by Sam Eastland
When Fegelein returned to the apartment on Bleibtreustrasse, he found Elsa fast asleep and sprawled across the mattress, still wearing her transparent nightgown.
Rather than make room for himself on the bed, which would almost certainly have woken her again, Fegelein sat down to rest in the yellow chair by the phone stand.
He told himself he would not sleep, but he dozed off anyway, his chin sunk down on to his chest.
Four hours later, he woke to the sound of the caretaker, sweeping the pavement with his witch’s broom.
At first, Fegelein was startled to find himself in the chair and it took him a moment to recall why he was there. He glanced at his watch, gasping when he saw the time. It was 9.30. He should have been at Lilya’s half an hour ago.
Elsa was still asleep, which did not surprise Fegelein. She regularly stayed in bed until noon.
As quietly as he could, Fegelein got out of the chair and made his way to a bookshelf built into the wall on the other side of the room. Behind the collected works of Goethe, which he had never actually read, was a panel that operated on a spring-loaded latch, opening when it was pushed. With gritted teeth, he set his hand upon the panel and applied pressure until the panel clicked open. He looked back to see if Elsa had been woken by the noise.
She had not moved. Her breathing was slow and deep.
Behind the panel was a small briefcase, containing the jewellery and travel documents he and Lilya would need for their escape. The briefcase had been a present from his wife, who had ordered it to be embossed with his full initials and last name – H. G. O. H. Fegelein, and suggested that he use it for his daily meetings with the High Command. However, on the first day he brought it in, Hitler had remarked that the golden initials looked ‘flashy’. This meant, of course, that Fegelein could never use the briefcase for its intended purpose, but he had discovered that it was just the right size for stashing the jewellery and passports. After removing the briefcase from its hiding place, Fegelein was about to press the panel back in place when he paused. The first click had not woken Elsa, but the second one probably would. So he only pushed the panel part way closed and then carefully replaced the books. Standing back, he surveyed his work to see if it would pass inspection. It was barely noticeable, and Fegelein doubted whether Elsa even looked at the bookcase.
There was no time to pack a bag. He simply lifted his leather greatcoat from the hook in the entrance way, opened the door as quietly as he could and stepped out into the hall.
Before he closed the door behind him, Fegelein glanced back at Elsa. He had known long ago that this day would come. In fact, he had rehearsed it so many times in his head that he had managed to convince himself he would feel nothing when the moment finally arrived. But now that he was actually leaving, without a word of goodbye, he still felt sick about it.
He closed the door and made his way down the stairs, keeping to the outer edge of the steps so as not to make them creak. By the time he reached the street, Fegelein was no longer preoccupied with leaving Elsa behind. Instead, his thoughts turned to the future and the wonderful life he would have in the arms of Lilya Simonova.
Just as Lilya Simonova was reaching for the handle, the door seemed to open by itself.
The safe house on Heiligenbergerstrasse had not been difficult to find and she encountered no one as she climbed the stairs. Pausing to examine a newly replaced window on the second floor, she looked out into the street to make sure she hadn’t been followed.
Although Lilya had never actually met the agent with whom she was to rendezvous that day, she did know him by sight, since they had crossed each other’s path more than once in the Hasenheide park where messages were left in the hollowed-out leg of a bench. The first time had been just as she was leaving the park, having timed her exit perfectly to coincide with the arrival of a tram at the Garde-Pioneer station, on which she would begin her journey home.
The thickly moustached man was short and frail, with rumpled clothes that looked as if they needed cleaning. He looked lonely, sad and preoccupied. The man had caught her attention because of the way he glanced at her as she walked by. It was not the casual wolf-like stare she often received from men when she was out walking on her own. This glance was furtive and suspicious, like that of someone who knew more than he could say.
Afraid that he might have been sent to follow her, Lilya Simonova boarded the tram and then immediately exited through the door on the other side. She doubled back on her tracks, following the man across the park.
