by Bill Walker
“Then how?” Jack said.
“The letter.”
“What letter?” Jack said, turning to Wiley.
Wiley shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jack. There was so much to tell you... I forgot.”
Curly continued. “The computer was told that your man Chessman has a method for getting Kruger back in time. Given that, the odds are lowered astronomically. Assassinating Eisenhower, believe it or not, is going to be dicier for our man. Ike had constant security, and SHAEF headquarters were, for all practical purposes, unapproachable. Still, Kruger could get lucky. If that happens... well, you can imagine...”
“What about this letter?” Jack asked.
“That’s the key factor the Cray latched onto. Without it, the odds go way back up. Anyway, one of the ‘Nine Old Men,’ as you call them, is Armand Bock. We have a thick file on him, by the way. He was christened Armand-Wilhelm von Bock.”
“Pretty German,” Jack said.
“Yeah... pretty German,” Curly repeated. “Even more interesting is that Bock’s uncle was none other than Field Marshal Fedor von Bock.”
He leaned back and smiled, as if waiting for a compliment.
“What about the letter?”
Curly leaned forward.
“Jack, you’re not thinking. Armand Bock has written a letter to his uncle, a Field Marshal in the Wehrmacht, introducing our friend Kruger and asking that all courtesies be extended, blah, blah, blah. It’s true that the Field Marshal was dismissed by Hitler in nineteen forty-two, but retired or not, the old guy still has influence with him and the General Staff. And that is what turns the odds from guaranteed failure...” He slammed his fist down onto the desk. “...to five point one out of ten!”
“Shit!” Jack said. “What’re we going to do?”
“Hold on a minute,” Curly said. “Just bear with me, okay? I’ve got some ideas. Just sit back and let me talk this through and I’ll try to answer any of your questions.”
Jack let out a deep sigh and said, “Okay, go ahead.”
“All right. For the moment, let’s deal with the chain of events the Nine Old Men have put into motion. The first question is: Why Kruger? Besides being German and knowing the language, that sort of thing, Bock will give Kruger a glowing recommendation, telling the general that he is someone who will be ‘of great value to the Fatherland,’ and that Kruger was a boyhood friend. Remember, our friend Bock was around twenty-seven in nineteen forty-four. Kruger is twenty-seven now.”
“What if the Field Marshal checks with the young Bock? He won’t know anything?”
“I got that covered,” Curly said. “The Cray placed Armand Bock in Yugoslavia at the time. He was totally incommunicado for four months.” He stood up and walked over to a small dry bar set into a bookcase. “You guys want a drink?”
Jack glanced at his watch.
“At nine thirty in the morning?”
Curly smiled mischievously. “Hell, the liver doesn’t know if it’s a.m. or p.m.”
“No thanks,” Jack said.
“Wiley?”
“Yeah, I could use one. On the rocks.”
Curly pulled down a bottle of Bacardi Amber, two tumblers, and a small tray of ice from the tiny refrigerator. He quickly poured two fingers into each, added a cube of ice, then walked back to the desk and handed one to Wiley.
“All right. Now comes the central question. Kruger has the letter and access to von Bock and Hitler. So how does he get his armies moved to Normandy? Now that’s a bitch. By the way, according to the Cray, the critical unit was the Fifteenth Army under the command of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.”
“You know, Curly,” Jack said, “when you’re talking about letters, and all that stuff, it sounds logical as hell, but when you start talking about moving armies, I’m right back where I started out—this whole thing is a fairy tale. I don’t know why we’re even talking about it.”
“Because that’s what I do. I spend all day long contemplating the bizarre and the ridiculous, because somewhere, someone believes it’s possible, that it just might happen. That’s why you’re here, Jack—because deep inside it scares you pea-green. If they can figure a way to go back in time, they can move the army. And if I were the Nine Old Men, I’d direct Kruger to concentrate on two people: the Field Marshal, who would get me access to the General Staff... and Hitler’s astrologer.”
“Oh, come on, Curly!”
