It's positively unnerving.' Then sharply, 'Is the plane ready, Berger?'
'I... I believe so, Herr@' 'TO your work, then!'
'Jawohl, Herr Reichminister!' Major Berger turned and marched toward
the crewmen, who now stood uncertainly against the fuel truck, waiting
for permission to return to Aalborg. Berger unclipped his Schmeisser
with one hand as he walked.
'All finished?' he called.
, 'Jawohl, Herr Major,' answered the chief mechanic.
'Fine, fine. Step away from the truck, please.' Berger raised the
stubby barrel of his Schmeisser.
'But ... Herr Major, what are you doing! What have we done? '
'A great service to your Fatherland,' the SS man said.
'Now-step awayfrom the truck!'
The crewmen looked at each other, frozen like terrified game.
Finally it dawned on them why Major Berger was hesitating. He obviously
knew something about the volatility of aircraft fuel vapor.
Backing closer to the truck, the chief mechanic clasped his greasy hands
together in supplication.
'Please, Herr Major, I have a family-2' The dance was over. Major
Berger took three steps backward and fired a sustained burst from the
Schmeisser. Hess screamed a warning, but it was too late. Used with
skill, the Schmeisser could be a precise weapon, but Major Berger's
skill was limited. Of a twelve-round burst, only four rounds struck the
crewmen. The remainder tore through the rusted shell of the fuel truck
like it was [email protected], The explosion knocked Major Berger a dozen feet
from where he stood. Hess and the.captain had instinctively dived for
the concrete. Now they lay prone, shielding their eyes from the flash.
When Hess finally looked up, he saw Major Berger silhouetted against the
flames, stumbling proudly toward them through a pall of black smoke,
'How about that!' the SS man cried, looking back at the inferno. 'No
evidence now!'
'Idiot!' Hess shouted. 'They'll have a patrol from Aalborg here in
five minutes to investigate!'
Berger grinned. 'Let me take care of them, Herr Reichminister!
The SS knows how to handle the Luftwaffe!'
Hess felt relieved; Berger was making it easy. Stupidity was something
he had no patience with. 'I'm sorry, Major,' he said, looking hard into
the SS man's face. 'I cannot allow that.'
Like a cobra hypnotizing a bird, Hess transfixed Berger with his dark,
deep-set eyes. Quite naturally, he drew a Walther automatic from the
forepouch of his flight su I it and pulled back the slide. The fat SS
man's mouth opened slowly; his hands hung limp at his sides, the
Schmeisser clipped uselessly to his belt.
'But why?' he asked quietly. 'Why me?'
'Something to do with Reinhard Heydrich, I believe.'
Berger's eyes grew wide; then they closed. His head sagged onto his
tunic.
'For the Fatherland,' Hess said quietly. He pulled the trigger.
The captain jumped at the report of the Walther. Major Berger's body
jerked twice on the ground, then lay still.
'Take his Schmeisser and any ammunition you can find,' Hess ordered.
'Check the Daimler.'
'Jawohl, Herr Reichminister!'
The next few minutes were a blur of action that both men would try to
remember clearly for the rest of their lives-plundering the corpse for
ammunition, searching the car, double-checking the drop tanks of the
aircraft, donning their parachutes, firing the twin Daimler-Benz
engines, turning the plane on the old cracked concrete-both men
instinctively carrying out tasks they had rehearsed a thousand times in
their heads, the tension compounded by the knowledge that an armed
patrol might arrive from Aalborg at any moment.
Before boarding the plane, they exchanged personal effects. Hess
quickly but carefully removed the validating items that had been agreed
upon: three compasses, a Leica camera, his wristwatch, some photographs,
a box of strange and varied drugs, and finally the fine gold
identification chain worn by all members of Hitler's inner circle.
He handed them to the captain with a short word of explanation for each:
'Mine, my wife's, mine, my wife and son . . .' The man receiving these
items already knew their history, but he kept silent. Perhaps, he
thought, the Reichminister speaks in farewell to all the familiar things
he might lose tonight. The captain understood that feeling well.
Even this strange and poignant ceremony merged into the mind-numbing
rush of fear and adrenaline that accompanied takeoff, and neither man
spoke again until they found themselves forty miles over the North Sea,
arrowing toward their target. As the plan dictated, Hess had yielded
the controls to the captain. Hess now sat in the radio operator's seat,
facing the twin tail fins of the fighter. The two men used no
names-only ranks-and limited their conversation to the mechanics of the
mission.
'Range?' the captain asked, tilting his head back toward the
rear-facing seat.
'Twelve hundred and fifty miles with the nine-hundredliter tanks,' Hess
replied.
'I meant range to target.'
'The island or the castle?'
'The island.'
'Six hundred and seventy miles.'
The captain asked no more questions for the next hour. He stared down
at the steadily darkening sea and thought of his family. Hess studied a
sheaf of papers in his lap: maps, photographs, and mini-biographies
secretly copied from SS files in the basement of the
Prinz-Albrechtstrasse. Ceaselessly, he went over each detail,
visualizing the contingencies he could face upon landing. A hundred
miles off the English coast, he began drilling the pilot in his duties.
'How much did they tell you, Hauptmann?'
'A lot. Too much, I think.'
'You see the extra radio to your right?'
'You can operate it?'
'if all goes well, you have only a few things to remember.
