The Heirs of Babylon

by Glen Cook

  they’ll catch you making one of your organization’s maneuvers. Then goodbye Erich.”

  Hippke popped up, shouted, “Goddammit, Kurt, am I supposed to kowtow to those zombies?” A half-dozen sailors turned to see what was happening. Hippke forgot himself completely. “Let’s stop this idiocy here, now! We’ll cut their throats and go home! You... Fritz! Want to see your wife again? Karl? Adolf?”

  Fritz averted his eyes, afraid to show agreement. Kurt groaned, remembering Otto Kapp. “Erich, shut up!” He tried to pull Hippke back to his seat on the torpedo tube.

  Erich shook him off. “Stop it, Kurt! You blind fool. Don’t you give a damn about Karen? Ever wonder who she’s seeing now? I care about my wife.” His questions struck a tender spot. Kurt jumped.

  He remembered only impressions of leaping, swinging, feeling his fists connect, then arms grasping him, pinning him as he struggled. Four men pulled him to the far side of the torpedo deck while another bent over Erich, to help.

  Calmness quickly returned, and with it, shame. He glanced at the bridge, thinking he had seen Hans there as he began swinging. But no, it must have been someone else, seen in a flash.

  Kurt suddenly realized he might be in a great deal of trouble. “Let me go. I’ll be all right.”

  The hand on his arms relaxed, but the sailors stayed close as he walked over to Hippke. “I’m sorry, Erich. I just went wild.”

  Erich, with a bloody nose and an eye he caressed gently, stared for a long moment, then smiled thinly. “I should learn to keep my mouth shut. Maybe you did me a favor. I was going after those Political Officers....”

  “Stop!” Kurt snapped. He waved everyone back. “Erich, be doubly careful now. A lot of people saw this.”

  Hippke nodded. “Will do. Only time I’ll open my mouth is to shove food in.”

  Kurt offered a hand. They shook. “Go clean up. I’m sorry.”

  Kurt watched him go down a ladder and aft, to their compartment, then he turned, went forward and down, to officers’ country. He knocked at the door of Gregor’s Stateroom. A sleepy-eyed Lindemann answered the knock. Kurt’s taut expression roused him. “Trouble?”

  “The biggest.” He had seldom felt more alone, though his cousin was here to help him.

  “Come in.”

  Kurt slipped inside. Gregor checked the passage behind him, then closed and locked the door. “What’s happened?”

  “I just had a fight with Erich Hippke.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  Kurt explained, then, “It isn’t the fight that bothers me. Just before I jumped him, he was spouting the same stuff that got Otto killed.” He repeated much of what Erich had said. “Who heard?”

  “No Political Officers. But there weren’t any around when Otto made his speech. And he was killed that same night — I think by Marquis.”

  “Killed?”

  “I was on the torpedo deck when it happened. You know that. I never told anybody I saw someone go in a door aft.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. Could’ve been anybody. And there was blood on Otto’s jumper when we found him, like he’d been stabbed.”

  “You noticed, eh?”

  “You did too?”

  “Yes. And I’ve been snooping, checking on people. Otto was one of mine.... I’ve even gone through a few lockers, looking for the knife — I mean to even this.”

  “So do I. But I haven’t found anything. I’ve been checking names off the muster, but I’ve still got over forty. Oh, you’re clear.”

  Lindemann chuckled. “Thank you, Kurt. I’ve cleared you, too. Just now.”

  The full import did not sink in then. Later, it would, and Kurt would understand why Gregor had so long been cold. “You have a list? Could we compare?” They did so, eliminating a dozen names each.

  “That’s better,” said Gregor. “But there’re still a lot of people to watch.”

  “But most of them will go ashore tomorrow,” Kurt replied. “If there were an attempt on Hippke, we’d narrow it considerably.”

  “Speaking of which, you’d better keep an eye on him. If there’s anyone aboard who’d murder him for criticizing High Command — other than our three apprentice headsmen — he’ll be in danger. And I need him desperately. I’ll tell my Brindled Saxon.”’

  “I’ll go see him now. He’s popular. Long as he sticks with a group, he’ll be safe.”

