My Immortal: The Vampires of Berlin

by Lee Rudnicki

  Axel turned his attention back to the instrument panel. He felt the loss of his friend, but that was tempered by the fact that his own death was—for the first time in weeks—no longer imminent. “Where are we going? Switzerland?” he asked.

  “Argentina.” Wolf replied.

  “You’re going to have to refine your travel plans, Major. We don’t have enough fuel to get to Italy, let alone South America.”

  “Head south. We’re going to Prague,” Heydrich said.

  Wolf was mystified. “Prague? That would be suicide. The Russians have already overrun most of Czechoslovakia.”

  “The Russians have not yet moved into Prague, Major Kepler. We’re going there—preparations have been made for our arrival.”

  Wolf stared at Heydrich. He thought that he knew him from somewhere, but he couldn’t quite place it.

  Heydrich was amused that Wolf still hadn’t recognized him. The Hungarian surgeon had done brilliant work. Unfortunately for him, Adolf Hitler ensured that the good doctor ended his career and life at Auschwitz, as a personal research subject of Dr. Mengele.

  “Try to get some sleep, Major,” he said. “We have an appointment with destiny.”

  PART III

  OPERATION TRISTAN

  “War is fear cloaked in courage.”

  -- General William C. Westmoreland

  62

  The Last Supper

  Night and day morphed into one. With their demise imminent, no one in the Führerbunker felt compelled to sleep away what little time they had left. The doomed men and women drank the never-ending day away and spent countless sleep-deprived hours discussing suicide. They lived in a fantasy world, growing detached from the ugly reality of the war as it slowly encroached. The subject of religion came up once in a while, but with all of the crimes they had committed in the name of National Socialism, they felt very far away from God.

  Then, in the early hours of 30 April 1945, Adolf Hitler ordered a staff meeting. The glum generals and advisors walked into the situation room and were astonished by what they saw in front of them.

  Hitler was in a tuxedo. His wife Eva Braun wore a beautiful red Italian gown. The map table had been covered with a white linen tablecloth; Bohemian crystal chalices were filled with forty-year old French Bordeaux and perfectly cooked Sauerbraten was set out on fine china. The men hadn’t seen real food in weeks. Their mouths watered at the extraordinary sight of the roast beef marinated in burgundy wine, vinegar and spices, exquisitely complimented by potato pancakes, applesauce and red cabbage. With the Soviet Red Army less than a kilometer away and moving closer with each tick of the clock, fine dining was the last thing they expected.

  “You’ve outdone yourself, mein Führer,” General Krebs said as he stared at the food. “This is fantastic.”

  Hitler acknowledged the compliment with a nod and motioned for them to sit. “Please everyone, enjoy your meal.”

  As his guests took their seats and dove into their wonderful food, Hitler noticed that Artur Axmann’s seat was empty. “Where’s Axmann?”

  No one answered. They feared the Führer might go berserk if he thought that another one of his trusted advisers had fled Berlin. Finally, Goebbels spoke up. “I haven’t seen him in a few hours. Maybe he left.”

  “Do you really think it is possible that Artur has surrendered or fled the country?” Hitler asked.

  “Perhaps,” Goebbels replied, rather nonchalantly.

  “Too bad. Joseph, can you please pass the potatoes?”

  General Krebs nearly choked. Hitler’s response was no less surprising to his guests than if he had suddenly attacked them with a flamethrower.

  For the next thirty minutes, Adolf Hitler dined with his most trusted officers and aides for what would be their last meal together. The men enjoyed the cuisine, but they kept a close eye on Hitler as they ate, fearful of what might happen next in the bizarre culinary episode.

  When most everyone had finished eating, Hitler surveyed his guests with a smile. “By the lack of food on your plates, it looks like you enjoyed your meal. That makes me very happy. Very, very happy. Now, I would like to tell you an interesting story about the delicious food that you just ate.”

  General Krebs spit a mouthful of roast beef into a napkin and turned as white as a ghost. Holy Christ. Hitler just poisoned everybody!

