Eva (17 page)

He had looked into the face of death, and he had not liked what he saw.

Nothing was as important as his life. He had already written Eva off. There was no way he would ever find her again. It was doubtful if she and that presumptuous
Obersturmführer
would survive the enemy artillery barrage or the wrath of the SS hangmen, when they found their leader shot. So be it. He would have to do without the Hitler treasure.

He stood up. Flensburg, and the waiting submarine, lay four hundred kilometers to the north. He would have to find transportation. Once out of Berlin he could commandeer a vehicle. The enemy was closing in on both sides of the salient. He had little time to spare.

Cautiously he emerged from the cellar.

Eva Braun Hitler had already been erased from his mind.

Willi stood inside the boathouse waiting for his eyes to accept the darkness. Eva stood close behind him. He could feel her tremble. Fear? Or exhaustion? Gradually his eyes adjusted and in the faint reddish light from the fires in the street he could make out his surroundings. To his right stood a table. A small lantern with a candle stump had been placed on it, and next to it a stack of deck-furniture cushions had been piled on the floor. With a match from his spare waterproof container he lit the candle.

He walked back to the door and closed it. The lock had splintered away from the doorjamb when the motorcycle had rammed into it, but there was a heavy dead bolt on the door. He pushed it home.

Holding up the lantern, he inspected the shed. Two windows were boarded up with heavy wooden shutters bolted from the inside. There was another door opposite the door to the street. It was closed, its dead bolt in place. Three or four wooden folding deck chairs were stacked along the wall in one corner along with a folded lounge. On one wall were some framed photographs of a small boat and several smiling people enjoying themselves; on another a bad oil painting of a schooner in a storm. A ceiling fixture in the shape of a ship’s lantern suspended beneath a ship’s wheel hung in the center of the room. Willi did not try to turn it on. There would be no electricity. In one corner a few pieces of clothing had been thrown across a pair of rubber boots. He put the lantern on the table. He unfolded the deck lounge and placed the cushions on it.

“
Frau
Hitler,” he said, “we will be safe here for a little while. Why don’t you get some rest?”

She looked at him, suddenly looking bone-weary. “What about you?” she asked.

“I will rest, too,” he said.

She nodded. She lay down on the lounge. Willi searched through the old clothing. He came up with a heavy jacket. He put it over her. “Try to sleep,” he said.

She nodded.

In less than a minute she was breathing the deep, measured breaths of sleep.

Willi unfolded one of the deck chairs. He sat down. He looked at the sleeping woman.

She was his responsibility now. And his alone. And so was the heir of Adolf Hitler. The future of the German Reich, the Führer had said. A new generation in his image, with his ideals.

He thought of Bormann. The
Reichsleiter
was lost to them now. They would never find him nor he, them. He wondered if he was still alive. He did not know what Bormann’s plan had been for them to reach Flensburg under his leadership, nor what to do if they succeeded in doing so on their own. No need for him to know, the
Reichsleiter
had said. That had been his decision. At least the man had been consistent, Willi thought wryly.
All
his decisions had been wrong!

He was suddenly grateful for the Führer’s foresight in giving him his personal instructions. Included among them was an address. An address in Potsdam. “Should a real emergency arise, Lüttjohann, use it,” the Führer had said. “The people there will give you aid—and further instructions.”

He clenched his teeth in determination. A real emergency
had
arisen.

He spread out his map on the table next to the lantern. Potsdam was fifteen kilometers to the south. At the southern tip of the lake. If they stayed on the
Ostufer
—the eastern shore—they would have to go through Grunewald. The Russians were there. The road on the
Westufer
ran past Flughafen Gatow. His map did not indicate if the Russians had taken the area as yet but there was bound to be heavy fighting around an airstrip. Both routes were undesirable.

The lake.

If he could use the lake itself he could reach Wannsee Forest at the southern end and, from there, Potsdam.

He looked at his watch. It was just past 0400 hours. If they were to travel on the lake it would have to be under cover of darkness. That gave them barely three hours. He looked at the sleeping woman. He was about to wake her up. He thought better of it. Let her sleep as long as possible. She would need all the strength she could muster later.

