122
Reich chancellery, Tiergarten runway
Berlin
HEINZ LINGE brEATHED A sigh of relief as he stood at attention, awaiting the departure of the tiny plane. The din of the raucous engine and the propellers gave him comfort—comfort that he’d successfully carried out his final mission.
Then he felt the gun against his neck.
He closed his eyes as terror filled his chest. This was it. The Soviets would show him no mercy.
Thomas Bauer, his gun on Heinz’s neck, spoke close to his ear. “Don’t make a move!” he shouted. “I’m going to disarm you! If you resist, you won’t have a throat anymore!”
He pulled Heinz’s sidearm from the holster and added it to his collection.
“Hands on your head, drop to your knees, and lie face down on the ground! When you’re on the ground, put your hands behind your back. Understand?”
“What are your intentions?” Heinz shouted.
“My intentions? My intentions are to blow your goddamn head off if you don’t follow my orders!”
“Let the plane go!” Heinz shouted. “You can kill me or do whatever you want, but let the plane go!”
“Why?” Bauer shouted. “Who’s on it?”
Heinz went quiet. And then, as if on cue, so did the plane. The engine cut, dribbling to silence. The propellers slowed to a halt. Heinz deflated.
Other than the occasional rat-a-tat-tat of Russian artillery fire, the road was quiet now.
“Listen, Heinz,” Bauer said, “you do what I say right now or I kill both you and your asshole boss.”
Heinz complied, dropping to his knees, lying face down, tucking his hands behind his back. Bauer bound his hands with rope and pulled the knot taut.
“Where’s Hans?” Heinz called out.
“The pilot? He’s taking a nap right now.”
Bauer walked over to the passenger side of the airplane and opened the cabin door. “Out,” he called to Adolf Hitler, wiggling his fingers forward while training a gun on him.
The Führer stepped down off the plane with some difficulty. He didn’t look well—pale with sickly eyes, stooped over, a tremor in his left hand that looked like palsy. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.
Von der Haas came around from the other side of the plane, his gun out, aiming it at Hitler.
“You win the bet, Erich,” said Bauer.
Hitler looked at Bauer, then at von der Haas.
“I bet with my friend here that you love yourself too much to commit suicide,” said von der Haas. “That you’d try to fake it and escape. The plane made the most sense. Either you get away or you die in a fiery crash under heavy artillery fire. Your only real choices.”
“It helped that the only person in the kitchen you didn’t release happened to look just like you,” said Bauer. “And that you kept your personal pilot in the bunker with you. Besides, who announces a date and time for their suicide?”
For whatever reason, Hitler chose not to speak.
“Lars von der Haas,” Erich said, his voice shaking. “Annika von der Haas. Dahlia von der Haas. Verena von der Haas. Diederik von der Haas.”
Bauer kept his gun out, positioned himself closer to Heinz on the ground.
“My family!” von der Haas shouted. “My Jewish family! My beautiful family that you murdered!”
“I killed nobody,” said Hitler, remaining remarkably calm. “I cannot be responsible for the actions of rogue underlings purporting to act on my—”
“Shut up! Shut up!” Von der Haas, trembling, moved closer to Hitler. “It was you. You set all this in motion. You called for the genocide of millions of innocent people. Say it. Say it, goddamnit!”
Tears streamed down his face.
“I did no such thing,” said Hitler, “but I am deeply sorry—”
“No! No! Okay, you won’t say it? You won’t say it? Fine.” Von der Haas shook his head furiously. “Fine. I just want you to know, it was a Jew who killed you.”
He aimed his gun at Hitler’s face.
“Please,” said Hitler.
The gun shook as von der Haas continued to sob, but he couldn’t kill a defenseless person in cold blood.
A loud boom shook the ground, a bomb dropping somewhere close in the Tiergarten. Von der Haas’s head whipped around at the sound of the explosion.
Adolf Hitler reached into his right pocket, removed a Walther pistol, and aimed it—
—and Bauer dropped him with a gunshot to the right temple.
The Führer crumpled to the ground.
“No!” shouted Heinz. “No!”
Von der Haas walked over to Hitler, crouched down, felt for a pulse. The Führer was dead. Emotionally spent, he stood over the lifeless body, mumbling to himself, before he slowly shook his head and reholstered his weapon.
Bauer breathed out a sigh. “You didn’t disarm him, Erich?”
“Guess I forgot.” He shrugged. “I’m not a very good killer.”
Bauer squatted down by Heinz Linge, who was still upset.
“Heinz, I’d like to untie you and let you be on your way, but something tells me you’d give me a fair amount of trouble.
But it shouldn’t take more than five or ten minutes for you to get free.
And then I’d suggest you get the hell out of Berlin.
I wouldn’t waste one more second on that lowlife you called a boss. ”
“You’re going to carry him back, aren’t you?” von der Haas said. “You’re going to carry him back to the bunker and put him next to Eva and say he killed himself just like he promised.”
Heinz didn’t answer. He was still sobbing quietly.
“Well, whatever you do, Heinz, leave Berlin,” said Bauer. “Good luck. And wish us luck, too. I’m just hoping my friend hasn’t forgotten everything he learned in aviation training twenty years ago.”
They jumped into the tiny plane, von der Haas the pilot, Bauer the passenger. The engine coughed to a start. The propellers wound into a frenzy. The plane taxied down the airstrip and lifted into the air.