Three Tales From the World of Cotton Malone

by Steve Berry

  He waited.

  “Her blue dress was no longer wet.”

  Within hours of Hitler’s suicide, Bormann donned the uniform of an SS major general, crammed papers into a leather topcoat, and fled the Führerbunker. On the Weidendammer Bridge he encountered bazooka fire, but managed to flee the scene with only minor injuries. He commandeered a stray vehicle and drove to another underground bunker constructed in secret by Adolf Eichmann, equipped with food, water, and a generator. He stayed there a day, then slipped out of Berlin and headed north, dressed as a forest warden.

  Across the Danish border he found a rescue group stationed there weeks before. He had prepared himself for the journey months earlier by burying two caches of gold coins, one in the north, the other in the south. He’d also secreted away banknotes and art treasures that could later be converted into cash. His political position gave him access to Lufthansa, cargo ships, and U-boats, and he’d utilized that privilege in the early months of 1945 to transport out of Germany all that he might need in the years ahead.

  By the end of 1945 he was in Spain. He stayed there until March 1946. His face remained obscure until October 1945 when, after he was indicted for war crimes, his picture was posted throughout Europe. It was then he decided to leave the Continent, but not before dealing with Eva Braun.

  They were in many ways similar. During the war she was intentionally kept in the background, denied the spotlight, forced to remain in the Bavarian Alps. Only those in Hitler’s innermost circle were familiar with her, so it was easy for her to meld into the postwar world.

  She’d returned to Berlin against Hitler’s orders on April 15 to inform him she was pregnant. Hitler took the news calmly, but delayed fourteen days before finally marrying her. During that time he arranged, through Bormann, for her escape. By April 22 Hitler knew that he would never leave the bunker alive. Braun objected to surviving. She wanted to die with Hitler.

  But he would not hear of it, particularly with her being pregnant.

  A female SS captain was chosen by Bormann, one who possessed a build and look similar to Braun’s. The woman was proud of the fact that she would be with the Führer in his final moments. She entered the bunker on April 30, an hour before Hitler and Braun were to lock themselves away for the final time. In the confusion of the day no one noticed her. People were routinely coming and going. With Bormann watching, she bit down on a cyanide capsule and ended her life. Her body, clothed in a blue dress identical to the one Braun would be wearing, was kept in an adjacent anteroom.

  Bormann was the first to enter the bedroom after Hitler died. He sheathed Braun’s body on the pretense of protecting her dignity. He realized all focus would be on Hitler, and he was correct. Braun’s task was to lie still and be dead. It was Bormann who carried her from the bedroom, and after being called by a guard he momentarily deposited her body in an anteroom. That was not prearranged, but it provided Bormann an easy opportunity to make the switch, leaving Braun hidden in the anteroom while her substitute was burned with Hitler in the Chancellory garden above. In the chaos that followed, Braun, her physical appearance altered and dressed as the SS captain who’d arrived hours earlier, left the bunker.

  She was flown out of Berlin to Austria on one of the last flights. From there she traveled by train to Switzerland, no different from thousands of other displaced women. Her journey, using new identity papers and money provided by Bormann, was easy.

  Eventually, she made it to Spain, and there they stayed until the spring of 1946, under the protection of a local fascist leader. Transportation to South America was arranged on an oil transport by a Greek sympathizer, so they traveled to Chile. Nazis had congregated there since the war, most in heavily fortified estancias south of Santiago. Bormann felt crowded, so he and Braun settled near the Argentine border in the lake district until the lure of Africa drew him back across the Atlantic.

  “Bormann never let Eva Braun forget that she owed him her life,” Schüb said. “He loved to retell the story of her survival, and the part he played. It was his way of asserting superiority, making sure she knew that he was the only reason she still breathed.”

  Wyatt was amazed at what he was hearing. History had never been a great interest of his, but it was hard to ignore the impact of what Schüb was saying.

  “They were married in Africa.”

  “Why?”

