the Valhalla Exchange (1976) Read online

  'Martin Bormann?' he said.

  'Oh, come off it, General. Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, Head of the Nazi Party Chancellory and Secretary to the Fuhrer. The one member of Hitler's top table unaccounted for since the war.'

  'Bormann's dead,' he said softly. 'He was killed attempting to break out of Berlin. Blown up crossing the Weidendammer Bridge on the night of May 1st, 1945.'

  'Early hours of May 2nd, General,' I said. 'Let's get it right. Bormann left the bunker at 1.30 a.m. It was Erich Kempka, Hitler's chauffeur, who saw him come under artillery fire on that bridge. Unfortunately for that story, the Hitler Youth Leader, Artur Axmann, crossed the Spree River on a railway bridge, as part of a group led by Bormann, and that was considerably later.'

  He nodded. 'But Axmann asserted also that he'd seen Bormann and Hitler's doctor, Stumpfegger, lying dead near Lehrter Station.'

  'And no one else to confirm the story,' I said. 'Very convenient,'

  He put down his glass, took out a pipe and started to fill it from a leather pouch. 'So, you believe he's alive. Wouldn't you say that's kind of crazy?'

  'It would certainly put me in pretty mixed company,' I said. 'Starting with Stalin and lesser mortals like Jacob Glas, Bormann's chauffeur, who saw him in Munich after the war. Then there was Eichmann - when the Israelis picked him up in 1960 he told them Bormann was alive. Now why would he do that if it wasn't true?'

  'A neat point. Go on.'

  'Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter, always insisted he was alive, maintained he had regular reports on him. Ladislas Farago said he actually interviewed him. Since 1964 the West German authorities have had 100,000 marks on his head and he was found guilty of war crimes at Nuremberg and sentenced to death in his absence.' I leaned forward. 'What more do you want, General? Would you like to hear the one about the Spaniard who maintains he travelled to Argentine from Spain with Bormann in a U-boat in 1945?'

  He smiled, leaning over to put another log on the fire. 'Yes, I interviewed him soon after he came out with that story. But if Bormann's been alive all these years, what's he been doing?'

  'The Kameradenwerk,' I said. 'Action for comrades. The organization they set up to take care of the movement after the war, with hundreds of millions of gold salted away to pay for it.'

  'Possible.' He nodded, staring into the fire. 'Possible.'

  'One thing is sure,' I said. 'That isn't him lying up there at the mortuary. At least, you don't think so.'

  He glanced up at me. 'Why do you say that?'

  'I saw your face.'

  He nodded. 'No, it wasn't Bormann.'

  'How did you know about him? Bauer, I mean. Events in La Huerta hardly make frontpage news in the New York Times.'

  'I employ an agent in Brazil who has a list of certain names. Any mention of any of them anywhere in South America and he informs me. I flew straight down.'

  'Now that I find truly remarkable.'

  'What do you want to know, son? What he looked like? Will that do? Five foot six inches, bull neck, prominent cheekbones, broad, rather brutal face. You could lose him in any crowd because he looked so damned ordinary. Just another working stiff off the waterfront or whatever. He was virtually unknown to the German public and press. Honours, medals meant nothing to him. Power was all.' It was as if he was talking to himself as he sat there, staring into the fire. 'He was the most powerful man in Germany and nobody appreciated it until after the war.'

  'A butcher,' I said, 'who condoned the final solution and the deaths of millions of Jews.'

  'Who also sent war orphans to his wife in Bavaria to look after,' Canning said. 'You know what Goring said at Nuremberg when they asked him if he knew where Bormann was? He said, "I hope he's frying in hell, but I don't know."'

  He heaved himself out of the chair, went behind the bar and reached for a bottle of Scotch. 'Can I get you another?'

  'Why not?' I got up and sat on one of the bar stools. 'Brandy.'

  As he poured some into my glass he said,

  'I was once a prisoner-of-war, did you know that?'

  'That's a reasonably well-known fact, General,' I said. 'You were captured in Korea. The Chinese had you for two years in Manchuria. Isn't that why Nixon hauled you out of retirement the other year to go to Peking with him?'

