The Berkut (64 page)

"If Hitler's headquarters had everything, then they surely had the best medical services."

Gottfried laughed. "Life is neither logical nor orderly. The hunter was evading military service. The army searched for me and the craft, but they never found us. By the time I was well enough to travel on my own several months later, I couldn't see any reason to go back. Officially I was dead, and that seemed to me to be as good a finish as I could hope for. Some of the local people knew about me, but they left me alone and referred to me as the ghost. Now none of this matters. Hitler is dead, the rest of his Nazi lunatics are gone, and Germany is the better for it." For emphasis, he stomped one of his wooden legs on the floor.

Valentine turned to the fuselage. "But you said your craft was destroyed. What's this?"

"It is the one I flew," Gottfried said proudly. "I rebuilt it. Climbed back up there and brought it down here, a piece at a time. Took me months."

"I don't understand."

The man shrugged. "Don't try. When some people go to the hospital to have their gallstones taken out by the surgeon, they put them in a jar and display them in the parlor. I don't understand it either. You do what you are compelled to do."

That night Gottfried described the workings of the escape system in detail, drawing diagrams and demonstrating with his hands, as all pilots do when they talk about their craft. For Valentine the whole thing was an unlikely, almost nonsensical discovery: Hitler had created a plan to allow for escape. This was important information. It didn't matter that it was a harebrained idea; it was the intent that mattered. That the Fuhrer had thought seriously enough about escape to entertain this bizarre scheme was beyond anything Valentine had previously considered. "What happened after your crash?"

"I heard that more died," Gottfried said, "but that eventually they perfected the system. Apparently the engineers discovered the design error that doomed me and corrected it."

"And then?"

"There were pilots on duty around the clock at the Eagle's Nest to await the Fuhrer's call."

"What good was the plan if he was in Berlin or elsewhere?"

The man laughed. "Don't underestimate these people. They may have been psychopaths, but they were Germans. They were wed to the principle of redundancy. I heard rumors that several stations were built around the country so that a pickup could be made virtually anywhere. It didn't require much space, and all that was needed was a couple of poles, and some cable for the plane to pick up the glider. Who would notice?"

The next morning after an early breakfast, Gottfried hitched his horse to the cart and drove Valentine to Mount Kehlstein; after reaching the base of the mountain, it was a twisting, nearly vertical sixteen
kilometer climb of hairpin curves to the place where an entrance to an elevator had been blasted into solid granite by slave laborers. When they finally reached the Eagle's Nest, it was midafternoon. The ghost led his American friend up to a small ridge line and showed him the two poles that served as the launching pad for the glider. "I'll be goto-hell," Valentine said.

92 – April 6, 1946, 6:30 P.M.

Shadows cast by the setting sun gathered over the Tiber. Small ripples running under a gentle breeze caught the rays and reflected them in a thousand winks as Pogrebenoi ambled along a broad walk overlooking the water. It was still hot and humid; the panorama of the city beyond wavered as rising heat deflected light waves and gave the scene a surreal quality.

It had been four days since she'd had lunch with the old priest, and while undoubtedly he was her contact, he had shown no inclination to discuss the mission or anything else she thought important. Still, he had proven to be an able and willing talker. He regaled her with stories about the Romans and their peculiar ways, and she had found herself laughing until her eyes filled with tears and her stomach ached. Nevertheless, she was irritated by his obvious avoidance of more substantive issues. At the end of lunch he had told her that evening strolls along the Tiber were often "enlightening" for visitors; then he had limped from the restaurant and melted into the crowded streets.

Now, as she walked along, she wondered what progress was being made in Germany. She felt a knot in her stomach whenever she thought of the team, especially of Ezdovo. In combat she had known the camaraderie forged by deprivation and shared danger, and what she felt for the members of the Special Operations Group was similar and yet different, too. These were men unlike one another-indeed, unlike any she had ever known before. It was as if God had reached down through the instrument of Petrov to anoint his finest creations, so that on this holiest of missions He would be assured of success. To think that Petrov had selected her left her short of breath; she was proud-as a Russian, as a woman, as a soldier. It did not strike her as ironic that God might choose to work through the party, which recognized the existence of no supernatural being. What the party said for official consumption was one thing; what Russians believed was yet another. Like millions of her countrymen, Talia believed in God and in life after death. To her the Devil was real. What struck her as ironic was that the Roman Catholic Church might be shielding Adolf Hitler, the cause of twenty million Russian deaths. If the blabbering priest could help her to do her part, she was determined to work with him, whatever it might require. But as she walked she found herself wishing she was with Ezdovo. The notion embarrassed her; she hated moments in her life when her frailty was naked, and this was one of those times.

As the end of twilight approached and there still was no sign of the priest, Pogrebenoi resolved to return to her hotel and try again the next night. It was a long walk, but she covered the route at a brisk pace. After so many years in sturdy boots, the paper-thin soles of her pumps made her feet hurt, and several small blisters were forming. Being a soldier, she paid careful attention to her feet.
In
Russian winters even one day of carelessness in such matters cost toes, even an entire foot. She was proud that in her unit the cases of trench foot and amputations from frostbite had been the lowest in the division. Such losses couldn't be eliminated entirely, but good hygiene could minimize them, and she had become a fanatic on foot care.

It was dark when she decided to shed her shoes. She carried them by their straps and enjoyed the freedom as her feet slapped loudly against the Roman pavement; she didn't care that the cement was shredding her nylon stockings.

