by Vic Robbie
The American’s smile expanded. ‘It flew straight into the mountain at full speed?’
‘Yes, what we call a controlled flight into terrain.’
’So it was just an accident? Nothing out of the ordinary.’ Disappointed, The Times reporter was already thinking about lunch.
He nodded.
‘But why wasn’t it found?’ the reporter asked, his face growing redder as the temperature rose.
‘After exhaustive searches by air and on foot, they found nothing.’
’So it just disappeared?’
‘Yes, and no. It had been there all the time.’
‘Please explain, doctor,’ Vega interjected.
‘We believe that when it flew into the glacier, the impact triggered an avalanche covering it in snow within seconds. Later snowfalls would have buried it further so that over time it became embedded several hundred feet down. You may think a glacier is static, but it moves down the mountain by a couple of feet every year.’
There was a pause before local journalists interrogated the panel. Vega answered them in Spanish before turning his attention back to the visitors.
‘Did the plane make any Mayday calls?’ the agency journalist asked.
‘None.’
‘That suggests a sudden happening,’ The New York Times reporter said.
‘Exactly.’
‘Why do you rule out the possibility of a bomb?’ The Times man asked.
‘Colonel Moreno, who led the search team, could answer that.’ He turned to the man on his right.
Moreno concentrated his attention on some distant point. ‘I led a team of a hundred soldiers on a ten-day expedition to the glacier. At first, we travelled by truck, but after a couple of days, we had to rely on mules. It was tough going for the soldiers and the animals. We took five days to reach the location, and it was cold. We soon discovered some wreckage. The main wheels, twisted fragments of the fuselage, but only one of its four propellers – the one found by the Meulenbel brothers. That showed it had been travelling at full speed when the impact occurred. And there were human remains. It was all contained within an area of around a square kilometre. If it were a bomb, it would have broken up in mid-air, and the wreckage would have been spread more widely.’
‘What about the three other propellers?’ The Reuters journalist asked.
Moreno struggled to conceal his irritation. ‘They’re still in the glacier which in time will give them up.’
‘What about the occupants?’
‘We discovered the remains of the four crew members and other body parts.’
’Such as?’
‘A hip bone and a shoe with a severed foot in it and other fragments of human tissue.’
‘Were any passengers identified?’
‘No.’
‘What about DNA?’ asked The Times journalist as he studied the end of his cigar.
‘Let me explain.’ Dr Carizzo leant into the microphone. ‘We have no passenger names and DNA deteriorates after fifty-one years in the open. That means there were only minuscule fragments of DNA left making it difficult to produce profiles.’
‘Why weren’t others found?’
‘We cannot know for sure,’ the doctor replied. ‘We can only surmise they were unbelted or were moving about the cabin on impact.’
‘And?’ The Reuters woman encouraged him to elaborate.
‘When it hit and broke up, they’d have been scattered far and wide, but their deaths would have been instantaneous.’
‘And their remains wouldn’t have weathered well?’
‘Quite.’
The journalist from Der Spiegel suddenly took an interest. ‘Isn’t it strange that although they had special clearance, no one knew their identities? Were they Germans by any chance?’
‘Why do you ask that?’ Vega looked worried, and the colonel appeared to switch off as he continued to stare at the ceiling.
The Der Spiegel reporter’s striking face took on a harder look emphasising her disdain. ‘Do I need to spell it out? A group of Germans charter a plane from here to Chile just after the war. Important people. And it disappears and isn’t found until much later…’
‘Well?’ He waited for what he knew was coming and didn’t want to help her.
‘Were they high-ranking Nazis?’
‘That’s mere speculation.’
‘Were they Germans?’ she asked again.
He glanced down at the table and absent-mindedly wiped it with the flat of his hand as if cleaning some dirt.
With immaculate timing, the Reuters journalist got to her feet. ‘So let’s say they were German passengers, possibly Nazis, fleeing Argentina. Maybe it was a bomb.’
‘This is all nonsense.’ He was flustered. ‘Intrigue and conspiracy.’
‘Perhaps not. It was before you were born, but you must know that your dictator at that time, Juan Perón, made Argentina a haven for Nazi criminals fleeing punishment in Europe. Several years before Germany lost the war some of Hitler’s SS salted away in Swiss banks massive amounts of gold and valuables they had stolen from their Jewish victims. When they lost the war, they set up so-called ratlines to spirit them and their fortunes to safety in South America, and Argentina, in particular, made them welcome.’
Vega attempted to regain control, but she waved him away.
‘Perón sent trusted aides, including a priest, to Rome to arrange forged documents and passports for thousands of Nazi criminals who in many cases were funded by the Argentine government. And when they got here they were allowed to live under their aliases or sometimes under their real identities, untroubled by any possibility of retribution.’
He stood up. ‘We should halt this now. We’ve gone far enough.’
But she glared at him, and he flumped down again.
‘You gave Dr Josef Mengele haven in your country,’ she accused. ’The Angel of Death carried out hideous experiments on thousands of children, mainly twins. He injected dye into their eyes in an attempt to turn them blue, or sewed them together to see how their organs would react, or filled them with gasoline and recorded how they died.’
