Beyond the Shield

by Nachman Kataczinsky

  The intelligence official interrupted. “We know where a lot of that is. For instance, we know where the massive amount of art Goering stole is stored it and who it belonged to. Not a simple task to return it but possible, especially since the owners are alive and with us. We will have real difficulties with property that was converted to gold and deposited outside of Germany. Swiss banks hold most of it and I don’t think they will be happy to give it up.”

  “We can apply diplomatic pressure but it will go only so far with the Swiss,” the Foreign Minister added.

  The intelligence official nodded. “We have a current operation going in Switzerland and, if I get your permission, we may be able to kill a number of birds with a single stone.” He went on to explain, with no details, the search for the source of funding of the Swiss Industrial Research Institute. “So we will be speaking to Swiss bankers and, unlike the Foreign Ministry, we can and will if necessary use force to persuade them.”

  The Finance Minister smiled. “Feel free and we will thank you for the service, as long as you don’t involve the state and don’t sully our name.” The Foreign minister said nothing, just nodded in agreement.

  ***

  Franz Beerli was generally a happy man. He was the chairman, general manager, and majority owner of the Beerli Bank. Not a big bank but a very successful one with world renowned firms among its customers and discreet and personal service. Secrecy was its key operating principle.

  Franz was a little curious about the visitor who had inquired about his largest account, presenting the correct pass phrase. The inquiry had been routinely reported to him. Nothing happened for a full week so he forgot about it. Now his secretary announced a visitor who gave his account number instead of his name (not an unusual practice) and asked to see the chairman.

  The man who entered his office was well-groomed and expensively dressed. He extended his hand. “Heinz,” he said with a smile. “That should be enough for the moment.”

  Franz Beerli shook the offered hand and led his visitor to a coffee table and two armchairs in the corner of his spacious office. “Would you like coffee, tea or something stronger?”

  “Coffee would be nice.”

  Beerli waited for the coffee to be served. “How can I help you?”

  Heinz leisurely sipped his coffee. Finally he said, “Mr. Beerli, I would like to make a withdrawal.” He extended a piece of paper with a number and a passphrase.

  Beerli glanced at the paper. “When do you want the funds?”

  “Right now.” Heinz smiled. “A bank draft would be nice.”

  “This is a very large amount. I would need some time to have your funds ready.”

  “I understand, Mr. Beerli. How long?”

  “I could give you a banker’s draft for about 10% right now and the rest in 10% increments every two weeks. Would that be satisfactory?”

  “No, that is not satisfactory at all. My associates want the whole amount within the next three days.”

  Beerli smiled a somewhat supercilious smile. “That’s impossible. I offered you the best I can do.”

  “I understand. I will report to my associates. I have to warn you that the consequences will be extremely unpleasant. I hope you have your will ready.”

  Beerli wasn’t smiling anymore. “The deposit agreement allows ‘a reasonable amount of time’ to arrange for withdrawal. I don’t keep the money here. It’s invested and I need time to retrieve it.”

  “Of course. I have a copy of the agreement right here. It says clearly that the funds should be available within not more than three days of the depositor requesting them unless the depositor agrees to an extension. It also states that no problems are foreseen by the depositor in extending the time. Well, depositor doesn’t agree to an extension.

  “But I see your problem. This particular deposit comprises close to 40% of your bank’s equity. Removing that amount will undermine the bank’s stability and might even cause it to close. If you prefer, my company can take a majority share in your bank in return for leaving the money deposited. You get your shares back as soon as you repay all the funds. It’s a very generous offer.”

  “You want a controlling interest in the bank for 40% of its equity?”

  “No, I want 60% of the bank for not bankrupting it right now.”

  “I need to think about this. Can we meet tomorrow afternoon to finish this discussion?”

  “Certainly.” Heinz got up and left.

  He went directly back to his hotel, Hotel Löwen am See. Once in his suite he took a small radio out of his briefcase and keyed in a frequency. “Josh, what’s new from the bank?”

  “Your guy made two calls as soon as you left. One was to the Research Institute. A short conversation. He informed Hans Kammler of your visit and said that he’s sure that the German authorities are on to him.

  “His second call was long distance. It took a while but he eventually got through to Alfried Krupp. He told Krupp about your request to cash out the deposit and asked for help. Krupp offered a loan to tie him over. He also informed Krupp that the German authorities might be on to the transfers to Kammler.”

  “Did you report to Center?”

  “Yes, I did. Their instructions are to liquidate the Institute and take care of Krupp. With extreme prejudice. I notified Karl, Michella and the rest of our team. The operation in Essen is probably on its way.”

  “Good. I’m going to rest for a while and later play tourist and see the city. I’ll be meeting with Beerli tomorrow.”

  ***

  “Hi, Michella. I have some papers for Dr. Hanle to sign.” Karl Merkel went into an explanation about the documents as he discretely handed Michella a piece of paper. The message was: “Need to finish everything now. On my way to do Kammler. You take care of both doctors. Meet me in Storeroom 5 in fifteen minutes.”

