The Berkut (16 page)

Brumm's interest was piqued; if it would get him out of Berlin and away from his pointless existence, he was interested. It didn't much matter what it was, as long as there would be action. But when he pressed Skorzeny for details, the SS captain smiled wryly and excused himself. "Perhaps you'll hear from me sometime."

A month later Brumm received a wire marked "SECRET" from Skorzeny. If Brumm was interested, the SS major wrote, he might have a job that would challenge his unique talents. Skorzeny did not wait for an answer. Brumm's orders followed within the week.

Brumm was flown to Munich and driven from there to an isolated mountain installation, where he was shown into Skorzeny's office. The beefy Austrian proudly explained that he had been given a special assignment under the Amt VI of the Reich Main Security Office. Skorzeny, who had been sent home from the Eastern front with an ulcer in 1942, now commanded a special commando unit, the Friedenthal. He assured Brumm that they would be undertaking some "very interesting" assignments. He needed a planner, a director of operations planning to whom he could entrust details. Brumm accepted, even after Skorzeny explained that the new posting would entail his joining the SS, a circumstance that would necessitate an investigation of his racial history. Brumm had heard of such procedures but had paid little attention to them; elite military units often had strange traditions and customs.

Two teams of researchers were promptly sent from Berlin to look into Brumm's family background; within several days they were back with their evidence and made their report. There was no trace of either Jewish or Slavic blood in Brumm's maternal and paternal lines going back to the Thirty Years War. The investigators also had sworn statements that there was no mental illness in his family and that his physical characteristics--some twenty different measurements of everything from his sitting height to the distance between his eyes
--
were within the standards of the elite corps.

In due course Brumm's name was officially entered into the SS pedigree
roll
-Das Sippenbuch-
and
he took the oath of loyalty sworn by all new officers entering Hitler's Black Order. It was a small concession for his rescue from bureaucracy, and it wouldn't hurt his promotion chances.

Ezdovo came into the holding facility at mid
-
afternoon and made his way up to the group's private quarters. "They have the bodies," he reported to Petrov, who was in the middle of reading an interrogation statement. "Yesterday they found two badly burned bodies-a male and a female-in the Chancellery garden. Apparently they weren't interested, because they put them in blankets and buried them again. But this morning they showed up with a truck, dug them up again, put them in wooden boxes and drove them to SMERSH at the Third Shock Army in Buch. It's on the outskirts of the city."

"You saw them?"

"Only the truck as it pulled away." "Your source?"

"A lieutenant. She's attached to a SMERSH unit with the Fifth Shock Army." The others smiled as he explained the situation in his own way; as always, there was a woman involved. "I suspect a little territorial jealousy. She claims that while security for the Chancellery area belongs to the Fifth, the Hitler investigation belongs to the Third. She was unhappy, so I shared some of our vodka and consoled her. She told me all about it. She feels much better now."

Ezdovo was short and powerfully built, like a small Himalayan black bear with massive shoulders, a sinewy neck and bulging upper arms. His head was small, out of proportion, and his black curly hair was thinning in back. He had a dark complexion and a face full of scars from a childhood bout with smallpox. By all ordinary standards he was ugly, yet women were drawn to him, much to the envy and amazement of his comrades. It was a mystery the others in the group often talked about.

"Did you share more than your vodka with the poor girl?" Bailov asked with a grin.

Petrov cut the banter short. "What else?"

"They found two dogs with the bodies. Also a bazooka."

Petrov stood up immediately and began putting on his overcoat. "Get transportation."

Bailov reached for the phone. "For all of us?" Petrov grunted an affirmation.

"Do you think it could be Hitler?" Ezdovo asked anxiously. "We look, we think, then we decide," Petrov said as he led them

to the elevator.

It took two hours to reach the Third Shock Army's headquarters.

When they entered, Petrov went directly to the commandant's office, passing through a herd of protesting clerks. In less than two minutes he was back, followed by a corpulent, bald general whose wire-rimmed glasses were askew and who was hopping along, trying to put on his boot as he followed the leader of the Special Operations Group. As soon as he reached the orderly room, the general screamed for his driver. Petrov's group still took pleasure in watching the extraordinary effect their leader had on others.

Petrov rode with the general, and the others followed in their own vehicle. They drove a kilometer or so to a battered string of connected wood-frame buildings that served as a makeshift field hospital.

By the time they arrived the general was dressed, but still lacked control of his emotions. In the hospital he shouted for attention and got it. He demanded to know the whereabouts of Colonel Doctor Shkaravski, chief of forensic medicine with the First Belorussian Front. No one seemed to know, but the group was taken quickly to a small wooden house apart from the rest of the complex. No guards were posted, and Petrov quickly pointed out their absence to the general, who turned pale, then a dark shade of red, and slammed his hands against his fat thighs like a plump bird beating its wings in a mating dance.

Inside the house, eleven bodies were laid out side by side on a scuffed wooden floor. A frail medical orderly was sitting on a wooden chest in a corner, cleaning his fingernails with a small knife. He looked at them when they entered, but did not speak and showed no particular alarm over their presence. It had begun to rain outside; heavy, drops pounded loudly on the roof and ran off the gutters in a solid wall. The orderly stopped working on his fingers to watch the rain.

The general jerked the orderly to his feet. "Are you in charge
?" "I'm the only one here," the
man mumbled.

