Eva (4 page)

“I do.”

“The documents must under no circumstances fall into enemy hands. If such a course is inevitable, they must be destroyed at all costs.”

“Understood,
mein
Führer.”

Hitler’s eyes bored into the man.

“And should you be captured,
mein lieber Feldmarschall,”
he said softly, “should you be interrogated in such a way that you are in danger of revealing what you know—and the enemy may employ means you cannot resist: torture, drugs—you will protect the secret with your life! Even if you have to take that life yourself!”

“I will,
mein
Führer!” Greim picked up the envelope. For a moment he stared at the embossed seal on it. The swastika, held in the claws of a German eagle.

Or was it a Phoenix?

Hitler nodded slowly. He took the envelope. It rustled faintly in his trembling hand. He stared at it.

It had begun. Phase One. The Greim mission.

Phase Two, the most crucial, the most important part of
Unternehmen Zukunft
—Operation Future—would begin when Skorzeny’s young officer arrived in the Bunker later that day. One
Obersturmführer
Willibald Lüttjohann.

He wondered what he would be like.

Everything would depend on him.

The future . . .

A
CLOUD OF SATIATED FLIES
rose in alarm from the carcass of a dead horse as
Obersturmführer
Willibald Lüttjohann skidded to a halt on the dirt road. Sitting astride his BMW R750 motorcycle he was aware of its power throbbing beneath him. He was glad he’d chosen the cycle for the trip to Berlin from the Commando School in Neustrelitz rather than the offered half-track and detail of SS men. He liked to depend on himself, and he’d figured he’d get through alone on the bike a helluva lot easier than with a half-assed escort. And he’d been right. Taking back roads and cutting across country he’d been able to evade enemy patrols and the crush of refugees and military traffic. It did not matter that the trip of about a hundred and fifty kilometers had become twice as long. He gunned the bike. He liked to hear the deep, controlled growl of promised power.

He raised the goggles from his grime-streaked face, revealing two circles free of dirt around his eyes. He peered ahead. It was beginning to grow dark. The back-country road in front of him was empty. He pulled his map from his brief tunic. He was wearing his commando outfit. He was approaching Berlin toward Spandau, having skirted Nauen and Falkensee. It was the only approach still open into the city, surrounded by Russian assault troops. On the horizon a red haze reached up into the sky from the city which was now the front line. The deep-throated rumble of distant battle filled the air, and it seemed as if the very clouds above were aflame.

He quickly oriented himself on the map. According to the intelligence given him there was a narrow gap in the Russian lines south of the Charlottenburg district—between Charlottenburg and Wilmersdorf—still held by friendly troops. He’d have to cross the Havel River—he hoped he could find a bridge still standing; he’d hate to have to abandon his bike—and head for the Tiergarten. The Chancellery was just beyond. He studied the map closely. Wilhelmstadt seemed his best bet.

Briefly he wondered again why he had been ordered to Berlin. Urgently. To report to the Führer himself! The thought once again filled him with excitement. He suppressed it. Get there first.

Again he gunned the motorcycle. His
Blitzrad
—his Blitzbike— as he liked to call it. He felt it was almost part of him, and he considered it lucky. The first two numerals of the license number, WH 219514 were his birthday, the last two his birth year.
Had
to be lucky.

He lowered his goggles and adjusted them. He gunned his bike and sped off toward the distant hell.

Once again Adolf Hitler unfolded the map of Berlin. He had carried it along all afternoon and it was rapidly disintegrating from the perspiration on his sweaty hands.

Where was Skorzeny’s man?

Where was
Obersturmführer
Willibald Lüttjohann?

He should have reported to the Bunker hours ago. He spread the map out on the conference table in the lounge hall. He stood staring at it, fixedly. He looked up as Hanna Reitsch came out from Ritter von Greim’s room. He motioned her over.

“
Mein liebes Fräulein
Hanna,” he said solemnly. From his tunic pocket he fished out a little glass phial sealed with copper. “It is cyanamide,” he explained meticulously. “Dr. Stumpfegger assures me it acts instantaneously. One bite—and you will not have to fear anything.” He looked at the phial in his hand with a strangely morbid look in his eyes. “We all have them,” he said. He handed it to her. “It is not what I would have liked to give you as a farewell present,
meine liebe
Hanna.”

Moved almost to tears, Hanna was about to speak, when across the hall a door opened and Hitler’s personal valet,
SS Standartenführer
Heinz Linge, came out from the Führer’s quarters. He left the door open. Through it Hanna could see a young woman sitting on the sofa, engrossed in a photo album with an ivory-colored leather cover.

Eva Braun.

For a brief moment Hanna’s eyes rested on the girl. She had been astonished, and a little jealous, when all the rumors about the little assistant to the Führer’s official photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, who had become the Führer’s mistress, turned out to be true. Even during the short time Hanna had been in the Bunker she had seen the influence the girl had on the Führer. She looked at her. She was attractive. Blond. With a pleasant face and a good figure, perhaps a little on the plump side, she looked younger than her thirty-three years. Clad in a close-fitting gray suit she sat on the sofa unconscious of Hanna’s scrutiny. As she turned the pages in the album her little diamond-studded wristwatch glinted in the light. Hanna wondered if it had been a gift from the Führer. No doubt, she thought, again with a twinge of jealousy. But she could not dislike the girl. Eva Braun had been unfailingly friendly toward her, and grudgingly she admired her. Eva was by far the calmest and most composed of the women in the Bunker. And the most pleasant. Together she and Eva had tried to entertain the six Goebbels children, telling them stories and teaching them to yodel—to the dismay of their parents. She sighed. She, Hanna, would leave the Bunker.

Eva Braun would stay.

