Neil concealed his interest by pretending to view an adjacent display, a schematic demonstrating the Imperial Stadium and each day’s events. He stood in front of it while he watched the driver break discipline with his libidinous actions. Using what had to be his most persuasive tone, the driver was trying his best to charm the young woman to take a walk in the woods with him so he could teach her the “true meaning of life.” As the driver preoccupied himself with his coaxing, Neil ambled past the Mercedes in a casual manner, spying a handsome briefcase in the center of the back seat. The vehicle was locked. The teenage girl, appearing quite scared, managed to disentangle herself and scurry away just as Neil passed. The driver, his face flushed, turned to the driver at the next car.
“Dumb little slut doesn’t know what she needs.”
“So teach her,” the other driver said.
“She’ll be back. Betcha. She wants me.”
Neil glared at the Reichsleiter driver for a moment before disappearing into the tent city on the south end of the Imperial Stadium.
~~~
The 75,000-plus Hitler Youth had been inside the gaping mouth of the stadium, waiting in complete and obedient silence for well over an hour—sheer misery for anyone, and especially for adolescent boys. Earlier, at high noon, they had marched in wide columns to their pre-assigned locations, singing cadences in unison, their voices echoing through the buildings and monuments. Like every other parent or guardian in the area, Neil had stood in a line at what was known as the Great Road, watching the boys as they performed their precision maneuvers while flooding into the colossal, horseshoe arena. He observed the numerous cameras, shooting the formations as the unit directors shouted to the operators to focus only on those Jungvolk with distinct Aryan features. Neil waited until he spotted Peter’s brigade guidon, peering through the masses until he saw the boy. And there he was, almost squarely in the middle, marching in step and singing his cadence as he had been taught—and was required—to do.
Once Peter passed, Neil walked back to the truck and retrieved his dirty undershirt from the day before, ripping it and stuffing a third of it into his pocket. He hustled away from the truck and scoured the campsites until he found what he needed, a book held by what must have been someone’s grandfather. The man was asleep, snoring away on a blanket, his skin bright pink from the early autumn sun. Beside him was a pile of beer bottles, and clutched over his midsection was the book. Neil tapped the man’s bare foot, waiting until he lifted his head and shaded his eyes.
“May I use a blank page from your book?” Neil asked.
The man blinked a number of times, seemingly confused as he clawed from under his alcohol-induced slumber. Without a word, he handed Neil the book. Neil flipped it open, finding a blank page at the very back of the book and ripping it out. He tossed the book back to the befuddled man and walked away.
Next, Neil searched for a pencil. He had an ink pen in the truck, but in order to make the note genuine he needed a pencil. After considerable searching, he snatched one from the dashboard of a car parked not too far from the Heinz truck.
The Hitler Youth had now been situated in the stadium for over ninety minutes. Thankfully, they were no longer silent. Now they were replying en masse to the various charges from the latest dignitary on the microphone. Neil walked back to the southwestern end of the stadium, at the Great Road, seeing the undisciplined SS driver of the Reichsleiter’s Mercedes, right where he had left him. From a great distance, he watched as the man occasionally nipped from a flask. Satisfied, Neil turned and walked southeast until he arrived at the railroad tracks, following them into a shallow valley. It was the perfect spot for a naughty rendezvous and quite some distance away.
Up the opposite hill was a row of homes, the closest ones to the Nazi parade grounds. To his left was a ravine with a creek, thick with brambles, and above the creek the railroad tracks. To his right was a long, thick stretch of overgrown forest. He did a full circle, satisfied that no one was nearby. Neil hung the large scrap of his T-shirt from a tree limb just outside of a copse of conifers before heading back to the stadium. He timed the walk; it took three minutes each way.
Neil went back to the Heinz’s Adler truck and produced the smaller scrap from the T-shirt. He tied the scrap to a string and used a stick to shove the scrap into the neck of the gasoline receptacle on the old Adler. He pushed the stick all the way down before using the string to pull it back out. Most of the rag was now soaked in gasoline. Neil wrapped the rag over itself so the gas would distribute through the entire scrap of cloth.