  “Tell him it’s an order from me, that it’s too late to take chances. If you just warn him, hell laugh it off. Got no sense. Keep me posted. I’ll be in the wardroom.”

  Kurt left and went aft, hoping Erich would still be in his compartment. He wiped sweat from his forehead as he entered Operations’ living spaces. It was ovenlike there. The Egyptian sun in June....

  Everyone was above decks. The compartment would be a good place to talk. “Erich?”

  Hippke was not there. Kurt wandered through the compartment, climbed the ladder to the fantail. “Anyone seen Hippke?”

  One of the loungers there rolled over, said, “He was in the head, last I saw. He was going to play chess with Bodelschwing when he was done showering.”

  “Thanks.” Kurt went back down, walked forward through the dark, sweltering compartment, and scrambled up the ladder to the midships passage and head. A shower was running.

  “Erich?” No answer. Must be someone else. “Hey! You seen Hippke?” Still no answer. He shrugged and turned away. His eyes passed over the foot of the canvas shower curtain. He froze. Redness. Blood. He crossed the head in three quick steps and jerked the shower curtain aside.

  Hippke, curled in a fetal position on the floor of the stall, dead, wrists slashed, face empty, pale, unsouled. The shower ran on, washed the last of the blood down the drain.

  There was a small, almost unnoticeable bruise on the back of Hippke’s neck, at the base of his skull. He had been struck before being cut. Kurt saw it only by accident, as he insanely tried to shake Erich back to life. He knew. No suicide.

  He rose, stared for a long moment, taking in details with sudden calm. But the detachment was brief, the eye of an emotional storm. It passed. He kicked open the door to the weather deck, grabbed the nearest man, ordered, “Horst, get the Captain. Get Commander Haber. Tell them to come to the after crews’ head.” His words were spoken softly, but with an intensity which startled.

  “What?”

  “Just do it! Now!” Eyes wide, the seaman ran forward. Von Lappus, Haber, and Gregor arrived as a group hardly a minute later.

  “Secure this head!” von Lappus snapped, suddenly and startingly coming to life. Even horrified, Kurt marked again the disparity between the Captain’s buffoon appearance and his hard, practical actuality.

  “You men get back,” Haber ordered a gathering crowd. “Everyone lay to the forecastle. Not you, Ranke.” The man’s nervousness was temporarily gone. Perhaps all he needed was a problem.

  The three young Political Officers arrived like an officious squad of vultures. “Get forward!” von Lappus thundered. Seamen scrambled. The Political Officers appeared uncertain. “That means you too, gentlemen!” The three joined the retreat. “All right, Ranke, what happened?”

  Quick as he could, with a stumbling tongue and the shakes, Kurt explained how he had gone looking for Hippke after telling Gregor of their fight, and had found him in the shower.

  “Here, what’s this?” Haber had found something beneath Hippke’s toilet kit.

  “Well?”

  “Suicide note. ‘I cannot bear the thought of my wife’s infidelity any longer....’” Haber read a number of thoughts which might well have been in Hippke’s mind — thoughts he had certainly been discussing with the men, desperate thoughts which might cause an unstable person to take his own life.

  “Well, Kurt? You said he was upset,” said Lindemann. “Was he this upset?” Gregor seemed shaken to the roots of his being, was certainly battling one of his headaches.

  “He was worried about his wife, sir. He might’ve do
ne it, except....”

  “Except what?”

  ‘This, sir.” He showed them the bruise. “May I see the note. Commander?”

  Haber handed it over. Kurt read it all, though the first few words told him what he wanted to know. “Erich didn’t kill himself.” He was certain. Then he was dismayed by the look which had entered von Lappus’s eyes. He knew he was the prime suspect. “This isn’t his handwriting. His was ornate, and he was a much better speller.” In fact, the handwriting looked like a poor imitation of his own. “Compare this with the log entries.”

  “Lindemann, check it,” von Lappus ordered. “Heinrich, search the ship’s records and compare hand writing.” He turned to Kurt. “Ranke, we’ll pretend this’s suicide for now. We know it’s not, but we don’t want the murderer to know we know, and I don’t want the crew spooked — and I want to keep you from getting the same.”

  “Sir?” The unexpected words were like a physical blow. “You had a fight with him, right? So who’ll be the logical suspect to the common mind? What might they do?”

