Greg Iles - The Spandau Phoenix

MordredThis will prevent him from informing Himmler.

Heydrich spends a good deal of time at the SD offices in the

Wilheimstrasse. Deliver it there-not Prinz-Albrechtstrasse. You can

log the trip as another training flight. Make some small talk for a

half hour, then return to Munich." Hitler pursed his lips. "You will

have no further contact with Heydrich, Rudi. But rest assured, he will

be working with you. Besides myself, he will be your only ally."

Hitler paused by the door, his fingers on the handle. "Any questions?"

Hess cleared his throat. "Only one, my Fuhrer."

One question was more than Hitler liked, but he forced himself to smile.

"What is it?"

"When do I leave for England?"

Hitler let his hand drop and walked back to Hess. He reached up, laid a

hand on the powerful shoulder, and gazed into Hess's earnest eyes. "From

the filthy trenches of France," he said softly, "we have risen up and

conquered all Europe. We have avenged the outrage of Versailles- Now we

stand poised to invade Russia itself. Russia itself!" Hitler paused,

his eyes burning. "Such a step is not to be taken without an awareness

of destiny, Rudi- On what day did we begin our glorious westward march

to the Channel?"

Mystified, Hess groped for the date. "The tenth of May, 1940?"

"Yes! And what day is our eastward invasionBarbarossa-to begin?"

"May fifteenth," Hess replied more confidently, recalling the date from

Directive 21.

"No! Our tanks will roll on the fifteenth, but the invasion of Soviet

Russia be ins with your mission, Rudi! On the tenth of May!

One year to the day after we marched on France! Just as before!"

Hess felt a wild thrill of foreboding, a tangible sense of destiny, as

if Fate herself had materialized in the room.

"It is all preordained!" Hitler cried, flinging his arms toward the

ceiling. His mesmerizing voice filled the salon, brimming with the

conviction of a prophet. "On the tenth of May you will secure our

western flank, and on the fifteenth we shall wipe the plague of

communism from the planet! By Christmas of this year, Greater Germany

will extend from the English Channel to the Ural Mountains and it will

be settled by pure German stock!"

Hess's ears roared with excitement. Only slowly did he become aware of

an insistent knocking at the door. It might have been going on for a

full minute. He slipped the manila envelope into his coat pocket as

Hitler opened the door.

it was Bormann again, but this time Hess's deputy hesitated in the

doorway. Hitter smoothed his black forelock and looked into Hess's

eyes. "You will take care of that today, Rudi?"

"Immediately."

"Excuse me, my Fuhrer," Bonnann interrupted, "General Halder is

waiting."

"Let him wait!" Hitler bellowed. "Escort the Deputy Fuhrer to his car,

Bonnann."

"Heil Hitler!" Bormann clicked his jackboots together, turned, and

marched down the hall.

"I'm going up to change clothes, Rudi," Hitler said softly.

"I cannot let my generals see me like this. They'll think they can run

right over me in the conference."

Hitler looked embarrassed by the confidence. Hess grinned and waved him

out. It had been good to see the old Hitler for a few the old spring

jacket and tie could not revoke a the steps they had taken in the

intervening years. T se steps were written in blood and fire, and they

could only be erased by more of the same.

Bormann waited like a Dachshund at the end of the hall.

Hess felt a new and powerful sense of purpose in his tread as he

followed his deputy out of the Berghof. "How are the children, Martin?"

he asked. Just now Hess could not have cared less, but since Bormann

had seen fit to name his offspring after Hess and his wife, he felt

obliged to ask.

"Rudi is strong as a bull," Bonnann bragged over his shoulder.

"And Ilse is the very flower of German womanhood!"

Hess smiled wanly.

Outside, Bormann held open the door of Hess's brown Mercedes.

Hess sensed a kind of animal exultance in him now that the

interloper-Hess-was leaving. Unreasonably irritated, he cranked his

Mercedes and goosed the pedal a few times. The engine roared

responsively.

,is there anything I can do for you, Herr Reichminister?"

Bormann asked.

Hess considered ordering his deputy to call ahead and have his

Messer_chmitt readied, then thoukht better of it. He shifted into first

gear, all the while looking hard into Bormann's eyes. He could see the

arrogance lurking just behind the peasant face. Bormann wore power

clumsily, like all men unaccustomed to it. But the little rat was

learning.

By all reports, he was setting himself up as lord of Obersalzburg,

strengthening his position by acting as sole conduit between Hitler and

the outside world. One of Hess's secretaries had actually heard Frau

Goebbels whisper that Bormann's star had eclipsed Hess's in the Nazi

firmament.

"I see you still haven't finished the construction up here, Martin,"

Hess said breezily. He waved his hand toward a half-finished concrete

bunker.

"The Fuhrer's needs expand every day," Bormann said proudly. "I can

barely keep up with the demand, but I do my best."

Hess forced a smile. 'There is something you can do for me, if you get

the time."

"Anything," said Bormann, with a nod of false obeisance.

With a casual motion Hess reached out of the car and caught Bormann by

the collar. one flex of his thickly muscled arm brought the shocked

Reichsleiter to his knees in the snow. Hess could feel the softness in

Bonnann, the boorish strength dissipated by alcohol and gluttony.

Bormann's piggish eyes bulged in terror.

"Never," Hess said harshly, "never forget who you are, Bormann.

You are my deputy, and as long as I live, that is all you will ever be."

Hess roared away, leaving his stunned subordinate kneeling in the noon

snowmelt. He skidded to a stop at the inner perimeter gate.

"How long to call Munich?" he barked at a surprised SS private.

"We have a direct line, Herr Reichministert" Hess reeled off the number

of his office telephone.

"And the message, Herr Reichminister?"

Hess said nothing. To the sentry he seemed lost in a world of his own,

but the SS man was not about to rush the Deputy Fuhrer of the Reich.

Hess's brain was spinning. All the dark misgivings of the past few

months were lifting from his mind like bad dreams at the coming of dawn.

The road to Moscow would soon be open, and he was the man Adolf Hitler

had chosen to open it! Yet the vision Hess saw now was no epic scene of

conquest, not German legions crossing their Russian Rubicon.

He saw a very small section of a shadowy Munich street, in 1919.

It was on that street, and a hundred others like it, that the seeds of

the Nazi party had battled the communist gangs for control of postwar

Germany. It was to that street that a young Rudolf Hess had returned

one afternoon, to find that a communist gang had reached his local group

headquarters ahead of him. Hess had hidden and watched in horror as

heavily armed Red Guard ruffians loaded twenty of his friends into a

panel truck. Later that night the communists shot all of Hess's

comrades, loyal Germans to a man. A captured communist later claimed

the Reds had lined the prisoners up and sl;of them one by one.

Among all the communist crimes, Hess vowed, this was the one for which

he would exact revenge in Russian blood"Herr Reichminister?" the sentry