His palms touched something moist and cold. Foundation stones.
Condensation.
Rubbing his hands a@ross the stones until they were sufficiently wet, he
returned to Weiss and laved the cool liquid over his forehead.
Still Weiss lay silent.
Alarmed, Hans pressed both forefingers against Weiss's carotid arteries.
He felt pulse beats, but very faint and unbelievably far apart. Weiss
was alive, but just. The jailers had mentioned a doctor, Hans
remembered. What kind of doctor would send a man to a cell in this
condition? The obscenity of the situation drove him into a rage as he
stood by the cadaverous body of his friend. Someone would answer for
this outrage! Lurching to the front of the cell, Hans began screaming
at the top of his lungs. He screamed until he had no voice left, but no
one came. Slipping to the floor in exhaustion, he realized that the
stacks of boxes in the basement must be deadening the sound of his
voice. He doubted anyone upstairs had heard even a whimper.
Suddenly Hans bolted to his feet in terror. Someone had screamed!
It took him a moment to realize that the scream had come from inside the
cell. He shivered as it came again, an animal shriek of agony and
terror. Erhard Weiss-who had lain like a corpse through all
Hans's.attempts to revive him-now fought the straps that held him as if
the gurney were on fire. As Hans tried to restrain the convulsing body,
the screwning suddenly ceased. It was as if a great stone had been set
upon Weiss's chest. The young policeman's right arm shot up and gripped
Hans's shoulder like a claw, quivered desperately, then, after a long
moment, relaxed.
Hans checked for a pulse. Nothing. He hadn't expected one.
Erhard Weiss was dead. Hans had seen this death before-a heart attack,
almost certainly. He had seen several similar cases during the last few
years-young, apparently healthy men whose hearts had suddenly stopped,
exploded, or fibrillated wildly and fatally out of control.
In each case there had been a common factor-drugs. Cocaine usually, but
other narcotics too. This case appeared no different.
Except that Weiss never used drugs. He was a fitness enthusiast, a
swimmer. On several occasions he and his fiancee had dined with Hans
and Ilse at a restaurant, Hans remembered, and once in their apartment.
In their home. And now Weiss was dead. Dead. The young man who had
argued so tenaciously to keep two fellow Berliners-strangers, at
that-out of the clutches of the Russians.
In one anguished second Hans's exhaustion left him. He sprang to the
front of the cell and stuck his arm through the bars, frantically
searching the floor with his right hand.
There-the iron pipe Rolf had brandished! Steadily Hans began pounding
the pipe against the steel bars. The siimr, ui the blows rattled his
entire body, but he ignored the pain. He would hammer the bars until
they came for Weiss-until they came for his friend or he &opped dead.
At that moment he did not care.
CHAPTER SIX
8.12 pm. #30 Ldtzenstrasse, British Sector.- West Berlin Seated at the
kitchen table in apartment 40, Professor Emeritus of History Georg
Natterrnan hunched over the Spandau papers like a gnome over a treasure
map. His thick reading glasses shone like silver pools in the lamplight
as he ran his hand through his thinning hair and silver beard.
'What is it, Opa?' Ilse asked. 'Is it dangerous?'
'Patience, child,' the professor mumbled without looking up.
Knowing that further questions were useless until her grandfather was
ready to speak, she opened a cupboard and began preparing tea.
Perhaps Hans would get back in time to have some, she hoped; he'd been
gone too long already. Ilse had told her grandfather as little as
possible on the telephone, and by doing so she had failed to communicate
the depth of her anxiety. Professor Natterman lived only twelve blocks
away, but it had taken him over an hour to arrive. He understood the
gravity of the situation now. He hadn't spoken a word since first
seeing the Spandau papers and brusquely questioning Ilse as to how they
came into her possession. As she poured the tea, he stood stiddenly,
pulled off his reading glasses, and locked the nine pages into his
ancient briefcase.
'My dear,' he said, 'this is simply unbelievable. That this ...
this document should have come into my hands after all these years.
It's a miracle.' He wiped his spectacles with a handkerchief.
'You were quite right to call me. 'Dangerous' does not even begin to
describe this find:' 'But what is it, Opa? What is it really?'
Natterman shook his head. 'In terms of World War Two history, it's the
Rosetta stone.'
Ilse's eyes widened. 'What? Are you saying that the papers are real?'
'Given what I've seen so far, I would have to say yes.'
Ilse looked incredulous. 'What did you mean, the papers are like the
Rosetta stone?'
'I mean,' Natterman sniffed, 'that they are likely to change profoundly
the way we view the world.' He squinted his eyes, and a road map of
lines crinkled his forehead.
'How much do you know about Rudolf Hess, Ilse?'
She shrugged. 'I've read the recent newspaper stories. I looked him up
in your book, but you hardly even mentioned his flight.'
The professor glanced over to the countertop, where a copy of his
acclaimed Germany: From Bismarck to the Bunker lay open. 'I didn't feel
the facts were complete,' he explained, 'so I omitted that part of the
story altogether.'
'Was I right about the papers? Do they claim that Prisoner Number Seven
was not really Hess?'
'Oh, yes, yes indeed. Very little doubt about that now. It looks as
though the newspapers have got it right for once.
The wrong man in prison for nearly fifty years ... very embarrassing for
a lot of people.'
Ilse watched her grandfather for any hint of a smile, but she saw none.
'You're joking with me, aren't you? How could that even be possible?'
'Oh, it's quite possible. The use of lookalikes was standard procedure
during the war, on both sides. Patton had one.
Erwin Rommel also. Field Marshal Montgomery used an actor who could
