I stared at that sentence for a full minute before I realized why it disturbed me. I walked over to the bookcase, picked up Glasgow’s book, and turned to the page where he describes the attributes of fascism. Back at the computer, I reread the League’s opening statement. In that one innocent-sounding sentence, a suspicious reader could identify five of the fourteen characteristics associated with fascism. Advocating for corporate rights and limited government was the same as protecting corporate power, since the only protection from corporate abuses comes from government laws and regulations. Too often, some people confuse their hellfire-and-brimstone beliefs with traditional American values, despite the Constitution’s separation of church and state. The concept of American exceptionalism too easily can slip into overt nationalism. And a strong national defense could equate with an obsession over national security and military supremacy.
Five attributes out of fourteen didn’t necessarily mean the League was a pro-fascist organization, but that was only the beginning.
I scrolled through the page, clicking links to other pages that looked interesting.
The League’s founding statement made my hackles stand up like little soldiers on parade. It was the League’s mission, it said, “to promote American universal leadership through a policy of military strength and moral clarity that will result in a benevolent American global hegemony.”
There it was again. Military strength and moral clarity. Whose morals? I wondered. Global hegemony? Why not just say world domination? I continued reading.
“The League views America as the world’s pre-eminent power, and as such American leadership is beneficial to both America and the world. The League sees the need for national policies that will shape a 21st century favorable to the country’s principles and interests. This will require substantial investments in military spending to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values, to promote political and economic freedom abroad, and establish and maintain an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles. Americans must gird themselves for the sacrifices these policies will require if the United States is to build on the successes achieved in this century and ensure our greatness in the coming century.”
You couldn’t get much clearer than that. Right there were most of the fourteen fascist attributes, only written in a kinder and gentler way. Kinder and gentler, I reminded myself, were the words President George H. W. Bush, scion of a Nazi sympathizer, used to describe his own policies.
And what sacrifices must the American people gird themselves for?
I surfed through their website a little longer, closed the browser, finished my drink, undressed, and lay down on the sofa. Within minutes, I was asleep.
☼
The dream woke me again.
It was only one of a half dozen nightmares that frequented my sleep, a half a dozen corrupted memories of my past. In this one I am on the roof of a tall building. A psychopath named Sidney is trying to kill me. A madman with a rifle, he has already murdered several others in the building. I am at the edge of the roof, trapped between Sidney and the short wall surrounding the rooftop. He aims the rifle at me. Two shots. Sidney falls at my feet, two circles of red spreading across his back. Jo stands behind Sidney, dressed in her army uniform, her service pistol extended, still smoking.
That’s when I wake up screaming.
The dream is always the same.
But not this time.
This time, Sidney is not the psychopath on the roof trying to kill me.
This time the madman is Frank Crane.
Frank Crane in a black, Nazi SS uniform.
☼
I slipped opened the bedroom door and tippy-toed in bare feet to the night stand. Jo was deeply asleep, a slight snore the only sound she made. Jack heard me and stood challenging me to do something untoward to her. I reached into the nightstand drawer and removed my nightmare stash of cigarettes, then tippy-toed back into the front room.
I slipped on some trousers, stepped out on the front porch, and lit up. I don’t smoke much anymore, only when my past wakes me up with night terrors. The smoke burned my throat and soured my lungs. Nicotine made me lightheaded. Still, I forced myself to finish the cigarette before arcing it out into the driveway. A light flashed in a car parked across the street. At least, I thought I saw a light. I stared at the vehicle, but the passenger compartment remained dark and lifeless. With a shrug, I turned and went back inside.
☼
Jo was still sleeping when I woke again. Once more, I barefooted into the bedroom, grabbed my running gear, then followed Jack into the kitchen where I fed him breakfast. Before I left, I cracked the bedroom door so Jack could return to his vigil over Jo.
I needed the run to clear my lungs of the damage I did to them during the night. I also needed it to clear my head of the swirling images of brown-shirted Nazis jack-booting down American streets, swastikas waving from American corporate flag poles, and CEOs sporting ridiculous Charlie Chaplin moustaches.
When I got home, Jo was awake. The aroma of frying bacon filled the bungalow. Jo was in the kitchen, wearing one of my large T-shirts as she used to do. Jack sat on one of the kitchen chairs, watching every move Jo made.
“There you are,” she said, then leaned over and kissed me softly on the mouth.
“I went for a run,” I said.
“I figured,” she said. “You had a nightmare last night.”
“How did you know?”
“I smelled the tobacco smoke,” Jo said. “You still get a lot of them?”
“My share,” I said. “You?”
“My share.” She poured an egg mixture into a frying pan. “I hope you don’t mind about the T-shirt and my cooking breakfast. I woke up starving.”
“I don’t mind either,” I said, looking at the taut, athletic legs beneath the shirt. They were beautiful. Well, one was beautiful. Scar tissue marred the beauty of her right thigh. “Just remember to make enough for Jack’s tithing.”
“How much would that be?”
“Half an egg, scrambled, with bacon chopped up and mixed in.”
