by Jack Higgins
Von Berger’s hand came out of his right pocket with the Luger and he shot Gorsky twice in the left side of the skull, narrowly missing the girls, who dropped to the floor as Gorsky went backward in the chair.
The carnage began, Kelly spraying the bar area. A side window crashed open and Ritter and Hanson fired through. Some of the Ukrainians turned to run and flung open the doors to the kitchen, only to find Hoffer and Schneider. There was an exchange of fire, but not for long. There were dead men everywhere, just a few still moving. Hanson had stopped a bullet in the shoulder and Schneider in his left arm.
Von Berger took the Mauser from his other pocket and tossed it to Hoffer. “Karl. Finish them.”
“For God’s sake,” Kelly said.
“It is his right.”
Hoffer found five men still alive and shot each one in the head. The girls had run for it, screaming. Ritter had opened a battle pack and was putting a field dressing on Hanson, while Schneider waited.
“So that’s it?” Kelly surveyed the bodies.
“No. Now we go home and bury our dead. After that, we are yours to dispose of.” Von Berger put a hand on Kelly’s shoulder. “I am in your debt eternally. I will repay you.”
“Repay me?” Kelly was mystified.
“A matter of honor.”
He was, of course, handled personally by top officers in both British and American intelligence, since he had been one of Hitler’s aides in those last few months in the Bunker. His account of events was fascinating and recorded in the smallest detail, but for Allied intelligence there was a problem with Max von Berger. On the one hand, he was unquestionably SS, and a commander. On the other, he was a brave and gallant soldier who seemed never to have involved himself in the more unsavory aspects of the Nazi regime. Never involved himself in anything remotely connected with the Jewish pogroms. In fact, it was soon established that he had had a dangerous secret all along – one of von Berger’s great-grandmothers on the maternal side had been Jewish.
He had also never been a member of the Nazi Party, though it was true that most of the German population had also not been members of the party.
Which left only the question of the flight out of Berlin. Obviously, von Berger mentioned nothing to them of his interview with the Führer. Indeed, he had put together a reasonable story with Ritter, while they were still together.
The story was this: Ritter had been ordered to Berlin in the Storch as a backup plane in case there were problems with the Arado assigned to fly out the new Luftwaffe commander, von Greim. There had been no problems, however. Von Berger, as one of Hitler’s aides, knowing that the plane was languishing in Goebbels’s garage and that the end was only hours away, had seized the opportunity to get out and had taken two of his men with him.
It was a perfectly simple explanation. There was no reason not to accept it, and Ritter backed it to the hilt, and so, in the end, that was that. As prisoners of war, they were disposed of in various ways. Many were sent to England for farm work. Amongst them was Max von Berger, who was posted to a camp in West Sussex. The regulations were minimal and each day he was allocated to a local manor house and its home farm, along with several other prisoners. There was nothing unusual in this. Officers up to the level of general found themselves working in such a way.
The truth was that the other prisoners deferred to him, called him “Herr Baron” with respect, and the owner of the estate, an aging lord, soon realized he had someone special on board, and not only that, a countryman by nature.
Before long, he was running things. The war was over, the villagers in Hawkley were decent people, and gradually the Germans were accepted, even for a pint in the pub. And then, at the end of 1947, German prisoners began to be returned home, and amongst them was Max von Berger.
It was snowing when he arrived in Neustadt off the local bus. It drove away and, a bag in his hand, he went up the steps and entered the inn, the Eagle. Local men were in there drinking beer, some eating, and he saw old Hartmann by the bar and Karl Hoffer and young Schneider at a table nearby eating stew. Someone turned and saw him.
“My God, Baron.”
Everyone turned, the entire room went still. Hoffer moved first, jumping up, running to meet him, in an excess of emotion, embracing him.
“Baron, we wondered where you were. I’ve been back six months and brought Schneider with me. His entire family was killed in the bombing in Hamburg.”
