“Any other weapons?” the man said, and Klaus shook his head.
“Any other weapons?” the guard repeated.
“No other weapons,” Klaus said.
The guard took him by the elbow and turned him around once more so that he was facing the Führer. Under different circumstances, Klaus might have chuckled at the irony of being assigned to this bunker to protect someone, and then not being trusted enough to be left alone in a room with that very same man.
But these were not different circumstances. These were extraordinary times.
At the desk, Adolph Hitler seemed not to have noticed his visitor’s entrance, nor the frisking that had taken place immediately afterward. His eyes were focused downward, toward a sheaf of papers on top of the desk, and in his hand he clutched an ink pen. Even from across the room, Klaus could see the Nazi seal—a black eagle with wings spread, clutching the iconic swastika insignia in its claws—wrapped around the pen’s barrel.
Rumors had been flying all day, and one of those rumors was that the Führer had dictated his last will and testament this afternoon. Klaus wondered briefly whether he had been called to the office to act as a witness to the document’s signing.
Then he realized the thought was absurd. It would not be left to a lowly soldier to serve as witness to such a historic document. The Führer did not operate in a vacuum. Adolph Hitler had a longtime personal valet, as well as a team of secretaries and the constant stream of high-ranking German Army officers and other officials that had been entering and leaving the bunker all day.
Any of them would make a more appropriate witness than Klaus Newmann.
Klaus had snapped out a salute the moment the guard released his elbow and he waited motionless inside the door, holding his arm at an angle, palm out. Eventually—ten seconds that felt to Klaus like ten years—the Führer raised his eyes from his document and returned the salute lazily.
“Thank you for coming, Klaus,” the great man said with a smile. “It does my heart good to see that some German soldiers still understand the concept of duty.” For all his angry ranting and raving earlier, Hitler’s eyes appeared clear and bright, captivating. Klaus was reminded how this man had been able to unite a German population beaten down after the devastating loss of World War I and the humiliation of being forced to accept the Treaty of Versailles.
“Of course, Mein Führer,” he said. He started to add that he couldn’t imagine anything being more important than meeting with the leader of the Third Reich, but his tongue would not cooperate and after a moment he simply closed his mouth and waited.
“Please, sit down.”
“Yes, Mein Führer.” Klaus moved to a single chair placed in front of the desk and sat. The guard who had frisked Klaus moments ago had moved to the side of Hitler’s desk and now stared unflinchingly ahead.
Hitler cleared his throat. “I must apologize for the lack of comfortable seating,” he said. “Our accommodations down here are far more…rudimentary…than above ground. On the other hand, they are much safer, eh?”
The Führer chuckled and an uncomfortable Klaus Newmann responded with a hesitant smile.
After a moment Hitler continued. “I am sure you are aware our situation here is…tenuous,” he said, his eyes glittering as he held Klaus’s gaze steadily. Klaus felt the first stab of real panic, a cold vice gripping his insides as he realized the Führer was waiting for an answer and he had no idea what the man expected him to say.
“Of course,” he said, feeling stupid and waiting for the tongue-lashing he so richly deserved. Surely the leader of the Third Reich expected something more out of Klaus than “of course.”
But no rebuke was forthcoming.
“Of course,” Hitler repeated, nodding, arms crossed as he cupped his chin with one hand. Klaus noticed that the Führer’s eyes had left his own and were now focused—or perhaps unfocused—on something over Klaus’s right shoulder. They had a faraway look and the soldier wondered what he was thinking.
“I am sure you’re wondering why I’ve called you here.”
“Well…yes, Mein Führer.”
“You have been selected for a great honor, Herr Newmann. You will serve the Reich in a very unique manner.”
Hitler paused. He seemed to be awaiting a response, and Klaus shook his head in confusion. “I am very sorry, Mein Führer, but I do not understand.”
“Things will be changing very soon, and not for the better. The war effort is failing, as I am sure you are well aware. The Reich teeters on the very brink of extinction, with the Allies overrunning the Fatherland and poised to take our historic city and country. Defeat seems imminent.”
Hitler paused and gazed at the young soldier, who was again overcome by a terror worse than any he had ever experienced. What response was the Führer expecting? How could Klaus possibly know? Surely the leader of the Thousand Year Reich was not requesting tactical advice or war planning from a lowly foot soldier?
He was saved from having to say something when the leader continued. “Defeat seems imminent,” he repeated. “But appearances to the contrary, all is not lost. This stinging downfall will not stand. It is temporary. The Third Reich has not been defeated and will not be defeated. Not now, not ever!”
The Führer’s voice had taken on the shrill, persuasive quality Klaus recognized from listening to dozens of the man’s speeches on radio. He seemed poised to launch into a soaring rhetorical soliloquy. Already had, really. But then he reined himself in, taking a moment to regain control of his emotions before continuing.
“The Reich has not been vanquished,” he insisted quietly. “Full implementation has merely been delayed. For quite some time, in all probability, I will admit. But still, it has only been delayed. However, given the circumstances in which we find ourselves, eventual implementation will depend heavily on people who may not ever have expected to play such a critical, historic role. People who may consider themselves unprepared for what will be asked of them.”
