The Gemini Agenda

by Michael McMenamin

  Two sentries posted at the road looked up as both autogiros passed low over them. Mattie and Winston waved gaily and the sentries smiled and waved back. As they passed once more over the compound, Cockran noticed a large grey Mercedes touring car, its top down. A woman with short chestnut brown hair was in the driver’s seat and a blond-haired man had just opened the door to step in.

  Hotel Continental

  Munich

  CAPTAIN David Baker found that the lock to Churchill’s hotel suite posed no challenge to the lock-picking skills he had learned during counter-intelligence training at Fort Holabird in Baltimore. Once inside, he immediately spotted the map on the table with the X in the small square. He brought a lamp from a nearby side table, placed it beside the map and turned it on, directing it at the X. He took several photographs and then returned the lamp to its original position.

  Baker had been skeptical at first when Hudson gave him this new task. “I don’t understand. Didn’t you tell me your partner Miss McGary was working with Mr. Churchill to find this German clinic where some kidnapped Americans might be held?”

  “I did, kid.” Hudson had replied. “But the broad and Churchill are both Brits. It’s the same as if we were working with a friendly foreign intelligence service. Trust but verify. We need to know everything they know as soon as possible, not when they’re ready to spoon-feed it to us. I’m working on my own angle to find the clinic but every piece of information is critical.”

  Hudson had been right, of course, and Baker still couldn’t believe his good fortune, working on a top secret assignment with Major Ted Hudson. A black drape even. This was really going to look good on his record.

  61.

  For The Good of All Mankind

  The Verschuer Clinic

  The Bavarian National Forest

  Tuesday, 31 May 1932

  THE roaring engine of the open-top Mercedes touring car echoed off the towering pine trees that stood sentinel along the side of the road as it carried Sturm and Ingrid north of the border city of Passau. Ingrid sat pensively watching the scenery, her brown hair protected from the wind by a scarf and her eyes protected from Sturm’s view by sunglasses. She had been quiet during most of the trip from Munich and difficult to read.

  Around another twist in the highway, they saw what Sturm had been looking for. The first road they had encountered since leaving Passau, the dirt entrance road leading to Verschuer’s clinic. Sturm downshifted and turned left into the road and 500 yards later came to a white barrier with two armed SS guards in black uniforms carrying submachine guns with full ammo clips. Ingrid reached over to hold his hand, the tension in her body rising at the sight of the weapons. He squeezed her hand.

  “Everything will be all right,” he said.

  Sturm pulled to a stop outside the barrier as one armed guard approached his door. Sturm handed him the letter from Hitler’s secretary. The first guard signaled to the second guard to call the compound. In a moment, the barrier arm was lifted and the guards waved them through.

  The main gate of the compound was set in the middle of a fence between two high watchtowers, each manned by an SS guard and containing a fixed heavy .50 caliber machine gun. The arrangement seemed strange. The two guards in the towers faced inward as though focused on a threat from within rather than without.

  Once through the gate, they pulled to another stop outside a one-story, whitewashed building several hundred meters wide. A tall man in a white lab coat stood just outside the entrance, his silver hair brushed back tightly against his scalp.

  “Heil Hitler!” the man said, raising his arm in a Roman salute. “Herr von Sturm. Herr Heinz told us to expect you. I am Baron Doktor Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer.”

  “Kurt von Sturm,” he said, limply raising his arm in the same fashion he had seen Hitler employ and then shaking Verschuer’s hand. He gestured to Ingrid. “My traveling secretary.”

  Ingrid held out her hand and Verschuer took it gently, gazing at her intently for a moment, a smile forming on his lips as he leaned forward to kiss her hand. “Welcome, my dear.”

  Ingrid smiled demurely, but she remained quiet. Sturm could feel the anxiety radiating from her body.

  Verschuer motioned for them to follow him. “Come, let me show you our facility.”

  “I understand you are interested in my work on hereditary blindness,” Verschuer said.

