catch. “To make your pistol safe. Otherwise you might blow your toe off, sir. I’ve seen it happen.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Thank you, Schellenberg.” Himmler swallowed uncomfortably. “I never shot anyone before.”
“No, Herr Reichsfuhrer,” said Schellenberg. “It’s not a pleasant thing to have to do.”
He glanced down at Wagner, shook his head, and lit another cigarette, reflecting that there were many worse ways to get it if you had been stupid enough to incur the wrath of Heinrich Himmler. When you had seen Russian POWs doing hard labor in the quarry at Mauthausen you knew that for a fact. Following the attempt on Schellenberg’s life in Himmler’s private plane, a discreet investigation had revealed Ulrich Wagner had been the only one who could have telephoned Hoffmann at Tempelhof Airport and alerted him that there was something in Schellenberg’s briefcase that had a bearing on the secret peace negotiations being conducted by Felix Kersten. As soon as Wagner had seen the Swedish currency on the cashier’s desk in the Ministry of the Interior, he would have known Schellenberg’s destination. And then there was the fact that before joining Himmler’s personal staff, Wagner had worked in Munich for the Criminal Police Council at a time when the senior police counselor had been Heinrich Muller, now chief of the Gestapo. It seemed that Ulrich Wagner had been Muller’s spy on Himmler’s personal staff for years. Not that there was any real proof of Muller’s direct involvement. Besides, Himmler had no wish to bring formal charges against the Gestapo chief; that would be to risk exposing the complete history of Kersten’s peace negotiations, about which the Fuhrer was, perhaps, still unaware.
“What shall we do with the body?” asked Brandt.
“Leave it,” said Himmler. “Let the beasts of the forest have him. We shall see if Muller’s Gestapo is equal to the task of finding him here.”
“So close to the Wolfschanze?” Schellenberg asked. “It’s probably the last place they’ll think of looking.”
“So much the better,” sneered Himmler, and led the way back to the car.
They drove on and reached a turnpike barrier across the road. It was manned by four SS men. All four recognized the Reichsfuhrer but went through the motions of checking his identity, asking for SS paybooks and Fuhrer visitor chits. Their papers were examined again at a second checkpoint, and the duty officer in the guardhouse telephoned ahead and then told Himmler that his party would be met by the Fuhrer’s ADC at the Tea House. Waving the car through into Security Zone 2, the officer smiled politely and administered his usual warning before giving the Hitler salute.
“If your car breaks down, sound the horn and we’ll come and get you. Above all else, stay with the car and don’t ever leave the road. This whole area is mined and observed by hidden marksmen who have strict orders to shoot anyone who strays from the road.”
They drove on until a barbed-wire fence and a few buildings came into view. Some had grass growing on their flat roofs; some were covered with camouflage nets to help hide them from reconnaissance planes. It was only after a third checkpoint that the car finally reached Restricted 1, which was the most secure zone of the three.
Anyone seeing R1 for the first time would have compared the Fuhrer’s Prussian HQ to a small town. Covering an area of 250 hectares and made up of 870 buildings-most of them private concrete bunkers for various party leaders-R1 at the Wolfschanze included a power station, a water supply, and an air-purification installation. The Fuhrer HQ was an impressive-looking redoubt, although to Schellenberg’s more sybaritic sensibilities it was difficult to see why anyone would have wanted to stay more than one night in such a place, let alone the six hundred nights Hitler had spent there since July 1941.
Himmler’s party left their cars parked inside the gate and walked toward the Tea House, a wooden Hansel- and-Gretel sort of building opposite the bunkers of Generals Keitel and Jodl, where the General Staff took their meals, when they were not obliged to dine with the Fuhrer. Inside, the Tea House was plainly furnished with a dull boucle carpet, several leather armchairs, and a few tables. But for the presence of several officers awaiting their arrival, it might have passed for a common room in a Roman Catholic seminary. Among the waiting officers were two of Hitler’s personal adjutants, SS-Gruppenfuhrer Julius Schaub and Gruppenfuhrer Albert Bormann. Schaub, the chief of the adjutants, was a clerkish, mild-mannered man who wore spectacles and managed to look like Himmler’s elder brother; both his feet had been injured in the Great War and he used a pair of crutches to get about the FHQ. Albert Bormann was the younger brother of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary and the man who controlled everything that happened at the Wolfschanze. He was also his elder sibling’s bitter rival.