She was within sight of the hotel when a dark form stepped from a doorway and blocked her path. Sensing a threat, she braced herself and picked up her pace to give herself added momentum. Closing in on the stranger, she gauged the remaining distance and weighed her tactical choices. If attacked, she decided, she would take him below the knees with a kick, then try to use a hand or elbow on his Adam's
apple. She had been hand-to-hand against men before and knew that their weight advantage could be used against them with the proper leverage. It was almost amusing, she thought, to think about the shock to this Italian in the fleeting second before she maimed him.

No attack came; instead, a vaguely familiar voice offered a loud and friendly
"Ciao."
The greeting stopped her in her tracks as surely as if she'd been struck, but she managed to respond in turn. The form took on shape. He was straighter now, less hunched than at their luncheon; she was face-to-face with her priest once again. Or was she? The clerical garb was gone; in its place he wore a tiny brown fedora and the coarse clothing of a workingman, complete with dust that seemed to rise from various parts of his body when he shifted his weight.

"I found no edification along the river," Talia said.

"Perhaps not, but it was beautiful, was it not?" the priest asked. "I never visit Rome without taking the time to watch the sun set on the river."

"One such experience would have been adequate."

"I'm sorry about that," he said apologetically. "I never intended for us to meet there. I wanted only to be sure that you weren't being followed. I was near you last night and again this evening. Now I'm satisfied that there's no special interest in you."

His words triggered alarm in her; it had never occurred to her that anyone might follow her. "I crossed the border without incident," she said.

He laughed and took her arm. "Rome is a dead end. Our business is in the north. In Genoa," he said, as if he'd made the decision in the same instant he spoke.

When they reached the hotel, she tried to pull away from his grasp, but he maintained his grip on her arm and kept walking. "My things are in the hotel," she said.

"Already taken care of. I've paid for the room. You're free and clear."

A dark sedan was parked at the curb ahead of them. He opened the street-side door and held it while she slid into the passenger seat. It was a tight fit. Her bag was on the floor in back, and while the priest walked around to the driver's side she checked its contents quickly. She was examining the clip in her automatic when he got behind the wheel and started the motor.

Roman traffic is legendary, with good reason. Its inhabitants drive where they please at speeds they choose. Miraculously, most accidents are minor: bent fenders, crushed bumpers, broken glass and scraped paint. Somehow they avoid turning the streets into a circus of carnage. The priest weaved through the streets like a bird through a thick forest, his hands and feet a blur as he shifted up and down, swerving in and out of tight spaces between other equally erratic vehicles.

"Odd," he said to her as he maneuvered the auto out of the center city. "The streets are the final habitat of Italian courage. These people love their machines-more than their women, I suspect. The first time I drove an automobile here, I thought I would succumb to nervous collapse, but now I derive a peculiar pleasure from it, a sense of trying to out-Roman the Romans. A deep-seated antisocial drive, no doubt," he added as he took the machine around a narrow corner on its two outside wheels.

Traffic thinned as they sped north across the Apennine foothills.

Eventually other automobiles disappeared entirely, and with the road clear ahead of them, they accelerated. She had to admit that he was adroit behind the wheel, guiding them deftly through severe ascending and descending turns, often with their tires screaming in opposition to the centrifugal force.

After a long time the priest spoke again. They had dropped from the mountains to a coastal plain. "Italians love intrigue," he said. "They're consumed by the nearness of danger, though they seldom go all the way to face it. Down south, of course, the Sicilians are an exception, but that's because of their ancient Arab blood. The Arabs take their danger seriously." He patted her thigh; she reacted by pulling away. "An apology," he said sincerely. "I've been too long among my Italian brothers; I have their habits. I'm an old man, comrade; you have nothing to fear from me. I've dedicated my life to higher pur
suits-though I have
known
life, biblically speaking." He laughed infectiously.

He was a strange man, but Talia's instincts told her to trust him.

"How far to go?" she wanted to know.

"Sleep," he urged her. "It's all right."

Pogrebenoi dozed with her head against the window and her small handb
a
g for a pillow. The pistol was on the floor, just below her fingertips
.

93 – April 8, 1946, 8:15 P.M.

Beau Valentine was back in Nuremberg. No matter what he found or theorized, his mind always turned back to Skorzeny. It was hard to know where to look-or even what to look for. When faced with a puzzle, it was Valentine's way to make a list of the knowns in order to focus his thoughts, and so far the only real known was the scar
faced German commando. He made his notes on a stack of loose onionskin paper with a pencil he sharpened with his pocketknife. Throughout his life he had used this method, and now as he turned it to the case at hand he felt sharp.

Fact:
Hitler was in Berlin when it fell; correction-just before it fell. This was verified by witnesses who saw him and also by radio broadcasts he made to the nation.

Fact:
First the Russian commander of the Berlin garrison an
nounced publicly that his troops had found Hitler's body. Twenty
four hours later the same commander reversed himself to Western reporters in a formal statement. He'd made a mistake; they didn't have Hitler's body.

Fact:
Stalin told several people at the Potsdam conference that the Russians had not found Hitler's body. He is said to have told President Truman that Hitler was still alive and at large.

Fact:
Ike was on record to the American press that he thought Hitler was still alive.

Fact:
Otto Skorzeny was Germany's leading commando and reported directly to Adolf Hitler. He was selected by Hitler to rescue Mussolini and given other sensitive assignments.