The Leader And The Damned

Chapter Eight

'Wing Commander Lindsay, you are to fly immediately to the Wolfsschanze to meet the Fuhrer. Heil Hitler! '

Commandant Muller of the Berghof security detachment shot out his arm in the Nazi salute as he stood in front of the Englishman in his room where he had been confined overnight. The Commandant's manner had changed entirely from the domineering attitude of his first encounter with the unexpected arrival. It was now one of respect.

'I can fly myself there,' Lindsay responded with typical audacity. 'Supply me with a flight plan.' He stood up and returned the salute. ' Heil Hitler! '

'One of the Fuhrer's personal pilots, Bauer, has just arrived at the airstrip. He will pilot you there. It is an honour..'

'It is, indeed.' Lindsay, who had just finished a meal, gazed at a girl dressed as a nurse who entered the room and waited for instructions. She was dark-haired and attractive. 'Do I get her as well as the pilot, Muller?'

The Commandant laughed coarsely. Lindsay had struck exactly the right note to appeal to the Commandant, who shook his head. 'She will attend to your face wound. Please sit down so she may attend to you. Meantime…' He produced a flask from his hip pocket and unscrewed the cap. 'A drink of schnapps? Very difficult to obtain these days in Germany..'

'Thank you..'

Lindsay sat down in a leather arm chair and took a generous swig from the flask – so generous he caught a flicker of alarm cross Muller's face. The Englishman was greatly amused, holding firmly on to the flask as the girl knelt by the arm of his chair, gently removed the sticking-plaster which had been roughly applied to his jaw earlier. Using a piece of gauze soaked in some disinfectant liquid she skilfully removed the ugly scab which had formed over the wound. There must be no traces of ill-treatment when he met the Fuhrer. From now on he was to be coddled as a very important person – until the confrontation at the Wolfsschanze took place.

Lindsay recognized the Junkers. 52 transport plane when the Mercedes in which he had been driven arrived at the airstrip. It was a reliable workhorse and should reach East Prussia in a few hours – even though it had to fly the full breadth of the Third Reich before they reached their destination.

As he opened the door and put a foot on the ice- encrusted running-board he felt the bulk of the sealed envelope Muller had permitted him to take from the wall-safe. True, a bomb-disposal expert had tested the package – Muller certainly knew his job – but the actual contents remained secret.

'Bauer? I'm Ian Lindsay. From the look of you I shouldn't have any worries on this flight..'

Lindsay held out his hand to the man in a pilot's helmet who had come forward from his machine. His step was firm and his face was creased into a pleasant grin as they shook hands. The Englishman knew exactly what had been in the pilot's mind. 'Another bloody God Almighty..' He would have been told his passenger was a Wing Commander who considerably out-ranked him. He would further have been impressed on hearing Lindsay knew the Fuhrer. But above all else – discounting difference in rank – there is a camaraderie among fliers, regardless of which nation they represent.

Bauer was surprised and pleased at Lindsay's friendly informality. He also noted that Lindsay paused to thank his driver for getting him to the airstrip safely. Commandant Muller had apologized for not accompanying the Englishman.

'I have to do every ruddy thing myself,' he had explained back at the Berghof. 'I must stay here in case that creep, Bormann. He stopped and winked at Lindsay. 'You went deaf suddenly, didn't you?'

'As a matter of fact, yes. You were saying?'

'Happy landings..'

Lindsay was about to climb into the passenger seat of the Junkers 52 when he asked Bauer the question, hoping to catch him in a relaxed mood. He gestured towards fresh plane ruts in the snow, tracks made by a heavy machine.

'Somebody else took off earlier today?'

'Very hush-hush.' Bauer looked resentful. 'The SS hustled me away into a but – but not before I saw the Condor land. It was a bit weird.'

'Weird?'

'It looked just. like the Fuhrer's plane. Same markings, a twin of the Condor he always uses. Then there was the convoy of cars from the Berghof which arrived at the same moment.'