The big man’s mouth set into a hard line. “Hear me out.”
“Sorry,” Jack said, feeling foolish, like he was back in school again.
“Anyway, how does Kruger convince them? It’s obvious he has only one choice: he has to convince them he’s from the future. And there are ways to do that, which I’ll get to in a minute. But suppose he does? What do they do? No matter how convinced they are personally, there has to be a compelling way—and I mean compelling with a capital ‘C’—to get them to stick their necks out.”
“So, where do you get your five point one out of ten?” Jack said.
Curly stared at Jack, his expression grim.
“He scares the hell out of them. Out of von Bock, Hitler, and the General Staff.”
“And how does he do that?” Jack said.
“Very carefully,” Curly said. “He’s got to take it one step at a time. Any slipups and he’s dead. Look, he knows the future, that’s a huge advantage. If the Nine Old Men are smart—and they are—they will drill him with all the important events over the appropriate span of time. One of them is the death of von Bock’s sister sometime in early nineteen forty-four.”
“The Cray tell you that?” Jack said.
Curly nodded. “And a lot of other things. Details about the Russian front, Roosevelt’s death, Rommel’s injury. On and on. The big problem will be to avoid the ‘Salem witch-hunt reaction.’”
“What’s that?” Wiley said, opening his mouth for nearly the first time in over half an hour.
“Kruger will be walking a very fine line. He has to break through Hitler’s absolute convictions about the invasion coming to Calais. Remember, we’re dealing with a megalomaniac here, a nutcase. Hitler, I mean. This is the guy that listened to his astrologer rather than his generals. But if Kruger handles it right and can convince guys like von Rundstedt and Keitel that he for damn sure knows the future, he has the most beautiful trump card in the world!”
“What?” Jack said.
“Nuremberg, goddamn it!” he shouted. “The War Crimes Trials! He’ll give them all the gory details. When Keitel realizes that he faces a hangman’s noose in nineteen forty-six, believe me... the Fifteenth Army will be moved!”
Curly had a wild-eyed look that made Jack nervous. It sounded logical, but something still didn’t add up.
“But why should Nuremberg carry any more weight than any other of the stuff Kruger’s going to tell them? They could disbelieve that just as easy as the rest.”
Curly leaned forward.
“Because Kruger’s going to do exactly what I would do. He’s going to bring the newsreel films.”
Chapter Four
Stamford, Connecticut
5 August 1993
Everyone sat quietly, the last statement hanging in the air like a malignant vapor. Jack’s head throbbed, and a part of him still wanted to get up and walk out—forget the whole nasty business. The other part wanted to hunker down and get the job done. And God only knew what that would be.
It was Curly who broke the long, uncomfortable silence.
“Ready for that drink now, Jack? It’s almost noon in Bermuda.”
“God bless Bermuda,” he said. “Same as Wiley’s—make it a double.”
Curly brought out a third glass, plunked in the ice, and filled it halfway with the golden rum. Then he freshened up his own and Wiley’s.
“Well,” Curly said, “that pretty much covers the whole scenario, for the moment. There are a mess of other details we can talk about later. Right now, all I want to know is... how do we stop them?”
“How do we?” Jack said.
Curly knocked back his drink. Jack could hear the leather squeaking as the big man shifted his weight in the chair.
“There are only five possibilities worth considering. And none of them are without risk. Before we get into that, I want to ask you guys something. Do you want to stop him?”
“Jesus Christ, Curly!” Jack said. “What kind of a question is that? What do you think?”
“No. I mean, are you prepared to do whatever it takes?”
“Yeah, sure, why not?”
“You don’t sound too sure, Jack.”
“For crying out loud! I’ve been up all night, half of it on a plane. I’ve just spent all morning analyzing a crazy scheme by a bunch of over-the-hill Hitler Youths who want to change history, and you want to know if I’m sure? Shit, yes!”
“Wiley?”
“I’m in.”
