Lest you despair, my love, I have good news for you. In the final hours, we were able to develop and implement Martin Bormann's brilliant plan. As the result of our actions, the future of the Third Reich is assured.
It pains me to tell you what I have been obligated to do in these final hours, but these actions relate to a series of last minute events so significant that I must recount them so that you can live secure in the knowledge that Germany and our children ultimately will rise from the rubble. What we have attempted to do with our lives has not been in vain.
Bormann informed us of his plan shortly after he was told of Mussolini's humiliation and death in the Pizzale Loreto. Bormann has steadfastly insisted that such a public display of the dead Fuhrer must be avoided at all costs. To that end, he has implemented an elaborate plan, a scheme so covert and so clandestine that you may well be the only person who will know about it by the time the sun sets on the Chancellery this very night. Even Eva Braun, who you may be surprised to learn has married the Fuhrer, was not apprised of Bormann's plan.
The Fuhrer was instructed to bid his staff farewell following a lunch with his two secretaries. He was told to go to his quarters and tell Eva to take a poison provided for this very liklihood. It was not a poison, but a powerful sedative. During this period, I was instructed to hide in the anteroom adjacent to the Fuhrer's quarters. While I was there, an assistant cook, a somewhat addled fellow by the name of Neichter, was brought to me. The man had been selected because he was in his fifties and strikingly similar in physical characteristics to our Fuhrer. While Linge and Kempka held him, wrapped the man's head in a canvas bag, inserted the barrel of my revolver in his mouth and shot him.
The assistant cook's body was dressed in a tunic and black trousers similar to those worn by Hitler. Several S.S. men were then permitted to enter the room. Even they did not see through the ruse. A scullery maid, also selected by Bormann, was also killed, and we carried the bodies out to a shallow grave, poured petrol over them and Gunshe set fire to them.
That evening, both the Fuhrer and Eva underwent a freezing procedure developed by Herr Doctor Bachmann. While I confess I do not understand all of the ramifications of this remarkable procedure, I am told that the process can be reversed, and even though the Fuhrer will spend some length of time in a form of suspended animation in a sealed container, he can be brought back by the gradual application of warmth.
After they were sealed in the containers, Bormann made arrangements to have the bodies removed from the Fuhrerbunker under the cloak of darkness. Even as I write to you, they are being transported to the port of Rostock.
Weep not, my darling.
I will continue to love you in the afterlife as I have on earth, passionately and with my total being.
Yours forever,
Manfred
I closed the diary, stunned. After a few minutes I managed to get to my feet and walk out on the balcony overlooking the gulf. The surf was subdued, a shimmering expanse of blackness reflecting a feeble light cast by a full moon nestled low in the western sky.
2
It was a delightful sensory bombardment — the soothing sound of the surf, the salt water freshness, the reassuring warmth in the early morning sun streaming through my window… and the perfume. Perfume?
I opened one eye, and the view was so rewarding that I opened the other.
''Good morning," she cooed in a honey butter voice.
It was the blonde lady, she of bikini and Bearing Schuster fame, but this time, to my dismay, she was fully clothed in a white linen suit with a fussy white blouse and coordinated appointments. Amazingly, she looked just as good in clothes as she did without them.
"You don't act surprised to find me in your apartment," she said, disappointment in her voice. I couldn't tell whether she wanted me to be or not.
In truth, I was just emerging from a sound sleep and I wasn't prepared with a few well-rehearsed lines for the lady. For the moment it was sufficient to sit up, thank my good fortune and enjoy the view. "Surprised isn't the word," I admitted. "Delighted might be more appropriate."
She fluttered her blue eyes and reached for one of the capped styrofoam cups sitting on the nightstand next to my bed. "Black? Or do you want me to dump some disgusting chemicals in it?"
"Black," I muttered, finally beginning to wonder how she got in, what she was doing there and what she wanted. Even when I'm half asleep, I tend to be the suspicious type.
She handed me the coffee, leaned back, crossed her long legs and smiled. The whole gesture was a little theatrical, perhaps, but there wasn't any doubt she was enjoying my growing discomfort. "Bearing says your name is Elliott Grant Wages and that you're some sort of an authority on the Doobacque Cluster."
"Bearing misled you. He has my name right, but that's all. I'm a writer in residence at a small college, and a sometimes parapsychologist. As for the Cluster, I spent a year there one week trying to survive. No one in his right mind would spend enough time there to become an authority on the place."
The lady wrinkled her pretty nose and graced me with a musical laugh. It was the kind of laugh men like, a little bit husky and a whole lot sincere. She saluted me with her coffee and took a noisy slurp. "You haven't asked, so maybe you're not interested, but just for the record, my name is Maggie — Maggie Chrysler."
"So tell me, Maggie Chrysler, what's your role in Bearing's little melodrama?"
"It varies from day to day," she admitted.
"Let's use today as an example."
She winked at me. "Today I'm a courier."
"Couriers usually have something to say or deliver."
"And I've got both," she said. She rummaged through her purse until she was able to produce a small package. She flipped it on the bed and instructed me to open it.
I peeled off the brown paper wrapper and 250 crisp one-hundred-dollar bills cascaded down on the sheet, discreetly concealing my growing attraction to Maggie Chrysler.
"You're supposed to be impressed," Maggie pouted.
"Swayed, not impressed," I corrected. "Money sways me — you impress me."
"Damn," she said, "I hope you take this job. I'd like to have you around just to charm me."
I leaned back on one elbow and studied her for a moment. "Tell me, how do you fit in all of this? Are you part of the package or what?"
"Well," she said, "I do have the distinction of being the first official member of what Bearing calls 'The Prometheus Project'."
"Yeah?"
Maggie nodded. "The boss man gave you the straight scoop, at least the same one he gave me. Right up until the time Cosmo paraded you in, we've been a team without a captain."
"What if I told you you weren't making any sense?"
Maggie smiled, kicked off her shoes, curled her long legs up under her on Ginny's flowered settee and started over. "My full name is Margaret Fullmer Chrysler, from Austin, Texas and now and then a research cryobiologist for Schuster Laboratories. I used to teach at the University of Wisconsin."
"What?"
"Cryobiologist. I freeze things, then I cut 'em up."
"Sounds fascinating," I grunted, probably coming off a tad on the surly side.
"Oh, there's lots more to it than that. It's just that most people don't care enough about it for me to make the effort." She glanced out at the gulf momentarily, then back at me. "We froze a frog once and brought it back to life." This time there was a distinct note of pride in her voice.
I could see what Maggie meant. Going around telling people that you froze frogs and then tried to revive them wasn't the kind of thing that inspired a lot of spontaneous questions.