Last Man to Die (29 page)
Authors: Michael Dobbs
‘Thank you for your help, Eva.’
‘It wasn’t easy. I haven’t had a chance to explain things to the Fuehrer; I’ve simply invited him to tea, our last time in the Bunker. He’ll be along any minute. I hope he won’t be angry with me …’
From within his black officer’s tunic Hencke took a one-armed toy bear. It looked sad and exhausted, as if it had had enough. He placed it on the table beside the tea cups.
‘My lucky charm. It’s been with me all the way …’
‘Peter, how sweet. You with a teddy bear! You really are the strangest man.’
She picked up the battered toy to examine it, glowing with pleasure like a girl sharing presents with her schoolfriends, trying to stroke fresh life back into its tattered fabric. For a moment she scarcely noticed that Hencke had risen from his seat and was by the small bureau near the door, where she had left her handbag. When she looked up again she saw he was opening the bag and reaching inside.
‘Peter …?’ The smile had gone as she saw him take out the Walther. ‘Peter, what is it …?’
It took him less than two full strides to cross the room. He was leaning over her. He didn’t want to, from deep down within him he absolutely didn’t want to, this was no aunt-image, but he knew she would leave him with no choice. Her mouth was open and she was about to scream when his hands went round her neck and he began to squeeze, choking off the cry of warning. Her right hand came up, clenched in a fist, striking him fiercely in the testicles and he winced with pain, but kept squeezing. She tried to kick but her feet were obstructed by the seat. Her face was rapidly changing colour and after another futile attack on his groin her hands were up trying to tear his fingers away from her neck. The harder she fought, the tighter he squeezed. Her body was shaking, seeming as light in his hands as a pillow, and her strength was ebbing fast. Her tongue was out, her jaw was slack, her lips pursed in a silent scream of fury, and her large green eyes stared up at him accusing, beseeching, uncomprehending. While they stared, he dared not let go.
It seemed for ever before he realized she was dead, that the eyes, still full of accusation, retained no life.
His own eyes brimmed with tears. ‘No regrets, Eva. No regrets,’ he whispered. With great tenderness he leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.
It was as he stood up that he heard someone enter the room behind him. He turned round to find himself looking straight down the barrel of a gun.
‘Bormann, you oaf. Can’t you see I’m recording a broadcast?’
‘Fuck the recording. It’s Hencke we’ve got to worry about.’
‘Oh my God. What is it?’
‘It’s not Hencke, it’s not him!’
‘Make sense, man!’
‘I’ve just had Karlsbad on the phone. They’ve found out more about Hencke. The reason we haven’t been able to find any recent records for him’ – Bormann swayed with breathless fatigue – ‘is that he’s dead. He died seven years ago.’
‘How? Where?’
‘Hencke was a schoolteacher all right, at the time we seized the Sudetenland, but some bloody idiot Freikorper threw a grenade through a window during the troubles. It exploded in the middle of his classroom, killing Hencke and half a class of schoolchildren.’
‘This cannot be serious,’ whispered Goebbels.
‘There’s more. Seems he never married and was living with another man, a Czech. Probably a pillow-biter, some of the locals reckon.’
‘Then if Hencke is dead, who the hell is this one …?’
As one they sprang for the door.
Hencke stared into the glassy expression of Adolf
Hitler. The gun in the Fuehrer’s hand trembled as he gazed open-mouthed from Hencke to the body of Eva Braun and back again. His wits seemed dull, his reactions slow and his attention unable to focus, to settle on either, moving backwards and forth as if by searching hard enough he would discover his eyes had deceived him. He shook his head, to clear his senses, to refute all that he saw. Eventually, agonizingly, as he stood looking at his lover’s lifeless body, as the truth pierced through to his befuddled brain, his watery eyes began to dissolve.
Hencke watched transfixed as the tears began pouring down Adolf Hitler’s cheeks.
‘Where’s Hencke?’ Goebbels and Bormann shouted in unison as they burst into the corridor.
