The fat woman’s body slammed to the floor.
Eva Braun never moved. Exhaustion claimed her. She would be told that the baby died at birth and the midwife was killed for incompetence. There would be no argument from her. Why should there be? They were now bound together. Their lives forever intertwined.
And that was fine.
She wasn’t altogether unpleasant, and he realized that his ability to enjoy female companionship in the years ahead would be limited. He must be careful. He’d watched how a woman could undo a man. That was not going to happen to him. Eva Braun would do as she was told or he’d plant a bullet in her skull, too.
He carried the infant from the room.
Outside, in the shade of a porch that jutted from the front of the farmhouse sat a man. Bormann walked over and handed him the baby. “Raise him as your own.”
The man’s eyes were misty with pride. “He is his?”
“Absolutely.”
“I heard a shot.”
“The midwife’s duty.”
The man nodded. “There can be no witnesses.”
“Just you and I, old friend.”
“I will raise him well.”
“It is of no matter to me any longer. I have done my duty.”
A lie. He was supposed to raise the child himself. But he wanted no more reminders of Adolf Hitler.
The man rose from his chair and said, “Live long, old friend.”
“I plan to.”
And Bormann watched as his visitor headed for a car parked under the shade of a sprawling elm, the infant in his arms.
Schüb finished his story.
Voices broke the silence.
From behind where they stood.
Schüb ignored the sound and stepped forward, grasping a rope handle for the door.
They entered what appeared to be a funerary chamber, the spacious room lit by sconces. A far wall was lined with bookcases, illuminated by ceiling-mounted floodlights. The shelves teemed with odd-shaped volumes packed tight in rows. But what dominated the room were two sarcophagi, each flooded in a pool of blue-white light. The exteriors were of marble, one gray, the other pink, the pair similar in size.
“The pinkish tomb contains the mortal remains of my mother,” Schüb said. “Eva Braun. The other is Bormann’s.”
“Your brother was Bormann’s son, born in Africa,” Wyatt said. “You, though, were the baby born in Spain. You are the son of Adolf Hitler.”
Schüb’s face had a sad remorseful mien.
Then Wyatt saw the gold bars, stacked five feet high, at least six piles on pallets. “There must be several hundred million dollars’ worth of bullion there.”
“A fraction over a billion actually.”
“This is Hitler’s Bounty?”
“What is left of it.”
He’d never seen so much raw gold.
He stepped over and lifted one of the bars. Maybe thirty or so pounds. He studied the top, half expecting to see a swastika etched into the surface. But there was nothing.
“No links to Nazis remain,” Schüb said. “Those traces were removed long ago.”
“This is from the Reichsbank robbery? What was stashed in the Alps at the end of the war?”
“Some. Some more from the bounty. Other parts from unspeakable sources. Bormann took control of all those caches.”
He recalled what Isabel had called Bormann.
A quetrupillán. Mute devil.
“This is the devil’s gold?”
Schüb nodded. “A good way to describe it.”
“How did Bormann get it all here?”
“Simple, actually. Much of what was buried in the mountains were bags of iron bars and plain paper. The actual gold and currency was moved farther south into Austria, where it stayed for many years. The man who raised me from birth personally supervised its eventual transportation here in the early 1950s. It took several years to accomplish, but it was accomplished.”
“How was all that kept secret?”
“There were men who still believed in the Reich. They did their job and took what they knew with them to their graves. They understood their duty. But of course each one realized that he, or his family, would be shot by the others if he revealed anything.” Schüb paused a moment, grabbing a breath. “They were but a few of those men, and eventually they all died. Bormann, though, survived. He possessed a great hatred for the follies of man, and all who knew him, like the real Gerhard Schüb, were aware of that fact. No tolerance for frailty or passion, no pity for those who’d done him harm. He wished his enemies to hell, and put them there in his heart. He was, quite simply, a man of wrath.” Schüb paused. “Or a devil, as you put it.”
“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.”
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“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.”