Eva (18 page)

“Now!” he called.

Eva pulled the bolt away and opened the door halfway. Willi stepped into the narrow opening.

Instantly the dogs outside looked up at him. Growling and snarling, they fixed their crazed eyes on him. The big black leader of the pack, fangs bared, leaped for his throat. He thrust the flaming torch straight at the beast. The firebrand hit the dog in the open maw, and with a startled yelp it twisted in mid-air and crashed against the side of the cabin. Howling with fury and pain it scrambled to get away. Willi waved the torch before him. Stabbing the fire at the savage pack, screaming at them, he slowly drove them back from the motorcycle and its grisly rider.

The maddened eyes of the beasts—red pits of hate and ferocity in the glow from the blazing torch—never left him. But the flames made them keep their distance.

Not taking his eyes from the dogs, Willi bent down and tugged at the wrecked motorcycle. The dogs—seeing their prize being wrested from them—moved in. Willi jabbed the torch at them, driving them back.

He pulled on the bike. Slowly it moved. He realized he could not free it from the body entangled in it; he would have to drag both bike and body into the cabin. He yanked at the motorcycle. Hackles raised along their backs, tails between their legs, burning eyes riveted on Willi, the dogs slowly moved in. Willi glanced at the torch. The flames were getting weaker. It would not last much longer.

“Open the door!” he bellowed. He strained to pull the motorbike and its gory burden into the cabin. The sweat dripped into his eyes, blurring them. He blinked it away, keeping his gaze locked on the furious beasts.

With a sudden mighty heave he hauled the motorbike halfway through the door opening. It caught on the jamb, making it impossible to close the door. With the courage of desperation the dogs lunged for him. He flailed the burning torch at them, close enough to singe the hair on their muzzles. They howled with fear and rage. He felt the bike jar and move under his hand, slowly being drawn into the cabin. Eva.

With a final roar of defiance he hurled the torch at the frenzied beasts. He leaped over the bike in the doorway into the cabin, and yanked the machine all the way in—as Eva slammed the door on the charging pack of dogs.

The shelf above the door looked sadly naked with only one or two torn red paper hearts remaining where thumbtacks had fastened the decorative border to the wood, but on the shelf itself stood two steins. Gray, without the elaborate lids that adorn most steins, they bore an inscription instead of fancy ornamentation:
Gruss aus dent ZILLERTAL Hamburg—St. Pauli
—souvenirs from the famous Hamburg beer hall. Willi and Eva used them to transfer the gasoline from the wrecked motorcycle to the tank of the motorboat. As if by tacit agreement they averted their eyes from the mangled corpse trapped in the twisted bike. Nor did they speak of it.

The boat motor caught and roared into a steady purr on Willi’s first try to start it. Within minutes they were well away from the little pier, cruising down the river.

Fires burning on shore on either side cast red ribbons of rippling light across the wavelets in a spectacular display of watery fireworks.

Willi was at the wheel. Eva sat close beside him. She turned to him.

“Willi,” she said, “do you have a cigarette? I forgot. I left mine with the rucksack.”

He shook his head. “Sorry.”

She sighed. She ached for a smoke.

Willi turned to her. “We will not get to Wannsee for a couple of hours,” he said kindly. “Get some sleep.”

“I will,” she said. “Soon.” She shifted in her seat. She felt a compelling need to be close to someone.

Willi peered into the darkness. Ahead lay the Wannsee Forest.

And the safe house in Potsdam.

SS Obersturmbannführer
Oskar Strelitz cursed himself. He had let the Führer down. He had allowed himself to lose his charges—
Frau
Eva and her escorts.

When he had been trapped by the fiery cave-in in the sewer and been prevented from following Bormann and the others, he had had to run all the way back to the Tiergarten entry hole to get out. At gun point he had commandeered a dispatch rider’s motorcycle and raced through the zoo, emerging on Bismarck-strasse, and he had tried to follow on the streets above the course of the old sewer all the way to the exit point in Wilhelmstadt that he had been told about.

He had been well into Wilhelmstadt when he had been caught in a Russian artillery barrage coming from the direction of Grunewald. A shell had landed a few meters in front of him. The explosion had knocked him from his bike and spun him against the curb. He had been dazed, but recovered quickly. The bike was wrecked. He had continued on foot and had come upon an SS flying court-martial in the process of hanging a Hitler youth from a lamppost. He had just begun to skirt the gang of SS thugs when he had seen Lüttjohann, Eva, and Bormann emerge from the manhole. He had lain in wait, trying to decide how best to rescue his charges from the SS hangmen, if need be, when a second Russian artillery barrage had hit.

He had seen Bormann shoot the
Rottenführer
and take off into the ruins. And he had seen Lüttjohann and Eva flee in the direction of Havel Lake.

As soon as possible he had followed them.

But
verflucht nochmal
—dammit all—he had lost them again.

He ran across Heerstrasse. Before him lay a suburban community on the shore of the lake.

Suddenly, ahead, he heard the furious barking of a pack of dogs. He ran to investigate.

At a small boathouse a pack of wild-looking dogs were howling, barking, and scratching on the door.

He took out his gun and fired into the air to frighten off the beasts.

They turned on him.

He had to kill two of them—one a big, black brute—before the rest turned tail and ran.

The door to the boathouse was locked. He kicked it in.

The room beyond was empty. Another door on the lake side stood open.

He played the light from his flashlight around the room. A piece of shiny metal glinted in the beam. He picked it up.

It was the I.D. disc of one
Obersturmführer
Lüttjohann, Willibald.

He ran to the open door facing the lake. Down a few wooden steps was a small pier, and on it—incongruously—stood two beer steins.

He leaped down the stairs, two steps at a time. He picked up one of the steins. He smelled it. Gasoline. Hardly the remains of a drinking party.

