The man patted down Wyatt’s jacket but found nothing. The letters were taken from his grasp.
“Let’s go,” the male said.
He was led away from the cafe toward a parked pickup truck. He climbed up. The two men with rifles followed, guarding him in a dirty bed that smelled of dung.
They drove from town into the woods beyond. Startled animals dodged in and out of the thickets on either side of the roadway. Some crossed the pavement at the outer reaches of the truck’s headlights, their amber eyes dancing like stars. He kept a close watch on the truck’s course and surmised that they were headed east, a wide plain ahead shimmering beneath a burnished moon. Occasionally, groves of trees disturbed the flatness with irregular shadows.
The truck left the tarred surface and bounced its way through tall grass toward one of the groves. He decided that the roughness of the terrain would work to his advantage. After a couple hundred yards the truck stopped just short of the trees. Before the man and the woman in the cab could climb out, he rammed his elbow into the face of the guard to his right. He wrenched the rifle away from the second man and caught him with a solid uppercut, sending the body over the side and down to the grass. He pointed the muzzle of the rifle at the other man still lying in the truck bed and turned his attention to the two from the cab.
But strangely they did nothing in retaliation.
“No need for that,” the driver said, pointing toward the trees. “There. He waits for you.”
Though he knew he shouldn’t, he allowed his eyes to follow the man’s finger to a tight grove of trees with a clearing in between. Beside a roaring fire stood a short, thin figure. No features were visible, only the blackened outline of his shrunken form.
Wyatt jumped from the truck, rifle in hand, and trudged through knee-high grass. As he drew closer, the crackling blaze soaked away the night’s chill. He saw that the fire was contained with a stone circle.
He kept the rifle pointed forward.
His chaotic thoughts sought unity.
“Good evening,” the old man said. “I am Gerhard Schub.”
He lowered the rifle and pictured in his mind the image of the virile soldier wearing an SS uniform, the one he’d seen on Isabel’s dresser.
Not the same person.
The old man huddled next to the fire, who now sat in a wooden slat chair, cast an unhealthy pallor. Sunken cheeks, veined eyes, a spent face. Two deep furrows tracked a path from his aquiline nose to the corner of his mouth. His bald pate and wiry frame carried the anemic look of someone not accustomed to the outdoors, though if he was Schub he would have spent a lifetime in the African sun. Mottled brownish blue age spots dotted his cheeks and forehead and the backs of his bony wrists. But it was the eyes that drew Wyatt, bright and alive, reminiscent of ashes glowing from a dimming fire, feverish in their admiration of the blaze.
“You can’t be Schub,” he said.
The gaze shifted from the fire. “No. I am not the man Isabel loved. He died long ago. But he was a good man, who lived a good life. So I took his name.” The rasp of cigarettes echoed in the voice.
“Who are you?”
“Did you know your father?”
He hesitated a moment, then said, “I did. We were actually close.”
“Did you admire him?”
“I did.”
“You’re lucky.”
Disdain filled the wizened face. “Isabel was a good woman. But she felt a great loyalty to the Third Reich. She met Gerhard Schub in Chile. They were both young, they fell in love. She also came to know Eva Braun. Schub was sent to Africa, by Isabel’s father, with Bormann and Braun. As you now know, he never returned to Chile.”
“You wanted me to find those letters?”
“They were left for you.”
“How did you know I would come back?”
Schub sat silent for a moment, then said, “There’s something you must know.”
And the older man spoke.
His tone hypnotic, funereal.
The words barely audible over the crackle of the flames.
April 30, 1945. The Fuhrer’s mood had progressively worsened since yesterday when the generals informed him that Berlin was lost and a counter-offensive, which he thought would save the Reich, had not been initiated. He became incensed on learning that Himmler was negotiating independently with the Allies for peace. That made him suspect everything related to the SS, including the cyanide capsules they had been supplied for the bunker.
“They are fakes,” he screamed. “The chicken farmer Himmler wants me taken alive so the Russians can display me like a zoo animal.”
He fingered one of the capsules and declared it nothing more than a sedative.
“Malignancy,” he lamented, “is rife.”
To be sure of the poison, he retreated to the surface and watched as a capsule was administered to his favorite Alsatian. The dog’s quick death seemed to satisfy him. The Fuhrer then descended into the bunker and presented his two personal secretaries with capsules, commenting that he wished he could have provided a better parting gift. They thanked him for his kindness and he praised their service, wishing his generals would have been as loyal.
Earlier, everyone had been summoned to the bunker. Hitler appeared with Bormann. His eyes carried the same hazy glaze of late, a lock of hair plastered to his sweaty forehead, and he shuffled in what appeared a painful stoop. Dandruff flecked his shoulders, thick as dust, and the right side of his body trembled uncontrollably. The German people would have been amazed to see the weakened condition of their Supreme Leader. The staff was assembled in a line, and the Fuhrer proceeded to shake each of their hands.
Bormann watched in silence.
Hitler muttered as he departed, “All is in order.”
The end was near. This man, who by sheer personality had so completely dominated a nation, was about to end his life. So much relief spread through the people present that they hurried to ground level and held a dance in the canteen of the Chancellory. Officers, who days before would not have even acknowledged those beneath them, shook hands with their subordinates. Everyone seemed to realize that postwar Germany was going to be greatly different.
By noon the news was not good.
Russian troops occupied the Chancellory. The Tiergarten had been taken. The Potsdamer Platz and Weidendammer Bridge were lost.
Hitler accepted the dismal report without emotion.
At 2:00 PM he took lunch with his secretaries and cook. His wife, Eva, who normally ate with Hitler, was not there. Their marriage was little more than a day old. Such an odd wedding. The din of battle. The concrete walls. A humid moldy aroma that stained everything with a stench of confinement. Both declared that they were of pure Aryan descent and free of hereditary disease. Goebbels and Bormann served as official witnesses. The bride and groom barely smiled.
A queer sort of fulfillment amid overwhelming failure.
After lunch Hitler and his wife appeared together, and all were summoned again. Another farewell occurred with little emotion, then the Fuhrer and Eva Braun returned to their quarters.
Within minutes a single gunshot was heard.
Bormann was the first into the room. A smell of cyanide smarted the eyes and forced a retreat while the air cleared. Hitler lay sprawled on the left side of the couch, a bullet hole the size of a silver mark in his skull.
Eva Braun lay on her right side.
A vase filled with tulips and white narcissi had fallen from an adjacent table, spilling water on her blue dress. There was no sign of blood upon her, but the remains of a glass ampule dotted her lips.
A woolen blanket was produced, and Hitler’s body was wrapped inside. The Fuhrer’s valet, Linge, and Dr.
