Free Eva by Ib Melchior Page A

wanted to, he could have had him shot summarily. Without any preponderance of proof. Like Fegelein. He nodded.
    “An escape route has been prepared, mein Führer,” he began. “I came upon certain blueprints when the Bunker was being constructed.” He told his story carefully. “In 1936, when the new Olympic Stadium complex was built for the Olympic Games it was necessary to construct an entire new sewer system to serve the area. Some of the existing system was enlarged and rebuilt but most of it was abandoned.”
    He licked his suddenly dry lips. It was not easy to have to disclose his most secret scheme. “The blueprints I acquired showed this abandoned system,” he continued. “One main conduit ran from the Tiergarten in a straight line to the west, skirting the Olympic site and dipping under the Havel River to the suburb of Wilhelmstadt.”
    He paused. Hitler sat silent, listening, studying him.
    “I inspected it,” Bormann went on. “I ordered every access to it walled up securely. Except two. I had . . .”
    “Where located?” Hitler interrupted.
    “One in a Tiergarten building directly across from the underground bunker garages approximately two hundred meters inside the park. The other in Wilhelmstadt. At those two places I had the access sealed and rigged with a built-in explosive that, when detonated, would reopen the passage.”
    Again he paused. Hitler looked at him. “And the people who performed this work?” he asked tonelessly.
    “Foreign laborers, mein Führer,” Bormann answered. “They were—eliminated.”
    “Supplies? Equipment?”
    “Stored inside the Tiergarten access,” Bormann replied. “Everything that will be needed. Sufficient for a party of four.”
    “And the blueprints?”
    “Destroyed.”
    Hitler nodded, satisfied. But he withheld his approval from his face. For a moment he gazed at his deputy. “I could give you my help, Bormann,” he said slowly, “or I could have you shot.”
    For a while the two men sat staring at each other as the tension built in the little room. Then Hitler sighed.
    “But—I have decided to help,” he breathed. “However, there is one condition.”
    “What is it?” Bormann was at once on guard again.
    “You must take someone with you,” Hitler said. “Someone I will choose. Understood?”
    Bormann was intrigued. Who was that important to the Führer? No matter. He would agree, of course. It would be easy to get rid of whoever it would be that the Führer would saddle him with. When the time was right.
    “Who?” he asked.
    Hitler looked straight at him, his eyes suddenly ablaze.
    “Eva,” he said.
    Despite himself, Bormann looked shocked. Eva Braun! He knew the girl had pledged to die with the Führer. Everyone in the Bunker knew. When Hitler had decided to die by his own hand in the Bunker, Eva Braun emphatically had vowed to join him in death.
    “But—Eva!” he blurted out. “I thought—I thought Fräulein Eva had decided to end her life here.”
    Somberly Hitler nodded. “And that is how it will appear,” he said. “To the world she will die with me.” His voice suddenly rang with a strange, fanatic determination. “But she must live! She must’"
    Totally mystified, Bormann stared at the suddenly agitated Hitler. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why?”
    For a moment Hitler looked at his deputy. “Because of what Dr. Haase told me,” he said gravely.
    Bormann’s thoughts were awhirl. Professor Werner Haase. A brilliant physician. Tall, in his fifties, and already silverhaired, Haase was dying of tuberculosis. He had only part of one lung left, which often caused him to gasp for air. For the last several weeks he had been Hitler’s physician having replaced Dr. Brandt, arrested for some nebulous reason he no longer remembered. Haase? True, he had seen Hitler and Haase engrossed in intense, whispered conversations. He had assumed it had to do with the coming suicides. What had been said? He did not even know