The Berkut (18 page)

"Inadequate heat," Gnedin pointed out.

"The earth was then pounded flat to hide the fact of the burial," Petrov concluded.

"Where they remained until discovered by heroic members of the Seventy-ninth Rifle Corps," Rivitsky said, finishing the story.

"That's all we know now," Petrov said. "What questions do we ask? Where are the holes?"

"The autopsy," Gnedin said. "If the body is Hitler's, then our mission is complete."

"We know what the autopsy says; now we have to analyze it. It bothers me that the Forensics Commission has concluded that none of the bodies autopsied died of a gunshot wound, including that of General Krebs, who was not burned and whose body we saw. If this is a political judgment, I understand it; if it is their considered scientific opinion, then we have serious problems. Either these are the wrong bodies, or all the witnesses are lying."

"Mass hysteria can produce psychosis in a group, but it's unlikely. These are people accustomed to violence and to the bizarre," Gnedin said.

"Krebs was shot," Rivitsky said. "We found the body; there was no mistake about the bullet hole."

"Yes," Petrov said. "For the moment we will assume that our well
meaning forensics experts do not wish to have a war criminal with the courage to shoot himself. Chenko confirms this. His view is that there were clearly gunshot wounds, but he is only an observer to the commission. Its findings are official."

"This is irrelevant," Gnedin said impatiently. "The teeth prove their point. The commission has found the two dental technicians, Heusermann and Echtmann, and complete records. The two of them have been interrogated repeatedly, and they positively identified Hitler and Eva Braun by their dental works, including a prosthesis built for her. This is difficult evidence to refute. It cannot be discarded so easily."

"Objection noted," Petrov said, his voice playful. "Please remember our mission. What the commission believes and reports has no bearing on us. Their findings are of no real interest to us. Again I remind you that we seek the truth, and only the truth."

There was a tone in their leader's voice that surprised the men.

He was emotional, but under control; if they didn't know better, it would seem that he was almost teasing them. He was holding something back.

"Ezdovo, share your information with your colleagues."

They all looked expectantly at the Siberian. He made the most of his moment, sipping his vodka and swishing it around in his mouth before he swallowed and spoke. "The SMERSH boys finished with Fraulein Heusermann yesterday. She's a small one-young, blond, bosomy." He demonstrated with his hands. "Chenko told us the commission had asked her to identify the dental work in the jaw taken from Hitler's corpse. I fished her out of SMERSH, told her I was with the commission and that we wished her to make an inspection of the jaw in order to be certain. I told her we understood that she had been under great pressure and that so far she had been very cooperative. She was eager to please me, I can tell you that. I explained to her that she was under arrest, but that we wished to reward her cooperation by allowing her to return to her flat to gather her personal belongings. She was very appreciative."

"I can imagine," Bailov said admiringly. "Pay attention," Petrov warned.

"I drove her to her flat. At first she was nervous, but then I gave her some vodka and it seemed to calm her."

All the men laughed.

"She relaxed. I asked her to tell me about what it was like to be part of the upper echelon of the Third Reich. She tells me, 'There's lots of parties. They go all night and
sometimes for more than a day.”
She tells me Bormann is fucking half the women in the Chancellery, then writing letters to his wife about his affairs, giving her all the details. She says Goebbels fucks young ones and insists they can't be any older than his eldest daughter."

"All right," Petrov said with a hint of irritation. "Get to the point." "We're in her flat. Comfortable. Her Nazi friends have been very generous, and she says she's had lots of boyfriends. I give her some time to pack a valise, and while she packs I take a look around. There are bloodstains in a number of places. She tells me that on the night of the breakout a captain called Helmut Beerman shows up at her flat and begs her for sanctuary. He was one of Mohnke's group, but got separated from them and was scared of crossing the river by himself. Later in the morning, Beetz, Baur's copilot, crawls up to her flat. He's been shot and his skull is cracked open. The girl and Beerman try to help him, but he dies later in the day. They bury him in a rubble pile outside her building. Beerman still wanted to try escaping. He asked the girl to go with him, but when she refused, he took off on his own. It's around noon. She stayed in her flat until a Bulgarian medical student sent by SMERSH came to fetch her for questioning."

"So much for Beetz. We can move him to another category," Rivitsky said. "What happened to Beerman?"

Ezdovo shrugged. "She never saw him again. I finally got down to real business with the girl. I unwrapped a jawbone and laid it on the table. You should have seen the look on her face."

"The jawbone from the corpse in the mortuary?" Gnedin asked. Ezdovo ignored his comrade's question. "She took a long time.

Finally she says, 'It's his.' Whose? I ask. 'The Führer's,' she says. I ask her if she's certain. She's very emphatic, and proceeds to give me a point-by-point match against the Führer's dental records-all from her memory. It was a convincing display. I ask her to confirm that. this is the same jawbone she previously examined for the commission. This provokes her anger; 'Absolutely,' she shouts. I then tell her that the jawbone she has just identified was removed from the jaw of an SS sniper killed the day before and charred in a fire."

Gnedin, Rivitsky and Bailov sat with their mouths open, staring at him.

"This news causes her to weep; I let her get it out, then calm her and give her another vodka.
I ask her if she had been certain of any of the identifications. She tells me she wasn't. She is afraid of the Ivans, she confides in me; she told the commission what she thought its members wanted to hear. Further, she says that when the SMERSH people took her to Dr. Blaschke's office in the Chancellery, she grabbed a special bridge from a storage box and mixed it in with the other specimens they had. Later, when she was asked to identify the bridge as belonging to Eva Braun, she did so truthfully-a lie of omission. They never asked if it had been installed, which it hadn't."

