“Your loyalty has always been a key element in the success of the Apostles. You should never be underestimated.”
Her look changed from child-like to competitive. “Like those women at Berghof always did. Like that jealous Angela Raubal, who couldn’t stand that he dumped her daughter Geli for me.”
The Führer actually had Geli, his half-niece and lover, killed for insubordination when she threatened to expose certain secrets after he left her, but Otto didn’t want to ruin the more romantic tale, and kept quiet.
“And Gerda Christian,” she went on with a frown. “She said I was just a vacuous showoff with a passion for bad clothes and cheap films, hardly suitable for the leader of the Third Reich. But my love told her off … said that I suited him just fine.”
Otto agreed that Eva Braun was never as stupid as people made her out to be. In fact, she did most of the manipulating in her relationship with the Führer. And her biggest weapon of manipulation was the suicide attempt.
Her first attempt was in 1932 when she shot herself in the neck. Then in 1935 she made a second attempt by taking pills. After Raubul’s “suicide,” the Führer wanted to move past any scandal that might stunt his still-growing power, especially with the whispers that he was behind her death. So Eva’s tactics often worked, meaning she usually got what she wanted.
And what she wanted was often expensive. The Führer bought her a villa in a Munich suburb, a Mercedes, and provided both a chauffeur and maid. By 1936 she’d become a fixture at Berghof, his grand estate in the Bavarian Alps. He was always worried about her safety, so he hid her out, so much so that most of the German people were unaware of their relationship until after the war.
But while she wasn’t the simpleton that many portrayed her to be, Otto would never have described Eva as being deep or profound. Her life was basically that of leisure, even during the war, in which she was oblivious to most of what was going on around her. She spent her days exercising, reading romance novels, and watching films. Unlike most Germans, she was free to read European and American magazines.
But as dysfunctional as their relationship was, Otto thought that in many ways it worked. They had what the Germans called
gemütlichkeit
—a coziness. It was something Otto never found in his own life.
“It’s been a long journey for us,” he said.
Her smile seemed to go back in time. “I remember the first time I met Adolf back in 1929, when he called himself Herr Wolf. I was a lab assistant for Heinrich Hoffman, the official photographer of the Nazi Party. It was just like a movie—I was up on a ladder and he came in to a great view of my legs … he always loved my legs.”
She giggled as she told the story once again, and probably for the last time. Otto must have heard it two hundred times throughout the years.
“I can see it like it was yesterday. He wore this big felt hat with his light-colored English coat. He told me I had the dreamy beauty of a farmer’s daughter and that I had the same eye color as his mother.”
Her face turned dismayed. Otto knew that even in the best relationships the thoughts always turned to the end. As was common with Eva, the smile faded away and she returned to her sad sulk—her carefree giggles were often a cover for her inner torment.
Otto noticed that she was wearing her wedding dress today. Normally a symbol of the beginning of a journey, but for Frau Hitler, it was an emblem of the end.
“All the women of Germany would’ve given their lives to be with him, but he chose you,” Otto tried to comfort her.
Her smile returned, like a weak pulse, but it quickly faded. “He deserved a better ending. Not in that dreadful place. All I can remember is the smell—the smell of death. And I’ll never forget the sight of the Goebbles children, their bodies piled in that room. I could never understand how a mother could do that to her own children.”
The comment took Otto back to that fateful day. Upon arriving at the Führerbunker, he found that their plan had gone terribly awry. The Führer was dead, Bormann and the pilot Baur were nowhere to be found, and Otto’s contacts were telling him that Müller had been captured by either the Russians or Americans. Nobody was sure—the entire country was in the fog of war. Berlin was nothing but chaos—every man for himself as Stalin’s troops marched in.
What he did find was an inconsolable Eva Braun. She was telling bedtime stories to the bodies of the six children of Joseph Goebbles, all poisoned to death by their mother, Magda. Otto needed to think fast. He decided to bring Eva with him, more out of respect for the Führer than his better judgment, and headed northward to the coastal city of Flensburg. He wouldn’t regret it.
Flensburg was crawling with Allied troops, so Otto made the risky move to take Eva across the border into Denmark, where they found a deserted farmhouse. He spent seven long days holed up with Eva Braun and her nonsensical conversation. But they also formed a bond that would last the rest of their lives.
On May 10 they crossed back into Germany to meet up with Himmler. Otto always had a laugh at how history recorded Himmler as taking the southern route and being caught by the bumbling Brits, before supposedly committing suicide. That route was a certain death trap, especially with Eisenhower’s obsession with the Führer’s redoubt in the Bavarian Alps. For the tale to be true, one must believe that the world’s most conniving plotter didn’t have a post-war plan. But Himmler made sure his doppelganger was on that route. He was the one captured by the British and splashed across the world’s newspapers upon “Himmler’s” suicide.
Ironically, they used British built planes from the Air Squadron 3KG200 to flee Germany. It was no coincidence that Himmler had used his SS powers to move the planes to Flensburg near the end of the war. They flew to Britain where they hid amongst the mass celebration of the Allied victory. In Britain, they mastered their new identities and received enough plastic surgery to make a Hollywood actress envious. When the time was right, they moved to the United States without receiving a second look.
Rose remained nostalgic. “I want to thank you for taking me with you, Otto—the United States was good for me. I missed Adolf, and my sister Gretl, but for the first time I really became who I was supposed to be. Not somebody’s girlfriend or somebody’s daughter. I was Rose Shepherd.”
Otto almost laughed out loud at the contradiction of someone who “found themselves” while using a false identity. Spy humor. He could relate.
