could make demands of the arrogant West Germans and expect to be accommodated, but today would be one of those days. The Moscow call, on the other hand, he would not enjoy at all. It
might mean anything from a medal to expulsion from service without a word of explanation.
This was Kosov's fear. For the past ten years, operationally speaking, Berlin had been a dead city. The husk of its farmer romance clung to it, but the old Cold War urgency was gone. Preeminence had moved to another part of the globe, and Kosov had no Japanese or Arabic. His future held only mountains of paperwork and turf battles with the GRU
and the Stasi. Kosov didn't give a damn about Rudolf Hess.
Chairman Zemenek might be obsessed with Nazi conspiracies, but what was the point? The Soviet empire was leaking like a sieve, and Moscow was worried about some intrigue left over from the Great Patriotic War?
The Chainnan's Obsession. That's what the KGB chiefs in Berlin had called Rudolf Hess ever since the Nuremberg trials, when he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Spandau.
Four weeks ago Kosov had thought he had received his last call about Spandau's famous Prisoner Number Seven. That was when the Americans had found the old Nazi dead, a lamp cord wrapped around his neck. Suicide, Kosov remembered with a chuckle. That's what the Allied board of inquiry had ruled it. Kosov thought it a damned remarkable suicide for a ninety-three-year-old man. Hess had supposedly hanged himself from a rafter, yet all his doctors agreed that the arthritic old Nazi couldn't lift his arms any higher than his shoulders. The German press had screamed murder, of course. Kosov didn't give a damn if it was murder.
One less German in the world made for a better world, in his view. He was just grateful the old man hadn't died during a Soviet guard month.
Another sharp chest pain made Kosov wince. It was thinking about the damned Germans that caused it. He hated them. The fact that both his father and his grandfather had been killed by Germans probably had something to do with it, but that wasn't all. Behind the Germans'
arrogance, Kosov knew, lurked a childish insecurity, a desperate desire to be liked. But Kosov never gratified it. Because beneath that insecurity seethed something else, something darker. An ancient, tribal desire-a warlike need to dominate. He'd heard the rumors that Gorbachev was softening on the reunification issue, and it made him want to puke.
As far as Kosov was concerned, the day the spineless politicians in Moscow decided to let the Germans reunite was the day the Red army should roll across both Germanys like a tidal wave, smashing everything in its path.
Thinking about Moscow brought Kosov back to Hess. Because on that subject, Moscow Centre was like a shrewish old woman. The Rudolf Hess case held a security classification unique in Kosov's experience; it dated all the way back to the NKVD. And in a bureaucracy where access to information was the very lifeblood of survival, no one he had ever met had ever seen the Hess file. No one but the chairman.
Kosov had no idea why this was so. What he did have was a very short list-a list of names and potential events relating in responses.
to Rudolf Hess which mandated certa' One of those events was illegal entry into Spandau Prison; and the response: immediate notification of the chairman. Kosov felt sure that the fact that Spandau now lay in ruins did not affect his orders at all. He glanced one last time at the scrawled letters on his pad: Hauer, Polizei Captain. Then he stubbed out his cigarette and lifted the red phone.
6.-25 A.M. British Sector. West Berlin
The warm apartment air hit Hans in a wave, flushing his skin, enfolding him like a cocoon. Ilse had already left, he knew it instinctively.
There was no movement in the kitchen, no sound of appliances, no running shower, nothing. Still jumpy, and half-starved, he walked hopefully into the kitchen. He
might mean anything from a medal to expulsion from service without a word of explanation.
This was Kosov's fear. For the past ten years, operationally speaking, Berlin had been a dead city. The husk of its farmer romance clung to it, but the old Cold War urgency was gone. Preeminence had moved to another part of the globe, and Kosov had no Japanese or Arabic. His future held only mountains of paperwork and turf battles with the GRU
and the Stasi. Kosov didn't give a damn about Rudolf Hess.
Chairman Zemenek might be obsessed with Nazi conspiracies, but what was the point? The Soviet empire was leaking like a sieve, and Moscow was worried about some intrigue left over from the Great Patriotic War?
The Chainnan's Obsession. That's what the KGB chiefs in Berlin had called Rudolf Hess ever since the Nuremberg trials, when he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Spandau.
Four weeks ago Kosov had thought he had received his last call about Spandau's famous Prisoner Number Seven. That was when the Americans had found the old Nazi dead, a lamp cord wrapped around his neck. Suicide, Kosov remembered with a chuckle. That's what the Allied board of inquiry had ruled it. Kosov thought it a damned remarkable suicide for a ninety-three-year-old man. Hess had supposedly hanged himself from a rafter, yet all his doctors agreed that the arthritic old Nazi couldn't lift his arms any higher than his shoulders. The German press had screamed murder, of course. Kosov didn't give a damn if it was murder.
One less German in the world made for a better world, in his view. He was just grateful the old man hadn't died during a Soviet guard month.
Another sharp chest pain made Kosov wince. It was thinking about the damned Germans that caused it. He hated them. The fact that both his father and his grandfather had been killed by Germans probably had something to do with it, but that wasn't all. Behind the Germans'
arrogance, Kosov knew, lurked a childish insecurity, a desperate desire to be liked. But Kosov never gratified it. Because beneath that insecurity seethed something else, something darker. An ancient, tribal desire-a warlike need to dominate. He'd heard the rumors that Gorbachev was softening on the reunification issue, and it made him want to puke.
As far as Kosov was concerned, the day the spineless politicians in Moscow decided to let the Germans reunite was the day the Red army should roll across both Germanys like a tidal wave, smashing everything in its path.
Thinking about Moscow brought Kosov back to Hess. Because on that subject, Moscow Centre was like a shrewish old woman. The Rudolf Hess case held a security classification unique in Kosov's experience; it dated all the way back to the NKVD. And in a bureaucracy where access to information was the very lifeblood of survival, no one he had ever met had ever seen the Hess file. No one but the chairman.
Kosov had no idea why this was so. What he did have was a very short list-a list of names and potential events relating in responses.
to Rudolf Hess which mandated certa' One of those events was illegal entry into Spandau Prison; and the response: immediate notification of the chairman. Kosov felt sure that the fact that Spandau now lay in ruins did not affect his orders at all. He glanced one last time at the scrawled letters on his pad: Hauer, Polizei Captain. Then he stubbed out his cigarette and lifted the red phone.
6.-25 A.M. British Sector. West Berlin
The warm apartment air hit Hans in a wave, flushing his skin, enfolding him like a cocoon. Ilse had already left, he knew it instinctively.
There was no movement in the kitchen, no sound of appliances, no running shower, nothing. Still jumpy, and half-starved, he walked hopefully into the kitchen. He
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