The Seventh Secret

by Irving Wallace

  "The entire set minus one," Foster reminded the German.

  "No question this is incomplete. The seventh bunker plan is missing. Speer may have returned six to me and misplaced the seventh, left it behind in Spandau. Conceivably with his friend Rudolf Hess, whom he sometimes consulted. That appears to be a possibility." He began rolling up and securing the blueprints on his desk. " I can have these six copied for your book. As for the seventh, I suggest you go to Spandau Prison and inquire—" He stopped and held up his desk calendar. "Wait for three days before you go there. Spandau continues to be supervised by the four victorious powers, which rotate control of the prison. The Russians are in charge now. But in three days they turn it over to the Americans. The Russians won't even see you. I can't speak for the French or British. I do know for certain that the Americans will be friendly and cooperative. You go and ask them whether they have that seventh print around. If they have it, and chances are it is somewhere in the prison, you can recover it and that will give you the complete set for your portfolio. Here, let me write you a note giving you permission to pick up the blueprint."

  Zeidler dashed off a note, and handed it to Foster.

  After thanking him, but before leaving him, Foster had one more question. "Do you remember anything about the missing seventh bunker?"

  "Not too much, but I do remember this much. I had done one other underground fortress, Bunker Riese, next to the spa town of Charlottenborn. It was the most costly, at least sixty million in your money at the time. It was the biggest bunker of them all. Hitler did not like it and never used it. He had it destroyed, along with the blueprint. But then, I think it was in 1943, he had second thoughts and decided to duplicate it for location elsewhere. It was to be called Bunker Grosse Riese. But I was never ordered to build it, so only the plan exists, the design, not the bunker."

  "It would still be valuable for my book."

  "Then go to Spandau in three days, and see what you can find.-

  Tovah Levine had been so eager to be on time for the arranged appointment with her superior, that she had arrived at Im Café Carre fifteen minutes early. She hadn't minded being early because the outdoor Café off Savignyplatz, somewhat removed from Berlin's business district, offered a peaceful retreat and a degree of privacy. The steel chair she had taken at the white table in the graveled courtyard was completely hidden from the street by a high green hedge. Tovah enjoyed the cloistered feeling and was somewhat startled when Chaim Golding suddenly sat down across from her.

  He offered a brief good morning and ordered himself an ice cream soda. Since it was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch, Tovah, despite the fact that she disliked ice cream, ordered the same.

  Golding occupied the next minutes with emptying out his jacket pockets and examining his notes.

  Seated opposite him, Tovah was struck more forcibly than at their first meeting by the fact that Chaim Golding looked more like a perfect German Aryan than like an Israeli who was director of the Mossad operation in West Berlin.

  As their ice cream sodas were being served, Tovah took in Golding, who had risen briefly to remove his seersucker jacket. The first time that she had met him, upon her arrival in Berlin, he had been busy behind his desk. Perfunctorily, he had clarified her assignment to become acquainted with a new arrival in Berlin, the historian Emily Ashcroft, and learn more about the clues she possessed that Hitler and his wife had survived the fall of the city.

  Now, having requested this second meeting, Tovah was able to get a better impression of Chaim Golding. He appeared to be about five feet eleven, with a sinewy, hard, athletic physique; his facial features were deceptively Nordic, with their clear gray eyes and straight nose. As he seated himself once more, she could see that he was relaxed, more at ease than he had been in the Mossad office during their initial meeting.

  "So," he said softly, skimming the heap of whipped cream off the top of his vanilla soda, "you have met Miss Ashcroft of Oxford at the Kempinski hotel."

  Tovah was taken aback. "Oh, you know."

  "My business is to know," he said without a smile. "Do you like her?"

  "Very much."

  "Does she like you?"

  "I believe so. We've even had dinner together."

  "Along with the Californian, the architect Foster."

  "So, as usual, you know everything."

  "Not enough." Golding met Tovah's eyes. "I want to know more. What is she after about Hitler?"

  "You saw the picture of her at the mound of the bunker in BZ?"

  "Of course," said Golding. "She wants to dig. But dig for what?"