'Something funny about them, too?'

By his complete lack of side Lindsay had already established an excellent rapport with the amiable Bauer.

'Couldn't see who was inside any of them,' the pilot chattered on, taking final drags on his cigarette. 'Curtains all drawn. The odd thing is the Fuhrer is at this moment at the Wolf's Lair.'

'I hope so,' Lindsay replied, carefully not probing any further. 'I'm supposed to be on my way to meet him.'

'Then we'd better get cracking..'

Bauer ground out the cigarette under the heel of his boot and within minutes the machine was airborne. It gained height swiftly on a north-easterly course. When Lindsay glanced back through his goggles the Obersalzberg had disappeared.

'Commandant Muller! You are to delay Wing Commander Lindsay's departure from the Berghof until further notice.' Bormann barked the order over the telephone from the signals office at the Wolf's Lair. Muller's reply came back to him with horrible clarity.

'Reichsleiter, I am afraid he took off half an hour ago as per your previous order…'

'Recall him,. for God's sake! Radio the pilot..'

'I cannot do that,' Muller informed him. 'Control at the airstrip have lost radio contact with the pilot. There is a storm north of Salzburg – and the mountains don't help..'

'Are you telling me you cannot reach the plane before it lands at the Wolf's Lair?' Bormann demanded.

'Quite possibly, yes!' Muller snapped with some satisfaction.

'In that case,' Bormann said more calmly, 'put me through to SS Colonel Jaeger. On the private line..

He waited, his mind in a turmoil. He had not slept for twenty-four hours, the Fuhrer was dead, killed on his way back from Smolensk. The local SS team had cleared up all traces of the catastrophe, the second team from Berlin, the execution squad under the command of Rainer Schulz had arrived and liquidated the local team when it had completed its grisly task.

Bormann had been so absorbed in attending to the details, the extraordinary arrival of Wing Commander Lindsay had slipped his memory until this moment. And the second 'Fuhrer', Heinz Kuby, was due to land at the Wolf's Lair shortly. He would decide how to deal with the unwanted Englishman later. The fresh priority was solving the problem of Muller, the only man at the Berghof aware of Kuby's existence. A confident voice came on the line.

'Colonel Jaeger speaking. You wanted something?'

No respectful reference to Bormann's title of Reichsleiter. At the Wolf's Lair Bormann pursed his lips: he disliked Jaeger and his independence intensely. He would have to handle this bastard.

'You are sure this line is safe?' Bormann demanded.

'Unless the Gestapo is tapping the line.' Jaeger sounded very much as though he didn't care one way or the other.

'Colonel Jaeger! You are the commander of the special Waffen SS unit charged with security at the Berghof..'

'I'm not a communications expert…' Jaeger now sounded thoroughly bored. 'As for being in control of security here that's a laugh. There's a whole area of the Berghof sealed off from my inspection…

`Don't let's go into that,' Bormann said hastily. He became more conciliatory. 'I'm phoning to warn you of the imminent arrival by plane from Berlin of SS Lieutenant Rainer Schulz. I have arranged for Schulz to come straight to your barracks. On no account let the Commandant know he is coming.'

'If you say so..'

Jaeger replaced the receiver and swore. A tall, well- built man of forty, bluff in manner with thick, dark eyebrows, a neat moustache and a firm jaw, he hated his present assignment. A veteran of all the major -campaigns so far, Hitler had taken a liking to him and had personally selected him to command his private bodyguard.

The Waffen SS later became smeared by being lumped together with other – less savoury – SS organizations. In fact it was an honourable body of elite soldiers comparable with, any Guards regiment in the British Army. Its allegiance was strictly confined to the Fuhrer and the Reich – not to Himmler. Its structure was unusually democratic, there being little difference between the officers and other ranks. Jaeger, champing at the bit for more active service, was a typical Waffen SS officer.

'Schulz, why have you come here?' Mailer asked. There was a note of exasperation in his voice.

