“Von Greim being head of the Luftwaffe?” queried Kelly.
“Yes, as of that meeting with Hitler. Göring had been accused of treason and dismissed in absentia. Von Greim was promoted to Marshall of the Luftwaffe there and then.”
“And they flew out that same day?” confirmed Kelly.
“Yes, they did. They pleaded with Hitler to join them, but he refused. Their instructions were to fly to Plön and arrest Himmler.”
“Plön?”
“It’s a little town in Schleswig-Holstein. I think it was Donitz’s HQ for a short while,” explained Horst.
“Oh yes, I remember now,” said Kelly, “they moved to Flensburg shortly after. Did anyone fly out with Reitsch and von Greim?”
“I can’t say for sure. Bormann escorted them out of the bunker, but I have no way of knowing if there was already someone out there waiting. One thing I can say is that I definitely saw both Hitler and Eva Braun after Reitsch and von Greim had left.”
“Right, so that wasn’t their route out, but of course it doesn’t rule out the use of a plane a few days later … it does seem to be the logical way out.”
Kelly paused for a moment while he made notes on his pad. “Sorry, Horst, if this sounds like an interrogation. We need to get to the bottom of this.”
“It’s fine,” said Horst smiling, “I understand.”
“You mentioned that you didn’t actually see the bodies of Hitler and Braun—what you saw were two bodies wrapped in blankets, which may or may not have been them. Who actually went into the room, and who definitely saw the bodies?”
“Let me think for a minute about the sequence of events that afternoon,” said Horst, his brow furrowed.
“The first thing we heard was the shot. I immediately ran up the corridor, taking out my pistol as I did so. Bormann called to me to stop. I did so but kept my pistol at the ready. I heard Bormann tell everyone to stay where they were. He called for Linge and Günsche, and together they walked up to Hitler’s study, where they were joined by Rochus Misch …”
“Hold it there for a moment, Horst. Remind me who these people were.”
“Heinz Linge was Hitler’s valet. He had never really been a soldier, however Hitler had given him the rank of Obersturmbannführer in the SS. He thought he was quite something in his SS uniform, but the ‘real’ soldiers used to laugh at him behind his back.
“Otto Günsche was one of Hitler’s adjutants—he had several—and was a true soldier, having fought in France and on the Eastern Front. Rochus Misch was a friend of mine and a really good person. He held the rank of Oberscharführer, that’s roughly equivalent to sergeant. He had been badly wounded in Poland in the first year of the war, and because of his bravery in that campaign he had been awarded the Iron Cross and transferred to the Führer’s bodyguard.”
“Right! I’ve heard of Linge. He was captured by the Russians and transferred to Moscow, where, as far as we know, he still is. The others I need to look up in the records. Sorry, go on.”
“Bormann shouted to me to stay where I was and to stop anyone else coming up the passage. I was standing in the doorway between the west and the east corridor. The former doubled as the conference room and the latter as a staff lounge. I motioned to the staff starting to congregate to remain in the lounge. My position was very close to the door of Hitler’s study. The four men were standing outside the door, Bormann speaking in whispers to Linge who then opened it and stepped inside with Bormann at his side, Günsche and Misch following behind. From my position I could see into the office and I saw the four make their way to the door of Hitler’s sitting room. Bormann motioned the other two to remain where they were, and he and Linge went into the sitting room, coming out almost immediately. Bormann motioned Günsche to enter, then spoke to Misch who joined me in the corridor. As he did so he caught my eye, pursed his lips and shook his head—that pretty well told me everything I needed to know. After ten minutes or so, Günsche came out wiping his hands on his handkerchief. He ordered Misch to summon Goebbels and several others, then, stepping past me into the staff lounge, he announced that the Führer and Frau Hitler had taken their own lives.”
“You couldn’t see into the sitting room?” queried Kelly.
“No, and Misch only had a glimpse through the door. He told me later that afternoon that both bodies were on the couch, which was against the wall opposite the door. Hitler had slumped forward, his head resting face down on the table beside the couch. Eva Braun—Eva Hitler by this time—was angled away from him, her legs drawn up to her chest and her head thrown back, eyes wide open and her face terribly contorted.”
