Slowly the water dripped from Gregory’s eyebrows, nose, lips and chin. His sight was still blurred and the back of his head was throbbing violently. Instinctively he looked from side to side for any possibility of help or escape. As he made the movement his brain seemed to roll inside his skull, causing him exquisite agony.
The room was about fifteen feet square and it had no window. That suggested that it was in a basement; but it was obviously not one of the cells or torture chambers below the Gestapo headquarters in the Albrecht Strasse, because it was comfortably furnished. The only evidence of pain-infliction in it was a collection of whips hanging from a rack above a backless leather couch on which there was an open suitcase crammed full of clothes. But those slim, springy, silver-mounted strips of birch, hide and whalebone were not, Gregory knew, for flicking the skin from the backs of prisoners. Grauber was not only a homosexual but also a sadist. In the old days he had always travelled with a specially selected S.S. bodyguard of blond young giants who painted their faces and addressed one another with endearments. Those whips had been used on them and, probably, by them on Grauber himself.
Suddenly Grauber spoke. ‘Our last round, Mr. Sallust. And I win it hands down. You are a slippery customer, if ever there was one. But your extraordinary feat of getting yourself into the Führer’s bunker gave you a swollen head. At last you have made the fatal mistake of underrating your opponent.’
It was true. Had Gregory been less preoccupied with his endeavours to keep Hitler in Berlin and his anxieties about Erika and Sabine, he would have given more serious thought to Grauber and the possibility that his old enemy would devise some subtle way of bringing him to grief. But the terror Hitler inspired among his followers was so universal that, once under his protection, Gregory had thought the risk of Grauber taking any action against him to be negligible.
He had been further lulled into a false sense of security during the past five days by Grauber’s attitude. Their respective duties had entailed being at the same time for long spells in the passage outside the conference room and taking meals together in the mess passage. Naturally, neither of them had been more than barely civil to the other, but Grauber had treated Gregory with a certain deference, which Gregory had put down to his having become one of the Führer’s intimates, and that had strengthened his conviction that his old enemy fully accepted the situation.
Too late, he realised that, outside the bunker, Grauber still possessed almost limitless powers and could on any night have him kidnapped by Gestapo men while making his way home through the blackout.
Pain made it difficult for him to work his jaw, but now that his wits were coming back to him he managed to croak out, ‘Yes, you’ve got me … but you’d better watch your step. You seem to have forgotten that … the Führer is my friend. He … he warned you not to lay a finger on me at the peril of your life. At any time he may ask for me … to talk about the future. If I’m not to be found he’ll guess that you are at … at the bottom of my disappearance …. Then you’ll be for the high jump.’
‘That maniac!’ Grauber suddenly spat. ‘Do you think I any longer give a damn for him? He has brought Germany to ruin, and himself. He is now through. Finished!’
‘Not yet. You and the others still quail every time he opens his mouth … And he has a memory like an … encyclopædia. He won’t have forgotten that we are enemies. Just wait until you get back to the bunker. The moment he sees you he … he’ll hand you over to his private police. He’ll have them take you to pieces on … on the assumption that you’ll be able to tell him what has become of me.’
Grauber gave a high-pitched laugh. ‘You poor fool. What do you think I am doing out of uniform and in these clothes? I’m not going back to the bunker. I’m leaving Berlin tonight. Tomorrow it may be too late.’
That contemptuous statement hit Gregory as though it were the last nail being hammered into his coffin. The moment he had grasped the situation he was in he had realised that his chances of getting out of that room a free man were about as good as those of a man surviving who puts the barrel of a loaded pistol to the roof of his mouth and pulls the trigger. But there had been just the slender hope that he might use Hitler’s knowledge of his feud with Grauber to frighten him.
Now that, too, was gone. But he felt sure that his end would be no more horrible if he twisted Grauber’s tail a little; and, his words coming more easily, he said, ‘I see. Another rat leaving the sinking ship. You’re off to join the king rat, eh? But don’t flatter yourself that Himmler will succeed in making a deal with the Allies. He’ll not be able to save your skin, or his own. Count Bernadotte’s intentions are of the best, but——’
Leaning forward, Grauber snapped, ‘What do you know of that?’
