He wondered whether he could have done this for Lucian. Probably.
For a moment they both gasped and shivered in silence as the water quickly rose noisily around them, and then Max placed the barrel of the gun against the side of the boy’s head and pulled the trigger. Stef jerked once, violently, his hands clawed against Max’s back for a second before slackening.
Max let his limp body drop from his arms and slowly slide beneath the water. He held back the grief behind gritted teeth and smacked the sea angrily with one hand.
Only an inch of the little window in the navigation compartment remained above water, and through it the faint glow of the gathering dusk outside was fading fast. For a moment he considered turning the gun on himself and joining Stef and Pieter below the waves. Now the mission was over, they could once more be comrades, if only in death. One quick movement of the arm and another of his index finger and it would be over, no more struggling, it would be the easiest thing.
There’s still time to get out.
He dropped the gun, suddenly galvanised into action.
‘All right then,’ he muttered through trembling blue lips amidst a cloud of vapour. There were two ways to exit, both of them were underwater now and he would have to dive down and feel his way out blindly. He could either go back down into the waist section and out through one of the gun portholes. There might be enough room to squeeze his way out, since the port side gun had been jettisoned. Or he could climb forward, down through the flooded bombardier’s compartment and out through the belly hatch.
He decided to head for the waist section.
He waded towards the bulkhead leading to the waist. There was now a gap of only inches at the top, the water was around his chest and rising fast.
It’s flooded beyond the bulkhead, no air until you’re outside again . . . you ready for that?
Max breathed deeply several times. Each time he exhaled the dwindling space in front of him between the water and the roof of the fuselage filled with his foggy breath. Water bubbled and spat as trapped air from the aft of the plane hissed out through the last inches of the bulkhead doorway above the waterline.
He watched the top of the bulkhead dip below the water and felt the rear of the plane beginning to swing downwards, the plane now held above the sea by the air trapped in the front half. His ears popped from the buildup of pressure.
There was a loud, deep metallic groan. It sounded like the mournful cry of a whale.
She’s sliding under . . . go now!
He filled his lungs quickly and ducked through the bulkhead. Under the icy water he could hear a whole new world of sounds, the sound of metal straining and contorting, the roar of expelled air and incoming water, the click and clatter of debris spinning in circles and eddies. He pulled himself deeper and forwards, down towards where both waist-guns had once spewed bullets in anger. He was encumbered by his uniform and the thick leather flying jacket. His progress was torturously slow, but there was no time to tread water while he struggled to unzip it and shrug it off. He worked desperately with his arms, grabbing hold of the internal ribs of the fuselage and pulling himself forward to the next. His hand scraped a jagged bullet hole, one of a row that had stitched a line diagonally above the starboard waist-gun. Frantically his hand felt along the metal, seeking the edge of the porthole, as he felt his body urgently commanding him to take another breath.
He found the top rim of the porthole and with one frantic exertion he pulled himself down deeper into the flooded waist section, down and through the porthole. His legs now kicked desperately as he struggled to rise to the surface, but his flying jacket was weighing him down, and he had precious little energy left to fight the drag.
Life-vest, you idiot! Life-vest.
He felt for the pull-cord, patting his chest to find it, all the while feeling himself sinking slowly. He heard the painful groan of metal under stress below him. The plane was going down. The noise began to diminish as it pulled away from him, sinking at a greater speed than he was. He saw the bomber’s tailfin pass by closely. As it descended and faded from view he felt a rush of bubbles rising swiftly past him and the tug of the backwash from the plane plummeting below.
He felt the tickle of string against the back of his hand - the cord - and frantically waved his hand to find it again. He made contact, grasped the cord in his hand and pulled.
The vest inflated violently with a roar of bubbles and Max felt himself pulled rapidly up through little more than twenty feet of water.
He broke the surface with a roar of expelled air and gasped for a fresh lungful.
The plane was gone, marked now only by a handful of floating items of debris. The sea was kind this evening, only small swells, but it was painfully cold. The sun shone weakly; a few hours more and it would be gone. Max turned towards it.
Rises in the east, sets in the west.
West was where he was headed. He started to swim, in his heart knowing the cold would get him before long.
Chapter 59
Burning the Bodies
5 a.m., 30 April, Berlin
It was easy to lose track of the time, down there, down in that dimly lit warren of concrete rooms. For some inexplicable reason he had thought it was five o’clock in the evening, not five o’clock in the morning.
He looked up at the early-morning sky. It was a pale grey, and, for once, it was silent in Berlin. The Russian artillery was sleeping. The featureless clouds above were letting go of a light drizzle of rain, and delicate drops, like cold pinpricks, touched his cheeks. He closed his eyes and felt the raindrops on his eyelids and tasted the still, cold, morning air. It felt good, to drift away from this messy end to things, if only for a few moments, to savour something as simple as the coolness of rain on his face.
He heard the sound of boots scraping on wet concrete. Someone coughed awkwardly, dispelling the quiet, and he was immediately back where he would rather not be.
Hauser opened his eyes.
