The Heritage Paper

by Derek Ciccone

Thoughts of his mentor momentarily calmed Otto, and stopped the shaking. But as he studied his wrinkled hands, he realized he no longer recognized them. That was the cruel part of the aging process—he remained trapped within the excruciating knowledge of his deterioration. He envied Ellen, and her alien sightings, unaware that her mind had turned to mush.

  In his mind, he was still the dashing young spy of yesteryear. His legend grew to the heights of the Loch Ness Monster within Nazi circles. Nobody could ever identify the mysterious Otto, but they knew he was present, camouflaged seamlessly into the background.

  And perhaps his greatest secret was that the renowned Nazi spy wasn’t even German. He grew up in Dublin as Petey O’Neill. He’d come a long way from that street-hustling kid in Ireland, who was only a toddler when his brother was killed during Bloody Sunday. At the mere age of ten, Petey carried out orders to kill a British intelligence agent—disguised by his youth, they never saw him coming—to achieve justice for the brother he never really knew.

  The British came after him mercilessly. This was no surprise, since the British never understood the concept of mercy, and his life in Dublin was effectively over. In order to save his last remaining son, Petey’s father moved his family to the States—Brooklyn, to be specific.

  Petey never fit in his new surroundings. Ironic, since his natural ability to assimilate into any situation is what made him such a lethal spy. As he entered his teens, he grew to hate America, and especially the Jews who controlled his father’s job. The one he slaved at over a hundred hours a week—until one day when they decided they didn’t need him anymore, and killed him and Petey’s mother.

  By his mid-teens, Petey was orphaned and passed around from neighbor to neighbor. He did find comfort in the Good Book. Not the Bible, but a visionary work by an up-and-coming German politico named Adolf Hitler, called Mein Kampf. It was as if he’d understood Petey’s pain. A pain that he could only numb by running—he channeled his tortured emotions into becoming the top high school track athlete in New York. Just the thought of those days bemused Otto. He patted his old legs, wondering if they were napping and would wake up in time to sprint to the finish line.

  Many in his Brooklyn neighborhood, made up of hardworking Irish, Germans, and Italians, raised money for the local track star, so he could attend the 1936 Olympics Games in Munich. Jesse Owens stole the headlines at the Games that year, but nobody ran faster than Petey O’Neill. He ran all the way to a new life. He wouldn’t return to America for nine years.

  While at the Olympics, he posed as a British diplomat in order to gain a meeting with his hero. The Führer was impressed by Petey’s ability to avoid his security, which, combined with his desperate need for English-speaking spies, made him an ideal choice to become a German intelligence officer. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse. Petey might not have been blood German, but his loyalty to the Führer was unmatched, and he was willing to go to any length to prove it when challenged, which the Führer constantly did.

  He was assigned to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, who many considered the second most powerful man in Germany, and unquestionably the most ruthless. Petey was sent to Britain, where he enlisted as an agent in the British SIS named Peter Jansen. Mixing trickery with charm, and his debonair nature—he still believed the James Bond character created by Ian Fleming, whom he crossed paths in British intelligence circles, was based on him—he moved quickly up the ladder.

  When war broke out in 1939, Peter Jansen was able to pass important strategic information to Himmler, including the British plans to defend Belgium and France. With each piece of classified information he turned over he grew in stature and responsibility.

  His signature moment came in May of 1941, although he wouldn’t realize the significance until much later. He was to establish communication between the Duke of Hamilton and his German contacts, to create a secret meeting in which Hitler’s right-hand-man, Rudolf Hess, would travel to Britain as an envoy of peace. Peter Jansen tipped off the SIS about this meeting, allowing the British to capture Hess.

  Of course, it wasn’t Hess who had parachuted to what he thought was the Duke of Hamilton’s residence. Nor was the man who spent the rest of his life jailed in Spandau Prison after being convicted as a war criminal at the Nuremberg Trials.