After washing his hands twice under their jug of water, Neil wrote a note, short and sweet, on the book paper with the pencil. He labored to create a juvenile female’s handwriting. The message was quite clear, and Neil couldn’t suppress a grin as he folded it over on itself three times. From the bottom of his flannel shirt, Neil yanked a piece of red thread, tying the note in a dainty bow. And then he waited.
The charges and replies had ceased coming from inside the stadium. The only sound that emanated was the same voice over the loudspeaker, instructing the formations to remain still, and to wait patiently for their special guest. The voice, quite unapologetically, informed the masses that the guest would arrive when he was ready, and that their unyielding endurance and quiet patience signified manly discipline. Neil recalled his days in the Army, standing stone-still in formation. It was no picnic. And on this day, to make matters worse, the temperature was quite warm, the sun beating down as if it were July.
Neil searched the toolbox on the Adler. From the wooden split rails on the sides of the flatbed, he removed a foot-long section of flat steel bar. Using a file from the toolbox, he smoothed the edges of the steel and cut a hook into the end. Neil locked the passenger door of the Adler, sliding the bar down between the window seal. After a minute of moving it around, he found the catch, pulling upward and watching as the door unlocked. Just like back in the States.
Shortly after two o’clock, a murmur went through the campground. Neil heard the horns of a distant band. He then began to see people scurrying from the campground in the direction of the Great Road, yelling “Heil” with their right arms raised, offering the Nazi salute.
The scene was frenetic, the electricity palpable.
Adolf Hitler had arrived.
Neil gathered his items: the note, the steel bar, the gas-soaked rag. He wrapped the rag in waxy sandwich paper and moved with the crowd. Because thousands had rushed from the campground area, the eastern edge of the road was ten deep in family members trying to glimpse the man who had titled himself their Führer, meaning, among similar definitions, person in charge. Hitler had used the name long before his meteoric rise to power, touting his Reich as a coming thousand-year epoch—the longest reign in recorded world history.
Neil didn’t give Hitler’s reign ten more years. Someone, or some people, would end it. They had to.
Hurrying around the tail end of the vehicle column, Neil arrived on the western side of the Great Road. There was a crowd there, too, but it was only a few deep. He was able to push himself to the human barrier of Hitler’s own bodyguard regiment, known as Leibstandarte. Before Neil allowed himself to scan the crowd for Hitler, he first studied the bodyguards.
Several years before, when he and his team had yearned to assassinate the emerging Austrian madman, Neil read various intelligence reports about these Leibstandarte. He learned that they had been chosen, not for their skill, but rather for their size and looks. Each man possessed a chiseled face and light-colored eyes. Most had blond or light brown hair, and all were well over six feet tall. Neil studied their moves as Hitler presumably remained in the center automobile. The Leibstandarte surrounded it, jamming the crowd backward with their billy sticks.
Neil narrowed his eyes as he focused on one in particular, herding a large number of women backward. He used his baton as a barrier, pressing backward, but with his free left hand he took advantage of the frenzy, copping cheap grabs of variou
s female body parts. Neil shook his head. Hitler was using thugs for protection, not professionals.
He turned, scanning the nearby area. There were two giant towers, adorned with enormous Nazi flags, signifying the main entrance that led to Zeppelin Field and the grandstand from where the Führer would soon speak. There was no one guarding the base of the towers, and the height was no less than eighty feet. Any assassin worth his salt could be perched at the top, concealed by the popping scarlet flags, aiming an accurate rifle at Adolf Hitler’s swollen head. It would be a suicide mission, no doubt, but it could be done.
Leaving the world a better place…
Neil refocused on his current task. Hitler was out of his car now, snapping off Nazi salutes and smiling at the pulsating crowd. As Neil knew from film reels, Hitler was like a seasoned stage actor, his gesticulations incredibly pronounced for greater effect. He was shorter than Neil might have imagined, perhaps an inch or two below an average man’s height. From the other autos, important-looking Nazi officers emerged, falling into place behind their Führer. Neil couldn’t believe his eyes with what followed. Out of a blackened panel truck at the tail end of the convoy, four soldiers removed two Bengal tigers, the great cats’ muscles rippling against the leather restraints as they roared at the frenzied onlookers.