"Then you're in charge and have failed to post sentries."
The man smiled weakly. "I'm a medical orderly, Comrade General"

"You're a member of the Third Shock Army, and you are derelict in your military obligation."

"But 1 arrived here just before you, sir." Sweat was pouring off the man as he shifted his weight nervously.

"You know the penalty," the general screamed.

“I just got here!”
the man shrieked. "I was told to report to t
he mortuary, so 1 came directly
over. You can't shoot an orderly for doing what's he's told."

The general unsnapped his holster, removed his revolver, held it with the barrel straight up, like some kind of banner, and pushed the orderly through the back door of the building. The man lost his balance, landed on his back and slid backward in the sparse green shoots of grass and mud.

Petrov and Gnedin ignored the commotion and began to inspect the bodies. The other three watched through a window as the general shoved the man toward a large oak tree. Twice the orderly fell, but the general picked him up each time and kicked him again. When they reached the base of the tree, the general opened the cylinder, closed it, put the barrel to the man's head and fired. There was a puff of smoke, and the orderly twisted and fell on his side. His legs kicked twice, then he was still. Through the rain the sound of the shot was no louder than that made by a child's popgun.

Ezdovo laughed quietly. "Dead soldiers don't repeat their mistakes."

"Shit rolls downhill," Rivitsky observed.

"When the mastodon runs, it's the grass that suffers," Ezdovo chirped.

"All right, let's play sentry until the Comrade General can rally his subordinates," Rivitsky said. "Petrov, we'll secure the area. Do you want privacy?"

"Gnedin will remain with me. A Dr. Chenko was to be sent from Moscow. Bring him to me if he arrives, but our meeting must appear to be purely accidental." Petrov did not want the Russian medical authorities to know that Stalin had installed an observer in their ranks.

Rivitsky, Bailov and Ezdovo went outside and took up positions. "Observations?" Petrov asked the young surgeon.
Gnedin coughed to clear his throat. "That one we saw in the bunker," he said, pointing to the corpse of General Hans Krebs, chief of the General Staff. "That one is Goebbels. See, they botched burning him, but that profile is unique. And here is the metal prosthesis for
his clubfoot. The woman is probably his wife, or one of his whores; he had a propensity for such women and his wife encouraged it. I presume the children we found are theirs, too; there were six."

Petrov poked at one of the bodies with a thin finger and pursed his lips. "Could these be the corpses transported here this morning?"

"They
are
charred, and they're a male and a female. It's possible." Rivitsky came in and pointed through the windows to a platoon of infantry double-timing into a protective ring. The soldiers took up positions two meters apart, with their backs to the building, their rifles pointing out, bayonets fixed and at the ready. "There are some doctors coming. Chenko is among them," Rivitsky told Petrov.

"Bring him in."

Chenko wore a Red Army uniform devoid of rank or decorations. His black boots were caked with brown mud. He was squarely built, with stunted, bowed legs and long thin arms. His nose was thick and swollen, with blue veins in the tip snaking their way across wide nostrils into wrinkled, leathery cheeks.

"Chenko," Petrov said in simple greeting.

"Comrade Petrov. When our mutual friend asked me to see to your needs, I never imagined it would be so soon. I bring regards from Moscow."

"We learned today that the counterintelligence of the Third Shock Army unearthed two burned corpses, a male and a female. They suspect that these are the bodies of Hitler and his concubine. It is imperative that we view them before the autopsies are done."

"Whatever you wish, comrade, but you should be aware that what is happening here is politically sensitive. Marshal Zhukov is closely monitoring these events. There is considerable pressure on him to identify Hitler, and the good scientists waiting outside in the elements are already favorably predisposed toward tidiness, if you get my meaning."

"I don't give a damn about the politics, Chenko. I seek truth." "Yes, I understand that. But you must also know that truth is relative to the need of its holder."

Petrov stared at Chenko. "Truth is truth, comrade. What one does with it is relative. Truth gives the full range of options for action, and I intend to have that full range. Are these the new bodies?"

Chenko shook his head. "Below."

The four men went downstairs. In the high-ceilinged cellar, postmortem tables and implements had been set up, and battery-powered arc lamps stood around two tables like observers. A badly burned and decomposed corpse was on each table.

"Ripe," Rivitsky muttered.

Gnedin turned on the lights and stood between the tables. "Male here, female on my right. No easy identification this time; they are in poor condition."

"What can you tell?" Petrov asked. He found a box in the corner, turned it on end and sat down, more interested in listening than looking.

"The male has been shot. See the skull fragment missing here. No telling with the woman, but there appears to be major trauma as well. The pathologist will have to make a judgment of whether or not the major injuries were sustained before or after death. If the flesh had not been burned, the degree of lividity would tell us what we want to know, but in this condition it will be more a matter of art than science."

Rivitsky stared at the corpses. "How will they make an identification? There's not much left."

"Dental records." Gnedin reached down, hooked the small finger of his left hand in the male corpse's mouth and lifted it open to reveal the blackened stump of a tongue and charred teeth. "See, the teeth are black, but they're still there. Medical histories will also provide some clues; there are a number of possibilities."

"Still not much to go on," Rivitsky said.

"True. There will be as much guesswork as anything down here." "Forensics always involves guesswork," Chenko observed.

"Do you want to do the autopsies?" Petrov asked Gnedin.

"I don't think it's necessary. All I need are their reports," Gnedin said.