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  He flipped the page and peered at the Lüttjohann Personalienakt attached:

  LÜTTJOHANN, WILLIBALD

  SS Obersturmführer, # 3.309.288

  Born: Göttingen, 21 June 1914

  Hitler Youth, Group: Center, 1929

  Promoted: Gefolgschaftsführer 1931

  SS 1933

  Assigned RSHA 1936

  Assigned Sonderabteilung Ausland 1937

  Agent Provocateur, U.S.A.

  German-American Bund, N.Y., 1937/38

  Hitler smiled a thin, self-satisfied smile. The German-American Bund under that buffoon, Fritz Kuhn, had still been an excellent operation, astonishingly successful and effective considering it had to be carried out on a large, highly visible scale in a foreign country. He recalled the many news stories of violent rallies in open support of the German cause; the American Stormtroopers— sometimes outdoing their German brothers in their brutality and zeal; the fine propaganda films and the riots in the German part of New York City. Yorkville, it was called, as he remembered. Yes, the Bund had done much for the Nazi ideology, much to weaken the internal security of the United States. Of course, only in a decadent democracy could such actions be allowed to take place. It had been to his gain. The Bund had been important in recruiting patriotic spies and saboteurs who had served the Fatherland well through the years. He looked at the Personalienakt. Largely because of the efforts of such men as Obersturmführer Willibald Lüttjohann. The young officer chosen by Skorzeny seemed an excellent choice. He would know the enemy well.

  He read on:

  Waffen SS 1939

  Campaigns: Warsaw, Poland 1939

  Belgium/France 1940. Dunkirk

  Promoted: Stabsscharführer 1940

  “Operation Barbarossa,” Russia 1941

  Field Commission: Untersturmführer 1941

  Sonderkampfgruppe Skorzeny 1942

  Knight’s Cross, Gran Sasso, 1943

  Promoted: Obersturmführer, 1944

  Jagdverband, Denmark, 1944

  “Operation Greif,” 1944

  Oak Leaves, Knight’s Cross

  Werewolf Training Ctr., Neustrelitz 1945

  Hitler frowned. The Werewolves. Why had he heard nothing? Krueger should be in position by now. He clenched his fist. It still twitched uncontrollably. The enemy would quickly learn the deadly perils of occupying German soil once the Werewolves were let loose. They would be the ones to make the invaders cringe in fear. He had at once approved the formation of the organization when Himmler had approached him with the idea. Unternehmen Werwolf—Operation Werewolf. Dedicated young men and women; from the SS; from the Hitler Youth; civilians, who would gladly lay down their lives in the performance of their duty, a duty which was to inflict death and terror on the invaders. Like their medieval namesakes. Himmler had put Prützmann, an SS General, in charge. And, of course, there was Skorzeny. When the time came they would be the backbone, the living spark of the continued resistance from the Alpine Fortress. He frowned again. He made a mental note to order Bormann to find out why there had been no word from Krueger; the general should be ready to go into action in a few days. He suddenly felt impatient. Nothing ever went the way it should. He could rely on no one but himself. And yet he had to.

  He returned his attention to the service record of Willibald Lüttjohann. It was imperative that that young officer be unfailingly reliable. He read:

  Vital Statistics

  Height: 6 feet

  Weight: 180 pounds

  Hair: Blond

  Eyes: Blue

  Complexion: Fair

  Identifying Marks: None

  Special Capabilities

  Languages: Fluent English; some French, Italian

  Expert Marksman, small arms

  Expert, Close Combat

  Parachutist

  He pushed the papers aside. He had asked Skorzeny for the best. He had not been let down. For once.

  Willibald Lüttjohann. A young man he had never seen. A young man who soon would be carrying the future of the German Reich in his hands.

  Abruptly Hitler gathered up the papers and put them away. Squinting for the keyhole he unlocked a drawer in his desk. Two large identical envelopes embossed with the state seal and thick with papers were lying side by side. For a moment he sat staring at them—unseeingly. Then he picked up one and stood up. Dragging his left foot he shuffled toward the door.

  In the little chamber off Dr. Stumpfegger’s examination room across the hall from Hitler’s study, Feldmarschall Ritter von Greim was asleep. The shock had worn off and his injured foot had begun to hurt. Stumpfegger had given him a sedative to help him sleep. An orderly was just placing a small tray with a carafe of water and a glass on a table next to the bed. He straightened up and stood at attention as the Führer entered.

  For a moment Hitler hovered at the door, watching the sleeping officer. “Wake him!” he rasped, without looking at the orderly. He walked to the foot of the bed.

  The orderly at once stepped up to the sleeping Greim. Gingerly he took hold of the officer’s shoulder, gently shaking him.

  “Herr Feldmarschall,” he said. “Bitte. Bitte aufwecken!”

  Greim stirred fitfully. The orderly became more insistent. He shook the patient. “Wake up, please!” he said loudly. “The Führer wants to speak with you.”

  Slowly Greim opened his eyes. With difficulty he focused on Hitler, standing at the foot of his bed. He screwed up his eyes in an effort to clear his drowsy mind. “Mein . . . Führer,” he whispered, his voice husky.