It was clear to Neil that everything about this “world leader” was carefully, meticulously choreographed. The late entrance. The imposing, good-looking bodyguards. The surrounding, overabundant Nazi iconography. And even the two Bengal tigers. This little Austrian, Adolf Hitler, was a megalomaniac, a true lunatic and a narcissist to boot. He’d taken a downtrodden, starving people and given them abundant food and a purpose. A situation not unlike throwing gasoline on a smoldering fire. And while he had no time to concern himself with it right now, Neil knew that Adolf Hitler was no simple extremist.
And as Hitler strode toward the Zeppelin Field, accepting flowers and blown kisses from his adoring masses, Neil turned and headed back to where the officials’ cars were parked. He had a “date” with the horny chauffeur of the sleek black Mercedes.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
DIDIER VON HERBORN EXAMINED HIS MUD-CAKED BOOTS, thoroughly pissed off that he had to stand watch over the car in this thick, foul sludge, which was probably created by human excrement. When he had first been bestowed the “honour” of being a chauffeur to a Reichsleiter, Didier naively believed the job would be loaded with bountiful moments of glitz and glam. Exotic nights spent in places like Berlin and Munich, bedding skinny women with insatiable appetites for sex and liquor. Important meetings with Himmler and the Führer himself, when each man might even turn to Didier for his sage, real man’s advice.
“Didier, we’re collectively stumped and we value your brilliant mind…what would you do about the confounding currency situation in Danzig?”
Didier had also daydreamed that perhaps he would even be chosen by one of the senior party members to impregnate their daughter. He’d heard similar rumors and, after all, Didier possessed the traits of a perfect Aryan specimen.
His delusions couldn’t have been farther from reality.
In one year on the job, almost to the day, all Didier had ever gotten from Hitler was a quick glance. And damn it, wouldn’t you know, it had been during a private moment when Didier just happened to be removing a nagging booger from the tip of his perfectly shaped nose. How was he to have known Hitler was going to turn his way at that moment? Didier had only wanted to make certain that it wasn’t hanging out grotesquely. So he’d scratched it out, horrified as Hitler turned to him and frowned, the way a parent might frown to his child in a church setting.
Didier now hated his job.
So, as the music and the roar from the stadium reached a fever pitch, it was a surprise to Didier to see the small child, a boy of no more than five, appear from the rows of cars to hand him a note tied in a red thread bow. As the boy sprinted away, Didier turned his attention to the note. He pulled the thread and allowed it to fall to the mud as he unfolded the paper, seeing the words scrawled by what looked like an adolescent hand.
Didier’s immediate and urgent erection pressed against his tropical wool uniform trousers. The note was from the teenage girl he’d sweet-talked earlier. She’d had to hurry away but now wanted to meet him during all the commotion. She wanted to kiss him and then feel him on top of her, doing the pleasurable thing that some of her older girlfriends were now doing. She wanted her first time to be special, with a handsome, Aryan soldier such as himself.
Hervorragend!
Didier von Herborn struggled to breathe. The girl was waiting for him in the low area below the tracks, probably on a blanket with her skirt hiked up around her waist.
The roars from the stadium were now coming in rapid succession. After gathering himself, Didier scurried to the next car, screaming in the face of his junior NCO friend that the young tart had called for him, just as Didier had said she would.
“Cover for me,” Didier panted. “Don’t tell a soul I’m gone.”
Pulling his tunic down to cover the jutting steel rod in his pants, Didier sprinted through the rows of cars in the direction of the rendezvous spot with the little Schlampe who was so hot-to-trot. He only hoped he could last longer than a few seconds. His last time—with a hooker in Frankfurt’s red light district—had been a painfully succinct, crab-contracting disaster.
