'May fifteenth,' Hess replied more confidently, recalling the date from
Directive 21.
'No! Our tanks will roll on the fifteenth, but the invasion of Soviet
Russia be ins with your mission, Rudi! On the tenth of May!
One year to the day after we marched on France! Just as before!'
Hess felt a wild thrill of foreboding, a tangible sense of destiny, as
if Fate herself had materialized in the room.
'It is all preordained!' Hitler cried, flinging his arms toward the
ceiling. His mesmerizing voice filled the salon, brimming with the
conviction of a prophet. 'On the tenth of May you will secure our
western flank, and on the fifteenth we shall wipe the plague of
communism from the planet! By Christmas of this year, Greater Germany
will extend from the English Channel to the Ural Mountains and it will
be settled by pure German stock!'
Hess's ears roared with excitement. Only slowly did he become aware of
an insistent knocking at the door. It might have been going on for a
full minute. He slipped the manila envelope into his coat pocket as
Hitler opened the door.
it was Bormann again, but this time Hess's deputy hesitated in the
doorway. Hitter smoothed his black forelock and looked into Hess's
eyes. 'You will take care of that today, Rudi?'
'Immediately.'
'Excuse me, my Fuhrer,' Bonnann interrupted, 'General Halder is
waiting.'
'Let him wait!' Hitler bellowed. 'Escort the Deputy Fuhrer to his car,
Bonnann.'
'Heil Hitler!' Bormann clicked his jackboots together, turned, and
marched down the hall.
'I'm going up to change clothes, Rudi,' Hitler said softly.
'I cannot let my generals see me like this. They'll think they can run
right over me in the conference.'
Hitler looked embarrassed by the confidence. Hess grinned and waved him
out. It had been good to see the old Hitler for a few the old spring
jacket and tie could not revoke a the steps they had taken in the
intervening years. T se steps were written in blood and fire, and they
could only be erased by more of the same.
Bormann waited like a Dachshund at the end of the hall.
Hess felt a new and powerful sense of purpose in his tread as he
followed his deputy out of the Berghof. 'How are the children, Martin?'
he asked. Just now Hess could not have cared less, but since Bormann
had seen fit to name his offspring after Hess and his wife, he felt
obliged to ask.
'Rudi is strong as a bull,' Bonnann bragged over his shoulder.
'And Ilse is the very flower of German womanhood!'
Hess smiled wanly.
Outside, Bormann held open the door of Hess's brown Mercedes.
Hess sensed a kind of animal exultance in him now that the
interloper-Hess-was leaving. Unreasonably irritated, he cranked his
Mercedes and goosed the pedal a few times. The engine roared
responsively.
,is there anything I can do for you, Herr Reichminister?'
Bormann asked.
Hess considered ordering his deputy to call ahead and have his
Messer_chmitt readied, then thoukht better of it. He shifted into first
gear, all the while looking hard into Bormann's eyes. He could see the
arrogance lurking just behind the peasant face. Bormann wore power
clumsily, like all men unaccustomed to it. But the little rat was
learning.
By all reports, he was setting himself up as lord of Obersalzburg,
strengthening his position by acting as sole conduit between Hitler and
the outside world. One of Hess's secretaries had actually heard Frau
Goebbels whisper that Bormann's star had eclipsed Hess's in the Nazi
firmament.
'I see you still haven't finished the construction up here, Martin,'
Hess said breezily. He waved his hand toward a half-finished concrete
bunker.
'The Fuhrer's needs expand every day,' Bormann said proudly. 'I can
barely keep up with the demand, but I do my best.'
Hess forced a smile. 'There is something you can do for me, if you get
the time.'
'Anything,' said Bormann, with a nod of false obeisance.
With a casual motion Hess reached out of the car and caught Bormann by
the collar. one flex of his thickly muscled arm brought the shocked
Reichsleiter to his knees in the snow. Hess could feel the softness in
Bonnann, the boorish strength dissipated by alcohol and gluttony.
Bormann's piggish eyes bulged in terror.
'Never,' Hess said harshly, 'never forget who you are, Bormann.
You are my deputy, and as long as I live, that is all you will ever be.'
Hess roared away, leaving his stunned subordinate kneeling in the noon
snowmelt. He skidded to a stop at the inner perimeter gate.
'How long to call Munich?' he barked at a surprised SS private.
'We have a direct line, Herr Reichministert' Hess reeled off the number
of his office telephone.
'And the message, Herr Reichminister?'
Hess said nothing. To the sentry he seemed lost in a world of his own,
but the SS man was not about to rush the Deputy Fuhrer of the Reich.
Hess's brain was spinning. All the dark misgivings of the past few
months were lifting from his mind like bad dreams at the coming of dawn.
The road to Moscow would soon be open, and he was the man Adolf Hitler
had chosen to open it! Yet the vision Hess saw now was no epic scene of
conquest, not German legions crossing their Russian Rubicon.
He saw a very small section of a shadowy Munich street, in 1919.
It was on that street, and a hundred others like it, that the seeds of
the Nazi party had battled the communist gangs for control of postwar
Germany. It was to that street that a young Rudolf Hess had returned
one afternoon, to find that a communist gang had reached his local group
headquarters ahead of him. Hess had hidden and watched in horror as
heavily armed Red Guard ruffians loaded twenty of his friends into a
panel truck. Later that night the communists shot all of Hess's
