The Leader And The Damned (3 page)

'I will await your return eagerly,' Bormann had replied.

The plane came into view again, much lower now and no more than one kilometre from the airfield. It was descending rapidly when it again vanished in the overcast. As Bormann stood there he saw a blinding flash which dissipated the mist. He actually glimpsed the machine breaking up in mid-air followed by a muffled detonation. Then the mist rolled in again and the hush of the fog-bound forest descended. Silence.

Stunned, he didn't move for several seconds, but the Alsatian did. With a low, moaning howl it leaped forward, freeing itself from his grip, running off in the direction of the explosion. The dog's flight jerked Bormann into action. He shouted towards Vogel.

'Send two men to the control tower! Close down all communications! Ring the airfield with troops! No one is allowed in or out! Then come with me.'

Vogel reacted instantly, issuing the instructions before running to join Bormann who had hurried over to where a Kubelwagen stood. The strange vehicle - with wheels at the front and caterpillar tracks at the rear - was for negotiating difficult terrain. Bormann was behind the wheel as Vogel arrived with his warning.

'They may have heard the explosion at headquarters...'

Bormann thought for a moment, idling the engine as Vogel got into the passenger. seat beside him. 'Kempner, he called out to Vogel's second-in-command. He studied the SS man who stood at attention below him. No sign of panic. He took another quick decision.

'Kempner. Drive back to headquarters. Inform them that the Fuhrer's plane has been delayed by bad weather - that it has put down at another airfield. Tell them he has cancelled tomorrow's conference at noon. And if anyone mentions hearing an explosion, say it was caused by a fox running over a mine..

It was only too plausible an explanation. The Wolf's Lair was ringed by minefields and there had been many a false alarm when foxes had detonated a mine. Leaving Kempner running for a car, Bormann set the Kubelwagen in motion, beckoning for several SS men to climb aboard.

Soon he was driving along a track through the pine forests, the airfield lost from view as the mist swirled amid the trees in a sinister fashion. He did not have to drive far. Suddenly they came to a clearing where pine trunks were blasted stumps projecting at awkward angles like mutilated limbs. As he stopped the vehicle the scene they gazed at was appalling, horrific.

Bits of the plane were scattered everywhere. It must have been close to tree-top level when the detonation occurred - and the blast had gone downwards. Fragments of bodies were caught in the branches of trees. It was like a slaughterhouse where a maniac with a meat-axe had run berserk. A stench of petrol mingling with burnt flesh hung in the mist. Blondi, the Alsatian, was sniffing around the charnel house. Bormann and Vogel climbed out, followed by the SS men.

'He could not have survived this,' Bormann said slowly.

'What do we do?' asked Vogel.

'Wait a minute while I think...'

Bormann had risen to the position of being Hitler's right-hand man because of his powers of meticulous administration and planning. The Fuhrer hated the donkey work of routine and had come to rely on the quiet, stocky deputy to deal with all details. He would issue an order and Bormann would process it - to such an extent that he could send out any instruction, ending it with the words no one dare question: 'By order of the Fuhrer.'

At this moment he held the fate of Germany in his hands and he showed what he was made of. As he stood in the snow with the mist drifting among the encircling pines, surveying the carnage with the stench of death in his nostrils, his mind was racing.

'Vogel, cordon off the entire area. Shoot anyone who tries to approach it. Bring in trucks and clear up the mess. Miss nothing. Every remnant of corpses - bits of the plane - go aboard the trucks which will be driven to a remote spot. Empty the mess out and burn it - then bury it...'

He was interrupted by a nearby sound of someone retching. An SS man came stumbling through the mist, so shaken he omitted to salute Bormann. He had difficulty speaking.

'What is it?' Bormann snapped. 'Get a grip on yourself.'

'Karl has just found the pilot's head in his helmet - just his head...'

'First item to go aboard the trucks,' Bormann told Vogel brutally.

'There is something else,' the SS man stammered. He showed them what he had been hiding behind his back. A briefcase with the relic of a hand still clutching the handle tightly. 'It is the Fuhrer's

Without a sign of squeamishness Bormann took the briefcase, holding its sides before he tipped it open. The hand fell to the ground, still clutching the handle which had broken off.

Bormann examined the contents of the scorched briefcase. Yes, it was the Fuhrer's - he recognized the maps of Western Europe he had personally inserted inside the case before Hitler's departure for Smolensk. He returned the briefcase to Vogel.

'Put that with the rest of the relics ready for the trucks.' He gestured to the grisly object on the ground. 'That goes with all the other remnants...'

Vogel was appalled. 'But surely he must have a decent burial - a state funeral.'

Bormann stared bleakly at Vogel. 'Do you think that a man like the Fuhrer did not foresee this contingency - that he might one day be assassinated? Do you really think he did not leave a contingency plan for just such a situation as we face now?' he lied.

'My apologies...' Vogel stammered.

'Your apologies are not accepted - yet,' Bormann told him coldly. 'Your entire future depends on your carrying out my instructions. By order of the Fuhrer,' he added.

'I will start at once...'

'When the trucks have been emptied, when their contents have been burned,' Bormann continued, 'you will drive the trucks to the nearest lake and sink them.'

'There will still be all this.' Vogel gestured towards the broken tree stumps, the charred pines, their branches hanging like limp limbs in the drifting mist.