‘Enough to be certain that if we were way back in 1940 and Britain had really been at her last gasp Churchill would still not have negotiated with a swine like Himmler. As things are, it’s already been announced that he and his kind are to be tried as war criminals. That goes for you and it won’t be long before you are dangling from a beam by a rope round the neck.’
‘Others may, but not I.’ Grauber shook his massive head. ‘Again you underrate me. About Himmler you are right. He is a brilliant organiser but in all other respects a fool, and he has always gone about with his head in the clouds. Now he has become almost as mad as Hitler. His acceptance of Schellenberg’s belief that the Allies would treat with him through Count Bernadotte is the proof of it. I’ve no intention of mixing myself up with such a pack of dreamers.’
‘Whether you do or don’t the Allies will get you,’ Gregory said tersely. ‘You are too big a fish for them to allow you to slip into obscurity. They will comb Germany for you; and you’ve plenty of enemies here. Sooner or later the Allies’ agents will catch up with you or someone will give you away.’
Grauber’s pasty face took on a cunning look. ‘You are wrong. I shall be neither caught nor betrayed, because I shall not be here. There are many good Nazis in our Navy and I made my preparations weeks ago. A U-boat is waiting to take me to South America, where I have a large ranch and sufficient money invested for me to live as a rich man for the rest of my life.’
To that Gregory could find no reply. Von Below had said that there was no justice in the world and if, instead of paying the penalty for his crimes, this arch-fiend was to enjoy an old age of comfort and plenty it seemed that von Below had been right.
‘And now about yourself,’ Grauber went on. ‘I have always promised myself that if I caught you I would cause you to die very gradually and very painfully, with the best medical attention between whiles; and I should have considered myself unlucky if your heart had given out in less than a month. But present circumstances render that impossible, as I must leave here in about an hour. In consequence I have decided to let you live.’
Gregory swallowed hard. That Grauber should show mercy and, of all people, to him, was beyond belief. He stammered, ‘You … you’re playing with me.’
‘No. I assure you that I am not. Within an hour you shall leave here a free man.’
It is said that hope springs eternal in the human breast. Despite his every instinct Gregory could not prevent a sudden lifting of the heart. ‘I … you really mean … to … to let me go?’
‘Yes.’ Grauber’s small mouth twisted into a smile. ‘But there is a little matter we must attend to first. You will recall that in November ’39, you bashed out my left eye with a pistol butt. You therefore owe me an eye and I propose to claim that debt. Since it has been so long outstanding it is only fair that I should receive interest, and the destruction of your other eye seems appropriate for that.’
Gregory felt a cold shiver run through him as Grauber went smoothly on. ‘That evens up our score. But I must also protect myself; for you have made it clear that you will run to our crazy Führer and complain about me. I greatly doubt if he could now have me caught once I have left Berlin; but you and I have survived all these years of war only because it has become second nature to us to take precautions. In the present case I must prevent you from talking. I’ve seen a tongue torn out by the roots, but doubt my ability to perform such an act; and anyway it would be a very messy business. I shall therefore break a small phial of vitriol on your tongue. After that you will tell no tales for many months to come—if ever again.’
In vain Gregory strove to prevent himself from listening. His hands were tied down so he could not stop his ears, and the gloating effeminate voice continued to penetrate his brain. ‘Lastly, I have always had a passion for thoroughness and I should not feel happy if we parted without my having made a proper job of you. I shall therefore pierce both your eardrums with a knitting needle.’
For a moment Grauber was silent, then he added, ‘So, you see, although I must deny myself the pleasure of actually watching you scream for mercy daily for some weeks, I shall be able to think of you during my voyage to South America undergoing a mental stress greater than that caused solely by physical inflictions. As I promised, in less than an hour you will be a free man. I shall remove your uniform tunic and put you out into the street; but you will be blind, deaf and dumb. Then I shall pray for you.’ Suddenly he gave a high, cackling laugh. ‘I shall pray that you are not killed by a bomb or a Russian shell.’
At that Gregory’s control snapped. Hurling curses and abuse at Grauber he violently wrenched with wrists and ankles at the cords that bound him to the chair. But it was of Jacobean design with a high strong back made of heavy ebony. The most he could do was to rock it and the Obergruppenführer ignored him. With his mincing gait he walked over to a cabinet, took from it a box of cigars, selected one and, sitting down in front of his prisoner, held it up.