This time the adjutant was completely incapable of speech and it was not until Greim, disturbed by the commotion, put his head around the bulkhead door from his position at the top of the stairs that they got their reply.
‘Hencke? He’s … down with Fräulein Braun,’ Greim whimpered. ‘They went to have tea …’ He trailed off in terror as he saw the look on Goebbels’ face.
‘You shit-eating scum!’ Goebbels pushed past him. ‘You’re dead!’
The Reichsminister was hobbling, dragging his braced leg behind him, yet Bormann was in panic as to what they might find and gladly let the other lead the way. As they stumbled in their haste down the corridor, Goebbels trod on the head of a china doll with which his young daughter had been playing. It shattered into useless, unrecognizable fragments.
They clattered down the metal stairs, Goebbels
forced to take them one at a time and slowing Bormann and the FBK guards who had joined the pursuit. They rushed into the lower corridor of the Fuehrerbunker, Goebbels shouting ahead to the guard stationed outside the entrance to Hitler’s rooms.
‘Where’s the Fuehrer?’
The guard pointed through the door and Goebbels lunged frantically past. Inside the Fuehrer’s sitting-room they hesitated, unsure which door to try. A single shot rang out. It came from behind the door leading to Eva Braun’s suite.
Goebbels already knew what he would find as he burst into the room. Hencke was standing over the body of Eva Braun, a gun by his side. Directly in front of them, slumped on the floor, his face pointing to the ceiling, lay the body of Adolf Hitler. There was a gun in his hand and a bullet wound in his temple. He lay as dead and as useless as the shattered doll.
There are moments when time stands still. It did so now for Goebbels as he took in the scene before him. The Fuehrer, a single bullet wound in the temple. Eva Braun, open-eyed, distorted lips, the agonies of death etched across her face. A small porcelain vase of flowers tipped over on the table, the water dripping mournfully on to the floor. A scene to be remembered for all time. Suddenly a pistol was thrust over his shoulder and Bormann was firing. The first bullet struck Hencke full in the chest and spun him round, but like a man possessed Bormann continued to fire repeatedly into Hencke’s body until it was slumped against the wall, covered in angry, raging wounds, and Bormann had run out of ammunition. Yet still he pulled at the trigger and
the hammer clicked against empty chambers until Goebbels forcibly restrained him.
In the icy silence that followed, nobody moved. Then one of Hencke’s eyes twitched open, a flicker of flame shone from somewhere within, and through lips twisted with pain and effort he whispered: ‘
Nelipuje
.’ A thin, triumphal smile brushed briefly across his face, and he fell back, dead.
‘What did he say, what did he say?’ Bormann was quivering with shock.
‘It was Czech,’ Goebbels responded quietly. ‘It means “No Regrets”.’
There was another long period of silence before they were distracted by the gathering of curious guards beyond the outer door.
‘Keep them out. They have no business here.’ Goebbels was calm. He seemed very much in command, almost serene. At last he turned to face Bormann. ‘It’s over. The end.’
Bormann shook his head, unwilling to accept. ‘But surely we can fight on. There’s still the Alps.’
‘Without the Fuehrer? Impossible. Tomorrow we are dead.’
‘No, no. We can still escape from Berlin.’ There was fear in Bormann’s florid face.
‘Hopeless!’ Goebbels snapped. He pointed at the corpse of Hitler. ‘The head and the heart of Germany are here in this room. The war is over, Bormann. All we have left is the idea.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘The cause, it must live on. And for that we need martyrs and a noble myth, not some shabby little scene played out in an underground sewer, the Fuehrer dead beside the body of his mistress and some snivelling Czech laughing in our faces. Is that
what you want future generations to remember, for God’s sake?’ Goebbels had grown animated as he struggled for one final time to rearrange the pieces of history.
‘But what can we do?’
‘I tell you what you do. You find a notary and get him to marry these two.’ He waved at the corpses of Hitler and Eva Braun.
‘But they’re dead …’
‘Do you want the world to know that Hitler died with a whore? You get the notary, and once he’s married them, get rid of him. We can’t have anyone going round telling tales.’
