We all sensed that the end was near. This man who by sheer force of personality had so completely dominated a nation was about to end his life. There was so much relief that we hurried to ground level and held a dance in the canteen of the Chancellery. High officers who days before would not have acknowledged we existed shook our hands and talked openly. Everyone realized that postwar Germany was going to be greatly different. A realignment would occur not only in people, but in social order. All at the dance seemed to grasp that reality, and I watched with great amusement as egos crumbled.
By noon the news was not good. Russian troops had partly occupied the Chancellery. The Tiergarten had been taken. The Potsdamer Platz and Weidendammer Bridge were lost. Hitler accepted the information without emotion. At 2:00 P.M. he took lunch with his secretaries and cook. His wife, Eva, who normally ate with Hitler, was not there. Their marriage was little more than a day old and her absence from Hitler’s side was something to be noted. Such an odd wedding. The din of battle leaking in from aboveground. The cold gray concrete walls. A humid, moldy aroma that stained everything with a stench of confinement. Each declared that they were of pure Aryan descent and free of hereditary disease. Goebbels and Bormann served as official witnesses. The bride and groom barely smiled as vows were exchanged. An odd sort of fulfillment amid overwhelming failure.
After lunch, Hitler and his wife appeared together and we were all summoned again. Another farewell occurred with little emotion, then the Führer and Eva Braun returned to their private quarters. All were dismissed save for a few. Within minutes a single gunshot was heard.
* * *
Cotton looked up from the pages.
The helicopter kept churning westward.
“This is nothing new. I’ve read similar accounts before. Eva Braun bit down on a cyanide capsule and Hitler shot himself. Their bodies were taken up to ground level and burned, then buried. The Russians found the corpses, but told no one and took the remains back to Moscow. Stalin wanted the Allies to believe Hitler was still alive. His way of keeping everybody off guard and justifying his occupying Eastern Europe. All of the details came to light in the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union when its archives were opened.” He held up the sheets. “But this seems like firsthand information. Where did it come from?”
Danny shrugged. “Moscow. From those old Soviet archives. Historians have long thought there was a Soviet spy in the Führerbunker. Even Hitler believed it.”
He knew the tale of das Leck. The leak. Many names had been attached to the label, similar to speculation over who could have been Deep Throat during Watergate. That mystery had been solved. But das Leck remained unknown.
“Keep reading,” Danny said.
* * *
Bormann was the first into the room after the shot. A smell of cyanide smarted the eyes and forced a retreat for a few moments while the air cleared. Hitler lay sprawled on the left side of the couch, a bullet hole the size of a silver mark in his skull. Eva Braun lay on the right side of the sofa. A vase filled with tulips and white narcissi had fallen over from an adjacent table, spilling water on her blue dress, staining her thighs. There was no sign of blood upon her, but the remains of a glass ampule dotted her lips. A woolen blanket was produced and Hitler’s body wrapped inside. The Führer’s valet, Linge, and Dr. Stumpfegger carried the body up to ground level. Bormann wrapped Eva Braun’s remains in a blanket. He shouldered the corpse and carried her from the room. One of the guards called to him and he halted in the passageway. There was a brief discussion and Bormann laid the body in an adjacent anteroom. He dealt with the guard, then returned and passed Eva Braun’s corpse to Kempka, who in turn passed her to Günsche, who then gave her to an SS officer who carried the body up to the Chancellery garden.
The two corpses were laid side by side and petrol poured over them. Russian guns boomed in the distance and someone mentioned that Ivan was less than two hundred meters away, near the Stadtmitte U-Bahn station. A bomb exploded and drove the mourners into the shelter of a nearby porch. Bormann, Burgdorf, Goebbels, Günsche, Linge, and Kempka were all there. I watched from the doorway leading into the bunker. Günsche dipped a rag into petrol, lit it, then tossed the burning fuse onto the bodies. Sheets of flames erupted. Everyone stood at attention, saluted, then withdrew. I was the last to retreat. Before closing the door I stood for a moment and watched the flames. One thought kept racing across my mind. A detail that I willed myself never to forget. When they laid out Eva Braun’s corpse, her blue dress was no longer wet.
* * *
“I’ve never heard this before,” Cassiopeia said. “I’ve read Trevor-Roper’s Last Days of Hitler and other definitive narratives. But no one ever mentioned anything like this regarding Eva Braun.”
“The German experts agree with you,” Danny said. “This is new information, supposedly from a Soviet spy who was there. You’re reading an English translation from the original Soviet report. Hanna Cress delivered an envelope full of document images, each bearing the Soviet seal and stamp. But here’s the really fascinating part. Those documents were delivered last Friday. But a summary of the same information, written by Jonathan Wyatt, appears in his report, filed in DC, on what happened in Chile a few years ago. Nearly identical information, leading us to believe he may have read this exact account, too. Supposedly told to him by a man named Gerhard Schüb.”
Cotton connected the dots and gestured with the pages. “You think Schüb was das Leck? He wrote this?”
Danny shrugged. “We’re not sure what to think. All we know is that this firsthand account has now appeared two times, on two different continents, and the common denominator is a man named Gerhard Schüb.”
He had to admit. That was way too much of a coincidence.
“Chancellor Eisenhuth asked me to talk with Hanna Cress on her behalf and find out what I could. She wanted this kept close and didn’t want to use her people. I tried to question Cress, but she told me little. Only what I told you before. But before she died, she mentioned one word. Kaiser. Needless to say, this has all grown way above my skill grade, so I decided to bring in the experts.”
Which explained why Danny had appeared in Copenhagen on Sunday, and then here today.
“You think Eva Braun survived the bunker?” Cotton asked. “That she somehow escaped?”
“Why the hell not,” Danny said. “Nobody has a clue what happened in that bunker. The people who were there all contradicted one another with their statements after the war. There are no forensics to prove a thing. No bodies. No nothing. The Soviets totally contaminated whatever evidence may have been there. And think about it. Braun returned to Berlin on April 15, 1945. Hitler had sent her south to the Alps for safety. It was always assumed she returned out of love and loyalty. It was actually one of the all-time dumb-ass moves. The Russian army was closing in and the city was on the verge of capture. So she walked right back into the hornet’s nest? To a nearly certain death or imprisonment? Out of love and loyalty for Hitler?”
He had to admit, it sounded implausible. Still. “What aren’t you telling us?”
“I know this is going to sound crazy, but part of the information Hanna Cress delivered says Eva Braun may have been pregnant. Supposedly, she came back to legitimize her child through a lawful marriage to Hitler.”