Spandau Phoenix (73 page)

"If you wreck this negotiation, Qaddafi will have your head on a spike!

And mine with it!"

Karami easily pulled his arm free. "If you had half the cunning of a rug peddler, Jalloud, you'd see that this old Nazi needs us as much as we need him. Probably more."

Karami reached out and laid his forefinger lightly on Jailoud's cheek.

"When our business is done," he vowed, "I will gut that old man for-his insult."

Jalloud stared at Karami with horror, but the major only smiled.

"Hurry!" the interpreter whispered. "He's already around the corner!"

"Let us go, my friend," Karami said pleasantly. "We'll see what else our host has to offer us." He started down the hall.

Jalloud followed slowly. He didn't know exactly what the second-in-command of the Libyan People's Army had in mind, but he knew already that he didn't like it. He also knew that the fanatical, impulsive dictator who still held the reins of power in Tripoli would probably love it. "Allah protect us," he murmured, hurrying after the receding figure of Karami. "From ourselves, if no one else."

Ilse Apfel opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling of her bedroom prison cell. How did I get here? she wondered. As she lay there, trying to gather her thoughts, a key scratched in the door.

Ilse sat up slowly, her eyes on the knob. It turned slowly; then the door burst open. Robert Stanton stood there wobbling, with two crystal goblets in one hand and a bottle of cognac in the other. The Englishman smiled crookedly.

"Guten Abend, Frdulein!" he bellowed.

While Ilse stared, he stepped in, closed the door, and propped himself haughtily against it.

"Get out of my room," she said forcefully.

"Now, now, Fraulein, let's just relax and have a sip of something nice, shall we?"

"I'll scream," Ilse threatened, though she knew it sounded ridiculous.

"Wonderfully solid house, this," Stanton said, grinning.

"Damned near soundproof, I should think."

Ilse summoned her coldest voice. "If you touch me, Herr Horn will make you pay."

Stanton raised an eyebrow. "The old goat's taken quite a fancy to you, it's true. But he's terribly busy just now, hobnobbing with the Great Unwashed. He doesn't have time for domestic squabbles. So, it's up to us to have a good time while the business gets done." Stanton poured two brimming glasses of Remy Martin V.S.O.P spilling as much again on the floor.

The mention of the Arabs brought the earlier meeting back in a rush.

"Business?" Ilse echoed. "You're aware of what he's doing, and you call it business? Aren't you an Englishman, for God's sake?"

"The genuine article," Stanton said with a mock bow. "I told you, my blood's nearly as blue as the queens."

"Then why don't you try to stop him?"

Stanton shrugged. "What's the point? Alfred stopped listening to me long ago. Although what he thinks he can get from those flea-ridden Arabs, I haven't the slightest idea.

Poppies, I suppose. Very old hat. He certainly can't sell them anything-they've got their own sources of supply in the trade, haven't they? Rather like trying to sell them oil, what? Now, come her-e and give us a kiss."

"My God," Ilse whispered. "You don't even know what he's doing!

What he's selling!"

Stanton lurched forward, sloshing cognac onto her blot "I don't care if he's selling the-bloody crown jewels, love.

I'm well out of it now and ... darling, you make quite a dish in those natty secretary's clothes. Makes one quite anxious to see what you look like out of them."

Leering through a haze of alcohol, Stanton set the bottle on the bedside table, drained his glass and smashed it against the door with a flourish.

Ilse struggled to stay calm. "Lord Granville," she said evenly, "you're drunk. You don't know what you're don Herr Horn will have you killed if you do this. Don't you know that?"

Stanton laughed raucously, then,his face grew deadly serious. "I advise you to choose your allies with care," he said, wagging a finger in her face. "Very soon dear Alfred may no longer be in a position to have anyone killed."

Ilse thought swiftly. She was afraid, but not in the way she had been on the X-ray table. This babbling Englishman was no Pieter Smuts.

"All right, then," she said. "I suppose there's nothing I can do." As Stanton watched fascinated, Ilse lifted the bottle of Rdmy Martin and swigged from the mouth of the bottle.

She let some of the brandy dribble down her chin, her eyes fixed on Stanton's. "Lock the door," she said. "I don't want to be interrupted."

