AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Squeezy toyed with his wine glass for a moment. ‘They took ‘em out and burnt them. I agree with you there, but—’
Ben interjected. ‘So, that’s verifying, yes? Hitler’s bunker. Two bodies that look exactly like them. Everyone agreed it was them.’
Squeezy glanced back at Aleksey. ‘Best you tell it, boss—seein’ as it was your lot did it.’
Aleksey pursed his lips, thinking. ‘We did some—’
‘We?’ Tim was almost sneering, as if half-expecting Aleksey to try to convince them of time travel too: that he’d actually been there, done all this himself.
‘TheSovietsin Berlin—remember we controlled the whole city before it was divided up. A branch of the Soviet military intelligence took the burnt remains and tested them and concluded that they were genuine. Yes, this is true.’
Ben almost crowed, ‘There you go then!’ Both he and Tim seemed pleased and appeared more than happy to let this rest there.
Aleksey just murmured, ‘Stalin didn’t agree with you, Ben.’
Before Ben could contest this, their food began to arrive, so they were silent as the wait staff handed it around. The dogs, stirred to interest by the smell, sat up suddenly, shocking a family with young children who were taking photographs of the boats in the harbour. Ben’s glance at the little girl posing dutifully, but making silly faces every time her mother raised her camera, spoke volumes to Aleksey, and for the first time since they’d found the boxes in the concealed roof space, he was seriously regretting bothering with this at all: burn the evidence and get back to their lives.
But he was committed now. He should have been more attentive to his superb education: the Greeks knew a thing or two about the opening of boxes.
When alone again, Aleksey clenched his jaw for a moment thinking it through in his head. ‘A year after these events, Stalin ordered some of his NVDK to return to Berlin and bring back the remains to Moscow to be tested again. We had better labs there. They exhumed the charred remains, found the skull with the bullet hole in it, and took that. They did their tests, and they told Stalinmonstr myertv: he is dead.’
He paused, realised he was starving, and began to eat as rapidly as the others already were. The drinks’ waiter returned and began taking their orders for a top up. A young couple strolling along arm in arm spotted him, broke apart, and thrust a camera at him asking if he wouldn’t mind…thanks…just point and click…with the boats in the background…
Feeding the dogs the battered fish he’d ordered for them, Aleksey felt the tension asmonstr myertvdissipated on the chill night air.
The couple were satisfied; the waiter handed the phone back; peace descended on them again.
Aleksey wiped his fingers and continued more softly than before as the outside seating was beginning to fill up, ‘Still Stalin did not believe it. Many who knew him believed that he had information about this that he did not share: that somehow he had come to know that this great beast had escaped them, escapedhim. And that he was therefore trying to prove something he knew, rather than disprove something he only feared. And remember, he knew how Hitler thought, for he was like him.Suicide?It was not in their natures. Eventually they took the skull to Magdeburg, to our headquarters, and it was sealed away.’
Ben was signalling to the staff so he could order some more food, and he muttered flatly, ‘Just because Stalin believed something doesn’t make it true.’
Aleksey waited while Ben ordered more chips.
Squeezy finished the tale for him. He’d been following Aleksey’s words as he’d chewed, his lack of contribution noticeable. ‘Nah, see Diesel, Boss’s mate, the new president they got over there, put this skull on display couple of years back. Americans got to test it then, didn’t they, with all this newtrust the scienceshit they got. Turns out it’s a skull of a young woman. And that’s one hundred percent fucking true.’
‘I held it in the palm of my hand and thought I was holding Hitler’s skull.’
That rather stopped all eating and drinking. Aleksey twitched his lips ruefully. ‘It was inourheadquarters.NKVD.’ He glanced at Squeezy who was now focused upon him with the intensity of a cat observing a snake approach. ‘I told you, Ben. Gregory recruited me. I began there, before other positions opened up for me. I held that fragment in my hand and thought, yes, good,monstr myertv.’
‘But you’re saying now it wasn’t his…?’ Ben leaned back, toying with his fork.
Tim was still eating. He’d been quiet and thoughtful since his outburst, and around a mouthful murmured uncertainly, ‘They do keep finding pictures of him in Argentina.Fakepictures. Well, I’d always supposed they were. What was that place they all went to?’
‘San Carlos de Bariloche.’ Squeezy was still staring at Aleksey, but he added to his flawlessly pronounced contribution, ‘Nice place. So I heard. German-Swiss chalets. Bavarian theme. Home from fucking home. Lots of blue-eyed, blond-haired kids in lederhosen, that kinda thing.’
Ben was staring at the image of the two men on the dock. He tapped it lightly. ‘The picture in the little history book we bought here. You said it could have been taken from a U-boat.’
Aleksey nodded. ‘Yes, that thought had occurred to me as well. Maybe one of the crew wanted a memento of this great moment: his part in his Führer’s escape, so took one of the island before they went under.’ Aleksey swivelled the photo around so it was facing him and murmured, ‘I think we know what the gagging order was about.’
Ben reared back. ‘You think the Royal Family knew these photographs existed? That doesn’t make any sense.’
‘I don’t know. But it’s odd, no? A non-disclosure, and when I ask what it is for, the lawyer says…anything I find on the island. Perhaps they worried something was there, but were not sure themselves.’
Suddenly, Tim reared back in his chair, tipping it over. He held a hand to his throat. Squeezy had him a Heimlich hold before he could speak, but Tim elbowed him in the stomach and then rounded on him. ‘You made me put that fucking coat on! You utter fuckwit! Look! Look whathe’sbloody wearing!’
Squeezy, theatrically leaning on the table and groaning, holding his ribs, only murmured gleefully, ‘Lucky I didn’t make you put on those baggy undies, then, ain’t it?’
Once Tim realised he’d made a very uncharacteristic scene and that everyone on the outside tables was looking at them, he slid back mutinously into his seat, but every so often he appeared to shudder and brush at himself.