He looked out over the night-dark lake.

He had found his charges. And he knew where they were headed.

He, too, had heard the Führer’s instructions.

Dawn was valiantly trying to penetrate the oppressive mixture of mist and smoke that hung in an acrid haze over the lake as the little motorboat neared shore.

It had still been dark half an hour before when they passed Schwanenwerder peninsula, protruding into the river from south Grunewald. All the luxury villas on shore were lit up brightly and they had plainly heard the loud talk, raucous laughter, and drunken bellows of the Russian troops, punctuated by an occasional shot. Willi—who had stayed in midstream on the broad river—had ducked into the protective darkness of the Kladow suburb on the west bank. They were therefore approaching the east shore of Wannsee above Pfaueninsel rather than coming in from the north.

The trees of Wannsee Forest loomed tall on the horizon. Willi headed toward a stretch of wooded lakeside rather than the open beach. Wannsee and Potsdam were supposed to be in German hands. He prayed his information was still correct.

Soon a small pier, a modest motor yacht sunk beside it, presented itself out of the mist. Willi headed for it.

There was only a narrow strip of beach between the water and the woods. A couple of small sailboats had been hauled up on land and lay on their sides, their masts at oddly disturbing angles.

Willi throttled down. They were only a few meters from the pier.

Suddenly a man stood up from behind the boats. He leveled a rifle at Willi. On his arm he wore the red brassard of the
Volk-sturm.
Three more men joined him. Three more rifles were aimed at Willi.

And the boat hit the pier with a soft bump, as Willi killed the motor.

A sudden alarming thought struck him.

He was without any identification.

T
HE SHRILL BELL
on the field telephone rang insistently. Woody put down his coffee mug and picked up the receiver.

“World War Two, Agent Ward,” he said cheerfully.

“How the hell can you be so damned chipper,” Major Hall growled on the phone. “It’s barely dawn.”

“You bet.” CIC Agent Woodrow Wilson Ward grinned at the receiver. “The dawn of a new day, and a new month. Mark my word, Mort. Major. Sir. The month of May will go down in history as the month the Nazi pricks finally got their ass kicked in. Or is that too much of an anatomically mixed metaphor?”

“Simmer down,” Hall said sourly. “It’s too damned early for that kind of crap.”

“What’s up?”

“You still interested in that five-point case?”

Woody sat up. “You bet! What’ve you got?”

“Don’t know. Just got a call. Woke me up, dammit.” He snorted in disgust. “Could be something. Could be nothing.”

“Everything is something,” Woody philosophized. “Give me the poop.”

“MP unit in Weiden is holding an SS officer.”

“Big deal.”

“They seem to think he’s more than just another SS mandatory.”

“Why?”

“
You
get the details, dammit!” Hall exploded. He was never at his best early in the morning. “Get your ass down there and find out! Five-point case or not.”

“Sure thing, Mort, sweetheart.” Woody grinned. “Did they give you
any
clues?”

“They think the guy may be a left-over guard officer from that Flossenburg thing,” Hall said. “Or he may have something to do with that much-touted Alpine Fort. Or Fortress. Or whatever. Never could figure out what the hell the difference is between a fort and a fortress.”

“That’s easy, Mort,” Woody quipped. “A fortress has breastworks.”

Hall groaned. “Your contact in Weiden is a Lieutenant Arin. Dirk Arin. MPs. And Woody,” he said sarcastically, “don’t try to crack the case with wisecracks.”

He hung up.

Ten minutes later Woody was tooling toward Weiden in his jeep. His cheerful mood had vanished as he had thought over what Hall had told him.

An SS officer. Possibly one of the officers who had been in command of the Flossenburg March of Death. Unconsciously he gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles showed white. If the bastard was one of those inhuman fiends, he’d
give up
five points to bring him to justice!

It had been less than a week ago. He had tried to forget it. He knew he never would.

Flossenburg was a
Konzentrationslager
—a concentration camp—ten miles northwest of Weiden. When the Nazis realized that it was in danger of being overrun by elements of the 11th Armored Division, the commandant of the camp had been ordered to march those inmates who could still walk to safer ground near the Czechoslovakian border. Fifteen thousand of them had started out on what was to be truly a march of death. More than half of them fell dead on the way. Most of the rest perished soon after.

For three days and three nights, without food, without water, without rest, they had been driven on by the brutishly ruthless SS guards and their officers, clad only in their thin, ragged, striped uniforms of the camp—walking, fleshless bags of bones. Those who were too weak and fell by the wayside were either shot or bayoneted to death by the guards. So emaciated were they that they hardly bled when gutted. The road shoulders for miles were littered with their corpses. Involuntarily he shuddered. He had seen them. And he had seen—and smelled—the hellish camp from which they came.

It was the smell of death. The stink of the starving, the suffering, the dying, and the dead. A cloyingly putrescent smell that burned itself into his nostrils and his mind to stay forever. He had seen the barracks holding hundreds of living skeletons ridden with disease and dysentery, lying in rows of wooden bunks four tiers high—the dying and the dead together, for no one had the strength to remove the cadavers, their body wastes seeping and dripping from bunk to bunk to collect on the floor in a fecal, slimy mass. And the stench.

Those had been the ones too weak to walk. Theirs had been a death in filth and stink rather than in the fresh air of the death march route. Theirs had been a death even worse.

He had seen the crematorium ovens, the torture instruments, the gas chambers. He had looked upon the shriveled bodies stacked along the barracks like cordwood, and he had gazed into the sunken, imploring eyes of the still living.

And he would never forget.

It had all been brought back to him when only the day before
Stars and Stripes
had headlined:
Real Horror of Nazi Camps “
UNPRINTABLE
.” He hoped some day someone would print it. But he had not read the report.