She looked at me. “You do pamper him, don’t you?”
“I am honored and proud to serve my feline overlord,” I said. “Besides, he has sharp teeth and claws. He might kill me in my sleep.”
While Jo cooked breakfast, I took a quick shower and got dressed. When I got back to the kitchen, the table was set and Jack was happily munching on his bacon and eggs. Jo and I ate in silence, a little embarrassed by the memories of other mornings like this one.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“My head hurts a little.”
“I’ve got some aspirin.”
“I know,” Jo said. “I took some already. All these years, and you really haven’t moved anything around in here.”
I shrugged and poured myself more coffee.
“What I meant was how do you feel about World-Wide?”
Jo stopped eating, set down her fork, and mulled that over.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Yesterday I was in shock. But today—” She shook her head. “Today I don’t really care. I have other things to think about. I have a mortgage and no job. I have the rest of my life and I don’t know what to do with it.”
“You’ve got a gold bar that could pretty much pay off your mortgage.”
Jo considered it a moment, then said, “What do I do? Take it to the mortgage lender and say, ‘Here, have some Nazi gold’?”
I shrugged.
“But, yes, there’s all of that, too,” she said. “The gold, that ring. And Frank’s death. I stopped caring for Frank a long time ago, but—well, maybe it’s the MP in me, but I feel I should do something about it.”
I felt the same way about my ex-wife Robin’s murder. I acted on that feeling, and a lot of other people died, too. But I didn’t mention that to Jo.
“I did some research on the League for Freedom and Responsibility after you we
nt to bed,” I said.
“And?”
“If Frank was a member,” I said, “his extremist views matched theirs.”
I briefed Jo on what I read, then added, “And the League is headquartered here in San Diego. MacIntosh lives here, too.”
Jo looked up from her plate. “Really? I assumed they were in Washington, DC, with all the politicians.”
“Me, too.”
“Well, that’s how Frank knew MacIntosh. But where’s that get us?”
The phone rang. Jo was closest to it and, without thinking, answered it.
“Peter Brandt’s house,” she said. “No, no, I’m not the lady of the house.” She listened. “Well, it’s really none of your business who I am. And, no, I don’t think Peter needs any magazine subscriptions.”
She hung up and caught me staring at her.
“What?”
“Who was it?”
“Some guy selling magazine subscriptions,” she said.
“With a Texas drawl?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
I picked up my plate, scraped what was left into Jack’s bowl, and rinsed it off in the sink. I kissed Jo on the cheek and said, “I’ve got to go out for a while. You want to stay here?”
“No, I should go home,” she said. “And how did you know that man had an accent?”
“If you’re not here when I get back, I’ll come by your place tonight and explain,” I said as I let the screen door slam into place.
CHAPTER 11
FRED DANBURY HADN’T WORKED for The Company for more than a decade, but old habits are hard to break. We had long ago established that if he wanted to talk to me, he would ring my number and offer me magazine subscriptions. Then I was to go to a pay phone—never the same one twice in a row—and call him on a prearranged number. That all worked well for years. But now with cell phones, public pay phones were disappearing.
I found one in a Laundromat, dropped in some coins, and dialed the number.
“Who’s the little lady with the pretty voice?” Fred answered.
“An old friend,” I said. “What’s up?”
“I’m hungry.”
“You called me to tell me that?”
“No, I called you to tell you I am sitting in a Mexican restaurant on Newport Avenue called Margarita’s,” Fred said. “You know it?”
I did. Fifteen minutes later I walked into Margarita’s and found Fred shoveling huevos rancheros into his mouth. I sat across the table from him.
“You drove all the way down here for huevos rancheros?”
“No, I drove all the way down here to get out of the goddamn office,” Fred muttered through a mouthful of eggs and refried beans. “That Maryanne drives me crazy sometimes. She acts like another wife. If I wanted a wife, I wouldn’t have divorced the last two.”
“With your connections,” I said, “I’d think you’d hire someone who could take her out.”
Fred sniffed. “Thought about that, I did,” he said. “Too expensive. Plus, it might jack up my company’s insurance rates.”
As he continued eating, I asked, “Fred, with all the cloak-and-dagger stuff you have me do to talk to you, did you ever think your cell phone might be tapped?”
Fred shook his head. “I scan all my phones for taps every morning—home, office, and cell,” he said. “I ain’t new to this rodeo, you know, son.”
Fred finished his meal and wiped his mouth.
“So, I did some calling around,” he said, “asking about Nazi gold and stuff. Didn’t get crap until one of my contacts put me in touch with an old geezer who goes way back. He was OSS during the war and joined The Company right at the beginning in ’47. Anyway, this guy was part of an OSS operation called Safehaven, where they tried to identify the whereabouts of looted Nazi gold. He worked in Switzerland with Allen Dulles. Dulles was—”
“I know,” I said, “former OSS agent and first civilian director of the CIA.”
And alleged Nazi sympathizer?
“Good boy,” Fred said, “you get a gold star. Anyway, this geezer says Safehaven continued long after the war ended, along with another operation to locate escaped Nazis.”