In full flow now, she barely paused for breath while Vega sat back.
‘Adolf Eichmann, an SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer who was the architect of the Nazis’ Endlösung or The Final Solution, exterminated millions of Jews. He travelled here in 1950 under the name of Ricardo Klement on an Argentinian visa. Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, had been in Buenos Aires in 1951. I could go on. These are just some of the thousands of Nazi scum shielded by Perón and his cronies. When tracked down, Argentina wouldn’t agree to extradite them, claiming they had committed only political crimes. So those seeking justice had to resort to cloak and dagger tactics. In 1960, Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, kidnapped Eichmann. They drugged and dressed him as a flight attendant to smuggle him out of the country so he could stand trial for his crimes.’
He looked at the door as if planning his retreat. ‘This isn’t relevant to today’s business.’
‘Really?’ She broke into a triumphant, but twisted, smile. ‘I put it to you that some passengers on this plane were Nazi criminals fleeing for their lives. And, if they escaped, we should be told who they were and what happened to them.’
1
Berlin, April 30th, 1945
Beyond the door he would find death. As Head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller had seen it often and become inured to its many forms, but he braced himself. Death could prove too problematic for even the most cynical. This would be the passing not of one man, but of an age. And perhaps some would believe it to be the end of civilisation.
At about 3.30 in the afternoon, a Russian mortar fell in the grounds of the Reich Chancellery with a dull thump. He stood up. ‘Quiet,’ he ordered. ‘What was that? Sounded like a shot. Here. Inside.’
Most of those around him, the majority in uniform and others in grey suits, had been drinking for twenty-four hours. And they stared glassy-eyed, fear registering
on their faces. That made his task easier.
Although they pressed him, he hesitated. Whatever he might be, he was a policeman and determined to do his duty by the book. They urged him to open the door but were not confident enough to usurp his authority. The sucking of the air-conditioning pumps in the confined space sounded like a heartbeat, or it could have been the blood coursing through his brain. He must be decisive. The longer the delay, the more chance of his being entombed alive in this concrete coffin thirty feet below ground. Despite nine-foot-thick walls, it shuddered under the bombardment that sent a mist of dust spreading down from the ceilings in the flickering light.
Before directing his attention to the door, he glanced at the others. The first knock was hesitant. Then with more force, almost expecting to hear an angry ‘Herein’. He had rehearsed this scene many times in his mind, and he ran through a checklist of what he did in the most mundane of investigations. Composing himself, he pushed open the door.
As if asleep, a woman lay on a couch, her knees drawn up. She wore a black chiffon dress with white roses at its neck. A pinker than usual complexion and a faint bitter almond smell confirmed the cause of death. As agreed, she had bitten down on a capsule of cyanide and would have died within a minute from internal asphyxia. The man next to her had fallen forward with his head resting on a coffee table. A broken capsule of poison lay at his feet. Blood pooled on the table and dripped onto the carpet, but it was the hole in the face that attracted his attention and the Walther PPK still dangling from the man’s fingers. Not trusting the efficacy of the poison, the man had shot himself. The fact that it was the same hydrogen cyanide they used in their extermination camps to dispatch the unwanted struck him as ironical. An unwelcome emotion soon replaced that thought. Realising he had work to do, he took control. First, ascertain signs of life, identify the victim, and assess the cause of death. He stepped into the room.
The others crowded the doorway and craned for a view but did not venture over the threshold. And they were silent as if a sound might lessen the enormity of what had occurred.
Tasks completed, he turned back, and they parted to allow him to leave. Grim-faced, he collected his thoughts and ran an eye over those clustered around him, despising their expressions of shock, disbelief and fear. Together, they demanded confirmation of what they already knew.
‘Der Führer ist tot,’ he almost whispered, and the words caught in the back of his throat. Hitler’s valet Heinz Linge said nothing, but his adjutant SS Sturmbannfuhrer Otto Günsche swung around and in a loud voice confirmed the death of their leader to the others.
Two of the crowd broke down in tears, another fell to his knees and clutched his head as the realisation sank in. Stunned, the others stared into space. Twelve hours before, Hitler had gathered them together to say farewell. Now each, having received receptacles of the same poison, had to decide whether to follow his example.
Müller’s final instruction was that if the poison had not worked, he must finish his leader with a bullet to the brain. Who better than the Generalleutnant der Polizei of the Geheime Staatspolizei to carry out this last request? But it was unnecessary.
The Führer had insisted his body and that of Eva Braun, his wife of a day, should be carried out of the Führerbunker into the Chancellery gardens, placed in a nearby bomb crater, doused in gasoline and set alight. And it should be filled in after the cremation, so no trace of him remained. Hitler wanted to avoid the final humiliation of his friend, the Italian leader Mussolini. After being shot, partisans hanged his corpse upside down on meat hooks alongside his mistress.
During the brief ceremony in the gardens, the Red Army’s presence was pervasive. The Russians had encircled Berlin and were now as close as Potsdamerplatz. The young soldiers, once so officious in their duties, looked about with fear, realising once the enemy broke through, they would die. Constant shelling made the ground shudder, and sporadic firing signalled the mopping up of Berlin’s remaining defenders, old men and boys, armed only with vintage firearms.
