The Big Reap

THEN

Despite the vents at regular intervals through which faint, dilute wisps of spring cool sluiced downward, the air inside the bunker hall was warm and dry and still. It smelled of tobacco, pipe and cigarette, as well as people too long confined. Many of the doors that graced the hallway on either side were closed, and all were unmarked. Those that were open revealed a strange hodge-podge of seemingly unrelated rooms, as if they opened into different buildings altogether. To the right, a bare-concrete-walled war room, where dour, jackbooted men pushed what looked like children’s toy tanks and airplanes across a table at the center of the space, wholly occupied by a map of Europe, while headphoned others manned radios, reading codes to others still who clacked away on the odd, typewriter-y cipher devices of which the Nazis seemed so fond. Across from that to my left, posh living quarters hung with large gilt-framed Carravagios and three-quarters filled by a mahogany four-poster bed, which stood, draped with rich linens and multiply bepillowed, atop a plush Oriental rug of tan and green and red. Past that, a room piled high with rations, guns, and ornate trinkets — candelabras, tea services, jewelry — in gold and silver. And yet further down, there was a dark room bare but for ten cots, on top of two of which slept fitfully a pair of fully clothed soldiers.

I trod the busy hallway in mute slow-motion like a specter, flinching reflexively whenever anyone got too near, as if contact might break whatever spell allowed me to pass among them unnoticed. Despite the heat, I’d left my overcoat on, and even buttoned it, but I could still detect the faint, acrid scent of bile emanating from my shirt. My hands shook. My eyes darted fitfully from face to face, certain I’d be fingered at any moment as an interloper — a spy.

But no one seemed to pay me any mind.

“Lilith!” I hissed, once the general who hurried past me with a wordless head-nod greeting had disappeared up the stairs, leaving me momentarily alone. “Damn it, Lily, what the hell am I supposed to do now?”

And though I could not see her, and the hallway was plainly empty but for me, Lilith replied as low and clear as if she’d breathed the words into my ear. “For starters,” she said, “you’d best never call me Lily again, or you’ll find out what fresh hell it is to wind up on my bad side. Understood?”

Given the lusty pin-up image Lilith’s throaty purr conjured in my mind, I had trouble picturing her having a bad side, though I confess I wouldn’t have minded spending a couple hours looking for it. Still, I was clueless in the belly of the beast and desperately needed her help, so in the interest of appeasing her I said, “Understood. Now — what happens next?”

“You see that door up on your right? The windowed one with light shining through?”

“Yeah, I see it.”

“That’s Hitler’s office.”

“He in there?”

“There, or the adjoining living quarters,” she said. “He’s been holed up inside for weeks. It’s almost as if he knows you’re coming…” she chided.

“Sure. Nothing at all to do with the fact that damn near every army on the planet wants him dead, or that the Ruskies have been doing their best to bomb Berlin clean off the map. So what do I do?”

“Your job,” she breathed.

“How?”

“That, Collector, is for you to figure out. I’m afraid whatever happens next, I cannot intervene.”

“So this is like some kind of Collector rite of passage, then? A ‘see if the new guy passes muster’ sort of thing?”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “You’ll almost certainly fail horribly, and likely get your vessel killed in the process. In fact, I’m betting on it.” Visible or not, she sensed my sudden panic. “Fear not, Collector. If your vessel dies, your soul will simply be evicted, and reseeded somewhere else at random. No one ever knows quite where. I’ve selected Angola in the office pool, which is why I’m forbidden from influencing you from here on out.”

“Shit,” I said.

“Yes, I know it’s a long shot, but what was I to do? I drew a crap number in the lottery, so all the populous nations were already taken by the time I was allowed to choose.”

“I meant, ‘Shit, I’m fucked.’”

“Oh. Yes. Most probably. But, you know, good luck regardless and all that.”

“Thanks,” I said, my tone biting, but it didn’t matter. If my gut was to be trusted, Lilith was gone.

As I approached the door to Hitler’s office, it swung open, and I was buffeted by what sounded like heated conversation. My heart fluttered in sudden fear, so certain was I I’d been discovered. But then a man — older, birdlike, with a faint dusting of close-cropped hair across his liver-spotted pate — burst forth from the door, dressed in doctor’s whites and clutching a full-grown German Shepherd to his chest. The dog, I saw as he shouldered past me, was dead, eyes bulging, tongue lolling, pink-tinged foam dripping from the corners of its mouth. The man I recognized from many a newsreel, always standing beside Hitler or close behind. His name was Werner Haase. He was Hitler’s personal physician.

Haase muttered a few words to me as I passed, the only one of which I understood was Adolf. But his tone was concerned. Tender, even. It was clear he was worried for his friend, as, he assumed, would I — would Goebbels — be.

I nodded tersely and continued to the office, stopping short in shock as I laid eyes upon the man himself. Partly because he always seemed more an abstract concept to me — a black-and-white capital-letters Bad Guy writ large across the silver screen, while here he was full-color flesh and blood. And partly because that full-color flesh-and-blood Hitler looked small and wan and frail behind his broad oak desk, which was scattered with maps and papers all weighted down by a Walther PPK. His hair, normally slicked back, dangled oily and lank down over his forehead; his trademark mustache was unkempt, as if it’d been too long since his last trim, his face was sallow; his eyes were red-rimmed, wet, and swollen. In one hand, he held a brown glass bottle filled with pills. In another, a kerchief, damp with the Führer’s tears. And as I stood in the doorway, greeted by the stares of Hitler’s inner circle looking stricken to a one — though Hitler himself had scarcely noticed my approach in his despondency — I detected the faint note of bitter almonds in the air.