~~~
Neil stood on the edge of the lot where the Reichsleiter’s car was parked. Stifling his laughter, he watched the chauffer hustle through the lot, covering his midsection, moving with great haste to get to the lower field for his sex-fueled rendezvous with the dirty-minded teenager. Neil shot a look at his watch, marking the time so he would know exactly how long he had.
The chauffer disappeared over the crest of the hill, having already been gone a full minute. Moving around the boundary of the lot, Neil made his way to one of the military transport vehicles, this one with a canvas top. The roars coming from inside the stadium were now deafening. “Heil” pulsated over and over, echoing through the thousands of vehicles in the shallow valley. Neil took the gasoline rag and wedged it under one of the ribs of the transport truck’s canvas top. He folded some of the canvas over the rag, produced a box of matches, and lit the rag.
He hurried away, taking only thirty seconds to move all the way around the lot, close to the Mercedes he planned to enter.
Neil peered around the area, seeing four posted drivers, each of them staring the direction of the stadium, their mouths parted as they, too, were dumbfounded by the deafening roars emanating from what must have been the world’s largest ever assemblage of adolescent boys. The music and chants quieted. An eerie silence descended over the parade grounds. Neil rotated his eyes to the truck. It was burning brightly.
From the stadium, someone introduced the savior to the German Empire, the founding father of the Thousand Year Reich, the Führer, our Führer…Adolf Hitler!
The next was the loudest roar yet—Neil actually felt the sound waves go through his body. His only problem was that each of the posted sentries had their backs to the flaming truck. He checked his watch. Four more minutes. The crowd quieted again. There was a long pause. Then, a voice.
Adolf.
The guards listened in awe, staring at the stadium as if they were absorbing the spoken voice of a supernatural being. Neil saw that the canvas was now fully aflame, and could be burned out in a matter of minutes. He timed a pause in Hitler’s speech, ducking down and screaming the German word “Feur!” for fire.
The drivers heard him, because they repeated the word. Neil emerged from his spot to see them scurrying to the five-ton truck. One man sprinted in the direction of a tent, probably in search of water. The closest driver to the Reichsleiter’s car hurried to the burning truck, putting Neil in motion.
Neil rushed to the Mercedes, crouching down as he checked the doors. Predictably, they were all locked. Whipping the freshly-filed steel bar from his trousers, h
e wedged it between the felt window seal and the glass, feeling for the lock catch. This time it only took him ten seconds. He replaced the bar and opened the door, reaching backward to unlock the back door. After diving inside, he glanced at the men trying to beat back the truck’s dying flames with quilts.
The Mercedes smelled new, adorned with cream leather seats and black carpet. Neil knelt on the seat with his shoes in the air so he wouldn’t leave any footprints. He snapped open the briefcase and thumbed through a stack of papers, none of which seemed to hold any value. He opened the front pocket of the briefcase, feeling his heart lurch when he noticed a thin, passport-size leather book. Following another quick look out the window, he studied the identification. It was owned by a man named Baldur von Schirach. The document was adorned at the top by the typical German eagle, and stamped in various places in red and black ink. But true to what Neil had hoped from the insignia on the fender, at the bottom of the document, in old Germanic typeface, was the word “Reichsleiter.” Neil clearly remembered from his research that only fifteen or so Reichsleiters existed, each of them reporting directly to Adolf Hitler himself. And next to the title, the last name scrawled legibly, was Hitler’s signature.
Neil might as well have found a gushing oil well.
He tucked the identification into his pocket, replacing the briefcase just as he had found it. After a glance at his watch, showing that he was almost out of time, Neil eased out of the car and shut the door. The fire was now out, each of the drivers standing around the smoldering struts of the once covered truck, blaming one another for the responsibility of the vicious ass-chewing they knew they would soon receive. Neil hunched low, backing away from the area until he had cleared the cars and trucks, and as he spun around he was surprised to find himself staring directly into the face of the chauffeur he had deliberately misled. The man’s cheeks were florid. He stared Neil up and down before turning his eyes to the smoking truck.
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