The Templar Prophecy Read Online Free PDF Page B

conscious of the process once it has begun. In reality, between thirty minutes and three-quarters of an hour. But even if the Ivans burst in just as we are taking them, they will not be able to resuscitate us or avenge themselves on our bodies in any way that we will notice. From the moment we bite into these we will be freed from any such nonsense.’
    â€˜But what about –’
    â€˜Inge. No.’ Hartelius pressed a finger to his wife’s lips. His gaze travelled round the upper corners of the anteroom. He cleared his throat and raised his voice. ‘Ever since the July plot the Führer has become justifiably suspicious.’ He rolled his eyes to show that he was in deadly earnest about the possible presence of microphones. ‘All of us are searched. Nobody is immune. Not even our generals. Yesterday he had the traitor Fegelein brought in. His own brother-in-law, I tell you, accused of conniving with that sewer rat Himmler. The Führer has brought in Müller of the Gestapo to question him personally. This is happening as we speak. Then he is to be taken out and shot. Good riddance, I say.’
    Colonel Freiherr von Hartelius raised his hands in mute supplication as if to apologize to God for the gulf between his words and their meaning. He was a Wehrmacht officer. A career soldier. Instinctively non-political. For the past two years he had seen Adolf Hitler steadily arrogate all military power and all strategic decision-making solely onto himself. First it was the fifty-six-year-old and otherwise healthy General Guderian who had been overruled and forced to take sick leave; now it was General Krebs’s turn. Everybody knew that the daily strategy meetings held in the bunker had become little more than a screaming match in which Hitler blamed everybody but himself for the imminent collapse of the thousand-year Reich. He was the Gröfaz , after all – the greatest commander-in-chief of all time.
    â€˜But Johannes. Why did the Führer order me to fly you out here if all he intends for us to do is to die with him? It’s grotesque. And why us? What significance do we have? We are little people compared to the Bormanns and the Goebbels of this world.’
    Hartelius shrugged. ‘Because they couldn’t spare any male pilots, I suppose. And you just happen to be number two on the Führer’s favoured list of celebrity female test pilots. You also happen to be my wife, Schätzchen , and I’m not able to fly a plane to save my life. Lieutenant Colonel Weiss just explained to me that we were called in as last-minute replacements for another husband-and-wife team. Any guesses who they might be, in the light of what I’ve just said?’
    Inge von Hartelius rolled her eyes.
    â€˜Yes. General Ritter von Greim and Hanna Reitsch. Who are unfortunately a little higher up in the pecking order than we are. Even though they are not, strictly speaking, married.’ Hartelius’s laugh was almost a bark. Test pilot Hanna Reitsch, alongside film-maker Leni Riefenstahl, was the most famous woman in wartime Germany, and her affair with von Greim was an open secret. ‘The pair flew in on the twenty-sixth. But just as Greim was landing his Fieseler Storch on the East–West Axis, they were hit by a Russian artillery shell. It blew out the bottom of the plane and damaged Greim’s foot. I got all this verbatim from von Loringhoven, who is one of Krebs’s aides. Hanna Reitsch had to take the controls herself and land the plane. But Greim has since recovered and the Führer has sent them away again. Greim has been promoted to Field Marshal, apparently, and is now in charge of the Luftwaffe.’
    Inge began to mouth the words ‘what Luftwaffe?’ but her gesture was swamped by the crump of incoming Russian shells landing on the nearby Chancellery.
    The vibrations in the Hitlerbunker were more or less constant now. Water trickled everywhere – down