Spandau Phoenix (2 page)

He looked more accustomed to the comforts of a soft billet like Paris than a battle zone. Behind him, a thinner man dressed in a leather flying suit sat rigidly in a straight-backed wooden chair.

Like the pilot, his face was also draped by a scarf. His eyes darted nervously between the newcomer and the SS man.

"Right on time," the SS major said, looking at his watch.

"I'm Major Horst Berger."

The pilot nodded, but offered no name.

"Drink?" A bottle appeared from the shadows. "Schnapps?

Cognac?"

My God, the pilot thought. Does the fool carry a stocked bar about in his car? He shook his head emphatically, then jerked his thumb toward the half-open door. "I'll see to the preparations."

"Nonsense," Major Berger replied, dismissing the idea with a flick of his bottle. "The crewmen can handle it.

They're some of the best from Aalborg. It's a shame, really."

It is, the pilot thought. But I don't think you're too upset about it.

I think you're enjoying all this. "I'm going back to the plane," he muttered.

The man in the wooden chair stood slowly.

"Where do you think you're going?" Major Berger barked, but the man ignored him. "Oh, all right," Berger complained. He buttoned his collar and followed the pair out of the shack.

"They know about the drop tanks?" the pilot asked, when Berger had caught up.

"Ja. "

"The nine-hundred-liter ones?"

"Sure. Look, they're fitting them now."

Berger was right. On the far side of the plane, two ground crewmen attached the first of two egg-shaped auxiliary fuel containers to the Messerschmitt's blunt-tipped wings. When they finished, they moved to the near side of the aircraft.

"Double-check the wet-points!" the pilot called.

The chief mechanic nodded, already working.

The pilot turned to Major Berger. "I had an idea," he said.

"Flying up."

The SS man frowned. "What idea?"

"I want them to grease my guns before we take off."

"What do you mean? Lubricate them? I assure you that the weapons are in perfect working order."

"No, I want them to pack the barrels with grease."

Behind Majo@ Berger, the man in the flying suit stepped sideways and looked curiously at the pilot.

"You can't be serious," Berger objected. He turned around.

"Tell him," he said. But the man in the flying suit only cocked his head to one side.

"But that's suicide!" Major Berger insisted. "One chance encounter with a British patrol and-" He shook his head. "I simply cannot allow it. If you're shot down, my career could take a very nasty turn!"

Your career is over already, the pilot thought grimly.

"Grease the guns!" he shouted to the crewmen, who, having fitted the empty drop tanks, now anxiously pumped fuel into them. The chief mechanic stood at the rear of the fuel truck, trying to decide which of the two men giving orders was really in charge. He knew Major Berger from Aalborg, but something about the tall, masked pilot hinted at a more dangerous authority.

"You can't do that!" Major Berger protested. "Stop that there!

I'm in command here!"

The chief mechanic shut off the fuel hose and stared at the three men at the edge of the runway. Slowly, with great purpose, the pilot pointed a long arm toward the crewman under the wing and shouted through his scarf: "You! Grease my guns! That's a direct order!"

The chief mechanic recognized the sound of authority now. He climbed onto the fuel truck to get a grease gun from his tool box.

Major Berger laid a quivering hand on a Schmeisser machine pistol at his belt. "You have lost your mind, I believe," he said softly.

"Rescind that order immediately or I'll put you under arrest!"

Glancing back toward the crewmen-who were now busy packing the Messerschmitt's twenty-millimeter cannon with heavy black grease-the pilot took hold of his scarf and unwrapped it slowly from his head.

When his face became visible, the SS man fell back a step, his eyes wide in shock.

Behind him the man in the flying suit swallowed hard and turned away.

The pilot's face was dark, saturnine, with eyes set deep beneath bushy black brows that almost met in the center. His imperious stare radiated command. "Remove your hand from that pistol," he said quietly.

For several moments Major Berger stood still as stone.

Then, slowly, he let his hand fall from the Schmeisser's grip.

"Jawohl, Herr ... Herr Reichminister."

"Now, Herr Major! And be about your business! Go!"

Suddenly Major Berger was all action,. With a pounding heart he hurried toward the Messerschmitt, his face hot and tingling with fear.

Blood roared in his ears. He had just threatened to place the Deputy Fuhrer of the German Reich-Rudolf Hess-under arrest! In a daze he ordered the crewmen to speed their packing of the guns. While they complied, he harried them about their earlier maintenance.

Were the wet-points clear? Would the wing drop tanks disengage properly when empty?

At the edge of the runway, Hess turned to the man in the flying suit.

"Come closer," he murmured.

The man took a tentative step forward and stood at attention.

"You understand about the guns?" Hess asked.

Slowly the man nodded assent.

"I know it's dangerous, but it's dangerous for us both.

Under certain circumstances it could make all the difference."

Again the man nodded. He was a pilot also, and had in fact flown many more missions than the man who had so suddenly assumed command of this situation. He understood the logic: a plane purported to be on a mission of peace would appear much more convincing with its guns disabled.

But even if he hadn't understood, he was in no position to argue.

"It's been a long time, Hauptmann, " Hess said, using the rank of captain in place of a name.

The captain nodded. Overhead a pair of Messerschmitts roared by from Aalborg, headed south on patrol.

"It is a great sacrifice you have made for your country, Hauptmann. You and men like you have given up all normality so that men like myself could prosecute the war in comparative safety. It's a great burden, is it not?"

The captain thought fleetingly of his wife and child. He had not seen them for over three years; now he wondered if he ever would again.

He nodded slowly.

"Once we're in the plane," said Hess, "I won't be able to see your face.

Let me see it now. Before."

As the captain reached for the end of his scarf, Major Berger scurried back to tell them the plane was almost ready.