  “The meal that you just ate was very expensive,” Hitler said. “It cost the lives of twenty-one of Germany’s finest soldiers—seven of them were killed on the assault on the wine cellar alone. You have no idea how hard it is to find a good Bordeaux right now.”

  The men were incredulous. Hitler hadn’t poisoned anyone. He paid for their food with German lives.

  You sent young men on a suicide mission so we could have a nice goddamn meal? Wouldn’t it have been faster to drink their blood? General Krebs thought, desperately wishing he were brave enough to say those words out loud.

  “I believe the price was worth it,” the Führer said. “Wouldn’t you agree, Joseph?”

  “Ja,” Goebbels replied, his mouth full of food.

  General Weidling stared at his steak knife and wondered if he could jump across the table and stab Hitler in the heart with it before the SS guards that lined the walls could shoot him dead. Probably not.

  Adolf Hitler’s surreal monologue continued. “I sent those brave men on a mission to gather this food and wine for a very important reason. After more than five years—and just when all hope seems lost—we’re about to win the war. We are having dinner together on this fine day to celebrate the imminent victory of the Third Reich. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  The room fell silent. General Weidling dropped his fork onto his plate, splashing gravy all over his gray tunic. With the exception of Goebbels—who had a shit-eating grin on his face—everyone looked at Hitler with a mixture of dismay and fear. They weren’t sure if the collective mind fuck was a macabre practical joke or if the Führer had just lost his marbles. Or both.

  “By the looks on your faces, I can see that many of you think I am crazy,” Hitler said. “Perhaps you don’t believe that it is possible to win the war at this late date.”

  Even with the Red Army closing in, his guests were not inclined to answer the question honestly. They feared sending him into another blind rage that would end with getting shot for treason.

  Adolf Hitler noticed his guests squirm and he took immense pleasure in their discomfort. “Perhaps you find it odd that a leader holed up in a damp underground bunker that is surrounded by hordes of subhuman Asiatic barbarians would still talk about ... Final Victory.” Hitler laughed out loud, but no one else got the joke.

  Weidling’s thin smile betrayed his disbelief. What the hell is this circus? Send in the goddamn clowns. Oh wait, they’re already here.

  Hitler suddenly got animated. “Germany will win the war. I can tell you this with absolute mathematical certainty because I have a supernatural weapon!” he shouted, pounding on the table for emphasis. “When Operation Tristan is launched, we will destroy the Soviet Red Army within days. We’re going to kill EVERYONE.”

  “Everyone...” Eva Braun repeated.

  No one else said a word. Hitler took a drink and suddenly became calm again. “Unfortunately, a change in circumstances has necessitated launching Operation Tristan from Prague,” he added. “I hope you understand.”

  Prague? Now the generals were truly confused. Czechoslovakia would fall to the Soviet forces within days. Any military operation launched from Prague could not possibly get to Berlin in time. Is Hitler fighting the same war?

  “But don’t worry. We will be safe here until it is time to launch the operation,” Hitler continued. “The Allies don’t have a bomb big enough to take out this bunker. In fact, God himself doesn’t have a bomb big that is enough to take out this fucking bunker.”

  Suddenly, there was a huge rumble from what must have been a catastrophic explosion above ground. The floor shook violently and Hitler was knocked to the fl
oor.

  The lights flickered as Goebbels and Krebs helped the Führer to his feet. Eva Braun wiped the food off of her evil husband’s tuxedo and wondered if there was anything left of the Reich Chancellery that stood above them.

  Hitler grabbed his wife’s hand and smiled. “Final Victory is upon us, my faithful servants. Final Victory...”

  If the Führer noticed his guests staring at him, he didn’t show it. He was lost in thought. For years, he had known this was exactly how the Second World War was going to end. And he looked forward to it with every fiber of his cursed existence

  63

  Czechoslovakia

  The plane roared over the Czech forest. Axel lowered the landing gear and desperately scanned the landscape for the airfield that Heydrich assured him would be there.

