The Berkut (43 page)

Only once had Brumm attempted to talk to him about the future.

"We need to discuss the details of what happens next," the colonel told him. It was after midnight, and all the women had retired to their various bedrooms.

Herr Wolf flicked his hand at Brumm. "You take care of it." "I want to be sure that you understand everything."

"I trust you," Herr Wolf said. He stared at the ground for a while. "Perhaps we should reconsider and remain here," he said finally.

"Neither safe nor practical."

"Discovery by the Jews was an accident, an improbable event."

"For the Jews it was improbable. Not for the Russians. They will come. It will take time, but they'll be here."

Herr Wolf looked at the officer. "A shame. It's so peaceful here.

I'd planned to retire, Brumm-did you know that?-to Salzburg. I had no desire for a lifetime of public service. There would have been a new Fuhrer in time. I wanted something like this. A place with privacy, time to read and think, time to plan."

"You will have your refuge eventually, but this isn't it." "I think I'm too tired to run again."

"You're much stronger now. Your color is back. If the Russians begin to breathe down our necks, you'll have no trouble summoning the adrenaline."

"My mind is tired. And my heart. The Third Reich has crumbled to dust. So much promise, so many years of my life. Nothing remains."

"As long as you live, the Third Reich survives."

Herr Wolf smiled warmly. "Thank you, Colonel. You are consid-

erate to an old man."

"Not old."

"In life's measures, I'm ancient," Herr Wolf said mysteriously. Brumm didn't reply. He wanted to discuss the plan, not provoke

meaningless self-pity. The singular lesson of his own life had been that as long as you could draw breath there was hope. Thus ended the only attempt to discuss the plan before it was implemented. Herr Wolf made it quite clear; it was on Brumm's shoulders.

With the absence of rainfall, the streams in the valley shrank to mere trickles, and Brumm walked up and down the whole area studying the situation. Even if they wanted to remain, the valley wouldn't allow it. Three or four people might find a way to survive without depleting the food supply, but with ten of them it was out of the question. With luck and discipline they'd be able to make it until spring, but no longer.

At this time of day there were few chores to be done. On a bed of fine gravel in the widest part of the largest stream, Beard and the Valkyries practiced hand-to-hand combat. The women seemed leaner, their teenage softness transformed by a Spartan diet and rigorous training into the more mature lines of adult women. With pleasure Brumm watched them exercise as they deftly parried one another's attacks with growing confidence. After a while they broke off training and attacked Beard en masse, wrestling him into one of the last deep pools in the shrinking brook. Never had a sergeant major had such a
relationship with his "men," Brumm thought. It was a crazy setup.

Waller came up out of the clear pool, sat beside Brumm and wrung the moisture from her long hair. She was deeply tanned, and the cold water seemed to make her flesh glow. "Someday you'll dunk one of us when we don't want to play," he said.

"That time is already here," she said. The look on her face was peculiar, almost challenging. Beard was standing in the water, waistdeep, his arms crossed, smiling. The other Valkyries were nowhere in sight.

When he understood, Brumm rolled away instinctively, pulling a knee under him for support, but they were on him too quickly. His first instinct was to laugh, but suddenly his arm was locked viselike against his spine, the pain shot through his elbow and his smile evaporated. It took the girls only a few seconds to subdue him and dump him unceremoniously into the creek; when it was done, they stood on the bank and cheered loudly.

Waller remained on the bank with the others. "You see?" she

called out briskly.

"Unfair advantage. Ambush."

"One man's disadvantage is another man's advantage," she replied. "Spoken like a soldier." He laughed.

For a while the group lingered on the bank, enjoying the sun.

When they finally drifted away, Waller waded into the water with him and slid her arms around his waist. "Does the SS manual forbid mingling in the daylight?"

"Only when the urge to follow regulations is stronger than another urge."

"I hate rules," she said, pulling him down to her.

Later Beard sat on the stream bank flicking smooth pebbles into the current. How far would the flow carry the pebble before it hit bottom? He picked a target and adjusted each shot, noting that while the strength of the water was constant, the weight and shape of each rock changed the trajectories. Even so, by concentration he found that he could cluster the pebbles near his target.

Night was crawling into the valley, and shadows from the pines near Stone Cave were already climbing the near bank. Close by Brumm talked quietly with two of the girls. When they left, he joined his friend. "I'm too old to be a garrison soldier," Beard said to him forlornly. "I can't get used to all this. I've tried, but it's no good. I don't have the patience."

"You're just feeling sorry for yourself, my friend. How many other men your age have so many sensuous young consorts at their disposal?" Brumm teased. "Besides, our Valkyries still have a lot to learn from you."

"I know," Beard sighed. "I tell myself that every day. They work hard; they learn fast; they follow orders."

"It's important. We'll need them when we leave here."

"Leave?" Beard asked. "I don't believe we'll ever leave here. It's bigger than a tomb, but we can't leave it. It's a goddamned tomb." He thought for a moment, then looked at his colonel. "Besides, where would we go?"

"Is that what's bothering you?"

"Partly," Rau admitted. "Not knowing what's going on out there is also a problem." He motioned toward the rim of the canyon. "We've been beaten again. Will it be like after the last war? No jobs, no army, no money, no food? I want to know what's happening to the German people and to our country."

"It's all finished, my friend. There's nothing left of what you and I knew. The Allies and the Russians are carving her up. If they leave us alone, they fear we'll rise again. The Russians will keep every centimeter of territory they've taken as a buffer against the West. Germany disappears, and in its place there'll be a no-man's-land between the Russians and the West. That's the reality. Perhaps it's better in the long run."

"Better that Germany be destroyed? I can't accept that."

