were asked simply to give a person's vital signs time to return to
nominal between the relevant questions.
Hans knew if he could produce a strong enough emotional response to a
control question, then an actual lie would appear no different to the
polygraph than his faked control responses. Schmidt would be forced to
declare him "innocent." The best method to do this was to hide a
thumbtack in your shoe, but Hans knew that an exaggerated response could
also be triggered by holding your breath or biting your tongue. He
decided to worzy about method later.
If he couldn't pick out the control questions, method wouldn't matter.
Schmidt's voice jolted him back to reality.
"Sergeant Apfel, prior to discharging your Spandau assignment, did you
conununicate with any person other thaln the duty sergeant regarding
that assignment?"
"No," Hans replied. That was true. He hadn't had tim I e to discuss it
with anyone.
"Is Captain Hauer a married man?"
Irrelevant question, Hans thought bitterly. To anyone except me.
"No," he answered.
Schmidt looked down at the notepad from which he chose his questions.
"Have you ever stopped a friend or public official for a traffic
violation and let them go without issuing a citation?"
Control question, Hans thought. Almost any cop who denied this would be
lying. Keeping a straight face, he bit down on the tip of his tongue
hard enough to draw blood.
He felt a brief flush of perspiration pass through his skin.
"No," he said.
When Schmidt glanced up from the polygraph, Hans knew he had produced an
exaggerated response. "Am I holding up two fingers?"
Schmidt asked.
Irrelevant, thought Hans. "Yes," he answered truthfully.
Schmidt came a step closer. "Sergeant Apfel, you've made several
arrests for drug possession in the past year.
Have you ever failed to turn the entire quantity of confiscated drugs
over to the evidence officer?"
Control ques-Hans started to bite his tongue again; then he hesitated.
If this was a control question, Schmidt had upped the stakes of the
game. Giving an exaggerated response here would not be without serious
consequences. Police corruption involving drugs was an epidemic
problem, with accordingly severe punishment for those caught.
The men at the table gave no indication that they saw this question as
anything but routine, but Hans thought he detected a feral gleam in
Schmidt's eyes. The dirty little man knew his business.
"Sergeant?" Schmidt prodded.
Hans fidgeted. He did not want to appear guilty of a drug crime, but
the Spandau questions still awaited. If he intended to keep the papers
secret, he would have to give at least a partially exaggerated response
to this question. In silent desperation he held his breath, counted to
four, then answered, "No," and exhaled slowly.
"Is your wife's maiden name Natterrnan, Sergeant?"
Irrelevant. "Yes," Hans replied.
Schmidt wiped his upper lip. "Were you the last man to arrive at the
scene of the argument over custody of the trespassers at Spandau
PrisonT' Relevant question. Hans glanced up at the panel. All eyes
were on him now. Stay calm ... "I don't remember," he said. "Things
were so confused then. I really didn't notice."
"Yes or no, Sergeant!"
"I suppose I could have been."
Exasperated, Schmidt looked to Funk for guidance. The prefect fixed
Hans with his imperious stare. "Sergeant," he said curtly, "one of your
fellow officers told us you were the last man there. Would you care to
answer the question again?"
"I'm sorry," Hans said sheepishly, "I just don't remem-her." He looked
at the floor. The Russian soldier who had caught him in the rubble pile
could call him a liar right now, he knew, but for some reason the man
hadn't spoken up.
Funk appeared satisfied with Hans's answer, and told Schmidt to move
along. There can't be many more questions, Hans thought. Just a little
longer"Sergeant Apfel?" Schmidt's voice cut like slivers of glass. "Did
you remove any documents from a hollow brick in the area of the
Holy Mother of God! Hans choked down a scream. Every eye in the room
burned upon his face. For the first time Hauer's steely mask cracked.
His probing eyes fixed Hans motionless in his chair, stripping away the
pathetic layers of deception. But it was too late to come clean.
"No," Hans said lamely.
"Specifically, " Schmidt bored in, "did you discover, remove, see, or
even hear of documents pertaining to or written by Prisoner Number
Seven-Rudolf Hess?"
Hans felt cold sweat running down his spine.. His heart became an enemy
within his chest, thumping out the tattoo of his guilt. And there stood
Schmidt, lie-hungry, watching each centimeter of paper unspool from his
precious machine.
Looking at him now, Hans fancied he saw a mad doctor reading an
electrocardiograph, a diabolical quack watching each fateful squiggle in
the hope of witnessing a fatal heart attack. Hans felt his willpower
ebbing away. The truth welled up in his throat, beyond his control.
Just tell the truth, urged a voice in his head, tell it all and take
whatever consequences come. Then this insanity willfocus elsewhere.
Yet as Hans started to do just that, Schmidt said"Sergeant, have you
ever omitted an important piece of information from a job application?"
Hans felt like a spacewalker cut loose from his tether.