Bormann blanched.
‘Then you dispose of the bodies. Burn them. We can’t have them falling into the clutches of the Russians.’ He stood amidst the carnage, struggling to summon up the energy and adrenalin for his task, but it became all too much and somewhere inside him a switch was thrown. Shoulders sagged, the long face wilted and he closed his eyes for a moment, seeking composure. When he spoke again, his voice had taken on an uncharacteristic mellowness. ‘You do that. And I will announce to the world that the Fuehrer has committed suicide, his new wife by his side, fighting to the last to defend the Reich capital of Berlin. An heroic death which will inspire great histories to be written. Only you and I will know, Bormann.’
‘What of him, the Czech?’
‘Place him in a side room for the moment, out of the way of prying eyes.’ Goebbels paused to consider the man in whom he had placed so much faith and who had betrayed him with such devastating effect. He shrugged, the energy for hate gone. ‘Then give
him a proper burial. He died a soldier’s death after all, whoever he was.’
‘The last man to die, maybe?’
Goebbels sniffed in contempt as the other man’s fear filled his nostrils. But what did it matter any more …‘You get out of Berlin, Bormann. If you can.’
‘You, too?’
Goebbels kicked a one-armed toy bear lying on the floor. ‘No, I don’t think I’ll bother …’
The sun was setting through the leaves of whispering ash trees, long shadows falling across the path of the old man as he wandered between the neat lines of memorial stones. They were white and carefully scrubbed, and Cazolet paused in front of each one, lingering on occasion to offer a silent tribute to the exceptional youth or valour of the victim recorded on the stone, but always moving on. They were mostly American and British, almost all airmen, with every once in a while an Australian, New Zealander, Indian or South African being remembered. There were even five Poles buried in the Allied War Cemetery in Berlin, but they were not what he sought.
He found it after almost half an hour, when the sun had all but vanished and a fine autumn mist was beginning to gather. He had tired himself greatly and bent heavily over his walking stick as he read the inscription, his frail body trembling as he did so.
An Unknown Czech Soldier. Died April 1945
.
‘So the Old Man’s crazy, impossible plan worked. We got to Berlin after all. If only he’d known …’
Cazolet stayed for a long while, until it was twilight and the damp had begun to bite at his bones. He did not mind. At last, and for whatever time he
had left, he could be at peace with his memories, of Churchill’s desperate hope at the time he sent this man that he might forestall any possibility of an Alpine Redoubt, of his desolation when those hopes had crumbled and he had lost Berlin, of the guilt they had shared that this sacrifice had been in vain. Cazolet could only surmise what might have happened to their man, but since he had got as far as Berlin it seemed probable that he had gone all the way. ‘The insurance policy,’ as Churchill had described it to him, had worked. Nobody would believe the story, of course, not after all these years. So the memory would die with Cazolet, and soon there would be nothing left but a small, white marker in some crowded foreign field.
In the deepening shadows of evening the frail old man dug into his pocket and pulled out the. medals and decorations awarded to him during a lifetime of public service. Leaning carefully on his cane, he bent to place them on the grave of the unknown soldier. He walked stiffly away, looking content. Now he could face up to dying. With no regrets.
Much of the original idea for this book began with my father and his vivid memories of wartime London. We spent many enjoyable hours talking of his days as a young policeman. During the course of writing, he discovered he was dying, yet the knowledge only gave added urgency to his enthusiasm for sharing. He didn’t live to see the book completed, but it couldn’t have been done without him. So this book is dedicated to my father. I’m glad we had the time to share.
Others have helped, and as always in researching a book, I have made both enjoyable discoveries and new friends. I am indebted to Karl Wahnig for his experiences of active service on a U-boat; to have survived was remarkable, to have retained his sense of humour even more so. I am grateful to many others for their assistance and patience, particularly those at the Imperial War Museum, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the Royal Navy Submarine Museum at Gosport, and M. Bernard Hine for his thoughts on fine cognacs.