  Michella nodded and thanked him aloud.

  After Karl was gone she knocked on the inner office door and entered without waiting. Dr. Hanle, who heard Karl’s loud explanation, was waiting to sign the papers. She shot him twice in the head with her silenced .22 Beretta. A relatively slow small caliber bullet will make a complete mess of the brain. If it doesn’t have enough energy to exit the scull it bounces around inside, causing instantaneous death.

  When Dr. Hanle was ‘done’, Michella locked the door, descended one floor, and entered the office suite of Dr. Höcker. His secretary looked up from the letter she was typing. “A bunch of papers for the doctor to sign,” Michella announced. She shot the secretary once through an eye and continued to the inner office. The doctor was surprised to see her but accepted the explanation and was reaching out for the papers when she shot him in the face and the forehead. He died instantly.

  Karl was late. While waiting for him she went ahead with the preparations, opening two 50 liter containers that had “Caution! Flammable!” stenciled on them. They contained ammonium nitrate mixed with hydrazine. The resulting clear liquid is a powerful explosive, several times that of TNT. Michella attached detonators to the inside of the two caps and screwed them back onto the containers. Everything was ready for an encoded radio signal to explode the bombs. An explosion equivalent to several hundred kilograms of TNT, in addition to the conflagration caused by the solvents stored in the room, was certain to destroy the building.

  Karl entered the room five minutes after she was done. He was slightly stressed. “The damn Nazi disappeared. His secretary said that he receive a phone call from the banker and immediately went somewhere. He’s certainly not in the building.”

  “We have to go ahead with the final stage. He’s not likely to come back here, that is assuming the banker warned him about Heinz.”

  “Are the doctors done?” Karl inquired.

  “Yes. I also locked both office suites, but it won’t take long for someone to get suspicious. We need to go now.”

  The couple went out the front door of the Institute holding hands – the guards, and everyone else, knew that they were
dating and were not surprised.

  “See you after lunch.” Michella waved to the head of the guard detail, who waved back.

  Half an hour later a huge explosion shook the calm air of the far western suburb of Zug. The Institute for Industrial Research was no more.

  On board a train to Lugano, Michella said to Karl, “I still feel uncomfortable killing everyone at the Institute. There probably were innocents there.”

  “What innocents? They may have looked like nice people but all were handpicked by General SS Kammler and you know what kind of monster he is. They were all members of the SS, the Gestapo, or some other Nazi organization. Some, like the head of the guard detail that liked you so much, had a lot of blood on their hands. That guy was SS and killed prisoners of war in Poland and in the Balkans. I know that one of the secretaries was very proud of her service to the Fatherland, in Dachau.

  “The civilians were no better. All of them knew what they were trying to build and had no problem handing the Nazis a nuclear weapon. I’m sorry you had to take care of the two doctors personally but they were good scientists and eager to do Kammler’s bidding. Too dangerous to leave them to chance.”

  Michella smiled at Karl. “Thank you, that helps. But I’m not sure I want to continue in this business.”

  ***

  Ze’ev looked at the landscape unfolding below the helicopter. They were flying several hundred meters above the green, wooded landscape. The chopper was on Earth 2 bearing southeast, from where Herzliya would be to Red Sea 2. The new oil terminal and refinery were in Aqaba 2. In this universe the land was mostly empty, except for animals panicked by their noisy passage.

  They arrived at the refinery location several hours later, landing on the pad by the brand new office building.

  “Welcome to the Delek refinery.”

  The man that greeted Ze’ev was dressed casually and smiling. They shook hands and proceeded into the office building. Inside the light wasn’t as glaring as it was outside. The glass walls were darkly tinted.

  After settling in the operating manager’s office and getting the obligatory coffee and cookies, Ze’ev said, “I see that you’re mostly done here. When will you start deliveries?”

  “We started already. Only test batches. We will be at full production within five months, if everything works out according to plan. Which it probably will not.”

  “Sounds good. As much as I enjoy chatting with you I still need to catch a flight.”

  “The plane is almost ready to go. We’re finishing loading cargo. There are several other passengers, although you are the guest of honor. They will call when they’re ready for you. You’re scheduled to be in Baghdad 2 before sundown.”

  “It’s a really silly situation. I have a small airstrip by my office in Herzliya but the Environmental Agency told me to stop using my jet. They think it scares the wildlife. Do they mess with you a lot?”

  The manager shrugged. “They’re enforcing the same standards as in Israel. Here we’re really close to the border in our universe so it kind of makes sense. In alternate Iraq it makes less sense but we’re not objecting. Our families live not too far away from the oil.”

  Ze’ev main purpose on this trip was tourism of a kind. He wanted to see how the alternate universe settlement and industry were developing. To do that he needed to actually see and smell what was happening.

  He was impressed by what had been done in less than a year. On their approach to the little airport - which had a proper control tower, three runways, and a terminal building - Ze’ev could see a medium-sized settlement. He noticed a number of smaller agricultural villages on the way in. He knew that the whole area supported close to twenty-five thousand people and imported no basic foodstuffs. In fact, it was scheduled to start exporting food by the middle of the year.

