head. Goltz went down like an ox under the slaughterhouse hammer.
Harry heard the metallic ring of a gun hitting the concrete, but he saw
no gun. Goltz must have fallen on it. The Stasi agent lay motionless
on his stomach. As Harry stared down, he caught the dark glint of metal
protruding from beneath Goltz's waist. Cautiously he leaned down and,
snatched up the pistol. Goltz didn't move. Seeing no one else on the
street, Harry decided to question him. He held the pistol to Goltz's
head with his left hand and probed beneath the jaw with his right. There
was a pulse-weak, but steady.
As Harry opened his mouth to speak, he caught sight of the strange spot
behind Goltz's right ear. Hariy's blow had torn the bandage away.
He expected to see stitches, but ins@ he saw a perfectly round moon of
white flesh shining under the streetlight, marked at the center by what
looked like a spot of blood. Leaning closer, he saw what it was-a small
tattoo. A tattoo of an eye. A single, blood red eye, inked into the
scalp by a very talented needle. it reminded him of the eye on the
pyramid on the back of a one-dollar bill, but only a little.
This eye was less defined somehow, yet more piercing, more mystical.
As Harry stared, Axel Goltz flicked his head up from the pavement like a
slingshot and cracked him across the bridge of the nose. The next thing
Harry saw through stinging tears was the East German on his feet, moving
forward with a gleaming knife extended in his right hand.
Harry @ Goltz's pistol without thinking. The explosion of the
unsilenced weapon reverberated through the empty streets like a cannon
shot. The bullet blew Goltz off his feet.
He landed on his back in the street, sucking for air, a tiny hole in his
chest, a gaping hole in his back. Harry knelt quickly beside him and
said into his ear, 'Why did you shoot the Russian? Why?'
Wide-eyed in shock, Goltz made a gurgling noise in his throat.
Harry lifted him roughly by his shirt front. 'What is Phoenix?' he
asked sharply. 'Goltz! What is PhoenixT' The German couldn't speak. A
froth of blood spilled over his lower lip. Harry racked his memory for
the Stasi man's rank. Lieutenant? 'Was ist Phoenix, Herr Leutnant?' he
barked in the voice of a sergeant major.
A faint smile touched the corners of Goltz's mouth. 'Der Tag kommt, '
he croaked. 'For the Jews ... for the world.'
He sighed once, then went limp.
HaM heard sirens in the distance. 'Damn!' he cursed. He dropped Goltz
to the concrete and forced his head to the side. The blood red eye
stared upward. Harry didn't know what the mark meant, but he knew that
it was somehow important. Goltz had obviously been hiding it from Rykov
and his men; Harry saw no reason to let them find it now. He
264 GREG IL-ES
laid the pistol barrel against the German's skull, muzzle against the
tattoo. He pulled against the trigger, then stopped.
Without pausing to think, he jammed the pistol into his belt and pried
the knife from Goltz's clenched fist. He tried to grasp the bald circle
of Goltz's scalp between his thumb and forefinger, but it was
impossible. There was no hair to pull, and the skin was stretched too
tightly around the skull.
Ignoring the wailing sirens, Harry braced his knee firmly against the
right side of the Stasi man's head. He grasped the hair at the lower
edge of the shiny circle and tugged up a little hummock of flesh.
Then he jabbed the knifepoint into the scalp beneath the tattoo, deep
into the fascia. Goltz's body jerked when the point struck bone-from
reflex, Harry hoped. But then the bleeding started: little pulsing
waves that shimmered black-red beneath the streetlight. Goltz was
unconscious, but alive. Gritting his teeth together, Harry levered the
knife blade up, using the point as the fulcrum, and worked his left
thumb under the raised scalp. This accomplished, it took only a few
seconds of sawing to excise the half-dollar-sized swatch of skin that
bore the tattoo.
The sirens were much closer now. Harry stood and shoved the fragment of
scalp deep into his trouser pocket. Then he sprinted toward the nearest
intersection, wiping the blood from his hands as he ran. There were
street signs at the intersection, but he didn't recognize the names.
With no better option, he began running toward the brightest lights he
could see. He soon saw a sign he knew: Rosenthaler Strasse. High in
the sky to his left hovered the shining observation, sphere of the great
Femsehturm, the 1,215-foot television tower that rises needle-like from
the Alexanderplatz to dominate both East and West Berlin. Using the
tower as point zero, Harry visualized East Berlin from the air,
estimating distances and comparing the times it would take him to reach
different destinations.
Twelve blocks to the west stood the British Embassy.
Harry knew the ambassador, but he also knew that his chances of getting
through the gate unmolested were nil. If either Goltz or Rykov had
reached a telephone, the friendly embassies would be covered already.
Twenty blocks to the east was a French SDECE safehouse where Harry knew
he could find refuge, but the shortest route to it lay through one of
the busiest sections of East Berlin. Even at night it would be risky.
Harry started walking. He crossed two deserted corners, then passed a
row of yellow phone boxes where an ill-kempt young man stood shouting
into a telephone. On impulse Harry turned and walked back to the phone
boxes. He took hold of the boy's jacket with one hand and broke the
connection with the other.
'Hey!' the boy snapped. 'Arschloch! Let go!'
'Coins!' Harry demanded, pointing to the phone.
'Pragen' I '
'Fick Dich in Knie!' the German cursed.
Harry grabbed the tangled mane of blond hair and twisted until the boy's
eyeball rested against the telephone's coin slot. 'Pragen! ' he
hissed.
Snarling, the youth pulled thirty Pfennig from his jacket and dropped
the jangling coins onto the sidewalk. Harry jerked him out of the phone
box and shoved him down the street. 'Beat it!' he growled.
'Haue ah!' The boy backed off cursing, then turned and shuffled on.
Harry dialed an East Berlin number from memory and waited. He could
still hear the siren, but fainter.
