The Hunt

“If I am to be shot, tell Adolf to do it himself,” Rohm said arrogantly.

“Suit yourself,” Vierhaus said and whirling around, he stalked crablike out of the cell. When he got upstairs, Theodor Eicke was waiting for him. Vierhaus shrugged.

“Obstinate to the end,” he said. “Do it.”

They waited fifteen minutes. Then Eicke checked the clip in his Luger and charged a round into the chamber.

“Heil Hitler,” he said.

“Heil Hitler,” Vierhaus answered.

Eicke went down into the musky, dark, basement cell. The guards watched him as he came down the steps, silhouetted against the sunlight on the first floor, a burly angel of death, gun in hand. He said nothing. He walked to Rohm’s cell and nodded. The guard opened the door.

Rohm looked up as he entered.

“Well, my friend the exterminator,” he said. “So old Adolf does not have the guts to do it himself.’

“Chief of Staff, get ready,” Eicke said.

Rohm threw back his head.

“Mein Fuhrer, mein Fuhrer! Heil Hitler!” Rohm yelled.

The pistol roared in Eicke’s fist. The first shot hit Rohm in the chest.

“Oh!” he cried out. He looked down with surprise at the wound. Eicke shot him again. A second hole burst open beside the first, knocking him on his side. He started to get up again, his head dangling, blood trickling from his nose.

Eicke stepped closer and shot Rohm in the temple. Rohm’s head snapped sideways and he stiffened. Every muscle seemed to tense up. Eicke stood over him. He was about to fire a fourth shot when he heard Rohm’s breath rush out and saw his body go limp.

A few minutes later, Vierhaus entered Hitler’s office.

“Rohm is finished,” he said.

Hitler glowered from beneath bunched eyebrows. There was a moment when he might have felt fleeting remorse hut it quickly passed. He nodded.

“So . . . the opera is over,” he said. And then slowly he clapped his hands together.

“Bravo.

And now he is in control of the German Army, Vierhaus thought to himself. Now the police are under the control of Himmler. In one night, Hitler has eradicated the heart and soul of the SA and almost all of his outspoken political opponents. He is absolute master of Germany. Now all of Europe is within his grasp.

Hitler looked up at Vierhaus, his eyes glittering, his blood lust still not sated.

“Now bring me the Black Lily,” he said.

Jenny left the hotel before eight A.M. and took three different taxis on the way to her destination. It was a trick she learned from Avrum, paying ahead of time, jumping out suddenly, dodging through buildings, taking another taxi, then repeating the same procedure again. She did not check to see if someone was following her; she just assumed someone was, just as she had when she was passing out leaflets and circulating The Berlin Conscience. Finally she took the Boulevard Ney south around the perimeter of the city, past the Arc de Triomphe to Montparnasse and walked two blocks to a small cafe on Rue Long- champs. She bought the morning paper and took a table in the back, from which she could watch the door. She ordered coffee.

She was shocked when she opened the paper. The story was bannered on the front page.

HUNDREDS DIE IN NAZI MASSACRE

What surprised her even more than the lead story was a guest column on the front page by Bert Rudman. Why didn’t he call them with this news? she wondered. Then she smiled ruefully to herself, remembering that she and Kee had made love until early morning and that he had left word at the desk to hold all calls.

Bert Rudman’s commentary on Operation Kolibri was on the front page just under the main story, bordered in black and labeled Commentaire.

BERLIN, GERMANY,JULY 1.

Last night, in this land of Brahms and Beethoven, of Viennese waltzes and Dresden china, the word fratricide was redefined in a bloodbath the scope of which has not been seen in modern times.

In 1920, then university student Rudolf Hess, now Hitler’s second in command, wrote in an essay:

“Great questions of the day will always be settled by blood and iron. Hitler does not shrink from bloodshed. To reach his goal, he is prepared to demolish even his closest friends.”

How prophetic.

In one ghastly night of homicide, Adolf Hitler turned the dagger of deceit on his friend, Ernst Rohm, and the brownshirt legions that helped propel him to power. Germany’s leader ordered his personal guards, the SS, to execute hundreds of brownshirt leaders, one of whom was Rohm, the pedophile warrior he once called friend and comrade.