"Nor can I, but then we're not being asked. Our days of choosing are ended." Brumm leaned back and stared up at the first stars of evening twilight. "These mountains have always cleared my head and allowed me to think clearly. Our Germany is not a simple physical and political entity. It's a spiritual condition, a concept; at least that's how I think of it. The German character is one of implicit trust. We trust our leaders, we trust our abilities, we trust in what we think is a God-given destiny for greatness. It's always been so, even when we were tribes in caves. We trust better than any people, I think. But what we lack is confidence. We bemoan every small failure as a large one, and we insist on perfection. That's our weakness. When we lose confidence, we lose control. Our Teutonic blood rises and our emotions overrule our minds. The world sees us as calculating, cold-blooded people-and we are, outwardly. Inside we're a jelly of seething emotions, always on the verge of exposing our Romantic spirits. We can't catch one fish; we must catch them all. It's the German way. If the abolition of the German nation is necessary to protect us from ourselves, then so be it. Losers can't complain or write history books."

Beard went back to tossing pebbles into the water. Birds fluttered overhead, their wings cutting the still air.
"Gü
nter?" he asked tentatively at last.

"Umm?"

"You're still full of shit." They both laughed.

From upstream they heard Herr Wolf's voice as he and the Jewish woman emerged from a thicket, walking at a brisk pace as he talked and she listened intently. The time since the bunker had worked a miracle on his health. His arm was regaining strength and mobility, his leg no longer dragged behind him and he acted younger. The elimination of his frequent "vitamin" injections and living close to nature had done wonders. Mentally he also seemed to be more his old self, gaining in confidence and arrogance each day. He had taken to rising at noon and breakfasting with his female companion.
In
the afternoons they would sit by the radio listening to hourly broadcasts, to which he offered a running commentary while she scratched notes on a pad of paper as if she were his secretary. They ate a light lunch late in the afternoon, after which they always took a long walk. Then they would disappear into their room for a nap, emerging again around midnight for a heavy meal, then sitting around the fire. Herr Wolf could be a superb conversationalist when he chose, but more often than not he preferred to monopolize the conversation, and the woman seemed content to listen.

Brumm had observed that while Herr Wolf had a prodigious recall for facts and seemingly endless tables of obscure statistics, he often strung them together in ways that made no sense. Here was a man with acutely developed intellectual tools, but with no perspective to apply them. But Brumm remained silent in the face of Wolf's preposterous sermons; peace within the group was more important than winning minor verbal skirmishes.

Of all the inhabitants in their small and isolated community, Brumm was most intrigued by Razia Scheel, who remained an enigma. She was never far from Herr Wolf's side and seemed to cater to his every desire, often reacting before he spoke, as if she could read his mind. Brumm considered Skorzeny's theory that after the immediate danger had passed, hostages tended to identify with their captors. Over the course of many missions kidnapping had become almost routine, and in the Friedenthal the psychological profile of hostages was a much discussed topic over beer and schnapps. Every commando unit returning from an operation was thoroughly questioned on the behavior of prisoners, no matter how brief such incarcerations might have been. Radl, Skorzeny's executive officer, acting on his commander's directions, had even commissioned studies by a noted Austrian psychiatrist on various aspects of hostage psychology. Generally their interest in the phenomenon was more practical than scholarly. Each man understood that in certain circumstances a hostage could become an ally, and they were taught to use this knowledge to their practical advantage.

But even knowing this, Brumm still found the woman's behavior remarkable and unexpected. After so many years in a concentration camp, and as a subject of medical experiments, it seemed that she would be demented, a raging maniac waiting for the first opportunity to strike. Yet no such motive was apparent; in a matter of minutes she had been changed from an avenger to a disciple. It was such a fast and complete reversal that it alarmed Brumm, and professionally he did not trust what he couldn't understand. Even more amazing was the fact that she seemed genuinely fond of Herr Wolf and was his gentle but firm protector.

Even in small societies there are pecking orders, and while Razia Scheel had no formal status in theirs, she was in fact the slave of the master, and her proximity to him gave her a certain degree of power and leverage. She flashed her black animal
like eyes at all of them but Herr Wolf, who demonstrated no visible affection for her.

The greatest mystery of all was that of Herr Wolf's sex life. At first Brumm had been shocked by the girls' explicit talk about sex; they were as casual about it as soldiers. Early on, Gretchen had told him that the others talked often about the possibility of servicing the Fuhrer's sexual needs-some small wagers were even made-but the object of their speculation showed no inclination to accept their overtures, no matter how overt. Razia Scheel, who was always close by his side, took such advances with seething anger, hissing at the others like an animal defending its territory. Herr Wolf laughed at such displays, and warned the girls that they should be careful of his niece's "protective" ways. Eventually the fantasy had died, and in its place grew a resentment that the leader of the Third Reich would share his bed with a Jew. It was not clear who had a hold on whom, but
it was apparent that the bond w
as a powerful one.

In Berlin it had been well known that Adolf Hitler relished the
company of comely young women. Early in his public career he had seldom been seen in public without one of Germany's most beautiful females as his companion. By and large his tastes had been for blond full-busted types with narrow waists and powerful legs. Later there had been Eva Braun, a young, empty-headed Bavarian photographer's assistant about whom sexual legends abounded. Several of Skorzeny's officers claimed to have seen photographs of her in the buff, and occasionally in the intimate embrace of other living creatures, some of them animal. With such a past as Hitler's, the apparent abstinence of Herr Wolf seemed out of character.

The room shared by Herr Wolf and the woman was off limits to all the others, but sometimes passersby caught whiffs of unpleasant odors from the interior and wondered what the two were up to when they were alone.