by Ib Melchior
Eva was listening to him, gray-faced. She was trembling. But she did not move. Willi peered into the semidarkness of the sewer. The dim light from their kerosene lamps, faintly reflected in the murky puddles, made only a feeble attempt at defeating the gloom.
“Herr Reichsleiter,” Willi continued, “use your flashlight. Shine it over the sewer bottom.”
Bormann turned on his torch. The beam from it glinted on the wet wall of the tunnel. He moved it down to the floor and played it back and forth. Eva gasped.
The sewer bottom was alive with reptiles. Lizards, toads, and frogs. And snakes.
Stirring uneasily in the sudden bright light they scurried and slithered into the litter and the shadows, or slipped into the muddy water puddles.
Aghast Willi stared at the shuddery sight. There must be hundreds of snakes, he thought. Poisonous and nonpoisonous. Involuntarily he shivered. Which were which? It was impossible to know. They would have to assume that every creature crawling or slithering in the darkness could be deadly.
But they had to go on.
“Herr Reichsleiter,” he said tightly, addressing himself to Bormann who stood frozen in a puddle on the sewer bottom. “with your permission we will move on, very slowly. The snakes will not attack us unless they feel threatened. They are as frightened of us as we are of them.” He looked at the ashen-faced Eva, sitting rigidly on the rim of the side drain. “I suggest we make a fireman’s seat, Herr Reichsleiter, with our hands. And carry Frau Hitler between us until we reach safety. Our boots will give us some protection. Frau Hitler wears only shoes.”
“I will walk,” Eva said softly.
Willi looked at her. He recognized the determination in her voice. He did not argue.
“As you wish,” he nodded. “We will move out single file.” He glanced toward Bormann. “With your permission, Herr Reichsleiter.”
Bormann nodded wordlessly.
“I will go first,” Willi said. “With the flashlight. Frau Hitler will follow me. And you, Herr Reichsleiter, will bring up the rear.”
He looked around. He needed a stick. A probe. His eyes fell on the rusty iron bar he had bent out of the way for Eva. About four feet long. It would do. He wrenched it loose.
Slowly, cautiously they started out. They kept to the center of the conduit. Willi played the beam of the flashlight back and forth before him and churned the mucky, fetid water with his iron bar. They were aware of quick, furtive movement in the trash and the shadows beside them, and occasionally there was a splash of water as some creature escaped from Willi’s probe.
Eva was petrified with fear. She walked stiffly, almost somnambulistically in the footsteps of Willi, disregarding the pangs of pain in her twisted foot. With each step she expected to feel a slimy, writhing snake under her foot and the pain of a poisonous strike. It took all her willpower to go on. She had always had an unreasonable fear of snakes. She knew not why, but the mere sight of them brought her close to panic. She stared at the back of Willi’s head. She dared not look aside.
They were there.
She was aware of the heavy footsteps of Bormann behind her. For the first time in her life she welcomed his presence.
She wanted to curl up and cry.
But she didn’t.
Suddenly Willi gave a short, hoarse cry. A large brightly marked snake lying at the edge of a puddle, partly hidden by a soaking wet newspaper, lethargic from the cold and swollen with a frog or toad, had not reacted at once to Willi’s probe. Startled, it raised its triangular head, drew back, and struck straight for Eva’s leg. Willi had whirled around. In the same instant the snake struck he kicked out at it. With a thud the fangs buried themselves in his boot. He got the iron bar under its body, and with a mighty heave he flung the reptile against the sewer wall.
Eva sobbed. She clung to Willi. Without a word Bormann took the flashlight from him. He probed the conduit ahead of them with its beam. Ten—fifteen meters before them the bottom of the sewer looked dry and firm.
And free of reptiles.
“Los!” he said. “Let’s go!” And he walked on. Willi looked at his boot. High on the calf were two punctures about an inch apart and from them glistening venom oozed down the black leather.
Eva stared in horror at the boot.
“Did it—did it go through?” she asked.
Willi shook his head. “No,” he said. “I would have felt it. And the venom is on the outside.”