It took me a moment to piece together what had happened. The pills inside the bottle were suicide pills — cyanide, unless Goebbels’ nose was much mistaken. And the dog — one of Hitler’s own — was their first victim. A test subject to ensure they’d work.

Which meant this human monster, this man who had the deaths of millions on his hands, was crying because he’d lost his dog. A dog he’d ordered killed. And all because he wanted to ensure his exit plan would prove successful when the time came.

For a brief second, I wondered if that meant I was off the hook. If Hitler was considering suicide, why bother going to all the trouble of killing him? But in my heart, I knew the truth. This man could not be allowed to decide his own fate, to dictate the terms of his own exit.

And I realized something else, as well. I wanted to be the one to end him. Wanted the last thought that passed through his mind to be a fearful one.

I looked forward to collecting him.

Hitler dabbed his tears and tossed his kerchief onto the desk. Then he waved his hands in dismissal at the dozen-odd people scattered around the office and barked a few quick words in German. The room cleared, all its occupants save three shuffling past me. Two of those who remained were clearly guards — uniformed, armed with rifles and sidearms both (the former held across their chests, the latter holstered at their hips), and standing at attention on either side of Hitler’s desk. Both struggled to remain stoic, pretending with all their might they hadn’t seen their Führer just break down.

The other occupant of the room was Eva Braun.

I knew nothing of her at the time, of course. Her relationship with Hitler remained secret until the war ended. Seems he thought he’d have more sway with the women of the Third Reich if they thought him a bachelor. Which, technically, he was, at least until two nights before I found myself standing in his presence; as I’d soon discover, the two had recently and, of course secretly, married.

But as I said, I knew none of that. In fact, the notion that Hitler might have a lady friend seemed so preposterous — like a shark keeping a housecat — it had honestly never, until that very moment, crossed my mind. And if it ever had, I suppose I might’ve pictured him secretly cavorting with some severe Aryan bombshell complete with skintight uniform and matching riding crop, not the vapid, mousy creature who stood before me.

Her face was round and unlined. Kind, even. Her clothes were neat, if plain. Her hair was done up all nice in mouse-brown curls; her eyes were vacant, and tinged with concern. As I stood watching, she placed a hand on Hitler’s shoulder, and cooed a German platitude I could not understand.

The gesture made me sick. It was more than he deserved. I turned away, only to have him call to me. Seems he mistook my anger for politeness. As if I were allowing them their quiet moment of affection, rather than seething at them for it.

“Joseph,” he said, “Kommen Sie, bitte!” I looked up at him once more to suss out the meaning behind his words, and found him beckoning for me to enter. Hesitant and trembling, I acquiesced.

“Joseph, was ist los?” he asked. I blinked in response. I had no idea what to say to him. Turns out, I didn’t have to say anything. I was saved the trouble when the small device at the corner of his desk began to move.

It was a strange looking device, two crossed sticks atop a spindle such that they sat parallel to the desk’s surface, with cups at each stick’s end to catch the wind and spin the crossed bits clockwise. Only there was no air current in the room to speak of, and anyway, the device wasn’t spinning clockwise, it was spinning counterclockwise — ever faster as I approached.

I had no idea what it meant, but evidently, Hitler did. He slid back from his desk so fast, his chair toppled, and with a barked order, had both his guards train their rifles at me.

“Mein Gott,” he muttered to himself, “war Mengele richtig!” And then, to me, “Das Passwort.”

I said nothing, instead putting my hands up like some busted movie bank-robber. The strange wind machine — an anemometer, my brain uselessly supplied — continued to pick up speed, spinning so fast its cups blurred, and riffled the papers on his desk.

“Das Passwort, Joseph — jetzt!”

I shook my head. Couldn’t figure a way out. The anemometer spun so fast it began to shake.

“Jetzt!”

The anemometer toppled. When its spinning rotor hit the desk, it flew apart in a crazed scatter of debris.

“I don’t know your fucking password!” I shouted, clenching shut my eyes in anticipation of the shots to come. But the shots did not come. Hitler stilled them with a hand on each barrel, lowering them away from me.

“Aaah,” he said. “American.” The word was heavily accented, but nonetheless in English. No small feat, for a man not thought to speak it. “Tell me,” he said, his words halting and heavily accented, “is Joseph still in there?”

“Yeah,” I answered, over Goebbels’ insistent cries in the back of his own mind. “He’s still here.”

“Good,” he said. It sounded more like goot. “Mengele said that someone like you would come. That is why he constructed for me this machine.” Vat eesss vye he contructed for me zees machink. “Und insisted on using passwords. I thought him a fool. It would seem that he is not.”

With a smirk, he gave the guards an order in rapid-fire German. From what little I could glean, it seemed the plan was to knock my ass out and keep me in the brig until I could talk German again.

The guards approached me. I closed my eyes and swallowed hard. A rifle-butt to Goebbels’ temple, and he went down like a sack of potatoes. Then the two guards slung their rifles over their shoulders and each grabbed one of Goebbels’ arms, dragging him from the room.

It mattered not to me. In fact, I was kinda glad they knocked him out. If they hadn’t, he mighta ratted on me.

But, unconscious as he was, he couldn’t. Nor could this Mengele’s magic anemometer, now in pieces on the floor. So, Goebbels and the guards gone, I crossed the room and closed the door, wearing the flesh of Hitler’s new bride, Eva Braun.