‘One of my best Havanas,’ he said, his solitary eye gleaming with sadistic delight. ‘To bash out your eyes with the butt of a pistol would be much too crude. Instead I intend to burn them out with the lighted end of this excellent cigar. But not yet. Oh no, not yet. When it has singed your eyeballs it would have an unpleasant flavour; so first I shall smoke three-quarters of it. You see, we still have plenty of time; time for you to think about what I mean to do to you, time in which you can watch the cigar gradually burning down until there is just enough of it left for me to deprive you of your sight for ever.’
It was the last refinement of cruelty. Gregory was compelled to sit there, sweating with terror. As no-one in the bunker knew where he was he had no possible hope of rescue. The underground room was heavy with a pregnant silence. Down there even the bombardment could be heard only as a faint rumble, and exploding bombs did no more than cause the floor occasionally to give a slight quiver. Obviously Grauber had sent away the men who had kidnapped Gregory, so there was no-one to whom he could appeal for help, even had they been willing to listen. The knots in the thin cord that held him to the chair had been tied by experts and, strain as he might, he could not even ease them.
To attempt to bargain with Grauber was as futile as to ask him for mercy. Had he been going to join Himmler, Gregory could and would have used all his powers to drive home the fact that within a short while now Germany must collapse, and that soon after their victory the Allies would bring to trial and hang all the Chiefs of the Gestapo. Then, counting on Sir Pellinore’s great influence, of which Grauber was aware, he would have offered to guarantee his life if allowed to go unharmed. But Grauber was going to South America, where a fine estate and ample money awaited him. So he had nothing to fear, and Gregory nothing to offer.
Maddeningly, a clock on a bookcase ticked away the minutes. Grauber continued placidly to smoke his cigar. The blue haze of the smoke and admirable aroma began to fill the room. Three times he carefully tapped an inch of ash from the cigar end into an ashtray on a nearby table. Each time he did so he looked critically at the cigar, then at Gregory. After removing the ash for the third time he said, ‘We are getting on. About another five minutes, I think.’
It was at that moment that a bell rang. The sound acted like an electric shock on Gregory. His heart missed a beat and his muscles tensed. Grauber gave a swift, surprised look towards the door. But he did not move.
The bell shrilled again. Still Grauber did not move. With a frown he looked at Gregory and said softly, ‘Don’t delude yourself with false hopes, my friend. It is only some neighbour making a chance call. If I don’t answer it he will go away.’
For some twenty minutes Gregory had been almost out of his mind from visualising the awful torments that Grauber intended to inflict on him. Suddenly his wits came back and he opened his mouth to shout. In one catlike spring Grauber was upon him and had seized his nose between a finger and thumb. Dropping the butt of his cigar, he pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket with his other hand and thrust it into Gregory’s open mouth, effectively gagging him.
Again the bell rang, this time insistently. Evidently whoever it was had his finger firmly pressed on the button.
Picking up the cigar butt Grauber stood in front of Gregory, mouthing curses below his breath.
The bell stopped ringing but after a moment there came the muffled sound of heavy blows on the outer door.
For nearly two minutes Grauber remained irresolute. But the blows did not cease and it became evident that someone was endeavouring to break in the door.
With a blasphemous oath Grauber stepped over to the sitting-room door and pulled it open. From where Gregory was sitting, trussed and helpless, he could see that it gave on to a narrow hall. The noise of the blows now came louder to him; then the sound of splintering wood. There followed a confusion of raised voices. Grauber had evidently unbolted the door and was shouting, ‘What in thunder do you mean by this?’ Someone else cried, ‘The light showing under the door told us you must be here.’
His nerves as taut as violin strings, Gregory wondered who these people who had forced their way in could be. As he made desperate efforts with his tongue to force the handkerchief out of his mouth, he prayed frantically that they would save him. A heated argument was going on outside in the passage. He was petrified with fear that it would be settled and that before he could shout for help Grauber would have got rid of his unwelcome callers.
Stretching his mouth to tearing point, Gregory did his utmost to vomit. The effort ejected a part of the handkerchief but the silk of the remainder clung to his gums. He was now able to gurgle, but not loud enough to be heard outside the room. Thwarted in his attempts to shout, he flung all his weight sideways. The heavy chair tipped, hovered, then went over with a crash. His head hit the floor. It had still been aching intolerably from his having been coshed. This second blow sent such a violent pain searing through it that he passed out. But only for a few moments.