  Kurt looked from one officer to another, trying to read their expressions. He was certain von Lappus suspected him. Did the others? But the suspicion should lessen — unless they really thought that note was in his handwriting. He was in a bad spot, circumstantially. Twice now he had been the first man to a murder victim. He had a feeling of walls closing in, of slowly being bound in an invisible straitjacket. Was someone after him? Why this complicated method? So much easier to stab him in the back....

  “Kurt!”

  “Sir?” He had been on the verge of something, but it now fled before other concerns.

  “Come to my stateroom when you’re done here,” said Gregor. “Commander?”

  “We’ll put him over the side. Full muster. A show. A little speechmaking, or something, to divert the crew so they don’t start brooding. Ranke, take a couple of men and get him ready.”

  The shower still ran, washing the body. The blood, except the stain on the shower curtain, was gone.

  Kurt gathered several of Erich’s friends for the burial detail. Two sweating, fear-filled hours passed before the ceremony — fear-filled because no one accepted the suicide story. Anger surged through the vessel, rumbled just short of volcanic explosion.

  But, to his amazement, Kurt found no one questioned his innocence. All the anger was directed at the Political Officers. Something had been happening of which he was unaware — Erich’s propaganda! He had seen only a little of what Hippke had been doing, cautiously developing a general antipathy toward the Political Office and lager’s mission, recruiting, organizing. Those who had become his followers automatically assumed he had been silenced because of his actions.

  Kurt worked hard to prevent the outbreak of violence he expected — so near, so near,” he could almost hear a fuse sputtering toward a powderkeg — reminding everyone of the nearness of the High Command battleship. Perhaps because of his efforts, perhaps for some other reason, the anger crested short of combustion and gradually subsided. By funeral time the danger was past, though a lesser anger would still be there, hidden, ready to explode at any new provocation.

  The ceremonies were brief, with a short prayer by the Captain and a eulogy by one of Erich’s friends.

  Kurt reached Gregor’s stateroom five minutes after the funeral ended. “It could get ugly,” he said. “The men won’t buy the suicide story. They think the Captain’s covering up for the Political Officers.”

  “Not their doing — not directly. They were in the wardroom all afternoon. Haber and I went through the records. The note doesn’t match anyone’s handwriting.” Kurt sighed with relief as Gregor took the note from his pocket. “Here. Read it again. Don’t bother with the sense, just the spelling.”

  Kurt read. “A lot of misspelled words. But most people just put down whatever sounds right.”

  “Correct. I’ve studied that almost since we found it. I think there’s a pattern to the errors. Look. Every sch is spelled ch. And k where ch should be. Study it. You’ll see others.”

  Kurt examined it carefully. For some reason he could not at first comprehend, Martin Pitzhugh came to mind. Then it dawned on him. “Gregor, it looks like this was written by someone who speaks, but has a hard time writing, German. Someone who thinks in another language. English, I’d guess.”

  “I thought so too. The errors were too regular. And I think I know the errors the Poles would make. That left the Political Officers as the other bilinguals.”

  “But you just said they were in the wardroom.... Marquis.”

  “Yes. One of them could’ve written it for him earlier. The meeting with the Captain was at their request. They needed an alibi. Kurt, they’ve beaten me. I couldn’t win against even their most inexperienced players. It was tonight... tonight we’d seize the ship, at midnight when the watches change and men moving around wouldn’t be suspicious. Too late. I can’t do it without Hippke’s help... and tomorrow everybody goes ashore. They knew, and they played cat with me until the last minute....”

  Kurt was afraid Gregor would grow hysterical — was amazed by the depth of the plot his cousin had put afoot, and how well he had been fooled. He had had no idea it had ripened, not to within hours of action. The failure, for Gregor, was shattering. “Do you want some aspirin?” he asked.

  “In my desk drawer. Haber gave me a packet.”

  Kurt opened the desk, found the aspirin — for a moment his eyes were caught by a black leather notebook embossed with the Political Office seal, and he frowned deeply, wondering — took two to Gregor.

  “I’m alone now, Kurt, and I’m frightened. You told me it wasn’t a game. I couldn’t believe it, deep inside. But those kids’ve proved there’re no games being played. Kurt, you’ve got to help. The whole program’ll collapse if they get me.”