  “She was pregnant again, and he wanted the baby to be legitimate.” The older man paused. “Theirs was a difficult relationship. Her dead husband, the man she truly loved, told her to rely on Bormann. She tried to follow Hitler’s will, but Bormann was difficult. It helped that, before the war ended, their initial disdain of each other had somewhat faded. Bormann was the one who provided her with money. Took care of her needs. She respected his power.”

  A moment of silence passed between them.

  “Strange was his personality,” Schüb said. “Capable of murdering millions, yet concerned that his offspring would be called a bastard.”

  “What happened to Hitler’s child?”

  “Braun gave birth in January 1946. The baby was robust and healthy. That occurred while they were still in Spain. They did not arrive in Chile until early 1947. The child did not make the journey. Bormann took the baby at birth. He was tasked by Hitler with taking care of Braun and the child. But that never happened.”

  He understood. Once Hitler was dead, Bormann made the rules.

  “Eva Braun bled to death giving birth to Bormann’s child. That was in 1954.”

  A muffled sound filled the air overhead, like a breeze. He glanced up to see birds, not a hurried or confused flight, but a pilgrimage, their shadows flitting across the moon.

  “The night is their refuge,” Schüb said. “They will return at dawn.”

  He continued to watch until the last of the shadows faded into the blackness. He faced Schüb and said, “Did you kill Isabel and the book dealer?”

  There was hesitation while the old man caught his breath.

  Then Schüb swiveled his head like an owl and said, “Be patient, Mr. Wyatt, and I will tell you everything.”

  He wondered if that was a good thing.

  I will tell you everything.

  Why?

  These secrets had stayed buried a long time. Why share them now? Particularly with someone who could repeat them.

  Which made him wonder.

  Was the next bullet to the head his?

  “Christopher Combs has become a problem,” Schüb said. “He fancies himself a treasure hunter. Did you know that about him?”

  He shook his head.

  “He’s also a Nazi enthusiast. He has quite a collection hidden away.”

  “You’ve seen it?”

  “I sent men to steal a look.”

  “Is Combs investigating you?”

  Schüb chuckled. “I should say not. No, he’s after the gold.”

  He listened as Schüb explained how, in the last days of the war, the Berlin Reichsbank was emptied, its contents transported south to the Alps and the National Redoubt, the supposed last stand of the Third Reich. Those assets came by railway from Berlin to Mittenwald. The American army wasn’t far away, and time was short. There were gold bars, boxes of bullion, bags of coins, and millions in foreign currency. It was supposed to be buried in mountain caches. Some was, by a special army detail. But only a fraction of that loot was found after the war.

  “There is a great debate over exactly how much was actually buried,” Schüb said. “Later investigations indicated that American soldiers may even have discovered some of the gold and kept it. I’ve read FBI reports from the time, after they were called to Germany to investigate. The results were inconclusive. But if Americans did find the Reichsbank assets, it was still only a portion of the total that the bank held.”

  Schüb reached beneath his jacket, produced a piece of paper, and handed it to him.

  April 28, 1945

  Delivery of the Reichsbank assets occurred without event i
n Mittenwald. An inventory was performed that revealed the following:

  364 bags of gold (2 bars each for a total of 728 bars)

  4 boxes of gold bullion

  25 boxes of gold bars (each containing 4 bars)

  2 bags of gold coins

  11 boxes of gold weighing 150 kilos

  20 boxes of gold coins

  All banknote printing plates were disposed of in Lake Walchen per original orders. Cache locations were chosen on the north-facing mountain slopes at elevations varying from 100 to 200 meters and burial holes prepared during the night. Disposal occurred over the course of April 25 and 26, completed by the 27th.

  “That is an English translation of a German memoranda from the time. Many call the Berlin Reichsbank the largest bank robbery in history.”

  Wyatt motioned with the paper. “Why is this not in German?”

  “Because you do not speak that language.”

  He was impressed. “What else do you know about me?”