He caught the tramp of feet. When his mind cleared the room was full of S.S. men. At the sight of their black uniforms he groaned. These were Grauber’s people. The noise of the chair going over must have brought them in from the passage, but his hopes of rescue had been vain.
Two of them heaved the chair upright. Then Gregory saw Grauber and an S.S. officer facing one another in the open doorway. The latter had his back turned, but Gregory heard him ask sharply, ‘What has been going on here?’
‘A private matter,’ piped Grauber angrily. ‘A private matter. I have been interrogating an English spy.’
The officer turned and looked at Gregory. Instantly they recognised one another. He was S.S. Standartenführer Hoegl, the Chief of Hitler’s personal bodyguard, and he exclaimed:
‘Donnerwetter! It is Major Protze! He is no spy!’
‘He is!’ insisted Grauber. ‘He is a pig of an Englishman.’
‘You can tell that to the Führer,’ retorted Hoegl. Then he added to his men, ‘Release the Herr Major.’
Half fainting from strain, shock and relief, Gregory was untied and stumbled to his feet. Meanwhile a furious altercation was taking place between Grauber and the Standartenführer.
‘How dare you address me in this way!’ shrilled Grauber. ‘I demand that you treat me with the respect due to an Obergruppenführer.’
‘Not while you are in those clothes,’ sneered Hoegl.
‘What I wear is my business. I am about to change back into uniform.’
‘Oh no you’re not. You are coming with me as you are.’
‘I’ll not take orders from you.’
‘Yes you will. The Führer asked for you this evening. You weren’t to be found in any of the bunkers. He sent me to fetch you. Naturally, we expected to find you at the Albrecht Strasse. You weren’t there but they said you might be at this underground apartment of yours. And here you are. What game you were about to play in civilian clothes and with that suitcase already packed that I see over there it is not for me to judge, but——’
‘My Chief, the Reichsführer, has sent for me to join him.’
‘Then he’ll have to wait until you’ve seen the Führer and explained to him why you left the bunker without his permission. He will want to know, too, what you have been up to with Major Protze. Come along now.’
Two minutes later they had emerged from a deep basement and were all packed into a big S.S. car that had been waiting outside the ruined block. By the flashes of the ack-ack guns Gregory saw that they were driving along the north side of the Tiergarten, but his head was still splitting and he was so exhausted that he was hardly conscious during the journey.
When they arrived at the Chancellery he asked if the car might take him on to Goering’s house. As it was not he for whom the Führer had sent and he was obviously near collapse, Hoegl agreed. With an S.S. man on either side of him Grauber, white and shaking, was hustled into the building to face the wrath of the Führer. The car drove off and within ten minutes Gregory, between gulps of brandy, was giving Erika an account of his ghastly experience.
But his trials that night were not yet over. At half past four in the morning there was a terrific detonation. Both he and Erika were blown out of bed. Picking themselves up they put on their coats and went through the wrecked doorway to find out the extent of the damage. A Russian shell had blown in a part of the back of the house. The kitchen quarters were wrecked and the Hofbecks, who slept in a room adjacent to them, had both been killed. Malacou, although sleeping in the room above them, the outer wall of which had collapsed, had, miraculously, come to no harm.
When they had helped him move his bedding downstairs to the small dining room he told Gregory that the previous day he had found Sabine still at Seeaussicht and handed him a letter from her. It read;
My dear,
Poor old Kurt having been wounded explains why he never came for me. These past two days I’ve been in half a mind to set off with Trudi on our own, but everyone says there are now thousands of Russians to the south of here, so I haven’t had the courage to risk it. I must have been out of my mind not to have gone weeks ago, when you tried to persuade me to. But I’m sure you can’t mean to stay in Berlin to be captured, and you have always been so full of resource. When you leave, I implore you to come here first and take me with you.
Always your devoted Sabine.
Having shown the note to Erika, Gregory said, ‘I don’t wonder that having left it so late she’s scared to run the gauntlet on her own. But the Russians can’t be very thick on the ground to the south of the city yet. And this can’t go on much longer. If I find that Hitler is still set on doing himself in we’ll leave this coming night and pick up Sabine on our way out.’