With an astonished gape Stanton turned around and lurched toward the door. The half-full bottle of Remy Martin crashed against the base of his skull like a glass avalanche.

He staggered and fell to the floor. Ilse rifled his pockets and found the key he'd used to enter her room. Praying he didn't have access to any others, she flung the bedroom door wide, dragged his unconscious body into the hall, then jumped back into her room and slammed the door.

She tried to lock it with the key, but it didn't seem to fit. She cursed as the useless metal bent in the lock. Either she'd taken the wrong key from Stanton, or the proper key only worked from the outside.

She thought of opening the door and searching him again, but she had lost her nerve. Her entire body was shaking. Ilse lurched into the bathroom and locked it with the flimsy door latch.

"Please hurry, Hans," she murmured. "God, please hurry."

7.55p.m. BurgersparkHatel, Pretoria When Hans Apfel walked into the lobby of the Burgerspark, Yosef Shamir felt his heart thump with excitement. Hans looked neither left nor right as he walked, but marched straight across to the elevators set in the far wall. Yosef lifted the walkietalkie that connected him to Stern's room on the eighth floor.

"Apfel has arrived," he said. "He's going for the elevators."

"Any sign of HauerT' asked Gadi Abrams.

"No. Should I wait?"

A pause. "No. Get up to Natterman's room."

Yosef scurried to a second elevator. Just as he stepped inside, he glimpsed the broad back of a man wearing a dark business suit disappear through the fire stairs door. "I think Hauer's here," he said as the elevator doors closed. "He's coming up the stairs."

"Acknowledged," Gadi replied. "Get the professor ready to move."

Dieter Hauer crashed through the third floor fire door and hit the up elevator button. The stairs were taking too long, and if anything rough was going to happen in suite 811, he didn't want to be too late or too exhausted to participate. After a brief wait, he darted into an empty elevator and punched 8. The car whooshed up the remaining floors in seconds. It took Hauer a moment to get his bearings, but within fifteen seconds he was knocking on the door of suite 811.

Hans opened the door after scrutinizing him through the fisheye peephole. "See anyone?"

Hauer stepped into the suite. "No, but I went through the lobby pretty fast."

"The room's empty," Hans informdd him. "Do you think they'll call, or send somebody up?"

"I think they'll call." Hauer glanced at his watch. "In one minute we'll know for sure."

Gadi Abrams adjusted the headphones he was wearing and looked up at Jonas Stern. "Hauer's inside," he said.

Stern nodded. "Let's see if anyone shows up."

The unexpected ring of the telephone in the Israelis' room startled both Gadi and Stern. Gadi asked sharply, "Who t sides our own men knows we're here?"

Stern tightened his lips. "No one. Except maybe the kidnappers."

He lifted the receiver. "Yes?"

"Someone's trying to hit us!" shouted a voice in Hebrew.

"The professor's stark naked!"

"Yosef.?" Stern said. "Yosef, what's happened? Where are you?"

"In the professor's room! Just after we left Natterman, someone came in here looking for the papers. A woman. I used the phone because she blew the professor's radio to pieces. He's hysterical!"

Stern touched the bulge in his pocket where the three Spandau pages lay.

"Yosef, stay whore you are. Stay on the line@' , "Telephone ringing in Apfel's room," Gadi said, pressing the headphones to his ears.

"Yosef," Stern instructed, "wait five seconds, then start calling suite 811. Make certain the professor is ready, and keep trying until you get through."

Yosef rang off.

Hans jumped a foot off the bed when the ringing telephone fulfilled Hauer's prediction. Hauer glanced at his watch: eight Pm.

exactly. Hans darted between the beds and snatched up the receiver.

"Hello?"

"Sergeant Apfel?" said a male voice.

"Yes!"

"You know the Voortrekker Monument?"

"What? Wait ... yes, the big brown thing. I saw it as I drove into town."

"Be there tomorrow at ten A.M. Come alone. Ten A.M. Do you have that?

The Voortrekker Monument. Ten in the morning. Alone."

"What about my wife? Will Ilse be there?' "You be there. If you're not alone, she dies."

The caller broke the connection.

Hans dropped the receiver onto the floor, @ face slack.