Adolph Hitler focused his steady gaze on Klaus Newmann. His eyes burned with the glow of righteous fanaticism. “People like you,” he said dramatically.
“I-I’m sorry, Mein Führer. I am afraid I still do not understand. How can I possibly—”
“It is very simple,” the Führer replied. “You must safeguard this key.”
He reached under his collar and grasped a gold necklace between his thumb and forefinger.
Pulled a pair of ornate-looking gold keys from beneath his undershirt.
Held them up for Klaus’s inspection.
The first thing Klaus noticed was that the keys were oversized, larger than any keys he had ever seen. They were nearly twice as large as he would have expected them to be.
They resembled skeleton keys in design, but even from across the desk Klaus could see they were different in very significant ways. Each key featured a series of odd-looking appendages fused to its teeth, tiny squares that looked like gold boxes, with what appeared to be microscopic wires threaded through the gold.
The keys were exotic-looking. Bizarre, even.
At last he shook his head, mystified. “I am so sorry, Mein Führer. I still do not understand.”
Hitler smiled. “Don’t worry about that, Klaus. You will.”
1
November 12, 1987
7:30 a.m.
Wuppertal, Federal Republic of Germany
Klaus Newmann’s day started out exactly as had nearly every other day for the past forty-two years: a cup of black coffee and a Danish, followed by a shower and a hike.
Klaus completed his hike every day, no matter the weather, no matter his mood, no matter his physical condition. He had hiked through blinding snowstorms, through brutal heat. He had hiked the day after an appendectomy and hours after the death of his beloved wife.
In forty-two years, Klaus had never taken a day off.
Now sixty-four, he did not hike because he loved the outdoors, and he certainly was no physical fitness buff.
Klaus was much more at home in his study, feet propped on a divan, reading from the collected works of Nietzsche or even Mein Kampfe—although bitter personal experience had taught him to keep his love of Adolph Hitler’s biography to himself, except among a handful of very close friends—than trudging through the thick forest surrounding Wuppertal, risking a sprained ankle or worse navigating the rugged terrain.
He hiked because he had made a pledge as a young man, a pledge to someone he admired more than anyone else in the world. He knew now, with the benefit of years—decades—of reflection, that he had been caught up in the fever of nationalism that swept his country during his teen years and immediately after.
Over time, that fever had subsided, even in a true believer like Klaus. But although his passion for the cause had waned and his body had grown old and increasingly frail, deep down inside he was still the wide-eyed optimist he had been once upon a time, and he was no more likely to forget his pledge or ignore his duty than he was to put a gun to his head and squeeze the trigger.
Klaus was under no illusions. He knew his limitations, knew he was nothing special. He was neither physically gifted nor particularly intelligent. He was a quick learner and a hard worker, but so were millions of other Germans. There was nothing about him that would have set him apart from any other young Nazi male in the waning days of World War Two.
But responsibility had been thrust on Klaus Newmann, regardless of his lack of worthiness to accept it. Many Berliners had been called to sacrifice once the tide of the great war began turning against their country, and Klaus knew that the sacrifice asked of him could not begin to compare with what had been asked of many of his fellow citizens.
The difference, of course, was that Klaus was in a position to make a difference. He had waited decades for the payoff that had been promised, faithfully discharging the duties assigned to him that horrible night so long ago in a cramped underground bunker, with stale air and faulty wiring, lights flickering almost constantly from the relentless Allied bombing raids on Berlin.
His youthful enthusiasm had waned, of course it had, but Klaus had never once doubted the sagacity of Adolph Hitler’s words, spoken as the Red Army closed in and Germany’s situation went from dire to hopeless. He had also never doubted the inevitability of the Third Reich’s return.
And now, after so many decades of waiting, forty-two years of it, during which Klaus had given up hope of ever living long enough to see the Reich’s triumphant rise from the ashes of defeat, it was finally going to happen. Whispered rumors had begun circulating among his band of aging true believers nearly a year ago, months before Klaus received official notification.
The time was right. The Soviet Union was collapsing under the weight of mismanagement and a more open world, and citizens trapped for generations behind the Iron Curtain had begun to get tantalizing glimpses of just how much they were missing out on under the jack-booted rule of their Russian masters.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union was only a matter of time, so the rumors went, and the collapse of Soviet rule would throw open a power vacuum that must be filled. Citizens conditioned over the course of eighty-plus years of hard-line Soviet rule would be ill-prepared for the freedoms enjoyed by so many in the West, indeed by Klaus himself in West Germany.
Some other system of government would be necessary.
Something besides old-style Communism.
Something like Nazism.
Klaus quickened his pace as he picked his way through the forest. The odd-looking key given to him so long ago had been stored for decades in a bank vault, the location of which was known only to Klaus. His lawyer had received explicit instructions that upon Klaus’s death the location of the key, along with the code to access the vault, would be given to one member—and one member only—of the secret Third Reich group to which so much had been entrusted.