He sat down on the bench, fetched a newspaper from his coat pocket and began to read. It was only after several minutes that he reached down, retrieved the message Lilya had placed there and made his way out of the park.
This time, she did not follow him.
Whenever they crossed paths again, although she felt his stare upon her like the heat from a lamp held too close, Lilya never looked him in the eye.
Now she wondered what she would say to him.
But the man who stood before her in the doorway was not the same person she had encountered in the Hasenheide park.
It took her a moment to realise she knew who he was.
Her heart slammed into her chest so hard it was as if she had been thrown against a wall.
But his presence here was so unexpected, so impossible it seemed, that she forced herself to think she was mistaken.
He spoke her name, so quietly she barely heard him.
In the instant that she heard Pekkala’s voice, Lilya found herself back on the crowded railway platform of the Nikolaevsky station in Petrograd, just about to board the train, the last time she had held him in her arms.
Then all the years between that day and this receded into darkness, like a butterfly folding its wings.
Pekkala reached out to take her hand. ‘Come inside,’ he said, ‘and I will tell you everything.’
He led her into the flat, and gently closed the door.
Two other men were waiting, one of whom she recognised as the policeman who had questioned her two days before. This man looked as astonished to see her standing there, as she was surprised to see him.
With shock still crackling like sparks along the branches of her nerves, she sat down on the bed.
Pekkala knelt before her and explained the situation they were in. But he paused before he had finished, unsure whether she had heard a single word he’d said. ‘Lilya?’ he asked.
‘Don’t ever leave me again,’ she told him.
He breathed in sharply, as if dust had been thrown in his face. ‘I swear that all the days which we have left I’ll spend with you,’ he said, ‘but what we must do now is leave this place. All hell is about to break loose.’
Hunyadi had been sitting in a chair by the empty fireplace, just staring at Lilya Simonova. ‘But you were never in the bunker!’ he blurted out suddenly, as if a conversation had been playing in his head this whole time and had just now transformed into words.
Lilya glanced at Hunyadi, then turned again to face Pekkala, a questioning look on her face.
‘It’s all right,’ Pekkala told her. ‘It doesn’t matter now. You can tell him, if there’s anything to tell.’
‘Everything I learned, I learned from Fegelein,’ she said.
‘He was the leak, and he had no idea,’ muttered Hunyadi. ‘The poor fool has been hunting himself!’
Kirov rested a hand upon Hunyadi’s shoulder. ‘It’s time to go,’ he said.
Hunyadi rose stiffly to his feet. ‘I thank you, gentlemen,’ he told them, ‘but after what I have just heard, I believe I’ve found a way to solve this case without ever mentioning the name of Lilya Simonova. Hitler will be satisfied, and he will never even know that you were here.’
‘The choice is yours,’ said Pekkala, ‘but what about your wife in Spain? What will become of her?’
‘She’ll be released,’ answered Hunyadi. ‘And as for me, although I’ve always wanted to see Moscow, I believe I’ll take my chances in
Berlin.’
‘Fegelein?’ Hitler’s voice sounded hoarse and faint. His laboured breathing slid in and out of the static on the telephone line. ‘Fegelein is the leak?’
‘That’s right,’ answered Hunyadi. By agreement with Pekkala, he had waited several hours before telephoning the bunker. By the time Hunyadi placed the call, the others would already have escaped the city.
‘And can you prove this?’ demanded Hitler.
‘You should be able to correlate every piece of information broadcast on the Allied radio network with times when Fegelein was present in the bunker.’
‘I may require more proof that that, Hunyadi. He is Himmler’s liaison, after all.’
‘If you detain Fegelein and no more leaks emerge, then you’ll know that you have the right person.’
There was a long silence. ‘Very well,’ Hitler said at last. ‘I’ll send Rattenhuber to pick him up.’
‘I suspect that he will be at the house of his mistress, Elsa Batz.’
‘His mistress?’ Hitler’s voice rose suddenly in anger. ‘That man has a mistress?’
‘Yes, I thought you knew.’