"Well?" said Hauer. 'What did they sayt' Hans stood silent for several seconds. "They want me to meet them tomorrow," he said finally. "At the Voortrekker -Monument."

Hauer nodded excitedly. "That's a good place for us. Very public.

That's where I'll lay out our terms for the exchange.

What time is the rendezvous?"

A strange calm seemed to settle over Hans. His eyes seemed unfocus@d.

He sat down hard on the bed.

"What time, Hans?" Hauer repeated softly, his eyes straying to the door. "What time is the rendezvous?"

Hans looked up, straight into his father's eyes. "Six," he said in a robotic voice. "Six Pm. at the Voortrekker Monument."

Down the hall and around the corner, Gadi Abrams shook his fist in triumph. "The rendezvous is at six," he murmured, "at the Voortrekker Monument. Apfel's off the line, but I didn't hear him hang up." Gadi pressed the headphones to his dark head. "No phone ringing. Come on, Professor -- ." Suddenly Gadi jumped up and pulled off the headphones.

"the professor can't get through! Apfel didn't hang up the phone!"

Stern forced himself to think clearly. His well-planned operation was unraveling around him. Snatching up the phone, he tried to call Yosef and the professor. "Busy," he said.

"They're still trying to reach Hauer. That means the stairs won't be covered."

"Aaron has to stay at the elevator box," Gadi said quickly.

"You've got to keep trying to reach the professor. That leaves me to cover the stairs." The young commando picked up his Uzi and started for the door. He had not heard it open.

With the mute surprise of a man watching the earth split open at his feet, Gadi watched a small round fragmentation grenade rolling toward him through the foyer. The door slammed shut.

"Grenade!" he shouted.

While Stern-a veteran of three desert wars and countless guerilla actions@over behind the far bed, Gadi Abrams proved the boast he had made minutes before about the sayaret matkal commandos. With the reflexes of a gifted soccer player, he stopped the grenade's forward motion with his right foot, then kicked it sideways into the bathroom.

Then he hurled himself backward into the space between the two double beds.

Hauer was leaning out of the door down the hall, straining his ears for the slightest sound, when Swallow's grenade exploded in the bathroom of room 820.

"Donnerwetter!" he roared. "What the hell was that?"

Reaching back blindly, Hauer wrenched Hans through the door.

"Stay with me!" he commanded. "And don't use your gun unless you absolutely have to!"

Hauer dragged Hans toward the fire stairs, away from the explosion. They crashed through the metal door at speed, careening headlong down concrete steps like teenaged hoodlums. As they passed a large, red-painted 5, Hauer caught hold of Hans's jacket.and pulled him against the wall. He clapped a hand over Hans's mouth and listened for any sound of pursuit. At first he heard only their own ragged gasps.

Then a slow creak, as of someone attempting to silently open a disused fire door, echoed through the stairwell.

When the crash came, Hauer knew that their pursuer had given up all hope of stealth. He shoved Hans downward and charged after him.

They took each flight in two leaps, only lightly touching the rails as a guide. On the thirdfloor landing Hauer grabbed Hans and growled a dozen words into his ear, then slipped through the fire door while Hans continued downward. Hauer drew his stolen Walther-then he recalled his warning to Hans. The explosion upstairs would draw all attention to the eighth floor. If he fired the unsilenced Walther here, he would certainly draw some attention to himself.

With a curse of frustration he slipped the Walther back into his pocket and waited.

Four floors above him, Yosef Shamir flung himself down the stairs like a man possessed. From the moment he'd gotten off the telephone with Stern, the young commando had been hauling his instincts. Stern had ordered him to stay put, but from what Natterman had told him, Yosef feared that the woman with the machine pistol was now on her way up to find Stern. Leaving Natterman to complete the call to the Germans on his own, Yosef had raced upstairs to help Gadi and Stern. He had reached the seventh floor.when he heard the door just above him crash open. He slipped quietly through the seventh floor door just in time to see Hauer and Hans rush past him down the stairs. With a sudden sick feeling, Yosef realized he was probably -the sole remaining link to Stern's quarry. The young Israeli bounded down the fire stairs with no regard for safety, his mind only on regaining contact with the Germans.