“Cyanide!” said Kelly grimly. “What happened then?”
“Misch returned with the people he had been ordered to bring. Goebbels walked to the end of the corridor and stood at the bottom of the staircase leading up to the garden exit. The others were ushered into the study and then into the sitting room, from where they emerged a few minutes later carrying the two bodies wrapped in blankets. They carried them up the stairs to the garden exit. That was the last I saw of the bodies. My understanding was that group plus Goebbels, Bormann, Linge and Günsche formed the funeral party and gave the salute as the two bodies were burned.”
“Can you remember the names of the others in that funeral party? It’s important, Horst.”
Horst screwed his eyes up and put his hand over his mouth as he tried to bring back the names. “One was definitely Erich Kempka, Hitler’s chauffeur, another non-combatant raised to Obersturmbannführer. Hitler tended to raise all his dogsbodies to colonel rank. I remember Obersturmbannführer Högl—he was my immediate superior, in charge of the guard—but I’m sorry, Dan, I think there were two others. I can’t remember them though.”
“That’s okay, you’ve done really well remembering that much. Peter Högl, by the way, was killed trying to cross the Weidendammer Bridge during the attempted breakout. I remember his name from the reports. Well, that pretty well covers everything …” Kelly paused and dropped his head into his hands. “I’ll tell you, Horst, I’m struggling to get my head around all this. Part of me feels that we are overthinking this, that Hitler and Braun died in the bunker and that Trevor Roper was absolutely right in the conclusions he drew—albeit from very unreliable source data—and part of me keeps saying … what if? What if?” He paused again, then sat upright in the chair, his face grim.
“If Hitler survived the bunker, we have a big problem. If Eva Braun survived and is now bringing up Hitler’s son … we have a huge problem!”
Skadi Investigates
Sybilla Thorstaadt emerged from the Davidwache Police Station and walked up Davidstrasse. She had been allocated two rooms, a desk and a telephone by the very obliging Hamburg police to aid her investigation. Sybilla had been instructed by McFarlane, her chief in London, to investigate allegations, fed to him by the KGB in Moscow, that a war criminal was living openly in Hamburg. She had tracked the man, Walter Busch, to a small semi-detached house on the outskirts of the city, where he lived with his wife and two children.
Busch’s life had been turned upside down when Sybilla, accompanied by two armed policemen, had turned up on his doorstep one morning. He was detained for questioning while Sybilla investigated the KGB allegations that he had been guilty of a number of atrocities when serving as part of an Einsatzgruppen commando unit in Belarus.
After painstaking investigation, it transpired that several Walter Busches had served in the Wehrmacht and the SS during the war—and the Soviets had picked the wrong man. This particular Walter Busch had only joined the Wehrmacht in 1944, being too young prior to that, and his only military claim to fame was that he had finished third out of a class of twelve on his storeman/clerk technical course at a Wehrmacht training centre. Thereafter, he spent the rest of the war counting boxes of ammunition. Walter had never been on the Eastern Front and, given a map of the world, it is questionable whether he could even have located Belarus.
Busch’s idea of h
ellraising was shouting abuse at opposing teams—and sometimes his own—when he went along to the Sportplatz am Rothenbaum, the SV Hamburg football ground. The only atrocity he had ever committed was on the answer paper of his end of school exams.
Busch had been returned to the tranquillity of his idyllic life in his semi in the suburbs of Hamburg with an abject apology and best wishes for the future. He had expressed himself annoyed and angry with his treatment by the Hamburg police, who had made it clear that they were annoyed and angry with the British Secret Service for wasting their time. The Secret Service, in turn, had informed the KGB that they were annoyed and angry with them for feeding them duff intel. Sybilla had no doubt that the KGB would have advised some poor agent that they were very annoyed and very angry at being so embarrassed by his or her incompetence. She wondered idly in what part of Siberia that agent was now working.
