The Seventh Secret (36 page)

"We don't need Vogel and his logbook. Two hours ago we had Vogel, and he told us all we wanted to know. We're getting very close, Tovah, very close to the truth. Sick as I feel, I have to get back to my excavation. Where can I drop you off?"

"The Kempinski, please."

When they drew up before the hotel, Tovah opened the back door to leave. She looked at Emily once more. "I hope you're right, Emily, that we are closer to the truth."

"We'll get to it," promised Emily, "as long as someone doesn't get to us first. Now after all this you get yourself some rest. See you later."

Standing at the curb, watching the Mercedes drive off, Tovah knew that she would be too busy to rest. They were very close to the truth. It was time for Tovah to report to her superiors. It was time for her to contact Chaim Golding and the other Israeli intelligence officers in the. Berlin branch of Mossad, and bring them up to date. Someone was onto them, and the biggest game of all was still to be tracked down and punished.

T
hey were inside the heavily guarded Frontier Zone of East Berlin, inside the Wall, with Plamp carefully driving the Mercedes over the dirt road carrying them to the mound of the
Führerbunker
. Emily 'sat tensely in the back seat, still clutching the pink card that had permitted her entry into the security area.

She tried to distract herself from her anxiety by counting the concrete posts that held the chain-link fence that ran along the road and hemmed them in. But she could not be distracted from what was foremost in her mind. The results of the initial digs. She had been given one week to uncover evidence that Hitler had or had not died as announced, and this was the end of the second day of excavation. By now, she was sure, Andrew Oberstadt and his three workmen would have unearthed the shallow trench and the 'nearby shell crater. By now, the first phase was over, and she wondered what the dig had turned up.

Looking off to her left, Emily could see the heap that was the grassy and rubble-strewn mound that covered the old
Führerbunker
. A portion of Oberstadt's Toyota truck was visible from behind the mound. His three men were not in view, but then Emily saw him come around the front of the mound with a spade in hand. He halted, pushed the pointed spade into the earth, and leaned on the handle, watching her approach.

Plamp had swerved the Mercedes off the road and headed bumpily across the uneven field toward the bunker. About fifteen feet from Oberstadt, he brought the car to a halt, turned off the ignition, and left the steering wheel to come around and assist Emily out of the rear.

"Thanks," she said to the driver. She removed her raincoat, adjusted the belt of her blue jumpsuit, planted the heels of her boots in the soggy turf, and strode toward Oberstadt.

"Sorry to be late," she said. "But I didn't think you'd need me around until you'd finished digging up the two sites."

"We didn't need you. Maybe we do now."

"You finished excavating the shallow trench and bomb crater?" Emily asked anxiously.

"We had covered the area with plastic, so we were able to finish both after the drizzle stopped."

"And—?"

"No luck, I'm afraid." Oberstadt confessed unhappily. "Found three minor relics. But nothing you wanted."

"No cameo with a portrait of Frederick the Great? No piece of jawbone with a dental bridge attached to it?"

"Neither," said Oberstadt. "If they were there in 1945, maybe the Russians picked them up. Possibly they were never there where we dug. You want to see what we did find?"

"May as well," said Emily.

Oberstadt left his shovel implanted in the ground and started around to the rear of the mound, with Emily right at his heels, trying to keep her balance on the wet turf.

At the far end of the mound, Emily saw the truck, and the three dirty laborers grouped around the front bumper, having hot coffee from a thermos bottle. They waved to her, and she waved back.

Oberstadt brought Emily to a small yellow towel spread atop a flat rock near the deep ditch of the once shallow trench.

"Here's all we found at both sites," said Oberstadt. From the towel, he held up the first of three objects. "A loose tooth. I think it belonged to a dog."

"That makes sense," said Emily. "Hitler's dogs were destroyed and later buried in this area."

"Then this," said Oberstadt, showing her a moist lump of what could have been wadded paper.

"What is it?" Emily wondered.

"Best I can make out, it must have been a small notebook once with a few pages of writing inside. But it's completely rotted from years of moisture."

Emily nodded. "That also fits. Goebbels's notebooks and papers were thrown into the trench and presumably burned."

"Well, no one will ever know." Oberstadt reached toward the towel and gingerly took up a blackened shred of cloth. "Finally this."

"It doesn't look like anything."

"It's something all right," Oberstadt said. "It's some-thing that was monogrammed that I can read, barely read. See the two initials." He pointed. "Can you make them out? Those initials are E. B."

"Eva Braun," Emily whispered. The reality of the past made her blink. "That must have been a piece of one of her handkerchiefs or else part of what they called in those days step-ins. We're on the right track for sure."

"Wouldn't that tell you that it was Eva Braun, along with Hitler, who was cremated here?"

"Not necessarily. That monogrammed—whatever it was—could have been planted on someone else who was cremated. Now if you'd found that dental bridge or cameo. .

"But we didn't, I'm sorry to say."

"No Andrew, don't be mistaken, that's not bad at all. The bridge or cameo might have proved that it was indeed Hitler who was buried here, and less likely an imposter. Since you didn't unearth either item, there's no positive evidence that it was Hitler who was cremated. So far, so good, Andrew." She turned around and considered the huge mound of dirt, grass, and rubble. "There is one more place we must look." She hesitated. "Hitler's last living room and bedroom. To learn whether the cameo or bridge was left there to be used on a double, but was overlooked in the haste of the burial. If neither is there, it would indicate that Hitler got away wearing both of them."

