The Dead Alone (Empires Lost Book 3)

by Charles S. Jackson

  A man of dark features and average height in his late twenties, McCaughey had been involved with the Irish Republican Army all his adult life, and currently held the post of OC (Officer Commanding) of the IRA’s Northern Command. Prior to the British surrender of 1940, his sole consuming passion had been that of a free and reunited Ireland. With Nazi Germany now in control of Northern Ireland, his passion hadn’t diminished in any way, although the IRA’s new alliance with the British Government-in-Exile in the pursuit of that end was something that to him was a great irony indeed.

  “Seán,” Kelly began, directing the next words toward Seán Michaels, who’d moved around from the driver’s side of the truck and was now standing near the rear cargo bed. “There should be a set o’ field glasses in the front room: pop in there like a good lad and keep an eye out for the all-clear signal, would y’? Take this young feller with y’,” he added quickly, taking note of Turner standing just behind Michaels. “Never know when a man on watch with a good rifle might come in handy.”

  It was more for his own piece of mind that he’d suggested the young Englishman go along too. He suspected the man probably was legitimate, but it never hurt to be careful, and maybe it was best this unknown newcomer wasn’t given any details of their plans just yet.

  As Michaels simply nodded and the pair immediately disappeared through a side door to the left of the barn’s main entrance, Kelly noted that Evie was staring at the floor about her with a distinct look of discomfort, and even he had to admit that it wasn’t the cleanest environment he’d ever seen (or smelled) by a fair margin.

  “There’s a place to wash up in the house if you’ve the need,” he added, making sure she knew he was speaking to her as he held the main doors open just enough to allow a view of Urney Road disappearing northward in the distance.

  “Thank you, Mister Kelly,” Evie nodded in return, giving the man a weak smile. “I think I might go in and freshen up a little.”

  “No need to worry, darlin’,” he grinned back, allowing himself a short break from the seriousness of the morning as he nodded toward the same door Michaels had used. “You just go on in through there: Seán’s in there already, and Old Margie will look after ye right enough. We’ll call you when it’s time to head out.”

  “You want to go with her?” Kelly asked as he watched Levi watching her leave with deep concern on the young man’s face.

  “She’ll be all right, I’m sure,” Levi responded, not sounding entirely convinced but forcing himself to accept the advice of a man he’d come to trust over the last few weeks. “Actually, what I’d really like is to hear the rest of Samuel’s story…”

  “Is that so?” Lowenstein asked with a wry smile, standing on the opposite side of the truck beside a large, squat log that still carried a long-handled axe with the blade stuck in its top. Turning side on and reaching down to lever the head out of the wood, he cast the log-splitter aside and plopped himself down onto the makeshift seat that was left behind. “Well, if we’ve time to waste anyway…”

  “Time enough,” McCaughey observed, turning over a discarded milking bucket and seating himself awkwardly on that as the rest of them found their own places or rest all around.

  “Well…” Lowenstein began again, taking a deep breath “…where was I…? The Board of Directors, yes…” Another, shorter pause… “Well, as I was saying, these seven rich industrialists ‘found’ each other and formed a cabal of sorts; an exclusive little ‘club’ for whining, rich old Nazis so they could sit around in each other’s smoking rooms and complain about how ‘Germany came so close…’ and ‘We could have done it...’ and reminiscing drunkenly about the ‘good old days’ when Germany took on the entire world and almost won. Between them, they represented billions of Euros in financial backing,” he continued, forgetting in that moment that no one else in the vehicle would have any hope of recognising the name of that post-war currency, “but the fact was they didn’t know what to do with it… at least, not at first…

  “But then sometime during 2005 or thereabouts, one of the Directors discovered that the British Ministry of Defence had been funding a minor research project into the theoretical possibility of time travel… research that even then looked tentatively promising, if a long way from complete. I never knew which one found out what I’d been working on, but that doesn’t really matter anyway; whoever it was, these Nazi swine had finally found some kind of real purpose into which they could pour the entirety of their black hearts and souls.

  “The only problem now was that they had no idea exactly how to go about making use of the information. They knew that they needed help, but where to get it was the main problem. Most of the rank-and-file Neo-Nazis were little better than uneducated yobs who’d be lucky to be capable of assembling a coherent sentence without help, and save for showing off during late-night, soap-box rants about where ‘der Führer’ went wrong, not one of the Directors themselves had any real military training or historical knowledge.

  “The solution lay in a retired Bundeswehr general by the name of Kurt Reuters,” he explained, again ignoring the fact that none of them would recognise the title of Germany’s post-war military. “A career officer and a flair for military tactics that bordered on outright genius, Reuters had his own axe to grind regarding the fate of his family during and after the war, and he jumped at the opportunity to erase half a century of what to him amounted to a nation’s suffering and shame at the hands of Allied Occupation Forces… particularly the Russians…”

  “So they took you hostage and forced you to complete your research for them,” Kransky filled in, remembering the stories he’d been told while working at Scapa Flow with that secret Hindsight task force, two years and what seemed like a lifetime ago.

