Eva (9 page)

Brandishing the Reuters bulletin over his head he screamed at them, his voice hoarse with hatred, his face distorted in such frenzy that it was barely recognizable, the blue veins standing out in his neck, bloated with rage.

“Himmler is a traitor!” he shrieked. “
Der treue Heinrich hat mich verraten!
Behind my back the despicable double-crosser has offered to deliver the Reich—the German people—
me!
—into the hands of the enemy!”

His venomous paroxysm of fury threatened to choke him. He shook the bulletin at Hanna and Greim who sat watching him, aghast.

“Must all great men suffer a damnable betrayer?” he screamed. “Caesar his Brutus. I—
Himmler!"

In berserk agitation he began to pace the little room, ranting his rage at the traitorous Himmler.

Profoundly shaken, Hanna watched her beloved Führer gripped in the throes of his violent agony. Her heart went out to him. Was he to be spared nothing? Even now? She knew he had always valued and believed in the loyalty and devotion of Heinrich Himmler, his trusted, ever faithful supporter and ally. Who now, in the eleventh hour, had stabbed him in the back. She knew how deeply the wound must hurt. It was the most cruel blow of all. She knew. But she knew not what to say.

“Goering was always a contemptible opportunist. Corrupt,” Hitler mouthed venomously. “But Heinrich! Worse! Pretending to be loyal!” He suddenly whirled on Ritter von Greim. He shook a trembling fist at him. “A traitor must
never
be my successor as Führer of the German people,” he shouted. “You! Greim! Arrest him! See to it that he doesn’t succeed in his treachery!”

With burning, bloodshot eyes he stared at Greim, his look going through the man and beyond.

“The Russians are about to assail the Reich Chancellery,” he rasped. “You must leave the Bunker as quickly as you can.”

Abruptly he turned and stalked toward the door.

“Report to me as soon as you are ready,” he ordered.

And he was gone.

Time had run out. There were other pressing matters that had to be attended to.

Now!

Feldmarschall
Ritter von Greim looked down at his bandaged foot. The wound was far from healed. He swung his leg out over the bed. Painfully he stood up, supported by Hanna Reitsch.

The Führer had given him an order to be carried out.

It would be done.

The coldly penetrating, unblinking eyes of Frederick the Great watched the two men sitting in Hitler’s study.

There
is
a resemblance, Bormann thought. It is in the eyes. You cannot escape them. He wondered what it was the Führer had wanted to talk to him about so urgently.
Im strengsten Vertrauen
—in the strictest confidence. Somehow he felt vaguely uneasy. The Führer had summoned him personally, seeking him out in the Bunker. There was an air about the man he had never seen before. The Führer seemed uncharacteristically stoic, as if he were looking at the world with the eyes of a man already dead. That was it, he thought. It was undoubtedly the fact that death by his own hand was imminent. He dismissed his uneasiness.

Hitler fixed his deputy with a steady gaze. “It is time,” he said quietly. “It is time I told you, Bormann, that
I
know.”

Bormann stiffened, his instinct for self-preservation instantly alert. “Know what,
mein
Führer?” he asked guardedly.

Hitler sighed.

“Argentina.”

Bormann sat bolt upright. The shock exploded through him. Hitler’s eyes never left him. “Your plan to escape the Bunker and the Russians,” he said. “Your secret plan, Bormann, your preparations. Made long ago.”

Bormann’s mind raced. Adrenalin pumped its reinforcement to every nerve end in his body. How had Hitler found out?
Um Gottes Willen!
—how? Who had talked? It was impossible. No one could. He had seen to that. He suddenly felt a cold shudder twitch through him. Fegelein!
SS GruppenFührer
Hermann Fegelein. Married to Eva Braun’s sister, Gretl. Himmler’s special liaison officer to the Führer himself. Only hours before, his execution, ordered by Hitler, had been carried out. Fegelein had left the Bunker clandestinely. Hoping to escape. He, too, had had an escape plan. But the Gestapo had caught up with him. And he had been shot. He, Bormann, had been present when the bullets from the firing squad cut the poor devil in half. Was this what Hitler had in mind for him?