He looked at the bolted door on the lake side of the cabin. Perhaps. He opened it.

Below, moored to a short pier, a small motorboat lay bobbing gently in the wavelets lapping at the shore.

His first impulse was to get the woman and set off at once. He stopped himself. Preparation. Planning. Performance. The creed of the Skorzeny commandos.

The Bormann escape route had been mapped out to take them through German-held territory. He did not know if Potsdam had fallen to the enemy or not, but it was likely that they would run into enemy patrols. They would have to appear exactly like the thousands of other refugees who always eddied in the wake of war.

He took his SS identification papers from his tunic pocket. They would do him no good. Neither would the identity disc he wore around his neck. He tore it off and discarded it along with his I.D. papers. Better no identification than identification that would harm him. His uniform. He would have to get rid of it. He rummaged through the old clothing in the corner. There was a shirt. A colorful sports shirt and a pair of dark blue pants. He changed into them. The fit was acceptable. And he could use the jacket he had spread over Eva Hitler.

What else? He would keep his gun. That would not be out of keeping. But the army issue rucksacks and most of their contents would have to be left behind. He took out the rations and broke them open.

He went over to Eva. He shook her gently. “
Frau
Hitler,” he called. “Wake up! We will have to leave here in a few minutes.”

Eva sat up groggily. Startled, she stared at Willi. “Your clothes . . . ” she exclaimed.

He smiled at her. “A little disguise,
Frau
Hitler,” he explained. “Simply as a precaution.” He gave her a ration. “Please eat something,” he said. “We will have to leave here soon. For Potsdam.”

“Potsdam!” Eva exclaimed, startled.

“The Führer instructed me,” Willi told her. “Personally. I am following his orders.”

Eva nodded. She began to eat some crackers from the ration box.

“There is a small boat below,” Willi said. “We will use it to make our way down the Havel. To Wannsee. And Potsdam.” He walked to the door. “I will check to see what condition it is in.”

Eva stood up. “I will go with you,” she said.

The boat was seaworthy. Its name,
FREUDENREICH,
was painted in ornate letters on the side near the bow. The word was a double-entendre. It could mean either “Joyful” or “Reich of Joy.” It was immaterial, Willi thought. Neither meaning held true any more.

A permanently built-in outboard motor provided the power. Willi examined it. It had a simple pull-string starter. He pulled it. The motor fired, sputtered, and died. It was cold. He tried again. And again.

The motor would not start.

He looked at the fuel tank. It had no gauge. In a little tool box under a seat he found a dip stick. He used it. The fuel tank was dry.

He turned to Eva. “No gasoline,” he said.

He looked around. Oars. He saw none. Even if he had, he realized, he would not have been able to use them. The build of the boat made it impossible even if that had not already been the case because of their strict time limitation. Rowing, they could never make it to Wannsee before dawn.

“
Herr Obersturmführer
Lüttjohann,” Eva said hesitantly. “Willi. Would—would the fuel in a motorcycle work in that?” She pointed at the outboard motor.

Willi stood up. Of course! “Yes,” he said, “it would. A capital idea,
Frau
Hitler!”

“Eva.”

He smiled at her. “
Gnädige Frau,”
he said. “With your permission—Eva.” He leaped back up onto the little pier. “Come on!”

At the door to the street he handed the candle lantern to Eva. “Hold this,” he said. He pulled the dead bolt open.

All of a sudden a deep, angry growl reached them from outside the door.

Willi frowned. Cautiously he opened the door a few inches.

Instantly the head of a huge, black dog catapulted itself at the opening. One ear torn to bloody shreds, lips drawn back over long, yellow fangs and wild eyes shining with malevolent fury in the candlelight, it snarled and snapped at Willi, as it thudded against the door. At once, behind the attacking beast, a roar of maddened barking and savage growls rent the air.

Eva screamed. She dropped the lantern and the cabin was plunged into utter blackness as Willi quickly slammed the door and bolted it. The furious scratching on it by the frenzied dog outside mingled with the growling and yelping in spine-chilling pandemonium.

