The Devil's Gold by Steve Berry Read Free Book Online Page A

reached out as Braun gritted her teeth. “Now. Push with all you can muster.”
    Braun’s head came up from the bed. For a moment Bormann’s gaze locked with hers. He wanted to tell her to shut up and finish, but it seemed that the end was at hand. Braun’s teeth were clenched tight, her face contorted, all her focus seemingly on expelling the baby from her womb.
    “Yes,” the midwife said. “Yes.”
    Braun pushed harder. Her breaths came short and shallow. Sweat soaked her. The woman grappled between Braun’s legs and Bormann watched as a head came into view, then shoulders, arms, chest, and finally legs as the fetus emerged.
    “What is the sex?” he asked.
    The midwife ignored him. Her attention remained on the infant now cradled in her arms, the umbilical cord tracing a path back inside the womb. Braun had relaxed and appeared unconscious.
    He could not see the baby clearly, so he moved closer.
    “The sex. Tell me,” he demanded.
    “A boy.”
    Had he heard right? “Truly?”
    “You sound amazed.”
    He recovered his emotions. No one must know what he thought. “I only speak of the joy he will bring to the mother.”
    “It is good to have a son.”
    The midwife turned her attention back to Braun as the afterbirth was expelled. He stepped away. A son. Hitler’s son. He recalled what his former supreme leader had told him after Braun had revealed in the Führerbunker that she was pregnant. There had been no anger, no joy. Just a placid acceptance. But Hitler had wanted the baby to survive, harboring a dream that his issue would one day resurrect the movement. So he released Bormann from his duty and instructed him to ensure that both Braun and the baby survived. Bormann had accepted the charge only as a way of escaping the death sentence that was Berlin. He hadn’t wanted to stay in the first place and had urged Hitler to flee south to the Alps. The fanatical idiot refused. Hitler had actually thought that he could rally enough military might to thwart the advancing American and Russian armies.
    He glanced down and noticed that the midwife had tied the umbilical cord and cut away the tissue. The infant started to cry, and the woman swiped the tiny face with a wet rag.
    “He is a beauty,” the midwife said.
    “No flaws?”
    “None I can see.”
    Not what he wanted to hear.
    “Give him to me.”
    The woman laid the screaming baby in his arms. Sparse wisps of black hair matted the scalp. He wondered what Adolf Hitler would have thought to be here, holding his son, admiring what he and Eva Braun had conceived. Most likely he would have felt nothing. Hitler had been drawn to children, but only because they represented the perfect canvas for his political image.
    He laid the baby beside a still-unconscious Eva Braun.
    He then removed the Luger he’d carried since leaving the Führerbunker and fired one bullet into the midwife’s skull.
    The fat woman’s body slammed to the floor.
    Eva Braun never moved. Exhaustion claimed her. She would be told that the baby died at birth and the midwife was killed for incompetence. There would be no argument from her. Why should there be? They were now bound together. Their lives forever intertwined.
    And that was fine.
    She wasn’t altogether unpleasant, and he realized that his ability to enjoy female companionship in the years ahead would be limited. He must be careful. He’d watched how a woman could undo a man. That was not going to happen to him. Eva Braun would do as she was told or he’d plant a bullet in her skull, too.
    He carried the infant from the room.
    Outside, in the shade of a porch that jutted from the front of the farmhouse sat a man. Bormann walked over and handed him the baby. “Raise him as your own.”
    The man’s eyes were misty with pride. “He is his?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “I heard a shot.”
    “The midwife’s duty.”
    The man nodded. “There can be no witnesses.”
    “Just you and I, old friend.”
    “I will raise him