The Alpha Team leader walked behind Eva Braun and placed the pistol to her temple. “You will sign the document, or your bride will die.”
Eva Braun’s eyes flared with terror, fully aware that her beloved “wolf” would never succumb to the terrorists’ demands. She shut her eyes tightly, inhaled deeply, and steeled herself for her inevitable end.
“I will never sign!”
The Templar swiftly reached into his pocket, extracting a cyanide capsule. With a swift, calculated movement, he cracked the capsule, a puff of deadly cyanide powder escaping. He seized Braun’s head, forced her mouth open, and ruthlessly shoved the cyanide capsule inside. The acrid scent of bitter almonds filled the air as the powder spilled into her mouth. Before she could react, the Templar clamped her mouth shut, ensuring the lethal poison was ingested. Her body jerked once, then slumped forward, her life extinguished.
“You animal! What have you done?”
“SIGN THE DOCUMENT!”
“NEVER!”
At the Alpha Team leader’s signal, two Templars lunged at Hitler, wrestling him back into his chair and binding him with ruthless efficiency. The second-in-command glanced at the Alpha Team leader, seeking confirmation. Upon receiving a curt nod, he seized Hitler’s head, forced his mouth open, and rammed in another partially cracked cyanide capsule. As he clamped his hand over the Führer’s mouth, Hitler’s body convulsed before slumping lifelessly in the chair.
Goebbels sat frozen, his eyes wide with horror as he took in the sight of his Führer and Eva Braun, their lives snuffed out. A chilling realization dawned on him—he was next.
“Get rid of these abominations,” the Alpha Team leader commanded, his voice cold and devoid of emotion. “Take them upstairs and burn the bodies. I won’t have this filth turned into martyrs.”
The Alpha Team dragged Hitler and Eva Braun out of the bunker and shot them point-blank in the head to stage a murder-suicide, their bodies doused in petrol and burned.
The Alpha Team leader sent a coded message to the Templar headquarters:
Alpha Mission Accomplished.
A Team
1 May 1945 5:02 a.m.
Vorbunker, Berlin (First Floor of the Führerbunker.)
“Time for some answers, Herr Goebbels,” the Gamma Team Leader growled as he began his relentless interrogation of the newly appointed Reich Chancellor at the break of dawn.
“I’ve told you, I know nothing of your claims. All my orders came directly from mein Führer.”
“Lies!” the Gamma Team leader roared, his face mere inches from Goebbels’s. “Tell us how you were getting instructions from the pope!”
Goebbels shut his eyes, attempting to block out the verbal onslaught.
“He needs some persuasion.” The Gamma Team leader signaled his first lieutenant to release the former Minister of Propaganda from his restraints.
Handcuffed, Goebbels was led down the corridor to the room where his wife and children lay unconscious, sedated by a sleeping gas. As the door swung open and the lights flickered on, Goebbels was met with the sight of his family sprawled peacefully on the bunker cots, oblivious to their intrusion. Two Templars shoved him into the room, the Gamma Team leader stalking in behind him.
“Admit to your Vatican-orchestrated crimes against the Jews.”
“I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
With a curt nod from the Gamma Team leader, his first lieutenant stood over Joseph’s wife, Magda Goebbels.
BANG!
A spray of blood painted the wall behind her head.
BANG! BANG! Two more shots pierced her heart.
“NO!” Goebbels howled, witnessing the brutal execution. “I swear, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he sobbed, watching his wife’s blood staining the sheets.
Another nod from the Gamma Team leader and two Templar officers knelt before two of the children, placing cyanide capsules in their mouths. Their jaws were clamped down and the lethal power released. Their bodies slumped lifelessly. The remaining four children then suffered the same fate.
Goebbels crumpled, held up only by his captors, tears splashing onto the concrete floor as he watched his family be massacred.
The Gamma Team leader drew his pistol and pressed the cold barrel against Goebbels’s temple. “Confess,” he hissed, each word a deadly promise. “Or you’ll wish we’d handed you over to the Soviets.”
Goebbels had heard the rumors of the Soviet Union’s torture methods—boiling victims alive, mutilation, even crucifixion. His head dropped, resignation etched on his face.
“He’s worthless,” the Gamma leader grunted, exasperated with the Nazi leader.
BANG!
Goebbels crumpled to the floor, a pool of blood spreading around him. The newly appointed Chancellor of the Nazi Party was no more.
“Take the bodies upstairs and burn them. And kill the rest of those Nazi bastards in the other room.”
A transmission was sent to Templar headquarters:
Gamma Mission Accomplished.
Γ Team
Chapter 78
March 12, 2000
Sunday, 9:55 a.m.
Templar Satellite’s Basement
Mario slammed the book shut, his heart pounding at the gruesome details of the executions carried out inside the Führerbunker. The Templar teams had been merciless, eliminating the pope’s top four henchmen with chilling precision. He could see now that the Vatican had cornered the Templars, forcing them to take out the proxy leaders to prevent Solomon’s treasure from falling into the wrong hands. But what other horrors awaited him in these pages?
Drawing a shaky breath, he steeled himself before delving deeper into the dark truth behind World War II.
Chapter 79
8 May 1945
Rome, Italy
Templar Headquarters