He couldn’t deny that playing Rose Shepherd was Eva’s greatest acting job. It came quite naturally to her—her whole life was an act—and she pursued it professionally in the late 1940s and into the 50s, even getting a couple of roles in off-Broadway plays. And if she wasn’t in front of the camera, she was behind it. Her friends in Germany had called her
Rolleiflex Girl,
after the popular camera of the time. She did her own darkroom processing and most of the color stills often seen of the Führer, along with the campy home movies that showed him in the Bavarian Alps, were the work of Eva.
And even though she had many doubters within the Apostles, she proved her importance when she volunteered to silence Greta Peterson—sacrificing her own freedom so that Greta couldn’t share the secrets of the Apostles with the world, as she planned.
Otto knew that time was getting short. “I believe we must part ways now, Eva.”
Her expression was of acceptance. She nodded slightly, and said, “My mother only made it to ninety-six. I beat her by three years.” She smiled. “I already died at thirty-three … at least that’s what people think.”
He removed the glass vials of cyanide from the pocket of his overcoat and handed them to her. She stared at the vials for a moment and then looked up at him.
“Would it be okay if I finished my book first? I only have one chapter left.”
He had no worries that she wouldn’t go through with it. And he wanted to be far away when her body was discovered, anyway. Before he left, she removed her necklace and handed it to him.
It was a gold cross with
v^988v^
on it and her apostle name
James The Less
carved in the back. Otto put it in the pocket of his coat. They traded final smiles as he left, and then Eva Braun returned to her book’s final chapter.
***
Eva finished her novel. In the end, the two lovers found each other after years of being kept apart. She saw it as another example of art imitating life. She set the book down on the nightstand and placed the glass vial in her mouth. She bit down, eager to join her love in eternity.
She soon found herself in the Alps on a chilly autumn day with him beside her. His arm was wrapped around her as she snapped photos of the leaves as they blew off a tree in the distance. And when the final leaf released from the tree, her story had come to an end.
Veronica read the signs.
Jamie bouncing off the walls. Maggie whining.
She knew exactly what this meant—it was nine o’clock and they hadn’t eaten since lunch, which according to Veronica’s watch, was three lifetimes ago. They needed to eat or this was going to get ugly.
Zach remained behind the wheel, and had his own parental radar working. Without prodding, he suggested they grab a bite at “the best restaurant in New York.”
Veronica was surprised when he drove off the island of Manhattan. She was expecting a swanky uptown eatery Zach might have frequented when he worked for
Newsbreaker.
Twenty minutes later they arrived at the Palisades Mall in West Nyack, and Zach announced they were going to the Rainforest Café. This was a big hit with Maggie and Jamie, whose surliness instantly turned to glee. It was their favorite.
Zach explained that he often took TJ here, and Maggie once mentioned her fondness for the themed restaurant on one of her visits. Veronica was impressed.
They moved past all the typical mall stores until they arrived at the restaurant, where they were greeted by trumpeting elephants, squawking birds, and erupting volcanoes. They were seated beside a robotic, chest-pounding gorilla that Jamie thought resembled Eddie. They ordered a “Paradise Pizza” for everyone to split, but Maggie had to be different and got an order of “rasta pasta.”
Shouting over the simulated thunder, Maggie and Jamie asked if they could check out the large marine aquarium built into the back wall. But before Veronica was able to instruct them that they wouldn’t be allowed out of her sight until they turned fifty, they were already halfway to the fish tank.
She began to order them back to the table, but Zach encouraged her to let them go.
Veronica gave in. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t keep one eye on them at all times. They did look like they were having fun, though.
Zach sipped on his fruity drink, and intently viewed the landscape.
“What is it?” Veronica asked.
“Nothing Nazi related. I just see all these young families and couples, and it makes me think how simple things were back then.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I went on my first date last night since Carsten died, and it was one big awkward mess.”
“Wow—congratulations.” He caught himself. “On the date part, not the mess.”
“Thanks, but I didn’t get promoted to department manger, I just took in a film festival with a guy I met in one of my classes at Pace. I went back to school to get my masters.”
Zach tried to hide his reaction, but he wasn’t a very good actor, so she answered the question he wanted to ask, “He’s twenty-three.”
He smiled. “You gotta be young to keep up with you. I don’t think I’ve had a day this crazy since, well … I don’t think I’ve ever had a day like this.”
“Just a typical day in the life of a single mom,” she said, returning the smile. She appreciated his demeanor. Eddie would have made a clawing motion, including sound effects, and called her a cougar.
“So how did you meet Carsten?”
“College—NYU. He was a business major from an upscale Nazi family,” she made a bad attempt at humor—she could-a sworn she used to be somewhat witty. “We dated all four years and we were married soon after. Then Maggie came along and I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since.”
“Kids change everything,” he said with the look of experience. “Sounds like he’ll be a tough guy to replace.”
“You don’t replace the past—you just look to the future. And hope one day you don’t learn that the past is plotting to kidnap your children and take over the world.”
He laughed. “Having met your mother and Maggie, I think it’s safe to say you’re the funny one in the family.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment … I think. How about you and your wife?”
“I’m originally from Michigan, but my first job out of college was with the
Arizona Republic
newspaper. I couldn’t get access to the Detroit Lions games in Phoenix, so I would go to a local sports bar to watch them. Sara was a waitress there. Long story short, we fell in love, got married, had TJ. We moved to New York when I got the job with
Newsbreaker
. You can read the rest in the police reports.”
Veronica was half listening—maybe less than half. An older man had moved behind Maggie and Jamie and for a brief second she thought it was Youkelstein.