Sam Eastland - Berlin Red

Growling under their breath, Berthold and Andreas turned and shoved their captives past the second barricade.

They left their bicycles propped against the felled trees of the roadblock and followed the policeman down the road.

‘And make sure they stay put!’ the officer called out before he climbed back into his bunker.

The truck which the captain had mentioned was hidden in the woods only a short walk down the road. It had been painted with a curious camouflage pattern, made from leafy branches which had been laid upon the metal bonnet and cowlings and then painted over with a lighter shade of green than the original colouring, leaving the silhouette of the branches behind when the second coat had dried.

Andreas climbed into the back, which was covered with a canvas roof. ‘In!’ he barked at the two men, motioning for them to climb aboard.

Sitting across from each on the hard wooden benches, Kirov and Pekkala were handcuffed to a metal rail which ran behind each bench.

Andreas patted Kirov gently on the face before climbing out of the truck. ‘Good night, gentlemen!’ he said, as he shuffled away through the leaves.

The sun was just rising over the shattered rooftops of Berlin when Leopold descended to Hitler’s private quarters on the fourth and deepest level of the bunker.

There, Hitler welcomed him into a small, cramped sitting room, whose space was largely taken up by a cream-white couch, a small coffee table and two chairs. Hitler was already dressed. He gave the impression of being a man who seldom slept at all, and Hunyadi suspected that this was not far from the truth.

Here, in the stark electric light, Hitler’s skin looked even paler and more bloodless than it had done in the Chancellery garden. He stooped as he moved about, as if, somehow, he felt the weight of the tons of earth between them and the ground above. He was dressed, as he had been before, in a pale green-grey double-breasted jacket, a white shirt and black trousers, neatly pressed.

‘So, Hunyadi!’ he growled, ‘have you caught our little songbird yet?’

Hunyadi was startled by the power in his voice. From his outward appearance, Hitler appeared as someone who could barely speak at all. ‘Not yet,’ he replied, ‘but I have learned a few things since we last spoke.’

Hitler held his arm out towards the couch and gestured at Hunyadi to sit. Hitler lowered himself down in one of the chairs, settled his elbows on to the wooden arms, and leaned forward expectantly.

Before Hunyadi could speak, a door on the far side of the sitting room opened and Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun, appeared, wearing a blue dress flecked with tiny white polka dots and low-heeled black shoes. She had a round, guileless-looking face, with a softly shaped chin and narrow, arching eyebrows. These were darker than her brownish-blonde hair, which had been combed back to reveal her forehead.

To Hunyadi, who immediately rose to his feet, she looked like she was getting ready to go to a party.

Behind her, through the open door, Hunyadi could see an unmade bed. But it was a small bed, and he struggled to imagine how two people could have fitted in it comfortably. The furnishings in the room – everything from the lampshade to the pictures on the walls – showed nothing that would indicate the presence of a man. Hunyadi wondered if they slept in separate rooms, even though both of them were crammed together in this dungeon. It may have been a well-decorated dungeon, but it was a dungeon, nevertheless.

Hitler’s relationship with Eva Braun was not widely known outside the bunker. She rarely appeared with him in public and it was only when her car was stopped for driving erratically across the Oberbauer Bridge, early in 1944, that Hunyadi had learned of her existence. The police officer who pulled her over, an old friend of Hunyadi’s named Rothbart, had been on the point of arresting the woman for being drunk behind the wheel, along with her loud and even more inebriated companions who occupied the back seat, when two carloads of SS security appeared to escort the woman away. Rothbart’s name, home address and service number were taken down by an irate SS officer, whose sleeve bore the black and silver cuff title of the Fuhrer’s Headquarters. Then, after warning Rothbart to keep his mouth shut, the officer helped the woman out of the driver’s seat, opened the rear door of the sedan and waited until she climbed in beside her friends before getting in himself behind the wheel.

The last thing Rothbart heard as the car sped away into the dark was laughter and the popping of a champagne cork from the back seat of the car.

‘That was Hitler’s girl!’ Rothbart had confided to Hunyadi. It was the first time he had ever heard the name of Eva Braun.

‘And who is this?’ she asked, barely glancing at Hunyadi as she walked into the sitting room. Instead, she busied herself with attaching a small golden ring into her earlobe.

‘My name . . .’ began Hunyadi.

‘Is not important,’ Hitler said abruptly. ‘It’s a friend of mine from the old days. That’s all. He’s working on something for me.’

‘I see,’ said Eva Braun and, in an instant, it was as if Hunyadi had ceased to exist. ‘I am going up to the canteen to get some breakfast,’ she told Hitler. ‘Is there anything you want?’

‘A glass of milk,’ he replied, ‘but do not hurry back on my account.’

Then the two men were alone again.

With clawing fingers, Hitler beckoned at Hunyadi. ‘Tell me!’ he whispered urgently. ‘Tell me everything you know.’

‘Based on what you’ve told me,’ said Hunyadi, ‘I believe you are correct. There is a leak.’

‘Yes? And?’ Hitler’s eyes bored into the detective.

‘Everyone I spoke to is aware of it,’ continued Hunyadi. ‘However, I do not believe that the person responsible for the leak is operating from inside the bunker.’

Hitler sat back suddenly, as if he had been pushed by a ghost. ‘But how could it be otherwise? The information is coming from here and nowhere else!’

‘I agree,’ said Hunyadi, ‘but I believe that this is happening indirectly. Somebody who works here, among you, is speaking to someone on the outside. A wife. A husband. A lover, perhaps, but in any case it’s someone they trust implicitly.’

‘What brings you to this conclusion?’ asked Hitler.

‘The one thing shared by everyone I spoke to yesterday was their fear. Fear of you. Fear of the Russians. Fear of the judgement they may have to face some day. None of them, not even the lowest in rank, would risk their lives to smuggle out the gossip you are hearing from Der Chef.’

‘And yet that is exactly what they’re doing!’

‘Without realising it, yes,’ agreed Hunyadi. ‘I am willing to bet that your informant does not even know that he or she is delivering secrets to the enemy and, given how long this information has been leaking out, we can be sure of two things.’

‘What two things?’ demanded Hitler.

‘The first’, replied Hunyadi, ‘is that the relationship required to enable such a transfer of information is a long-standing one. The second is that consistency of the information, and the kind of information you have been able to pinpoint as having come directly from your headquarters, implies that it is being passed on in the course of normal conversations. It is just chatter, which people feast upon no matter where or who they are. It is part of human nature. There is nothing threatening, per se, in the information itself, at least as far as we know. This is why the informant believes there is no danger in discussing it.’

‘Then we arrest them all!’ cried Hitler, leaping to his feet. ‘Interrogate everyone! Smash their fingers with a hammer one by one until we get the answers we are looking for!’