  “Not straight away, but yes…” Lowenstein answered after a moment, his tone sounding far less enthusiastic now. “It would be four more years before my work began to produce worthwhile results, and they spent that time amassing a wealth of technology and weapons that, if the project were successful, would ensure that Hitler’s Germany would be invincible!” There was another moment of silence as he took a deep, settling breath and Levi and the others all realised there were tears at the corner of the man’s eyes now as the story came to its climax. The boy took a few steps and moved across to stand beside the man who one day would’ve become his son, instinct producing some kind of latent, paternal concern.

  “They took me during the summer of 2009,” he began slowly, voice wavering now as he recalled it all far too vividly and emotion swept through him. We were preparing for our first static test, and I’d spent the morning working from home on a few final equations that had been troubling the ignition sequence…” A shudder rippled through him, audible in his tone. “I’d packed my laptop and my notes and was heading into the lab. I walked into the car park of my apartment block and that’s the last thing I remember.” Another pause for courage. “When I woke up I was in a cell, somewhere deep in the Siberian Forest. That… that was when the torture began…”

  “Enough, Samuel…” Levi croaked softly, tears in his eyes also in reaction to the pain he could clearly see in the older man’s expression. “Sam…” he corrected, using the diminutive for the first time. “I’m sorry…”

  “‘Sorry…’?” Lowenstein repeated, staring up into the boy’s eyes. “You’ve no reason to be sorry…” Tears flowed freely down his sweat-stained cheeks now, leaving tracks of moisture as evidence of their passing. “I created the devices for them… gave them the means to conquer the world and drive my own people to extermination! They tortured me…” he moaned as he buried his head in his hands, his tone almost pleading now as if he were seeking forgiveness from an entire world. “They did things… terrible things… I couldn’t…”

  With no clue as to what he could possibly say at that point that might make anything better, Levi Lowenstein could only place a gentle, reassuring hand on his son’s shoulder and look away, staring ashamedly at the floor by
his own feet and wondering darkly in that moment whether he might’ve had the strength to endure what Sam had gone through… whether he might have broken under that same, vile torture.

  Around them, the other men present also cast their own eyes into the semi-darkness of that musty barn, looking at nothing in particular and to a man asking themselves that exact same question… a question for which not one of them had an acceptable answer.

  3.Casus Belli

  Legation of the Republic of Ireland

  Drakestrasse 3, Tiergarten

  Berlin, Grossdeutschland

  Reichsmarschall Kurt Reuters had never liked early mornings, that fact flying directly in the face of a long life dedicated almost entirely to the German armed forces in one form or another throughout his eighty years. As he stepped from his chauffeur-driven Mercedes just after dawn that grey and overcast morning, he felt a chill in his bones that he was sure must’ve been some indication of his advancing age.

  Of course, his rational mind knew better… knew full well that although he continued to mark off every passing birthday, the reality was that he’d not aged a single day in over nine years. Yet somehow the cold felt worse now than it used to, as so many things seemed worse these days than they once had, and all the rationality in the world couldn’t dissuade an ‘old man’ from his irrational fears of ageing and senility… things that would supposedly never come but terrified him greatly nevertheless.

  Tall and fit even by comparison to far younger men, he wore his grey hair cut regulation-short beneath his officer’s cap and strode up to the front doors of the Irish Legation with a long, purposeful gait. Positioned on Drakestrasse at the border of The Tiergarten, the Legation stood perhaps five hundred yards or so south-west of the Siegessäule victory monument that lay at the centre of that huge urban park, and little more than the same to the west of Abwehr headquarters on The Tirpitzufer.

  Troopers armed with submachine guns escorted him on either side for the entirety of that short journey and he winced over a faint, unfounded fear that perhaps they might be inwardly sneering at the ostentatious nature of his full dress uniform. His ¾-length, field-grey waffenrock military coat was adorned with a brace of service decorations and awards, all complemented by the customary application of decorative braid and a similarly-braided silver belt. The impressive overall effect was accentuated even further by an immaculate and incredibly-expensive, full-length leather coat of similar colour worn open above it all. It wasn’t the preferred style of dress for a career officer with an infantry background, however the presence of Foreign Minister Ribbentrop and other German dignitaries at this scheduled meeting with the Irish Chargé d'Affaires had made a prerequisite of what he considered to on the whole be an extravagant level of unnecessary frippery.

  Brötchen, mama…! Brötchen… brötchen…! The child’s voice echoed sharply in his mind, momentarily blocking out all other thoughts as he was overcome by a sudden, inexplicable craving for bread rolls. As his stomach was actually still feeling quite full after a hearty breakfast in the chambers of his own office, just half an hour earlier, it was a quite disconcerting experience.