The Commandant was in the front passenger seat of the Mercedes which Lieutenant Schulz was driving up the winding road leading to the famous Eagle's Nest at the top of the Kehlstein. This unique engineering feat built before the war under the direction of Martin Bormann at a cost of thirty million marks had, ironically, not been used by Hitler for years. He had become bored with his tea-house in the sky and had complained of vertigo. It was to this deserted eyrie the two men in the car were going.

'We have a problem…' The pallid, bony-faced Schulz paused while he negotiated another dangerous bend. He spoke slowly, as though stringing words together was akin to handling sticks of gelignite. 'It is so delicate we have to be sure no one could overhear our conversation. By order of the Fuhrer, the Reichsleiter said..'

Muller was uneasy and relapsed into silence. Characteristically, Colonel Jaeger had ignored Bormann's orders and had 'phoned the Commandant warning him Schulz was on his way from the barracks to the Berghof.

'.. a very welcome type of visitor he is. A walking bloody death-mask..

At the end of the ice-bound drive to the Kehlstein they left the car at the base of the mountain. They continued on foot inside the underground passage which had been blasted out of the peak. Muller found himself growing more and more nervous.

Still in silence the two men stepped inside the copper-lined elevator and Schulz, staring straight ahead, pressed the button. The elevator began its 400-foot ascent up the vertical shaft excavated out of solid rock. Muller pulled at his collar with his finger. The elevator stopped, the doors opened.

'Where are the guards?' Muller asked sharply. 'It's a good job I came up here – they're getting slack. Disciplinary action will be taken…'

Schulz had not replied. He led the way through a gallery of Roman pillars, across an immense, circular, glassed-in room and out onto the open terrace. The surface was covered with snow which had an icy, treacherous sheen. Muller noted that Schulz walked firm-footed to the wall bordering the terrace, a wall as high as an average-sized man's thighs. The man had no nerves.

Still with his back to the Commandant, Schulz placed both his gloved hands on the snow-crusted wall and gazed out across the incredible panorama of mountains. Below, the Kehlstein dropped a sheer four hundred feet. Muller joined him, careful not to look down. He also suffered from vertigo.

'Well,' he snapped, determined to put an end to this nonsense, 'now you have dragged me all this way it had better be good..'

'But it is good…' Schulz purred. For the first time he looked at Muller. 'We have located a traitor actually inside the Berghof..'

Muller was stunned. Thoughts raced through his mind, all of them frightening. He was responsible for overall security. There would be an official enquiry. He glanced down and shuddered – whether at the sight of the abyss or the news he had just been given he wasn't sure. He placed both hands on the wall to steady himself.

'Who is the traitor?' he asked eventually.

'The traitor is yourself…'

Schulz moved while he was speaking. His right hand grasped the back of Mailer's overcoat belt. His left hand struck the Commandant a hard blow beneath his cap and above his collar, hitting a nerve centre. The SS man employed all his strength to heave Muller up and forwards. His victim's feet slithered on the ice, increasing the momentum.

The Commandant grabbed at the wall-top but there was no purchase. He dived into space like a swimmer leaving the high board at the side of a pool. His scream came back through the clear mountain air. Schulz saw the falling figure become tiny as it descended four hundred feet. The heavy mountain silence returned.

Schulz went down in the elevator, walked slowly along the passage and headed for the waiting car without going anywhere near the crumpled body. As a matter of interest, he observed the Commandant had hit the ground a surprising distance from the base of the Kehlstein. He started up the motor and drove back to the Berghof to report the accident.

'Most unfortunate,' Bormann commented in reply to Schulz's call telling him of the incident. 'You will return to Berlin at once. Inform Colonel Jaeger that he is to take over the post of temporary Commandant at the Berghof. By order of the Fuhrer…!'

Bormann replaced the receiver and took out his notebook, turning to the page where he had written down the list of problems to be attended to. He put his pen through two words, cancelling out another task successfully dealt with: Commandant, Berghof.

