The Seventh Secret (32 page)

"Possibly," said Emily. "Let's see if they've got our entry permits from Professor Blaubach."

Emily started toward the soldiers. To one side of them, near the guardhouse, she became aware of an ominous wooden sign: WARNING! STAY OUT! THIS FRON-TIER AREA RESTRICTED!

One of the soldiers, taller than the others, bespectacled, in a dress uniform, stepped forward. Emily saw that he was an officer.

"Fräulein Emily Ashcroft?" he inquired.

"Yes, I'm Miss Ashcroft. Professor Otto Blaubach was to have left permits for me and the others. Do you have them?"

The officer did not give confirmation, but instead held out a hand. "Your passport, Fräulein ?"

Emily found her British passport in her shoulder bag and handed it over.

The officer studied her passport photo, then com-pared it to her face. Without a word he handed the passport back. He peered past her at the Mercedes sedan and then at the Toyota truck. "I count five to accompany you," he said.

"That's right."

"All West German nationals?"

"All from West Berlin. They have their passports. If you wish—"

The officer's hand dismissed the passports. "Before you may enter, we must make a thorough search of your vehicles."

"Please do," said Emily.

"Will you have your friends leave the vehicles, and stand aside until we have finished?"

"Of course," said Emily, turning away. She signaled for Oberstadt and his crew to leave their truck.

Plamp backed away, while Oberstadt leaped down, beckoning to his men.

As this occurred, the East German officer was barking an order to the other guards. Immediately, they hastened into action. One soldier, after retrieving a mirror set on a long handle from the guardhouse, headed for the Mercedes. Meanwhile, the tall officer led two of his other guards to the truck.

Emily joined Oberstadt, who was an inch or two shorter than she and two or three times broader, as he observed the activity around his Toyota. "No nonsense this time," he whispered. "Not doing it only with mirrors. We're getting the hill treatment."

Emily saw two of the soldiers on their backs wriggling under the truck.

"What do they expect to find?" Emily wondered.

"Possibly on the lookout for weapons," whispered Oberstadt. He added, "Or for Martin Bormann.-

The search of both vehicles took ten minutes. When it was done, and the soldiers had reassembled in front of the guardhouse, the officer strode toward Emily. He gave her six pink cards. "Permission for the six of you to come and go for seven days," he said. "You will enter at ten o'clock each morning. Of course, your vehicles will be searched each time you come and again when you leave. You will leave no later than five o'clock in the afternoon through this gate. You may proceed to your exact destination, as stated, and nowhere else."

"The mound and the area immediately around it," said Emily.

"The
Führerbunker
area," said the officer more specifically. "You may go through now."

They were inside their vehicles once more, the Mercedes sedan slowly preceding Oberstadt's truck through the gate and into the obstacle course of the East German no-man's-land.

They drove past the watchtower from which two curious East German soldiers followed their progress, and then they swung onto the dirt road and zigzagged their way along the bumpy turf.

When they arrived at the foot of the elongated dirt mound, Emily reaffirmed to herself that it must rise at least twenty feet at its highest point, its summit overlooking the uneven but relatively level surrounding field.

Emily emerged from the Mercedes and stood hands on hips eagerly studying the lay of the mound, which was some distance from the nearest watchtower and quite isolated. Not far to its right was a portion of the five-foot chain-link fence and beyond it in the East Berlin sector the parking lot from which Hitler's Old Reich Chancellery had once risen before it had been thoroughly bombed by American and British planes and shattered by Russian artillery shells.

Andrew Oberstadt had jumped down from the cab of his truck, and given commands to his crew members, who were gathering together shovels and picks, and sifting screens. Presently Oberstadt reached Emily's side and together they surveyed the scene in the sun.

Oberstadt shook his head. "Looks like a pile of nothing. To think the leader of the German Third Reich lived under all that rubble every day for—what?—two months, three months?"

"The last three and a half months, at least."

"And died there like a cornered rat," said Oberstadt.

"Maybe," said Emily, almost inaudibly. Then more clearly, "You know what we're looking for?"

"Exactly. A cameo bearing the face of Frederick the Great. A jawbone, with teeth and a bridge hopefully intact."

"Yes. Also, anything else you might turn up."

"We won't miss a thing. But first off, you've got to show us where to start. In the former Chancellery garden, I know. Now you'll have to point out the exact place where we're to begin and the dimensions of the dig. Should we get going?"

"This minute," said Emily, rummaging through her purse to find the drawing that she had made with Ernst Vogel's help, a diagram of the
Führerbunker
and adjacent garden area that Foster had refined for her with his own sketch of the underground structure and photographs taken afterward by the initial Soviet search teams.

Walking slowly toward the left side of the mound, Emily studied the diagram, with Oberstadt in step beside her and peeking over her shoulder.

Abruptly, Emily stopped just past the midpoint of the mound. "Here," she said. "From the lower level fifty-five feet below, they carried Hitler's body up four flights of steps, then Braun's body, to the emergency exit situated right here. There was sort of a blockhouse or vestibule here with a doorway that led into what was left of the garden." Emily took a few steps to her left, with Oberstadt trailing after her. "About here we will do our first excavation: This is where the Russians found a shallow trench." She pulled loose two photographs that had been clipped to the diagram. "These are pictures of the trench made by a Russian photographer the day after the Soviets overran the area."