“All right,” Curly said, “let’s get on with it. I said there are five possibilities. Four of them offer a slim chance of success. The fifth one is your best shot.”
“Right.”
“Don’t be sarcastic. This is the only one with a hundred percent chance of success. And it is simplicity itself.”
He paused again.
“Kill Chessman and Kruger.”
“My God,” Wiley said, turning white.
Somehow, this did not surprise Jack. Wiley had told him Curly would not pull punches, and he certainly hadn’t. But it gave him the creeps to hear this come out of the man’s mouth in such a matter-of-fact tone, like someone reading a shopping list.
“What the hell kind of an idea is that!” Wiley said.
Curly bounded to his feet. “It’s a practical idea, goddamn it! You brought me a problem to solve. I solved it!
“But murder...” Wiley said.
Curly waited while everyone calmed down.
“I’m trained to get at the heart of a problem, not make moral judgments. I didn’t tell you to kill them. It’s an option, not the only option. What you do with it is your business.”
Curly plopped down, his face beet red.
“But...” Wiley began.
“Shut up, Wiley,” Jack said. He turned to Curly, who fiddled with his tie, his eyes everywhere but on him and Wiley. “Curly, let me ask you something. Do you want to stop them?”
Curly took a deep breath and put his hands on his desk. He looked about ten years older.
“I’m sorry I blew up at you. Anyway, like Bock, we’ve got files on Chessman. I read those while the Cray was crunching numbers. That’s when it all hit me. It felt like my head was exploding.”
Jack nodded in silent empathy. Curly continued.
“We have to assume that since Kruger has made two trips, that they are ready to go at any time. I want to help. However I can.”
Jack nodded. “Okay, what are the other four options?”
Curly instantly snapped out of his dark mood, almost as if someone had thrown some kind of internal power switch.
“The second obvious option is to just call in the Feds. The FBI, CIA, Defense Intelligence. Take your pick.”
“They’d think we’d flipped our lids, Curly,” Wiley said. “They’d probably lock us up and throw away the keys.”
Curly laughed. “No more than likely they’d start a file on you and keep you under surveillance for a while. Me, I’d lose my job for sure.”
“Then why are we even talking about this? It’s dumb.”
Curly bristled a moment, then let it go with a nonchalant shrug. “Like I said. It’s my business to explore all the options. Doesn’t mean they’re all good.”
“What’s the rest?” Jack said, motioning for him to continue.
“Kill Kruger, either here or in nineteen forty-four. The past is the best of the two because here, the Nine Old Men would just find a replacement. Back there it will take them longer to find out. At any rate, it’s all a delaying tactic. Sooner or later the Nine Old Men will try again. In fact, all the options are canceled out simply by finding another Kruger—that is, except killing Chessman along with him.”
“Shit,” Jack said, standing and moving to the window.
“Wait a minute! Let’s hear the rest of it,” Wiley said. He sounded tired and desperate, something they all felt. Curly poured more Bacardi into his glass and continued.
“There are two distinct groups of feasible solutions: those we can put into motion and those already in motion back in nineteen forty-four, ones we can exploit. The best known is the July twentieth plot to kill Hitler. It was led by a Colonel von Stauffenberg. Besides the bomb attempt, they tried posting riflemen along the route of an inspection tour but failed because Hitler changed the route at the last moment. His astrologer again.
“Anyway, the bomb blew up but failed to kill Hitler because another officer in the room moved it seconds before it went off. All Hitler suffered was an arm injury and partial hearing loss. If either of those events could be altered so they would occur differently, you’d have one dead Führer.”
“And the end of the war,” Jack said.
“Precisely,” Curly said. “The generals knew that the war was lost by then, and that leads to our final option. There was an ongoing conspiracy known as the Schwartz Kappel, or Black Orchestra, comprised of men very high up in the General Staff. They had a plot to issue battle orders that, on the surface, looked like a smart move, but would actually succeed in splitting the German forces, allowing the Allies to pour through the gap and bingo, the war is over!”
“That actually happened?” Jack said. “I mean, the plot?”
