'How do you know so much about him?'
Hans felt his face flush; he shrugged and looked out the window to cover
it.
'I'm glad it happened,' Weiss said softly.
'Why?' asked one of the recruits.
'Showed those Russians what for, that's why. Showed them West Berlin's
not a doormat for their filthy boots.
They'll have quite a little mess on their hands now, won't they, Hans?'
'We all will, Erhard.'
'Hauer ought to be prefect,' suggested an old hand of twenty-one.
'He's twice the man Funk is.'
'He can't,' Hans said, in spite dr himself.
'@y not?'
'Because of Munich.'
'Munich?'
Hans sighed and left the question unanswered. How could they
understand? Every man in the van but him and Weiss had been toddlers at
the time of the Olympic massacre.
Turning onto the Friedrichstrasse, he swung the van into a space in
front of the colossal police station and switched off the engine.
He sensed them all-Weiss especially-watching him for a clue as to what
to do next. Without a word he handed Weiss the keys, climbed out of the
van, and started for his Volkswagen.
'Where are you going?' Weiss called.
'Exactly where Hauer told me to go, my friend! Home!'
'But shouldn't we report this?'
'Do what you must!' Hans called, still walking. He could feel the
papers in his boot, already damp, with nervous sweat.
The sooner he was inside his own apartment, the better he would feel.
Again he prayed silently that Ilse would be home when he got there.
After three unsuccessful attempts, he coaxed his old VW to life, and
with the careful movements of a policeman who has seen too many traffic
fatalities, he eased the car into the morning rush of West Berlin.
The car that fell in behind him-a rental Ford-was just like a thousand
others in the city. The man at the wheel was not. Jonas Stern rubbed
his tired eyes and pushed his leather bag a little farther toward the
passenger door. It simply would not do for a traffic policeman to see
what lay on the seat beneath the bag. Not a gun, but a night-vision
scope-a third-generation Pilkington, far superior to the one the
American sergeant had been toying with.
Definitely not standard tourist equipment.
But worth its weight in gold, Stern decided, following Hans's battered
VW around a turn. In gold.
CHAPTER TWO
5.'55 A.M. Soviet Sector. East Berlin, DDR The KGB's RYAD computer
logged the Spandau call at 05:55:32 hours Central European Time. Such
exactitude seemed to matter a great deal to the new breed of agent that
passed through East Berlin on their training runs these days.
They had cut their too-handsome teeth on microchips, and for them a case
that could not be reduced to microbits of data to feed their precious
machines was no case at all. But to Ivan Kosov-the colonel to whom such
calls were still routed-high-tech accuracy without human judgment to
exploit it meant nothing. Snorting once to clear his chronically
obstructed sinuses, he picked up the receiver of the black phone on his
desk.
'Kosov,' he growled.
The words that followed were delivered with such hysterical force that
Kosov jerked the receiver away from his ear.
The man on the other end of the phone was the 'sergeant' from the
Spandau guard detail. His actual rank was captain in the KGB, Third
Chief Directorate-the KGB division responsible for spying on the Soviet
army. Kosov glanced at his watch. He'd expected his man back by now.
Whatever the flustered captain was screaming about must explain the
delay.
'Sergei,' he said finally. 'Start again and tell it like a
professional. Can you do that?'
Two minutes later, Kosov's hooded eyes opened a bit and his breathing
grew labored. He began firing questions at his subordinate, trying to
determine if the events at Spandau had been accidental, or if some human
will had guided them.
'What did the Polizei on the scene say? Yes, I do see. Lis ten to me,
Sergei, this is what you will do. Let this policeman do just what he
wants. Insist on accompanying him to the station.
Take your men with you. He is with you now?
What is his name?' Kosov scrawled Hauer, Polizei Captain on a notepad.
'Ask him which station he intends to go to.
Abschnitt 53?' Kosov wrote that down too, recalling as he did that
Abschnitt 53 was in the American sector of West Berlin, on the
Friedrichstrasse. 'I'll meet you there in an hour. It might be sooner,
but these days you never know how Moscow will react. What? Be
discreet, but if force becomes necessary, use it. Listen to me.
Between the time the prisoners are formally charged and the time I
arrive, you'll probably have a few minutes. Use that time. Question
each of your men about anything out of the ordinary they might have
noticed during the night. Don't worry, this is what you were trained
for.' Kosov cursed himself for not putting a more experienced man on
the Spandau detail. 'And Sergei, question your men separately. Yes,
now go. I'll be there as soon as I can.'
Kosov replaced the receiver and searched his pocket for a cigarette. He
felt a stab of incipient angina, but what could he expect? He had
already outfoxed the KGB doctors far longer than he'd ever hoped to, and
no man could live forever. The cigarette calmed him, and before he
lifted the other phone-the red one that ran only east-he decided that he
could afford sixty seconds to think this thing through properly.
Trespassers at Spandau. After all these years, Moscow's cryptic
warnings had finally come true. Had Centre expected this particular
incident? Obviously they had expected something, or they wouldn't have
taken such pains to have their stukatch on hand when the British leveled
the prison. Kosov knew there was at least one informer on his Spandau