But nothing had ever happened to Klaus. No accidents had befallen him, no serious illnesses, and one after another the decades had passed with no reason for him to retrieve the key from the secret bank vault.
That had all changed one morning two weeks ago. Klaus’s phone rang, and when he picked it up he was greeted with the coded message he had memorized in April 1945, and had given up on ever hearing again. The message meant he was to retrieve the key and keep it on his person at all times.
Operation Phoenix had begun.
At some point in the near future, a courier would approach Klaus, a man unknown to him. The courier would greet him with a separate coded message. Upon receipt of the message, Klaus was to hand the key over to the courier, who would carry it to another representative of the Reich, a man who well understood the key’s significance.
That man would use the key to unlock the vault.
And the Third Reich would rise to power once again.
***
Following Germany’s surrender, Klaus Newmann had moved immediately to Wuppertal per the Führer’s explicit instructions, issued April 29, 1945. Using capital supplied by investors sympathetic to the cause, he opened a machine shop in his new hometown and went to work fabricating parts for the industrial boom that would immediately follow the Allied victory. Great swaths of the countryside had been leveled and required rebuilding, and as the victorious Allies—most notably the United States—poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the reconstruction of West Germany, a small but significant portion of those funds found their way into Klaus’s pocket.
He grew comfortable, not quite wealthy but nearly so, expanding the machine shop several times over the years and eventually employing several dozen fabricators and machinists.
No matter how busy the shop got, though, he never sacrificed his daily hike. It was, after all, the reason he was living and working in Wuppertal to begin with.
He wiped the sweat from his brow with one sleeve as he stepped around a large boulder. He was breathing heavily and perspiring freely despite the chill in the air. The objective of his daily hike was surveillance—to observe a munitions factory that had been abandoned with the defeat of the Nazis at the end of World War Two.
The factory stood in a remote area, accessible by car only via a long-since abandoned and crumbling access road. The condition of the road was irrelevant to Klaus, though, since he never approached by car. To do so might cause the wrong people to ask the wrong questions.
Instead, he exited the back door of his home—chosen so long ago for its specific location rather than style or comfort—and set out through an area as forbidding as the Black Forest. Over the years, Klaus had memorized dozens of different routes, all mapped out to avoid wearing down a path or establishing any kind of trail that could be followed.
This surveillance of the abandoned munitions factory was as important a part of his mission as was safeguarding the special key, and Klaus took it very seriously. Should the wrong people—meaning anyone not involved in Project Phoenix—begin to take notice of the building, advance warning would be critical. Klaus would pass word to his contact, who would ensure the necessary measures be taken to eliminate those people.
By any means necessary.
Including murder.
But it had never come to that. It had never come close to that. The factory was simply too far off the beaten path, and too much a relic of a past most Germans wanted to forget, for anyone to care about. Klaus doubted many people were even aware of its existence now, so long after it had been shuttered.
He plodded forward, his route taking longer to complete now than it had even just a few years ago. He breathed heavily but easily, swinging his arms and daydreaming about the mug of hot cocoa he was planning to make upon returning home. He would enjoy the drink and then leave for work.
But the satisfaction brought on by the image of the drink was tempered by a growing uneasiness. His sense of caution, developed out of necessity decades ago and honed to a razor-sharp edge, was telling him something was wrong.
Alarm bells were ringing in his head.
Someon
e was here. He couldn’t see anyone, hadn’t heard anything, but he knew, nevertheless. His subconscious had observed something out of the ordinary, something his conscious mind had missed.
It wouldn’t be the first time he had stumbled across another hiker, even out here in the middle of nowhere. It was unusual, yes, but it had happened before. Germans were not intimidated by thick forest, and a goodly percentage of them were fond of the kind of solitude that a walk through the woods could provide.
Still, this was different. Perhaps it was the muffled snap of a twig underfoot, or a glimpse in his peripheral vision of someone hiding behind a tree.
Could it be his contact, coming to relieve Klaus of the tremendous burden he had carried for more than four decades as he aged from young man to middle-aged, and now as he approached elderly?
A meeting here, in the middle of nowhere, would make sense. And that meeting was bound to happen soon. It was why he had retrieved the bizarre-looking key from its secure location in the bank vault to begin with.
But Klaus didn’t think that was it; it just didn’t feel right. The other presence felt too…stealthy, which was why Klaus was suddenly so aware of his extreme isolation, deep in the forest outside Wuppertal. He had hoped for a secluded place to turn over the key, but the fact of the matter was that isolation was a double-edged sword. Lack of witnesses to a key exchange meant lack of witnesses to a mugging as well.
Klaus froze in his tracks. Spun very slowly in a three hundred sixty degree circle. Examined the surrounding area, searching for movement, for a flash of color, anything that would pinpoint the location of the person stalking him.
Because he was being stalked.
He knew that.
He reached under his windbreaker and eased his Walther out of its shoulder holster. Then he turned to the left, and—
And felt the cold, hard steel of a gun barrel press against the side of his skull.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 74