Shadow of Evil
Dragan Kelly Book Two
Peter Alderson Sharp
Shadow of Evil
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By
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Peter Alderson Sharp
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Copyright © 2021 Peter Alderson Sharp
Bark at the Moon Books
All rights reserved
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Publishers note: This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and for effect. Any resemblance to actual persons, either living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of very brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
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Cover design by Francessca’s PR and Designs
Formatting by Tammy
Proofing by Johnny Bonbon
Contents
Part I
The Bunker – Berlin 1951
The Thule Maiden and the Gruppenführer
Skadi and the Wolf
Release from Plötzensee
The Wolf at the Door
The Thule and the Swastika
Horst Manteufel Reflects
Skadi Reports
Part II
A BRIXMIS Extraction
Manteufel’s Story – I Leave the Bunker
A Gift from God
Gretel
Home
The Granite Guardsman
Helmut’s Revelation
Part III
Hitler Alive?
Skadi Investigates
McFarlane Plans
Down the Line
Obersturmbannführer Skorzeny
Father Vilim Cecelja
Part IV
Into Mexico
A Luxury Cruise
Buenos Aires
El Avión del Presidente
Bariloche
Escape
The Long Trek
Nature Provides
Part V
Baptism in Blood
A Visit to the Castle
A Conversation with the Vril Maiden
Gardermann’s Farm
The End?
Also by Peter Alderson Sharp
Part I
Berlin 1951
The Bunker – Berlin 1951
Dan Kelly cursed as he stumbled on loose rubble and crashed into the concrete wall, dropping his torch in the process. Ruefully he rubbed his shoulder and thanked his Russian compatriot for his concern, assuring him he was fine. They spoke in German, their common language.
Major Mikhail Sverlov was a squat, heavily built man with Slavonic features and a hint of the steppe about the eyes. He was friendly, if somewhat taciturn, but seemed willing to assist.
Regaining his torch, Kelly gestured for the Russian to continue down the narrow dank Kannenberg passageway that led from the ruins of the Reichskanzlei to the bunker. As they reached the end, Sverlov heaved open the steel connecting door, which groaned and protested but swung easily once in motion. Kelly stepped through and stopped dead. His body tingled and his hands shook slightly. Momentarily he felt dizzy. He was standing in the Führer’s bunker!
Sverlov clanged the metal door closed, jarring against the eerie stillness and tomb-like silence of the bunker, then turned to Kelly.
“Are you alright, Comrade Colonel?” There was a note of concern in his voice and even in the gloomy darkness, illuminated only by the penetrating beam of the torches and the reflected light from the white walls, Kelly could see the quizzical look on the soldier’s face.
The major liked his British counterpart: bright, humorous, and clearly professional and on top of his job. Kelly was a big man, tall and broad and with a craggy face that sometimes looked sad, the green eyes reflecting memories that would be better forgotten.
Kelly was nodding. “I’m good Mikhail. It just seems so strange to be in this place.” They spoke in hushed voices, almost whispering. There was no need to, but the place seemed to demand that level of respect and awe.
“I had the same feeling the first time I explored it,” confirmed the Russian, then, struggling for the word he needed, added, “gruselig!”
Kelly smiled and nodded. Yes. Creepy, sinister.
Kelly was inwardly astonished to have reached this point. The Russians had been very protective about the bunker. Kelly’s cover of being on the trail of some of the last inhabitants and guards with a view to prosecuting them as war criminals, however, was at least part true and had made it difficult for the Soviets to refuse. They had themselves pursued the same agenda at the end of the war, but apart from a few who were captured and held, the majority had escaped to the west and given themselves up to the advancing British.
It made sense, therefore, for British Intelligence to continue the work started by their Soviet counterparts. Kelly remembered his joy on the day the official letter arrived bearing the Soviet CD insignia. Permission had been granted to visit the bunker.
“Be careful here, there are stairs—they may be slippery!” warned Sverlov. Gingerly they descended the concrete steps then passed through two small rooms before turning right and entering a long thin area.
“Dining room,” said Sverlov, looking at Kelly and indicating the empty room, his face barely visible. “You can get a bratwurst from the kitchen over there,” he said smiling and waving his torch in the direction of an open door on the left.
Kelly slapped him on the shoulder. “I think I’ll pass. I’ll treat you to a ‘bocky’ when we get out of this place,” said Kelly, referring to Sverlov’s favourite German sausage.
“Again, take care!” cautioned the Russian as they approached more stairs. “The stairs turn sharp left further down.” They descended, Kelly at pains to keep to the wall. He didn’t think he could trust what remained of the metal handrail. As he reached near ground level, he shone his torch at the inky blackness of the floor. There was no reflection. Water!
