Swastika

by Michael Slade

  The floorboards of the condo were interconnected.

  Dane was lying on the floor when he felt the slight heave come in from the living room next door.

  Someone was invading his home.

  He didn’t know who.

  But a homicide cop in the Mounted makes a lot of deadly enemies in the course of his crime-busting career. Dane wasn’t about to come out of the closet and introduce himself.

  He didn’t have his gun.

  At night, he kept that close at hand in his bedroom, in case he ran into trouble like this.

  So all he had was the element of surprise.

  One hand on the floorboards to track approaching vibrations from soft-shoe footfalls, the other clenched around the knob of the closet door, the defender held his breath and waited.

  Squeak!

  Dane knew that floorboard.

  This was his home.

  He knew every squeak and draft and nook and cranny.

  Now! he thought.

  And whipped open the door.

  The force of the flying door caught the spook completely off guard. The whack from the wood wrenched the H&K from his grasp, triggering a muffled shot as it flew. The door swung wider to slam him full in the face, driving the lenses of the night-vision goggles back into his eyes and smashing the bones in his nose. As the .45 clattered to the floor and Mr. Clean stumbled back in shock, the Mountie grabbed him by the throat of his Kevlar jogging suit and yanked him forward, driving his fist as hard as he could into the shattered pulp of the intruder’s nose and the eyeball-bursting goggles. The slug that had torn through the plank of the door left him with little doubt that this was combat to the death, and while Dane didn’t have a nutcracker like the one in the pouch on the spook’s sneaky uniform, he did have the version that had served Stone Age warriors since war first began.

  It was called a kneecap.

  The direct hit to the crotch had such outrage behind it that the home invader was lifted right off his feet and propelled out of the bedroom hall to crash down supine at the rear of the living room.

  With his blinders on, Mr. Clean couldn’t see.

  But so incensed was he that some peon had dared to thwart the master plan that he struggled to overcome bunching muscles in his spastic groin and the excruciating pain that tore a battlecry from his throat to go for another weapon.

  His hand was closing on the butt of the Warthog at his hip when he heard a sound that was like checkmate to a chessplayer.

  “Phhhhht!”

  By reaching for the next generation of black world weapons, Mr. Clean had mistakenly overlooked the firepower still in play.

  The H&K .45 scooped up in Dane’s fist.

  There’s only one rule of engagement in the Mounted Police: don’t draw your sidearm except to shoot to kill.

  The kill shot wasn’t to the heart, which was protected with Kevlar armor. The kill shot wasn’t to the brow of the head, which was crowned with metal goggles. The kill shot was to the smashed-in nose, where Dane’s skinned knuckles had struck flesh, blood, and bone.

  “Phhhhht!”

  “Phhhhht!”

  “Phhhhht!”

  Arlington, Virginia

  With the beak of his mouth gaping open and the talons of his fingers clawing the edge of his desk, Big Bad Bill hunched over his satellite speakers.

  Ajax had yet to report in from the Skunk Mine. The dead air from that satellite link grew more ominous with each second that ticked by on Bill’s watch.

  Even more disconcerting was the showdown now going on in the home of the meddling Mountie, every blow of which was being bounced here from the open mike of Mr. Clean’s headset.

  “Phhhhht!”

  “Phhhhht!”

  “Phhhhht!”

  Thank God, thought Bill.

  He recognized the whispering of the silencer-equipped .45 carried by all Pentagon hit men.

  “Is he terminated?” Bill asked through the plug in Mr. Clean’s ear.

  No answer.

  Then he heard a voice that was familiar to him from conversations picked up earlier by that parabolic mike, a voice that seemed to be about as far away as someone standing over a body on the floor.

  “Who the hell are you?” Winter asked rhetorically.

  Selbstmord

  Berlin

  April 30, 1945

  Only Joseph Göbbels and Martin Bormann had witnessed the wedding the night before last. Snatched from duty to marry Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, a minor bureaucrat serving with the Volkssturm performed the nuptials. The fiftyish, bewildered man in the brown Nazi Party uniform and swastika armband had asked the two—as required by law—if they were third-generation Aryans. After accepting that their bloodlines were pure, he was able to pronounce them husband and wife.