He took her arm. Together they followed Bormann on into the sewer.
In the yellow light of his kerosene lamp Willi pored over his plan of the sewer system. They had been walking steadily for about two hours. He estimated they’d covered about five kilometers. They should be somewhere under the Charlottenburg district. About halfway to the suburb of Wilhelmstadt. They were taking a much-needed break. The stale air was suffocating and made any exertion difficult. The sewer tunnel had been relatively dry for the last stretch and he was sitting down, leaning against the wall, resting his feet. Eva was seated next to him.
Suddenly she sat up. She peered back down into the gloom of the tunnel. She listened.
Willi looked at her. “What is it?” he asked.
“I—I don’t know,” Eva answered uncertainly. “I thought I heard something.”
Willi looked down the conduit. He listened. He heard nothing. “A bit of loose mortar. Or dirt. Falling from the ceiliing,” he said. “Little sounds carry far down here. And seem larger than they are.”
Eva looked at him. “Little sounds carry far . . .” Adolf had said that to her. The same words. The first time they had made love in his private apartment on Prinzregentenplatz in Munich. On the big, red-plush-covered couch with the lacework back in his living room. She had moaned with pleasure and he had shushed her. Little sounds carry far.
It was so long ago. Thirteen years. Ever since they had always made love in silence.
She felt the tears begin to smart in her eyes. She looked away. She peered down the tunnel. There had been a funny noise.
“I—guess,” she said.
Bormann turned to them. “Do you know where we are?” he asked Willi.
“Yes, Herr Reichsleiter.” Willi stood up. He pointed to the diagram. “Right about here.”
Bormann nodded. “We should be at the exit point in another three hours,” he said. “At about two in the morning.” He frowned. The trip through the sewer was taking longer than he had anticipated. That damned girl! She had to trip over her own feet. Slow them down. He wanted to get out of the sewer as quickly as possible and on his way through the German-held corridor to Mecklenburg before it was too late. Hours counted. He had, of course, done what he could to safeguard his escape route. He had seen to it that heavy defense forces would be concentrated around Wilhelmstadt and the salient to the north. Crack SS troops. He had signed the top priority orders personally. In the name of the Führer, of course. But time was running out.
The stagnant water in a small puddle in the middle of the sewer shimmered into a myriad of concentric wavelets as on the street far above heavy equipment rumbled across. Tanks? German? Or Russian? He turned to Eva.
“Liebe Frau Eva,” he said solicitously, “how is your foot?” Even to himself his concern sounded insincere. To the devil with it! he thought angrily. The little bitch was a millstone around his neck. But a millstone he could not afford to throw off. Yet.
“Are you quite ready to go on?” he asked. “We must try to get to Wilhelmstadt as fast as we can.”
Eva stood up. “I am ready,” she said.
She was far from rested. Her foot hurt. She was nauseated. But she could not bear the hypocritical solicitude of the man. She held back the tears that stung in her eyes. How was she ever going to stand being with him during the weeks—even months—it would take to reach Argentina?
Her train of thought was abruptly interrupted. A distant explosion above shook the conduit. In quick succession two more blasts jarred the sewer.
“Quick!” Willi
cried. “Against the wall!”
At once they ran to the wall and pressed against the side of the drain, standing close together. More explosions shook the sewer.
“Barrage,” Willi shouted over the thundering rumble from above. “Coming our way. Put your arms around your head.”
They did.
More explosions, ever closer, ever louder, buffeted the conduit. The last one seemed right over them. The blast rocked the entire sewer tunnel. Bits and chunks of masonry, mortar, and crusted dirt loosened by the concussion rained down from the ceiling, rattled on the sewer floor, and splashed in the puddles. The flooring shook and heaved as the earth quaked and a broad crack burst open in the wall behind them and zigzagged toward the roof of the drain with a sharp, tearing sound.