Oberstadt examined the photographs, and then studied the excavation site. "It doesn't seem very deep."

"Andrew, don't forget that forty years have passed. In that time, due to Russian bulldozing around here, more earth has been overlaid on the trench. It will not be so shallow or near the surface now. It could be many feet down."

"Don't worry," said Oberstadt. "We'll go way down deep just to be sure."

He looked off and summoned his crew. Crisply, he gave them orders. As he drew the outline of the trench in the turf with a toe of his boot, he told the men to drive stakes around the perimeters, giving an outline of the area they were to excavate.

Emily watched the men go off, then turned back to Oberstadt. "Let me show you the shell crater where the bodies were buried after they were cremated."

She pointed to her diagram. "At this point," said Emily. "Three meters away."

She paced off the distance.

Oberstadt frowned. "This is the next spot?"

"The approximate location of the crater," Emily replied. "The remains of Hitler and Braun were carried to this point in a canvas, lowered about nine feet, and covered with dirt. A short time after, witnesses led the Russians to this crater. The Russians uncovered the corpses, removed them, and eventually identified them as the remains of Hitler and Braun."

"But you are not sure that they found the right bodies?"

"I want either to confirm that the Russians were correct or prove that they were mistaken. Your excavation will give us the answer, I hope." Emily stared down at the grassy plot. "Since we don't have the precise circumference of the crater, you'd better enlarge the area of your excavation."

Oberstadt was again marking the soil with the toe of his boot. "This should cover it," he said, when he finished. "We'll stake it, giving ourselves plenty of leeway."

"Do your men understand what they are looking for?" Emily asked once more.

Oberstadt reassured her with a smile. "They are instructed to filter all dirt through sifting screens. Anything we find, we will call to your attention. You'll be here to look it over and decide on its importance.''

"Where and when do we start?" Emily asked.

Oberstadt pivoted, and saw that his crew had finished staking out the dimensions of the trench. One of them was now carrying up shovels and screens.

"We'll start with the old trench, the site of the funeral pyre."

He retraced his steps to the staked-out trench. He looked it over, bent down and picked up a long-handled spade. Stepping to the edge of the trench site, he put his foot on the back of the spade and drove its pointed blade into the earth.

"When do we begin? We begin now." He pushed the shovel deeper into the turf. "The dig is now underway." Emily swallowed with difficulty and watched.

I
t was an overcast early morning in West Berlin, and Tovah Levine sat at the dining-room table with Josef Müller, waiting until his wife finished serving them breakfast.

Tovah could not help staring at her host as she tried to make out whether Josef Müller had any of the mannerisms of his father, Manfred Müller, Adolf Hitler's double. Tovah could discern no similarities. Josef Milner, who she had figured must be around forty-eight years old, had a beefy, somewhat bloated face, graying pompadour, no mustache, and was otherwise indistinguishable from a million other German white-collar workers.

At first, Tovah had tried to locate him on her own, through Lufthansa, but learned that he was away on a vacation. His office would give out neither his telephone number nor his home address, and she could not find him listed in the telephone directory. But then, Anneliese Raab had come through as she had promised and given Tovah the younger Müller's home telephone number.

When Tovah had reached him, he was just back from vacationing with his family in the Black Forest region. Tovah had identified herself as an Israeli journalist who was pursuing a story about Manfred Müller's renowned Hitler act. The son had sounded pleased, even cordial, and had invited Tovah to breakfast with him the following morning at his home on Waragerweg not far from Gatow.

With breakfast served, Tovah and Josef Müller were alone with their cold cuts and coffee. A light drizzle had begun outside, and Josef Müller sat contemplating the small raindrops splattering against the windowpanes.

Before breakfast, the son had already answered questions about his father's nightclub career, and spoken of his success in mimicking the Führer. The son had also displayed a scrapbook with yellowing press write-ups of Manfred Müller's performances, as well as ads announcing his long run at the Lowendorff Club. After that, they had discussed the night the Gestapo blackshirts had picked up Manfred MüIler after a show.

"Yes, that was always a memorable moment in our family," Josef Müller had admitted, still impressed. "My father was taken to meet with Hitler himself."

"Apparently because Hitler had need of a double. Did you know that at any time before Fräulein Raab confirmed it for you and sent you the Olympics film showing your father as Hitler's double?"

"I had never known for certain. I knew only that my father had met Hitler and had done some errands for him. But I think I vaguely suspected my father's role from hints my mother dropped from time to time. I never knew exactly what my father did for Hitler. My father refused to speak about it. Also, I was very young, maybe seven or eight, at the end of the war. Of course, I understood nothing about politics."

That had been part of their discussion before breakfast, but with breakfast served, Tovah posed her latest question. "So Manfred Müller was Hitler's double during most of the 1936 Olympic games. What I wonder about is—did he continue to act as a double after that?"

Josef Müller concentrated on the trickles of rain on the windows and considered the question. Shifting in his chair, he took up his fork and began to slice and eat the first of his cold cuts. "Yes, as I grew up, I always suspected that my father had continued to work as Hitler's double."

"But you never knew for certain?"