The Man in the Bunker
For Madeleine, with love
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
What Happened to the Witnesses?
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Rory Clements Readers’ Club
Letter from Author
Copyright
Chapter 1
August 1945
They skirted the slumped remains of a Panzer, its blackened gun barrel twisted sideways like the crook of an elbow. Collingham stuck a cigarette in his mouth and inspected the packet. ‘God damn it, we’re clean out, Mr Harper.’
‘I’ll stop there.’ The driver nodded towards a ramshackle stall at the side of the road, fifty yards beyond the tank. A few miles away, threatening cloud banked over the Alps, but here in the foothills and lakes of southern Bavaria, the sky was clear and bright.
In another time, Randy Collingham could imagine coming here for a holiday, but he’d have to disregard the darkness bred and nurtured in these pretty villages and towns, and he wasn’t sure that he could stomach that. Too many horrors lurked beneath the surface of those still waters and in those snow-capped peaks.
He got out of the passenger seat, leaving the door open, and strode towards the rickety trestle table on which random items were laid out to tempt buyers: an old box camera, a Hitler Youth dagger, two bottles of milk, a large bottle of beer, an Iron Cross medal, a typewriter and some potatoes. The stallholder was a thin woman in her fifties. Her dress was tattered and torn and her left eye was haunted and restless. The right eye was missing; beneath the empty socket, scars rained down across her cheek.
‘Zigaretten, bitte. Haben sie Zigaretten?’ Collingham said. He knew she’d have some stashed away; cigarettes and dollars were the only universally respected currencies in the ruins of the Third Reich.
‘Five dollars,’ she said in English. ‘For pack of ten.’
‘You’re not allowed to use dollars, only scrip.’
She sneered. ‘Keep your scrip.’
‘OK, two dollars for pack of twenty.’
She shook her head then looked away.
‘What make you got, Fräulein?’ Broad and tall, he towered over her. The conqueror and the conquered. But he could see she did not fear him. Did not even respect him. Good, he liked that defiance.
‘English cigarettes. Very best – straight from Naafi.’
‘OK three dollars – for twenty.’
‘Eight dollars.’
‘What? I pay a fraction of that at the PX!’