Sybilla had been on the point of packing up her papers and documents with a view to vacating her borrowed office when she received a call from McFarlane. Dan Kelly, he informed her, had uncovered evidence that suggested Hitler might—unlikely, but just might—have escaped from the Führerbunker. He was aware of a submarine having been seen delivering two people to a place in Argentina just a few months after the war ended. He thought the submarine may have sailed from Hamburg. Would she investigate?
As ‘No!’ was not an acceptable answer to any question McFarlane asked, she assured him that she would.
Cap in hand, she approached the police officer who had allocated her the rooms and asked if she could extend her tenure. He had agreed amiably, but warned that his limited human resources meant it would be unlikely he’d be able to offer much in the way of manpower assistance.
Sybilla had set to work immediately. British military services held much of the information she needed, and scrutiny of captured naval documents now carefully archived in state depositories in Hamburg, Kiel and Bremerhaven completed the eventful story of the transatlantic U-boats.
It seemed that two U-boats had crossed the Atlantic immediately after the end of the war, the U-977 and the U-530. It was the U-530 that was reported as having transferred two people in civilian dress into a small boat in the waters off the coast of Argentina. The submarine had then turned up at Mar del Plata where the captain had surrendered his boat, his crew and himself to the Argentine Navy on 10 July 1945.
Sybilla had obtained a transcript of the interrogation of the captain, Oberleutnant Otto Wermuth, who had refused to answer key questions: What were they doing off the coast of Argentina? Why did the crew carry no identification? What had happened to the boat’s log? The crew were interned for a while before they and the boat were transferred to the United States.
Sybilla had scrutinised the details of the crew and their current locations where these were known. Three were living in Hamburg; it was a good place to start. She was currently on her way to meet one of them and had earlier called at the boarding house where he lived. The landlady had informed her that Herr Voigt was ‘not to house’ but could be found most nights at the Gaststätte St Pauli located in Grosse Freiheit. Her friendly policeman, Lieutenant Wagner—known for his wicked sense of humour—had informed her it was a short, pleasant walk along the Reeperbahn.
As she turned into the Reeperbahn she was bitterly regretting not taking a taxi. She was walking along the most infamous road in Hamburg’s notorious red-light district. The Reeperbahn was the haunt of prostitutes, pimps and drug dealers. Each side of the street was lined with bars, nightclubs, strip clubs and brothels, the names of the establishments flashing out in red neon, while bouncers exhorted passers-by to come in and view the best live show on the street.
Sybilla kept her gaze focussed directly ahead, refusing to make eye contact with any other person. She resolved that, when she returned to the Davidwache, she would skewer Lieutenant Wagner with a rusty fish knife. She walked the whole length of the street before arriving at its junction with Grosse Freiheit. Her anxiety deepened when she realised it was just a ninety-degree extension of the Reeperbahn. However, halfway up, the strip clubs and topless bars started giving way to restaurants and Gasthöfe. Near the end of the road, she came upon the bar she was looking for. In place of the ubiquitous neon, a simple sign in gothic lettering on a painted background declared to the world that this was ‘Gaststätte St Pauli’. It looked like a very traditional German pub: no bouncer, no picture galleries displaying naked women, no loud, blaring music.
Sybilla stopped just inside the entrance to allow her eyes to accustom to the gloom. The red flock wallpaper, together with the low lighting, gave the room an eerie atmosphere. The diabolical masks hanging from the walls enhanced that further. Directly to her front was a three-piece combo on a stage, accompanying an attractive young girl with a surprisingly good voice singing a surprisingly bad song.
To Sybilla’s right was the bar, beautifully constructed in wrought iron, the front of the bar in red padded leather. Several rows of bottles and optics lined the rear wall, and hanging from hooks on a cross-beam at the front was a line of traditional beer mugs.
Arranged haphazardly around the stage were a number of black tables surrounded by red leather upholstered chairs. Sybilla was, according to Voigt’s landlady, looking for a loner. Most of the tables were occupied by small groups, but on one table a single man sat, seemingly engrossed by the stage show. Well, thought Sybilla, I have to start somewhere.