  The bride wore black for their wedding: a short-skirted silk taffeta afternoon dress with gold clasps at the shoulders. It was Hitler’s favorite. At long last, Eva had what she’d always desired. The tears that filled her blue eyes were full of joy.

  The reception was held in Hitler’s study, a room large enough to accommodate a dozen bunker veterans. As the champagne flowed and congratulations were received, Frau Hitler held court with a slight tremor in her lisping voice and tossed back her glass regularly. Not yet drunk, Eva was well on her way.

  As a perk for performing the wedding, the Volkssturm official was given a liverwurst sandwich and a glass of champagne, then he was hustled out of the bunker and returned to the streets, where the Battle for Berlin raged on. The man was shot dead on the Wilhelmstrasse, on his way back to his foxhole post.

  The night of his honeymoon, the führer dictated his last will and political testament to a secretary. “It is not true that I or anyone else in Germany wanted war back in 1939. It was desired and provoked solely by those international politicians who either come from Jewish stock or are the agents of Jewish interests,” he averred. Of those who would succeed him, he demanded continuation of the war, as well as undying hatred of all Jews.

  Hitler left his personal possessions to the Nazi Party, or if that no longer existed, to Germany. “If the state, too, is destroyed, there is no need for any further instructions on my part.”

  Dr. Göbbels witnessed the will.

  * * *

  Yesterday, Hitler had awakened to news of what had happened to Il Duce down in Italy. Benito Mussolini—the führer’s Axis partner—and his mistress, Clara Petacci, had been killed in Milan by their own countrymen, who then strung their mutilated corpses by their heels from a filling-station marquee so that passers-by could jeer and spit on them all day.

  Selbstmord would be better.

  * * *

  Today had begun with the killing of Hitler’s dog. Blondi meant more to the führer than even his closest associates. In March, she had whelped a litter of four puppies in the bunker. Though Hitler was afraid of “fresh-air poisoning,” he had from time to time ventured out for a few minutes to walk the Alsatian in the chancellery garden. Now it was time to say goodbye.

  Besides, this poison had come from Himmler the Traitor, and so had to be tested.

  The vet had to get drunk to do the job. He and Hitler’s doctor took Blondi into the toilet. As the first streaks of pre-dawn light fell on Berlin, the dog handler forced the Alsatian’s mouth open and the doctor reached in to crush the vial of cyanide with pliers. The poison acted quickly, and Blondi died.

  Soon after, Hitler entered the toilet to make sure she was dead. By then, he was so drugged himself that he didn’t say a word or exhibit any emotion. Satisfied, he disappeared into his study.

  With his pistol, the drunken vet shot Blondi’s puppies. Then, prematurely, the man staggered out to the canteen hollering, “The führer is dead, and it’s now every man for himself!”

  In fact, Hitler had gone to bed.

  * * *

  An hour later, at five-thirty Monday morning, April 30, Hitler rose once more. The British-American air bombardment had stopped the week before.
The final raid had hammered Berlin on April 21, one day after Hitler’s fifty-sixth birthday. That was followed by the 327th all-clear siren of the war. It hadn’t taken long to figure out why: the invading Red Army had reached the outskirts of the city. Since then, the Russian artillery had gone to work on the ruins, physically advancing to the edge of Tiergarten park, where the massive outlines of the Reichstag and the New Reich Chancellery loomed. The cannon barrage had reached a crescendo over the past few days, but for some inexplicable reason, it had fallen off during the night. Because the booms of the bursting shells were the only battle sounds to penetrate the bunker, the führer awoke to deathly quiet in his underground tomb.

  Der Tag.

  The day.

  “One must not—like a coward—seek to avoid one’s own destiny,” Hitler had once told a trusted general. “I shall not join in the battle personally. There would be the dangerous prospect that I might only be wounded, and thus fall into Russian hands while still alive. I do not want to give my enemies any chance to mutilate my corpse. If the end is near, warn me, General.”

