Sam Eastland - Berlin Red

She slipped off the rubber band and opened each passport in turn. Then she dropped them back into the briefcase. ‘You were going away with her,’ she whispered.

‘Yes,’ admitted Fegelein. There was no point in lying any more.

‘And you were leaving me here.’ It wasn’t a question. She already knew the answer.

‘Elsa,’ he began, but then his voice died away.

As Fegelein stumbled about in his mind, trying to think of what to say next, Elsa Batz reached into her open bag and withdrew the Walther automatic which Fegelein had given her. She raised the gun and aimed across the room. That day of their first outing flooded back into her brain. The flower pots set up along the wall. The first shot gashing off the wall and the others which peeled away into space. She heard again the clench-jawed hissing of his laughter.

The first shot caught Fegelein in the throat. He dropped to his knees just as the second shot hit him in the chest. By the time the third shot tore off his right ear, Fegelein was already dead.

He tipped face down upon the floor.

She thought how strange the gun smoke smelled as it mixed with the scent of her perfume.

Two minutes later, General Rattenhuber walked into the room, followed by a guard from the Chancellery, who was carrying a sub-machine gun.

Elsa barely glanced up as they entered. She had sat down in the yellow chair and was still holding the Walther automatic.

Rattenhuber recognised the woman from her days as a dancer at the Salon Kitty club. ‘You are Fegelein’s mistress,’ he said.

She nodded wearily.

‘And do you plan on using that again?’ asked Rattenhuber, nodding at the pistol in her hand.

Elsa shook her head.

‘Then kindly drop it to the floor,’ said the general.

She let the gun slip from her grasp.

Rattenhuber walked over to Fegelein, stuck the toe of his boot under the dead man’s chest and rolled him over. ‘I see you left nothing to chance,’ he remarked to Elsa Batz.

At that moment, Rattenhuber’s guard called out to him. ‘You need to see this,’ he said, pointing at the open briefcase on the table by the door.

Rattenhuber made his way over to the table, lifted up a handful of the jewellery and let it sift back through his fingers again. Then he examined the Swiss passports. At the sight of Fegelein’s name, he let out a small choking noise. ‘And who is this?’ he demanded, holding up the other passport.

‘His secretary,’ answered Elsa. ‘Lilya Simonova.’

‘And where is she now?’

‘God knows,’ said Elsa Batz.

Rattenhuber turned to the guard. ‘Search the body,’ he commanded.

The guard placed his sub-machine gun on the bed, knelt down and began going through Fegelein’s pockets. He soon discovered a crumpled sheet of paper, bearing a cryptic series of numbers set into sequences of five.

‘Let me see that,’ said Rattenhuber.

The guard held up the paper and the general snatched it from his hand. ‘Son of a bitch,’ he muttered.

‘What is it?’ asked the guard.

‘A code used by the Allies, called Goliath.’

‘What will happen to me now?’ asked Elsa Batz. She spoke in a half-drugged voice, the way people talk in their sleep.

‘Now you will come with us,’ replied the general.

‘If you’re going to shoot me,’ said Elsa, ‘I’d rather you just did it here.’

‘Shoot you?’ snorted Rattenhuber. ‘The way I see it, Fraulein Batz, you just prevented a traitor from fleeing the course of justice. I think it is more likely that Hitler himself will pin a medal on your chest.’

Heinrich Himmler sat in his office at Hohenlychen, a telephone receiver pressed against his ear. ‘Are you certain, Rattenhuber?’ he asked. ‘Are you absolutely sure that it was Fegelein who leaked the information from the bunker?’

‘I don’t see how it could be otherwise,’ replied Rattenhuber. ‘We found a message in his pocket which was written in a code used by the Allies.’

‘And have you managed to translate it?’

‘Some of it,’ confirmed Rattenhuber.

‘What did it say?’ demanded Himmler.

‘It mentioned the Diamond Stream project.’

There was long silence at the other end.

‘Herr Reichsfuhrer?’ asked Rattenhuber, wondering if the line had been cut.

‘Yes,’ Himmler said at last. ‘This coded message, do you know if it has been sent? Or was it intercepted in time?’

‘That is impossible to say,’ answered Rattenhuber, ‘but I must ask you whether Fegelein was ever in possession of the Diamond Stream schematics.’

‘Yes,’ sighed Himmler.

‘And how did this come about?’

‘I asked him to borrow the plans from Professor Hagemann so that I could look at them myself.’

‘Then we must assume the worst,’ said Rattenhuber.

‘And Hitler knows about all this?’

‘He does.’

‘My God,’ whispered Himmler.

‘A word of advice, Herr Reichsfuhrer.’

‘Yes? Yes? What is it?’ Himmler demanded anxiously.

‘You must distance yourself immediately from Fegelein, as well as anything to do with the Diamond Stream project. Remove any trace of your involvement. Do you understand what I am saying?’

‘I do,’ replied Himmler, ‘and will see to it at once, Rattenhuber.’

Professor Hagemann was sitting in the basement of a ruined house, in a forest west of Berlin. His faithful sergeant, Behr, had just delivered to him a mess tin full of greasy-looking stew. Outside, technicians were assembling a mobile launch pad for one of the few remaining V-2s in the German rocket arsenal.

The planned construction of the hundreds of V-2s demanded by Hitler at the last meeting had never materialised. The factory that manufactured engine parts, located in the mountains of Austria, had just been overrun by the American Army. Newly made dies for the Diamond Stream guidance components, which were to have been installed in the new missiles, had never been put into use. In addition to this, a train carrying the last reserves of rocket fuel, bound for a different assembly area near the old Peenemunde research facility, had been destroyed by British Mosquito fighter bombers before it ever reached its destination.

Only six V-2 launch teams remained in operation, of which General Hagemann’s was one. They were scattered at various sites within a 10-kilometre radius. Within twenty-four hours, the last of the operational rockets would have been fired, at which point Hagemann had instructed the launch team commanders to return to Berlin. There, these highly trained technicians would be armed with whatever antiquated weapons were available and incorporated into makeshift squads tasked with defending the city against the vast firepower of the Red Army.

By Hagemann’s own estimation, their chances of survival were zero.

In the meantime, Hagemann and his crew continued to carry out their duties, but in the trance-like state of those who could no longer find a reason to go on, but went on anyway.

Now the professor pulled a battered aluminium spoon from his boot and stirred it in the contents of the mess kit. He ladled up some of the oily mixture, which bristled with fish bones, as well as some pine needles that had fallen into the cooking pot. He was just about to take a mouthful when Behr appeared at the top of the basement stairs.

‘There’s a call for you on the field radio,’ he said. ‘It’s from Hohenlychen.’

‘Himmler?’

Behr nodded grimly.

Hagemann dropped the spoon back into his soup. ‘What the hell does he want now?’

‘He didn’t say,’ replied Behr. ‘He just told me it was urgent.’

With a sigh, Hagemann put his mess kit down upon the floor, trudged up the stairs and out to the radio truck, one of which accompanied each V-2 launch team.