Von Berger put an arm around Schneider, who was actually sobbing. “Come on, boy, we got out of Berlin, didn’t we? There’s nothing to cry about.”
He called to the landlord, “The bill’s on me, my friend, let the beer flow.”
He turned to Hoffer. “I’m so pleased to see you. Let’s sit down.”
In a corner booth, they talked, young Schneider listening. “We’re getting by,” Hoffer said. “It’s mainly subsistence farming, but we’re all in it together. Everyone is taken care of.”
“And you?”
“Well, I act as bailiff. It gives me something to do.”
“You haven’t…”
“Found someone? No, Baron.”
“What about the Schloss?”
“We had the Americans for two years, so it’s in good condition. The thing you don’t know about is the… situation with Holstein Heath.”
“And what would that be?”
“When the border between the East and West was agreed on by the Allies, we should have been inside the Eastern zone, and Communist.”
“I thought we were in the Western zone?”
“Well, no, that’s it. We aren’t there either. The whole of the estate isn’t in either of the zones. Someone made a mistake drafting the map.”
Max von Berger was astonished. “You mean we’re a kind of independent state?” He laughed out loud. “Like Monaco?”
Hoffer, an intelligent man, said, “Well, not exactly. The police are technically West German. However, they’re all local boys, mostly ex-army or SS, so they see things our way.”
“Excellent.” Von Berger drained his beer and stood up. “Show me the Schloss.”
Hoffer did, and he’d been right. It was run-down, but the Americans hadn’t kicked it to pieces. Finally, they approached the chapel. It was dark in the early winter evening, but candles flickered close to the mausoleum. Von Berger stood and looked and noticed some winter roses.
“Who are those from?”
“Village women. They like to keep things right. It’s the same at the church for the others, my wife, the girls.”
Von Berger said, “That day, Karl, those final killings. It wasn’t that I was leaving it to you. I felt you had a greater right.”
“I know that, Baron.”
“Do you ever regret what we did?”
“Never.”
“Good. Now, pay attention. We were comrades then and comrades now, and I am going to share my greatest secret with you.”
He went behind the mausoleum and pressed the hidden catch. The statue groaned and moved. Von Berger reached in and took out the briefcase.
“This is the true reason we left Berlin.” He opened it and extracted the blue book. “This is Hitler’s diary, Karl.”
“My God in heaven,” Hoffer gasped. “Can this be true?”
“Yes. I’ll tell you later what’s in it, but right now we’ll put it back.”
He pressed the catch and the statue reversed into place. He fastened the briefcase and held it up.
“And in here is the solution to all our financial problems. I’ll explain it to you as we go. The first thing we must do is visit Berger Steel. We’ll need decent suits and some sort of vehicle.”
“I’ve still got a Kübelwagen from the war, Baron.”
“Excellent. Stuttgart then, but Geneva first. That’s where the money is.”
Geneva was amazingly easy. At the bank, the passwords and codes from the material given him by the Führer inspired immediate compliance. The rather ordinary-looking banker indicated ho
w immense the resources were at his disposal, and he transferred ten million into a liquid personal account, thus establishing his name and status. The bank, in effect, jumped to attention.
His next move was to contact Berger Steel’s lawyers in Munich, leading to a meeting on-site at the Stuttgart factory. They toured it with the general manager, Heinz. It was working, of course, but in a low-key manner, a certain amount of steel-making, but not much more than that.
“As you can still see, we had bomb damage, but on the whole we were lucky and we’ve an excellent workforce,” Heinz told him.
The lawyer, Henry Abel said, “Cash flow and investment, that’s the trouble. We don’t have enough of either.”
“Not anymore.” Von Berger turned to Heinz. “I’m transfering five million into the company accounts tomorrow.”
“Dear God, Baron,” Heinz said, “I’ll guarantee you results with that kind of money.”
