The Valhalla Exchange. Jack Higgins
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so he was no coward – but the handshake lacked firmness and there was sweat on the brow, particularly along the thinning hairline. This was a badly frightened man, a breed with which Ritter had become only too familiar over the past few months.
‘An exaggeration, I’m sure, General.’
‘And you, too, Sturmscharführer.’ Fegelein did not take Hoffer’s hand but nodded briefly. ‘A magnificent performance.’
‘Indeed,’ Ritter said dryly. ‘He was, after all, the finger on the trigger.’
‘Of course, my dear Ritter, we all acknowledge that fact. On the other hand …’
Before he could take the conversation any further the door opened and a broad, rather squat man entered the room. He wore a nondescript uniform. His only decoration was the Order of Blood, a much-coveted Nazi medal specially struck for those who had served prison sentences for political crimes in the old Weimar Republic. He carried a sheaf of papers in one hand.
‘Ah, Martin,’ Fegelein said. ‘Was it important? I have the Führer’s orders to escort this gentleman to him the instant he arrived. Sturmbannführer Ritter, hero of Wednesday’s incredible exploit on the Innsbruck road. Reichsleiter Bormann you of course know, Major.’
But Ritter did not, for Martin Bormann was only a name to him, as he was to most Germans – a face occasionally to be found in a group photo of party dignitaries, but nothing memorable about it. Not a Goebbels or a Himmler – once seen, never forgotten.
And yet here he was, the most powerful man in Germany, particularly now that Himmler had absconded. Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Party Chancellery and Secretary to the Führer.
‘A great pleasure, Major.’ His handshake was firm with a hint of even greater strength there if necessary.
He had a harsh, yet strangely soft voice, a broad, brutal face with Slavic cheekbones, a prominent nose. The impression was of a big man, although Ritter found he had to look down on him.
‘Reichsleiter.’
‘And this is your gunner, Hoffer.’ Bormann turned to the sergeant-major. ‘Quite a marksman, but then I sometimes think you Harz mountain men cut your teeth on a shotgun barrel.’
It was the first sign from anyone that Hoffer was more than a cypher, an acknowledgement of his existence as a human being, and it could not fail to impress Ritter, however reluctantly.
Bormann opened the door and turned to Fegelein. ‘My business can wait. I’ll see you downstairs anyway. I, too, have business with the Führer.’
He went out and Fegelein turned to the two men. Ritter magnificent in the black uniform, Hoffer somehow complementing the show with his one-piece camouflage suit, sleeves rolled up to the elbow. It couldn’t be better. Just the sort of fillip the Führer needed.
Bormann’s sleeping quarters were in the Party Chancellery Bunker, but his office, close to Fegelein’s, was strategically situated so that he was able to keep the closest of contacts with Hitler. One door opened into the telephone exchange and general communication centre, the other to Goebbels’s personal office. Nothing, therefore, could go in to the Führer or out again without the Reichsleiter’s knowledge, which was exactly as he had arranged the situation.
When he entered his office directly after leaving Fegelein, he found SS-Colonel Willi Rattenhuber, whose services he had utilized as an additional aide to Zander since 30 March, leaning over a map on the desk.
‘Any further word on Himmler?’ Bormann asked.
‘Not as yet, Reichsleiter.’
‘The bastard is up to something, you may depend on it, and so is Fegelein. Watch him, Willi – watch him closely.’
‘Yes, Reichsleiter.’
‘And there’s something else I want you to do, Willi. There’s a Sturmbannführer named Ritter of the 502nd SS Heavy Tank Battalion on his way down now to receive the Swords from the Führer. When you get a moment, I want his records – everything you can find on him.’
‘Reichsleiter.’
‘That’s what I like about you, Willi, you never ask questions.’ Bormann clapped him on the arm. ‘And now, we’ll go down to the garden bunker and I’ll show him to you. I think you’ll approve. In fact I have a happy feeling that he may serve my purpose very well indeed.’
In the garden bunker was the Führer’s study, a bedroom, two living rooms and a bathroom. Close by was the map room used for all high-level conferences. The hall outside served as an anteroom, and it was there that Ritter and Hoffer waited.
Bormann paused at the bottom of the steps and held Rattenhuber back in the shadows. ‘He looks well, Willi, don’t you agree? Quite magnificent in that pretty uniform with the medals gleaming, the pale face, the blond hair. Uncle Heini would have been proud of him: all that’s fairest in the Aryan race. Not like us at all, Willi. He will undoubtedly prove a shot in the arm for the Führer. And notice the slight, sardonic smile on his mouth. I tell you there’s hope for this boy, Willi. A young man of parts.’
Rattenhuber said hastily, ‘The Führer comes now, Reichsleiter.’
Ritter, standing there at the end of a line of half a dozen young boys in the uniform of the Hitler Youth, felt curiously detached. It was rather like one of those dreams in which everything has an appearance of reality, yet events are past belief. The children on his right hand, for instance. Twelve or thirteen, here to be decorated for bravery. The boy next to him had a bandage round his forehead, under the heavy man’s helmet. Blood seeped through steadily, and occasionally the child shifted his feet as if to prevent himself falling.
‘Shoulders back,’ Ritter said softly. ‘Not long now.’ And then the door opened. Hitler moved out flanked by Fegelein, Jodl, Keitel and Krebs, the new Chief of the Army General Staff.
Ritter had seen the Führer on several occasions in his life. Speaking at Nuremberg rallies, Paris in 1940, on a visit to the Eastern Front in 1942. His recollection of Hitler had been of an inspired leader of men, a man of magical rhetoric whose spell could not fail to touch anyone within hearing distance.
But the man who shuffled into the anteroom now might have been a totally different person. This was a sick old man, shoulders hunched under the uniform jacket that seemed a size too large, pale, hollow-cheeked, no sparkle in the lack-lustre eyes, and when he turned to take from the box Jodl held the first Iron Cross Second Class, his hand trembled.
He worked his way along the line, muttering a word or two of some sort of encouragement here and there, patting an occasional cheek, and then reached Ritter and Hoffer.
Fegelein said, ‘Sturmbannführer Karl Ritter and Sturmscharführer Erich Hoffer of the 502nd SS Heavy Tank Battalion.’ He started to read the citation. ‘Shortly after dawn on the morning of Wednesday, April 25th …’ but the Führer cut him off with a chopping motion of one hand.
There was fire in the dark eyes now, a sudden energy as he snapped his fingers impatiently for Jodl to pass the decoration. Ritter stared impassively ahead, aware of the hands touching him lightly, and then, for the briefest of moments, they tightened on his arm.
He looked directly into the eyes, aware of the power, the burning intensity, there again if only for a moment, the hoarse voice saying, ‘Your Führer thanks you, on behalf of the German people.’
Hitler turned. ‘Are you aware of this officer’s achievement, gentlemen? Assisted by only two other tanks, he wiped out an entire British column of the 7th Armoured Division. Thirty armoured vehicles left blazing. Can you hear that and still tell me that we cannot win this war? If one man can do so much what could fifty like him accomplish?’
They all shifted uncomfortably. Krebs said, ‘But of course, my Führer. Under your inspired leadership anything is possible.’
‘Goebbels must have written that line for him,’ Bormann whispered to Rattenhuber. ‘You know,