  Sturm did not expect this and briefly wondered what else Hitler’s private secretary had had told the man over the phone. “It’s a subject of some personal interest,” he said.

  “The work we’re doing here could make human blindness a thing of the past,” Verschuer said. “In fact, all physical misery that afflicts the human race may become history when our work here is finished, I truly believe it.”

  “And what is this miracle procedure, Herr Doktor?”

  “Oh, it’s no miracle,” Verschuer said. “We’re simply taking a page out of nature’s book. Many of these diseases and weaknesses, like blindness, are passed on from generation to generation by the people who are afflicted with them. Our work here will enable us to identify the afflictions that are passed on genetically.”

  Verschuer led them into a room with a two-way mirror that looked in on another room where two identical twins were being examined. The two women had brown hair and hazel eyes and appeared to be in their late twenties. They were both very attractive and completely naked. The two white-coated male attendants were using calipers to measure various parts of their bodies, one measuring, the other writing figures down on a clipboard. Both men seemed oblivious to the women’s unclothed condition. The women also appeared indifferent to their nakedness, a distant, vacant look in their eyes. Sturm thought they had been sedated.

  Ten minutes later, Verschuer led them back out of the two-way mirror room and down the opposite corridor to another examination room where two naked men were being measured. “What do you do to heal them, once you’ve discovered these genetic defects?” Sturm asked.

  “We can’t heal anyone with defects. None of our subjects today have any apparent defects but if they did, we simply would sterilize them,” Verschuer said. “They could live out long and happy lives, but we essentially quarantine their genetic defect to their own lifetimes. We prevent them from spreading their affliction to succeeding generations.”

  “I wasn’t aware German law permitted this.”

  “It doesn’t without consent but the subjects we examine have signed consent forms. Should defects be present, they have agreed to sterilization. But soon, once Herr Hitler assumes his rightful place as Chancellor, I’m confident that we will no longer need to bother with consent forms. Any German with genetic defects will be sterilized just as they are in the majority of American states. A nation has a right to protect its gene pool for the sake of future generations.”

  “Herr Hitler agrees with you?”

  “Read his book. The weak have no right to force their deficiencies on the rest of a healthy German race. If we can make these difficult choices, we can conquer human frailty for good.”

  “Come now, Herr Doktor,” Sturm said amiably, maintaining a light air to keep Verschuer talking and remembering the monograph he had read in Munich. “How can you expect to conquer all of human frailty? Not every ailment is passed from mother to child. Many people develop blindness because of an accident, not because of any birth defect.”

  Verschuer stopped. “For the good of all mankind and in the interests of strengthening the race, the involuntary sterilization of all fertile blind people will be necessary in order to eliminate hereditary blindness,” he said. “There should be no exceptions, because even those who claim their blindness is the result of an illness or an accident may not be telling the truth.”

  Sturm recognized the line almost word for word from Verschuer’s monograph. “Doesn’t that strike you as a little cruel, Herr Doktor?”

  “No,” Verschuer said. “Perhaps to the person involved but patriotic Germans will put in
dividual concerns aside and focus on what is best for all the German people. It will require men of strong will like Hitler to accomplish this. I pray he takes power before it is too late.”

  Sturm checked his tongue and nodded his head, as though agreeing. He glanced at Ingrid, but she had of course understood none of their German. Her face was still tense, each set of twins examined being another source of hope extinguished. All of the twins appeared drugged like the first two and spoke little but when they did speak to Verschuer’s staff, it was in English and they appeared to be American. But none of them were Thomas or Beatrice.

  After visiting a fourth examination room, Verschuer led them back to the entrance and seemed to have no intention of extending the tour any further so Sturm decided to wander down the corridor to a closed door with a large sign that read: “Authorized Personnel Only”.

  “I’m sorry, Herr von Sturm,” Verschuer called out from the entrance where he appeared ready to lead them back out. “That wing is off-limits to visitors.”

  “Why is that?” Sturm asked without turning around.