After another few hours’ sleep, weary, haggard and with his head still aching, shortly before midday Gregory went to the bunker. There he learned that on the previous evening Goebbels had raised the question of the Prominente. Not the German Prominente, with whom Gregory had for a time been a prisoner. Of them Goerdeler, Popitz, Nebe and others had been executed several weeks earlier. The remainder had been transferred to Flossenbürg and, on orders given by Hitler on April 9th, Canaris, Bonhoeffer, Oster, Dohnanyi and the majority of the others had been butchered. Goebbels, thirsting for blood, had referred to the other group of Prominente, which consisted of the most distinguished British and American prisoners of war. The latter had been removed from Colditz and were now being held as hostages in Bavaria. At his mentioned them Hitler had gone purple in the face and, his whole body trembling, yelled:
‘Shoot them all! Shoot them all!’
It was to transmit orders for this massacre that Grauber had been sent for and, on learning that he had disappeared, the Führer, now ever ready to suspect treachery, had sent Hoegl to try to find him. When he had been brought in there had been another scene, but his wits had saved his life. He had said that his Führer’s need of reliable troops was much greater than the Reichsführer’s and that Himmler’s personal bodyguard, consisting of a whole battalion of crack S.S. men, was at Hohenlychen doing nothing. His idea had been to go and fetch it and he was in civilian clothes because that would give him a better chance of getting through the Russian lines.
Hoegl had begun to report having found Gregory tied to a chair in Grauber’s apartment. But by then Hitler had appeared so near collapse that Eva Braun had insisted that he should go to bed. Supported by her he had staggered off, but shouted over his shoulder that Grauber was to be deprived of his rank and placed under arrest until his questionable conduct could be gone into further. So the ex-Obergruppenführer was now a prisoner locked in a cell in one of the outer bunkers.
The news that came in continued to be as black as ever. The Allies were advancing rapidly on all fronts, Russian shells were now falling in the Chancellery garden and their troops were said to have captured Potsdam. Yet Hitler continued to cling to the idea that General Wenck’s Army would rescue him.
Then in the evening he received his most terrible blow. Heinz Lorenz arrived from the ruins of the Propaganda Ministry. With him he brought a transcript of a broadcast that had just been put out by the B.B.C. It was a full report of Himmler’s negotiations with Count Bernadotte.
When given the news by the eager Bormann, Hitler broke into agonising wails. ‘Der treue Heinrich,’ of all people, had betrayed him. It was unthinkable, yet incontestable. Soon his distress gave place to fury. As he mouthed curses, his face became almost unrecognisable. He saw everything now. Steiner was one of Himmler’s men. It was on Himmler’s orders that the General had refrained from launching the attack that could have saved Berlin. It had been a deliberate plot to ruin him. Suddenly he remembered Grauber and gave orders that Heinrich Mueller, the Chief of the Political Police, should interrogate him.
Hoegl told Gregory afterwards that when they went into Grauber’s cell his sagging face had broken out in a sweat of terror, and that in twenty hours he had lost at least two stones of his surplus fat. They had carried out the usual drill of beating the calves of his legs with steel rods until he could no longer stand, pulling out his fingernails and so on, and had extracted a confession from him. He had admitted that for weeks past he had known of Himmler’s negotiations with Count Bernadotte and in a desperate attempt to escape further torment he had even invented a story that in exchange for a guarantee that his own life should be spared Himmler had offered to hand Hitler’s corpse over to the Allies.
On receiving Mueller’s report Hitler flared, ‘So the fat swine was aware of all this yet did not tell us. Take him up to the garden and shoot him!’
Gregory was by then so drained of emotion that he could not even take pleasure in the thought that his incredibly brutal and malicious enemy was to die; so although he had intended to witness the execution he was not particularly sorry when, as he was watching Grauber, now a gibbering wreck, being dragged by the guards up the concrete stairs, he was sent for by the Führer.