He was suddenly acutely aware of his Walther 7.65 in its holster on his belt. His beautifully ornamented
Ehrenwaffe
—Honor Weapon—presented to him by the Führer himself. Could he kill him? And claim the Führer had shot himself? Everyone knew he intended to take his own life. He quickly rejected the idea, however tempting. There was no way he could get away with it in the power struggle that would follow. Wait. He would wait. Wait to see what would develop. Use the Führer’s own axiom: As long as one lies in wait like a cat and takes advantage of every moment to deal a sudden blow or make a sudden parry, one is not lost. Possibilities will always arise. He threw up his hands.

“
Mein
Führer,” he protested. “I do not . . .”

Hitler impatiently waved him to silence.

“Stop it, Bormann,” he said. “There is no time for empty denials.” He placed both his hands on the table. The left one shook uncontrollably. He leaned toward Bormann. “I
know,”
he said flatly. Accept it. I have known for some time. About the old abandoned sewer system. The hidden supplies. The disguises. The suddenly missing workers. All of it.”

Bormann clenched his jaws. He stared at Hitler sitting quietly, contemplating him. He was right. The time
was
past for being evasive. For lies. He looked steadily at Hitler.

“How?” he asked.

Hitler waved a trembling hand at him. “Unimportant,” he said. He stood up. For a moment he paced in a laborious shuffle before the painting of Frederick the Great. He turned to Bormann. “Important is,” he said, unsuspected authority in his voice, “important is that your plan fits in exactly with my own!”

Bormann was thunderstruck. The Führer! Had he decided to leave the Bunker after all, now that it was too late to fly him out? In the last possible moment.

“
Mein
Führer!” he exclaimed. “Are you—are you planning to— break out?”

Hitler turned to look at his deputy with disdain. “
Sei nicht dumm,”
he chided. “Don’t be foolish.” He stopped his shuffling gait. He looked at his trembling, withered arm. “You know my decision. It is unalterable. I shall die here. In the heart of my city. My Fatherland.” Angrily he grabbed his shaking arm. “I am half dead already!”

He fixed Bormann with baleful eyes. “No,” he said firmly, “I shall not attempt to leave here. I will not take the chance of suffering the disgrace of being captured. The Bolsheviks shall not parade me in a cage through the streets of Moscow!”

Bormann had a twinge of self-disgust. He should have known. Hitler would simply have taken over the operation now that he had the facts. Not have asked to go along. Anyway it was obvious the Führer was not physically able. And every man, woman, and child in Germany would recognize him. It was not the same as with him. Very few people were familiar with the appearance of
Reichsleiter
Martin Bormann. Certainly not the enemy. Then what did the Führer mean?

Hitler stared at his deputy sitting in shocked silence before him. “No, Bormann,” he said, “I shall not go with you. And I will not stop you. In fact, I have already made certain arrangements to help you. To ensure the success of your escape.”

Bormann was stunned. For once in his life he was totally unprepared for what was happening. He was at once leery. He had long since learned that in the inner circle around Hitler nothing ever was what it seemed to be. The first question he always had to ask himself in any situation was: Where is the trap?

“I—I do not understand,” he said, playing for time to think. “How . . . ?”

Hitler gave a crooked little smile. He knew exactly what his deputy was thinking—and doing. So be it.

“I shall be perfectly frank with you, Bormann,” he said soberly. “I expect the same from you. I know of your plan to escape from the Bunker—and from Berlin—and to head for what I have been told is so colorfully called the Flensburg escape hatch. That you hope to take refuge in Denmark—at a certain hospital, I understand—and there wait until you can safely make your way to South America.” He sat down at the desk again.

He gazed at the silent deputy. He shook his head. “I have made better plans for you,
mein lieber
Bormann,” he said. “In a few hours
Feldmarschall
Greim will leave the Bunker. He will fly to Admiral Doenitz’s headquarters. He will hand him sealed orders from me, personally, instructing the Admiral to place at your disposal when you arrive in Flensburg—a submarine. Type XXI, ocean going,
Scbnorchel-equipped.
Its very existence there has been kept secret. It will take you to South America. Argentina.”

Bormann stared at the Führer. If it was true, if such arrangements had in fact been made, his successful escape to South America was virtually assured.