Schmidt had asked another control question! Hadn't he? But why hadn't
he triumphantly proclaimed Hans's guilt to the tribunal? Hans had
expected the little demon to dance a jig and scream: Him! Him!
There is the liar!
"No-no, I haven't," Hans stammered.
"Thank you, Sergeant."
While Hans sat stunned, Schmidt turned to Funk and shook his head.
The prefect closed the. file before him, then turned to the Soviet
colonels and shrugged. "Any questions?" he asked.
The Russians looked like sleeping bears. When one finally shook his
head to indicate the negative, the gesture seemed the result of a
massive effort. Hans even sensed the soldiers in the back of the room
relaxing. Only Captain Hauer and Lieutenant Luhr remained tense. For
some reason it struck Hans just then that Jiirgen Luhr was the kind of
German who made Jews nervous. He was a racial type-the proto Germanic
man, tall and broad-shouldered, thin-lipped and square-headed-a mythical
Aryan fiend passed down in whispered tales from mother to daughter and
father to son.
"Thank you for your cooperation, Sergeant," Funk said wearily.
"We'll contact you if we need any further details."
Then over Hans's shoulder, "Bring in the last officer."
Hans floundered. They had drawn him into the trap, yet failed-to pounce
for the kill. "Am I free to go?" he asked uncertainly.
"Unless you wish to stay with us all night," Funk snapped.
"Excuse me, Prefect," Lieutenant Luhr cut in. All eyes tur
ned to him.
"I'd like to ask the sergeant a question."
Funk nodded.
"Tell me, Sergeant, did you notice Officer Weiss acting in a suspicious
manner at any time during the Spandau assignment?"
Hans shook his head, remembering Weiss being dragged down the hall. "No,
sir. No, I didn't."
Luhr smiled with understanding, but he had the watchful eyes of a police
dog. "Officer Weiss is a Jew, isn't he, Sergeant?"
One of the Russian colonels staffed, but his comrade laid a restraining
hand on his shoulder.
"I believe that's right," Hans said tentatively. "Yes, he's Jewish."
Luhr gave a curt nod of the head, as if this new fact somehow explained
everything.
"You may go, Sergeant," Funk said.
Hans stood. They were telling him to go, yet he sensed that some
unspoken understanding had passed between the men in the room. It was
as if several decisions had been taken at once in some language unknown
to him. He turned toward the soldiers and police at the back of the
room and shuffled toward the door. No one moved to stop him. Why
hadn't Schmidt called him a liar? Why hadn't the Russian who'd caught
him searching called him a liar? And why did he feel compelled to keep
lying, anyway?
Because of the Russians, he realized. If the prefect@r even Hauer-had
only questioned him alone, he could have told them. Just as Ilse wanted
him to. He would have told them ...
A burly policeman held open the door. Hans walked through, hearing
Funk's tired voice resume behind him. He quickened his pace.
He wanted to get out of the building as soon as possible. He entered
the stairwell at a near trot, but slowed when he saw two beefy patrolmen
ascending from the first floor. Nodding a perfunctory greeting, he
slipped between the two menThen they took him.
Hans had no chance at all. The men used no weapons because they needed
none. His arms were immobilized as if by steel bands; then the men
reversed direction and began dragging him down the stairs.
"What is this!" Hans shouted. "I'm a police officer! Let me go!"
One of the men chuckled quietly. They reached the bottom of the stairs
and turned down a disused hallway, a repository of ancient files and
broken furniture. When the initial shock and disorientation wore off,
Hans realized that he had to fight back somehow. But how? In the
darkest part of the corridor he suddenly let his body go limp, appearing
to lose his will to resist.
"Scheisse!" one man cursed. "Dead weight."
"He soon will be," commented his partner.
Dead weight? With speed born of desperation Hans fired his elbow into a
rib cage. He heard bone crack.
"Arrghh!" The man let go.
With his free hand Hans pummeled the other attacker's head, aiming for
his temple. The policeman held him fast.
"You bastard . . . " from the darkness.
Hans kept pounding the man's skull. The grip on his arm was looseningAn
explosion that seemed to detonate behind his right eye paralyzed him.
Darkness.
Less than sixty feet away from Hans, Colonels Ivan Kosov and Grigori
Zotin stood outside an idling East German transit bus in the central
parking lot of the police station. Inside the bus, the Soviet soldiers
from the Spandau patrol waited for their long-delayed return to -East
Berlin.
Most were already fast asleep.
Zotin, a GRU colonel, did'not particularly like Kosov, and- he was
deeply offended at the KGB colonel's effrontery in.
donning the uniform of the Red Army. But what could he do? One
couldn't keep the KGB out of something this big, especially when higher
powers wanted Kosov involved.
Rubbing his hands together against the cold, Zotin tested the KGB man's
perception.
"Can you believe it, Ivan? They gave them all clean reports."
"Of course," Kosov growled. "What did you expect?"
"But one of them was certainly lying!"