After referring briefly to Gregory’s having been kidnapped the previous night, Hitler said, ‘I am now taking the necessary steps to prepare for my end. No leader has ever been served as badly as myself or suffered so many betrayals. Yet I still have a few friends who have demonstrated their loyalty by expressing a wish to take their lives at the same time as I take mine. You, Herr Major, came into my life too late for me to bestow on you such honours and rewards as I would have liked to do; but you have been a great support to me in these past terrible weeks, and it has occurred to me that I may be able to show my gratitude to you later. I refer, of course, to your being reincarnated with me on Mars. To ensure there is no time lag and your being reborn there about the same time as myself, it has occurred to me that you may wish to join those who are about to leave this earth with me.’
Completely taken aback by this horrifying invitation, Gregory did his utmost to prevent his features from showing his true feelings. Hastily stammering out that it had been a great privilege to have been of service to his Führer, he rallied his tired wits to take a quick decision. It was that he dared not refuse to play the game out, and could only pray that he would escape this new threat to his life by Hitler giving an example to the rest and taking his own life first. In a steadier voice he added:
‘Mein Führer, I seek no reward. But it would be an honour to die in your company.’
‘Good! Good!’ said Hitler cheerfully. ‘I expected no less of you.’ Then he took from his pocket a poison capsule and pressed it into Gregory’s hand.
By then it was a little after midnight and von Greim and Hannah Reitsch were about to leave the bunker. In anticipation of their departure everyone had been writing farewell letters to their relatives for Hannah to take with her; and now Hitler went into von Greim’s room to give him his last instructions. Both the newly created Field Marshal and Hannah expressed the opinion that it was no longer possible to escape from Berlin by air and begged to be allowed to remain and die with their Führer. But he insisted on their going.
When they had left he was suddenly seized by a fit of renewed confidence. He announced that his intuition told him that von Greim would get through and carry out his orders. These had been to arrest the treacherous Himmler and use the whole of the Luftwaffe to support Wenck’s Army. Von Greim, he said, was a very different man from that decadent traitor Goering. He would put new life into the Luftwaffe and it would now cover itself with glory. The bridges over the Havel were still being held. Under cover of the Luftwaffe Wenck would reach Berlin and save them all.
To Gregory’s despair there was no more talk of suicide. Instead the Führer declared his intention of conferring the status she had long desired on his faithful friend of many years. He meant to marry Eva Braun. A minor official named Walter Wagner, whom nobody knew but who was competent to perform a civil marriage, was produced by Goebbels. The ceremony took place in the narrow map room with Goebbels and Bormann as witnesses. So, at long last, Eva Braun became Frau Hitler.
Afterwards they came out into the conference passage and shook hands with everybody, then retired to their private rooms for the wedding breakfast to which Hitler invited the two witnesses, Frau Goebbels and his two women secretaries.
Gregory got away as soon as he could to find that Erika, having slept for a good part of the day, was sitting up waiting for him, and that she and Malacou were all ready to start, as had been agreed the previous morning.
As gently as he could, he broke it to her that he still could not leave. Having told her about Grauber’s end, the marriage and the poison capsule, he stilled her new fears for him by saying that he meant to empty the capsule of its deadly contents and refill it with water then, if he were forced to swallow it, throw a fit and sham dead. As she sighed with relief, he went on:
‘The last thing I heard before leaving the bunker was that von Greim got away safely after all. He is a fanatic and he’ll sacrifice every ’plane in the Luftwaffe in an attempt to save Hitler. If with von Greim’s help Wenck succeeds in reaching Berlin the odds are that Hitler will be tempted to abandon his alternative plan of committing suicide. I’ve simply got to stay and persuade him that it is not in his own best interests to cling on to life for another few months. Maybe as many as a million lives depend on that.’
Erika sighed. ‘Of course you are right, darling. You are playing for such tremendous stakes that we mustn’t even think of our own lives. All the same if I stay here for another twenty-four hours I may be dead next time you get back. The Russian shells have been coming over all day at the rate of one a minute. Half the roof of the house has gone and three fell in the garden. But don’t think I’m suggesting leaving you. I’ll never do that.’
After a moment’s thought Gregory said, ‘Look, central Berlin is now the Russians’ main target. The city is vast and they can’t possibly have enough guns to bombard the suburbs with anything like the same intensity. Why shouldn’t you and Malacou take your van out to Sabine’s villa? He knows how to find it and you would be much safer there.’
‘That’s certainly an idea,’ Erika agreed. Then she added with a smile, ‘But don’t you think your girl friend might spit in my eye?’
