by Ib Melchior
Led by Bormann, Eva and Willibald Lüttjohann were headed for the underground garages on Hermann Goering Strasse directly opposite the Tiergarten. It was a long way from the Führer Bunker itself. They had to travel in a wide, semicircular arch of corridors and shelters under the entire length of the New Chancellery building. Through the officers’ quarters and the huge civilian bunker; through the Lazaret, the hospital rooms, and dental offices; through the mess hall and the SS guards’ bunker.
Bright lights were everywhere; if not, they had been turned off for reasons known only to those who lurked in the gloom. Loud, strident music, screams, and laughter combined in a shrill cacophony filled the air. The stink of cigarette smoke and sour human sweat stung their nostrils.
Eva was appalled. In her entire, ordered existence she had never experienced anything to prepare her for the depraved sights and sounds that now assailed her senses. It filled her with loathing. And fear.
The bunker maze was a bedlam—a Dante’s Inferno with the souls of the damned adorned with blood-red swastika armbands and silver death heads.
As they made their way through the officers’ quarters the atmosphere of sexual saturnalia threatened to overwhelm her. Women and girls who only hours before had fled from basements and shelters in terror of being raped by the Russian barbarians now gave themselves openly and willingly to any German at hand.
One SS officer was shamelessly copulating on the floor amidst a jumble of empty beer and wine bottles and half-smoked cigarettes, drunkenly cheered on by his fellow officers.
A Wehrmacht general, naked from the waist down but with a row of gleaming medals on his immaculate uniform tunic, was tearing at the pants of a buxom, giggling teen-aged girl. And next to a gramophone oozing a Viennese waltz, two SS officers, their uniform pants bunched around their feet, were swaying drunkenly to the music in a clutching, orgasmic embrace.
Eva averted her face. She was profoundly shaken. She felt a sourness rise in her throat. She had a fleeting vision of a girl on a blue-and-white sofa. She had been shocked. Then. But nothing, nothing could be more terrible than the horrifying carnality she was now witnessing.
And on through the hellish network of passageways and compartments their obscene odyssey went.
In the Lazaret a half-naked nurse was masturbating a soldier whose legs were lifted in traction—both feet amputated. Madness shone in her eyes as she stared, transfixed, at the swollen penis in her rapidly moving hand, while she sensuously rubbed her own thighs together.
On the adjoining bed an orderly was changing the bloody bandage on another soldier’s chest—oblivious to the spectacle beside him—while two nurses, sitting on a gurney, were stuffing caviar into their mouths with their fingers, emptying a can split open with a surgical instrument.
And in a dentist’s office a naked, corpulent woman, strapped awkwardly into a dentist’s chair, was being savagely sodomized by a huge SS guard, her ululating shrieks of pleasure knifing through Eva’s horrified mind.
She stumbled along, clinging to the arm of Willibald Lüttjohann. She shuddered deep in her soul. A sudden, terrifying thought swept through her. If she were to be seized by those monsters, could her escorts protect her? Would they? Or would she be forced to become part of the monstrous corruption around her? Instinctively her grip on Willibald’s arm tightened.
They entered the SS guards’ room. Ahead lay the garages.
Most of the men in the room were in a drunken stupor. Bottles and empty food containers were everywhere. In a corner a group of noncoms were holding a naked girl on a table, her legs spread apart. One man was pouring champagne over her, drenching her blond pubic hair, while others, roaring with glee, took turns licking it off. Eva glanced briefly at the group. But she felt nothing. Nothing any more. . .
Grimly Bormann strode on, oblivious to the infernal scenes around him. Eva and Willibald followed. Ahead they could see the underground garages. Ahead were the stairs to the street above. And deliverance.
Despite the sight that met her, Eva felt a surge of relief as they emerged on Hermann Goering Strasse.
The street in front of them was deserted, empty of people, but scarred with bomb craters and filled with debris and disabled vehicles.