He stood in the small courtyard beyond the western emergency exit. Goebbels, Frau Jüng and a few of the remaining staff officers looked on as four of Hitler’s personal guards brought the bodies outside. They carried them out on white, linen bed-sheets - improvised stretchers. He watched in silence as they carried both bodies across the courtyard to a corner where the brick walls were at their highest. The bodyguards placed both of them on the ground with surprisingly little ceremony or deference; almost dropped them, like two sacks of grain.
There were no words spoken, and Hauser noticed very little grief displayed on the grim line of faces watching both Adolf and Eva Hitler being doused with petrol.
The sheets had fallen aside as the bodies had settled and both Hitler’s and Eva’s heads had emerged. Eva looked asleep. Her face looked peaceful, as if the cyanide had been mercifully quick. By contrast, Hitler’s face looked like that of a man who had died badly, violently. Blood coated the right side of it, from a bullet wound to his temple, and his mouth was pulled back in a vicious snarl of agony.
Otto Gunsch, Hitler’s adjutant, brought out the body of the German Shepherd, Blondi, and placed it carefully beside them with a tenderness than had not been afforded to the two bodies. Gunsch, who had the impassive face of a brutal and ruthless killer, kneeled down and stroked the dog’s head gently. He muttered a few words too, before stepping back as the last of the fuel was emptied over the three bodies.
Hauser rubbed his eyes tiredly.
The communication from the Americans had arrived only three hours ago, at two in the morning. That was when everything had come tumbling down for Hitler and, Hauser reflected, for himself too. The preceding hours, however, since the telegram from President Truman had arrived and confirmed that he agreed to the terms . . . they had been the happiest of Hauser’s life.
He had shared several glasses of brandy with Hitler and Eva and his three personal secretaries. Only two or three of the officers in the bunker had joined in; the others had stayed warily away from the su
dden and unplanned eruption of joy and celebrations.
It had been an impromptu party, of sorts, in the map room.
Hitler had announced to the few present that the war was over, and that the Americans had announced they were to step in to help what was left of their army expel the Russians from Berlin. The ladies, although bemused by this announcement, had cheered gleefully and raised their glasses, and Hitler had sought out Hauser with his eyes.
He had winked at him, like a friendly uncle.
They had sung along to some records, and Hitler had talked to Eva about urgent things that would need to be done first thing in the morning. He had cornered Hauser before he prepared to turn in for the night, as the party was winding down, and embraced him without warning.
He had let Hauser go and patted him awkwardly on the shoulder, as if embarrassed by the emotional gesture. He had said one last thing to Hauser as he held the door of the map room open and Eva brushed past him into the passage, heading for their quarters.
‘There’s a lot both you and I will need to do tomorrow. We have a busy time ahead. Get some sleep, Karl.’
Bormann stepped forward and produced a cigarette lighter. He lit one end of a rolled-up cone of paper. He waited until the flames had firmly taken hold of it before stepping back and tossing it onto the bodies. The flames engulfed Hitler, his wife and his dog, with a dull thump, and Hauser felt the warmth on his face from the other side of the courtyard.
The second communication from President Truman had been a simple statement that Hitler should surrender now, or suffer dire consequences. There had been no mention at all of the previous communication. And twenty minutes after Hitler had been handed the telegram, he had bid farewell to his staff and retired to his personal rooms with Eva. As Gunsch had stood guard outside, it was clear to all that the final moment had arrived. Hauser had heard many of them muttering that they were surprised that Hitler had left it so long, wondering what miracle it was that the Führer had been doggedly hanging on for. And then the muted conversations amongst the officers had swiftly moved on to the subject of the breakout that they were planning.
They all heard the single shot fired inside Eva’s bedroom.
Hauser had felt strangely immobilised by events, unable to think or do anything, other than follow the others outside shortly after the deaths had been confirmed, as they prepared to have the bodies promptly destroyed.
He watched as the flames caught the dog’s fur, and the animal seemed to shrink before his eyes.
Hauser wondered what happened next for him.
Some of those here planned on leaving; others, fearful of the fighting around the Chancellery, were for staying. Most of them appeared locked into a state of indecision. Perhaps they were to just wait until someone from the outside world knocked on the door of the bunker and told them the war was finally over.
To Hauser they looked pitiful. Goebbels, Bormann, the staff officers, even Hitler’s bodyguards. They looked like a group of children left unattended, unsupervised for too long - lost, confused, and those in uniform like little boys playing at being soldiers.
Hauser shook his head with disgust. Even Hitler, ultimately, had disappointed him.
In the last few days he had begun to see how weak and frail the man was. Only last night as they celebrated, had he returned, briefly, to the powerful and charismatic figure he once was. But even then, his jokes and his stories had solicited tired, long-suffering smiles from those around him. He had become like the drunken, awkward party guest that everyone wished would leave.
The flames had engulfed Hitler’s head, and now, amidst the popping and hissing, he imagined he could hear the man’s mewling cry, like Schenkelmann’s. Pathetic.
The Jew’s research notes and Hauser’s project data for the bomb were in a box in the bunker. That was a box of incredibly valuable information. And, he reflected, he too was going to be valuable.
