then use his double for such a sensitive mission in the first place.
It was a harebrained scheme that would have carried tremendous risk of
discovery by Hitler, and thus was totally out of character for both the
prudent SS chief and the flamboyant but wily Luftwaffe commander. Only
a week before Hess's flight, Himmler had sent a secret envoy to
Switzerland to discuss the possibility of an Anglo-German peace, with
himself as chancellor of the Reich. That might not be so exciting as
murder in the skies, but it was Himmler's true style.
The other popular theory held that the real Hess had reached England
alive, but that the British government-for reasons of its own-had wanted
him silenced. They supposedly killed Hess, then searched among German
prisoners of war for a likely double, whom they brainwashed, bribed, or
blackmailed into impersonating the Deputy Fuhrer.
Natterman considered this tripe of the lowest order. His researches
indicated that a 'brainwashed' man was little more than a
zombie-certainly not capable of impersonating Hess for more than a few
hours, much less for forty-six years.
And as far as British bribes or blackmail, Natterman didn't believe any
German impersonator would sacrifice fifty years of his life for British
money or even British threats.
Yet this theory, too, was partially based on fact. No informed
historian doubted that the British government wanted the Hess affair
buried. They had proved it time and again throughout the years, and
Professor Natterman did not discount the possibility that the British
had murdered Hess's double just four weeks ago. It was also true that
only a native German could have successfully impersonated Hess for so
long. Not just any German, however, it would have to have been a German
trained specifically by Nazis to impersonate Hess, and whose service was
either voluntary, or motivated by the threat of some terrible penalty. A
penalty like Sippenhaft.
Natterman felt a shiver of excitement. The author of the Spandau papers
had satisfied- all those requirements, and more. For the first time,
someone had offered a credible-probably the only)-answer to when and how
the double had been substituted for the real Hess. If the papers were
correct, he never had been. Hess and his double had flown to Britain in
the same plane. It had been the double in British hands from the very
first moment! Natterman recalled that a prominent British journalist
had written a novel suggesting that, since the Messerschmitt 110 could
carry two men, Hess might not have flown to Britain alone. But no one
had ever suggested that Hess's double could have been that passenger!
Natterman drummed his fingers compulsively as his brain shifted up to a
higher plane of analysis. Facts were the province of history
professors; motives were the province of historians. The ultimate
question was not how the double had arrived in England, but why. Why
was it necessary for both the double and the real Hess to fly to
Britain, as the Spandau papers claimed they had? Whom did they fly
there to meet?
Why was it necessary for the double to remain in Spandau?
Had he been murdered for the same reason? If so, who murdered him?
Circumstantial evidence pointed to the British.
Yet if the British killed the double, why had they done it now, after
all these years? Publicly they had joined France and the United States
in calling for Number Seven's early release (though they knew full well
they could rely on the Russians to veto it, as they had done every year
before)My God, Natterman thought suddenly. Was that it?
Had Mikhail Gorbachev, in the spirit of glasnost, proposed to release
Hess at last? As Natterman scrawled this question in the margin of Dr.
Rees's book, the huge, bright yellow diesel engine disengaged its brakes
with a hiss and lurched out of the great glass hall of Zoo Station,
accelerating steadily toward the benighted fields of the DDR.
In a few minutes the train would enter the narrow, fragile corridor
linking the is land of West Berlin to the Federal Republic of Germany.
Natterman pulled the plastic shade down over his small window.
There were ghosts outside-ghosts he had no wish to see. Memories he
thought long laid to rest had been violently exhumed by the papers he
now smuggled through communist Germany. God, he wondered, does it ever
end?
The deceit, the casualties? He touched the thin bundle beneath his
sweater. The casualties ... More were coming, he could feel it.
Yet he couldn't give up the Spandau papers-not yet.
Those nine thin sheets of paper were his last chance at academic
resurrection. He had been one of the lions once, an academic demigod.
A colleague once told Natterman that he had heard Willy Brandt quote
from Natterman's opus on Germany no less than three times during one
speech in the Bundestag. Three times! But Natterman had written that
book over thirty years ago. During the intervening years, he had
managed to stay in print with 'distinguished contributor' articles, but
no publisher showed real interest in any further Natterman books. The
great professor had said all fie had to say in From Bismarck to the
Bunker-or so they thought. But now, he thought excitedly, now the
cretins will be hammering down my door! When he offered his explosive
translation of The Secret Diary of Spandau Prisoner Number
Seven-boasting the solution to the greatest mystery of the Second World
War-they would beg for the privilege of publishing him!
Startled by a sharp knock at the compartment door, Natterman stuffed Dr.
Rees's book under his seat cushion and stood.
Probablyjust Customs, he reassured himself This was the very reason he
had chosen this escape route from the city. Trains traveling between
West Berlin and the Federal Republic did not stop inside East Germany,
so passport control and the issue of visas took place during the
journey.
Still more important, there were no baggage controls.
'Yes?' he called. 'Who is it?'
Someone fumbled at the latch; then the door shot open. A tall, wiry man
with a dark complexion and bright eyes stared at the professor in
surprise. A worn leather bag dangled from his left hand. 'Oh, dear!'
he said. 'Dreadfully sorry.'
An upper-class British accent. Natterman looked the man up and down. At
least my own age, he thought. Stronglooking fellow. Thin, tanned,