“How are things in Berlin?” Schaub asked.
“There was a bombing raid last night,” Schellenberg answered. “Nothing much. Eight Mosquitoes, I believe.”
Schaub nodded politely. “We tend not to mention bombing raids to the Fuhrer. It only depresses him. Unless of course he asks about them specifically. Which he won’t.”
“I have better news, I think,” said Himmler, who had recovered a bit of his former color since murdering his subordinate. “Last night we shot down a Wellington over Aachen. The five thousandth Bomber Command aircraft shot down since the start of the war. Remarkable, is it not? Five thousand.”
“Please tell the Fuhrer,” said Schaub.
“I intend to.”
“Yes. Five thousand. That will cheer him up.”
“How is he?”
“Concerned about the situation in the Crimea,” said Schaub. “And in Kiev. General Manstein thinks Kiev is more important. But the Fuhrer favors the Crimea.”
“Can we offer you gentlemen any refreshment?” Albert Bormann asked. “A drink, perhaps?”
“No, thank you,” said Himmler, answering for himself and Schellenberg, who had been about to ask for a coffee. “We’re quite all right for now.”
They left the Tea Room and headed further into the FHQ, where all was bustle and activity. There was a lot of construction work under way-to increase the strength of existing bunkers and to construct new ones. Polish workers trudged by with barrow loads of cement; others shouldered planks of wood. Schellenberg reflected that security was being defeated by the very effort being made to increase it. Any one of the hundreds of laborers who were at work in Restricted 1 could have smuggled a bomb into the Wolf’s Lair. Not to mention the General Staff in attendance, who had no great love for Adolf Hitler, not since Stalingrad, anyway. While it was customary to leave hats, belts, and pistols on a rack outside the Fuhrer Bunker, briefcases were permitted, and no one ever searched these. His own briefcase contained a second pistol and the plans for Operation Long Jump, and had not been examined since his arrival in Rastenburg. It might easily have also contained a hand grenade or a bomb.
The Fuhrer Bunker was one hundred meters north of the Tea House. As they neared it, Schellenberg continued to dwell on the security system at Rastenburg. How might one have set an assassination in motion? A bomb would be the best way, there could be no doubt about that. Like every other bunker at the Wolfschanze, the Fuhrer Bunker was aboveground, with no tunnels or secret passages. To offset this, it was covered with at least four or five meters of steel-reinforced concrete. Most important of all, there were no windows. This meant that the blast of any bomb detonating inside Hitler’s bunker would have nowhere to go but inward, actually creating a more lethal effect than had the building been made of wood.
An Alsatian bitch gamboled up to Himmler, its tail wagging amiably, prompting the Reichsfuhrer to stop and greet the animal like an old friend. “It’s Blondi,” he said, patting Hitler’s dog on the head and prompting Schellenberg to glance around for her master.
“We’re looking for a boyfriend for Blondi,” said Albert Bormann. “The Fuhrer wants Blondi to have some puppies.”
“Puppies, eh? I hope I can have one. I should like to have one of Blondi’s puppies,” Himmler said.
“I think it’s safe to assume that everyone would,” said a short, stocky man with round shoulders and a bull neck, who had just arrived on the scene. It was Martin Bormann, which meant the Fuhrer could not be far away. Hearing heels clicking to attention, Schellenberg looked to the left and saw Hitler coming toward them through the trees. “Everyone would like a puppy from the most famous dog in the world.”
Schellenberg jumped to attention, extending his right arm straight in front of him as, with slow steps, Hitler approached, his own arm partially raised. The Fuhrer was wearing black trousers, a simple open-necked field-gray uniform jacket that revealed a white shirt and tie, and a soft, rather misshapen officer’s cap that had been chosen for comfort as opposed to style. On the left breast pocket of his tunic he wore an Iron Cross First Class, won during the Great War, together with the black ribbon denoting someone who had been wounded, and a gold party badge.
