Chapter 1
April 3, 2012 – Bavaria Germany
Monday Stiehl fell in love with Berchtesgaden, located deep in the Bavarian Alps a long time ago when stationed nearby in a little town called Bad Tolz. At that time comma he was serving a tour of duty with the United States Army 10th Special Forces Group. He spent many of his weekends in the beautiful alpine village sitting in a small café looking up at the Obersalzberg mountain retreat. This was where Adolph Hitler built his famous "Eagle’s Nest" or the Kehlsteinhaus comma as it is called in Bavaria.
Monday often stayed at the Gasthof Neuhaus looking down Marktplatz Straße toward the square, with the spires of the Stiftskirche church in the background. From this vantage point comma he could observe the colorful locals in their traditional Alpine Trachten clothing - the women in Dirndls and the men wearing Lederhosen and traditional leather jackets.
Monday was back now after several years for a personal reason. He was in Berchtesgaden to meet Daria Wolff, the granddaughter of Paula Hitler. Most people never realized that Hitler had an extended family. Daria’s grandmother, Paula, was Adolf Hitler's only sister who lived to adulthood. During much of the Third Reich period she lived incognito by her brother's desire, as Paula Wolff (Hitler’s nickname.) After the war she lived quietly in Berchtesgaden, where she died in 1960 and was buried in the Bergfriedhof cemetery. Stiehl had met Daria Wolff in a small restaurant on Marktplatz Straße a few years ago. He was attending an Archeological Convention in Munich at the time and could not resist returning to his beautiful Berchtesgaden. That makes it sound as though he was attending the conference at the time he met Daria. Clarify which it is.
According to his mother, at his birth his father exclaimed; "Vhat a keen Monday to haf a sohn," in the new fragmented English he was learning, and then his eyes lit up and he said with a big grin; "That iss his name, Anna. I vill name him, Monday. Monday Von Stiehl. No! I will add another name to please you and call him Keen Monday Von Stiehl. The Keen is for you as Irish it be, und if you read into der name don't you zee, keen steel? Ja. Sharp Steel! Das Iss is goot Anna." His father's sense of dry humor escaped him. Fortunately his mother had the presence of mind to spell his first name Keane instead of the keen his father insisted on. However, that didn't matter much because as soon as everyone learned that his middle name was Monday, from then on that's the only name he was ever called.
He had grown into a strapping young man with blue green eyes, dark brown hair, around six two in height, with an insatiable appetite for learning. He also held an adventurous streak that found him backpacking through Central America, horseback riding in the American Rocky Mountains, and attempting every dangerous sport there was. His need for adventure and travel eventually led him to join the US Army and volunteer for Airborne/Ranger Special Forces training. His with assignments carried carrying him around the world to learn and study with the Special Forces of dozens of allied countries.
Not wanting a lengthy military career, Monday had resigned his commission and went back to grad school to pursue his first love, archeology. From a tender young age comma he had always wanted to dig up mysteries. Now, in his early forties, he had achieved his goal and was a highly respected archeologist and historian approaching tenure at Harvard. I would go with a different school. Dan Brown used Harvard, make yours unique.
Daria had called Stiehl several days ago and ask that he help her to restore her grandmother’s tainted memory. She has been fighting fought- otherwise, you got a tense shift the local authorities for over a year and could get nothing done.
He was suddenly blinded passive voice by a pair of hands that closed around his eyes. "Surprise!" Daria laughed, her pleasant giggling voice betraying her mischievous humor. "Thought you’d see me first didn’t you?"
He stood and pulled her hands from his eyes and looked again into the deep blue eyes of the girl he could never forget, the love that he had lost, but had never given up. She had not changed at all; if anything she was more beautiful comma and more vibrant than ever.
His heart jumped several beats upon learning this news. ‘So, she had not married her businessman after all. But, she had stopped writing to me over a year ago,{c: blue} period so you don't end up with a run-on. so perhaps she is involved with someone else.’