Hanna looked away. She wondered what would become of the Führer’s mistress.

She looked at Hitler. She could not speak. She merely smiled and took the offered phial.

Hitler once more turned his attention to the map spread out on the table. Deeply disturbed he studied it. He had entered on it every scrap of information received about conditions in the city outside. He knew it was still possible to get into the city from the west, although the Russians were driving hard to close the ring around the Chancellery. And they had been pressing their attack at Spandau. It worried him. He had issued urgent orders that the bridges across the Havel were to be held at all costs. Axmann, the one-armed
Hitler Jugend
leader, had deployed his Hitler Youths all along the river and he had them man street barricades and fortifications protecting the gap, along with the
Volkssturm.
He hoped they would hold.

Long enough.

Again he folded the worn street map. It was rapidly coming apart at the soggy seams.

Where was Lüttjohann?

Willi Lüttjohann was making his way through a rubble-strewn street approaching Kaiserdamm. It was getting dark but the many fires, most of them raging uncontrolled, lit the harrowing scene confronting him. The destruction was terrible to behold. Most of the buildings were in ruins, and those still standing showed the ugly, raw scars of bombings and shellings.

He had crossed the Havel on a bridge held by a detachment of Hitler Youth, led by a seventeen-year-old. Boys, thirteen to fifteen years of age. He had been shocked. Had it come to this? Did the Fatherland have to be defended by children? They had been efficient. They had examined him and his papers thoroughly before letting him go on. Reluctantly, he had thought.

There were few people abroad. He saw a couple of men rummaging through the mountainous piles of foul-smelling garbage heaped against the ruins. One boarded-up store had been broken into and a dozen or so ragged people were busily looting its stock. Several women brandishing knives were carving chunks of meat from the haunches and flanks of a dead horse, still harnessed to a demolished wagon. Lying between the wagon poles the head of the animal was wrenched around, its dead eyes open, sadly watching the women at their grisly task.

Willi felt sick. The city was disintegrating. And its people. It tore at him even more than the sights of villages he’d passed through, every window hung with the white sheets of surrender—waiting for the enemy.

He turned a corner, skidding in the mud cover left by the shattered masonry and mortar and the broken water mains. The street before him was empty. About a hundred meters ahead a barricade of rubble and sandbags built around an overturned streetcar blocked the entire thoroughfare. He began to work his bike through the debris.

Wolfgang Schiller was two days shy of his thirteenth birthday. He was already a
Fähnleinsführer
in the Hitler Youth. And he was proud of his responsibilities. He poked his friend Helmuth, almost six months his senior.

“Look,” he whispered. “Someone is coming. On a motorcycle.”

The two boys peered fearfully down the stretch of darkened, deserted street in front of the barricade. Automatically they moved closer together. They were alone at their post.

“Should—should we get Herr Brauner?” Helmuth whispered, clutching his MP40 submachine gun. “And the others?”

Wolfgang shook his head. “He said not to disturb them unless it was important,” he whispered back. “He said they hadn’t slept for two days—and better they sleep now than when Ivan comes.”

He bit his lip. He knew it was up to him.
He
had the rank.
He
had to decide if it was important. Or not. Was it? One lone soldier? He wished he could decide. If it
wasn’t
important and he alerted the men from the
Volkssturm
unnecessarily, he would surely be ridiculed. But what if it was? And he handled it himself? He would show himself to be a real soldier then, wouldn’t he? If he could only make up his mind . . .

Helmuth peered out through the barricade. He looked frightened. The strange man on the motorcycle was slowly coming closer. He turned to Wolfgang. “Who do you think it is?” he whispered, hoarsely.

“I don’t know.”

“A . . . Russian?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think he is one of ours?”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t look like it. His uniform looks funny.”

“What—what’ll we do?” Helmuth’s voice quavered.

Fähnleinsführer
Wolfgang Schiller said nothing. He did not know what to say. He took a firmer grip on the Panzerfaust poking out through an opening in the barricade. He knew it could knock out a tank, if it hit just right. He had seen it done. It would certainly destroy a motorcycle. And the man on it. He had fired a Panzerfaust once before. In training. You just aim it. Be sure no one stands behind you. And pull the trigger. It was like a rocket.

The man on the motorcycle was steadily coming closer. Wolfgang could see him clearly now. He did not recognize the uniform. And the helmet did not look like the ones he knew. He began to tremble.

“Oh, God,” he prayed. “Let me be brave. Not—not like the last time.” And softly, full of fear, he whispered the Hitler Youth oath to himself, his dry lips moving with the words: “I promise in the Hitler Youth to do my duty at all times, in love and faithfulness to the Führer, so help me God . . .”

The motorcycle was halfway to the barricade. What should he do? Was it a Russian? A Russian scout? Would they come in force? Or—was it a German soldier? He
had
to make up his mind. The tears began to run down his cheeks. What should he do? Shout to the man? And what if it
was
a Russian, he would be warned. And start shooting. Oh, dear God, what should he do? What? . . .

His finger was on the trigger of the weapon. He began to tremble. His hands shook. And suddenly . . .

Willi more sensed than saw the flash. Instantly he knew what it was. And even as the realization streaked through his mind to reach his conscious thought he reacted instinctively. He catapulted himself from the moving bike. The violent shockwave from the blast when the Panzerfaust warhead hit the bike, disintegrating it in a ball of fire, slammed into him, hurling him into the rubble. He felt a piece of shrapnel rip through his crash helmet savagely tearing it from his head. He let himself go loose as he hit the rubble of broken masonry and chunks of shattered concrete. With detached wonder he realized he was unhurt except for a numbness of his limbs and a ringing in his ears from the explosion. He pressed himself down among the broken bits of stonework. Cautiously he raised his head.