‘Of course I didn’t know!’ shouted Hitler. ‘The bastard is married to Gretl Braun! Between you and me, Hunyadi, there’s a good chance he might soon be my brother-in-law!’ By now his voice had risen to a roar. ‘How the hell am I going to explain that to Eva? What’s this woman’s name again?’
‘Elsa Batz,’ repeated Hunyadi. ‘She lives at number seventeen Bleibtreustrasse.’
‘I’ll send Rattenhuber over right away. And thank you, Hunyadi, for everything you’ve done.’
‘My wife,’ said Hunyadi.
‘She will be released within the hour, and you are free to join her, my old friend.’
When Fegelein arrived at Lilya’s flat, he found the door unlocked and the room empty.
She must have panicked, thought Fegelein. I’m almost an hour late, after all. But where could she have gone?
The only place that made any sense to him at that moment was Elsa’s. Lilya must have been on her way there at the same time as I was coming here. With no other way of accounting for her absence, Fegelein hurried back to the apartment on Bleibtreustrasse. Inside the building, he stashed the briefcase in the little closet under the main stairs, where the caretaker, Herr Kappler, stored the witch’s broom which he used for sweeping the pavement.
Fegelein entered the apartment just as Elsa was getting out of bed. As always, the first thing she did was to go to her handbag on the side table and retrieve her lipstick. Then, looking in the little mirror which hung by the door, she daubed her lips a poppy red.
Fegelein never understood why she did this. The lipstick was made by the French company Guerlain and was from the last remaining stock in Berlin, making it ridiculously expensive. Most of it ended up on the rim of her coffee cup, requiring her to apply it again as soon as she had finished eating. But there was no time to think of that now.
‘Where did you go?’ she asked, still looking at her own reflection in the mirror.
Normally, Fegelein could have spat out a lie as quickly as speaking the truth, but he was so distressed at not finding Lilya that his mind had just gone blank. ‘I was taking a walk,’ he muttered.
She laughed quietly. ‘That’s a first.’
He didn’t care whether she believed him or not. ‘Has anyone been here since I left?’ he demanded.
She turned. ‘Why would anyone come here at this hour of the morning?’
Fegelein just shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, heading for the kitchen. He hadn’t had any breakfast and his stomach was painfully empty.
‘What’s wrong with you today?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ he snapped. ‘Leave me alone.’
Just then, there was a knocking on the door.
Fegelein’s stomach flipped over. Lilya is here, he thought. But now he had no idea how to explain what she would be doing at the apartment. Although Lilya often stopped here to pick him up in the car, she always called up from Herr Kappler’s phone at the front desk. He was afraid of the scene Elsa would make in front of Lilya, when she realised he was leaving her behind.
I’ll say there is an important meeting at the Reichschancellery bunker, Fegelein thought to himself. I’ll say the phone downstairs is out of order. That’s why she had to climb the stairs. If Lilya will just play along with me for a couple of minutes, we can leave this place without Elsa causing a commotion. Of course, she will figure it out soon enough, but by then Lilya and I will already be gone.
The knocking came again.
‘I’ll get it!’ said Fegelein, striding across the room towards the door.
But Elsa was standing right there and before Fegelein could do anything about it, she had already opened the door.
Fegelein stopped in his tracks.
It was not Lilya.
Instead, Herr Kappler had come to the door, stooped and smiling and holding out Fegelein’s briefcase. The gilded letters of Fegelein’s name glinted in the morning light. ‘Found this under the stairs,’ he announced. ‘Thought Herr Fegelein might want it back.’ Kappler handed the briefcase to Elsa, bowed his head in a quick bobbing motion and headed back downstairs.
When they were alone again, Elsa turned to Fegelein. ‘What is this?’ she asked, holding out the briefcase. ‘What have you got in here?’
‘Nothing!’ Fegelein blurted out.
‘It doesn’t feel like nothing.’ She placed it on the table by the door and flipped the latch.
‘Don’t open it!’ he commanded.