The thick walls and earthwork of the Bunker below had not been able to keep out the thundering din of the battle raging above, but the sounds had been deadened and muffled by the noise in the Bunker itself. Here, in the open, the roar of battle slammed into them with physical force.
The city around them was aflame and under heavy Russian artillery bombardment. The red-black sky was crisscrossed with the beams of searchlights reaching for von Greim’s Luftwaffe planes, suicidally seeking to stop the enemy from closing the iron ring around the Chancellery, not knowing it was too late. From time to time the constant, ear-rending roar of battle and the crackling of fire were drowned out by a ground-shaking explosion or the crash of a collapsing wall. The distant wails and hoots of ambulances and fire engines punctuated the steady din.
Across the street the splintered tree trunks in the Tiergarten pointed into the sky in naked futility, unable to protect the city, crying out in death.
In a low run Bormann started across the nearly impassable street. Suddenly there was a sharp explosion which uprooted several tree trunks and catapulted dirt and debris into the air. Another. And another. A Russian mortar barrage hit the edge of the park. Bormann ran back to the shelter of the building above the garages.
Huddled together, the three fugitives waited.
There was a lull in the barrage.
“Now!” Bormann shouted.
They ran across the street. They zigzagged around craters, burned-out vehicles, and fallen trees, racing into the devastated park. Ahead, about two hundred meters, through the shattered trees, they could see a stone building. It looked badly damaged.
It was their destination.
Below it was the hidden entrance to Bormann’s escape route.
The ornate sign carved in sandstone over the entrance to the small, squat building—which looked even more graceless with the mantle of vegetation around it destroyed—at one time must have read: PUMPENANLAGE NO. 2. But shrapnel had chipped away or mutilated most of the letters identifying the pumping station. Shell splinters had also pockmarked the propaganda slogan painted in white letters on one stone wall: SIEG ODER SIBIRIEN! (Victory or Siberia!)—a statement as empty as all Nazi slogans.
A direct hit on one corner of the building had blasted away part of the walls and collapsed the roof over the rubble. The windows all gaped: wide-open dead eyes, with long soot marks from the fires that had gutted the building stretching up from them like huge black eyelashes.
In the basement of the little utility building the destruction was minimal. The pumping station had probably been operational until ten days earlier when the electricity in the city finally failed and it became impossible to pump water to the animal exhibits in the zoo that depended on it.
Bormann turned on a flashlight. He removed the eye patch and turned down the collar on his greatcoat. He took out his gun. Anyone they might happen to meet would instantly pay for that meeting with his life. Leading the way, he strode past the looming, silent, and inactive machinery to a small door. It was warped and he had some difficulty in getting it open. Finally it gave way. Behind it was a narrow tunnel containing a mass of pipes and cables. About fifty feet down the corridor a small side passage joined it. Bormann turned into it. Carefully he counted his steps as he went: Twelve—thirteen—fourteen—fifteen. He stopped. He shone his flashlight on the wall. The coloration and texture seemed only slightly different from the rest of the walls.
“Here,” he said with satisfaction. “It is here.”
While he searched for the soot where the concealed detonation fuse lay hidden under the mortar surface of the wall and chipped away on it with a penknife, Willibald helped Eva out of her bandages.
“I have it!” Bormann called.
They joined him at
the wall. He had scraped away a small area of mortar. Behind it was a little niche, and in it—wrapped tightly in waterproof oil paper—a rolled-up fuse.
Bormann freed the fuse and let it hang from the opening. He handed Willibald a box of matches.
“It is a thirty-second fuse,” he said. “Enough for you to reach the utility tunnel.” He took Eva’s arm. “I shall take Frau Eva to safety now. Light the fuse and join us.”
He and Eva walked back toward the tunnel. Willi looked after them. He smiled a crooked little smile. Bonzen, he thought (Brass Hats). He struck a match, lit the fuse, and waited to see that it was burning properly. Calmly he walked to the utility tunnel and turned the corner.
Bormann and Eva were waiting.