'Bring a mine and detonate it - that will explain ,the wreckage.'

Turning his back on the SS man, Bormann climbed up behind the wheel of the Kubelwagen and drove away from the scene of carnage.

It was still 13 March 1943. Adolf Hitler was dead - over two years before the end of the war.

Chapter Three

Martin Bormann sat at the nerve centre of the huge power apparatus which controlled the movement of millions of armed men, vast fleets of planes and columns of tanks and guns - one of the greatest war machines assembled in history.

He sat inside the
Lagebaracke
, a single-storey wooden building which housed the room where Hitler held his twice-daily military conferences at noon and midnight; the telephone system which relayed the Fuhrer's orders throughout his huge empire; a cloakroom, a washroom and an entrance hall.

The
Lagebaracke
was located at the heart of Security Ring A, the heavily cordoned-off Wolf's Lair protected by three separate barbed wire fences and a minefield. Elite SS troops patrolled the area and admittance through three checkpoints was strictly controlled by special passes issued by Himmler's chief of security.

Bormann sat alone with the telephone on the table, thinking carefully before he picked up the receiver and gave the orders on which the fate of Germany hung. So far his precautions had concealed the catastrophe. Kempner, Vogel's second-in-command, had arrived earlier and spread the story that the Fuhrer's plane - delayed by bad weather - had landed at another airfield.

Returning to the Wolf's Lair, Bormann had met Colonel-General Alfred Jodl, the Fuhrer's Chief of Operations. Jodl had helpfully supplied his own explanation for the delay.

'I suppose this is another of his sudden changes of schedule - to foil any assassination attempt?' 'Possibly,' Bormann had replied.

'And the next conference with the Fuhrer will be noon tomorrow?'

'That is the present intention,' Bormann agreed cautiously.

'Now, alone in the Lagebaracke, the meticulous Bormann studied the list of names he had written down on a scratch pad. Timing was everything if he was to pull off this coup - timing and the sequence of events which must be fitted together like a cleverly designed jigsaw. He studied the list of names afresh.

Commandant, Berghof

Kuby

Reiter, SS, Smolensk

Schulz, SS, Berlin

Vogel, SS, Wolf's Lair

His decision taken, he picked up the phone and asked to be put through immediately to the Commandant at the Berghof, Hitler's mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden on what had once been the frontier between Austria and Germany before the Anschluss incorporated Austria into the Greater German Reich. His conversation with the Commandant was terse and to the point.

. so you have understood your instructions perfectly? Kuby is to be flown here tomorrow in a Condor - it must be a Condor - and the markings on the plane, are to be exactly as I have specified. Now, put me on to Kuby himself...'

His instructions to Heinz Kuby were equally curt and brief.

'I will meet you personally at the airfield and brief you before we proceed to the Wolf's Lair. You know exactly what you have to do?'

'I have no doubt at all in my mind,' the familiar voice replied. 'The fate of Germany is in my hands.

'Don't overdo it,' Bormann interjected coldly. 'Everything depends on my briefing when you arrive here at the airfield.'

He put down the phone. Despite the rebuke Bormann, felt relieved, suddenly realized that for the first time he himself was convinced that it could work. God in heaven, it had to work or he would be dead within days. His next call was the really dangerous one, the call to Otto Reiter, chief of the SS guard at Smolensk. The trick, he decided, was to let Reiter do most of the talking. He ticked off from his list Commandant, the Berghof, and Kuby while he waited for the Smolensk call to come through.

'Bormann here,' he announced when Reiter came on the phone, 'I am calling by order of the Fuhrer. You were in charge of the guard which watched over his plane while he conferred with Field Marshal von Kluge?'

'Yes, Reichsleiter. I personally supervised all checks while the machine was on the ground.' There was a hint of pride verging on arrogance in Reiter's voice. Bormann smiled thinly; the idiot was obviously hoping for promotion or even decoration.

'While the plane was waiting did anything unusual happen? Did anyone at all approach or go aboard the aircraft?'

'Reichsleiter, is there something wrong?' The arrogance had been replaced by anxiety.

'Yes - you have not answered my question.'

Words began tumbling across the wire as Reiter explained. 'I can think of nothing unusual. The most strict precautions were taken, I assure you. When General von Tresckow took a package on board I examined it personally. He was not pleased, I can tell you. But I know my duty, Reichsleiter. This package contained two bottles of brandy. I even noticed the make,' he continued. 'It was Courvoisier. No one else boarded the machine until the Fuhrer himself left Smolensk...'

'Obviously this has nothing to do with von Tresckow,' Bormann interjected smoothly. 'A map appears to be missing from the Fuhrer's briefcase - but now I am sure we shall find it here.'

'My story can be confirmed by Lieutenant Schlabrendorff who is coming to the Wolf's Lair via Berlin - he is von Tresckow's aide..

Bormann froze. He decided Schlabrendorff's visit must be postponed until after the plane from the Salzburg airstrip arrived.. What later happened was that Tresckow's aide was stopped from approaching the aircraft and - to cover his failure - returned to Berlin and reported to his chief he had removed the unexploded bomb, dismantling it on the train and throwing the pieces out of the window. Bormann resumed talking to Reiter.