  Economically and precisely, as she had been taught to do during her Mossad training, Tovah related all that she had heard from Emily Ashcroft, and about the two clues that might prove that Hitler and Braun survived. Tovah went on. "She learned that one of the dental plates that the Russians identified as Hitler's was not the real thing. She learned, also, that Hitler always wore beneath his tunic a carved ivory cameo bearing a likeness of Frederick the Great. That's what she hopes to dig for. To find the real dental plates and cameo in the debris of the East German Security Zone. If they are not there—it would be some indication that Hitler and Braun got away."

  "Who gave her these clues?"

  "I don't know, Chaim. It was one detail Emily would not reveal. I'm surprised she revealed as much as she did, spelling out the two clues." Tovah leaned closer to the director. "Chaim, I'm breaking my promise to her. She trusts me implicitly."

  "Well she may. Just as you can trust me." He sipped at the straws in his soda. "I will repeat none of this." He was silent momentarily. "So, Miss Ashcroft believes that Hitler and Braun used doubles, that the doubles were cremated, and that the Russians fell for it."

  "Exactly. I offered her research assistance. I was intrigued by the whole idea of Hitler's employing a double. I told her I wanted to look into it. Do you think there is even a possibility that it could be true?"

  With a neutral movement of his shoulders, Golding replied, "The suspicion of a double is one of the favorite fantasies of the conspiracy-minded."

  "You don't believe in it then?"

  "I could. Historically, the theory has plenty of support. The use of doubles by world leaders and lesser celebrities has not been uncommon. King Richard II of England was supposed to have had a double. President Franklin D. Roosevelt definitely had a double. So did Field Marshal Montgomery of Alamein—a former actor and a look-alike named Lieutenant Clifton James. There is some speculation that Napoleon had a double. As to the Third Reich, there is a belief that Rudolf Hess employed a double. I've never heard that Adolf Hitler had one."

  "Nevertheless, I'm looking into it."

  "What have you found?"

  "Nothing yet. I've skimmed all the biographies of Hitler in the State Library in the Cultural Center near the Tiergarten. I drew a blank. But I may find out something yet. This morning I talked to Emily Ashcroft. She suggested I see a very knowledgeable and cooperative reporter at the Berliner Morgenpost, a fellow she knows named Peter Nitz. I'm meeting with him in about an hour."

  "Good luck."

  Tovah studied the director's face for any sign of approval or disapproval. "Chaim, am I being silly?" she asked earnestly. "Am I wasting my time?"

  He paid the check and stood up. "Don't stop, Tovah. Keep going, and keep in close touch."

  The glass-and-steel Axel Springer Verlag high-rise building, at Kochstrasse 50, towered over this corner of West Berlin like a Brobdingnagian in the land of the Lilliputians. Here were housed the offices of the Berliner Morgenpost, as well as other newspapers, and here Tovah Levine entered at her appointed time for her session with Peter Nitz.

  Inside the doors, the walls of the vast lobby were covered by maple paneling. Security guards screened Tovah, and requested her Israeli passport. When the passport was returned to her, it came with a pink slip that allowed her to proceed to the elevators.

  In the narrow corridor outside the elevator, on the
sixth floor, Peter Nitz was waiting to welcome her. He led Tovah to his office in the Morgenpost—six unoccupied work desks, each supplemented by a second desk holding an electric typewriter, shelves of books, a small refrigerator, a television set—and invited her to be seated at the worn desk nearest the door, his own.

  Receiving her as a fellow journalist and a friend of Emily Ashcroft, Nitz was immediately cooperative. Listening to Tovah's request for information on a Hitler double, Nitz admitted that he'd never written of one nor even heard of one. Still, he said, it was worth pursuing further, to learn whether anyone else had written about the subject and might provide Tovah with a lead.

  "If you'll excuse me for a minute," said Nitz, rising, "I'll go down to our archival section and consult the files of clippings."

