He fell to his knees and searched the dead man's clothes.
He immediately found a British passport-which he placed in his own
pocket-and a wallet, from which he removed the money. Robbery was the
most plausible option under the circumstances. He glanced quickly
behind the dead man's ears for the Phoenix tattoo, but saw no mark. It
took a considerable effort to dislodge Hans's knife. Hauer wiped it
clean on the corpse's jacket, then slipped the knife into his belt.
'Who is he?' Hans murmured.
'Worry about it later. Let's go.'
As Hauer turned and grabbed the door handle, he felt motion behind him.
He turned again, then froze. Hans had snatched up the corpse by the
collar and he was screaming, screaming in German at the top of his
lungs: 'Where is she, gotidamn you? Where is my wife?'
Gadi and Stern burst out of room 8@O to find an empty hallway. A
strange, cloying scent lingered in the air. Perfume.
'Who the hell was that?' Gadi shouted. 'The Germans?
They must be in one of these rooms.'
'They're gone!' Stern called from the door of suite 811.
'Come on!'
Together they raced to the elevator. As the doors slid shut, Stern
tried again to reach Aaron at the elevator-control box.
'Aaron!' he cried. 'Forget the elevator! Try to stop the Germans!
Aaron!'
In the concrete basement of the hotel, Aaron Haber heard Stern's
crackling commands as: 'Aaron! ... elevator! ...
-stop the Germans!' Dutifully, the young Israeli threw the switch that
stopped the elevator between the fourth and third floors.
When the car jolted to a stop, Stern and Gadi stared at each other with
ashen faces. Gadi punched the button to @:open the door, but got no
response. He tried to pry the doors 'Open with his Uzi, but they
wowdn't budge. Whirling around in fury, he saw no one. Stern had sat
down on the :floor of the elevator and leaned against the veneer wall,
his eyes closed.
'Chfld's play,' he said softly. 'Isn't that what you said?'
Hauer wrenched the rented Toyota over to the curb in front of a
government sandstone office building. He leavt out of the car, ran to
the left front wheel well, and crouched down. Eight seconds later he
was back beside Hans, holding a heavy paper packet covered with duct
tape. The packet held the Spandau papers and the photos Hauer had shot
during the afternoon.
'So much for the Burgerspark,' Hauer said. 'We're not going back to the
Protea Hof, either. Our passports are obviously blown.'
Hans rocked back and forth in the passenger seat.
'That explosion sounded like a grenade,' said Hauer.
'Who in hell could have thrown it? The kidnappers?'
'We got out,' Hans muttered. 'That's all that matters. We just have to
stay alive until the rendezvous tomorrow.'
'We need cover,' said Hauer. 'This time we ignore our friendly cabbie's
advice, though. This time we're going to a real fleabag.
Somewhere we won't need any identification at all.'
Hans nodded. 'How do we find that?'
'Just like we would in Berlin.'
Hauer let in the clutch and pulled onto Prince's Park Straat, then
turned southwest onto R-27. He slowed at each intersection and peered
down the side streets. He knew what he wanted: garish neon, street
people, liquor advertisements, the howl of bar music. The universal
siren song that draws the lonely and the bored and the hunted to the
dark marrow of every city in the world. From what Hauer had learned
already, he suspected it would be easier to find such a place in
Johannesburg than in Pretoria. But he knew that anonymity could he had
anywhere for a price.
With Hans watching the streets fanning north, he drove on.
826 Pm. Horn House: The Northern Transvaal
Alfred . Horn sat beneath the greenish glow of a banker's lamp in his
dark study. Opposite him, immersed in shadow, Pieter Smuts awaited his
questions.
'They're gone?' Horn said quietly.
'They're gone.'
'Comments?'
Smuts glowered from the shadows. 'I don't like Major Karami. I don't
trust him. I think it was a mistake to show him the plutonium.
It was a mistake to show him the Phoenix mark.'
Horn laughed softly. 'Is there anyone you do trust, Pieter?'
'Myself. You. No one else.'
'You must have a little faith in human greed, Pieter. The Arabs want
the weapon too desperately to risk losing it through treachery.
Now, what of the cobalt case?'
'Can't be done, sir. Not in ten days.'
Horn let out a sigh of exasperation. 'What about using a standard
cobalt jacket?'
Smuts shrugged. 'It would work, but the Libyans would reallize what
they were dealing with. They'd probably reive the jacket before the
strike. The only way we can fool them is by having the bomb case itself
seeded with cobalt.
And our metallurgists are having serious problems. We had ays getting
the cobalt itself, and the casting is far from pie. It's the rush, sir.
If we could slow down a bit, go back to the original plan-' 'Out of the
question!' Horn snapped. 'I may be dead in twenty days.
The British are coming for me, I'm certain of that.' What will the bomb
do without the cobalt?'
'To be honest, sir, the short-term damage will be just as severe without
it. And with the prevailing winds in Israel at is time of year, a
direct forty-kiloton strike on Tel Aviv ay well take out most of the
population of Jerusalem with radiation alone.'
Horn nodded slowly.
muts reached out of the shadows and laid four videocases in the pool of
light on Horn's desk. 'There,' he said ;efully, 'is the proof of Libyan
involvement with the ib. I must ask again, sir. Why trust the Arabs at
all? My and I can place the weapon inTel Aviv ourselves, and can use a