Hitler’s death increased the agitation in the bunker as Joseph Goebbels and a coterie of generals, aided by Hitler’s secretary Martin Bormann, worked on a peace agreement. But when it became apparent the Americans and Russians didn’t wish to negotiate, Goebbels instructed Müller and an aide to accompany him and his wife Magda, a particular favourite of the Führer’s, into the gardens. When their backs were turned, they shot them in the head and cremated them along with their six children whom Goebbels had poisoned earlier. They found the bodies of the children laid out in a bedroom in the bunker like parcels ready for dispatch.
Killing Goebbels, whom he despised, was not a problem. The lizard would follow his master to wherever and whatever lay beyond. Dying at the same time would ensure they might enter the afterlife hand in hand, his servitude unbroken.
Amongst the others, there was little desire to take that path. To avoid torture and humiliation, they would have to break out of the bunker. And their route through the bombed buildings would be hazardous and probably futile. It was their only chance. Müller suggested it would be better to split up and escape in small groups once darkness fell, and they should leave at intervals and take different routes. As each departed, those left listened for the telltale sound of gunshots that would signal their failure.
He agreed to partner Bormann and insisted they should be the last to exit the bunker in the early hours of the following day. This was not a gallant gesture. It was based on intelligence about the soldiering efficiency of the Russians. Unlike German soldiers, the Russians, confident of having triumphed, were not so disciplined and once night fell would drink and sing and seek German women to rape.
He changed out of his uniform into a suit. Bormann wore his, insisting that should the Russians apprehend them, he would claim he was an envoy sent to negotiate with their generals. Müller doubted the strategy but didn’t dissuade him. He disliked Bormann whom he regarded as someone of limited talent who had risen through the ranks on the coat-tails of his Führer.
They followed a path that the Gestapo chief had reconnoitred days before. They would make their way on foot a mile north to the Weidendammer Bridge. Then cross the Spree river where a car would be waiting in Ziegelstrasse. They made painstaking progress, and all the time Bormann protested. It was important to stay off the roads littered with bombed-out cars and corpses. He identified a route through the bomb-damaged buildings behind Friedrichstrasse that were all but shells, and it was even more dangerous in the dark. Everywhere the sounds of Russian voices and the occasional scream carried on the night air.
Using the car, they would drive to the outskirts of the city to a disused industrial park where a makeshift runway had been set up. And they would fly to freedom to fight another day.
He soon realised he would be quicker on his own, seeing panic in a babbling Bormann’s eyes. And several times he ordered him to be silent. As they neared the bridge, which appeared unguarded, Bormann shouted: ‘We have made it, Müller. We will be safe to carry on the Führer’s work. Sieg Heil.’
He shot him once. The pistol jammed up hard against his tunic to deaden the sound. Bormann fell back, and he added to the impetus, pushing him so that he tumbled down a slope and into some bushes at the water’s edge.
The drive was uneventful. Once he arrived at the landing strip, he changed again into working clothes and buried any papers and other incriminating possessions in waste ground nearby. Time crawled. Every so often he heard sounds suggesting he was on the point of being discovered, and he hid in bushes some distance from the car. After almost an hour, he recognised the welcome drone of an Arado Ar 96 trainer. He had piloted the monoplane several times in the First World War, winning the Iron Cross.
He admired the pilot’s expertise in landing in testing conditions. The plane taxied into position for a quick take-off. Opening the canopy, the pilot beckoned to him, but at that moment Müller pitched forward onto the tarmac, clutching his side.
‘Was i
st da los, Herr Müller?’ the pilot shouted above the noise of the engine and, getting no answer, climbed down from the aircraft. As he approached, Müller groaned in pain.
‘What’s the matter? We must be quick. The longer we are on the ground, the greater the danger.’
The pilot reached down to pull the injured man to his feet. As he did, Müller took his hand from under his jacket and shot him in the face.
2
Lerwick, Shetland, June 24th, 1947
Rain flew straight into her face, stinging her eyes and sucking on her breath. And the damp cold penetrated her sheepskin coat and hat. Another summer’s day, Alena thought. By now she should be used to the constant wind and rain. It swirled around her like a ghost and on the walk down into the town the sudden gusts threatened to bowl her over. Would she ever be comfortable here? Seven years ago when she and her son arrived, she believed it to be the most miserable land on earth. All brown rocks and endless grey skies that seemed to press down, emphasising an existence no more significant than that of an insect. Over time, she learned to accept the brooding landscapes. Fashioned as if by mood and painted a deeper green by the rains, they could change in an instant like a chameleon in a shaft of sunlight. In winter, the days were short and bitter with just six hours of light, and long nights drove many to drink. And the gales ramped up to near hurricane force, creating spectacular seas that made some islands inaccessible.
The locals viewed the mysterious Frenchwoman with suspicion. She would always be an outsider. A soothmoother they called her. To some, her countenance appeared a combination of competing expressions. The face of confusion or of someone able to juggle a variety of emotions as an actor.