When Rainer Schulz arrived back in Berlin he found his marching orders waiting for him. He had been posted to the Leningrad front. Three days after his arrival he was killed by a rocket fired by the Russian defenders.

It is approximately six hundred miles as a Junkers 52 flies from the Berghof's airstrip to Rastenburg in East Prussia. Bauer's course involved flying over Czechoslovakia, on over Poland and, on the last lap, into East Prussia. The two men chatted about how to fly a Junkers and there was not the slightest hint of tension between them. They were in the same business. Flying.

It was during the late morning of March 14 when the plane was approaching the Wolf's Lair. In the copilot's seat Lindsay tried to flog his cold-numbed brain into some kind of alertness ready for the ordeal when he confronted the Fuhrer. Below they were passing over a desert, a plain of snow, which went on forever. Above loomed another desert – a low ceiling of dense, dirty-grey cloud which threatened further snow. Lindsay's mind went back to the interview in Ryder Street where this crazy scheme he had volunteered to undertake had begun.

Colonel Dick Browne, who briefed him, was not his favourite person. He recalled thinking this when he had sat on the far side of the desk as Browne continued in his clipped voice.

'If you reach Germany..'

' When I reach Germany,' Lindsay corrected him.

'When,' Browne said reluctantly as though it were the most unlikely outcome. 'Your first task is to locate the Fuhrer's headquarters. As your pre-war attitude was known to be pro-Nazi – above all, since you visited Hitler personally – you might just receive a warm welcome.. He extended his hand, offering his pack. 'Have a cigarette, Lindsay.'

He made it sound as though he were granting a condemned man his last request. Lindsay took the cigarette and used the German lighter he was accustoming himself to. He said nothing so Browne, who had hoped for some reaction, was compelled to go on.

' When you arrive at the Fuhrer's secret headquarters, your second task is to discover whether Hitler himself is personally directing military operations – or whether some field marshal is the real brain. If so, what is the identity of this man?'

'From some of the phraseology this sounds to come from pretty high up,' Lindsay observed.

'The origin of the directive is top secret. Having obtained this information – I gather the second bit is what they're really after – you then make your way back behind allied lines by whatever means possible, report your presence to us via the local commander-in-chief. We fly you home…'

'A piece of cake.'

'Really, Lindsay, I do hope you are not going to treat this mission in a flippant manner..

'For Christ's sake, Browne, you expect me to sit here shaking like a bloody road drill?'

'My rank is that of Colonel..

'And mine is that of Wing Commander..

'Which will prove helpful,' Brown said quickly, changing tack as he realized this RAF type might put in a complaint higher up than he dared to contemplate. 'They're bound to check up on you, put you under the microscope. The Allied order of battle documents you'll be taking may bolster your cover…'

'They're fake, I assume?' Lindsay queried as he eyed the package Brown had produced from a locked drawer. 'The Germans should have at least some information about General Alexander's troops.'

'Do let me put you completely in the picture, there's a good chap,' the Colonel said smugly. 'These documents…' he laid a fond hand on the package, 'list Alexander's present order of battle in Tunisia. You'll be perfectly safe.'

'You reassure, me mightily,' Lindsay responded.

'That bit about being perfectly safe where I'm going. And won't I be popular with Alexander – flying into enemy territory with that package in my hip pocket.'

Browne looked even smugger, if that were possible. 'That is the beauty of the whole plan.' He leaned back in his chair and smarmed his thinning hair with the palm of his lean hand. 'If they check with German HQ in Tunis they'll get confirmation that was our order of battle when you flew off to Germany. As soon as you fly off into the wild blue yonder Alex changes his troop dispositions. With a bit of luck Jerry will attack on the basis of what's inside this package – and come a real cropper.'

'So Alexander…'

'Is only too pleased to cooperate with us. That's how we got his go-ahead. Pretty neat, eh?'

'It would appear so.'

