?”

“No. No friends, no family. It’s got to be untraceable. An empty house or … something.”

Slowly, almost mechanically, Hans removed his wallet from his pants pocket and took out a tattered white business card. He stared at it a moment, then handed it to Hauer.

“What’s this?” Hauer read aloud: “‘Benjamin Ochs, The Best Tailor in Berlin.’ You want to go to your tailor shop?”

“He’s not my tailor,” Hans said tersely.

“Eleven-fifty Goethestrasse. No one can trace you to this place?”

“Trust me.”

Hauer looked skeptical.

Hans turned away. The stress of being treated like an animal, caged and hunted, was congealing into something cold and hard in the pit of his stomach. With a guttural groan he slammed his open hand against the dashboard. “Get this fucking car moving!”

Hauer looked hard into Hans’s eyes, gauging the mettle there. “Right,” he said finally. He fired the engine and roared out of the hotel garage with tires squealing, making for the Goethestrasse.