The Secret of Spandau (37 page)

Red knew that this could be a Russian trick to get him to talk. He was guarded in his response. ‘Do you know about me?'

‘Of course.'

‘But you don't know about Cal.'

After a pause, the voice said, ‘I will come back with the coffee.' The panel closed.

Red paced the cell, trying to decide whether the French accent was genuine. To his ear, most Frenchmen speaking English sounded like con-artists. If this were really a warder, possibilities emerged – remote, improbable, but worth exploring in a no-win situation. If he could convey to the warders that their colleague Cal had been murdered and that Hess himself was in imminent danger from the KGB, they might be persuaded to help. They knew how Spandau operated. With their co-operation, and if they were willing to take exceptional risks, he might have a chance.

While he pondered the risks, his brain was busy, subconsciously turning over the significance of something he had noticed; and now it made the connection. He recalled a detail he had read in the press clippings back in England. Out of consideration to Hess, most of the warders had taken to wearing soft shoes, so as not to disturb his sleep. That was why the Frenchman had been able to approach the cell unheard. So he
was
a warder … wasn't he?

The risk had to be taken. Trust him.

The panel was slid open again. It came as a shock to hear another voice, American this time. ‘Coffee, no sugar.'

He took it through the hatch and waited there expectantly. ‘Thanks.'

‘You're welcome.'

And with that, the panel closed.

‘Fucking hell!' Red practically threw the stuff at the door. It had been a perfect opportunity for more communication, and it had gone begging. He had waited there, primed to speak. Christ, it was maddening! An American, Cal's buddy, and all he could find to say was a bloody platitude! Why hadn't the Frenchman reappeared when he had promised? Livid with rage and disappointment, Red sank on the bed with the paper cup of coffee in his fist. It was some time before he could bring himself to take a sip.

Then he felt something solid touch his teeth. He lifted it out of the cup and stared at it.

A small ballpoint pen.

The warders were not so dumb. They wanted him to write a message for them and pass it out. He felt through the pockets of the tracksuit for a scrap of paper. Nothing. Looked around the cell, under the table, under the bed. Plenty of dust, but no paper. He even tried taking a flake of paint from the wall, but it disintegrated in his hand.

Still in his other hand was the paper cup.

He shook his head and cursed himself for being so obtuse. He owed those guys an apology. For not only had they provided him with a writing implement and a surface; they had given him the means to return it undetected. There were two cups pressed together. He could write on the outer surface of one, using the whole of the space, and then enclose it tightly in the other. It would look like the one pristine cup they had appeared to hand him.

He wrote, compressing the size and content of the message:
Cal murdered by KGB. Also Edda Zenk, visited by Cal. Hess now in danger KGB Gen Vanin. I can explain. R. Goodbody, Brit. newsman
.

There was enough there to guarantee a bullet in the head if the cup was seen by the Russians, but he had to entrust his life to the warders. Not only that. He was banking on their outrage at Cal's death and their concern for Hess to shock them into helping him.

In a moment, the hatch opened.

‘More coffee?'

‘No thanks.'

He passed the empty cups through, and it was done. He wedged the pen into a corner on the underside of the table.

And waited.

Soon, he guessed, Colonel Klim would want him upstairs for more interrogation, possibly by General Vanin, whose name had provoked such alarm. If there was going to be action from the warders, it could not be long delayed. He wished to God he had stressed the emergency more.

He tensed. Words were being exchanged outside the cell door. He stood by the hatch, not knowing what to expect. Then he heard the bolts thrown across and the key turned. The door swung open slowly. The Soviet guard was there with his sub-machine gun. And so was a short, grey-haired man in gold-framed glasses and wearing the blue uniform of a prison official.

‘You must come for the ablutions now,' he said in the heavily-accented voice Red recognized as the chief warder's. ‘Put your hands on your head and follow me.'

No intimation of how the message had been received.