  “That you have been tracking Combs. He betrayed you eight years ago and cost you a career. I’m assuming you came here to kill him.”

  “You know a lot about me.”

  “You did your job, and you did it well. You asked little besides loyalty and respect. Those I understand. You, of course, received neither from Combs.”

  The pieces were beginning to fit. “Combs came here and started asking questions. He located Isabel and the book dealer. He was probing into something that you wanted to remain secret.”

  “Not just me. There is another. You asked me a moment ago if I killed Isabel and the book dealer. I killed neither. But the book dealer, Gamero, was going to sell Combs certain documents, like the one you hold. I tried to dissuade him, but he was far too greedy. Isabel. God bless her. She was bitter and angry and talked too much. Unfortunately, my brother was not as patient as I.”

  “He killed them?”

  “He is a difficult man. He attacks our common problem in a different manner. Killing is easy for him. He is much like his father.”

  “And who is that?”

  “Martin Bormann. He was the child born while they lived in Africa.”

  He had another question but held it for the moment.

  “My brother became heir to the family fortune. During the war, Bormann controlled the Adolf Hitler Endowment Fund of German Industry. Or, as history as labeled it, Hitler’s Bounty. The moneys came from German industrialists. Some paid willingly, others required encouragement. It was the price the wealthy paid for the privilege of profiting from the Reich. Bormann ruled that fund, and many believed that he diverted much of those assets into foreign accounts. They were right. Gamero’s file cabinets contained records of those transfers.”

  “A bit stupid, wasn’t it? Keeping records.”

  Schüb smiled. “Such was their fallacy. Nazis loved to write things down. Like that memo you hold. It records the transfer of much wealth at a time when it would have been far better to say nothing.”

  He could not argue with that.

  “Gamero was the son of a German immigrant. His father, along with countless others, filtered into Chile after the war. Some had relatives in the area, descendants of the original German émigrés who came, with the encouragement of the government, into central Chile during the 19th century. Gamero’s father had been a high-level diplomat in the foreign service, blessed with living abroad during the war, capable afterward of denying, with impunity, any involvement with war crimes.”

  “Who are you?” he asked, truly wanting to know.

  Schüb stared at the fire, still sitting slouched in the chair. “I am a man who bears a heavy burden. I think you can understand that, can’t you?”

  “I came here to right a personal wrong. I don’t care about your problems.”

  “I wish mine were as simple as yours.”

  Silence passed between them.

  “My brother is dead,” Schüb said. “I killed him myself a little while ago.”

  “Why am I still alive?”

  “I want to show you something.”

  He followed Schüb across the grass, back into the woods, and onto a wide path. After ten minutes of walking, during which his host said nothing, he spied the citadel, the long ponderous edifice clinging to the mount of a sharply rising slope, its gray walls splashed with a sodium vapor glow.

  They found a paved lane and followed the incline up to the main entrance. A solitary guard stood outside the wall, armed with a rifle.

  “My brother’s castle,” Schüb said. “My guard.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Not here.”

  He surveyed the burg and its assortment of buildings, the walls dotted with mullion, dormer, and oriel windows. They walked into an inner courtyard. Several cars sat idle. Some of the windows above glowed with light, but most loomed dark and silent.

  A lighted entrance seemed the way in. They started across the cobbles, passing the dark cars.

  Inside was opulent, German, and medieval. Exactly what he would have expected.

  “My brother clung to his heritage.”

  Schüb led them upstairs to a sleeping chamber. Wyatt noticed the enormous bed with bulbous Jacobean legs. Above its head hung a massive oil painting that depicted the archangel Michael with his sword directing anxious wayfarers toward heaven.

  Then he noticed the panel. On the far side, in an alcove.

  A slab of stone, hinged open.