  Today, the general had come to warn him at six a.m.

  Hitler was wearing a black satin robe over his white pajamas. On his feet, he wore a pair of patent-leather boot-slippers. The general found him sitting on the edge of his bed. Hitler rose to greet him and moved to the only chair. He motioned to the general to take a seat on the cot.

  “How bad is it?” Hitler asked.

  “The Reds are in the Wilhelmstrasse, four blocks away. They have penetrated into the subway tubes under both the Friedrichstrasse and the Voss Strasse. Most of the Tiergarten is in enemy hands. Russian troops have encircled our positions on the Potsdamer Platz. They are only three hundred yards from the chancellery. We expect them to storm the Reichstag at any moment.”

  “Why have the guns stopped?”

  The general shrugged. “Tomorrow is May Day, an important day to the Reds. Perhaps Marshal Zhukov plans to hold back for twenty-four hours so that he can present the big prize of Berlin to Joseph Stalin like a shashlik on a spit.”

  “Too bad,” said Hitler, sighing. “I had hoped to make it until May fifth. Napoleon died on St. Helena on that day back in 1821. Another great career that ended in disappointment, disillusion, betrayal, and treason. Fickle Europeans didn’t understand the French emperor and his great plans, as they have not understood me and mine. We were both men born before our times. Well, so much the worse for Europe. History will be my only judge.”

  The bunker staff had shrunk to a skeleton crew. Only the most faithful were sticking around, ready to perish like miserable rats at the hands of the Ivans in this musty cement vault. After the general departed for the Reichstag redoubt, Hitler had wandered listlessly about the lower bunker. His eyes cast to the floor, his hands clasped behind his back, the führer had paced from his cramped quarters to the central corridor, then along the quiet passage, past two staffers asleep in bedrolls on the floor, to the emergency staircase to the garden … before shuffling his drug-ravaged body back to where he had started.

  Damn Streicher! he thought.

  Never in the history of mankind had a military machine created as astounding an arsenal of wonder weapons as the Nazi scientists of the Third Reich.

  The V-1 cruise missile, the “buzz bomb” that plagued Britain …

  The V-2 ballistic rocket of Wernher von Braun …

  The Me-262, the Messerschmitt jet fighter …

  Nuclear energy for bombs and rocket propulsion …

  Anti-aircraft rays and laser-guided systems …

  The Flugkreisel …

  And die Glocke.

  What a colossal mistake he had made when he’d put that entire Pandora’s box of weapons under the exclusive control of Himmler’s SS, and consequently into the hands of a single keeper—Ernst Streicher. And then he had compounded that blunder on April 3, when the general and his sons had come to the bunker, by leaving it to Streicher to deliver the Reich—or at least its führer—from the forces closing in on all sides.

  Damn Streicher!

  He had dropped off the face of the earth.

  Where were the miracle weapons that would save the Fatherland from annihilation?

  Where?

  * * *

  At eight-thirty that morning, while Hitler was still at breakfast, the short-lived respite from artillery pounding had ended. The guns of the 69th Elite Storm Troops, from the Russian Third Assault Army, had opened up on the Reichstag, and ninety minutes later the Red Army’s final do-or-die attack had begun.

  At noon, suffering from a chronic hangover, Martin Bormann returned from his latest sexual foray into the casualty station in the cellar of the chancellery to caution Hitler that Götterdämmerung had indeed come to the Führerbunker.

  Hitler’s last meal, “for old times’ sake,” was shared with both of his secretaries and his vegetarian cook at the small table in the map room where he’d been married. Spaghetti and tossed salad. Berlin rape accounts were rife within the bunker, but to avoid distressing the women, the topic was sidestepped. Instead, they conversed about the proper mating of dogs and the fact that French lipstick was made from grease collected in the sewers of Paris.

  * * *

  The final farewells were said in the conference passage at just after three in the afternoon. It took less than three minutes.

  Eva Hitler had already given away her most valuable possessions. As she presented a silver fox wrap to one of the secretaries, the führer’s new wife said, “Traudl, sweetheart, here is a present for next winter—and your life after the war.”