“Now,” Hitler said firmly, “I want you to tell me, in detail, how you expect to leave Berlin.”

Bormann thought quickly. He decided. It might all be a trap to make him divulge his plans. But he had to take that chance. He had a gut feeling that Hitler was being honest with him. Had the Führer wanted to, he could have had him shot summarily. Without any preponderance of proof. Like Fegelein. He nodded.

“An escape route
has
been prepared,
mein
Führer,” he began. “I came upon certain blueprints when the Bunker was being constructed.” He told his story carefully. “In 1936, when the new Olympic Stadium complex was built for the Olympic Games it was necessary to construct an entire new sewer system to serve the area. Some of the existing system was enlarged and rebuilt but most of it was abandoned.”

He licked his suddenly dry lips. It was not easy to have to disclose his most secret scheme. “The blueprints I acquired showed this abandoned system,” he continued. “One main conduit ran from the Tiergarten in a straight line to the west, skirting the Olympic site and dipping under the Havel River to the suburb of Wilhelmstadt.”

He paused. Hitler sat silent, listening, studying him.

“I inspected it,” Bormann went on. “I ordered every access to it walled up securely. Except two. I had . . .”

“Where located?” Hitler interrupted.

“One in a Tiergarten building directly across from the underground bunker garages approximately two hundred meters inside the park. The other in Wilhelmstadt. At those two places I had the access sealed and rigged with a built-in explosive that, when detonated, would reopen the passage.”

Again he paused. Hitler looked at him. “And the people who performed this work?” he asked tonelessly.

“Foreign laborers,
mein
Führer,” Bormann answered. “They were—eliminated.”

“Supplies? Equipment?”

“Stored inside the Tiergarten access,” Bormann replied. “Everything that will be needed. Sufficient for a party of four.”

“And the blueprints?”

“Destroyed.”

Hitler nodded, satisfied. But he withheld his approval from his face. For a moment he gazed at his deputy. “I could give you my help, Bormann,” he said slowly, “or I could have you shot.”

For a while the two men sat staring at each other as the tension built in the little room. Then Hitler sighed.

“But—I have decided to help,” he breathed. “However, there is one condition.”

“What is it?” Bormann was at once on guard again.

“You must take someone with you,” Hitler said. “Someone I will choose. Understood?”

Bormann was intrigued. Who was that important to the Führer? No matter. He would agree, of course. It would be easy to get rid of whoever it would be that the Führer would saddle him with. When the time was right.

“Who?” he asked.

Hitler looked straight at him, his eyes suddenly ablaze.

“Eva,” he said.

Despite himself, Bormann looked shocked. Eva Braun! He knew the girl had pledged to die with the Führer. Everyone in the Bunker knew. When Hitler had decided to die by his own hand in the Bunker, Eva Braun emphatically had vowed to join him in death.

“But—Eva!” he blurted out. “I thought—I thought
Fräulein
Eva had decided to end her life here.”

Somberly Hitler nodded. “And that is how it will appear,” he said. “To the world she
will
die with me.” His voice suddenly rang with a strange, fanatic determination. “But she
must
live! She
must’"

Totally mystified, Bormann stared at the suddenly agitated Hitler. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why?”

For a moment Hitler looked at his deputy. “Because of what Dr. Haase told me,” he said gravely.

Bormann’s thoughts were awhirl. Professor Werner Haase. A brilliant physician. Tall, in his fifties, and already silverhaired, Haase was dying of tuberculosis. He had only part of one lung left, which often caused him to gasp for air. For the last several weeks he had been Hitler’s physician having replaced Dr. Brandt, arrested for some nebulous reason he no longer remembered. Haase? True, he
had
seen Hitler and Haase engrossed in intense, whispered conversations. He had assumed it had to do with the coming suicides. What
had
been said? He did not even know how to ask.

“
Mein
Führer?” he said.

“Soon the German Reich will be without its Fuhrer,” Hitler intoned solemnly. “The world without Adolf Hitler.” Some of the old fire returned to his voice. “But it is imperative that my seed, my genes, live on. A Germany in my image
must
endure for the ages.” He paused. He looked at Bormann—a burning, piercing gaze. “Eva Braun is carrying a child,” he said. “
My heir!
To be born into the world in less than five months.”