Studying the vast mound, Oberstadt shook his head. "Even if it could prove something, how do we get down there?"

"By digging from the top straight down," said Emily. "Impossible," said Oberstadt. "Do you know how much we'd have to excavate?" He stared at the summit of the mound. "I'd guess it is twenty feet from the top of the heap to ground level. Then, I think you told me, Hitler's quarters were fifty-five feet beneath ground level, and covered with eleven feet of concrete. That means we'd have to go down seventy-five feet, with countless obstructions, in five days—when your permit runs out. Even if the Russians crushed the concrete, it can't be done easily with a pick and a shovel."

"What about using heavy equipment?"

"I thought of bringing in a tractor and skiploader to speed up the digging of wider areas around the two sites we already handled. I asked the head East German officer about the possibility when we came in this morning. He said absolutely
verboten
. Not allowed."

Emily bit her lip, eyes fixed on the implacable mound. "There must be some way." She snapped her fingers. "I know what. Suppose you dig into the front, at ground level, into the upper level of the Führer bunker. That would save you twenty feet of digging."

"Even then ..." Oberstadt frowned. "If we tunneled into the top floor, we'd have to shore up all the way so the dirt above doesn't cave in on us. And suppose there is no longer an upper level, suppose the Soviets collapsed it with all their bulldozing? More digging. More time."

"But the lower level, where Hitler lived, it may be intact. It was built to hold up against almost anything. Isn't there some way, using the shortcut I suggested, that you can get to it?"

"I don't know," said Oberstadt studying the mound. "Perhaps if I could double the size of my daytime crew, and then have a second shift continue work into the night, we might figure out how to reach bottom."

"What can I do to make it happen?" Emily persisted.

"First you guarantee me funds to enlarge my daytime crew and take on a nighttime shift."

"I guarantee it."

"Second, you call your man in East Berlin and get permission for us to dig not only in the morning and the afternoon but also at night."

"I'll guarantee permission. I intended to call him anyway, to arrange a pass for Mr. Foster. He could be useful. Don't worry, I'll get you permission to dig overtime. "

"Finally, let me see my man in West Berlin."

"Your man in West Berlin?"

Oberstadt smiled. "My father, Leo Oberstadt, who founded our firm. He's incapacitated now, retired, but he's an expert on bunker construction and I'll need his advice."

"What do you mean—he's an expert?"

"He supervised the construction of at least a half dozen Nazi bunkers. My father Leo had a small construction company in Berlin before the outbreak of the war. He was arrested because he was more than half Jewish. In his youth he was as husky as I am, so the Nazis drafted him to be a slave laborer along with other Jews. Then it was learned that Leo had been a civil engineer and builder, and so he was promoted to being a foreman to supervise his fellow slave laborers. He and his slave crews built most of the underground bunkers during the war. All the slave laborers were sent to Dachau, Belsen, Buchenwald before the end of the war, but my father escaped and survived. No one in Germany knows more about bunkers than Leo Oberstadt. So I want to talk to him again tonight, review the design of the
Führerbunker
, and then I want him to tell me the best way to do it."

"Then you'll go ahead?"

"As soon as you get permission for us to work a second shift. Get me that, and I'll get you into Adolf Hitler's home, sweet home."

T
hat night, in their bed, Emily and Foster tried to make love. Clearly, neither was in the mood for it, and after a few minutes they gave up, and Foster lay beside Emily holding her.

Over dinner they had celebrated Emily's phone calls to and from Professor Blaubach that had finally gained her permission to excavate into the night. They had also intended to celebrate once more their desire for each other. But the passion wasn't there.

Holding her tightly, Foster inquired, "What is it, Emily? What's bothering you?"

"Ernst Vogel," she said almost inaudibly. "His dead body lying there in the rocker. I can't seem to put him out of my mind. I can't help feeling responsible."

Foster caressed her cheek. "You're not responsible. I'm sorry it happened, and that you saw it. Maybe the best thing you can do is to get some sleep."

She yawned. "Yes, sleep. That would be good."

Emily worked the blanket over both of them, turned off the bedside lamp, and fell back on the pillow. In the dark she could make out Foster's profile, and she drew herself close to his body once more.

"Rex," she said drowsily, "tonight you weren't up for it either. Something's bothering you, too."

Sleepily, he summed up his visit to Major Elford in Spandau Prison. Then he told her briefly of taking the missing bunker plan to Rudi Zeidler.

After that, dead end. Zeidler said there was no one on earth who could possibly identify the seventh bunker—except maybe one of Hitler's slave laborers who might have helped construct it. But presumably all the slave laborers were liquidated before Germany was conquered. If one did survive, Zeidler said, finding him would be like finding a needle in a haystack.

Emily, near slumber, had difficulty speaking. Her mouth was cottony. But she found her voice. "You're looking for someone who worked as a slave laborer?"

"I sure am."

"I've got one for you. Andrew Ober—Oberstadt's father. Slave laborer and still alive. Ask me in the morning. Ask me about Leo Ober—whatever in the morning. Good night, darling."

O
nce he had entered the Weinmeister Höhe district of West Berlin, Rex Foster had no trouble finding his way to his destination. Consulting the map of the city spread on the passenger seat of the rented Audi, he was able to follow the meticulous directions marked for him by the Kempinski concierge. A few turns, and he was on the residential street called Götenweg where the elder Oberstadt lived.