Get Lenin (11 page)

During the long empty afternoons in the mansion, she would write letters to Diana Mosley, knowing full well they would be intercepted and read. Eva, keeping the correspondence as light as possible, would slip in names, descriptions and the status of the men she met. Despite her best efforts, Kincaid refused to give her the name of the big man; he was simply known as ‘The Big Fellow’.

Four weeks into her stay, Kincaid burst into her room one morning with a telegram. 'I told you doll, I told you! It’s all starting to fall into place. Start packing. We're flying to Berlin tonight!'

Chapter 6

Berchtesgaden 1939: The Kehlsteinhaus

The Tea House sat 183 metres at the top of the Kehlstein mountain, accessed either by the 131 metre elevator bored into the mountain or the specially commissioned road. Hitler chose the road. As the motorcade swept up through the winding tunnels, its progress was observed by Martin Borman and Albert Speer from the sun terrace,

The head of Hitler's security detail strode up, 'He wants to look around.'

‘
Let’s hope he likes it,’ said Speer, taking in the view. The clouds danced beneath them around the peak of the nearby Hochter Góll,

‘
He’d better,’ replied Borman, his eyes never leaving the road. ‘It cost enough to build.’

The motorcade, all black with red flags fluttering, pulled into the main driveway. Hitler’s Mercedes was flanked by SS outriders on powerful motorbikes. Borman rose from leaning against the terrace balcony. They walked through the lavishly decorated main dining area to the reception. An SS honour guard was preparing to greet the entourage. The head of Hitler’s personal bodyguard, Schaedle, strode up to them.

Hitler ascended the steps to where Borman, Speer and Goebbels stood waiting in the doorway. The alpine air was refreshing and he stopped to admire the Alps. Removing his fedora, he closed his pale blue eyes, enjoying the sensation of sunlight on his face. He breathed deeply, his throat tingling from the crisp tang of the air. As he started toward the reception, a wave of vertigo swept over him. He steadied himself, inwardly furious that his followers could see this.

Once inside, the Führer marvelled at its craftsmanship. They walked as Speer explained its construction in detail. ‘As you can see, mein Führer, from the two windows here in the main dining area you can observe the Watzman and Hochkalter mountains.’ They paused to admire the peaks. Speer then guided Hitler through each room, some panelled in rare cembra pine or sand-blasted oak. Hitler was impressed; nodding quietly, stopping, examining, and inquiring, with hands clasped firmly behind his back when he wasn't shaking the hands of each of his household staff, beaming and joking awkwardly in the main reception area.

Then he was ushered to his private chamber off the main dining room. Speer's scaled model of New Berlin, moulded according to Hitler’s vision, almost filled the entire room. Hitler leaned into it closely, holding his breath in wonder.

Das Museum von gebesiegt - The Museum of the Vanquished - caught his eye and made him smile. He envisioned the British Crown Jewels, French Impressionist works, Faberg
é
eggs and Mozart’s manuscripts. And in pride of place, Lenin’s mausoleum.

‘
Perhaps,’ Goebbels suggested, ‘Stalin’s head in a jar of formaldehyde or mounted like a hunter’s trophy?’ They all roared with laughter.

The rest of the guests arrived and the four men left the room to attend Hitler’s 50th birthday party. Goebbels paused, looking back at the model citadel. Eradicating Communism was a personal crusade for Hitler; what if they managed to snatch Lenin's body sooner rather than later? It would be a sensational bargaining chip. He began to hatch a plot, an idea so brazen that, if it was pulled off, it would change the world. But before that could happen, there would have to be a war.

The following morning, Himmler drove directly to his new headquarters in Berlin, SS Hauptampt. The city had a freshness to it he hadn’t noticed before. The population moved about their business around the thriving Potsdamer Platz, the fa
ç
ades gleaming and the skies a cloudless blue. Everywhere around the capital gave the sense of success and order. He nestled himself deeper into the leather depths of his seat.

Across from him were two Waffen SS: General Rolf Metzger and a young impossibly beautiful Aryan Captain, Thor Schenker. All three were perusing a manila folder stamped at the highest level of confidentiality.

Metzger’s grey-steel eyes twinkled as he completed his review. ‘If this goes wrong, Reichsführer .... ’

Himmler’s eyes narrowed behind his wire frame glasses, a faint smile danced around his lips, making his moustache twitch.

‘
This is why we selected you, General. It won’t go wrong,’

Schenker’s head snapped up. It reminded Himmler of an obedient Doberman. He found he was unable to look away from this Adonis. Hitler was right; this boy was a prime specimen.

‘
I can’t foresee any problems.’ His cultured accent and his refined sense of dress confirmed he was born to wear the uniform. Himmler felt himself dumpy in this beautiful boy’s presence. He tried to concentrate on the dossier. He tried not to blush.

Metzger lit a cigarette. Himmler tried to wave the smoke away with a tailored leather glove.

'My concern is that we get a local policeman who just happens to be thorough.'

* * *

Himmler afforded himself a small smile as the limousine turned off Prince Albrecht Strasse down into a cavernous parking lot below the SS Hauptamt building.

‘
The nature of this will be so heinous that the Gestapo, Waffen SS and Diplomatic corps will want it. It is imperative that we execute this plan efficiently to forward the Führer’s plan.’

The limousine pulled up alongside an army truck painted in a gun-metal grey, the number plates and registration erased. Metzger and Schenker alighted and, with Himmler, strode to the rear of the truck. Pulling the tarpaulin window aside, a group of soldiers acknowledged the three of them with the briefest of nods. All looked like hardened street fighters, Metzger’s personal detail.

