My Immortal The Vampires of Berlin (10 page)

Wolf didn’t say anything as he carried the girl past him; it would be impossible to get him to leave her behind now. He just hoped they wouldn’t pay for Sebastian’s misguided kindness with their lives.

Seventy meters later, the tunnel ended at another small wooden door. Sebastian put Eva down and the men readied their weapons. Wolf put his ear to the door and smiled when he heard the music. It was the
Horst-Wessel-Lied
. The anthem of the Nazi Party.

18

Otto the Jackal and Pig Face slept on the couch as Varik kept watch out the window. A whistle from within the building sent the men into a panicked scramble for weapons. Varik was dumbfounded. He had kept a close eye on the street—he had no idea how anyone could have gotten into the Neptune without him seeing it.

The panicked SS troopers pointed their weapons down the stairwell and listened for the intruders. Otto pulled the pin out of a grenade. Suddenly, a German voice rang out. “Don’t shoot—we’re friendlies! Please! Hold your fire!”

“Screw you!” Otto yelled as he angrily put the pin back. “You almost bought yourself a one-way ticket to hell.”

At the bottom of the stairs, Wolf and Sebastian smiled. They were relieved that the response—as rude as it was—came in German and not in the form of a live hand grenade bouncing down the stairs.

Wolf led them up to the second floor. They were happy to be back behind German lines, but when Pig Face glared at Eva with lustful eyes, Sebastian got worried—a strange nautical-themed room full of armed and drunken Nazi fanatics who were awaiting their deaths was no place for a young woman.

Pig Face grabbed Eva’s arm. “Come to papa,
fräulein
.”

Sebastian pushed him away. “Back off pocky, she’s with us. We don’t want any trouble.”

With the hour of their escape from Berlin approaching, the last thing Varik needed was a brawl between his men and other German soldiers. He tried to break the tension. “Gentlemen, I apologize for my rude friend. Welcome to the Hotel Neptune,” he said. “It’s not much, but it’s all we have right now. That and our lives.”

“Nice place,” Wolf muttered as he stared at the surreal underwater landscape and fluorescent sea creatures that covered the walls. “It looks like we’re in a fucking aquarium.”

“You can have it, skipper,” Pig Face said. “We’ll even throw in the radio and the cognac-soaked couch. We’re getting out of here.”

“You can check out, but you won’t live long,” Sebastian replied.

Pig Face belched. “Maybe you won’t live long, you arrogant prick, but we’re getting a flight out of here.”

That got Wolf’s attention. “From Tempelhoff?”

Varik shook his head. “Despite the valiant efforts of the
Müncheberg
Division, the Russians overran Tempelhoff airport. Planes can only take off from Brandenburg now—the one miserable strip of grass in Berlin that the Reds haven’t taken yet.”

“And now, the finest airport in all of Germany!” Otto added. Pig Face laughed uncontrollably, which made Sebastian want to kill him.

Varik’s patience was wearing thin. “I just hope that you idiots aren’t so drunk that you won’t be able to get on the plane,” he scowled.

Pig Face pointed a bayonet at his commander. “Watch yourself,” he said ominously. Pig Face was smiling, but he had the eyes of a rabid animal.

Varik cautiously returned the smile. He knew all too well that both Pig Face and Otto the Jackal were capable of incredible violence when they were provoked.

19

As the campaign in the Eastern Front progressed, the Soviet military noticed that the
Wehrmacht
was having a tough time replacing the officers that their snipers were gunning down every day. To take advantage of this fact, the Russians strategically increased the number of snipers that were embedded in their units and significantly enhanced their training. Unlike most combatants of World War II, the Red Army also allowed women to join their sniper teams.

Lyudmila crawled across the rooftop with cat-like stealth, a path that had been carefully calculated to keep her in the shadows as much as possible. She called it the “MSR,” the
maximum shadow route
. After years of hunting fox and other game in the forests surrounding Novosibirsk with her father, Lyudmila’s marksmanship with a rifle was unparalleled. But she wasn’t hunting fox that night; she was conducting reconnaissance. Specifically, she was searching for a German machine gun nest that was hidden inside one of the buildings across the street.

A few meters behind her was Ruslan, a shy but dedicated soldier from Rostov-on-Don. Being the spotter in a sniper team was an apprenticeship. Lyudmila determined the target, position and escape route for each mission; Ruslan shut up and did what he was told so he could learn from the master. That night, he was learning that patience and stealth were the keys to success as a sniper.

The
Wehrmacht
had made killing snipers a priority. As a result, there were only two kinds of snipers left in the Soviet Red Army—good ones and dead ones. In fact, Lyudmila’s previous spotter panicked and ran from a concealed position in the
Tiergarten
when probing gunfire got too close. That unfortunate decision put him into the dead category.

Once their rooftop position was set, Lyudmila scoured the street and adjacent buildings. At night, there were two ways to locate a machine gun. The first method involved careful and deliberate reconnaissance. The second involved getting shot at. Lyudmila had no intention of finding out through the latter method; the Russian bodies in the street lay in mute testament to the deadly accuracy of the enemy machine gunner.

20

Deep in the
Führerbunker
, Adolf Hitler nervously waited for a status report on Operation Tristan. “Where is the girl?” he asked. “I don’t see her. Where is she?”

“She will be here soon,” Goebbels replied. “The hour of
Final Victory
is at hand.”

General Weidling cursed under his breath.
All hope may be lost
, he thought,
but Goebbels’ unrelenting arrogance annoys the hell out of me. He is just as delusional as the Führer.

Suddenly, there was a commotion. Weidling’s heart raced—he thought Russian shock troops had located the
Führerbunker
. His panicked thoughts of a quick suicide were tempered by the fact that Heydrich still had his pistol.

Weidling let out a sigh of relief when Martin Bormann stormed into the situation room. His clothes were torn and covered in soot. He looked like hell.

Then came Adalgar, Hitler’s personal astrologer and practitioner of the black arts, complete with fiery red hair and brooding brown eyes. Introduced to Hitler by the Swiss astrologer K.E. Kraft, Adalgar was rumored to be developing a supernatural weapon. His surprise appearance in Berlin on 15 February made Hitler’s bodyguards nervous, but they tolerated him at the
Führer
’
s
insistence.

Hitler apprehensively surveyed the new arrivals, looking for his most important guest. “Where is she?”

Adalgar pushed Bormann towards Hitler. “Go ahead. Tell him.”

The
Führer
put his arm on Bormann’s shoulder and peered into his eyes. “Tell me what, Martin?”

Bormann was so nervous that he actually stuttered. “Sh-sh-she wa-wa-wa-was...”

Extreme concern suddenly showed itself on Hitler’s face. “Where the hell is the Romanian girl?”

Bormann wiped his brow and took a deep breath. He was dripping with sweat. The tension in the air was extreme. “Sh-sh-she wa-wa-wa-was mo-mo-moved to Ge-ge-ge-ge-stapo headquarters under the gu-gu-guard of our be-be-best troops,” Bormann stuttered. “But we lost her.”

With those four well-spoken words, the color drained from Adolf Hitler’s face. He turned away and his left arm involuntarily contracted and shook like a flipper. Goebbels knelt down on the floor next to him, put his head in his hands and screamed. “Goddamn it!”

Then Hitler’s demeanor changed from shock to anger. He grabbed Bormann and shook him like a rag doll. “What the hell happened?” he screamed, saliva flying out of his mouth. “Where is the girl? Where is the girl???”

“It’s not my fault,” Bormann whimpered. “A bomb hit the building—my men are dead.”