  “The twins in that wing are quite ill and possibly contagious,” Verschuer said. “They are in quarantine for your own safety. My protégé, Doktor Josef, looks after them personally.”

  Sturm stopped, close enough now to see the three sets of dead-bolts in the doors from top to bottom. It had the look of a door that was rarely opened. The kind of door that opened only to receive new subjects, not release them. Thomas and Beatrice had gone through this door. Sturm was sure of it. He was just as sure that he soon would be walking them back through it. He had a plan, courtesy of Heinrich Himmler and his gift of a black SS officer’s uniform.

  “Herr von Sturm?” Verschuer called again. Sturm turned around and followed him.

  Sturm let Ingrid climb into the driver’s seat, as he walked around the front of the car to get in the passenger side. Verschuer followed him to the door and held out his hand.

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t show you more of our facilities, but I hope you have come away with a sense of the great importance of our work here.”

  Sturm reached out and shook Verschuer’s hand. “I’ve no doubt that the fate of Germany hangs on the outcome of your work.”

  As he moved to step into the Mercedes, Sturm heard an unusual sound—something he had heard before. When he turned his head skyward, he saw the familiar blurring pattern of two autogiros, their large rotary blades spinning directly overhead. He once had flown in such an aircraft, almost losing his life. It was not a pleasant memory. Neither was losing a woman he loved.

  62.

  That’s Suicide

  Hotel Continental

  Munich

  Tuesday, 31 May, 1932

  STANDING at the table in Churchill’s suite, Cockran looked at the blown-up photographs Mattie and Winston had taken of the compound. To his surprise, Winston’s photos were every bit as good as Mattie’s. They overlapped and complemented each other and showed that, in addition to the two SS guards on the road and the two in the watchtowers, there were also two others stationed at the gate itself as well as two more walking the perimeter of the compound. All of them had the same submachine pistols slung over their shoulders.

  “The forest is fairly close to the tip of the triangle at the back of the compound,” Sullivan said. “Would it be possible to drop down from the trees and land inside the fence?”

  Cockran shook his head. “The branches extend over the fence but I don’t think they’re that strong. I think heavy-duty wire cutters at that same spot will do the trick.”

  “I agree with Bourke,” Churchill said. “How do you propose to align your forces?”

  “Including Bobby, there are four of us. They appear to have eight on duty during the day, not counting any personnel inside the compound that we didn’t see. We can’t know how tight their security is at night, so we have to assume it’s the same as during the day. If they’re pulling twelvehour shifts, that’s sixteen men to our four. Twenty four if they have three shifts.”

  “My lads and I didn’t see a changing of the guard,” Sullivan said, “but there’s a barracks-like structure and we saw several men walk in and out. Sean had a good view from a tree.”

  “So what’s your plan?” Mattie asked.

  Cockran turned. “I’m going in alone at the rear of the compound. Sullivan’s men will take out the two sentries at the road. I’ll create a diversion once I’m in the compound and by that time Bobby, Sean and Barry should be ready to storm the front gate.”

  “Diversion?” Mattie asked in a skeptical tone of voice. “What kind of diversion?”

  “I’m working on it. Don’t worry, I’m good at this. I’ll think of something,”

  “Like what?”

  “Right now, I’m partial to lobbing two incendiary grenades into the barracks. That will draw the attention of the guards at the gate as well as the two in the watchtowers.”

  Mattie shook her head. “And you call me reckless? What about the two perimeter guards? Won’t they have something to say about this?”

  Cockran shook his head. “Not if they’re dead.”

  “So let me get this straight,” Mattie said. “You’re entering alone into the rear of that five-acre compound where you will be outnumbered anywhere from sixteen to twenty-four to one and you hope that a few incendiary grenades will even the odds?”

  “That’s the plan,” Cockran said.

  “That’s not a plan. That’s suicide.”

  “You got a better idea? It’s Tuesday. Autopsies begin Friday. There’s not much time.”

  “Isn’t there were some way we can take this to the authorities and get their help?”

