onto the gurney. 'Don't even breathe,' he said, wheezing like a draft
horse. 'If anyone stops us, I take him out. You stay on this cart! As
far as anyone knows, you killed Rolf, then I killed you. Period.'
Hauer shoved the gurney into motion and veered right, rolling his human
contraband toward the rear entrance Hans had used when he arrived. Hans
opened one eye to orient himself, but Hauer promptly struck him on the
head. Rounding the last corner, Hauer saw the pinch-faced young
policeman who had questioned Hans earlier. The guard rose from his desk
before Hauer reached him.
'Where are you taking this man?' he challenged. 'No one leaves the
building without written orders from the prefect.'
'This man's dead,' Hauer said, slowing to a stop. 'He was alive when he
walked in here. The prefect doesn't write orders that tie him to
embarrassing corpses. Now, let me pass.'
For a moment the officer looked uncertain. Then he cocked his chin up
and resumed his arrogant tone. 'There's no one back here but us. It
won't hurt to ring Lieutenant Luhr upstairs.'
He lifted the phone from its cradle, then leaned over Hans's face and
stared. Hans lay completely still, but it would not have saved them.
Hauer could see what was comw ing. The policeman's left hand ' as
moving up to Hans's wrist, searching for a pulse ...
Hauer brought his right fist down like a hammer on the man's temple.
Hans's eyes shot open when the body landed on him, but he stayed on the
gurney. Hauer quickly wrapped the telephone cord several times around
the stunned guard's wrists, then, spying a cloth napkin on the desk,
stuffed it into his mouth and let him fall to the floor.
'Hang on!' he bellowed. He slammed the gurney through the heavy door
that led to the rear parking lot.
The cold hit them like a wall of ice.
'Get up!' Hauer said. 'We've got to steal a car. Mine's parked in
front of the station.'
'Mine's back here,' Hans groaned, trying to rise.
'You've still got your keys?'
'No one took them.'
'Idiots! Give them to me!'
Hans fished the keys out of his pocket and handed them over.
Hauer helped him off the gurney and into the car, then climbed into the
driver's seat and fired the engine. Incredibly, the Volkswagen kicked
over without grumbling.
'This is our lucky day,' Hans croaked, still a bit silly from the blow
to his head.
Hauer drove slowly out of the lot, turning south on the Friedrichstrasse
to avoid the reporters, then shot down the first side street he came to.
He had to make some decisions very fast, but he could think of nowhere
safe to make them.
Just drive, he thought. Headfor the seedy section of the city and let
my mind clear Instinct would guide him. It always had. Maybe Hans
could give him a direction. He reached over and jerked Hans's chin up.
'Wake up! It's time to talk.'
'My God,' Hans mumbled. 'Weiss ... what did they do to him?'
Hauer cruised past the Anhalter Banhof, then wrenched the VW into
another side street. 'That was play time,' he growled, 'compared to
what they'll do if they find us. You'd better have some answers, Hans.
I just threw away my badge, my reputation, my pension, and probably my
life. If you mention our stupid agreement now, I'll brain you myself.
Now make yourself useful. Start watching for patrol cars.'
Praying that he would awaken from this nightmare, Hans slid up in his
seat, put a hand to his throbbing head, and peered out into the icebound
Berlin darkness.
CHAPTER SEVEN
9.55 Pm. British Sector.- West Berlin As Captain Hauer wheeled Hans's
Volkswagen out of Polizei Abschnitt 53, Professor Natterman stepped out
of a taxi thirty blocks away, paid his cabbie, and hurried into the
milling throngs of Zoo Station. He tried to walk slowly, but found it
difficult. Missing his train would mean standing around the station for
hours with nothing to do but worry about the nine sheets of onionskin
taped into the small of his back. Sighting a ticket window with a short
queue, he got into line and set down his heavy suitcase.
Ten minutes later Professor Natterman was safely berthed in a
first-class car, poring over a short volume by Dr. J. R.
Rees, the British Army psychiatrist who had supervised the first
extensive examinations of 'Rudolf Hess' after his famous flight. It
made for tedious reading, and Natterman had trouble concentrating. His
mind kept returning to the Spandau papers. He had no doubt that
Prisoner Number Seven had told the truth-if only because, to date, the
man had provided the only possible version of events that fit all the
known facts.
The Rudolf Hess case, Natterman believed, shared one major similarity
with the assassination of the American president John F.
Kennedy. There was simply too much information. A surfeit of facts,
inconsistencies, myth, and conjecture. Everyone had his pet conspiracy
theory. If one accepted the medical evidence that 'Number Seven' was
not Hess, then two general theories held popular sway.
Natterman dismissed them both out of hand, but like most farfetched
theories, each was based upon a tantalizing grain of truth.
The primary theory-put forward by the British surgeon who first
uncovered the medical evidence-held that one of the top Nazis (either
Heinrich Himmler or Hermann Goring) had wanted to supplant Hitler and
had decided to use Hess's wartime double to do it. To accomplish this,
either Goring or Himmler (or both) would have to have ordered the real
Hess shot down over the North Sea, then sent his double rushing on to
England. There the double would supposedly have asked the British
government if it might accept peace with Germany, if someone other than
Hitler reigned in Berlin.
Natterman considered this pure fantasy. Both Nazi chieftains had
possessed the power to give such orders, of course. And there was quite
a body of evidence suggesting that both men had prior knowledge of
Hess's plan to fly to Britain. But the question Natterman could not
ignore was why Himmler or Goring should have elected to murder Hess,