  After he had gone, Tovah waited beside his desk, then restlessly occupied herself by studying the shelves of reference books on the wall across the way. After a short period, she was aware that Nitz had returned carrying a manila file folder. She hurried back to her place as he sank down in his chair behind the desk, an unhappy expression on his face. He opened the folder. "Not much, I'm afraid. This is a very thin file."

  "What's in it?"

  "We shall see." He was studiously reviewing the clippings, slowly shaking his head. "Mostly false alarms. As late as 1950, American MPs zeroed in on a German male nurse in a Frankfurt-am-Main hospital, a man named Heinrich Noll, who very much resembled Hitler. They interrogated him, found out he wasn't Hitler, and re-leased him. In 1951, datelined Vienna, we have this story. Hitler was supposed to have died in 1944 in a bombing attempt on his life, and Martin Bormann re-placed Hitler with a double named Strasser. No first name given. No solid source for the story, so you can write that one off. The last flurry in 1969, when a retired German coal miner, Albert Pankla by name, was detained and released for the three-hundredth time because he looked just like Hitler. Apparently, there is not a thing—wait, here's a slip of paper with a notation I almost overlooked."

  Nitz read the notation, and wrinkled his brow. "What does it say?" asked Tovah hopefully.

  "I don't understand it. Someone noted here, 'On the matter of Hitler doubles, see the file on Manfred' "

  "Who's he?"

  "I haven't the faintest idea. But I intend to find out." He came to his feet. "There's a refrigerator over there with Cokes, Miss Levine. Have one. I'll be right back."

  Tovah had no patience for a soft drink. She waited again, a trifle crestfallen, but still curious about what Peter Nitz would return with.

  He returned with a single long clipping, scanning it as he reached his desk. "Of more recent vintage. A roundup of some of the older restaurants and nightclubs in West Berlin that have existed since the twenties. Manfred Müller was the most popular entertainer at one of these. Müller bore an uncanny resemblance to Hitler and used to regale audiences in the Führer s time with his stage imitations of Hitler. One day, he did not appear. He was never seen again. No idea what happened. Maybe he retired."

  "I wonder if Manfred Müller is still around?"

  "The article doesn't say. It does mention the restaurant nightclub where he used to appear. It used to be called the Lowendorff Club. It is now called Lowendorff's Kneipe. Why don't you look in there and find someone who can tell you about Müller. A longshot, yet worth chasing down. Let me give you the address."

  It was really a middle-class beer garden, Tovah saw.

  Once inside the outdoor enclosure, a surround and roof of vine-covered trellises that gave it some isolation from the street, she saw a scattering of tables at which young people huddled together over their soft drinks, beers, whiskies. Above the entrance to the indoor part of the club there stood a neon sign, not yet lit for evening, that read in large letters, LOWENDORFF'S, and beneath in smaller letters, FRCHSTUCK/KNEIPE.

  Tovah intercepted a waiter coming away from a table and introduced herself as a journalist who wanted to interview the proprietor.

  "You mean Herr Bree, Fred Bree," said the waiter, impressed. "He's inside. Come along. I'll get him for you."

  Tovah followed the waiter out of the sunlight into the darkened beer hall. Here the tables were more formally aligned, none occupied by customers at this mid-afternoon hour. Beyond that was a waxed floor—Tovah guessed it was for dancing as well as entertainment—and toward the rear there were members of a five-piece orchestra getting ready to rehearse. Talking to them was a wiry young man in shirtsleeves and Bavarian lederhosen held up with red suspenders.

  Inside the hall, at the farthest rim of tables, the waiter held out his arm to stop Tovah and said, "Wait." He scurried over to the wiry young man in the lederhosen who had been talking to the musicians, and whispered to him, pointing back toward the entrance. The wiry young man pivoted to locate Tovah, nodded a greeting, and came up the aisle toward her.

  "I'm Fred Bree," he said. "You wish to speak to me?"

  "My name is Tovah Levine. I'm from the Jerusalem Post, and I'm doing a series of articles on the kind of entertainment there used to be in Berlin before the war. We have many readers who emigrated from Berlin, and they are interested in these nostalgic pieces. I was told that a Herr Lowendorff once ran this club."

