“Why are you telling me all this?”
She shrugged. “Why not? As you say, it was a long time ago.”
“Could you—”
“I’m through talking to you.”
She started to leave the barn, the cat nipping at her heels.
He tried, “You speak of the past with reverence. Are you a Nazi?”
She stopped, turned back, and surveyed him with an insolent air of triumph.
“I am a faithful follower of my Führer.”
And she ambled off.
His visit with the old woman disturbed him. It was not at all what he’d expected. Never had he thought Martin Bormann, Eva Braun, and Adolf Hitler would be the subjects of their conversation.
Before leaving Turingia he parked the car under some shade trees and used his smartphone to access the Internet. There he found a concise summary of Martin Bormann’s life.
Born in Halberstadt on June 17, 1900, the son of a former Prussian regimental sergeant major, Bormann dropped out of school to work on a farming estate in Mecklenburg. After serving briefly as a cannoneer in a field artillery regiment at the end of World War I, he joined the rightist Rossbach Freikorps. He eventually entered the National Socialist Party, becoming its regional press officer in Thuringia and then business manager in 1928. From 1928 to 1930 he was attached to the SA Supreme Command and in October 1933 he became a Reichsleiter of the party. A month later he was elected as a Nazi delegate to the Reichstag. From July 1933 until 1941 he was the chief of cabinet in the office of the deputy Führer, Rudolf Hess, acting as his personal secretary.
There he began his imperceptible rise to the center of power, slowly acquiring mastery over the Nazi bureaucratic mechanism and gaining Hitler’s personal trust. In addition to administering Hitler’s personal finances, he controlled the Gauleiters and Reichsleiters, the men who administered the various lands in the Reich. His brutality, coarseness, lack of culture, and apparent insignificance led top Nazis to underestimate his abilities. His mentor Rudolf Hess’ flight to Britain opened the way for him to step into Hess’ shoes.
In May 1941 he became head of the party. Until the end of the war, Bormann was the fierce guardian of Nazi orthodoxy. He was an archfanatic when it came to racial policy, anti-Semitism, and the Kirchenkampf, the war between the churches. By the end of 1942 he was Hitler’s private secretary, taking care of tiresome administrative details and steering Hitler into approval of his own schemes. Ordered by Hitler “to put the interests of the nation before his own feelings and to save himself,” Bormann fled the Führerbunker on April 30, 1945, after Hitler was dead. Accounts of what happened afterward vary widely. According to some, Bormann was killed trying to cross Russian lines by an anti—tank shell. Doubts, however, have persisted and numerous sightings of Bormann have been reported, beginning in 1946. Having been sentenced to death in absentia at Nuremberg in October 1946, his true fate remains unknown.
All of the other sites he found confirmed the same information. Nobody really knew what happened. He then located what he could about Eva Braun.
Born in Munich in 1912 to a middle-class Catholic family, the daughter of a schoolteacher, Braun first met Hitler in the studio of his photographer friend Heinrich Hoffmann in 1929. She worked as Hoffmann’s office assistant, later becoming a photo lab worker, helping to process pictures of Hitler. Blond, fresh-faced, and athletic, she was fond of skiing, mountain climbing, gymnastics, and dancing.
After the death of Geli Raubal, Hitler’s niece with whom he maintained a long love affair, Braun became his mistress, living in his Munich flat. In 1935, after an abortive suicide attempt, Hitler brought her to a Munich villa, near his home. In 1936 she moved to Berchtesgaden where she acted as Hitler’s hostess. Every effort was made to conceal her relationship with Hitler, since the Führer was supposedly devoted solely to the nation. Few Germans knew of her existence. Even Hitler’s closest associates were not certain of the relationship, since Hitler avoided suggestions of intimacy and would often degrade and belittle her intelligence. She spent most of her time exercising, brooding, reading cheap novelettes, and watching romantic films. Her loyalty to Hitler, though, never wavered. In April 1945 she joined Hitler in the Führerbunker, and eventually died with him as part of a suicide pact.
