A thousand suns

Hauser felt pity for him, and the millions of other shaved monkeys on this planet that passed themselves off as homo sapiens. Amongst these retarded homo erectus creatures lived only a few people intelligent enough to deserve being considered genuine human beings. Hauser had known the Fuhrer was one of these rare people since the very first sentence he had heard the man speak.

Hauser nodded and then stooped slightly as he entered Hitler’s bunker. As he straightened up beyond the bulkhead, the soldier grabbed a handle and pulled the heavy iron door closed with a solid clunk.

The woman he had seen earlier returned down the corridor and entered the children’s room. She closed the door and the chatter of young voices was instantly locked away.

‘Dr Karl Hauser?’

He jumped a little. A smartly dressed young lady stood to the side of the door in a corner with the benefit of very little light. Her hair tied up in a bun and a slim build, Hauser guessed she was in her early twenties.

‘My name is Traudl Jung. I am one of the Fuhrer’s private secretaries. Will you come this way, please?’

Traudl led him down the corridor towards the spiral staircase at the end. He passed by one of the paintings on the wall, a watercolour scene of a stream in a wood; in the corner was scribbled ‘Adolf Hitler June ’25’.

This is real, Karl Hauser… not a dream any more.

Traudl turned round to look back at him.

‘He is in the map room right now, Dr Hauser, in a meeting. But he knows you are here and will see you in his private study shortly. It’s this way.’

They reached the spiral stairs, and the secretary led, modestly holding the hem of her skirt to the side of her leg as she took the steps one at a time upwards. Hauser’s eyes took in what was still visible of her stockinged legs. His mind so often distracted with numbers, he had had little time in his life to consider other matters, those things that it seemed most men’s minds strayed from rarely. But watching the young woman’s slender legs bend and stretch with every step, he felt the faintest charge of arousal.

The spiral stairs took them up one floor, and Hauser found himself staring along an identical corridor with metal doors on either side.

‘It’s on the left here.’

The woman tapped on a door. ‘Ma’am?’ There was no answer. ‘Miss Braun?’ Again, there was no answer. She opened the door slowly and entered.

Hauser followed her inside. The room was small and with little content. In one corner stood a coat rack. On it hung a leather coat, a cane rested against the base of it. To his left, a door was ajar and Hauser could see a bed. The touches here and there suggested it was a woman’s bedroom. A German Shepherd was curled up asleep on the bed.

‘Blondi! Off!’

The Shepherd’s tail thumped guiltily against the bed-covers. She clambered off and curled up on a rug on the floor beside it.

Traudl wagged a finger at the bitch. ‘You know you’re not allowed on there. Ba-a-a-d girl.’ Blondi’s tail continued to thump guiltily against the floor and her ears tucked down.

Traudl noticed Hauser looking past her into the bedroom. She pulled the door shut with a disapproving frown and reached for the handle of another door ahead of them.

‘Here, this is his private study. He will be along shortly, Dr Hauser.’

‘Thank you,’ he replied automatically.

Frau Jung studied him for a few seconds before adding, ‘He never conducts meetings in his study. Never.’ With that she pulled the door open to reveal the small room.

Hauser found himself holding his breath as the door swung open to reveal the study. It was a volume of space privileged enough to witness the most private moments of the Fuhrer.

A desk, a standard lamp, a leather chair, a second chair and, behind the desk, a bookshelf laden with bound notebooks. It was as Hauser would have imagined such a room: simple, uncluttered, a reflection of the Fuhrer’s brilliant mind with no space for unnecessary embellishments or decoration.

‘Please take a seat.’

Hauser entered the study, a room no more than ten feet long and eight feet wide, and settled himself down on the chair in front of the moderately sized desk. The young woman nodded at him before leaving the study and closing the door.

It took him a few minutes to realise he hadn’t experienced quiet like this in a long time, an almost complete absence of sound, except for the thudding of his heart and the faint and constant hum of a diesel generator in the bunker somewhere nearby.