  The Führer was so impressed by the Hess operation that he began affectionately referring to Petey as Otto, because he “carried the spirit of the ‘Iron Chancellor’ Otto von Bismarck,” who was credited with the unification of Germany. It also catapulted him into his most trusted inner circle—a group of twelve men and women anointed as the Apostles. The group’s name was a sign of both the Führer’s contrarian side and gargantuan ego. He didn’t lack for either. But its formation showed a pragmatic side that was not normally his strength.

  The purpose of the Apostles was to carry on the workings of the Reich if the war effort failed—a fact that all German leaders grasped long before the stubborn Führer. It was a plan that Otto unknowingly set into motion when he helped remove the real Hess from Germany. Hess was accompanied by a child named Josef, who was entrusted with returning the Reich to its rightful place. Hess would serve as the child’s father in their new home, while the plane was flown by a brilliant German intelligence officer, who would play the role of Josef’s mother.

  And while the plan was enacted over the next six decades, the chaos of April 30, 1945 in the Führerbunker was a constant reminder to Otto that things don’t always go as planned. It was a day that almost derailed the entire operation before it began. But even with the many bumps in the road, including the many issues concerning Josef, they were now on the threshold of regaining the kingdom in the most glorious fashion.

  He looked down again at his shaky hands that held his cell phone. He understood now why they shook. He dreaded making this call.

  The Candidate answered on the first ring.

  Otto didn’t mince words. “Your grandmother has gone home.”

  He could hear the choke in the Candidate’s breathing—he knew how much she meant to him. But like a great leader, he rallied, “She sacrificed her life for future generations.”

  “And her sacrifice went beyond what we expected. She did it on her own.”

  The Candidate sounded surprised, but relieved. He had argued passionately against silencing Ellen. Like those before him in his family, he was both stubbornly loyal and optimistic to a fault. But he also had the highest of leadership qualities, which Otto had spotted long before the Candidate understood his gift, so it didn’t surprise him that he eventually signed off on what was best for the group.

  The Candidate spoke assertively, “Her behavior was erratic at the end. Did she talk to anyone about the Apostles? Are there any other trails that need to be covered?”

  “Her only contact was with Maggie, whom she was helping with a school project. We can question the girl, but Ellen’s faculties had slipped greatly at the end. She couldn’t differentiate between the Apostles and aliens.”

  A long silence ensued, before the Candidate said, “It’s time for the children to come home. I was the same age as Maggie when I was brought in. With the kingdom within our sights, I think the timing is ideal.”

  With that, the Candidate hung up the phone.

  Chapter 15

  Theodore Baer ended his phone call, pondering the news he just heard. He looked around his penthouse suite, which served as both the studio for his syndicated radio show and his campaign headquarters. It was the first time he’d been alone since he began his shotgun candidacy for the presidency on Labor Day, just two months ago. It was both a relief and a surprise not to see any campaign managers, pollsters, or whoever else was trying to attach themselves to his backside.

  He moved to the window and looked down at the city below, reflecting on how this all started, back at the University of Maine. A much simpler time in his life where he hosted his first radio show on a college station. It was called The Teddy Baer Show, but was anything but cute and
snugly. His passionate opinions got him suspended from school on more than one occasion, including the infamous term paper he wrote that compared George Washington to Adolf Hitler, which he’d meant as a compliment to both men.

  Following graduation, he moved to a small station in Portland, Maine. His communications professor, Emil Leudke—the one who pushed him to do the college radio show—was such a believer in Theodore that he left his professorship to become his producer. It was the late 1970s, fresh off the wound of Vietnam, and America was being held hostage—overseas by the Iranians and at home by a gas shortage. The nation was sick, and like any ailing soul, it desperately sought a cure.

  His message resonated in a big way—rebuilding a self-sufficient America that wasn’t reliant on foreign oil or trade, and didn’t involve itself in international skirmishes that drained its blood and treasure like Vietnam. He shouted to anyone who would listen that America should once again claim independence from the rest of the world, even if his critics, the dreaded internationalists, called him a radical.

