Free Three Tales From the World of Cotton Malone by Steve Berry Page B

to the mother.”
    â€œIt is good to have a son.”
    The midwife turned her attention back to Braun as the afterbirth was expelled. He stepped away. A son. Hitler’s son. He recalled what his former supreme leader had told him after Braun had revealed in the Führerbunker that she was pregnant. There had been no anger, no joy. Just a placid acceptance. But Hitler had wanted the baby to survive, harboring a dream that his issue would one day resurrect the movement. So he released Bormann from his duty and instructed him to ensure that both Braun and the baby survived. Bormann had accepted the charge only as a way of escaping the death sentence that was Berlin. He hadn’t wanted to stay in the first place and had urged Hitler to flee south to the Alps. The fanatical idiot refused. Hitler had actually thought that he could rally enough military might to thwart the advancing American and Russian armies.
    He glanced down and noticed that the midwife had tied the umbilical cord and cut away the tissue. The infant started to cry, and the woman swiped the tiny face with a wet rag.
    â€œHe is a beauty,” the midwife said.
    â€œNo flaws?”
    â€œNone I can see.”
    Not what he wanted to hear.
    â€œGive him to me.”
    The woman laid the screaming baby in his arms. Sparse wisps of black hair matted the scalp. He wondered what Adolf Hitler would have thought to be here, holding his son, admiring what he and Eva Braun had conceived. Most likely he would have felt nothing. Hitler had been drawn to children, but only because they represented the perfect canvas for his political image.
    He laid the baby beside a still-unconscious Eva Braun.
    He then removed the Luger he’d carried since leaving the Führerbunker and fired one bullet into the midwife’s skull.
    The fat woman’s body slammed to the floor.
    Eva Braun never moved. Exhaustion claimed her. She would be told that the baby died at birth and the midwife was killed for incompetence. There would be no argument from her. Why should there be? They were now bound together. Their lives forever intertwined.
    And that was fine.
    She wasn’t altogether unpleasant, and he realized that his ability to enjoy female companionship in the years ahead would be limited. He must be careful. He’d watched how a woman could undo a man. That was not going to happen to him. Eva Braun would do as she was told or he’d plant a bullet in her skull, too.
    He carried the infant from the room.
    Outside, in the shade of a porch that jutted from the front of the farmhouse sat a man. Bormann walked over and handed him the baby. “Raise him as your own.”
    The man’s eyes were misty with pride. “He is his?”
    â€œAbsolutely.”
    â€œI heard a shot.”
    â€œThe midwife’s duty.”
    The man nodded. “There can be no witnesses.”
    â€œJust you and I, old friend.”
    â€œI will raise him well.”
    â€œIt is of no matter to me any longer. I have done my duty.”
    A lie. He was supposed to raise the child himself. But he wanted no more reminders of Adolf Hitler.
    The man rose from his chair and said, “Live long, old friend.”
    â€œI plan to.”
    And Bormann watched as his visitor headed for a car parked under the shade of a sprawling elm, the infant in his arms.

    Schüb finished his story.
    Voices broke the silence.
    From behind where they stood.
    Schüb ignored the sound and stepped forward, grasping a rope handle for the door.
    They entered what appeared to be a funerary chamber, the spacious room lit by sconces. A far wall was lined with bookcases, illuminated by ceiling-mounted floodlights. The shelves teemed with odd-shaped volumes packed tight in rows. But what dominated the room were two sarcophagi, each flooded in a pool of blue-white light. The exteriors were of marble, one gray, the other pink, the pair similar in size.
    â€œThe pinkish tomb contains the mortal