Red followed the instructions. He decided to leave the initiative to the Frenchman. There was nothing either of them could usefully do while the point of the gun was against his back. The bathroom was a short walk to the right down the corridor between walls coated in a pale green mould. An open doorway revealed a row of basins along one wall and eight lavatories without doors. Red went to one and relieved himself. Then he crossed the floor to the nearest basin and ran some water. He took off the tracksuit top and splashed water on his face and body.

As he bent over the basin again, he sneaked a glance behind him. The gun was still trained on him. Nothing was happening.

‘Enough,' said the chief warder in a bored voice. ‘Now we return to the cell.'

Red used the tracksuit to dab himself dry and put it on, looking with increasing desperation for some signal from the warder. Surely nothing could be done until the Russian was overpowered and disarmed. They needed the help of the American warder. Where the hell was he?

No clue was offered. ‘Put your hands on your head.'

He was the least demonstrative Frenchman Red had ever encountered. Even when their eyes met briefly, he communicated nothing. The encouragement Red had derived from the pen and the paper cups was draining away like the water in the basin. He was beginning to suspect he had made a hideous error.

A prod in the back from the gun, and he found himself retracing his steps along the corridor.

What now? The opportunity to act was almost past. At the cell door, he paused and said, ‘Thanks for the coffee.' Then, with slow emphasis, ‘Is there a chance of anything else?'

The chief warder answered tonelessly, ‘You want something to eat? I will try to arrange it.'

The Russian guard pressed the gun harder into Red's back. He had his own way of communicating, and there wasn't any ambiguity about it. Red sighed, stepped back into the cell and felt the rush of air as the door slammed behind him.

The missed opportunity rankled so much that it was a moment before he responded to the sight of something in the cell that had not been there before: a neat pile of clothes at the end of the bed – dark blue in colour, with silver buttons. A warder's uniform!

He lifted the jacket from the bed. Under it were a white shirt, black tie, trousers and black shoes. He clenched his fists and all but shouted in elation. He shouldn't have doubted the warders. This was brilliant, far more useful than anything he had dreamed up himself. The uniform was probably Cal's. He must have kept one at the prison to change into from his jogging gear. It was an excellent fit. The feel of the clothes gave Red a lift. There were still hair-raising problems to be faced, but he was in with some kind of chance.

Dressed up, he worked on his tousled hair with his fingers, trying to make it passably tidy. Then he waited in suspense, knowing that if he was summoned upstairs in the next few minutes, he was sunk. The sun had risen high enough for the first rays to streak through the barred windows. Red sat hunched on the edge of the bed, arms folded, staring at the stone floor.

Then he got up.

The bolts scraped and the key was turned. The door was pushed open slowly.

‘Your breakfast.' The American warder entered with a tray bearing bread rolls and a bowl of cereal. He placed it on the table and made sure that the cell door was only slightly ajar. Outside, the chief warder was in conversation with the guard, occupying his attention.

The American ran a critical eye over Red's turn-out. ‘OK,' he said in a subdued voice, speaking rapidly. ‘You step out of here and bolt the door, leaving me inside. The guard has the key. Walk right past him like you do it every day. Turn right, head for the stairway and go down to the next level. The warders' room will be the first on your left. It's standing open. Got that?'

Red nodded.

‘Hope you make it.' The American scooped the things off the tray and handed it to Red. ‘You'd better carry this.'

Red didn't attempt to thank him. There wasn't anything adequate he could have said. It was an act of rare courage to sit locked in that cell and wait for the Russians to discover that they had been outsmarted.

With the empty tray under his arm, Red opened the cell door, stepped outside, closed it, slammed home the bolt, turned past the chief warder and the guard and strode down the corridor at the measured pace he imagined warders used, wishing that the rubber-soled shoes didn't give the impression of stealth, and trying to decide at which point it would be worth making a dash if he were challenged.

Before he reached the stairs, he heard the key turn in the cell door. There was a change in the volume and tempo of the conversation behind him. It was the chief warder taking leave of the guard.