“How deep is this, Mikhail?”
“About ten centimetres, it’s okay,” answered Sverlov. Liar! thought Kelly as he descended a good six inches into the water and silently congratulated himself on his foresight to wear gumboots. Sverlov was heading off half left, the sloshing and splashing of his boots echoing around the dead emptiness. Kelly was aware of the dank, musty smell of saturated plaster and stale air.
“Medical centre,” explained Sverlov in response to Kelly shining his torch down a passage to the right. “Towards the end it was used by the Goebbels family as quarters. My comrades found the bodies of the six children in one of the rooms.”
“My God!” murmured Kelly, shaking his head in the darkness.
They reached a long corridor and started down it.
Indicating the first doorway on the left, Sverlov quipped, “Toilets if you need to go—alternatively you can piss on the floor, no one will object!”
He’s in a good mood today, thought Kelly.
There was something about Sverlov’s manner as he stepped through the next door. As Kelly followed, the Russian spoke quietly.
“The antechamber,” he breathed, then paused and, as if in correction, continued, “Hitler’s antechamber!”
The room was bare, as was everywhere in the bunker as far as Kelly could tell, plundered no doubt by the Soviet liberators. They appear to have liberated every stick of furniture.
The Russian indicated the do
or immediately ahead of them. “Go in there first; it’s the Führer’s living room. That’s where they killed themselves. On the right, you will see the door to the Führer’s bedroom.”
Kelly knew the ‘they’ referred to were Hitler and Eva Braun, Frau Hitler by that stage. “Are you not coming in?” asked Kelly as he started to the door.
The Russian half smiled and shook his head, his eyes refusing to meet Kelly’s gaze.
Surprised at what he assumed was superstition, Kelly entered the room. Immediately, an unmistakable feeling of dread assailed his senses. The atmosphere was heavy, the room darker and more forbidding than any of the others.
This is nonsense, he told himself. It’s darker because there is only one torch now. The rest is due to the sense of history I’m feeling.
In the open air in broad daylight the logic was undeniable, but in the dank, brooding darkness of that charnel room, he couldn’t quite convince himself. Moving to his right he entered what had been the bedroom. Nothing left to indicate that now, of course, so he moved back into the living room and paused for a few moments, trying hard to calm his jangling senses, before returning to the antechamber.
Sverlov was smiling broadly. “Nice place, eh?”
“Different,” said Kelly.
“The writing is in Eva Braun’s room, through there.”
Kelly moved through the door indicated. It was the same as all of the other rooms, small and bare but with one exception … in one corner, just above where the bed had been, someone had written some names in ink on the wall.
Kelly moved in closer, leaning over to get a better view. Sverlov helpfully brought his torch to bear on the names. Ignoring the cold and discomfort of the fetid water, Kelly knelt down, oblivious to the inundation of his boots. This was important. The saturated plaster was just beginning to cause the ink to spread, but it was still readable. In a few years, possibly less, it would be illegible—and a little while after that, the plaster would fall from the walls and disintegrate and this, probably the final act of Frau Hitler, would be lost forever.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a notebook and pencil, then carefully copied down each of the names, ensuring that his record accurately reflected what was written on the wall. He took care to ensure that even the spacing was correct. The writing consisted of a list of forenames in alphabetical order; to the right were two additional names, written at a slant as if added later:
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Alois
BerntManfred
Frida
Georgina
HelmutRichard
Klaus
Sybille
Wilhelm
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The first and last name had been crossed through.
Kelly checked and double-checked to see if he had everything exactly as per the original. There would never be a second chance. Then, standing up, he thanked Sverlov for his patience and indicated he was ready to leave.
After leaving the Soviet sector, Kelly drove west along Bismarck Strasse, wondering about the connection between the names on the wall and the Nazi-plundered treasure he was trying to find. That, of course, was his real mission, but his cover was only partially spurious. According to Manteufel, he would need to find the people listed if he was to find the plunder.
With only first names to go by, it was not going to be easy. Kelly needed to return to Plötzensee Prison to interview Stabsfeldwebel Horst Manteufel, former guard commander in the bunker. It was he who, in a previous interview, had linked the names to the treasure—perhaps he knew more than he was saying. First, however, a visit to the British HQ. He needed to arrange an urgent meeting with the British Commandant, General Geoffrey Bourne.
The Thule Maiden and the Gruppenführer
Maria Orsic poured herself another cup of coffee from the little table by the window. She raised the coffee pot inquiringly to her house guest who grunted and shook his head.