Petrov stepped in. "Recall that this bridge was the central evidence in the forensics ruling on the identification of the female body as that of Eva Braun."

"But it couldn't be evidence," Ezdovo pointed out. "At the time Hider's woman died, the bridge was in her dentist's office, not in her mouth. It turns out that Fraulein Heusermann's testimony is entirely worthless."

"I'll be fucked," Bailov said.

"Then who is the dead female?" Gnedin asked. Petrov paused. "Eva Braun."

Now they were all on the edge of their chairs.

"The body was severely traumatized, probably from artillery rounds landing on the grave in the courtyard, but I'm quite certain it's her."

"Then the male is Hitl
er after all," Rivitsky said.

"We shall see," Petrov said. "If the number one war criminal was going to stage his own death, what better red herring to offer than the corpse of his new bride?"

Rivitsky jumped in again. "You think he's alive?"

"There's one more factor to consider. Yesterday I visited one of the suburban collection points where they have rounded up various Nazi women," Petrov told them. "They're holding only women in uniform, so it's unlikely that we'll ever see the secretaries again. If they got past our troops-a miracle in itself-they'll go into hiding. They won't be found by us among the refugees; they'll head for the west. But I had another thought that I wanted to pursue. Unge told me that Hitler's cook was an Austrian. It seemed to me that, given our presence, being an Austrian would be preferred over being a German."

"Hitler was an Austrian," Gnedin said, pointing out the obvious. "True, but irrelevant," Petrov told him. "A large ratio of the SS is Austrian-born. Also irrelevant. What
is
relevant is that
Austria was annexed against its will by the Germans."

"That's bullshit," Rivitsky said. "Everyone knows the Austrians welcomed the Germans with open arms."

"The people, yes; the government, no. Technically, Austria has the same status as France or Czechoslovakia or any other country seized by Hitler. Under our agreements with the Western Allies, citizens of these countries must be considered to be liberated by our presence and allowed to return home. Our government has agreed to this."

"A mere cook won't know this."

"She'll be desperate; it's all she's got. I figured out the route Mohnke's group took; she was with him. I walked it myself. There are three hospitals in that area, but only one is handling civilians. I went there and asked to read the patient register. I love the Germans for this; they always keep their records neat and complete. The hospital had seven Austrians in its beds, two of them female. She was one of them."

The men grinned.

"She had been raped and beaten, then shot and left for dead. She had lost a lot of blood, but she was conscious off and on. She told me two things. First, for his final meal Hitler ate a lettuce salad and spaghetti; he ate everything. Second, she said, there was a fifth person present at that final meal, an SS guard, a corporal Schweibel."

"Remarkable," Bailov said, his awe plain. "He eats his entire meal even though he's about to kill himself."

"Interesting," Rivitsky said.

"Once I had his name, I put out an alert for Schweibel. I got a call last night. He was brought here and I questioned him." Petrov picked up a document and waved it. "Not much in here. He went out in the last group and was captured on the other side of the river. But he confirmed the menu of Hitler's last meal and that he ate everything."

Petrov paused. "Next I called on Chenko. The autopsy report does not indicate if the stomach was dissected. They took five cc's of urine from the bladder, but never opened the stomach, according to the report. Chenko confirmed this. The organs had been removed and placed in specimen jars. This morning Chenko and I visited the mortuary. The bodies had already been cremated, but the visceral specimens were intact. Chenko dissected the stomach. He found no evidence of food-none."

"The
lettuce,"
Gnedin said in a deep voice.

"The lettuce," Petrov confirmed. "The leaf does not digest easily. If Hitler died only an hour after eating, there would be lettuce in the stomach."

"But they burned the body," Bailov interjected. "That would have destroyed it."

"Only if the fire destroyed the stomach, but the stomach was intact.

It was blackened and dried out in places, but the cavity retained its storage integrity and there was no lettuce, as there should have been."
"If
it
was Hitler," Ezdovo said, voicing what they were all thinking. There was silence in the room.

Petrov sat down, brushed his hair back and picked up his glass. "I'll have another one."

Gnedin walked to the back of the room to be alone. Several minutes passed. Petrov watched as the facts sank into their minds.

"A double," Ezdovo said.

"The German word is
Doppelganger,"
Petrov reminded them. "I have reason to believe that Hitler had three, which he used infrequently-one of them here in Berlin. Undoubtedly there were more. The Seventy-ninth Rifle Corps, in fact, unearthed one of them during its search of the Chancellery garden."

"The body in the water tank."

"Probably arranged by Goebbels before his death, as a final gesture to his master," Petrov said.

"Fascist loyalty."

"It's indisputable," Petrov said. "Do you agree?"

"Da,"
Ezdovo grunted. "The woman's testimony has been un
masked and the empty
stomach speaks loudly."

"Yes," said Gnedin. "I think you have something." Rivitsky nodded. "A strong case."

"Yes," agreed Bailov.

"What's the next step?" Rivitsky asked.

"I report to Stalin. Then we sleep. Tomorrow we begin the followup. Consider when a double might have been inserted. My own feeling is that it had to be done at the last possible moment, absolutely the last."

"During the ten-minute delay," Bailov blurted out.
"How?" asked Ezdovo.