The Valhalla Exchange

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Whether Martin Bormann survived the holocaust that was Berlin at the end of the Second World War may be arguable, but it is a matter of record that Russian radar reported a light aircraft leaving the vicinity of the Tiergarten in Berlin on the morning of 30 April, the very day on which Adolf Hitler committed suicide. As for the remainder of this story, only the more astonishing parts are true — the rest is fiction.

On the Day of the Dead in Bolivia children take food and presents to the cemetery to leave on the graves of the departed. An interesting blend of the pagan and Christian traditions and highly appropriate the way things turned out. But even the most superstitious of Bolivian peasants would hardly expect the dead to get up and walk on such an occasion. I did.

La Huerta was a mining town of five or six thousand people, lost in the peaks of the high Andes. The back of beyond. There was no direct passenger flight from Peru, so I'd flown in from Lima in an old DC3 that was doing some kind of cargo run to an American mining company.

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