  "Walter Lowendorff—yes, he made this club very popular in the 1930s," said Bree.

  "I'm told he had an act here that was a special attraction. A one-man show starring the mimic, Manfred Müller. I was hoping to find out more about this Müller."

  "Manfred Müller," mouthed Bree. "Has a familiar ring, but I really don't know anything about him. I wasn't born then. That kind of knowledge would have only been known to Herr Lowendorff or to my father. This neighborhood was severely damaged by the Allied bombings in the last months of the Second World War. After the war, Lowendorff had no heart to rebuild the club. So he sold it to my father, who already owned several Kneipen. After my father died in 1975, I inherited the club and have managed it ever since."

  "So you would know nothing about Manfred Müller?"

  "I repeat, my father might have known, but he is no longer here. Of course, Walter Lowendorff might recall something of his old acts." The young proprietor brightened. "Why don't you ask Lowendorff himself?"

  Tovah, whose spirits had been low, felt a surge of hope. "You mean the original Lowendorff is still around?"

  "Indestructible," Bree said with a grin. "Really an ancient party, quite creaky in the joints, somewhat short on memory, but he still remembers to drop in on his old club for a daily beer." He took Tovah by the arm. "Let's go out to the garden and see if he's arrived yet...

  They emerged into the trellis-covered beer garden, and Bree ran his eyes over the various customers at the tables. "Not here yet." Bree consulted his wristwatch. "He usually comes by at three. So there's ten minutes or so to go. Why don't you take a table, Fräulein Levine, and wait for him? Let me treat you to a beer. I'll keep a lookout for him and bring him over to you."

  "Thank you, Herr Bree."

  The proprietor led Tovah to a vacant table, snapped his fingers for a waiter, ordered her a draft beer, and then wandered off to consort with his other patrons.

  Tovah, sipping her foaming beer, noted when fifteen minutes had passed, and began to have her doubts that anything would come of this, but then she saw Bree returning with an elderly, doddering man in tow.

  Helping the ancient into a chair at Tovah's table, Bree performed the introductions. "Fräulein Levine, this is the renowned Walter Lowendorff. I've already filled him in on your mission. You two get together, while I send over another beer."

  Tovah considered the wrinkled old man with some misgivings. His eyes were rheumy, and he looked off at the people at the other tables blankly, an idiot smile pressed into his prune face.

  He showed no awareness of Tovah until his beer was set before him. Then at last, after licking at the foam, he focused on Tovah.

  "I am writing about some of the more memorable acts and entertainers in Berlin in the 1930s," Tovah began. "I'm told you sponsored
some of the best."

  "Yes, it is true," said Lowendorff. "The best."

  He sucked on his beer, attentive to Tovah over his glass stein.

  "I'm particularly interested in one act you had that became famous," said Tovah, struggling uphill. "I understand you had a great success with Manfred Müller, a mimic who did sensational imitations of Hitler."

  "Ah, Müller, Müller," said Lowendorff, the foam clinging to his lips as he put down his beer. "The best, the very best."

  "I want to know more about him," said Tovah, "I understand he could have doubled for Adolf Hitler."

  Either the beer or the recollection of Müller appeared to revive clarity in the old man. "Looked exactly like Hitler," Lowendorff remembered. "Spitting image from the lock of brown hair on his forehead to the fanatical blue eyes to brush mustache. Absolutely Hitler. Also a funny mimic. He could do Hitler to perfection, but satiric, very satiric. Not cruel. Just humorous. The moment he tried out for me, I hired him."

  Lowendorfi's mind drifted off, and he returned to sucking his beer as he visited the past.

  Tovah tried to bring him into the present once more. "You hired Manfred Müller. He did his act here. He was a success."

  "Huge success. Every night standing room only. Spectators of every class came from everywhere. Manfred would do little blackouts of Hitler's movements. He would do Hitler in the Munich beer hall giving orders. He would do Hitler in his prison cell dictating Mein Kampf to Hess. Hitler ordering the burning of the Reichstag. Outrageous stuff, but to tickle the ribs. Business was never better."