"I also know of a German family who received a finders fee for a Nazi treasure they uncovered," Daria replied. "A finders fee of 5 I like to spell out numbers 1-10, but that's probably up to your editor. percent of the total value of the goods. I want that finder’s fee. I can use part of it to rebury my grandmother in a place of honor and respect. She had nothing to do with my great Uncle Adolph’s Nazi Party. In fact, he made here change her name and live incognito." Refresh my memory. What happened to the sister that ran his household? Also, for the reader at some point it would be good to tell them why Hitler wanted Paula to remain incognito.
Paula looked up at him with a twinkle in her eyes. "I know we will need an attorney," she replied. "But I also need an archeologist. Not just any archeologist. commaI need you Monday. I've tried to forget you, to go on with my life - God! How I’ve tried to make you go away. But, you’re still there, you won’t go away, and now I don’t want you to go away. Not ever!" She was almost in tears when she finished her rapid speech.
His heart started throbbing in his chest as if he had just finished a marathon race. He could barely catch his breath. comma His hands wereshaking like a leaf in a thunderstorm and his legs felt like mush.
"Kiss me you dumb, stupid, wonderful American," She demanded, reaching out to embrace him. For what seemed like an eternity comma they stood embracing each other on the busy sidewalk of Marktplatz Straße with smiling people walking past. But they saw no one, only each other.
Three weeks later comma, and this is a big jump. What did they do in the meantime, rekindle their love? spend their days working with the Cultural Ministry? they stood over a grave in the Bergfriedhof cemetery. Standing with them was a representative of the German Cultural Ministry, a German attorney and two representatives members? You just used representatives. of the other family that was buried in the same plot and their priest.
With a small backhoe comma it took only minutes to uncover the three caskets in the shallow grave. Two were immediately identified and set aside for reburial by the priest, the third was gently set on a dolly to be taken to a waiting hearse. It was in remarkably good condition for having been in the ground since 1960. There were no markings on the casket and no plaque identifying the occupant.
They followed the hearse to a local funeral home and gathered inside for the official opening of the casket. When the lid was finally opened, no repugnant smell of decay came wafted, poured? used a stronger verb out and the elderly body was in considerably good shape. A piece of paper lay on the corpse’s chest.
"Hitler lived!" he blurted, shocked at her find. "And we have the means to find him, or to at least find out what really happened to him." This would be an archeological feather in his professional cap. Oo! I can see a conflict of interest and a possible conflict between Monday and Daria with this.
"It says at the end of this note that Nazi science had progressed much farther than the world realized," Daria whispered, still reading the note. "On March 13, 1946, The miracle breakthrough occurred. The Reich will be saved and reborn. After that comma I only received one note from Eva in 1948 that said for me to look in the Argentinean City of Altavista in a grave marked Hanna Reitsch. I have also been deceitful dear family. Dolf and Eva had a daughter and named her Klara Wolff after his mother. Klara had only one child and named her Daria.” The note also said that a treasure far greater than all the gold in the world waited there and the drawing of an unfamiliar symbol was interposed on the right bottom edge of the note.
“This means that Paula was not my true grandmother,” Daria said, her eyes lighting up. My grandmother was really Eva and my mother was named Klara Wolff. My grandfather was…Adolph Hitler!” I would think there would be a conflict of emotions upon this revelation for Daria. That would make her more sympathetic for the readers.
Meanwhile, in the back seat of a dark Mercedes, the German attorney and representative of the Cultural Ministry had just shaken hands on a deal. The German government would never learn of the gold and of the four who knew about it, two were…expendable. They They meaning the government or the two men in the Mercedes? knew nothing of the second message.
When you do revisions take a look at places where you can combine sentences to add variety to length and sentence structure. I played around with a few of them.
I always thought that South American was the least plausible of escape routes. I thought that Hitler with his personality would never have been able to lay low, that he would have tried to make a return like Napoleon. Argentina or South American with its unstable governments would have been a good place to stage a comeback. Maybe that is something you address later on in the story. BTW, there was a program recently where they extracted DNA from the skull that the Russians claim is Hitler's. It was from a woman and the skull showed signs of someone more Eva's age. Hum... There's a story there! 
It ends on a good hook. I look forward to reading more!
Regards,
Ms. J
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Bishop Malsapina was the rector of the Church of Sant’ Andrea, an elegant Romanic cathedral, which was the religious and administrative center of the diocese. He was also a brother of Baron Malsapina.