  The orderly helped him to sit up, banking his pillow behind him. Hitler nodded to the man. “Leave us,” he said.

  The orderly left. Hitler pulled up a chair next to the bed. Heavily he sat down. For a moment he stared solemnly at the groggy man in the bed.

  “Greim,” he said portentously, “I want you to know exactly why I summoned you here.”

  Greim started to speak. Hitler silenced him with a wave of his hand. “Just listen to me,” he said. “I promoted you to Feldmarschall because I need you,” he continued. “But that is not the reason I had you come here in person. I could have done that more efficiently by telephone. Obviously I would not have subjected you to the danger you faced, if that had been the sole, the real reason for wanting you here.” He smiled cynically. “But it will serve convincingly enough as my reason for those who would question my motives. And they are legion, believe me, mein lieber Greim.” He looked soberly at the officer. “There is another reason,” he said gravely. “A vital reason—a top secret reason—which made it imperative that I see you in person. Do you understand?”

  Greim nodded. Fighting Stumpfegger’s sedative, he still found it difficult to concentrate.

  “Before you leave here,” Hitler went on, “you will be given official orders. But your real mission will be given to you by me. Personally. Now! I want you to have time to prepare yourself for it. There can be no margin for failure!”

  Greim stared at the hunched-over old man sitting next to his bed. The Führer. The leader of the German nation. The German people. His commander in chief. He knew something of great importance was happening, and he struggled to focus his attention. “I . . . shall do my utmost, mein Führer,” he said, his speech slurred. “As I have . . . always done.”

  Hitler nodded. From his pocket he brought out the large envelope he had taken from his desk. “In this envelope are some documents,” he said, his voice strangely tense. “Others will be added before you leave.” He paused. He looked at the envelope with an undecipherable expression on his haggard face, then back at Greim. “Your mission,” he grated. “Your mission will be to carry this envelope and its contents to safety and to see that the instructions contained in it are carried out faithfully.” For a moment his hooded eyes grew glassy. “Left here,” he said hoarsely, “it will only fall into—into the wrong hands.”

  He handed the envelope to Greim. “I want you to read the documents. Now!” he said. “I want you to reali
ze the vital importance of your mission.”

  Greim took the envelope. He opened it. It contained half a dozen documents, all imprinted with official seals and stamps. He began to read. Hitler sat immobile, watching him.

  And suddenly the drug-induced haze that swaddled Greim’s mind was torn away. At once he was fully alert. Mesmerized, he read on.

  Finished, he let the papers sink down on the bed. Obviously shaken, he stared at Hitler.

  “Mein . . . Führer . . .” he breathed. “I . . .”

  Hitler silenced him. “Only you and I know the contents of those documents, Greim,” he said soberly. “Reichsleiter Bormann will be told. And one other—but you need not know who.” He looked at the Feldmarschall, his eyes burning. “You understand what is required of you?”

  Greim nodded. “I do, mein Führer. I shall not fail you.”

  Hitler nodded. He had picked the right man. “And you realize that until the proper, the designated time, the knowledge you now possess must remain strictly secret?”

  “I do.”

  “The documents must under no circumstances fall into enemy hands. If such a course is inevitable, they must be destroyed at all costs.”

  “Understood, mein Führer.”

  Hitler’s eyes bored into the man.

  “And should you be captured, mein lieber Feldmarschall,” he said softly, “should you be interrogated in such a way that you are in danger of revealing what you know—and the enemy may employ means you cannot resist: torture, drugs—you will protect the secret with your life! Even if you have to take that life yourself!”

  “I will, mein Führer!” Greim picked up the envelope. For a moment he stared at the embossed seal on it. The swastika, held in the claws of a German eagle.

  Or was it a Phoenix?

  Hitler nodded slowly. He took the envelope. It rustled faintly in his trembling hand. He stared at it.

  It had begun. Phase One. The Greim mission.

  Phase Two, the most crucial, the most important part of Unternehmen Zukunft—Operation Future—would begin when Skorzeny’s young officer arrived in the Bunker later that day. One Obersturmführer Willibald Lüttjohann.

  He wondered what he would be like.

  Everything would depend on him.

  The future . . .

  2

  A CLOUD OF SATIATED FLIES rose in alarm from the carcass of a dead horse as Obersturmführer Willibald Lüttjohann skidded to a halt on the dirt road. Sitting astride his BMW R750 motorcycle he was aware of its power throbbing beneath him. He was glad he’d chosen the cycle for the trip to Berlin from the Commando School in Neustrelitz rather than the offered half-track and detail of SS men. He liked to depend on himself, and he’d figured he’d get through alone on the bike a helluva lot easier than with a half-assed escort. And he’d been right. Taking back roads and cutting across country he’d been able to evade enemy patrols and the crush of refugees and military traffic. It did not matter that the trip of about a hundred and fifty kilometers had become twice as long. He gunned the bike. He liked to hear the deep, controlled growl of promised power.