  Suddenly, the clouds parted. Sunlight from the first light of day filled the sky and poured through the bullet holes in the fuselage. Heydrich threw a black cloak at Wolf. “Put this over her!” he shouted. “Keep her out of the sun!”

  Wolf stared at the cloak. The mystery was growing deeper. Heydrich obviously knew that Eva was a vampire; he wondered if the Nazis were somehow allied with them. But that wouldn’t explain the vampire’s desperate and repeated attempts to kill Eva, one of their own. She isn’t a threat to anyone. Or is she?

  “Cover her now!” Heydrich yelled. Wolf snapped out of his thoughts and put the cloak over Eva.

  Axel looked at the fuel gauge and cursed. The secret runway that the SS had carved out of the forest came up much faster than he anticipated. “Hold on! We only have enough gas for one shot at this!” he shouted.

  The passengers held on for dear life as Axel put the plane into a steep descent and barely cleared a line of trees.

  Six seconds later, the aircraft hit the runway hard and bounced back into the air. When it hit the ground again, a wheel flew off. The plane spun around and around and around in a dizzying circle.

  When they finally came to a halt right in front of a tree, the plane was not in good shape. A wing was broken in half. Black smoke billowed out of the starboard engine and the fuselage looked like Swiss cheese.

  Axel looked back from the pilot’s chair with a big toothy grin. “Ta-da!” he yelled. The men laughed as Axel gave himself a round of applause. “I am so great.”

  Wolf leaned into the cockpit and patted him on the back. “Your landings stink, my humble friend, just like your marksmanship. But you got us out of Berlin, which I guess is something.”

  Axel laughed out loud. Wolf was right. His landings weren’t the best. In fact, he was notorious for destroying seven airplanes, two hangars and an official reviewing stand in his brief Luftwaffe career. And while his planes were often in piss poor shape when they arrived at their destination, he was also famous for always getting his passengers there in one piece. Assuming, of course, that you don’t count people who jump out of the airplane while it’s in flight to kill a vampire.

  As the story goes, Axel’s reputation was earned early in the war, on a mission in support of the Ninth Army. On that fateful spring morning, Russian fighters ambushed his formation in the skies over Raseiniai. When the dogfight was over, six Messerschmitt 109 fighters had been shot down. Axel’s plane was the only one to make it back to base that day. The young pilot didn’t get out of that fight unscathed, however. He took a round to the leg and lost a lot of blood. It was a miracle that he was able to stay conscious and land the plane. When he got out of surgery, he learned that one of his grateful passengers was General Hans Krebs himself.

  True to form, Joseph Goebbels went to great lengths to keep the horrific aircraft losses out of the press. Despite the censorship, news of Axel’s heroism spread far and wide. When he flew the last plane out of Stalingrad, his status went from celebrity to legend.

  With the accolades, Axel hoped to climb the ranks of the Luftwaffe as his hero Hermann Göring had done in the First World War. But when a refurbished Soviet army turned the Blitzkrieg into the all-out incredible ass-whooping, Axel’s squadron was disbanded for lack of aircraft and spare parts. Then he became just another pathetic German grunt who was on the run and preoccupied with self-preservation.

  Wolf stared at the tree that they had almost crashed into. He chuckled. It was a linden tree. How symbolic that crash would have been, he thought.

  Axel climbed down the ladder next and squinted into the sun. “We’re not in Prague, chief.”

  “No shit,” Wolf replied. “We’re in the Czech countryside with a trashed airplane, waiting for antagonized partisans to show up and shoot us down like dogs.”

  Heydrich climbed out of the plane last, wearing dark sunglasses. The Nazi scientists’ powerful UV blocking salve allowed him to move through daylight for up to two hours at a time. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it enabled his work to continue around the clock when circumstances dictated.

  Suddenly, a truck with a red cross painted on the door emerged from the forest and sped towards them.

  Wolf panicked and bolted for the trees. “We got company! Run!” He stopped running when he looked back and saw the smirk on Heydrich’s face.

  The truck screeched to a stop next to the plane. An SS trooper in green medical scrubs jumped out and started barking orders. “They picked you up on the radar! Hurry! Get in the truck! Keep the girl out of the sun!”