‘
Excellent,’ said Metzger.

Himmler touched his elbow and whispered into his ear, ‘If you pull this off, General, I can promise you a most excellent theatre of operations,’

Schenker whistled slowly, and began to follow the General’s lead. His smile almost stretched his jaw.

* * *

It was the dogs barking in the yard that woke farmer Rupert Lowe. He reached for his glasses and sat upright in the bed. The vast bulk of his wife Gertrude shifted and groaned as she tried to settle into a more comfortable position. He stared into the darkness, the window shutters rattling slightly again, the barking, then a shrill cry from one of the hounds. A quick succession of whinnies, shrill barks and cries rang out, then silence.

Lowe slipped out of the bed, his feet dancing on the cold floor. His stomach churned in fear. He could hear movement outside. The farm was two miles away from the Polish border and there had been reports of strange occurrences over the past few days. In two nearby farms, machinery had been vandalised in the night, some buildings had also been subjected to arson. The tension between the two countries was beginning to spill into the countryside. At the market last weekend a row had broken out between two German and Polish families who for years had traded amicably. The Gestapo had appeared out of nowhere, broken it up, and forcibly beaten the Polish family across the border.

Lowe loaded his shotgun quietly. His daughters Lottie, Dorothy and Anna peeked out at their father from their loft bed. Lowe raised his finger to shush them and went down the staircase he had built and installed a month after his wedding, fifty years ago. He opened the front door and spread his still broad form across the threshold, gun raised. He kept all the lights off, allowing his eyes to adjust to the gloom quickly.

Two figures scampered across between the barn and his tool shed.

‘
Who’s there?’ he shouted out into the darkness. He was met with silence.

Then a sudden movement in his peripheral vision made him turn. He fired the shotgun’s double-barrels into the night, the report booming. His dogs should have been raising hell by now.

Then he heard automatic machine gun fire. His legs buckled beneath him, white hot light flashed, consuming his vision, and a sweat drenched his nightshirt, mingling with his blood. He tried to rise up but was kicked back by a man in army fatigues whose design he didn’t recognise. The man looked mature, grey haired with cold grey eyes. He pointed a pistol into Lowe's forehead. The last thing Lowe saw was the man smiling. It was a warm smile as he pulled the trigger. Faintly in the distance, Lowe could hear his daughters screaming.

Metzger made his way up into the loft where the three women huddled. Wiping his brow, he smiled at his incredible good fortune. How did the saying go? ‘Country girls, country appetites’. He vaulted into the bed, brandishing a bayonet. ‘Now ladies, who’s first?’

Schenker moved through the house while Metzger and the other ten SS entertained themselves up in the girls' loft. His heart was racing with the excitement; the hapless farmer having been his second ever kill. He moved through the kitchen and came suddenly upon the crouching form of the dead farmer’s wife. Gertrude launched herself at him, a vast nightgown swooping toward him with a banshee howl. She flattened him onto the cold floor, his head striking the stone tiles making him see stars. She straddled him, he couldn’t breathe, she produced a huge carving knife from her sleeve and, deftly changing hands, flipped the blade toward him.

He wrestled his Luger free from its holster and fired point blank. Gertrude’s head flipped back, spraying blood all over him, the walls and the ceiling before she collapsed forward, her dead weight pressing like a vice on his lungs.

He lay there for minutes, his breath coming in short gasps. He thought about his strict catholic upbringing in Bavaria, the nuns, the mystery of the sacraments and his gift, his trick. As a child he liked to maim little animals. Starting with insects, he quickly moved onto feral kittens, birds and mice in the privacy of his room. He’d derived exquisite pleasure in baiting and torturing the neighbour’s dachshund that had annoyed him. He had tricked the noisy little bastard into his family’s barn and fixed a leash to its neck, the other end wrapped around the steel leg of his father’s work bench. He set to work on it with the knives from the cook’s pantry. He found it hard not to rush to the finale and learned over the years how to drag out the exquisite torture.

After each of these animals had been slain, little Thor would extend out his arms like the saviour and pray for these poor animals' souls and he would bury them guiltily under his mother’s rose bushes when left alone with his aged nanny.

This gift he brought to the SA, then the SS. His rigorous attention to detail during the Kristallnacht brought him to Himmler’s attention. He believed from an early age he had the power to grant life or death, that he was in effect the hand of God.

This gift he had bestowed on the elderly shopkeeper who had come out protecting his shop front from Schenker’s charges. Schenker had shot him in the head, citing self-defence. The man was armed only with a sweeping brush hurling insults in Yiddish. That night Schenker had found his calling, inspired by the words of Hitler, taking Goebbels propaganda as Gospel, an avenging angel of death for the Reich. The people rounded up that night were handed over for him and his cohorts to interrogate. In the police cells in the wee hours of the morning, Schenker’s skills were honed. These thoughts floated around as the vast expanse of Gertrude expired, slumping and pushing him harder against the floor.

Her blood was flowing in thick bursts onto him. He was going to be found dead under this woman. He started to scream for help. His voice was lost in the screams of the girls above. Eventually Metzger’s head appeared amid the woman’s blood-matted hair. Looking at Schenker he called back to the troop behind him, ‘Looks like he’s finally popped his cherry.’ Amid the laughter, Gertrude was hauled off him and he gasped the air around him.

An army radio barked into life on the kitchen table. For a radius of two miles, Metzger’s forces were attacking local German farms. Somewhere in the distance a farm was being torched, the horizon beginning to glow from the blaze. Schenker rose unsteadily to his feet, smelling like a butcher’s block.