Willi fumbled his way to one of the windows next to the door. He unlatched the bolt on the wooden shutter and swung it aside.

He looked out.

A gruesome sight met his eyes.

A pack of six or seven large dogs, all of them filthy and unkempt, their hides matted with dirt and dry blood from wounds and cuts, were fiercely worrying and tearing at the body of the dead motorcycle courier lying entangled in his demolished machine outside the door. Growling and snarling, they tore at the dead man’s clothing trying to yank him free. His one hand that had been raised in a mocking salute to death, its glove ripped off, was now a bloody, misshapen claw stripped of flesh.

Willi turned away.

“What—what is it?” Eva whispered.

“Dogs,” he said, shaken despite himself. “Killer dogs.”

“Dogs?” she whispered. Her mind struggled with the concept of dogs as killers. How was it possible? Fleetingly she thought of her own two sweet and loving Scottish terriers, Stasi and Negus, a birthday present from Adolf. Years ago. Gentle and fun they had been. A joy. And Adolf’s own beautiful German shepherd, Blondi, who had given her life for her master. The Führer had wanted to be sure the poison in the phials really worked, and Dr. Haase had tried it out on Blondi. She had died at once. It had been so sad. And inspiring, of course. A faithful dog sacrificing its life for its master. She had cried a little. Blondi had given birth to a litter of darling little puppies only a few days before; they had still been clinging to the cold teats of their dead mother when Günsche had shot them to death, one by one, in the garden. So they shouldn’t suffer. She wondered what would become of Stasi and Negus. Stasi was still at the Berghof in Bavaria. Negus was in the Bunker. She had loved them so. Such loyal and devoted companions. She looked toward the door. How? How could dogs turn into such terrible creatures?

“Dogs?” she whispered again.

“A pack of wild dogs,” he said. He groped around for the fallen lantern as he spoke, his voice leaden. “Forced from their demolished and burned-out homes. Separated from their dead masters. Driven mad by the bombardment, the fires, the chaos of the fighting, they roam the city in packs. Searching for food. For survival.”

He found the lantern. He relit the candle.

Eva was sitting on the floor, huddled against the wall. Even in the warm glow from the candle her face looked ashen. From the moment they had started out from the Bunker she had felt her nerves shrivel and die and disintegrate into tiny dead fragments. She had been forced to see a world she had not ever dreamed existed, to step into it and become part of it. A world where a father and son hung lifeless on a lamppost, a world where dogs became vicious killers. She shivered. She tried to crawl into herself, the only place of refuge left to her.

Willi shot her a quick glance. He recognized at once that she was about to go into shock. He had to get her mind off the horror outside.

“Eva,” he said sharply, “I need your help.” Dully she looked at him. “Find anything that will burn easily. Paper. Cardboard. That sort of thing. Put it on the table.” She stared at him, impassively. “Move!” he snapped. “Now!”

She started. She got up. She began to look around. A shelf running above the door to the boat pier had a cut-out paper border of red hearts tacked to the edge of it. She tore it off. She collected the wrappings from the rations; even Willi’s discarded I.D.

Willi had broken off a leg from one of the wooden folding deck chairs. He began to wrap the flammable material collected by Eva around one end.

“Those photos on the wall,” he said. “Take them out of the frames. They will burn.”

She plucked the framed photographs from the wall and tore the photographs out.

“And that oil painting,” Willi said.

She ripped the painting from the frame. Willi cut it into strips with his knife. He wound the strips of canvas around the paper and photos, securing it all to the chair leg with a few strips knotted around it.

He inspected his handiwork.

The chair leg made a credible torch.

He turned to Eva. “This is what we have to do,” he said earnestly. “We
must
get that motorcycle in here. We need the gasoline.” His eyes locked onto hers. “Listen carefully. I will light the torch. When I say, you will open the door, just enough for me to reach through. When I am ready, I will tell you to open the door all the way—and then, slam it shut. Do you understand? I am counting on you.”

Eva nodded.

“Good,” he said. He smiled encouragingly at her. “You will do well.”

He set fire to the makeshift torch. It took time before it was ablaze.