Spandau Phoenix (48 page)

"I think I should go with him," Schneider said blun ,Well, you can't. I need you here. You've got a lot do before you get any rest, mister."

"Such as?"

"Such as helping me rout out the scum that's holed up in that police station."

Schneider smiled coldly. "Gut.

"But first I want YOu to get over to that police sergeant's apartment.

kpfel, right? Talk to the guy's wife. We should've covered it hours ago, but I couldn't spare you."

Schneider stepped to the door and pulled on his heavy wool overcoat.

"And Schneider?"

"Yes, Colonel?"

"Sorry about that tattoo business. I'm on edge. If you stumble into trouble, don't play hero, okay? I know YOu don't like Americans messing around in your backyard, but solo's no way to flY On something like this. You get me?"

Schneider nodded, but as his broad back disappeared through the office door, Rose wondered how sincere the gesture really was.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

612 P.M. SOViOt Sector. EB$t Berlin, ODR In a black BMW parked two blocks from the red-and-white border posts of the Sonnenallee checkpoint, Colonel Ivan Kosov sat in silent rage while a man in a two-thousand dollar Savile Row suit berated him for blatant incompetence.

The man was Yuri Borodin, himself a colonel and one of the brightest stars of the Twelfth Department of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB. Kosov hated everything about Borodin-his undisguised arrogance, his hand-tailored clothing, his aristocratic family background and manner of speech, his meteoric rise to high rank@everything. It made the situation all the more difficult to bear.

"So you think your men can handle a simple surveillance job?"

Borodin asked coldly.

"Da, " Kosov grunted.

Borodin looked out of the car window distractedly. "I'm afraid I do not share your faith. Major Richardson will go to U.S. Army Headquarters for debriefing, then he'll move.

Wherever he goes, that is where the missing Polizei officers and your Spandau papers are. If indeed papers are what the young German found.

If it is papers, I'd, bet my career that the Americans have them already."

I hope you do, thought Kosov "What makes you think the Americans have caught them?"'he asked. 'And what makes you think Major fiichardson was even working on the Spandau case when my men captured him?"

Borodin switched to an upper-class English accent. "Instinct, old boy,"

he said primly.

Kosov wrinkled his lip in disgust. "You sound like an Oxford professor with a pipe stuck up his ass."

"And how would you know what an Oxford professor sounds like?"

Borodin needled. "I'm just practicing the King's English, Comrade.

I'll probably be needing it in the next few days."

Someone tapped on the smoked-glass window on the driver's side of the BMW. Kosov cranked down the window.

Captain Dmitri Rykov stuck his head into the window.

"They've taken him to U.S. headquarters," Rykov informed them, eyeing Borodin with curiosity.

"I'll be off, then," Borodin said lightly.

"Where are you going?" asked Kosov.

"To pick up Major Richardson when he leaves army headquarters.

You don't really think I trust your chaps to stay on him, do you?

No offense intended, of course."

"But how will you get there?"

Borodin smiled. "In this car, of course."

"But this is my personal car!" Kosov exploded.

"Now, now, Comrade," Borodin said. "Relax. This car belongs to the people, doesn't it? I need a car-this one's available. You'll get it back eventually. Now, out of the car.

I must be on my way."

Koso hauled himself out of the vehicle and slammed the v d door behind him. Borodin didn't even notice. He roared up to the checkpoint, not the slightest bit nervous about his false papers.

Borodin was Twelfth Department, and Twelfth Department always got the best.

Dmitri Rykov stared dumbfounded at his superior. He had never seen Ivan Kosov allow someone to run roughshod over him like that.

"Who was that man, Colonel?"

Kosov stared after his receding BMW. "Someone you will get to know very well in the next few days, Dmitri." He turned to Rykov.

"You still have your travel papers?"

"Yes, Comrade Colonel."

"Good. I want you to cross into the American sector and go to U.S. Army Headquarters. There you will find the man you just saw steal my BMW.

you're to follow him and report his every movement back to me.

Do you have any credit cards?"

Rykov nodded with enthusiasm"American Express?"

"Gold Card."

Kosov scowled. "Captain Rykov, I am authorizing you to spend whatever is necessary to follow that man wherever he goes."

"Yes, sir!"

"Anywhere in the world," Kosov added.

Rykov's chest swelled as he absorbed the import of Kosov's words.

This had to be something big. Something that could make a career.

"His name," said Kosov quietly, "is Yuri Borodin. He's a colonel in the Twelfth Department."

Rykov paled.

"Do you wish me to find someone else, Captain?"

Rykov cleared his throat. "Nyet, Comrade Colonel. Dmitri Rykov is your man."

"Then get your ass over to the checkpoint and find out what cover Borodin used to cross. I'll call a car for you."

Kosov laid a hand on Rykov's shoulder. "Keep your eyes open for someone named Zinoviev. He's either a very old man or a very dead one.

Call me as often as you can. I'll have more information on Borodin for you."

"Thank you, Comrade Colonel!"

"And Dmitri ... about that tattoo. The eye on Goltz'shead."

Kosov lowered his voice. "It is the symbol of a oneeyed man. I don't know his name, but whoever he is, he's at the center of this case. The Americans don't know anything about him, and I don't think Borodin does either. So if you happen to meet a man with one eye-a glass eye, or even a patch-you are to call me immediately. If you.

even hear of a oneeyed man involved with this case, you call me."

Rykov looked confused, but he nodded.

"Now go!

Ignoring his bruised leg, Rykov sprinted after the BMW.

Kosov lit a Camel cigarette and took a deep drag. He held in the acrid smoke for a long time before he exhaled. He felt better now.

Much better. When he smiled, the expression made him look even uglier than he wa's.