Eva pressed herself against the hard, slimy stone. She clamped her arms down around her head and screwed her eyes shut. Any moment she expected the sewer walls to collapse upon her and bury her alive. She was dimly aware of the two men pressing against her on each side, but she had never felt more alone. She waited for the final blast which would obliterate her, but the barrage had let up.
“Come on,” Willi urged, “hurry! We must get away from here before they lay it on again.”
He ran into the conduit. Eva and Bormann followed. They hurried, half running, down the dark tunnel, their swinging lanterns shadow-painting the sewer wall with misshapen, moving murals.
Suddenly Willi stopped. He stared ahead. In the distance the sewer was filled with a flickering reddish haze.
“What is it?” Bormann asked.
Willi frowned. “Fire,” he said grimly.
“Down here? In the sewer?”
“There must be a break,” Willi said. “Up ahead. A cave-in. The barrage.”
“What—what do we do?” Eva asked.
“We go on,” Willi said. He glanced at Bormann. The man said nothing. For a big shot who wanted to make all the decisions, he thought cynically, the Herr Reichsleiter was going about it in a peculiar way. He peered into the distance. He did not voice his fears that the break might have blocked their way. “Let us take a look,” he said.
They hurried on.
Presently they stopped again and stood staring at what lay before them.
Willi had been right. One of the exploding artillery shells had blasted a large hole in the street above, causing a break in the sewer tunnel below with the devastating effect of a sinkhole. Brick and concrete chunks had tumbled down into the crater, filling half the conduit with burning timbers from a demolished building above. The smoke billowed through the sewer, stinging their eyes, blinding them with burning tears.
Willi quickly assessed the situation. At the down side of the break was a narrow passageway—strewn with rubble but passable. The burning timbers lay close; they would have to get past the blaze as fast as possible.
He looked up. High above—at street level—a huge pile of broken, burning debris from the demolished building hung precariously perched on the rim of the gaping pit. Any moment it could give way and fall into the conduit below, completely cutting them off.
“We have to hurry,” Willi said urgently. He turned to Bormann. “Herr Reichsleiter, you go first. Then Frau Hitler. I will follow. Make your way past the fall-in. Now.” He coughed. The acrid smoke was getting thicker. It was becoming difficult to breathe. “Keep your face away from the flames. Look down. Look where you step. Don’t fall.”
He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “Wet your handkerchiefs. Hold them over your mouth and nose so you can breathe. Hurry!”
Quickly both Bormann and Eva took out their handkerchiefs. They bent down and saturated them with the fetid water from a puddle in the sewer.
“Now!” Willi called.
Bormann took off. He ran toward the narrow passageway below the slope of burning rubble. With surprising agility he danced through the debris and the chunks of brickwork and concrete. Willi watched him with detached amazement. It was like watching a fat, clumsy bumpkin, he thought, walk out onto a ballroom dance floor and begin to waltz with unsuspected grace.
He turned to Eva. She was looking up at him intently, as if drawing strength from him, her pinched face awash with the reflected light from the fire.
“Go!” he said.
She turned toward the cave-in—and froze. She stared ahead through the haze. At once Willi followed her gaze.
The rubble at the base of the fall-in had come alive, and came rushing toward them. A thin, high-pitched sound rose faintly above the roar of the flames, chilling their souls.
Rats!
Hundreds of rats!
Falling, leaping, dropping they came tumbling down the fiery pile of rubble in the break, frenziedly fleeing the holocaust raging above, shrieking in panic, some of them aflame. At the bottom of the slope they milled about in frantic confusion and came pouring away from the fire toward the two people staring at them in horror.
Willi at once realized what had happened. Driven from cellar to cellar by encroaching fires, hundreds, perhaps thousands of city rats had converged in the basement of some large building directly above. The Russian barrage had set the building ablaze and blasted open the old sewer below, creating a shaft of escape for the maddened beasts, plunging them into the old, sealed-up tunnel. The realization did nothing to diminish the horror.
The fear-crazed rats were racing away from the fire toward the gloom of the sewer tunnel, coming directly at Eva and Willi. Paralyzed with terror, Eva dug her nails into his arms.
