Стив Берри - The Kaiser's Web--A Novel

Voices broke the silence.

Whispers.

Like the gentle rustle of paper.

She crept forward, her pace as if walking on shards of glass. Her stomach tumbled with anxiety and she swiped the moisture from her eyes. She rounded a corner, and an open door appeared at the far end of the path.

More voices.

Kurt’s and Pohl’s.

Her legs were numb, her hands clammy. An unsettling fear gripped her entire body, similar to the day when she buried her parents.

She walked on without a sound to a doorway, then stopped short.

And listened as Kurt spoke.

Bormann watched as Eva Braun writhed and screamed in agony. The bitch was fighting the birth, though the midwife had cautioned her to relax. Her legs stiffened as another contraction racked her abdomen. She’d been nothing but difficult for the past few months. Pregnancy was not a condition she seemed to enjoy. But their constant movement had likewise complicated things.

They’d teamed up finally in Barcelona.

He’d come from the north, through Denmark and the Netherlands. She arrived from the south, starting in Switzerland and moving by rail into Italy, then across France. The Barcelona house had been used during the war and remained a secure location. Not taking any chances, he’d moved them farther into Spain, to an anonymous spot that he chose. The Führer was dead. He was in charge now.

And things were going to be different.

Braun screamed again.

He was tired of listening to her weakness. Women were so inept. Which was precisely why no fighting force in the world utilized them for anything beyond menial tasks. They were good for only one thing and that was precisely what Eva Braun was presently trying to perform.

Childbirth.

Braun screamed again.

“When will this end?” he asked the midwife. She was a Spaniard who thankfully spoke German.

“The baby is coming now.”

He stood behind the woman, whose head was plunged between Braun’s spread legs, each ankle tied to a post of the bed. Braun’s legs pulled on the bindings, but the thick posts held firm.

“Hurry it,” he said.

“Talk to God about that,” the midwife said, never turning her head from Braun’s writhing pelvis.

Another scream pierced the room. Thankfully, the farmhouse was isolated.

The midwife reached out as Braun gritted her teeth. “Now. Push with all you can muster.”

Braun’s head came up from the bed. For a moment Bormann’s gaze locked with hers. Interesting. No fear. Instead he sensed resolution. Then why temper that virtue with a submission to pain? He wanted to tell her to shut up and finish, but it seemed that the end was at hand. Braun’s teeth were clenched tight, her face contorted, all her focus seemingly on expelling the baby from her womb.

“Sí. Sí,” the midwife said.

Braun pushed even harder. Her breaths came short and shallow. Sweat glazed her brow. The woman grappled between Braun’s legs and he watched as a head became visible, then shoulders, arms, chest, and finally legs as the fetus emerged.

“What is the sex?” he asked.

The midwife ignored him. Her attention remained on the infant that was now cradled in her arms, the umbilical cord tracing a path back inside the womb. Braun had relaxed on the bed and appeared unconscious.

He could not see the baby clearly, so he moved closer.

“The sex. Tell me,” he demanded.

“A girl.”

Had he heard right? “Truly?”

“You sound amazed.”

He recovered his emotions. No one must know what he thought. “I only speak of the joy she will bring to the mother.”

“It is good to have a daughter.”

The midwife turned her attention back to Braun as the afterbirth was expelled.

He stepped away and considered reality.

Hitler’s daughter.

He recalled what his once Supreme Leader had told him after Braun had revealed in the Führerbunker that she was pregnant. There’d been no anger and no joy. Just a placid acceptance of another disappointment. But Hitler had wanted the baby to survive, harboring a dream of his issue one day resurrecting the movement. So he released Bormann from his duty to die and instructed him to ensure that both Braun and the baby survived. He’d accepted the charge only as a way of finally ridding himself of the yoke of death that remaining in Berlin would entail. He’d not wanted to stay in the first place and had urged Hitler to flee south to the Alps and the Redoubt.

But the fanatical idiot had refused.

Insanity.

Hitler actually thought that he could rally enough military might to thwart both the American and the Russian armies advancing across Germany.

He glanced down and noticed that the midwife had tied the umbilical cord and cut the tissue away from the baby. The infant started to cry, and the woman swiped the tiny face with a wet rag.

“She is a beauty,” the midwife said.

“No flaws?”

“None I can see. She is perfect.”

Not what he wanted to hear, but at least the child was female.

“Give her to me.”

The woman laid the screaming baby in his arms. Sparse wisps of black hair matted the scalp. The mouth was open as the baby shrieked her presence to the world. He wondered what Adolf Hitler would have thought to be here, holding his daughter, admiring what he and Eva Braun had conceived. Most likely the placid fool would have felt nothing, merely congratulating Braun on doing her duty and producing another loyal citizen of the Reich. Would it have mattered that the baby was not male? Surely, but he doubted that there would have been any more attempts. Hitler had always been drawn to children, but only because they represented the perfect frame for his perfect image to society. Hard to argue with a leader who surrounded himself with innocence. Now, staring down at the daughter Hitler would never know, he was more convinced than ever as to what needed to be done.

He laid the baby on the edge of the bed, beside a still-unconscious Eva Braun. He removed the Luger he’d carried since leaving the Führerbunker and fired one bullet into the midwife’s skull.

The woman’s body slammed to the floor.

Eva Braun never moved.

Exhaustion had claimed her.

She would be told that the baby died at birth and the midwife was killed for incompetence. There would be no argument from her. Why should there be? They were now bound together. Their lives forever intertwined.

And that was fine.

She wasn’t altogether unpleasant, and his ability to enjoy outside female companionship in the years ahead was, at best, limited. He must be careful. He’d watched how women could undo a man. That was not going to happen to him. Eva Braun would do as she was told or he’d plant a bullet in her skull, too.

He lifted the infant from the bed and walked from the room. Outside, in the shade of a porch that jutted from the front of the farmhouse, sat a man.

He handed him the baby. “Raise her as your own.”

The man’s eyes were misty with pride. “She is his?”

“Absolutely.”

“I heard a shot.”

“The midwife’s duty.”

The man seemed to understand. “There can be no witnesses.”

“Just you and me, old friend.”

“I will raise her well.”