630 pm. #30 Ldtzenstrasse

Ivan Kosov's black-clad assassin padded softy into Ilse's apartment building and slipped into the stairwell. He was looking forward to paying back the German whore who had taunted him yesterday, and he knew a hundred ways to extract his pound of flesh. He only hoped that the old tart's young companion would be home with her. She could prove very entertaining before she died. It never ceased to amaze Misha how cooperative women became after only the briefest acquaintance with his knife.

Three floors above him, Eva Beers leaned toward her bathroom mirror and pulled a stained bandage away from her cheek. The laceration looked considerably worse than it had twelve hours before.

The skin hung slack in spite of her best attempts to smile or grimace.

Last night, when she had first got back to her apartment, she'd discovered that the lower half of her left cheek did not seem to be moving normally. It disturbed her, but she put the problem down to shock. Eva had been in her share of bar brawls, and drawing on this experience she did a fair job of patching the deep gash inflicted by the young Russian. But now she worried.

The bleeding had long since stopped, but the stubborn flesh to the left of her mouth still hung lifeless, like that of a stroke victim.

Replacing the bandage, she decided to ignore Kosov's warning and seek proper medical assistance.

She slipped on a housecoat and walked out to the front room of her modest apartment to check on Ernst. The tough old cabbie lay snoring on the sofa. He had taken a bad beating and needed a doctor almost as badly as Eva did. She leaned over him, listening to his irregular breaths. His bruised and battered face made her furious again. She had expected the Russians to come back for her as soon as they realized she had lied about Ilse, but they hadn't. Lucky for them, too, she thought.

Because for the remainder of last night and most of today, some of her heavily built friends from her Ratskeller days had hung around the apartment just in case the Russians showed up. An hour ago Eva had thanked them and sent them on their way, glad that no further trouble had visited.

Kissing Ernst lightly on his forehead, she went back to her bedroom and pulled the door shut. In her bureau drawer she found the number of an old general practitioner who not so long ago had run a quiet practice catering to smugglers, addicts, and young girls in trouble. I hope he's still in business, she thought. She had no patience with emergency roomstoo many forms to fill out, too many questions to answer.

She left the doctor's number on the bureau and went into the bathroom to make up her face.

In the hallway outside the apartment, Misha inserted an@e-thin tOOl into the door lock and picked it with ease.

Eva had carelessly left the bolt unshot when her friends left but she had fastened the chain. Misha put his deceptively' narrow shoulder against the door and leaned into it hard, yanidng the chain's anchor-plate from the doo@amb.

The noise of the screws pulling loose was minimal, but enough to make the sleeping cabbie shift on the sofa.

Misha's ears detected the rustle, and after his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he discerned the supine form. He crossed the room silently and stared down. Bruises and a badly blackened eye distorted Ernst's face, but Misha recognized the old man who had fought so tenaciously outside his taxi on the previous night. As Misha stared, Ernst's eyes flut@ open. With the dreadful clarity of nightmares the old cabbie recognized the Russian above him. He opened his mouth to scream a warning to Eva, but Misha snatched a threadbare pillow from the couch and slammed it over Ernst's contorted face, pressing down with all his strength.

In the bathroom Eva heard nothing. The battle being fought in her front room was desperate but soundless. Just when Misha felt the old man's struggles begin to subside, a hand shot upward and locked around his throat in a maniacal death grip. The Russian struggled to hold the smothering pillow in place, not believing the old man's strength. The bony fingers clutching his throat seemed to be probing for some hollow place where they could gain sufficient purchase to crush his windpipe.

Misha had had enough. The pillow had seemed a good idea at first, but it was obviously too slow for this old lion.

Fighting to breathe, he held the @illow in place with his right hand and drew his stiletto from its ankle sheath with his left.

A veteran of the streets, Ernst the cabbie knew what the snick of spring and steel meant, but he rould fight no harder than he was already. He felt the cold blade pierce his chest just below the sternum. Misha expertly twisted the blade across the midline marking the passage of the aorta; the old man felt ice turn to fire. He jerked spasmodically, then his wrinkled hands slipped from Misha's-throat. @ I The Russian gulped in huge lungfuls of air and shook his head to clear it. He had not expected this battle. Then suddenly, as the pillow slipped from the old man's livid face, Ernst somehow summoned a last measure of energy and cried out-not loudly, but it was enough. Misha looked see Eva's bedroom door slam shut and hear the click of the bolt shooting home.

Cursing, he scrambled around the room's baseboards until he found the telephone line running from the bedroom. He severed the black wire two seconds after Eva picked up the receiver in her roomSheathing his knife with a grin, he charged the bedwom door. The bolt did not give.

He stepped back and examined the door. it had a heavy frame with two solid planks crossing with ur thinner sheets of in the middle, but it was Paneled with an above wood. Aiming at a spot on the upper right P

el-just the knob-Misha kicked hard, splintering the brittle woodA second kick opened the hole he wanted. He thrust his left hand through the jagged opening, groping for the bolt.

With the sure eye of a seamstress, Eva drove the point of a brass letter opener through the back of the Russian's ex@ hand. The shriek from the other side of the door did not even sound human. Misha's spasming hand jerked back through the splintered door panel, taidng the letter opener with it.

,Devil's whore!" he screamed, wrenching the blade from his punctured hand. "You're dead!"

Eva did not own a gun, and she was 'now truly terrified. Her attacker launched his body repeatedly against the door, wwarning in animal rage.

Still the bolt refused to give.

Then, suddenly, the bloody hand reappeared through the hole and probed for the bolt. The circular wound in its center made Eva think of the.

hand of C st. Hyste c ly, she hri ri al screamed some part of a childhood, prayer and smashed a chair down on the bloody fingers.