  Frightened himself, Kurt shook his head, said, “No, Gregor. I’m out. No matter what, I’m out. You’ve got to work inside the system. That’s always been true. Even the best systems strike back hard when you don’t play by the rules. And here you’re not only defying High Command, you’re fighting your own people. You’re more likely to succeed if you have Haber’s and von Lappus’s cooperation....” Yes, his only interest in this whole mess was ia finding Otto’s killer.

  Lindemann visibly pulled himself together. “I still have Brindled Saxon. I’m not as alone as I thought.” His expression was proud, and damned Kurt for not coming to his aid. “I’ll have him start a rumor that there’s an ununiformed Political Officer aboard. You find out where our suspects were when Erich died.”

  “There’s one benefit we’ll get from this,” Kurt said, frowning. “The men will learn to keep their mouths shut.” He opened the stateroom door and stepped into the passageway. “Suppose the killer thought we had some evidence? He might try to recover it....”

  “I hope that happens, Kurt. That’s why I want a rumor, why I want to push. If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to flush Marquis.”

  XII

  MARQUIS seemed unshakable. He remained undiscovered despite the frantic witch-hunt following Hippke’s death. Jager’s mood gradually deteriorated from angry hunt to sedentary apathy. Two months later the mark of remembrance existed only in the careful way men thought before speaking.

  Kurt’s vigilance, too, relaxed as the long, boring, intensely uncomfortable Egyptian weeks passed. He spent much of his time working on his translation. Though the book was inordinately dull — the government-report style clogged and bogged the flow of a truly exciting content — each surprising bit of information drew him on.

  The chapter entitled “The Nuclear Exchange” needed two translations — he could not believe it first time through. It was nothing like the history he had been taught.

  The War had been started by the shadowed Australian Empire, to the satanic purpose of enslaving the world; this was the gospel he knew.

  Ritual War, speaking from a different past, claimed Australia had been allied with
the West. Many current allies — most of the Littoral, Bulgaria, Romania, the Ukraine — had belonged to the enemy entente. It seemed someone, sometime, had decided the alliances should be reorganized along geographical lines. So the War was a lie. Top to bottom, misty beginnings to unforeseeable end, all a carefully fabricated lie.

  The book gave no indication — Kurt spent days searching for clues — of how or when the false history had been introduced. It had been written too early. High Command was undoubtedly responsible. Again Kurt resolved to stop drifting, to take a part in ending this endless insanity. And again he lied to himself. He knew he lied, was angry with himself because he lied — and would do nothing to change.

  The chapter entitled “The Nuclear Exchange” outlined the first years of war, before it had become the War, told of the Western military, gradually waxing enthusiastic, breaking the planned stalemate and plunging deep into Soviet territory. Spread along a two-thousand-kilometer front, southern end anchored on, and the fighting keyed on, Volgograd (Stalingrad, where Luftpanzer Armee 11 requited the destruction of the Sixth Army forty-seven years earlier), the Battle of the Volga raged for months. Counterattacking Eastern armies were slaughtered by massed Western firepower in a tactic called “the killing pocket.” An Eastern collapse appeared imminent. As fighting peaked along the Volgograd-Moscow line, Anglo-American, German, and Turkish forces descended on “impregnable” Rostov from land, sea, and air, destroyed a crack Guards Army in days. Unopposed American and German armored columns crossed the Volga and raced for Astrakhan....

  The Soviets, in desperation, unleashed the hounds of atomic destruction. Within a day, all nuclear arsenals were empty, cities were gone, millions were dead. But then Kurt discovered that the bombs had been less murderous then he had supposed. Very few had been delivered — wise men, foreseeing the possibility of their use, had begun dismantling those brutal weapons on agreeing to found the War. The real murderer of humanity had another and more terrible name. A chapter, “The Bio-War,” calmly related details.

  To ravage Asia, Western invaders used an aerially sprayed, laboratory-evolved disease of amazing properties: in its first generation, this bacteria was harmless; in its second, almost universally fatal; in its third, unable to reproduce. It did not spread, killed fast, and left human works undamaged, and troops could with impunity occupy the area of application within days.