  They walked over and stepped inside. Stone stairs lined with a red carpet runner wound down in a tight circle. They slowly descended and finished standing on a polished gray slate floor, staring at a Nazi uniform. The dry air was clearly climate-controlled and humidified. The coarse stone walls, plastered and also painted gray, bore evidence from when they were hacked out of the bedrock. The chamber cut a twisting path, one room dissolving into another. There were flags, banners, even a replica of some SS altar. Countless figurines, a toy soldier set laid out on a colorful map of early-20th-century Europe, helmets, swords, daggers, caps, uniforms, windbreakers, pistols, rifles, gorgets, bandoliers, rings, jewelry, gauntlets, photographs, and a respectable number of paintings signed by Hitler himself.

  “There are about three thousand items in all,” Schüb said. “A lifetime of effort. Perhaps the greatest collection of Nazism on the planet. As I said, my brother loved his heritage.”

  Wyatt’s attention drifted ahead, where he spied more memorabilia. Schüb stopped at a headless mannequin, one of many that displayed a variety of 1930s-period clothing.

  “This was the summer dress of a Sturmbannführer. A handsome white coat dotted with silver buttons, an Iron Cross, a scarlet armband, and a gold Horseman’s Badge affixed to the left breast pocket. By Hitler’s order the coat was worn only between April 1 and September 30, adorning the highest-ranking officers during ceremonial occasions at Berchtesgaden. To wear it any other time or place was unthinkable. Impressive, isn’t it? The Nazis were good at coating the rotten with a handsome veneer.”

  He’d entered a macabre world, his mind reeling at the spectacle. And though he’d seen worse, he’d never seen stranger.

  “When I see all this,” Schüb said, “I think of my childhood. Men, in secret, wearing armbands adorned with swastikas. Gorgets. Bandoliers. Gauntlets.” The older man pointed to a porcelain basset hound on display. “Prisoners at Dachau made those for the SS.”

  He stared at the shiny white dog.

  The subterranean labyrinth ended, ahead, at a solitary wooden door.

  Schüb faced him. “Before we go in there, there’s something you must know.”

  Bormann watched as Eva Braun writhed and screamed in agony. She was fighting the birth, though the midwife had cautioned her to relax. Her legs stiffened as another contraction racked her. She’d been nothing but difficult for the past few months. But their constant movement had clearly complicated things. They’d met up finally in Barcelona. He’d left Germany from the north, through Denmark and the Netherland
s. She arrived from the south, starting in Switzerland and moving by rail into Italy, then across France. The Barcelona house had been used during the war as a secure location. Not taking any chances, he’d moved them farther into Spain, to an anonymous spot that he alone chose. The Führer was dead. He was in charge now.

  And things were going to be different.

  Braun screamed again.

  He was tired of listening to her weakness.

  She screamed again.

  “When will this end?” he asked the midwife. She was a Spaniard who thankfully spoke German.

  “The baby is coming now.”

  Bormann stood behind the woman, whose head was plunged between Braun’s spread legs, each ankle tied to a post of the bed. Braun stretched the bindings, but the thick posts held firm.

  “Hurry it,” he said.

  “Talk to God about that,” the midwife said, never turning her head.

  Another scream pierced the room. Thankfully, the farmhouse was isolated.

  The midwife reached out as Braun gritted her teeth. “Now. Push with all you can muster.”

  Braun’s head came up from the bed. For a moment Bormann’s gaze locked with hers. He wanted to tell her to shut up and finish, but it seemed that the end was at hand. Braun’s teeth were clenched tight, her face contorted, all her focus seemingly on expelling the baby from her womb.

  “Yes,” the midwife said. “Yes.”

  Braun pushed harder. Her breaths came short and shallow. Sweat soaked her. The woman grappled between Braun’s legs and Bormann watched as a head came into view, then shoulders, arms, chest, and finally legs as the fetus emerged.

  “What is the sex?” he asked.

  The midwife ignored him. Her attention remained on the infant now cradled in her arms, the umbilical cord tracing a path back inside the womb. Braun had relaxed and appeared unconscious.

  He could not see the baby clearly, so he moved closer.