  'No, I mean way, way back. I was a prisoner once before. Towards the end of the Second World War, the Germans had me. At Schloss Arlberg in Bavaria. A special set-up for prominent prisoners.'

  And I genuinely hadn't known, although it was so far back it was hardly surprising, and then his real, enduring fame had been gained in Korea, after all.

  I said. 'I didn't know that, General.'

  He dropped ice into his glass and a very large measure of whisky. 'Yes, I was there right to the bitter end. In the area erroneously known as the Alpine Fortress. One of Dr Goebbels's smarter pieces of propaganda. He actually had the Allies believing there was such a place. It meant the troops were very cautious about probing into that area at first, which made it a safe resting place for big Nazis on the run from Berlin in those last few days.'

  'Hitler could have gone, but didn't.'

  'That's right.'

  'And Bormann?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'The one thing that's never made any sense to me,' I said. 'He was a brilliant man. Too clever by half to leave his chances of survival to a mad scramble at the final end of things. If he'd really wanted to escape he'd have gone to Berchtesgaden when he had the chance instead of staying in the bunker till the end. He'd have had a plan.'

  'Oh, but he did, son.' Canning nodded slowly. 'You can bet your sweet life on that.'

  'And how would you know, General?' I asked softly.

  And at that he exploded, came apart at the seams.

  'Because I saw him, damn you,' he cried harshly. 'Because I stood as close to him as I am to you, traded shots with him, had my hands on his throat, do you understand?' He paused, hands held out, looking at them in a kind of wonder. 'And lost him,' he whispered.

  He leaned on the bar, head down. There was a long, long moment in which I couldn't think of a thing to say, but waited, my stomach hollow with excitement. When he finally raised his head, he was calm again.

  'You know what's so strange, O'Hagan? So bloody incredible? I kept it to myself all these years. Never mentioned it to a soul until now.'

  2

  It began, if it may be said to have begun anywhere, on the morning of Wednesday, 25 April 1945, a few miles north of Innsbruck.

  When Jack Howard emerged from the truck at the rear of the column just after first light, it was bitterly cold, a powdering of dry snow on the ground, for the valley in which they had halted for the night was high in the Bavarian Alps, although he couldn't see much of the mountains because of the heavy clinging mist which had settled among the trees. It reminded him too much of the Ardennes for comfort. He stamped his feet to induce a little warmth and lit a cigarette.

  Sergeant Hoover had started a wood fire, and the men, only five of them now, crouched beside it. Anderson, O'Grady, Garland and Finebaum who'd once played clarinet with Glenn Miller and never let anyone forget it. Just now he was on his face trying to blow fresh life into the flames. He was the first to notice Howard.

  'Heh, the captain's up and he don't look too good.'

  'Why don't you try a mirror?' Garland inquired. 'You think you look like a daisy or something?'

  'Stinkweed - that's the only flower he ever resembled,' O'Grady said.

  'That's it, hotshot,' Finebaum told him. 'You're out. From here on in you find your own beans.' He turned to Hoover. 'I ask you, Sarge. I appeal to your better nature. Is that the best these mothers can offer after all I've done for them?'

  'That's a truly lousy act, Finebaum, did I ever tell you that?' Hoover poured coffee into an aluminium cup. 'You're going to need plenty of practice, boy, if you're ever going to get back into vaudeville.'

  'Well, I'll tell you,' Finebaum said. 'I've had kind of a special proble
m lately. I ran out of audience. Most of them died on me.'

  Hoover took the coffee across to the truck and gave it to Howard without a word. Somewhere thunder rumbled on the horizon.

  'Eighty-eights?' the captain said.

  Hoover nodded. 'Don't they ever give up? It don't make any kind of sense to me. Every time we turn on the radio they tell us this war's as good as finished.'

  'Maybe they forgot to tell the Germans.'

  'That makes sense. Any chance of submitting it through channels?'

  Howard shook his head. 'It wouldn't do any good, Harry. Those krauts don't intend to give in until they get you. That's what it's all about.'

  Hoover grunted. 'Those mothers better be quick or they're going to miss out, that's all I can say. You want to eat now? We still got plenty of K-rations and Finebaum traded some smokes last night for half a dozen cans of beans from some of those Limey tank guys up the column.'