“Hold your ears,” Willi said to Eva. She did. Willi and Bormann put their fingers in their ears and almost at once an explosion shook the tunnel. In the cramped space the detonation was ear-shattering. A fiery blast of dust and smoke shot into the tunnel from the side passage as the roar of the explosion reverberated down the corridor.
Quickly Bormann walked back to the passageway. He shone his flashlight into it. The beam from it was a pale-yellow streak of light that sliced through the dust-filled air. He hurried toward the spot in the wall where the explosion had taken place. Eva and Willi followed. Bormann played his flashlight on the wall. A gaping, black hole yawned in the beam.
Willi kicked the last few stones and masonry chunks away— and the three escapees stepped into the abandoned sewer.
The air was foul—stale and dank. Eva gagged, and Willi tried to breathe in shallow breaths holding his nostrils closed. Bormann played his flashlight around. The sewer was circular, with a flattened bottom and about eight feet in diameter. The masonry walls were encrusted with the hardened filth of decades and streaked with moisture which gleamed in the light from Bormann’s torch. Pools of stagnant, fetid water speckled the bottom of the sewer which was lost ahead in absolute blackness.
Bormann’s light came to rest on a wooden plank raised on cement blocks above the sewer floor. On the plank stood four bulging rucksacks and four kerosene lamps. Spades, pickaxes, and other tools leaned against the plank.
“Let’s get some light,” Bormann said. He shone his torch on the kerosene lamps.
And as the flames in the Chancellery garden—consuming the remains of Adolf Hitler and his substitute wife—were slowly dying down, the bright flames of three kerosene lamps in a foul-smelling abandoned sewer leaped into life, ready to light the way for Eva and her son on the first leg of their flight to safety.
In the light of the kerosene lamps Bormann and Willi took a final look at their maps and plans before starting out. Each had a set. A diagram of the old sewer system and the all-important area situation map to tell them the approximate positions of the enemy forces so they could avoid them.
The sewer plan was complicated with tributaries and branch lines coming in from various directions, creating dead-end forks and junctions. But it should not be difficult to follow the main line. The area map, complete with the most recent military information available when they left the Führer Bunker, showed a narrow corridor between the enemy from the west and the enemy from the east running from Wilhelmstadt to the Mecklenburg state still held by German forces. They had about thirteen kilometers to travel through the sewer. Willi estimated that it would take them between four and five hours to cover the distance, barring any unforeseen delays. That would get them to the exit point in the suburb of Wilhelmstadt between midnight and 0100 hours.
Bormann looked at the SS officer. There was resentment and animosity in his gaze. The young man looked too damned competent. Too damned confident.
“Obersturmführer Lüttjohann ,” he said coldly, “before we push off, there is one thing I want clearly understood.”
Willi looked at him. What the hell now? “Herr Reichsleiter?” he queried.
“In all matters, at all times, I am in charge,” Bormann stated firmly. “Is that clearly understood?”
“Jawohl, Herr Reichsleiter.”
Willi began to put his maps away in his tunic pocket. Bormann imperiously held out his hand. “I will take those, Lüttjohann ,” he said. “I will make all decisions.”
Willi hesitated for a second; then he began to withdraw the maps again. It was a foolish request—or, rather, order—but he had better comply. It was not wise to antagonize a man as powerful as Reichsleiter Martin Bormann. He stopped. Powerful? Now, down here, they were on equal footing. The source of Reichsleiter Bormann’s power lay smoldering in a shallow grave. He pushed his maps back into his pocket.
“With my respect, Herr Reichsleiter,” he said calmly, “I think not. There is always the remote possibility that we may get separated.”
Venomously Bormann glared at him. Then, without a word, he turned and stalked down into the darkness of the sewer.
Willi looked at his watch. They had been moving steadily through the sewer for only half an hour. Judging by the speed they were making he estimated they had covered a little less than two kilometers. They would be out from under the zoo and under the city proper in another fifteen to twenty minutes.
