All firing had now ceased. If the attackers were the twelve that Rahn had seen at Wewelsburg, then with Müller that made thirteen, eight of whom, including Müller, were now either dead or incapacitated. That left five against Kelly’s four. The game was over.
The sudden roar of engines being started from behind the barn was followed by a convoy of three cars streaming out of the farm gate and heading at high speed south down Lenggriesser Strasse.
Kelly clattered down the stairs, calling to the others, “Right, everybody out! Into the car! We don’t want the authorities finding us anywhere near this place—we are way out of our jurisdiction.”
All with the exception of Rahn clambered into the car. Rahn took a moment to check on Gardermann, who was quite unresponsive. The man and the beast together in death. Rahn genuflected and said a silent prayer before joining the others. The car was a quarter of a mile up Lenggriesser Strasse, heading north towards Munich, before he managed to close his door fully.
The End?
The russet browns and drab greens of Kelly’s camouflage jacket blended perfectly with the rustic, autumnal surroundings of the woods where he now lay. A green beret, devoid of any identifying cap badge, hid his blond hair, and smears of camo paint covered his face. His precious Lee Enfield rifle was wrapped in hessian to prevent reflection from its metal surfaces. To anyone more than ten yards away, he was invisible.
Following the ambush at Gardermann’s farm, Kelly had debriefed his team on arrival in their Munich hotel. They knew they had had a lucky escape. If it hadn’t been for the farmer’s kindness in inviting them in for coffee, well, who knows?
Kelly had hoped to get some inkling of Müller’s whereabouts. He was convinced that Müller was the key to this whole affair. Manteufel had reported that Gardermann’s prevarication over the picture had convinced him that he knew Müller, and probably knew where he was. They had certainly discovered Müller’s whereabouts in a surprisingly short time after that, when he and his dozen Nazi thugs had attacked them in the farmhouse.
Müller had been hit—there was no doubt of that—and was therefore in all probability hors de combat, and consequently lying low. It was unlikely he would be leading them to their target any time soon.
In a sudden fit of frustration, Kelly had asked, “Billa, you’re a woman. Imagine you’ve just returned from abroad to give birth to your firstborn … where would you go?”
Sybilla shrugged but answered immediately. “If I had a mother, I would go to her, probably. Speaking personally, I would go to my sister Inga.”
“Billa is right,” commented Rahn, “but she wouldn’t have gone there immediately she returned to Germany. That would have been too obvious. She probably gave birth under the protection and care of Maria Orsic or one of her Vril Maidens, but eventually she would have made contact with her close family, if not to live with them then certainly to visit occasionally.”
“My money would be on Gretl, her sister—they were very close,” observed Manteufel.
There followed a frenetic period of research as the team, using military archives and municipal records, traced the whereabouts of the Braun family post war. After locating all known close relatives of Eva Braun, they started their surveillance with Ilse, the eldest of the three sisters. The decision to target Ilse had been as a result of Rahn’s analysis. He conceded Manteufel’s point that Eva and Gretl were very close, but pointed out that on the two occasions in the past when Eva Braun had tried to take her own life, it had been Ilse who had found her, administered first aid and cared for her during her recovery. It showed, he felt, that Ilse had recognised a fragility, a weakness in Eva—and, as her older sister, was determined to care for her. Who better, then, for Eva to turn to in a crisis?
They found Ilse, now forty-two, living in an apartment block in Munich. She had few regular visitors, although a man identified as ‘Rudi’ by a local woman Rahn had spoken to, did seem to be one such. She did not appear to have married again and was still using the surname Fucke-Michels of her last husband. Kelly even went to the extreme of renting a room in a hotel opposite the apartment block in order to see into her rooms with a high-power telescope. There was no sign of any visitors even remotely matching the description of Eva Braun, even allowing for elaborate disguises. After a week they moved on to the next target.
Manteufel was adamant that if Eva was living with a family member, it would be Gretl. The two had shared the same bedroom in their parents’ home, had shared a flat in Munich and later, Hitler had—obliquely through Heinrich Hoffmann—obtained a villa for the girls also in Munich. Gretl had frequently stayed at the Berghof and had, for a few months in 1945, stayed at the Reich Chancellery where Manteufel had personally met them both. They were inseparable, he maintained.
The apartment that Gretl occupied was in a block in the western area of Munich, part of a much larger residential complex. Several such apartment blocks had been built in a square formation, enclosing a central communal space of lawns and leisure areas. Whilst it was easy to set up a watch on the front entrance of the building, watching this internal area was troublesome. Entering the area presented no difficulty—a number of shops and a café in the space were open to the public at large—but maintaining a presence without becoming conspicuous was a real challenge. They overcame the problem by varying the