  Cockran took a deep breath. How many times did they have to go through this? He could hear the irritation in his voice as he began to speak. “For starters, we have no proof that there are kidnapped twins in that compound. We only know its location because Bobby tortured and killed an SS agent. But even if we had proof, it wouldn’t help. We know it’s an SS operation. The Nazis have too much influence here. They’d be tipped off long before any police raid and the twins would just be hidden elsewhere. So, I repeat. Do you have a better idea?

  “I do,” Mattie replied. “Ted Hudson should be in Munich by now. Let me go over with him what we’ve found. If he agrees, then we’ll leave for Berlin in the morning and show everything to the American ambassador and get him to intervene with the Bavarian authorities.”

  Cockran shook his head at the irony of Mattie being more cautious than him. But her plan really was a triumph of hope over experience and he didn’t mean Ted Hudson. Cockran had met the American ambassador a year ago, a career politician and personal friend of President Herbert Hoover. He was not going to stick his neck out on something he would consider an internal German problem.

  Still, Mattie made a good point. Cockran didn’t like the odds either. He preferred a sure thing also. But, with only three days left, they had little choice. You played the hand you were dealt. Mattie might not know it based on his last two efforts to rescue her—which in some ways had been suicidal—but he was really good at this sort of thing. With her life not at stake, he would be more cautious. The sentries were there to keep people in. They weren’t expecting bloody mayhem from outside. His odds weren’t great but the sentries’ odds were worse.

  Better yet, Cockran thought, sending Mattie and Ted off on a fool’s errand to Berlin had its merits. She would be out of harm’s way while he and the Apostles attempted to rescue the twins. Otherwise, knowing Mattie, she might demand to accompany him into the compound. And that was not going to happen.

  Cockran shrugged. “Talk to Ted. Get his opinion. Bobby and I met the ambassador last year. He’s a political hack. He wouldn’t lift a finger to help my client whose companies were being terrorized by the SS. I can’t imagine he’s any different today.” Cockran grinned. “But go ahead, see what you and your old…”

  63.

  Trigger-Happy Boyfriend


  Hotel Continental

  Munich

  Tuesday, 31 May 1932

  DAMN it, Cockran, “Mattie said cutting him off in mid-sentence, “he’s not …”

  Cockran raised his hand as if to stop her, but he never had a chance.

  “… my old boyfriend!”

  Cockran grinned. “But I was only going to say ‘your old partner on this story’. Honest.”

  Mattie arched an eyebrow. “Sure you were.” Hell, Cockran was probably right. But what was the downside? Cockran going in alone really was suicide. The men were ignoring her now as they pored over the photographs, refining their plans. Winston was talking about hiring a motorbus to take the rescued twins to Regensburg where a tri-motor he chartered would be waiting to fly them out of Germany. Mattie was by nature an optimist herself but Winston was in a league all his own. She wanted to save the twins as much as anyone but nothing was worth Cockran’s life. Mattie walked over to Cockran, put her hands on his shoulders, and kissed him on the neck as she whispered into his ear, “I’m going back to our suite and call Ted.”

  MATTIE noticed, as she opened the door to their suite a white envelope which had been slipped beneath it, “M. McGary” printed on the envelope in neat block letters. Mattie tore it open and read the message inside.

  New developments. Call me in Room 525. Ted.

  Intrigued, Mattie picked up the telephone and the switchboard connected her to room 525. “Ted? Mattie. What’s up?”

  “Not over the phone. But it’s important. What’s your room number? I’ll come there.”

  “Room 820. But we shouldn’t meet here. How about the lobby?” Mattie asked. Having Cockran return to find Ted Hudson in their hotel room was not a good idea.

  “Too many people around,” Ted said. “Why don’t you come to my room?”

  “Okay,” she replied. It wasn’t much better going to Ted’s room but at least she had her knickers on.

  Mattie knocked on the door to Ted Hudson’s room but there was no answer. She rapped louder and heard a muffled voice from within, “It’s open.”