'Well, well,' the reporter deadpanned, 'the police have joined the club.
Listen, Sergeant, I don't buy stories, I track them down for pay. That's
the news game, you know? If you want money, try one of the American TV
networks.'
When Hans didn't respond, Weber said, 'Okay, I'll bite.
What's your story? The mayor consorting with the American commandant's
wife? The Wall coming down tomorrow? I've heard them all, Sergeant.
Everybody's got a story to sell and ninety-nine percent of them are
shit. What's yours?'
Hans looked furtively toward the street. 'What if,' he murmured, 'what
if I told you I'd got hold of something important from the war?
From the Nazi period?'
'Something,' Weber echoed. 'Like?'
Hans sighed anxiously. 'Like papers, say. Like a diary.
Weber scrutinized him for some moments; then his eyebrows arched
cynically. 'Like the diary of a Nazi war criminal, maybe?'
Hans's eyes widened in disbeliel 'How did you know?'
'Scheisse! ' Weber cursed. He slapped the wall. 'Is that what you got
me over here for? Christ, where do they find you guys? That's the
oldest one in the book!'
Hans stared at the reporter as if he were mad. 'What do you mean?'
Weber returned Hans's gaze with something akin to pity; then he put a
hand on his shoulder. 'Whose diary is it, Sergeant? Mengele's?
Borinann's?'
'Neither,' Hans snapped. He felt strangely defensive you ing t about
the Spandau papers. 'What the hell are try 0 say?'
'I'm saying that you probably just bought the German equivalent of the
Brooklyn Bridge.'
Hans blinked, then looked away, thinking fast. He clearly wasn't going
to get any information without revealing some first. 'This diary's
genuine,' he insisted. 'And I can prove it.'
'Sure you can,' said Weber, glancing at his watch. 'When Gerd Heidemann
discovered the 'Hitler diaries' back in '83, he even had Hugh
Trevor-Roper swearing they were authentic. But they were crap,
Sergeant, complete fakes. I don't know where you got your diary, but I
hope to God you didn't pay much for it.'
The reporter was laughing. Hans forced himself to smile sheepishly, but
what he was thinking was that he hadn't paid n all papers. He had found
them.
o e Pfennig for the Spand And if Heini Weber knew where he had found
them, the reporter would be begging him for an exclusive story.
Hans heard the regular swish of a broom from the first-floor landing.
'Heini,' he said forcefully, 'just tell me this. Have you heard of any
missing Nazi documents or anything like that floating around recently?'
Weber shook his head in amazement. 'Sergeant, what you're talking
about-Nazi diaries and things-people were selling them ten-a-penny after
the war. It's a fixed game, a scam.' His face softened. 'Just cut
your losses and run, Hans. Don't embarrass yourself.'
Weber turned and grabbed the door handle, but Hans caught him by the
sleeve. 'But if it were authentic?' he said, surprising himself.
'What kind of money would we be talking about?'
Weber pulled his arm free, but he paused for a last look at the gullible
policeman. The swish of the broom had stopped, but neither man noticed.
'For the real thing?' He chuckled. 'No limit, Sergeant.
Stern magazine paid Heidemann 3.7 million marks for first rights to the
'Hitler diaries.' '
Hans's jaw dropped.
'The London Sunday Times went in for 400,000 pounds, and I think both
Time and Newsweek came close to getting stung.' Weber smiled with a
touch of professional envy.
'Heidemann was pretty smart about it, really. He set the hook by
leaking a story that the diaries contained Hitler's version of Rudolf
Hess's flight to Britain. Of course every rag in the world was panting
to print a special edition solving the last big mystery of the war.
They shelled out millions. Careers were ruined by that fiasco.'
The reporter laughed harshly. 'Guten Abend, Sergeant. Call me next
time there's a kidnapping, eh?'
Weber trotted to the waiting Spyder, leaving Hans standing dumbfounded
in the doorway. He had called the reporter for information, and he had
gotten more than he'd bargained for. 3.7
million marks? Jesus!
'Make way, why don't you!' croaked a high-pitched voice.
Hans grunted as the tall janitor shouldered past him onto the sidewalk
and hobbled down the street. His broom was gone; now a worn leather bag
swung from his shoulder.
Hans followed the man with his eyes for a while, then shook his head.
Paranoia, he thought.
Looking up at the drab facade of his apartment building, he decided that
a walk through the city beat waiting for Ilse in the empty flat.
Besides, he always thought more clearly on the move. He started
walking. Just over a hundred meters long, the Liitzenstrasse was wedged
into a rough trapezoid between two main thoroughfares and a convergence
of elevated S-Bahn rail tracks. Forty seconds' walking carried Hans
from the dirty brown stucco of his apartment building to the polished
chrome of the Kurfiirstendamm, the showpiece boulevard of Berlin. He
headed east toward the center of the city, speaking to no one, hardly
looking up at the dazzling window displays, magisterial banks, open-air
cafes, art galleries, antique shops, and nightclubs of the Ku'damm.
Bright clusters of shoppers jostled by, gawking and laughing together,
but they yielded a wide path to the lone walker whose Aryan good looks
were somehow made suspect by his unshaven face and ragged clothing. The
tall, spare man gliding purposefully along behind Hans could easily have
been walking at his shoulder. The man no longer looked like a janitor,
but even if he had, it wouldn't have mattered; Hans was lost in heady
dreams of wealth beyond measure.
He paused at a newsstand and bought a pack of American cigarettes.
He really needed a smoke. As he sucked in the first potent drag, he
suddenly remembered something from the Spandau papers. The writer had
said he was the last ...