  If he was, he figured he was in good company. George Washington had warned the nation in his Farewell Address about the dangers of permanent foreign alliances, and the current conflict in the Middle East was another example that his warning should have been heeded. Washington believed in building a self-sufficient America, and becoming unnecessarily entangled in the battles of others worked contradictory to this goal.

  Adolf Hitler believed in this same concept of self-sufficiency, or what the Germans called autarky. He sought economic self-reliance, just like Washington, especially when it came to raw materials. Baer was convinced that the reason General Washington sat in the pantheon of history, while Hitler lay in the bowels of infamy, was that the German leader didn’t stick to the principles of autarky. Instead, he chose to seek world domination and all the pitfalls that went with such a strategy.

  Baer peered down at the ants below. The same way the “unbeatable” Jim Kingston and his political machine once looked at him. But as the historic election approached, Theodore Baer owned a slight lead in the polls, even after yesterday’s controversial comments.

  His independent candidacy was initially treated as a publicity stunt. And they were right—Baer knew he couldn’t beat the machine. Republican or Democrat didn’t matter to him—same disease, different doctor—but it was a chance for him to get his licks in, especially during the debates, and it sure wouldn’t hurt the ratings of his syndicated radio show The Baer Cave.

  But then the Republican nominee was caught celebrating Labor Day weekend at his Florida estate with his pants down—literally—and that was only the half of it, as his partner in crime turned out to be his running-mate. This made them not only endless fodder for the late night television comics, but more importantly, unelectable. With the election only sixty days away, too late to contain the damage, Theodore Baer suddenly didn’t seem such a bad alternative for the anti-Kingston crowd.

  Baer then received another dose of election magic, when tensions intensified in the Middle East, moving to the brink of war. Kingston’s biggest contributor and supporter was Aligor Sterling, head of the Sterling Center, the world’s biggest sponsor of Jewish causes. And he also happened to be his uncle—the brother of Kingston’s mother—so it wasn’t like he could just cut ties with him if he wanted to.

  So despite the electorate being heavily against America joining another conflict in the Middle East, Kingston promised to commit a full arsenal of US troops to a potential war, and to protect Israel at all cost. With Sterling his de-facto campaign manager, he had boxed himself into a political corner. By Halloween, Baer went from a novelty act to ten points up in the polls.

  The door of the suite opened and Emil Leudke walked in—a lone friendly face in a sea of ass-kissing. Emil put his phone away and headed toward him, showing urgency in each step of his old legs. After yesterday’s incident, they no longer felt able to speak freely in front of the campaign staff. So Emil had gone into the adjoining suite to call him.

  Baer smiled for the first time in days. Age had slowed his mentor’s body, but not his mind or his passion for the cause. And he was still the best-dressed and most debonair man in the room.

  Emil handed him a piece of paper, which he looked quizzically at. “What’s this?”

  “This is your first act of being presidential, Teddy. It’s called an apology—just look into the camera and try to look like you mean it. They’ve all done it—Nixon, Reagan, Clinton.”

  “Not you, Emil—have they gotten to you, too?”

  “You know as well as I do what an important moment in history this is. We can’t take any chances—losing this election is not an option.”

  The words were not necessary—Emil had been preparing him for this moment since he was a teenager. He always believed he would be president one day.

  “What happened to that great advice you’ve been giving me since Maine? About never apologizing to anyone for what I believe.”

  Emil just pointed at the piece of paper—it wasn’t negotiable.

  There was no time to debate. The show was one minute away. Baer sat behind the boom microphone with an enormous mural of a grizzly bear in the background, the symbol of The Baer Cave Show. The cameras were positioned for his simulcast on GNZ. Emil began counting down.

  Being the first presidential candidate with a built-in media outlet was a unique circumstance. It gave Baer a daily pulpit from which to preach to the voters. But as his critics liked to point out, it could also serve as a noose to hang himself, and yesterday that’s exactly what he almost did.