Red took the stairs at a quicker rate and found himself in a green and white corridor that looked more used to habitation. He found the warders' room and went inside. No one was there. It was furnished as a sitting-room, with a row of lockers, a fridge and a sink. The chief warder followed Red in. He pulled the door to and gestured to him to take a seat at the table.

Like a consultant with an anxious patient, he took off his glasses to polish them and said in a measured, emollient tone, ‘Now would you tell me precisely what happened to Cal Moody?'

Red stood gripping the chair-back. ‘For Christ's sake, there isn't time. They're going to send for me and all hell's going to break loose.'

The chief warder said in his deadpan manner, ‘I insist. I have responsibilities. If you want me and my colleagues to break the prison regulations, you must convince me it is necessary.'

Red's nerves were stretched to the limit, but he knew he couldn't do anything without the warders' active support. So he picked out the crucial events of the past twenty-four hours and related them succinctly, expecting any second to hear the clatter of army boots along the corridor. ‘Now do you believe me?' he asked earnestly when he was through.

The chief warder had listened impassively. ‘It is asking a lot. I must be frank with you. I cannot understand why it is necessary for you to speak to the prisoner Hess.'

Red had guessed this would be the sticking point. ‘Can't you see? He's in trouble. There's something he wants the world outside to know, some secret he has guarded for over forty years. He put his trust in Cal Moody and asked him to get in touch with this woman, Edda Zenk, and now the KGB have killed them both. They beat up Edda Zenk before they shot her, so you can bet that they found out the secret. Hess doesn't know this yet.'

‘That is probably true.'

‘You guys who have been close to the old man for years must have some regard for his well-being,' Red hazarded. ‘Don't you think he ought to be told what happened?'

‘
Ought to be
? No. In this matter, he has contravened the regulations.'

‘Sod the regulations!' Red almost howled.

‘But I was going to add,' the chief warder persisted staidly, ‘that we may feel a human obligation to tell him.'

Red clenched his fist as if to trap that human obligation in his hand. ‘Right! Only who would Hess trust, now that Cal is dead? Another warder?'

The question clearly made an impression, although the chief warder avoided answering it directly. ‘Why should he trust a total stranger?'

Before Red could answer, the phone buzzed.

The chief warder picked it up. He listened, and then responded in Russian. He frowned and changed the receiver to the other ear. His composure snapped at last. He protested angrily to the caller, gesticulating with his free hand. The to and fro continued for about a minute, at the end of which the caller must have put down the phone while the chief warder was still in full flow, because he suddenly stopped in mid-sentence, listened, held the receiver six inches from his face, stared at it, said, ‘
Merde
!' and fairly thumped it down.

He picked it up again, cradling the mouthpiece as he explained to Red, ‘Insufferable! Not only do the Russians flout the regulations by allowing this General Vanin to enter the prison without the agreement of all the directors, now they tell me he is already here and has a matter to discuss with Hess. I am ordered to escort Hess to the interview room. I will not do it without the consent of the other directors.'

‘Who is Vanin?' asked Red. ‘The Soviet director spoke about him on the phone last night. He was practically shaking in his shoes.'

‘I think he is KGB.' The chief warder impatiently rattled the contact-bar. ‘They won't give me an outside line, blast them. I don't mind who I speak to – the Allied Commission, any one of the directors. I refuse to capitulate to these Russians with blood on their hands.'

‘I've got to go in and talk to Hess now,' Red insisted.

‘Do you know? – I think the bastards have pulled the switches on me.' The chief warder rattled the phone again, and then pushed it away from him. He was outraged to the point of revolt. ‘OK,' he said tensely. ‘We will try, but it will be difficult. I will have to take you past two guards. There is the usual one on the inner cell-block door and an extra man who was posted outside the cell this morning. There is also Shaporenko, the Russian warder, on duty in the block.'

Red took a deep breath. ‘A warder? Christ, he'll know I'm a fake. Can you take care of him?'

‘I cannot promise. Straighten your tie.'