The Leader And The Damned (4 page)

'No confirmation is necessary. Put me on to Field Marshal von Kluge at once.'

When von Kluge came on the line Bormann explained that with his eye for even the smallest detail the Fuhrer had observed that Otto Reiter had performed sloppily while he was at Smolensk. 'Please arrange for him to be sent to the front to join an SS division today. By order of the Fuhrer!'

Von Kluge, puzzled and a little irritated that Hitler should bother himself with such details, was not entirely surprised. The Fuhrer seemed to miss nothing. He acted at once on the instruction. Reiter never reached the front. On his way a long-range Soviet shell burst within metres of the vehicle he was travelling in and he died instantly. When the news reached Bormann he crossed Reiter's name off the list.

His next call was to Rainer Schulz, commander of a special SS execution team then stationed in Berlin. Again the conversation was brief, but this time Bormann did most of the talking.

1.. you have been here once before, Schulz... we went for a drive in the Kubelwagen, so you know the spot... the lake which is little more than a large swamp... you remain hidden until they have sunk the trucks...'

'It seems an extreme measure,' Schulz ventured cautiously, 'the killing of twenty men...'

'One of whom, as I have already told you, is a spy. Since we cannot detect which one, all must go. Realize - this man, whoever he may be - has access to the Wolf's Lair Needless to say, you do not come with your men anywhere near Security Ring A. As soon as the job is done you return to Berlin under oath of secrecy. By order of the Fuhrer!'

'
Heil Hitler
, Reichsleiter..

'One more thing. We have uncovered another member of the underground - no less than the Commandant at the Berghof. As soon as you return to Berlin you will fly to Berchtesgaden alone and deal with him, too. It must be made to look like an accident. Understood?'

'I will begin my preparations' at once, Reichsleiter..

During the night of 13 March -14 March, Alois Vogel, commander of the Wolf's Lair SS guard, drove his men mercilessly in the bitter cold to remove every trace of the plane crash. With the aid of powerful mobile lamps mounted on trucks the area was scoured for every trace of the wrecked plane and the grisly remnants of bodies.

Vogel himself, whose maxim was 'thoroughness', spotted the machine's tail perched at a crazy angle in the fork of a huge pine. By some miracle almost intact, it was added to the human debris Piled aboard three trucks. It was close to dawn before he was satisfied they had removed every trace of the disaster.

'Now place the mine and detonate it,' he ordered one of his men as the three trucks rumbled off a safe distance down one of the tracks leading through the forest towards the lake. The mine was buried deep to muffle the explosion. The blast of the explosion smashed and scarred a few more trees - but now there was an explanation for the scene of destruction if anyone wandered into this part of the woods.

'To the lake!' he shouted, jumping aboard the last truck.

By four o'clock in the morning of 14 March Vogel and his twenty men had completed the first part of their task. The contents of the three trucks - the remains of the Condor and its passengers - had been shovelled into the snow by the edge of the swampy lake, petrol had been poured over them, ignited and the shrivelled remnants had been shovelled back inside one of the trucks.

'Now all we have to do is to sink the trucks,' Vogel told his exhausted men. 'The sooner the job is done the sooner we can get back to our warm beds...'

The driver of the first truck revved up his engine, pausing to make sure the door by his side was wide open. In the headlights he saw the mist rising from the dank waters of the muddy lake which was little more than a quagmire coated with ice - thin ice beneath which lay a mixture of mud and water. It was not a task he relished: he had to drive the truck forward at speed and jump clear at the last moment. Several of his comrades stood by the edge of the lake waiting to help him. Taking a deep breath, he released the brake and sped forward.

In his eagerness to complete the task properly - Vogel was a man who expected nothing less than perfection - he almost jumped out too late. The truck roared on past him as he landed and felt his legs sinking into the ooze just beneath the ice which crackled and gave way like glass. Two men grabbed his arms and hauled him clear, his boots covered with slime. From a safer distance Vogel watched the truck dive forward, its headlights vanish, followed by the rear light. The vehicle settled, sinking out of sight beneath the surface.

'Come on! Hurry it up!'

He waved the second truck forward which entered the lake a few metres away from the first. The driver, having seen what almost happened to the previous truck's driver, jumped earlier. Then the third truck was driven into the swamp. Now the only evidence of what had just taken place was the shattered ice and it was so cold a fresh film began forming almost at once. Vogel gathered his men round him.

'I think a little liquid refreshment is called for,' he announced and produced- a flask of vodka Bormann had given to him earlier. They were standing bunched together, passing round the flask when a dazzle of blinding lights illuminated them.

Earlier, Rainer Schulz, commander of the special ten-man execution team, recently returned from the Russian front, had flown his men to the airfield near the Wolf's Lair in a transport plane. Inside the machine his men huddled together for warmth a short distance from the five motorcycles with outrider cars they had loaded aboard the machine in Berlin.

The controller of the airfield had been told by Bormann himself to expect the new arrivals who would land in the early hours of the morning. He was given the special code signal the pilot of the plane would use when approaching the airfield: '
Dragon
'. The macabre implications of the word totally escaped the controller.

'They have come to replace the present security guard,' Bormann had explained. 'Men grow stale after a while performing the same duties. I do not have to tell you how important it is that the security team remains constantly on the alert... by order of the Fuhrer!'
 
he had ended.