But it was too late. She flipped up the lid of the briefcase and stared at the tangle of gold chains, diamond rings and jewel-studded brooches. She reached into the hoard and picked out the two Swiss passports, which were held together by a rubber band.
‘Please,’ said Fegelein.
But she didn’t seem to hear him.
She slipped off the rubber band and opened each passport in turn. Then she dropped them back into the briefcase. ‘You were going away with her,’ she whispered.
‘Yes,’ admitted Fegelein. There was no point in lying any more.
‘And you were leaving me here.’ It wasn’t a question. She already knew the answer.
‘Elsa,’ he began, but then his voice died away.
As Fegelein stumbled about in his mind, trying to think of what to say next, Elsa Batz reached into her open bag and withdrew the Walther automatic which Fegelein had given her. She raised the gun and aimed across the room. That day of their first outing flooded back into her brain. The flower pots set up along the wall. The first shot gashing off the wall and the others which peeled away into space. She heard again the clench-jawed hissing of his laughter.
The first shot caught Fegelein in the throat. He dropped to his knees just as the second shot hit him in the chest. By the time the third shot tore off his right ear, Fegelein was already dead.
He tipped face down upon the floor.
She thought how strange the gun smoke smelled as it mixed with the scent of her perfume.
Two minutes later, General Rattenhuber walked into the room, followed by a guard from the Chancellery, who was carrying a sub-machine gun.
Elsa barely glanced up as they entered. She had sat down in the yellow chair and was still holding the Walther automatic.
Rattenhuber recognised the woman from her days as a dancer at the Salon Kitty club. ‘You are Fegelein’s mistress,’ he said.
She nodded wearily.
‘And do you plan on using that again?’ asked Rattenhuber, nodding at the pistol in her hand.
Elsa shook her head.
‘Then kindly drop it to the floor,’ said the general.
She let the gun slip from her grasp.
Rattenhuber walked over to Fegelein, stuck the toe of his boot under the dead man’s chest and rolled him over. ‘I see you left nothing to chance,’ he remarked to Elsa Batz.
At that moment, Rattenhu
ber’s guard called out to him. ‘You need to see this,’ he said, pointing at the open briefcase on the table by the door.
Rattenhuber made his way over to the table, lifted up a handful of the jewellery and let it sift back through his fingers again. Then he examined the Swiss passports. At the sight of Fegelein’s name, he let out a small choking noise. ‘And who is this?’ he demanded, holding up the other passport.
‘His secretary,’ answered Elsa. ‘Lilya Simonova.’
‘And where is she now?’
‘God knows,’ said Elsa Batz.
Rattenhuber turned to the guard. ‘Search the body,’ he commanded.
The guard placed his sub-machine gun on the bed, knelt down and began going through Fegelein’s pockets. He soon discovered a crumpled sheet of paper, bearing a cryptic series of numbers set into sequences of five.
‘Let me see that,’ said Rattenhuber.
The guard held up the paper and the general snatched it from his hand. ‘Son of a bitch,’ he muttered.
‘What is it?’ asked the guard.
‘A code used by the Allies, called Goliath.’
‘What will happen to me now?’ asked Elsa Batz. She spoke in a half-drugged voice, the way people talk in their sleep.
‘Now you will come with us,’ replied the general.
‘If you’re going to shoot me,’ said Elsa, ‘I’d rather you just did it here.’
‘Shoot you?’ snorted Rattenhuber. ‘The way I see it, Fraülein Batz, you just prevented a traitor from fleeing the course of justice. I think it is more likely that Hitler himself will pin a medal on your chest.’
Heinrich Himmler sat in his office at Hohenlychen, a telephone receiver pressed against his ear. ‘Are you certain, Rattenhuber?’ he asked. ‘Are you absolutely sure that it was Fegelein who leaked the information from the bunker?’
‘I don’t see how it could be otherwise,’ replied Rattenhuber. ‘We found a message in his pocket which was written in a code used by the Allies.’
‘And have you managed to translate it?’