  'The coffee's just fine, Harry,' Howard said. 'Maybe later.'

  The sergeant moved back to the fire and Howard paced up and down beside the truck, stamping his feet and clutching the hot cup tightly in mittened fingers. He was twenty-three years of age, young to be a captain of Rangers, but that was the circumstances of war. He wore a crumpled Mackinaw coat, woolknit muffler at his throat and a knitted cap. There were times when he could have passed for nineteen, but this was not one of them, not with the four-day growth of dark beard on his chin, the sunken eyes.

  But once he had been nineteen, an Ohio farmer's son with some pretensions to being a poet and the desire to write for a living which had sent him to Columbia to study journalism. That was a long time ago - before the flood. Before the further circumstances of war which had brought him to his present situation in charge of the reconnaissance element for a column of the British 7th Armoured Division, probing into Bavaria towards Berchtesgaden.

  Hoover squatted beside the fire. Finebaum passed him a plate of beans. 'The captain not eating?'

  'Not right now.'

  'Jesus,' Finebaum said. 'What kind of way is that to carry on?'

  'Respect, Finebaum.' Hoover prodded him with his knife. 'Just a little more respect when you speak about him.'

  'Sure, I respect him,' Finebaum said. 'I respect him like crazy and I know how you and he went in at Salerno together and how those Krauts jumped you outside Anzio with those machine guns flat zeroed in and took out three-quarters of the battalion and how our gracious captain saved the rest. So he's God's gift to soldiery; so he should eat occasionally. He ain't swallowed more than a couple of mouthfuls since Sunday.'

  'Sunday he lost nine men,' Hoover said. 'Maybe you're forgetting.'

  'Those guys are dead - so they're dead - right? He don't keep his strength up, he might lose a few more, including me. I mean, look at him! He's got so skinny, that stinking coat he wears is two sizes too big for him. He looks like some fresh kid in his first year at college.'

  'I know,' Hoover said. 'The kind they give the Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster to.'

  The others laughed and Finebaum managed to look injured. 'Okay - okay. I've come this far. I just figure it would look kind of silly to die now.'

  'Everybody dies,' Hoover said. 'Sooner or later. Even you.'

  'Okay - but not here. Not now. I mean, after surviving D-Day, Omaha, St-Lo, the Ardennes and a few interesting stopoffs in between, it would look kind of stupid to buy it here, playing wet-nurse to a bunch of Limeys.'

  'We've been on the same side for nearly four years now,' Hoover said. 'Or hadn't you noticed?'

  'How can I help it with guys going around dressed like that?' Finebaum nodded to where the commanding officer of the column, a lieutenant-colonel named Denning, was approaching, his adjutant at his side. They were Highlanders and wore rather dashing Glengarry bonnets.

  'Morning, Howard,' Denning said as he got close. 'Damn cold night. Winter's hung on late up here this year.'

  'I guess so, Colonel.'

  'Let's have a look at the map, Miller.' The adjutant spread it against the side of the truck and the colonel ran a finger along the centre. 'Here's Innsbruck and here we are. Another five miles to the head of this valley and we hit a junction with the main road to Salzburg. We could have trouble there, wouldn't you say so?'

  'Very possibly, Colonel.'

  'Good. We'll move out in thirty minutes. I suggest you take the lead and send your other jeep on ahead to scout out the land.'

  'As you say, sir.'

  Denning and the adjutant moved away and Howard turned to Hoover and the rest of the men who had all edged in close enough to hear. 'You got that, Harry?'

  'I think so, sir.'

  'Good. You take Finebaum and O'Grady. Garland and Anderson stay with me. Report in over your radio every five minutes without fail. Now get moving.'

  As they swung into action, Finebaum said plaintively, 'Holy Mary, Mother of God, I'm only a Jewish boy, but pray for us sinners in the hour of our need.'

  On the radio, the news was good. The Russians had finally encircled Berlin and had made contact with American troops on the Elbe River seventy-five miles south of the capital, cutting Germany in half.

  'The only way in and out of Berlin now is by air, sir,' Anderson said to Howard. 'They can't keep going any longer - they've got to give in. It's the only logical thing to do.'