‘Of course not; since for your part you’ve already said you are willing to bury the hatchet. She will be only too pleased to see you, because it will be a guarantee to her that when we do make our attempt to get through the Russian lines we will take her with us.’
When full daylight came they roused themselves from their few hours of troubled sleep. Erika dressed herself in her nurse’s uniform and Malacou, as calm as ever, loaded into the Red Cross van all the oddments they thought might prove useful. Gregory promised to join them as soon as he possibly could and, after a heartrending parting from Erika, waved them away on their perilous journey.
Over in the bunker he found nearly everyone still asleep. The wedding party had gone on till dawn. After Gregory had left, Krebs, Burgdorf, von Below and the vegetarian cook had all been called in to join those already with the newly-weds. They had drunk lashings of champagne while talking of the glories of the Nazi rallies at Nuremberg in the old days and of how Hitler had been Goebbels’ best man.
It emerged that, at intervals between declaiming to his friends, Hitler had dictated his personal will and a testament addressed to the German people. But this did not prevent him from holding his usual midday conference.
Reports were made at it that the Russians had advanced in Charlottenburg and in Grunewald and had taken the Anhalter Station. Gregory, hovering with other adjutants in the outer side of the partition, learned, too, that the Russians had established themselves in force in Potsdam. At that piece of news his stomach contracted and he was almost sick from apprehension; for Sabine’s villa was less than half the distance from Potsdam than it was from central Berlin. Erika was on her way there and there was no possible means by which he could recall her.
When he managed to concentrate again, from the hushed and stilted conversation of his companions he took in the fact that the Führer, in his will, had appointed Admiral Doenitz as his successor and that three copies of the will had been sent off that morning by Lorenz, Johannmeier and Bormann’s adjutant, Zander. Also that Hitler’s imitator in immolating a nation for his own glorification, Mussolini, had been caught by partisans and shot the previous day. A mob in Milan had later kicked his body and that of his mistress, Clara Petacci, to pulp, then hung them up by the ankles.
Soon afterwards three other officers were called in to the conference: von Loringhoven, Weiss and Boldt. No news had been received from General Wenck and, at Burgdorf’s suggestion, these three were to be despatched in an attempt to get through the enemy lines and urge Wenck to hurry, otherwise the Chancellery might be captured before he reached it.
That afternoon von Below had the courage to go in to the Führer and ask permission to leave. Hitler was then in one of his calm spells and readily agreed; but added that he must wait until after the evening conference to take, if he could, a despatch to Keitel at the OKW headquarters, which had now been moved to Ploen in Schleswig-Holstein.
The long, terrible hours dragged by while the Russian shells crumped into the upper storeys of the Chancellery. At ten o’clock the evening conference began. General Weidling reported that the Hitler Youth still held the bridges over the Havel, but that the Russians had penetrated as far as the Wilhelmstrasse and almost reached the Air Ministry. Later Krebs came out, handed von Below a despatch and, in case he had to destroy it, told him its contents. They were to the effect that the situation in Berlin was now desperate, they could no longer hope that General Wenck would come to their rescue, and the Russians would capture the Chancellery within twenty-four hours. But the Führer expected the troops on all fronts to fight to the last man.
To the envy of most of the others who, had they dared, would willingly have risked death in the streets rather than remain with their mad Führer in the bunker, von Below said good-bye to his friends and set off into the flame-torn darkness.
The score of men and women left in the bunker had received orders that they were not to go to bed; so they stood about, drinking heavily. At last, at half past two in the morning, Hitler emerged and took a ceremonial farewell of them all. He shook hands with everybody, but his eyes were glazed with a film of moisture, his walk was unsteady, he seemed dazed and could do no more than mumble inaudible replies to those who spoke to him.
When he had retired they continued to stand about, expecting to hear the shot that would release them from their thraldom. But no shot came. Instead, the Führer’s valet emerged with an order. In the upper basement there was a canteen for the use of the guards and orderlies. With the desperation of despair they were holding a dance and the strains of the music were penetrating to the bunker. Hitler had sent out to say that the music must be toned down because it prevented him from getting to sleep.