His work could go on. His knowledge and his skills would be of extreme interest to the Russians, of that he was sure.
When they arrived, all of these people standing with him out in the courtyard and watching the flames would be unimportant, superfluous. He could well imagine the first Russians to arrive being trigger-happy, hungry to exact a little vengeance upon the first faces they stumbled across.
It would be important, he decided, to lie low, to remain unfound until their intelligence officers arrived at the scene later on, and then . . . then, he could make himself known, and humbly offer his services.
While every other face in the courtyard remained impassive, emotionless and still, there was a smile spreading across his.
Hauser could see in the time ahead, after this war was brought to a conclusion, that there were going to be great opportunities for a man like him. He turned away from the flames and headed back inside the bunker to collect his box of notes. Those papers were going to be his passport out of here when the Russians came.
Chapter 60
Decision
He studied their motel rooms from across the parking lot. There had been a light on in one of them until just now. He looked at his watch - it was approaching four in the morning. He would love to be tucked up in bed like them, but there was some thinking to do and perhaps a final job to be done.
It was decision time.
As he stood silently in the darkness, lit only faintly by the flickering neon light outside the diner, he allowed his mind to wander, to start gathering up all the loose ends into a manageable knot; loose ends that spanned over sixty years, all of his professional life, in fact.
His mind drifted back to the end of that last meeting with Truman. There had been an almost tangible sense of relief in the conference room as Hitler’s implied deadline came and went. Hours had passed and nothing had happened. Then Truman drafted a second, cautiously worded telegram to Hitler, calling for his surrender once more. It was over.
Then the work, his work, began.
The worst of it had all been a long time ago, the killings. Some of them were still fresh in his mind. He sometimes thought he saw their faces in a crowd, or on the evening news, or at least faces that reminded him of them; the faces of those innocent witnesses whose deaths he had calmly ordered.
The whole thing had been a nasty, unpleasant business, but a necessary job that had been passed his way to organise. In the weeks that had followed that meeting at the White House in the last days of the war, in fact for several months afterwards, he had been put in sole charge of the hastily assembled little department as it went about cleaning up many of the scattered breadcrumbs.
It had needed to be done quickly with the minimum of fuss, and certainly without the unnecessary involvement of any other departments. The President had decided that a small, ring-fenced mini-agency with a lean head-count of dependable, well-remunerated and experienced agents was the perfect tool for the job. The breadcrumbs had needed tidying up, therefore it was he, and his little task force, who’d had to ensure that all seventeen of the civilian witnesses simply vanished, with no one left to make a noise.
There were some vanishings that had stuck in his mind more than others; the truly unpleasant ones. They were the ones that, even today, could disturb his sleep and keep him up until the first pale shades of dawn. There were other ones, though, that he’d found comparatively easy to organise. For example, there had been that obnoxious Brooklyn janitor who had discovered the decomposing remains of a body on the roof of his tenement building late in the summer of ’45. He could still remember the janitor’s name - Bradley Donegan. The body he had accidentally stumbled upon was grostesquely distorted by both the fall impact and several months of decomposition and would have passed as just another John Doe in a city that served them up every day.
It would have passed for a John Doe, that is, except for the fact that Donegan had seen the German uniform and was asking a lot of awkward questions. The mess, of course, had been quickly cleared up by the Department. The body never made it to a morgue, and the un
iform was hastily incinerated in the building’s basement boiler room. His report to the local police went missing, and Bradley Donegan, a single, middle-aged man with a legacy of violent offences against his ex-wife and a taste for under-aged hookers, was found hanging in his apartment a few days later.
He smiled.
Never lost a single night’s sleep over that piece of shit.
The world was most definitely a better place without Bradley Donegan in it.
But then, to counter that, there were those ones that had troubled him deeply.
For example, the young elementary school teacher, Ms Elaine Scherbaum, who had spotted the erratic behaviour of ‘a large military-looking aircraft’ over the Prospect Park area. There had been children in her care at the time. That had complicated things further.
He had struggled with that one, long and hard, allowing himself much more time than was prudent to wrestle with the decision of what to do. Most of the children he was prepared to let go. None of them had seen the plane themselves, and had only heard their teacher comment on it briefly. It would have been an unnecessary risk to consider these children as liabilities. Children tell stories all the time. No one ever listens to them.
But it turned out that one of them, a twelve-year-old girl, had seen the plane along with Miss Scherbaum. Worse still, the girl had made a big deal about seeing something that looked like a body fall from the plane. Deciding what to do with them had been a very tough call, but there was no way he could afford to let them go around talking. The young teacher had family, sisters and parents in New York, and the longer she was left the more it looked like she would share her story with them. With some regret, there had been strings that needed pulling, quite a few in fact, to ensure both the little girl and the teacher were held longer than they should have been at the precinct station and then driven back home in the early hours by a squad car that met with an unfortunate end off the Brooklyn Bridge. The policeman driving the car had drowned along with them, and the next day the vehicle and all three bodies were recovered. The police discovered one of the car’s tyres had blown, and a curiously weak section of guard rail on the bridge, it appeared, had failed to prevent the car from going over.