  He raised the goggles from his grime-streaked face, revealing two circles free of dirt around his eyes. He peered ahead. It was beginning to grow dark. The back-country road in front of him was empty. He pulled his map from his brief tunic. He was wearing his commando outfit. He was approaching Berlin toward Spandau, having skirted Nauen and Falkensee. It was the only approach still open into the city, surrounded by Russian assault troops. On the horizon a red haze reached up into the sky from the city which was now the front line. The deep-throated rumble of distant battle filled the air, and it seemed as if the very clouds above were aflame.

  He quickly oriented himself on the map. According to the intelligence given him there was a narrow gap in the Russian lines south of the Charlottenburg district—between Charlottenburg and Wilmersdorf—still held by friendly troops. He’d have to cross the Havel River—he hoped he could find a bridge still standing; he’d hate to have to abandon his bike—and head for the Tiergarten. The Chancellery was just beyond. He studied the map closely. Wilhelmstadt seemed his best bet.

  Briefly he wondered again why he had been ordered to Berlin. Urgently. To report to the Führer himself! The thought once again filled him with excitement. He suppressed it. Get there first.

  Again he gunned the motorcycle. His Blitzrad—his Blitzbike— as he liked to call it. He felt it was almost part of him, and he considered it lucky. The first two numerals of the license number, WH 219514 were his birthday, the last two his birth year. Had to be lucky.

  He lowered his goggles and adjusted them. He gunned his bike and sped off toward the distant hell.

  Once again Adolf Hitler unfolded the map of Berlin. He had carried it along all afternoon and it was rapidly disintegrating from the perspiration on his sweaty hands.

  Where was Skorzeny’s man?

  Where was Obersturmführer Willibald Lüttjohann?

  He should have reported to the Bunker hours ago. He spread the map out on the conference table in the lounge hall. He stood staring at it, fixedly. He looked up as Hanna Reitsch came out from Ritter von Greim’s room. He motioned her over.

  “Mein liebes Fräulein Hanna,” he said solemnly. From his tunic pocket he fished out a little glass phial sealed with copper. “It is cyanamide,” he explained meticulously. “Dr. Stumpfegger assures me it acts instantaneously. One bite—and you will not have to fear anything.” He looked at the phial in his hand with a strangely morbid look in his eyes. “We all have them,” he said. He handed it to her. “It is not what I would have liked to give you as a farewell present, meine liebe Hanna.”

  Moved almost to tears, Hanna was about to speak, when across the hall a door opened and Hitler’s personal valet, SS Standartenführer Heinz Linge, came out from the Führer’s quarters. He left the door open. Through it Hanna could see a young woman sitting on the sofa, engrossed in a photo album with an ivory-colored leather cover.

  Eva Braun.

  For a brief moment Hanna’s eyes rested on the girl. She had been astonished, and a little jealous, when all the rumors about the little assistant to the Führer’s official photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, who had become the Führer’s mistress, turned out to be true. Even during the short time Hanna had been in the Bunker she had seen the influence the girl had on the Führer. She looked at her. She was attractive. Blond. With a pleasant face and a good figure, perhaps a little on the plump side, she looked younger than her thirty-three years. Clad in a close-fitting gray suit she sat on the sofa unconscious of Hanna’s scrutiny. As she turned the pages in the album her little diamond-studded wristwatch glinted in the light. Hanna wondered if it had been a gift from the Führer. No doubt, she thought, again with a twinge of jealousy. But she could not dislike the girl. Eva Braun had been unfailingly friendly toward her, and grudgingly she admired her. Eva was by far the calmest and most composed of the women in the Bunker. And the most pleasant. Together she and Eva had tried to entertain the six Goebbels children, telling them stories and teaching them to yodel—to the dismay of their parents. She sighed. She, Hanna, would leave the Bunker.

  Eva Braun would stay.

  Hanna looked away. She wondered what would become of the Führer’s mistress.

  She looked at Hitler. She could not speak. She merely smiled and took the offered phial.

  Hitler once more turned his attention to the map spread out on the table. Deeply disturbed he studied it. He had entered on it every scrap of information received about conditions in the city outside. He knew it was still possible to get into the city from the west, although the Russians were driving hard to close the ring around the Chancellery. And they had been pressing their attack at Spandau. It worried him. He had issued urgent orders that the bridges across the Havel were to be held at all costs. Axmann, the one-armed Hitler Jugend leader, had deployed his Hitler Youths all along the river and he had them man street barricades and fortifications protecting the
gap, along with the Volkssturm. He hoped they would hold.

  Long enough.

  Again he folded the worn street map. It was rapidly coming apart at the soggy seams.

  Where was Lüttjohann?

  Willi Lüttjohann was making his way through a rubble-strewn street approaching Kaiserdamm. It was getting dark but the many fires, most of them raging uncontrolled, lit the harrowing scene confronting him. The destruction was terrible to behold. Most of the buildings were in ruins, and those still standing showed the ugly, raw scars of bombings and shellings.

  He had crossed the Havel on a bridge held by a detachment of Hitler Youth, led by a seventeen-year-old. Boys, thirteen to fifteen years of age. He had been shocked. Had it come to this? Did the Fatherland have to be defended by children? They had been efficient. They had examined him and his papers thoroughly before letting him go on. Reluctantly, he had thought.