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.