The Valhalla Exchange

‘Nothing?’ Ritter thought. ‘Can it be truly possible this clown realizes what he is saying or is he as touched by madness as his masters?’

The car ramp was wrecked, but there was still room to take the field car inside. As they stopped, an SS sentry moved out of the gloom. The sergeant waved him away and turned to Ritter. ‘If you will follow me, please. First, we must report to Major-General Mohnke.’

Ritter removed his leather military greatcoat and handed it to Hoffer. Underneath, the black Panzer uniform was immaculate, the decorations gleamed. He adjusted his gloves. The sergeant was considerably impressed and drew himself stiffly to attention as if aware that this was a game they shared and eager to play his part.

‘If the Sturmbannführer is ready?’

Ritter nodded, the sergeant moved off briskly and they followed him down through a dark passage with concrete walls that sweated moisture in the dim light. Soldiers crouched in every available inch of space, many of them sleeping, mainly SS from the looks of things. Some glanced up with weary, lacklustre eyes that showed no surprise, even at Ritter’s bandbox appearance.

When they talked, their voices were low and subdued and the main sound seemed to be the monotonous hum of the dynamos and the whirring of the electric fans in the ventilation system. Occasionally, there was the faintest of tremors as the earth shook high above them and the air was musty and unpleasant, tainted with sulphur.

Major-General Mohnke’s office was as uninviting as everything else Ritter had seen on his way down through the labyrinth of passageways. Small and spartan with the usual concrete walls, too small even for the desk and chair and the half a dozen officers it contained when they arrived. Mohnke was an SS Brigadeführer who was now commander of the Adolf Hitler Volunteer Corps, a force of 2,000 supposedly handpicked men who were to form the final ring of defence around the Chancellery.

He paused in full flight as the immaculate Ritter entered the room. Everyone turned, the sergeant saluted and placed Ritter’s orders on the desk. Mohnke looked at them briefly, his eyes lit up and he leaned across the table, hand outstretched.

‘My dear Ritter, what a pleasure to meet you.’ He reached for the telephone and said to the others, ‘Sturmbannführer Ritter, gentlemen, hero of that incredible exploit near Innsbruck that I was telling you about.’

Most of them made appropriate noises, one or two shook hands, others reached out to touch him as if for good luck. It was a slightly unnerving experience and he was glad when Mohnke replaced the receiver and said, ‘General Fegelein tells me the Führer wishes to see you without delay.’ His arm swung up dramatically in a full party salute. ‘Your comrades of the SS are proud of you, Sturmbannführer. Your victory is ours.’

‘Am I mad or they, Erich?’ Ritter whispered as they followed the sergeant ever deeper into the bunker.

‘For God’s sake, Major.’ Hoffer put a hand briefly on his arm. ‘If someone overhears that kind of remark …’

‘All right, I’ll be good,’ Ritter said soothingly. ‘Lead on, Erich. I can’t wait to see what happens in the next act.’

They descended now to the lower levels of the Führerbunker itself. A section which, although Ritter did not know it then, housed most of the Führer’s personal staff as well as Goebbels and his family, Bormann and Dr Ludwig Stumpfegger, the Führer’s personal physician. General Fegelein had a room adjacent to Bormann’s.

It was similar to Mohnke’s – small with damp, concrete walls and furnished with a desk, a couple of chairs and a filing cabinet. The desk was covered with military maps which he was studying closely when the sergeant opened the door and stood to one side.

Fegelein looked up, his face serious, but when he saw Ritter, laughed excitedly and rushed round the desk to greet him. ‘My dear Ritter, what an honour – for all of us. The Führer can’t wait, I assure you.’

Such enthusiasm was a little too much, considering that Ritter had never clapped eyes on the man before. Fegelein was a one-time commander of SS cavalry, he knew that, awarded the Knight’s Cross, 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.