Some of his staff lurched drunkenly up the stairs to join the dancers. Gregory, with the awful feeling that this nightmare would never end, went to von Below’s now vacant bunk, flung himself fully dressed upon it and fell into a troubled doze.
Next day, the 30th April, the old iron routine was followed, just as though Hitler were still directing armies fighting on fronts many hundreds of miles from the capital. But for once he listened in silence to the reports of the Generals, who were now conducting the defence of central Berlin. Overnight the enemy had captured the whole of the Tiergarten and reached the Potsdamer Platz. The underground railway tunnel in the Friedrichstrasse was in their hands and they were fighting their way through the Voss Strasse tunnel towards the Chancellery.
At two o’clock Hitler had lunch with his two women secretaries and his cook, while Eva remained in her room. Over the meal he conversed quite normally, but before it he had made his final preparations. The guards had been told that they were not to enter the bunker again and his chauffeur, Erik Kempka, had carried two hundred litres of petrol up to the Chancellery garden in preparation for the funeral pyre.
After lunch Hitler came out into the passage with Eva and they again shook hands with all those who had remained to the last. They then returned to their suite. At two-thirty a single shot was heard. For a few minutes those outside stood as though petrified, then they went in. Hitler had shot himself through the roof of the mouth. Eva was also dead, but she had taken poison.
The Devil’s emissary who, for so many years, possessed by the spirit of Evil, had done his work in the world so well had, at last, gone to join his Infernal Master. It was as though an almost tangible black cloud, that had stifled clear thought, honest aspirations and all humane instincts, had suddenly been lifted from the bunker. The place had been reeking with treachery, fear, cruelty, blood-lust, and suddenly the atmosphere they breathed had become clean again.
They looked at one another in astonishment, seeing faces they hardly recognised because the features had become relaxed and the eyes no longer held the wary glint of animals intent only on self-preservation.
Smoking had never been permitted in the vicinity of the Führer, but one of them lit a cigarette. The others quickly produced their cases and followed suit. Calmly, not even bothering to bow their heads, they watched the guards carry the bodies of Hitler and Eva up to the garden to be burned.
Goebbels heavily declared that there was now nothing left to live for; so he meant to honour his promise to Hitler that he would kill his wife and children and himself. Krebs and Burgdorf agreed that it was better to put bullets through their brains than risk falling into the hands of the Russians. But the others were throwing away the poison capsules that Hitler had given them. Bormann had already begun to draft a telegram to Doenitz as a first move in an attempt to establish a similar relationship with the new Führer to that he had had with the old. The rest were eagerly discussing the chances of escaping through the Russian lines that night under cover of darkness.
Gregory, knowing that the Russians had captured Potsdam on the previous day, was almost off his head with fear that by this time they might have reached Sabine’s villa. Reports were coming in from all the suburbs overrun by the Russians that their brutal Mongolian troops were shooting every man and raping every woman that they captured. If they had advanced up the east shore of the Havel, what might now be happening to Erika, Sabine and Trudi did not bear thinking about.
As long as some eleventh-hour twist in Hitler’s disordered mind might have led him to attempt to leave Berlin and, perhaps, owing to the dark power that had so often protected him, succeed in reaching Bavaria where he would have bludgeoned the German Armies into fighting on, Gregory had felt it his inescapable duty to remain. But now that malignant beast in human form was dead nothing would have induced Gregory to postpone until darkness his bid to save Erika.
Without a word of farewell to anyone, he ran up the stairs and snatched from a pigeonhole in the arms depository the first pistol he could lay his hand on. Deciding to leave by the way the officers sent off on the previous day had taken, he ran on through the empty echoing corridors to the back of the building, where the garages faced on to the Hermann Goering Strasse.
A pall of smoke hung low over the city and the air stank from the fumes of high explosives. There were great holes in the road from one of which a burst water main was fountaining. Broken paving stones and shell splinters littered the sidewalks. In three directions flames from burning buildings lit up the sulphurous clouds with an orange glow. The noise from bursting shells was deafening but through it came the clatter of machine guns: a clear indication that the Russians had that morning fought their way to within a few hundred yards of the Chancellery. From close at hand there came the dull rumble of falling masonry. It seemed impossible that anyone could remain alive for more than a few minutes in the flaming heart of the stricken city. But great love begets great courage. Without hesitation Gregory plunged into the inferno.