“To bring them to justice?”
“Some.”
“Some?”
“Some were recruited,” Fred said, “for their special skills.”
“Are you talking about the rocket scientists like von Braun?” I asked.
Fred nodded. “In part. You know our early space program was basically an extension of the Nazi V-2 program, don’t you?”
“Operation Paperclip,” I said. “We brought over a bunch of German rocket scientists to work on our rocket program. Including Werner von Braun. He ran our space program.”
“You know a lot of those scientists—including von Braun—were members of the SS?”
“I heard that,” I said. “But it was just a handful of guys, right?”
“A handful?” Fred snorted. “This guy says the government never publicized the real number of Nazis they brought over here. It wasn’t a few dozen scientists to work on the space program, but thousands of ardent Nazis who had special skills to use against the commies. Some of them had nooses waiting for them at Nuremberg.” He tossed down his napkin and stood. “I need a smoke. Let’s walk.”
Fred paid up, and lit up as soon as we left the restaurant. As we ambled along the sidewalk, smoke from his little black cigar wafted up my nostrils and destroyed the respiratory cleansing I did that morning.
Newport is Ocean Beach’s main avenue, a small-town main street still lost in the Sixties. Smoke shops mingle with antique stores. Mom-and-pops sidle up alongside coffeehouses and student hostels. The people of OB are just as eclectic. Aging hippies with graying beards and thinning manes, bikini-clad coeds, and fearless, bare-chested skateboarders all weave along the tight, highly trafficked street, most heading the same direction—to the beach. That’s why I lived there, despite the racket airliners made taking off from Lindbergh Field to the south. OB is the kind of place where you can find everything you need within walking distance. And its laid-back Sixties lifestyle could make you believe you were younger than you were.
“Anyway,” Fred said, a stream of gray smoke jetting from his nostrils, “back to Safehaven. First the OSS and, later, the CIA continued hunting Nazi gold and the people they thought might use it to keep the dream alive—hunted them for years.”
An airliner roared over and I let its rumble fade before asking Fred, “What dream?”
Fred stared in admiration at a young woman sashaying in front of us. Blonde hair flowed to her waist and glowed against tanned skin bare excepted for a halter top. Tight jeans cut-offs trimmed very high up exposed long, athletic legs and the bottom edge of a rump that moved rhythmically with each step.
I elbowed him.
“What?”
“What dream?”
“The Nazi dream,” Fred said. “The whole idea of Safehaven was to remove the financial wherewithal to raise a new Fourth Reich. They were also looking for high-ranking Nazis like Martin Borman, the party secretary—even Hitler himself.”
“Hitler died in Berlin,” I insisted, mindful of what Jonathan Glasgow said.
“That’s what I always thought,” said Fred. “But this old guy said during the war Berlin was honeycombed with secret tunnels, including one that led straight from the Führer Bunker to Tempelhof Airport, and the Allies had credible intelligence saying Hitler flew out of Berlin before the Russians got there. By god, boy, talking to that old fella was like talking to a history book. He said the agency was investigating reports of Hitler living in South America well into the Sixties.”
“But why would the government insist Hitler was dead if they weren’t sure?”
“Because neither Washington nor Moscow wanted people to think Hitler and his gang could rise up again,” Fred said. “They wanted everyone to think Hitler and Nazism were gone forever even though they were scared shitless of another Reich uprising.”
“And the gold?”
“Most of it was never located,” Fred said. “Safehaven wasn’t all that successful. A lot of the gold disappeared into secret Swiss bank accounts. More was stashed in hidey-holes in other countries. This old guy was certain there’s enough unrecovered gold to finance an international movement, especially at today’s gold prices.”
We walked along in silence, Fred still fascinated by the oscillating hips in front of us, and I was lost in thought about what Glasgow told me and what I’d read about in his book. Apparently sensing Fred’s stare, the girl turned around and gave him a dirty look. Fred shrugged.
“I can’t believe I spent so much of my youth in crappy shitholes for my country,” he said, “when I could have been living life large right here.”
“To each his calling,” I said.
Fred stopped and put a hand on my shoulder.
“You’re a lot younger than me, boyo,” he said. “You’re smart living here now and not war-corresponding anymore.”
“I’ll remember that,” I said. “What about Mexico? Did this guy you talked to say anything about Nazis or gold in Mexico?”
Fred thought for a moment, then said, “No. No, nothing about Mexico. South America, sure. But he never mentioned Mexico.” He glanced at his watch. “Shit, I’ve got to go, Pete. Maryanne’s going to have my pecker in a vise. You remember what I said about living here. It’s a lot nicer and a whole lot safer than war-corresponding. Safer than poking around this kind of crap about Nazi gold, too.”
“You’re not the first one to tell me that,” I said as he walked off.
I only wished I’d listened.
CHAPTER 12
JO WAS STILL AT the bungalow when I returned. She stood at the screen door holding Jack against her breasts, scratching him behind his ears. I heard his purring before I reached the door.
The Fourth Rising (Peter Brandt Thrillers Book 3) Page 6