And so it proved. Over the years, the company contributed more than most to the miracle that became West Germany. As they developed into one of the most important steelworks, von Berger diversified into construction, hotels, the developing post-war leisure industry.
Soon his tentacles moved westward to the United States, his hotel interests burgeoning, and an ex-Airborne Ranger officer turned New York attorney named James Kelly proved more than useful, eventually becoming head of legal affairs for the American branch of Berger International.
At an early stage, he sought out Colonel Strasser, as he had promised, and Strasser became an adept troubleshooter, eventually overseeing all personnel matters for Berger. Ritter had been a different case. As usual with many wartime pilots, Ritter had been unable to go without the adrenaline rush, so though Berger had kept him as a personal pilot, it was never enough, and one day in 1960, Ritter, performing at an airshow in an ME109, stalled for the last time and plunged into the ground. At the funeral, they stood together, the Baron, Schneider, Hoffer, Strasser and Kelly, who had flown over from the States.
“Thirty-eight years old, and after all that he did,” Strasser said, “I’d say that’s young. It frankly makes me uneasy.”
Schneider, always “Young Schneider” to them, said, “That Berlin flight was amazing. We shouldn’t even be here now.”
“Well, we are, and the work continues,” the Baron said.
As the Cold War extended, the position of the great estate of Holstein Heath became more ambivalent, but von Berger’s position as one of West Germany’s leading industrialists gave him the right international contacts needed to block anything the East German regime could do.
The estate had developed a prosperity beyond belief, with Karl Hoffer as general manager, and young Schneider as his assistant. Von Berger poured in money and totally refurbished the castle, using the apparently inexhaustible funds from Geneva. He even had a runway constructed in the meadow, big enough for small planes to land.
Any overt support of Nazi ideals was not part of his agenda. It would have been counterproductive anyway, but gradually over the years there was a quiet coming together of others whose names were on the lists in Hitler’s briefcase. Not the Kameradenwerk, the Action for Comrades that Hitler had mentioned, but a sort of secret brotherhood, almost like a Masonic order, with Max von Berger as a kind of godfather. Anyone with the right background, the right ideas, could turn to him and get a hearing, a handout, help. Always discreet, always reasonable, a legend to the former soldiers of the German army, there was nothing the authorities could complain of.
The truth was that the brutal death of his wife and son had killed something inside him in a single devastating moment. He had taken his revenge, which had proved no revenge. It had, as he’d read in a poem, made of his heart a stone, left him curiously lacking in emotion.
The years rolled on, and in 1970 that emotionally cold heart found release when, at forty-eight years of age, he formed an attachment for a young Italian woman named Maria Rossi. Attractive and clever, with a degree in accounting, she became a personal assistant, traveling the world with him, and the inevitable happened.
Von Berger fought against his feelings for her, for it seemed a betrayal of his wife, but before he had to make any final decision, the situation resolved itself. She left him quite suddenly, leaving behind a brief apologetic letter telling him that family business had called her away to Palermo. He never heard from her again.
Time went by, and people started to die on him. First, Schneider was killed in a stupid accident on the estate when a tractor he was driving turned over, crushing him to death. Strasser went next with lung cancer, ten years later.
Von Berger went to the funeral with Hoffer. It was 1982 and he was sixty.
“The grim reaper is spacing things out, Karl, have you noticed?”
“It had occurred to me, Baron.”
Hoffer had remarried in middle life: a cousin, a widow from the village. She had died of a heart attack only a year before. He was two years older than von Berger. “So what do we do?”
“Gird our loins. I’ve been thinking of going into the arms business, and there’s always oil, especially with Russia opening up.”
“May I ask why you need to do that, Baron?” Hoffer said patiently. “You already have enormous wealth.”
“My dear Karl, more than even you could imagine. But my life lacks purpose, Karl. There is an emptiness I cannot fill. Maria Rossi made me warm for a while, and then went. This void in me – I must fill it, and work and enterprise are the only way.” He clapped Hoffer on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about me, Karl. I’ll sort it out.”