By order of the Fuhrer!
Time and again these five words, repeated with almost regular monotony, gave Bormann the immense power he wielded on Hitler's behalf. It had reached the pitch where no one throughout the whole of Germany dreamed of questioning such a command.

At three-thirty in the morning, aided by the landing lights briefly switched on, the transport plane landed and cruised to a halt on the runway. Everything went as smoothly as clockwork; Rainer Schulz was a meticulous organizer. Seated now in the side-car of the first motorbike, a Schmeisser machine pistol resting in his lap, he waited while the ramp was lowered before giving the order.

'Go! I will guide you..'

The motorbike and side-car cavalcade, led by Schulz, left the aircraft whose propellers were still spinning and headed for the exit gates which were already open. Turning right, away from the Wolf's Lair, the cavalcade plunged off the road onto a track leading into the forest.

Behind Schulz his other eight men also sat on their machines, and each man in the outrider car was armed with a machine-pistol and several spare magazines. The headlights of Schulz's motorbike shone on the deserted track, showed up a palisade of pines and the drifting mist.

They proceeded at a steady pace, guided by their leader who had a phenomenal memory for geography. He only had to follow a route once and it was engraved on his memory for ever. He had, as a precaution, brought a detailed map of the area, but he did not once refer to it as he led his column over the ice-rutted, bumpy track through the frozen forest, his only guide the beam of the motorbike's headlight.

'Halt! Dismount! We proceed from here on foot..

Schulz again led the way, holding his machine- pistol loosely. All the lights of the motorcycles and side-cars had been extinguished. From his neck a pair of night-glasses was slung, but his excellent vision in the dark took him down the broad track without their aid. The aroma of the drifting mist mingled with damp pine foliage scent in his nostrils as he moved silently forward.

Behind him, as previously ordered, six of his men - in three pairs - pushed their machines as the side-cars wobbled over the icy ruts. Their weapons were loaded in the side-cars. The only sound in the eery mist-bound forest was the occasional crunch of a wheel as it broke ice in a rut. Padded against the bitter cold in his leather greatcoat, Schulz paused.

'Get those machines off the track onto the grass,' he ordered. 'I want you to make less noise than a column of mice..

Having given the order, he moved ahead of the main body with only one man. They were nearing the lake. Turning a corner of the track, he stopped and raised his night-glasses. The lake was in view, mist like steam rising from its surface. At that moment one of Alois Vogel's men struck a match to light his cigarette, his stomach savouring the warmth of the vodka he had just swallowed. Vogel's team had only recently sent the third truck to its watery oblivion under the ice of the lake.

'Very convenient,' Schulz commented in a whisper to his subordinate. 'They are all bunched together. Place the bikes in position and await my order.'

The three motorbikes and side-cars were manhandled some distance apart, their headlights aimed to illuminate Vogel and his group of men from different angles. Schulz perched himself with his backside on the seat of one bike, =looped his machine-pistol and steadied the weapon for firing.

'Everyone is ready,' his subordinate reported to him.

'Proceed,' Schulz ordered.

Synchronization was perfect. The lights came on, their beams illuminating and blinding the targets. The forest silence was shattered briefly by the murderous crossfire of the machine-pistols.

Vogel and his men were slaughtered and so swiftly that not a single individual had time to reach for his weapon. In the glare of the headlight beams they crumpled like matchstick men, falling in grotesque attitudes, often one man toppling on top of his comrade. In less than a minute it was all over. Schulz rammed a fresh magazine into his weapon and walked slowly forward, his grey bleak eyes searching for any sign of survival.

He thought he saw one man twitch and emptied half the magazine into the heap the man lay atop of. He had no particular reaction to what had just happened, no thought as to which of the bodies had been the spy Bormann had spoken of. It was just an order to be carried out, an action his special SS team had accomplished against Soviet guerrillas time and again on the Russian front.

'Proceed to the next phase,' he told his second-in-command.

He waited while his team stripped the corpses of the SS men until they lay naked in the snow, their uniforms and the contents of their pockets neatly stacked in a separate pile. Schulz himself fetched a jerrican filled with petrol, poured it over the pile and set light to it.

By the illumination from the blaze he watched as his men completed their task systematically. A pair would take the body of one of the dead SS men by
 
the shoulders and the ankles, swing the body back and forwards and then hurl it as far as possible out across the lake. The bodies disappeared beneath the freshly-forming ice, following the three trucks they had themselves consigned to the dark waters.

Schulz watched the macabre scene with an expressionless face. He knew the Masurian lakes. The bodies would sink deep into the foul ooze, would lie frozen there until spring. And even then they would not surface. It was never really warm in East Prussia. Embedded in the ooze, they would remain there until they disintegrated.

'Now, the uniforms and the clutter..

Two men with shovels carefully scooped up the red-hot embers of the fire Schulz had lit and cast them into one of the broken areas of the lake where the ice had cracked as a body went through it. There was a sizzle, a brief puff of steam. Only when he was, satisfied they had removed every trace did Schulz give his next order.

'Back to the Wolf's Lair airfield.- back to Berlin. And hurry it up - I have an appointment...'

Mentally to himself Schulz added the words, '.. with the Commandant of the Berghof at Berchtesgaden.'