Steve Berry - The Devil's Gold

“Yet men served him.”

Schüb took a disconsolate stroll around the stacks of gold bars, eyeing the gleaming metal in the cool glow of the light fixtures. “That is true.” He motioned to bookshelves. “Toward the end of his life Bormann and my adoptive father communicated more frequently. Bormann started writing down his thoughts. He did this while serving Hitler also. He was obsessive about note taking. ‘The savior of the administrator,’ he would say. He created meticulous journals. Textbooks, he called them. Before he died he gave the journals to my brother. Braun, too, maintained private dairies, which Bormann gave to him for safekeeping. I’ve read all of them. Her thoughts were of Hitler, Bormann, and what fate had prescribed for her. Bormann’s journals are far more extensive. I have read those, too. That is how I know what I know.”

Wyatt glanced at the shelves, the volumes in varying shapes, sizes, and colors.

“My brother stored them carefully. They have been here, underground, many years. I assure you, each is authentic and can sustain any test an expert cares to impose.”

He turned his attention back to the tombs. “Why are the bodies here?”

“My brother believed that they did not deserve an anonymous grave in Africa. They are his family.”

“But not yours.”

Schüb stepped to the smaller sarcophagus. Eva Braun’s. And lightly stroked the exterior. “She would be appalled.” The older man went silent for a moment. “Strange how she never saw either one of her children.”

He again heard voices from beyond the door.

“Our final visitor has arrived.”

He turned and watched as Chris Combs was led into the chamber at gunpoint. He hadn’t spoken to Combs since the administrative hearing, and they really hadn’t talked then. Combs had simply sold him out through his sworn testimony while he sat and listened. After, he intentionally made no contact. That day would come, he’d told himself many times.

A tinge of relief entered Combs’ eyes as he spotted Wyatt. “Are you their prisoner, too?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Then what is this?”

Finally, Combs noticed his surroundings, particularly the gold. “Holy Mother of God. It does exist.”

“That it does,” Schüb said.

“I knew it. I knew it all along. I’ve searched the records for years. Hoping. Finally, I found leads.” Combs faced Wyatt. “That’s why I came down here. To check them out.”

“Two people are dead thanks to you,” Wyatt said.

“I didn’t kill anyone.”

“No,” he said. “You just gave others a reason to do it.”

A puzzled look came to the liar’s face. Then Combs asked Schüb,

“Who are you?”

Wyatt decided to answer for him. “He is the son of Adolf Hitler.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I’m afraid he is,” Schüb said. “I am genetically linked to an unfathomable evil, though I abhor even the mention of anything remotely related to National Socialism. Where some have the audacity to preach the good in Nazism, while rejecting the bad, I have nothing but revulsion for all that it was.”

“Why have I been brought here at gunpoint?” Combs asked. “I’m an American intelligence operative. Surely you know that.”

“This man, Wyatt, has come to kill you. Do you know that?”

“That true?” Combs asked him.

He nodded.

“Come on, Jonathan. That was eight years ago. I had to do it. You know that. I had to let you go. If I’d stuck with you at that hearing, we would have both gone down. I planned to take care of you afterward, and I did.”

“I didn’t want to be taken care of. I wanted you to keep your word.”

“Two men died in that warehouse. You ordered them in there.”

“It’s the risk we all take. I was under fire. Malone was under fire. We needed their help. That’s their job. But you sold me out to protect yourself.”

“I know. I know. It was a tough call for us both. But that board was going to find against you no matter what I said. I knew that.”

“If you’d told them that you, as my supervisor, had no problem with what happened, the outcome could have been different.”

“You don’t know that.”

“We’ll never know, thanks to you.”

“Why not Cotton Malone? Why aren’t you pissed at him? He brought the charges.”

“I haven’t forgotten that.”

“Look, Jonathan. I made sure you got plenty of contract work thrown your way. I know you’ve done well from that. I can make sure plenty more comes.”

“I wanted my career.”

Combs stood still and silent.

Schüb said, “In this room, Herr Combs, is everything you sought. This was my half brother’s estate. The final keeper of all secrets. He concealed the last remnants of the Third Reich. I despised him all of my life, as he did me. We were forced together since we shared the same mother and a common heritage. The difference being I hated that past. He worshiped it.”

Combs stood near the larger sarcophagus, the one that held Bormann. “History will have to be rewritten.”

Schüb reached beneath his jacket and produced a pistol.

The old man aimed directly at Combs and fired three times.

Bullets sent Combs staggering back toward the wall of journals. Schüb then planted two more rounds into the skull. Combs said nothing, the attack coming too quickly for him to react. His eyes simply went blank as the life left him, and he dropped to the floor.

Schüb tossed the gun onto the body. “That is the second man I’ve killed today.”

A flick of his hand and the two men who’d brought Combs left.

Wyatt stood silent.

“When it came to the moment,” Schüb said, “I sensed that you may not have killed him. You speak of revenge, but your anger is more subtle. More private.”

“I’ve killed.”

“In the heat of battle, of course. But this battle is eight years cold. Could you have done what I just did?”

He thought about the question.

True, he’d killed, but not in cold blood.

Could he have done it?

“It’s time for you to go,” Schüb said. “Somebody has to know about all of this. Somebody has to know the truth. I chose you. But please know that I was no Nazi. I did not ask to have Hitler’s blood course through me. My brother longed to be me. He told me that many times. I longed to be someone else. That is why I assumed Gerhard’s name. My feeble attempt at salvation.” He went silent for a moment. “This Christopher Combs forced a final confrontation between brothers. Someone had finally found us, after all these years. My brother dreamed of glory. I hoped for anonymity. It is true that the world has changed, but in many ways it remains the same as seventy years ago. Hate still exists. Bigotry can be manipulated. The masses are gullible.”

The comments were colored by sadness and regret.

He understood. “It’s over for you, too.”

Schüb’s hands gripped the marble of Eva Braun’s tomb in a tight embrace. “It has been for a long time. I am the son of Adolf Hitler. Do you know how many would relish that fact? I would be their idol.” Schüb surveyed him with an insolent look. “Even you, Wyatt. When you look at me, you think of him, don’t you?”

He could not lie. “I do. But you’re not him.”

“Few will make that distinction. I will forever be his son. A product of Eva Braun, the disgusting whore who resides right here, beneath this marble. And make no mistake, that was what she was. A whore, pure and simple. She profited from the blood of millions, all the while professing love for a maniac. I have no desire to harbor her genes, either.”

Schüb still held the gun, his face a shifting kaleidoscope of intense emotion.