The following day, back at the Schloss, he visited the chapel, opened the secret place, and leafed through the Hitler diary. He had read it so many times that he almost knew it by heart. There had never been any occasion to use it and as he replaced it now, he wondered if there ever would be.
He sat there for a while by the mausoleum, thinking of his wife and son, then took a deep breath and stood up. So, Russian oil fields and armaments. So be it. And he went out.
By 1992, he was seventy, his holdings in Russian oil extensive because of the temporary loss of the Kuwaiti oil fields in the Gulf War and the embargos placed on Iraqi oil. The money simply poured in, and the continuing threat in the Middle East and India and Pakistan made for more and more lucrative deals in the arms business.
In both Britain and the United States, there was unease at the highest level about his various dealings, but he didn’t care. He was now head of a consortium so staggeringly wealthy that his power was immense.
In 1997, James Kelly died in New York, but later in the same year, the Baron suffered his greatest blow of all when Karl Hoffer passed away with a heart attack.
The open coffin was on display in the chapel. Sitting beside it, alone, his hands on the silver handle of the cane he needed to get around these days, he thought of their years together in the war and that last final flight from Berlin.
“So, it would appear I am the last, old friend. My hip bothers me a great deal these days. You remember our old wartime motto: To the men of the SS, nothing is impossible.” He sighed, then gathered himself together. “So back to work.”
He limped out, and the chapel door slammed behind him. It was quiet, lit only by the guttering candles. Little did he know that just around the corner, a series of events were waiting that would change his life forever.
London
The Empty Quarter
Iraq
3.
THE FOLLOWING YEAR was the first time he met Paul Rashid, the Earl of Loch Dhu. The legendary figure behind Rashid Investments, the earl had had an English mother and an Omani general for a father, and had served in the SAS during the Gulf War. The Rashid wealth was well known, as was their grip on the oil fields of Hazar, and also in the Dhofar, for Paul Rashid was Bedu and controlled the vast deserts of the Empty Quarter.
Berger International had sought oil concessions in the Dhofar, but even the Americans hadn’t been able to break the i
ron control of the Rashids. The Baron tried a different approach. He arranged an arms deal with Yemen, then asked Rashid Investments to broker it for him, reporting directly to him. In this way he hoped, of course, to get to meet Paul Rashid, and one day he received a message that the chairman would meet him in the Piano Bar at the Dorchester Hotel.
He arrived in the early evening as stipulated and ordered a whiskey – an Irish. He’d always favored that. He sat, hands on the handle of his cane, and noticed a supremely beautiful woman pause at the entrance. She wore a black jumpsuit, her black hair hanging to her shoulders and framing a face that could have belonged to the Queen of Sheba. And then she came down the steps and approached him.
“Baron von Berger?”
“Why, yes.” He started to rise.
“No, don’t get up.” She pulled a chair forward. “I’m Lady Kate Rashid.”
He was totally thrown. “My dear young lady, I was expecting Lord Loch Dhu.”
“But you asked for a meeting with the chairman of Rashid Investments, and that’s me. My brother prefers to stay in the shadows, so to speak.” She laughed. “Don’t look so surprised. I did manage to get an M.A. in business at Oxford. Now let’s have a glass of champagne and you can tell me how we can possibly help the great Baron Max von Berger to do something he can’t do for himself.”
She called to Guiliano, the bar manager, and ordered house champagne. “Don’t worry, it’s the best in the place, but then everything here is the best. So, Baron…”
“Well, as you may know, Berger International dabbles in the arms business.”
“I wouldn’t call it dabbling, Baron.”
“It’s not quite on a par with your oil interests.” He smiled. “I have an order from the Yemeni government for assorted weaponry. Ten million pounds’ worth. It’s no big deal, but the shipment is Russian in origin, so I was hoping to bring it down from the Black Sea in a Greek-owned freighter to Aden.”