  Wolf helped Eva into the truck and wondered how the SS knew about her. More importantly, he wondered what the SS knew about her.

  As they settled into the back of the truck, the driver poked his head in. “We’ve been out of radio contact with Berlin for hours. Where is the security detachment?”

  “The other plane got held up,” Heydrich replied.

  “How far behind are they?”

  “I am not sure how to put a timeline on burning bodies and pieces of airplane spread all over the Tiergarten.”

  The driver frowned. “Very well. We will continue the operation without them.”

  As the back door closed, Wolf leaned over and whispered. “I didn’t realize that we still have ongoing operations in Czechoslovakia.”

  Heydrich smiled. “Only one.”

  64

  The Protectorate

  In April 1945, Prague was living through its final days as the Nazi “protectorate.”

  It had been a shock to the Czechs when Hitler forced them to join in lockstep with the Third Reich. The Führer took control of the small country by summoning the Czechoslovakian President Emil Hácha to Berlin on 15 March 1938. In the meeting, Hitler demanded that President Hácha surrender Czechoslovakia immediately or the Luftwaffe would bomb Prague until there was nothing left but ash. The Czech president suffered a heart attack during the meeting, but Hitler’s medical staff kept him awake so the so-called negotiations could continue.

  Threatened with the destruction of his beautiful capital city, President Hácha tearfully signed the document of surrender. A few hours later, German forces rolled into Czechoslovakia unopposed.

  The next day, Adolf Hitler looked out upon the medieval city from a balcony in Prague Castle and formally declared that Bohemia and Moravia had become a German “protectorate.” The city of a hundred spires suddenly found itself stuck under a Nazi boot.

  Although Prague was lucky enough to escape much of the bombing and devastation that other European cities had suffered during the war, the occupation had been difficult on the Czechs nonetheless.

  To cement his gains, Hitler appointed the ruthless and evil Reinhard Heydrich as Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia. Pragmatically speaking, Heydrich was a dictator. President Hácha and his cabinet were stripped of most of their powers and remained in power largely as a figurehead government.

  Reinhard Heydrich felt safe in Prague and often drove around the city in a black convertible Mercedes-Benz. In his mind, the Czechs considered him a benevolent king. He was convinced that he had nothing to fear in his beautiful city.

  Allied intelligence took note of Heydrich’s lax securit
y and worked with the Czechoslovak government in exile to plan an assassination mission. In December 1941, the RAF parachuted two agents into Czechoslovakia, Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík. The men soon learned that Heydrich had a meeting scheduled with Adolf Hitler in Berlin on 27 May 1942. They also knew that Heydrich had to drive past the point where the Dresden-Prague road merged with the road to the Troja Bridge to get to that meeting. That’s where they tried to kill him.

  When the ambush erupted, Heydrich’s response surprised his assailants. He ordered his driver to stop the car. Then he jumped out and started shooting back at them, like a crazed gunslinger. As the battle intensified, Jan Kubiš threw a powerful IED at the car. The blast knocked Heydrich off of his feet, but it also badly wounded Kubiš.

  Believing that the bomb had killed Heydrich, the agents fled back into the city. German troops eventually cornered them in the crypts of the Ss. Cyril and Methodius Cathedral. Rather than surrender and face endless torture at the hands of the Gestapo, Kubiš and Gabčík said their final prayers together and committed suicide in the church.

  A week later, the Nazis announced that Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich had died from injuries suffered in the assassination attempt. That’s when life under the Nazis got much more difficult for the Czechs.

  On 10 June 1942, Heinrich Himmler ordered all of the men in the Czech village of Lidice to be shot in retribution. After the executions were carried out, the Nazis shipped all of the women and children from the village to concentration camps, where most of them died.

  Unbeknownst to anyone outside of a few select members of Adolf Hitler’s inner circle, the Reichsprotektor was not dead. In fact, at the time of his death announcement, Heydrich had been undergoing cosmetic surgery in a secret location just outside of Budapest to dramatically alter his appearance.