  The Angel of Death was the only bunker inmate who seemed to be happy. She radiated quiet serenity, and appeared unaffected by the demoralization depressing Hitler’s staff. Her exultation was born of the fact that through a morbid pact of death, she would finally get her way with the only man she had truly loved. It was Romeo and Juliet, with death as the Erlöser, the great deliverer.

  The führer, too, was calm. Before departing, his doctor had given him a shot of morphine and a supply of pills. The man who stood shaking outside the door to his private suite was in the same condition as his crumbling bunker and the Reich itself. More shadow than substance, der Chef seemed hollow and burned out. His face was puffed, part yellow and part gray. How listless and subdued his gestures had become. His voice was as flat as a monotone.

  The artillery shells quaking the ground had knocked mortar off the thick cement walls. A few of the cramped rooms were painted battleship gray, but now they were as blotched as the führer’s face. A single diesel engine in the powerhouse ran the utilities that supplied the bunker with electricity, water, and air. To keep things functioning throughout the last stand, an electrician had strung light cables along the floor of the corridor. With all those comings and goings, the wires had become as tangled as the spaghetti at lunch, and now—as Hitler spoke his final public words—the flickering lights dimmed on the dying moments of his Third Reich.

  With Göbbels and Bormann flanking him, der Chef nodded a cue at his valet.

  Heinz Linge opened the door to Hitler’s private quarters.

  With a chivalrous gesture, the führer directed his doomed frau to precede him into the anteroom.

  “Linge, old friend,” Hitler stated, “I want you to join the breakout group.”

  “Why, my führer?”

  Hitler’s final words were “To serve the man who will come after me.”

  * * *

  As Frau Hitler led the way into the führer’s study, der Chef shut the heavy, vault-like steel door to the corridor and then the door between the small anteroom and the living room, where they would die. Both doors were fireproof, gas-proof, and consequently, soundproof. A narrow blue-and-white sofa ran along the far wall. A small round table and two chairs stood in front of the couch. On the table sat a Dresden vase filled with greenhouse tulips and white narcissi. After rounding the table and chairs, the couple sat down on the sofa.

  The foo
lproof method for Selbstmord—according to both Hitler’s doctor and his senior generals—was the pistol-and-poison combination. Selbstmord was a characteristically German phenomenon. The root word Mord meant “murder,” rather than Tod, “death.” Unlike seppuku, the Japanese concept of a joyous noble death, “self-murder” was a German’s escape from a fate worse than death.

  For the past week, Hitler had been carrying two pistols. Concealed in a leather holster sewn inside his trousers by the right front pocket was a Walther 6.35 that he had packed for years. Pulling that pistol from his pants, he set it down on the table beside the vase as a backup should the larger gun jam. The more potent pistol was the Walther 7.65 that he’d removed from the safe on the day of his nervous breakdown. Since then, he had lugged it around in his tunic pocket.

  From another pocket, Hitler withdrew two poison vials, each filled with the same cyanide the doctor had used to kill his dog. As a reserve, he placed one on the table between his backup pistol and the vase. The other went into his mouth as he fetched the Walther from his tunic and raised its muzzle to his temple.

  “Squeeze the trigger as you bite down on the capsule,” his doctor had advised.

  Eva Hitler sat in the other corner of the velvet couch, only two feet away from her husband. Dressed in a blue chiffon spring dress, with a raspberry-colored scarf for style, she kicked off her pumps and tucked her feet snugly under her body. She, too, had a pair of cyanide capsules. One she set down on the table, along with the scarf and her own small pistol, also a Walther 6.35. Then she popped the other capsule into her mouth. Unlike her husband, she didn’t grip a pistol in her hand.

  “Bite quickly into your capsule the second you hear the shot,” she had been told by his doctor.

  Eva’s eyes widened as she watched Hitler intently. She feared that the sight of her dead husband might shatter her resolve. They had to die together, and it fell to Eva to ensure that their deaths were simultaneous. As Hitler put the black muzzle directly to his graying temple and angled the barrel at eyebrow level, she wondered what final thought was passing through his mind.