  The comments in question were in response to Kingston’s ad campaign that compared Baer’s isolationist strategy to that of those who appeased Hitler in the 1930s.

  Baer responded on air that he believed Hitler’s one big mistake was not following a similar strategy as the Baer Plan for America. That he should have built on the successes he had in the economy, education, and the arts, which history had chosen to ignore. And by doing so, he would have let the Russians and the Western Allies fight to the death, as they eventually did in the Cold War, while Germany continued to thrive in its isolated existence.

  Aligor Sterling, responded by going on the national news and reminding America that Hitler didn’t make just one mistake, he made six million mistakes, as in the number of murdered Jews. It was damaging.

  Watching Sterling’s comments in his office, Baer angrily quipped that the other mistake Hitler made was not taking care of Sterling when he had the chance—Aligor Sterling had survived a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. One of Baer’s staffers, a Kingston spy, secretly taped the comment and leaked it to the media. It might have been unethical, but it worked. His lead shrunk by epic proportions.

  A loud bear growl shook the room—the famed intro to The Baer Cave.

  “I told you, I told you, I told you,” Baer began the show with his usual high-energy rant. “I told you the Kingston machine would pull out every dirty trick to win this election, so that they can keep you living in fear. So they can send your sons and daughters to bleed in a foreign desert.

  “But the main difference between Jim Kingston and myself is that I don’t send a twenty-year-old kid with a tape recorder to do my dirty work, just like he wants to send your twenty-year-old son or daughter to do his dirty work in the Middle East. And here’s another thing—I meant every word of what I said yesterday. I do think this would be a better world if Aligor Sterling were gassed in a concentration camp. What he and Kingston are planning, by sending your children to die for decades as part of their war machine, and creating more dependency on foreign nations, is no less despicable than any act of the Nazis!”

  Baer sneaked a peak at the cringing Emil. He could visualize the pollsters going into seizures in the next room. He shrugged at Emil, as if to say he couldn’t help himself—it was in his nature.

  Chapter 16

  Zach didn’t need his journalism degree to figure out that Veronica was tense. Sh
e was gripping the steering wheel so hard he thought she would break it. The trip to Rhinebeck would be just over an hour, but he got the feeling that it would seem much longer than that.

  Her children were in the back seat, along with a ninety-something Nazi hunter. And behind them, in the hatchback, was a priceless stolen painting. Just your typical road-trip upstate.

  Zach focused on Youkelstein, thinking back to the story he did on him and Sterling a few years ago, titled Shh It’s Nazi Season.

  The Nazi hunters weaved an interesting story, although they were vague on certain details, and danced around Zach’s questions about their rumored vigilante style of justice. On the record, they claimed that whenever they’d tracked down war criminals, they’d always handed them over to the proper authorities. Zach wasn’t buying it, but still marveled at their passion, and it’s not like he could evoke sympathy for the butchers who may have ended up on the wrong side of their sword.

  As Zach peered out at the monotonous row of barren trees that lined the Taconic Parkway, he felt a certain twinge of excitement. He’d had too many days lately where he knew how the next twenty-four hours were going to turn out before they ever happened. Raising TJ was all about schedules and pickups, which he worked around to write his bland stories for the small paper that was currently employing him.

  So perhaps him “tagging along” on this journey was another chance to chase the big story, which led to the question: Is it a big story? Zach wasn’t sure, but saw two possibilities—one was that it was a hoax of crop circle proportions. He doubted that one. TJ was good with altering photos, but not that good. The more likely scenario was that Ellen was telling the truth as she saw it. Of course, her cognitive abilities were very much up for debate. Like a good reporter, he would observe, seeking the truth without pride or prejudice, and remain open-minded until facts were validated.

  He thought of Sara, who always told him he was afraid to take a side. She said he used journalism as an excuse to avoid life—observing, but never living it. Sometimes he wished she’d done a little less living, and then perhaps she might still be there for their son.