He glanced at the young woman who valiantly trudged through the fetid sludge beside him. He rather admired her. She had not complained. She had simply shrugged into her rucksack and plodded on.
He looked at Bormann, tramping along a few feet ahead of them. He had never before been in contact with any one of the really influential men around the Führer—except for Standartenführer Skorzeny, of course, who was a man unequaled. But if Reichsleiter Bormann was a representative sample it was just as well. He wondered if the Reichsleiter would have joined the debauchery he had witnessed, had he stayed behind in the Bunker. Probably, he decided, although it might be just prejudice—or intuition?—on his part, he realized. He had known nothing of the man before he had been introduced to him by the Führer; he had not known he even existed. But he did not like him. He couldn’t get the vile and degrading scenes he had seen in the Bunker out of his thoughts, the sounds of depravity that had echoed through the bunker still echoed through his mind. It had offended him deeply to see fellow officers disgrace and debase themselves in so disgusting and unmilitary a manner. Somehow he equated Bormann with it all. He glanced at Eva. He wondered what she was really like. The wife of the Führer.
Eva deliberately had banished all thoughts of what lay behind her. For now. She simply could not have coped. She had only one goal—to finish the horrible, depressing march through the terrible sewer. She had never, never in her life been in such a dreadful place. The putrid air made it difficult for her to breathe and the claustrophobic confinement of the tunnel threatened her; she felt that only by desperately exerting her will could she keep the filth-encrusted walls from closing in on her. She was eternally grateful for the sturdy, sensible shoes she was wearing, but she envied the two men their high boots. Her feet were soaked and icy with cold. She thought with longing of the pair of warm woolen socks she knew was in her rucksack. She shifted the pack on her shoulders. She never knew woolen socks could be so heavy.
She was suddenly aware that the number of puddles in the bottom of the sewer had increased, and the water was deeper and felt slimy. They were walking through a part of the old conduit where several smaller drains ran into it—more than usual—all with a mere trickle of dirty water dripping into the main; some of them had the remnants of corroded gratings hanging from the openings where they joined the main sewer tunnel about two feet from the bottom. The stench of decay was overpowering, somehow different from before. Footing in the murky water of the pools was precarious, and suddenly Eva slipped. Her foot twisted under her and she would have fallen had she not grabbed hold of Willi.
“What happened?” he exclaimed, startled.
“I slipped. I twisted my ankle.”
“Can you walk on it?” he asked, concerned.
“I think so,” she said. “If I could just sit down for a moment.”
Bormann had stopped. He stood watching them with a scowl on his face.
“Let me see it,” Willi said. He smiled up at her, reassuringly. “I have seen a lot of twisted ankles in my time,” he told her. “Parachuting is almost as dangerous as walking through this place!”
Eva laughed. She felt comfortable with the young officer. “My foot is in good hands, then,” she quipped. She raised her foot to him. She hung her lamp on the remnant of the rusty grating as she leaned back and put her hands on the bottom of the drain to steady herself.
She screamed!
She snatched her right hand away as if she had plunged it into a pile of red-hot coals. She shrank in panic against the wall of the drain as a long snake, glistening with sewer slime, quickly slithered past her over the edge, dropped down, and disappeared in the gloom below.
Eva sat petrified in terror, her eyes riveted on the spot where the snake had disappeared.
Bormann called out in alarm. “What is it? What happened?” He started toward them.
“Don’t move!” Willi snapped at him. “Stay where you are! Stay perfectly still.” He was addressing them both.
Bormann stared at him, uncomprehending. But he remained stock still.
“Herr Reichsleiter,” Willi said measuredly, “please listen to me. I think I know what has happened. When I looked at the sewer diagram a short while ago I noticed we were getting near the section of the drain that runs under the Reptile House in the zoo above. The snake exhibits. The building must have been hit. The glass in the display cages shattered. And the reptile tanks. Some of the snakes must have escaped and found their way down here.”