'To recap,' Browne concluded. 'Find out where Adolf is holed up, check on whether he's running the show himself – and if not, who is his pet commander. Also the peace mission business. Then use the underground, who'll be waiting, and dash for Switzerland.'

'A piece of cake: Lindsay repeated drily.

The Englishman jerked himself into the present as he felt the machine change angle into a gentle descent. They were coming in to land at Rangsdorf, the airfield closest to the Wolf's Lair. Where, he wondered, peering down, the hell was it? Below was a sea of dense pine forest, the branches encrusted with snow, a forest dimly seen beneath a lake of white mist and nowhere was there a sign of human habitation. Bauer's voice spoke in his earphones.

'Five minutes and we'll be down.'

'Not in that lot, I trust?' Lindsay responded with a touch of grim humour, holding the headset microphone close to his mouth.

He heard the pilot's amused chuckle followed by his response. 'The radio works – none of those damned Bavarian Alps round here. I've contacted the airstrip and we're cleared to land. Watch my smoke!'

The airstrip appeared suddenly in a large clearing which seemed bereft of buildings, which struck Lindsay as strange. Where was the f-ff'ing control tower? It was a beautiful landing – Lindsay's professional expertise gave the German ten out of ten. The landing wheels kissed the earth and they glided along the runway.

Only at ground level did the buildings become visible. Their rooftops were camouflaged with netting entwined with creeper. Several even had plants growing on top. It was little wonder no one had so far spotted the Wolf's Lair from the air. Lindsay climbed out as soon as the plane was stationary – he had felt glued to his seat, petrified. First night nerves.

He thanked Bauer, shaking his hand warmly and genuinely as he congratulated him on his performance. The German made a self-deprecatory gesture but Lindsay could tell he was pleased.

'See you around.' Bauer grinned. 'How about a trip over the Russian front some time?'

' Some time..'

Lindsay turned his attention to the large Mercedes which had driven almost alongside the aircraft. A tall, good-looking man in army uniform greeted him, shooting out his right arm. 'Wing Commander Lindsay? I am Guensche, the Fuhrer's Adjutant. I am instructed to escort you immediately to meet the Fuhrer who has just arrived from the Eastern front. Heil Hitler! '

The news of his coming had preceded him, Lindsay realized at once. He noticed that all round the hidden airstrip men had stopped their work to stare at him. A Luftwaffe officer checking a Condor – the plane which had flown in the Fuhrer from the Eastern Front? The twin of the machine Bauer had described as taking off earlier from the airstrip near the Berghof? A mechanic holding a cloth also paused to stare at him and inside the small control tower someone was using binoculars to study him. He was the star turn!

'Thank you, Guensche. Do you mind if I ride in front. Sitting alone in the back I'd feel like the King!'

'But certainly, Wing Commander!' Guensche closed the rear door he had opened and led him to the front passenger seat. 'You know,' he continued after getting in behind the wheel and starting up the motor, 'whenever the Fuhrer is driven anywhere he, too, always insists on sitting next to the driver. He is truly a man of the people. Like yourself, sir, if I may say so..'

Lindsay reflected it was all so different from what he had feared. He was making friends hand over fist, a feat a certain Colonel Dick Browne of Ryder Street, London, would have found difficult to emulate. The Adjutant drove with skill along tracks between walls of gloomy pines as he continued to talk, providing interesting information.

'At the moment there is much activity, comings and goings, alarms and excursions..'

'Nothing serious, I hope?' Lindsay enquired.

'In the end, no! I am thinking of yesterday – there was a loud explosion. Like a bomb dropping. Then we realized it was the usual thing – a fox setting off a mine. Although this must have been several of them setting off two or three mines – the detonation was so loud. Wing Commander, you must not wander about without a guide. The Wolf's Lair is heavily guarded by minefields. I see the first checkpoint coming up. Don't worry – there are two more before we are inside the Wolf's Lair…' Ian Lindsay was not worried. He was petrified.