The two pilots, enthralled in the strange play they found themselves acting out, heard nothing. What the SS man saw when he reached them struck him like a blow to the stomach. All his breath passed out in a single kasp, and he knew that he stood at the brink of extinction.

Before him, two men with the same face stood together shaking hands! And that face! Major Berger felt as if he had stumbled into a hall of mirrors where only the dangerous people were multiplied.

The pilots gripped hands for a long moment, their eyes heavy with the knowledge that both their lives might end tonight over foreign soil in the cockpit of an unarmed fighter.

"My God," Berger croaked.

Neither pilot acknowledged his presence. "How long has it been, Hauptmann?" Hess asked.

"Since Dessau, Herr Reichminister."

"You look thinner." Hess murmured, "I still can't believe it.

It's positively unnerving." Then sharply, "Is the plane ready, Berger?"

"I... I believe so, Herr@' "TO your work, then!"

"Jawohl, Herr Reichminister!" Major Berger turned and marched toward the crewmen, who now stood uncertainly against the fuel truck, waiting for permission to return to Aalborg. Berger unclipped his Schmeisser with one hand as he walked.

"All finished?" he called.

, "Jawohl, Herr Major," answered the chief mechanic.

"Fine, fine. Step away from the truck, please." Berger raised the stubby barrel of his Schmeisser.

"But ... Herr Major, what are you doing! What have we done? "

"A great service to your Fatherland," the SS man said.

"Now-step awayfrom the truck!"

The crewmen looked at each other, frozen like terrified game.

Finally it dawned on them why Major Berger was hesitating. He obviously knew something about the volatility of aircraft fuel vapor.

Backing closer to the truck, the chief mechanic clasped his greasy hands together in supplication.

"Please, Herr Major, I have a family-2' The dance was over. Major Berger took three steps backward and fired a sustained burst from the Schmeisser. Hess screamed a warning, but it was too late. Used with skill, the Schmeisser could be a precise weapon, but Major Berger's skill was limited. Of a twelve-round burst, only four rounds struck the crewmen. The remainder tore through the rusted shell of the fuel truck like it was [email protected], The explosion knocked Major Berger a dozen feet from where he stood. Hess and the.captain had instinctively dived for the concrete. Now they lay prone, shielding their eyes from the flash.

When Hess finally looked up, he saw Major Berger silhouetted against the flames, stumbling proudly toward them through a pall of black smoke, "How about that!" the SS man cried, looking back at the inferno. "No evidence now!"

"Idiot!" Hess shouted. "They'll have a patrol from Aalborg here in five minutes to investigate!"

Berger grinned. "Let me take care of them, Herr Reichminister!

The SS knows how to handle the Luftwaffe!"

Hess felt relieved; Berger was making it easy. Stupidity was something he had no patience with. "I'm sorry, Major," he said, looking hard into the SS man's face. "I cannot allow that."

Like a cobra hypnotizing a bird, Hess transfixed Berger with his dark, deep-set eyes. Quite naturally, he drew a Walther automatic from the forepouch of his flight su I it and pulled back the slide. The fat SS

man's mouth opened slowly; his hands hung limp at his sides, the Schmeisser clipped uselessly to his belt.

"But why?" he asked quietly. "Why me?"

"Something to do with Reinhard Heydrich, I believe."

Berger's eyes grew wide; then they closed. His head sagged onto his tunic.

"For the Fatherland," Hess said quietly. He pulled the trigger.

The captain jumped at the report of the Walther. Major Berger's body jerked twice on the ground, then lay still.

"Take his Schmeisser and any ammunition you can find," Hess ordered.

"Check the Daimler."

"Jawohl, Herr Reichminister!"

The next few minutes were a blur of action that both men would try to remember clearly for the rest of their lives-plundering the corpse for ammunition, searching the car, double-checking the drop tanks of the aircraft, donning their parachutes, firing the twin Daimler-Benz engines, turning the plane on the old cracked concrete-both men instinctively carrying out tasks they had rehearsed a thousand times in their heads, the tension compounded by the knowledge that an armed patrol might arrive from Aalborg at any moment.

Before boarding the plane, they exchanged personal effects. Hess quickly but carefully removed the validating items that had been agreed upon: three compasses, a Leica camera, his wristwatch, some photographs, a box of strange and varied drugs, and finally the fine gold identification chain worn by all members of Hitler's inner circle.

He handed them to the captain with a short word of explanation for each: "Mine, my wife's, mine, my wife and son . . ." The man receiving these items already knew their history, but he kept silent. Perhaps, he thought, the Reichminister speaks in farewell to all the familiar things he might lose tonight. The captain understood that feeling well.

Even this strange and poignant ceremony merged into the mind-numbing rush of fear and adrenaline that accompanied takeoff, and neither man spoke again until they found themselves forty miles over the North Sea, arrowing toward their target. As the plan dictated, Hess had yielded the controls to the captain. Hess now sat in the radio operator's seat, facing the twin tail fins of the fighter. The two men used no names-only ranks-and limited their conversation to the mechanics of the mission.

"Range?" the captain asked, tilting his head back toward the rear-facing seat.

"Twelve hundred and fifty miles with the nine-hundredliter tanks," Hess replied.

"I meant range to target."

"The island or the castle?"

"The island."

"Six hundred and seventy miles."

The captain asked no more questions for the next hour. He stared down at the steadily darkening sea and thought of his family. Hess studied a sheaf of papers in his lap: maps, photographs, and mini-biographies secretly copied from SS files in the basement of the Prinz-Albrechtstrasse. Ceaselessly, he went over each detail, visualizing the contingencies he could face upon landing. A hundred miles off the English coast, he began drilling the pilot in his duties.