"Certainly."
"But how did they fake the polygraph readouts?"
Kosov looked bored. "We were six meters from the machine. They could
have shown us anything."
Grigori Zotin knew exactly which policeman had lied, but he wanted to
keep the information from Kosov long enough to initiate inquiries of his
own. He was aware of the Kremlin's interest in the Hess case, and he
knew his career could take a giant leap forward if he cracked it.
He made a mental note to decorate the young GRU officer who had caught
the German policeman searching and showed enough sense to tell only his
immediate superior. "You're right, of course," Zotin agreed.
Kosov grunted.
"What, exactly, do you think was discovered? A journal perhaps?
Do you think they found some proof of@' "They found a hollow brick,"
Kosov snapped. "Our forensic technicians say their tests indicate the
brick held some type of paper for an unknown period of time. It could
have been some kind of journal. It could also have been pages from a
pornographic magazine. It could have been toilet paper! Never trust
experts too much, Zotin."
The GRU colonel sucked his teeth nervously. "Don't you think we should
have at least mentioned Zinoviev during the interrogation? We could
have-2' "Idiot!" Kosov bellowed. "That name, isn't to be mentioned
outside KGB! How do you even know it?"
Zotin stepped back defensively. "One hears things in Moscow."
"Things that could get you a bullet in the neck," Kosov warned.
Zotin tried to look unworried. "I suppose we should tell the general to
turn up the pressure at the commandants' meeting tomorrow."
"Don't be ridiculous," scoffed Kosov. "Too little, too late."
"What about the trespassers, then? Why are you letting the Germans keep
them?"
"Because they don't know anything."
"What do you suggest we do, then?" Zotin ventured warily.
Kosov snorted. "Are you serious? It was the second to last man-Apfel.
He was lying through his Bosche teeth. Those idiots did exactly what we
wanted. If they'd admitted Apfel was lying, he'd be in a jail cell now,
beyond our reach. As it is, he's at our mercy. The fool is bound to
return home, and when he does"-Kosov smiled coldly-"I'll have a team
waiting for him."
Zotin was aghast. "But how-?" He stifled his imprudent outburst with a
cough. "How can you get a team over soon enough?" he covered.
"I have two teams here now," Kosov snapped. "Get me to a damned
telephone!"
Startled, the GRU colonel clambered aboard the bus and found a seat.
"And Zotin?" Kosov said, leaning over his rival.
"Yes?"
"Keep nothing from me again. It could be very dangerous for you."
Zotin blanched.
"I want everything there is on this man Apfel. Everything.
I suggest you ride your staff very hard on this. Powerful eyes are
watching us."
"How will you approach this policeman?"
"Approach him?" Kosov cracked a wolfish smile. "Break him, you mean.
By morning I'll know how many times that poor bastard peeked up his
mother's ski
rts."
Hans awoke in a cell. There was no window. He'd been thrown onto a
stack of damp cardboard boxes. One pale ray of light filtered down from
somewhere high above. When he had focused his eyes, he sat up and
gripped one of the steel bars. His face felt sticky. He put his
fingers to his temple.
Blood The familiar slickness brought back the earlier events in a
throbbing rush of confusion. The interrogation ... his father's stony
silence ... the struggle in the hallway. Where was he?
He tried to rise, but he collapsed into a narrow space tween two boxes.
Rotting cardboard covered almost the entire concrete floor. A cell full
of boxes? Puzzled, Hans reached into one and pulled out a damp folder.
He held it in the shaft of light. Traffic accident report, he thought.
Typed on the standard police fonn- He found the date-1973. Flipping
through the yellow sheaf of papers, he saw they were all the same, all
traffic accident reports from 1973. He checked the station listed on
several forms: Abschnitt 53 every case. Suddenly he realized where he
was.
In the early 1970s, Abschnitt 53 had been partially renovated during a
city wide wave of reform that lasted about eighteen months.
There had been enough money to refurbish the reception area and overhaul
the main cellblock, but the third floor, the basement, and the rear of
the building went largely untouched. Hans was sure he'd been locked in
the basement.
But why? No one had accused him of anything. Not openly, at least. Who
were the policemen who had attacked him? Funk's men? Were they even
police officers at all?
They had said he would soon be dead weight. It was crazy.
Maybe they were protecting him from the Russians. Maybe this was the
only way the prefect could keep him safe from them. That's it! he
thought with relief. It has to be.
A door slammed somewhere in the darkness above. Someone was
coming-several people by the sound-and making no effort to hide it.
Hans heard clattering and cursing on the stairs; then he saw who was
making the noise. Outlined in the fluorescent light streaming down from
the basement door, two husky uniformed men were wrestling a gurney off
the stairs. Slowly they cleared a path to the cell through the heaps of
junk covering the basement floor. Hans closed his eyes and lay
motionless on the holes where he'd been thrown.
"Looks like he's still out," said one mdn.