Maria was dressed in a long black ankle-length dress and wore a white crocheted shawl draped around her shoulders. She was slim, but not thin. Her blonde hair, which had once rested on her hips, was now shoulder length and worn plaited and wrapped around the back of the head, Tyrolean style. Her once flawless skin was only now beginning to show the first signs of ageing, with a few lines appearing at the corners of her beautiful, clear light blue eyes. Although Maria Orsic was nearly sixty, she could have passed for a woman half her age. On her falsified documents, which carried the name Helga Maria von Sindelsdorf, her age was shown as forty-five—to have had her real age inserted would have invited suspicion from anyone inspecting them. The years had been kind to Maria.
Maria placed her cup down on the side table and sank into the luxurious upholstery of the tan, leather armchair. The room wasn’t large but appeared spacious due to the sparsity of furnishings. The ceiling was oak beamed, and the walls covered with a light wallpaper bearing a pattern of intertwined leaves in pastel green. The windows were hung with rich brocade, designed to keep the cold out and the heat in. On the highly polished oak floor were spread two rugs, one in front of the fire and the other in the centre of the room. A simple oblong table bearing a candelabrum with four lit candles stood on the latter. Opposite Maria was her house guest in an identical armchair to her own, and between them the log fire spluttered and glowed, diffusing the room with a delicious pine aroma. The fire and candles were the only sources of illumination, providing a very gentle and relaxed atmosphere.
The whole ambience of the room was one of understated elegance. How much the more incongruent then was the farm labourer sat in the chair on the other side of the fireplace? He was in his stocking feet, wearing heavy wool trousers, a thick linen shirt and an old waistcoat which had probably seen better days before the war. Around his neck was a dirty yellow bandana. He was a man of below-average height, but of good physique. His facial features were not unpleasing, the hair beginning to recede from the temples and the nose a little crooked. He wore a beard, neatly trimmed. Maria made a mental note to warn him about that. It was the eyes, however, that defined the face: sharp, intelligent, penetrating eyes of steely blue-grey that bored deep into your inner being when he looked at you.
His documents attested to him being Klaus Gruber, age fifty-one, born in Zell am Ziller, Tyrol, Austria. Current address: Gardermann’s Farm, Lenggriesser Strasse, Bad Tölz, Bavaria.
Maria knew him better as Heinrich Müller, previously SS-Gruppenführer and Generalleutnant der Polizei, currently one of the most wanted men in Germany. She liked Müller; he was different from most of the other Nazi hierarchy. For one thing he was intelligent, a rare quality among Hitler’s henchmen … and the other thing that made him stand out was that he was not a Nazi! Oh, he was a member of the party, of course—that was a necessity. But the fact that his membership number was higher than four million suggested that he had joined very late, and then only when it had become unavoidable. One previous police superior had noted that Müller’s commitment was not to any individual party, but to the state of Germany. He had gone on to say that Müller would have been equally rigorously driven, conscientious and professional, whoever had been in government. Certainly, this was borne out in his early days as a policeman in Munich, when he had fought the Communists and the Nazis with equal enthusiasm and determination.
This previous anti-Nazi stance had made him many enemies in the hierarchy, and it was unlikely that he would have progressed very far in the state security service if it had not been for Reinhard Heydrich becoming his mentor.
Heydrich, second only to Himmler in the SS and the main architect of the ‘Final Solution’, had seen in Müller something of himself. He was intelligent, had excellent knowledge of, and experience in dealing with, subversive elements, was decisive and was not afraid to make ‘difficult’ decisions. In particular, he was fiercely loyal to his superior commanders. An excellent man to have watching your back!
Müller had progressed rapidly through the SS and had become head of the Gestapo, very
soon becoming Heydrich’s second in command. After Heydrich’s assassination, he had effectively become the de-facto head of the SS, although Ernst Kaltenbrunner came in as the official head of the Reich Security Service.
Maria pondered all of this as she looked at the scruffy man sitting opposite her and contemplated the details of his current mission—a mission that had been entrusted to Müller by the Führer himself, a mission which had been dormant until now. Müller was brave and resourceful. Twice during the First World War he had won the Iron Cross as a pilot flying dangerous missions. He would need all of that resourcefulness and bravery if he were to succeed. Maria knew he would accomplish what he set out to do, or he would die trying.
“I had better get back, Frau von Sindelsdorf,” said Müller rising. They always used their respective pseudonyms, even when alone. Maria had explained that it would reduce the risk of a potentially fatal error when in public.
“No, Herr Gruber,” said Maria shaking her head. “It’s snowing again, and apart from that, if you go wandering about at this time of night, you are likely to be stopped by the civil police. They will have no hesitation in handing you over to the Americans if they are the least bit suspicious, and then who knows what will happen? I have made up a spare room upstairs, second door on the left.”
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