Several websites proposed the possibility that one or both of them had survived the war, along with Hitler, but Wyatt could locate no reference where any serious historian ever considered that a reality.
Yet Isabel did.
He decided to continue mimicking what Combs had done days ago and drove back to Santiago, finding the same tree-lined boulevard and the bookstore. The shop was located near the Plaza de Armas, in the heart of the city, about midway into an arcade of picturesque boutiques. Next door sat a café that displayed an assortment of lovely Camembert and cheddar cheeses. He’d dined there on the first visit, while waiting on Combs, enjoying some spicy sausage and salami.
From a cathedral at the far end of the boulevard bells signaled half past three. Storm clouds were rolling in off the volcanoes rising to the west, and the afternoon sun was gradually fading behind a bank of thick cumulus. Rain would arrive by nightfall.
But by then he’d be somewhere else.
He entered the shop. The tinkle of a bell announced his presence.
“Buenas tardes,” he said to the proprietor, a squat, overweight man with a bushy black mustache.
The man acknowledged the greeting and introduced himself as the owner, Gamero, using English. The proprietor wore the same bow tie and cloth suspenders that had adorned his rotund frame during Combs’ visit.
“I need a moment of your time.”
He displayed five one-hundred-dollar American bills to emphasize the importance of his request.
“You are fortunate. The day has been slow. No customers at the moment.” Gamero plucked the money from his grasp. “I’ll lock up early.” The owner waddled to the door and twisted the lock. Then a smile formed on the man’s fleshy lips. “How may I help you?”
“Tell me what you told Christopher Combs.”
A puzzled look came to the man’s face. “Two of you? After the same thing?”
“Which is?”
Gamero shook his head, then motioned and led him through a ragged curtain into the back of the shop. The building had apparently once housed a bank, since left over from that time was an iron vault. He watched while Gamero spun the bronze dial, released the tumblers, then eased open a heavy black door.
“See for yourself. Just as Combs did. I will be out front.”
He entered the vault and yanked the chain on a bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. Eight filing cabinets were arranged against one wall. One door led out, but it was secured by a hasp lock. He studied the cabinets, noted their rust and decay, and concluded that time probably had not been kind to their contents.
He slid open one of the drawers.
Tattered folders and yellowed paper were packed tight inside. He removed a few samples and noted the writing, mostly in faded type.
German.
He could not read any of it.
He examined the other drawers. Each was similarly stuffed.
Apparently this was some sort of German records cache. Swastikas adorned many of the pages as part of the letterhead.
He heard the bell from the front of the store.
Then two pops, like balloons bursting.
Then, the bell again.
He left the vault and walked back toward the front. The shop was quiet. No one in sight. People milled back and forth outside the front windows on the sidewalk. Cars whizzed by on the boulevard beyond. Gamero, though, lay facedown on the floor in a pool of his own blood.
The pops had been from a sound-suppressed weapon, two exit wounds dotting the man’s skull.
He checked for a pulse.
None.
He stepped to the front door, locking it from the inside. He then dragged Gamero behind the counter, out of view of the windows.
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He needed to finish what he’d started.
Remembering the locked door inside the vault, he frisked the corpse, finding a set of keys. He retreated behind the curtain, back into the vault, and opened the hasp lock that secured the door.
He yanked the chain for another bare bulb.
The room was little more than a walk-in closet, its stone walls lined with wooden shelves sagging from an assortment of memorabilia.
Uniforms, busts, swords, pistols, all adorned with sig-runes and swastikas. He counted twenty tattered copies of Mein Kampf. Ceramics, too, mostly animals and statuettes. One, a storm trooper doll, had its arm raised in a salute. There were also beer steins, helmets, and a music box that still chimed.
Was Gamero a collector? Or a dealer?
Had this drawn Combs’ attention?
He heard a noise from the front of the shop. In the store’s silence, everything seemed amplified. He stepped back to the curtain and peered past. Two men were outside. One was jimmying the door lock while the other stood in front, trying to block the view of passersby.