  'Oh, I don't know,' Howard said. 'I'd say that if your name was Hitler or Goebbels or Himmler and the only prospect offered was a short trial and a long rope, you might think it worth while to go down, taking as many of the other side with you as you possibly could.'

  Anderson, who had the wheel, looked worried, as well he might, for unlike Garland he was married with two children, a girl of five and a boy aged six. He gripped the wheel so tightly that the knuckles on his hands turned white.

  You shouldn't have joined, old buddy, Howard thought. You should have found an easier way. Plenty did.

  Strange how callous he had become where the suffering of others was concerned, but that was the war. It had left him indifferent where death was concerned, even to its uglier aspects. The time when a body had an emotional effect was long since gone. He had seen too many of them. The fact of death was all that mattered.

  The radio crackled into life. Hoover's voice sounded clearly. 'Sugar Nan Two to Sugar Nan One. Are you receiving me?'

  'Strength nine,' Howard said. 'Where are you, Harry?'

  'We've reached the road junction, sir. Not a kraut in sight. What do we do now?'

  Howard checked his watch. 'Stay there. We'll be with you in twenty minutes. Over and out.'

  He replaced the handmike and turned to Garland. 'Strange - I would have expected something from them up there. A good place to put up a fight. Still...'

  There was a sudden roaring in his ears and a great wind seemed to pick him up and carry him away. The world moved in and out and then somehow he was lying in a ditch, Garland beside him, minus his helmet and most of the top of his skull. The jeep, or what was left of it, was on its side. The Cromwell tank behind was blazing furiously, its ammunition exploding like a firework display. One of the crew scrambled out of the turret, his uniform on fire, and fell to the ground.

  There was no reality to it at all - none. And then Howard realized why. He couldn't hear a damn thing. Something to do with the explosion probably. Things seemed to be happening in slow motion, as if under water, no noise, not even the whisper of a sound. There was blood on his hands, but he got his field-glasses up to his eyes and traversed the trees on the hillside on the other side of the road. Almost immediately a Tiger tank jumped into view, a young man with pale face in the black uniform of a Sturmbannfuhrer of SS-Panzer Troops, standing in the gun turret, quite exposed. As Howard watched helplessly he saw the microphone raised. The lips moved and then the Tiger's 88 belched flame and smoke.

  The man whom Howard had seen in the turret of the lead Tiger was SS-Major Karl Ritter of the 3rd Company, 502nd SS Heavy Tank Battalion, and what was to take place during the e
nsuing five minutes was probably the single most devastating Tiger action of the Second World War.

  Ritter was a Tiger ace with 120 claimed victories on the Russian Front, a man who had learned his business the hard way and knew exactly what he was doing. With only two operational Tigers on the hillside with him, he was hopelessly outnumbered, a fact which a reconnaissance on foot had indicated to him that morning and it was obvious that Denning would expect trouble at the junction with the Salzburg road. Therefore an earlier attack had seemed essential - indeed there was no alternative.

  It succeeded magnificently, for on the particular stretch of forest track he had chosen there was no room for any vehicle to reverse or change direction. The first shell from his Tiger's 88 narrowly missed direct contact with the lead jeep, turning it over and putting Howard and his men into the ditch. The second shell, seconds later, brewed up the leading Cromwell tank. Ritter was already transmitting orders to his gunner, Sergeant-Major Erich Hoffer. The 88 traversed again and, a moment later, scored a direct hit on a Bren-gun carrier bringing up the rear.

  The entire column was now at a standstill, hopelessly trapped, unable to move forward or back. Ritter made a hand signal, the other two Tigers moved out of the woods on either side and the carnage began.

  In the five minutes which followed, their three 88s and six machine guns left thirty armoured vehicles, including eight Cromwell tanks, ablaze.

  The front reconnaissance jeep was out of sight among the trees at the junction with the road to Salzburg. O'Grady was sitting behind the wheel, with Hoover beside him lighting a cigarette. Finebaum was a few yards away, directly above the road, squatting against a tree, his M1 across his knees, eating beans from a can with a knife.

  O'Grady was eighteen and a replacement of only a few weeks' standing. He said, 'He's disgusting, you know that, Sarge? He not only acts like a pig, he eats like one. And the way he goes on, never stopping talking - making out everything's some kind of bad joke.'