Willi galvanized into action. “Come!” he shouted. Roughly he pulled her along. At their feet the frenzied rats scrambled past. Willi kicked at them. They drew near the searing flames. “Use your handkerchief,” Willi shouted, before he clamped his own dripping kerchief across his face.
Eva followed suit. At once her nose and mouth were filled with the foul stench of the sewer water as her rapid breathing drew it into her lungs. She heaved, and vomit spewed from her mouth. She wiped it away with her handkerchief and hurled it at the rats scurrying at her feet.
The flames were scorching hot on her face. Willi tried to protect her with his own body as best he could as they scrambled over the rubble through the mass of desperate rodents. The terror-maddened creatures—their long, savage teeth exposed in fury and fear, tinged yellow-red by the flames—fought them for every foothold among the debris.
Through the smoke Willi saw the hazy figure of Bormann. Like an apparition from hell he stood waiting for them. He reached out and pulled Eva the last few feet away from the fiery fall-in.
Their own frenzy almost as great as that of the rats, together they ran down the sewer tunnel. They were aware of the panic-stricken rats everywhere around them. Tiny pinpoint eyes shone red with reflected light as the beasts stared at them and scurried out of their way into the trash and filth at the edges of the drain.
Suddenly there was a loud, rumbling crash behind them.
They turned to look.
The ruin above had thundered into the sewer, filling the break with burning debris, sealing the tunnel behind them.
It was exactly 0227 hours, May 1, 1945 when they finally stood before the walled-up exit point—two hours later than their estimated time of arrival.
“The fuse is located four feet up from the ground, Obersturmführer,” Bormann said. “In the center. Behind the mortar. There is a small pickaxe in your rucksack. Use it.”
Willi nodded. He shrugged out of his rucksack and pulled the little tool from a side pocket. It was actually a mountain climber’s hammer, the long, slender head pointed at one end, blunt at the other. The rucksack contained other items borrowed from mountaineering: matches in a watertight metal cylinder, and, of course, the heavy woolen socks.
Bormann and Eva took cover a short distance down the conduit.
Eva shivered. Now that deliverance from the dreadful place was near, the oppressive confines seemed to press in on her a hundredfold. She eagerly anticipated being able to climb out into the open
.
Willi came running back to them. “Cover your ears!” he called.
Hardly breathing, they waited.
The sewer was deadly quiet—except for the sounds of distant battle that filtered down to them from above.
They waited.
Eva felt herself tense. Could thirty seconds seem like a lifetime? Why was it taking so long? Had something gone wrong? Had the fuse gone out? Or was the explosive wet? She didn’t even know if that made a difference. But sweet Joseph, Maria, why didn’t the charge go off? Fearfully she turned to Willi. She started to speak . . .
Suddenly the explosion rocked the sewer, ripping the silence asunder. The roar rolled down the conduit in disappearing thunder—and once again the sewer was quiet.
They ran to the exit point. Dust was heavy in the air, settling slowly. They all held their lanterns aloft and peered into the huge, black hole that gaped open in the sewer wall. Bormann flicked on his flashlight. They crowded up to the opening, and Bormann aimed the beam of his torch into the blackness beyond.
Eva’s hand flew to her mouth. Involuntarily she gave a little cry.
About ten meters into the branch sewer a solid wall of stone, brick, and rubble totally blocked the conduit.
It would be impossible for them to dig out.
They stood in stupefied silence. Suddenly stripped of hope they stared at the massive blockage.
Their plight was clear to them all. Before them a solid wall of building-stone rubble, behind them the fiery barrier caused by the Russian barrage.
They were trapped.
7
WILLI RAN UP to the massive obstruction. He pulled and tugged and pushed at the chunks of masonry; he climbed up the jagged embankment and probed at broken cement slabs and bulky sections of brickwork. He returned to Eva and Bormann.
“Herr Reichsleiter,” he said soberly, “we will not be able to get out this way. What is your alternate plan?”
Bormann stared at him. “Alternate—plan?” he repeated.