  Ze’ev enjoyed his short vacation. He decided that the time was ripe for Consolidated to expand its operations and start mining the raw materials it needed instead of buying them abroad.

  Chapter 18

  February 1944

  The Prime Minister gestured to the Head of the Mossad to sit at the conference table with the rest of the Cabinet. Amos Nir invited the chief spy to start his presentation.

  “I have mostly good news. As you know from my previous updates we discovered a Nazi-led operation attempting to build a nuclear weapon using information stolen from us. In fact, the Nazi general that started it all, SS General Hans Kammler, tried to organize a research facility in Austria. He disappeared as the German civil war was ending. Apparently he was contacted months later by someone from the German Foreign Ministry and told that information from the future on how to build a bomb might become available.

  “It took us some time but we unraveled the mystery of who was the source in Israel. The Security Service notified us months ago that a German national who arrived here just before the time travel event, one Hans Paulus, wanted access to the recently classified area of a university library. We took over from there.

  “Apparently Mr. Paulus is an electrical engineer who used to work for Siemens and is now employed by Siemens Israel. He discovered that his great uncle, General Paulus of Stalingrad fame, was alive and well in this timeline and a member of the German temporary government. This somehow ignited his patriotic instinct. He decided to steal information he thought would be useful to Germany.

  “The current German government decided, as you all know, to keep their up-time staff here. Over the last several months senior members travelled to Germany. They were supposed to be updated on the current situation and the objectives and policies of the government. We kept an eye on some of them, especially the Third Secretary of the embassy. He used to be rabidly anti-Israel, supporting Hamas and any other enemy organization he could find. We also knew that he held far left views, so far left that he was really a fascist. Our surveillance paid off: while in Germany he contacted a Nazi in their Foreign Ministry. This wasn’t difficult since he had all the historical records and could reliably contact a Nazi even though the man was hiding his loyalties. Apparently they arrived at an understanding and the Third Secretary started looking for ways to transfer uptime scientific information to this person. He followed Hans Paulus for a while and finally contacted him after Paulus was admitted to the secure part of the BGU library. Apparently he thought that Paulus was a good candidate because he is a German national, an engineer working for Siemens and, most importantly, a member of the famous Paulus family.

  “Paulus was to leave nuclear information at a dead drop for the Third Secretary to pick up. We replaced those documents with our own version - all dead ends leading to costly failures. We discovered later that General Hans Kammler did receive the information and gave it to the scientists cooperating with him.

  “In a separate operation we discovered the location of Kammler’s research facility in Zug, Switzerland, and planted two agents inside. Zohar Kimmel, known to the Germans as SS Lieutenant Karl Merkel, and Michella Stern of the Mussolini operation fame. We monitored the Institute’s work with the view of eventually destroying it but in the meantime letting it attract pro-Nazi scientists and engineers so we could identify them. We also wanted to find and shut off their funding sources. Hans Kammler was also a primary target and marked for liquidation.”

  The Defense Minister interrupted. “Why not destroy the Institute immediately? It seems to me that you took an unreasonable risk. What if they actually learned something valuable and transmitted it to a third party?”

  “We considered that possibility and actually rigged the whole building for complete demolition as soon as our people got there. We carefully monitored their communications and found it a useful honey trap for Nazi nuclear scientists and engineers. There was also the question of funding. If we destroyed the Institute before we found their financial supporters we would likely never have found them.

  “In any case, a couple of week ago we found the banks and accounts in Germany that were feeding the Institute’s Swiss accoun
t. We also found that the private bank where the account was located held gold deposited there by Goering just before he was killed. At that point we made a mistake: our agent tried to pressure the owner of the bank into giving us control.

  “This would have had a number of advantages but our attempt failed. Not only did the banker refuse but he also warned Kammler that something fishy was going on. Kammler disappeared. We destroyed the Institute the same day so he was the only person to escape. I believe that he took with him records of all the work that had been done by the Institute. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It could mislead them into spending lots of resources on dead ends.

  “We were successful on the financial end. Approximately 60% of the funding was provided by Alfried Krupp. He is a known Nazi sympathizer, very rich and influential, enough so that the current German government was reluctant to touch him. We didn’t bother them with the information. Mr. Krupp had the bad luck to die of a heart attack at his mansion in Essen.

  “Just a reminder: In our timeline, after the end of WWII Krupp was tried and convicted of crimes against humanity. He served three years in prison, was pardoned, and died in 1967.

  “The rest of the funding came from an account owned by a foundation. Our information pointed to a group of Daimler executives controlling it. We gave this information to the German authorities. They seized the opportunity to take down this group of people who had supported their enemies. The Third Secretary of the German embassy was expelled and immediately arrested in Germany as an accessory to Nazi activities. We arrested Hans Paulus and he will be tried for espionage. The German government agreed not to ask for his extradition. I’m sure they’re eager to lay their hands on our nuclear secrets but are reluctant to anger us and so cooperate, at least for the time being.