“Sleeping . . . I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it. Therefore, he could not be informed until . . .” Her father took out his pocket watch and looked at it. “Four hours ago. And the officer on duty has not yet authorized the closest of the German panzer tank divisions in Paris to advance. But thirteen thousand American paratroopers have dropped into Normandy since three a.m. Only the Cuddle Pup can launch the panzers.”
Posie had a grin on her face. “He has to get up, brush his teeth, wash his face . . . move his bowels.”
Alice made a face. She hated that expression. “He has to move his tanks, Mum, before his crap.”
There was a knock on the door. The family quickly assumed doleful faces appropriate to the news. It was Walter, accompanied by a young officer who stepped into the room.
“I am here to escort Fräulein Ute Maria Schnaubel to her RP assignment. She is to pack a bag for herself, as she might be traveling to the Berghof. It is suggested that she bring warm clothes, as the weather is much chillier there. I shall wait outside while you prepare.”
It did not take Alice long.
She soon came out of her room. Her parents suddenly looked pale and quite fragile as they stood by the door. The time had come. Her very first mission.
“Try not to cry, Mum, Dad. I’ll be fine. And he said I might not leave right away.”
“Yes, of course, dear,” Posie replied, but her lower lip was trembling.
“You are prepared!” Her father’s voice was low and guttural. His eyes were suddenly suffused with a steely glow—a glow of belief, it seemed to Alice.
Two minutes later she was in the back of a Volkswagen with her bag, and the young fellow was driving.
“This is an odd route to get to the chancellery on Wilhelmstrasse,” she commented.
“We are not going directly to the chancellery.”
“Oh, I thought that was where my RP was.”
“Not exactly.”
“Where exactly are we going?”
“The Führerbunker.”
“The Führerbunker!”
“Yes, it is virtually next door, but we only approach by this route. It’s the quickest way into the complex.”
Alice knew about this complex. It was no secret. It had been built during the renovation of the Old Chancellery, maybe four or five years before, when the war began. It was located beneath the garden of the Old Reich Chancellery. It was essentially an air-raid shelter with an underground web of tunnels and rooms. But the word “bunker” wasn’t quite right, as it was rumored to be very lavishly decorated. There were chandeliers, and an extensive wine cellar with many bottles of the finest champagne.
They now turned through an entry gate, and the Volkswagen pulled up to a parking space in a courtyard in front of a stubby peaked roof tower—the guardhouse, presumably. A man came out.
“We are expected,” the driver said. The guard nodded.
“Park over there, sir.”
They pulled into a small parking lot. Getting out of the car, Alice followed the driver, who carried her bag across a small expanse of paving stones. In a wall of dressed stones, a small wood-paneled door opened. Obviously the servants’ entrance, Alice thought. An elderly lady with a crinkled-up face as wizened as a dried apple walked toward them. Alice nearly gasped out loud. She was the quintessential roly-poly old lady from a book of fairy tales. This woman, with her headscarf tied babushka style, her apron, and her voluminous skirt, looked like the old woman who lived in a shoe, with her numerous children spilling out of it every which way.
“This way, dearie,” the woman said. “I am Gudrun. Frau Gudrun Weissmann, and I’ll show you to your quarters and then explain your tasks here.”
“Yes, Frau Weissmann.” The air was dank and suffused with a tinge of mold.
“Good girl, I can tell you are obedient. Follow me.”
Frau Weissmann had a figure that reminded Alice of two blobs of dough piled on top of each other. Alice thought of the snow-people cookies that she and Louise would make for Christmas, three-dimensional cookies that they would decorate with chocolate frosting hats and buttons made of red hots candies, with raisins for eyes. She shut her eyes tight, remembering again the wafting scent of the Laurel Bright perfume that Louise wore. How could her nose cling to something so ephemeral? It really wasn’t the fragrance she clung to but their fight. The argument. The words like darts that they had hurled at each other.
“Now, dearie.” Gudrun turned her head. “When we go around the next bend, don’t look to the right. Try to cover that side of your face with your hand.”
“Why?”
“Art, degenerate art!”
“Then why do you have it here?”
Frau Gudrun Weissmann stopped abruptly. Her little eyes like raisins and appeared to grow darker.
“After this war is over and we are victorious, we shall sell it and build a beautiful museum to honor our Führer.”
But Alice did slide her eyes to the right. There was a luminous pastel of a woman in a prim blue blouse. She was certain it must be a Degas. Hardly degenerate. Not a bit of flesh showing. And next to it was what appeared to be an Italian Renaissance painting. Maybe a Caravaggio. Alice had seen a few Caravaggios in the National Gallery of Art in London when they had lived there.
“No peeking now!” The frau’s voice rang out. But Alice did peek, and then stopped cold as she saw a powerful radiance glowing a few yards ahead. Klimt! She knew about this painting, a portrait of a wealthy Jewish lady from Vienna. It had been commissioned by her husband and confiscated by the Nazis when they marched into Austria. Now here it was, moldering away in the dampness, countless meters underground in the lair of this mad man.
Frau Weissmann turned down another path. “Follow me!” she called out gaily. “The next door on the right is where you shall be staying. The room is tiny but comfortable.”
Alice stepped into the space. It was not simply tiny but minuscule. The bed took up three quarters of the room.
“Extra blankets under the bed. Washroom is down the hall. A shelf for your books—I know you are a very good student. So you must have books. Is that what’s in your backpack?”
“A couple, but mostly clothes.”
“I believe that you’ll be wearing a uniform.”
“Uniform?” Alice’s heart sank. A gray uniform like the SS. Or would it be the drab greenish-gray of the army or the blue-gray of the Luftwaffe, the air army? “What kind of uniform?”
“Oh, just a domestic one—a black dress with a nice crisp white apron, as I imagine you’ll help serve tea and such.” And such . . . ? Just what was “and such”?
“Now put your backpack down, and I’ll take you down the hall to the domestic quarters of the Führer.” They walked on a bit more. There were double doors made of steel ahead. “Through these doors.” She took out a key and unlocked a door. “This is the honorable Fräulein Braun’s bedroom, or boudoir, as she prefers to call it.”
Of course, thought Alice. The expression “honorable Fräulein,” Alice would soon learn, was the form of address that all people of the household would use when speaking about Eva Braun, the Führer’s mistress. The words should be considered a sign of respect or politeness. But Alice would soon realize that people, particularly when the Führer was not present, tended to put their own twists on the phrase. It was almost as if a smirk was embedded in the very words . . . perhaps a note of derision that hinted that Fräulein Braun did not yet have the right to be called Frau Hitler, since they had never married.