“Yes, it’s well documented.”
“What screwed it up? Hitler found out?”
“No. Believe it or not, the Allies messed this one up. They just didn’t believe the German generals, thought it was a trap. There was actually a meeting in Switzerland, but the plan was rejected. As for exploiting that opportunity, forget it. Too far-fetched. Remember we’d be dealing with the military mind-set at that time. Too many people to convince.”
He leaned back in his chair.
“Those are the four choices.”
“There’s one more,” Jack said. “We talk Chessman out of doing it.”
Curly shook his head.
“It’s too late for that. Kruger’s trained and ready. My guess is that despite their promises to the good professor, he may soon become a liability to them.”
Wiley sat up. “You mean—”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe we can recruit him,” Jack said. “Maybe they haven’t told Chessman the whole story; maybe they fed him a line of bullshit. Hell, we already know he’s not allergic to money.”
“Go on,” Curly said.
Jack glanced at Wiley. He could tell his friend liked the idea by the thoughtful way he stroked his chin.
“We tell him exactly what is going on and he bails out, comes over and trains one of us.”
“Why?” Curly said.
“Because if the Germans win and they put a concentration camp in New Jersey, Chessman’s going to be first in line. He’s a Jew!”
“Holy shit!” Wiley said. “Of course!”
Curly eyed them, unimpressed.
“You through?”
“Yes.”
“I congratulate you, but there’s one small hitch... Chessman’s not a Jew.”
“Are you sure?” Wiley asked.
“Positive. He’s Russian. The family name was Chesmanov until his father changed it after they emigrated to the US. As White Russians, they lost everything when the Bolsheviks took over. Chessman hates the commies as much as the Nazis did, and stands to gain as much as Bock if the Germans win.”
“Damn,” Jack said.
“Also, part of Chessman’s methods for achieving his results depends on the subject being psychically adept before training. Obviously, Kruger has that ability. Do you? I sure as hell know I don’t. And there’s another thing you’re forgetting.”
“What?”
Wiley asked.
“Once Kruger leaves, if he’s successful...”
“Christ.”
“You got it,” Curly replied.
Jack pinched the bridge of his nose; the dull ache behind his eyes had worsened. “So, where does that leave us?”
“In a world of trouble, Jack,” Curly said, “a world of trouble.”
Chapter Five
LaGuardia Airport
5 August 1993
While the Delta Airlines Boeing 767 sat on the runway waiting for clearance, Jack stared out the window, trying to remember everything Curly, Wiley, and he had talked about earlier that day. It was thirty-six hours since he’d last slept, and it felt like a lifetime ago. All he wanted to do was lie back and pass out, but he knew he wouldn’t.
His mind and body hummed like a transformer surging with power, thoughts roiling around his brain in a tempest of confusion: Bock, Chessman, Kruger, Eisenhower, Normandy, the whole mess.
What were they going to do? It all came down to two things: either recruit Chessman, an unlikely possibility given the facts, or go back and stop Kruger. And how was he supposed to do that? Curly had talked about being “psychically adept,” as he put it. As far as Jack knew, he was about as psychic as a potato. Still, he and Wiley had to do something.
A ping sounded and Jack glanced above him. The seatbelt light was on.
A voice came over the speakers. “We have been cleared for takeoff by LaGuardia tower. All flight attendants please take their seats and cross-check.”
The plane picked up speed and Jack felt himself pushed gently back into his seat. The plane rose quickly and banked over Manhattan, turning south. In a little under four hours, he’d be back in Miami. Wiley had begged him to stay, but he had a meeting the next day he couldn’t avoid. He’d promised his friend he’d fly back to New York the day after tomorrow. That should be plenty of time.
The ping sounded again and, without looking, Jack knew the seatbelt sign was off. In the old days, it would have meant that the pilot was a smoker. Now that the FAA banned it on all domestic flights, it was more than likely old habit. Jack had given up smoking ten years before and was happy he didn’t have to breathe the crap anymore.