Indicating the seat next to the man, Sybilla asked, “Is this free?”
“No!” he answered without taking his eyes off the stage.
“Thanks,” said Sybilla as she sat down. “Are you Uwe Voigt?”
“Who wants to know?” he asked without looking at her.
“Sybilla Thorstaadt. I work for the British military.”
For the first time the man turned towards her, looking puzzled. “Why?” he asked.
The question threw Sybilla for a moment but, regaining her composure, she laughed lightly and said, “Do you know, I’ve often asked myself that question.”
The man showed more interest in her. Sybilla’s laugh had that effect on men.
“Yes, I’m Uwe Voigt. What do you want?”
As she answered, Sybilla took a twenty-mark note from her purse and laid it in front of the man. “I just want to ask a few questions about U-530, particularly her last voyage.”
Voigt hesitated for a moment then picked up the money and slid it into his top pocket. “Why not?” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “It’s an open secret now. But before you start, I just wondered, does asking and answering questions make you thirsty?”
Sybilla rose, smiling. Inclining her head towards the bar she asked, “What are you drinking?”
“Oh, thank you!” he said, trying to sound surprised. “A large beer and a small beer—Dortmunder Pils—from tap, none of that bottled rubbish.”
“Who’s the small beer for?” asked Sybilla.
“The singer,” he said, nodding towards the stage.
When Sybilla returned a few minutes later carrying two half-litre mugs and a 0.2-litre glass of Pils, the singer had joined them and was sat next to Voigt. Sybilla placed one of the mugs in front of Voigt and handed the glass to the girl. “You have a lovely voice,” she said.
“Thank you,” she said, then openly appraising Sybilla, added, “And you are very beautiful.”
Embarrassed, Sybilla could only mutter her thanks, then rallying, she raised her mug. “Grüß Gott!”
“Ugh!” proclaimed the singer. “A Bavarian.”
“No, she isn’t,” said Voigt, “she’s British.”
“Actually, I’m Norwegian. I only work for the British.”
“Ah!” said Voigt. “Are you related to one of the U-boat crew?”
Looking puzzled, Sybilla shook her head. “No, why do you ask?”
“It’s just that we unloaded some of the crew in Norway—I believe one or two had Norwegian relations. I thought maybe that was why you were interested.”
“I meant what I said about you being beautiful. I have to go back on stage now, but if you want to wait until I finish, we could go upstairs together. I do women as well as men. You could have a free one.”
Sybilla, trying to hide her acute embarrassment, smiled as best she could. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m strictly business today, but it was truly kind of you to offer.”
The girl shrugged and started to walk towards the stage. Over her shoulder she called, “Another time then.”
Sybilla was still trying to regain her composure, when Voigt asked, “Do you want me to tell you about our epic voyage?”
She didn’t look at him, but she knew he was smiling broadly, enjoying her embarrassment. “Yes please, Uwe,” she said, trying to sound calm and business-like.
“We left Kiel in February—”
“That would have been the nineteenth, yes?” Sybilla interrupted.
Voigt scowled at her. “Am I going to tell the story to you, or are you going to tell the story to me?”
“Sorry!” said Sybilla, shrinking her head into her shoulders and doing her best to look contrite. “I won’t interrupt again.”
“… and headed up to Kristiansand for refuelling, staying there for the rest of February. Early March we sailed up the Skagerrak to the Oslo Fjord and anchored in Horton, leaving the following day, and travelling submerged to our combat area north of Scotland. Our orders were to patrol the area and to sink any Allied merchant vessel we encountered. We remained submerged for most of the time as that area was extremely dangerous for U-boats. The Allies had massive air superiority. Early in May, the captain informed us that the Führer was dead and Germany had surrendered. He told us we were to return to Kiel and surrender our vessel.
Shadow Of Evil: Cold War Espionage Thriller (Dragan Kelly Book 2) Page 12