  The voice was equally disconcerting, although it was becoming a common enough occurrence now that its manifestation no longer held quite the level of shock and fear it initially had. He’d told no one about the episodes, of course: it wouldn’t do for either The Führer or anyone else in a position of power in Nazi Germany to discover that the commander-in-chief of all Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS forces was hearing voices. He’d be certain to be relieved at the very least, and with the Aktion-T4 program currently in full-swing there was every possibility he might well find himself the victim of a far worse fate than mere retirement.

  Referred to by Hitler as the Gnadentod – a ‘Merciful Death’ Directive – and overseen by his personal physician, Karl Brandt and other high-ranking Nazi medical officials, the program ostensibly provided relief from the pain and suffering of incurable mental or physical illness by the judicious application of euthanasia. In truth, the project had instead been utilised as an opportunity to summarily exterminate all manner of opponents and critics of the Nazi regime including dissidents, political prisoners, Jews and others of various ethnic backgrounds. Reuters personally knew of at least three men close to him sent to Brandenburg who’d never see the light of day again, and he’d heard reports the same had happened to at least a half-dozen more at various sites around Germany.

  He grimaced as he reached the pillars on either side of the embassy’s front doors, taking a moment to straighten his tunic as he heard the approach of footsteps on the other side. He’d argued against the euthanasia directive initially, but resistance had been half-hearted at best. Gnadentod was a program close to The Führer’s heart and Reuters was well aware that any ongoing opposition would be doomed to failure, and would only serve to weaken his own standing with Hitler himself – something he could ill-afford considering the cutthroat nature of Nazi politics directly below the Chancellor.

  The doors were drawn back by a pair of servants as he approached, with a uniformed officer of the Irish Defence Force waiting behind them to greet him.

  “Herr Reichsmarschall,” he declared in perfect German, coming to attention and saluting as Reuters entered. “My name is Major O’Connell; I’m the military attaché here at the Legation.”

  “Herr Major,” The Reichsmarschall returned immediately, coming to attention himself in the doorway just long enough to correctly return the salute.

  “I must apologise,” O’Connell continued, extending a hand as a request that Reuters follow him down the main corridor leading away from the entrance hall. “Chargé Warnock has been unavoidably detained by an urgent communiqué from Dublin, and he’s asked me to greet you in his absence. Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop and Freiherr von Neurath are already here and waiting in the main antechamber… I can escort you through to them, if you’d follow me…”

  “Thank you, Major,” Reuters countered, pausing for a moment and switching to equally-good English, “but if it’s all the same, I’d much prefer somewhere a little more private and quiet, if that’s acceptable.”

  The reaction was something the younger man had been expecting. He’d been well-briefed on the personal dislike the man held for the German foreign minister, something that was by no means unique within the Wehrmacht at large. Considered by many to be lacking in talent or any capacity for foreign affairs whatsoever, von Ribbentrop’s reputation was one of a simpering ‘Yes-Man’ who leaped at any opportunity to please or appease The Führer, and who to that end was willing to accommodate even the most ridiculous plan or idea.

  “Of course, sir,” O’Connell nodded with a knowing smile, also switching to English. “Would you care for some breakfast while you wait?”

  “Thank you, no; I’ve already eaten… A coffee would be appreciated however… with cream, no sugar… an espresso if you’re able…”

  “Right away, sir: if you’ll follow me…”

  Alone five minutes later, O’Connell stepped through a large, padded door upholstered in black leather for the purposes of soundproofing as much as for any symbol of opulence. The office beyond wasn’t particularly large – the property on Drakestrasse wasn’t huge, and space was at a premium – however it was well appointed for all that and contained all the accoutrements one would expect of someone operating in high position in a nation’s foreign ministry.

  A short, dark-haired man of moderate stature waited expectantly behind the large desk in the centre of the room, a faint, almost mocking smile on his face. At thirty-one years of age, Chargé William Warnock was a relatively young man to have been given the task of acting as representative for his small country in the court of the most powerful nation on Earth. A graduate of Dublin’s Trinity College, he’d entered the Irish Foreign Service in 1935, had been posted to Berlin in 1938, and had held the position of Chargé d'Affaires since August of 1939.

  “They’re all here?” He asked softly as O
’Connell closed the door securely behind himself.

  “Vons Ribbentrop and Neurath and their entourage of simpletons are being attended to in the antechambers,” the officer replied, moving across to the opposite side of the desk. “Reuters arrived alone… he clearly thinks he can take care of himself, and I don’t doubt it for a moment either…” he added with grudging approval. “…Didn’t want to sit with his fellow countrymen, strangely enough, so we set him up with a coffee in his own little private room.”

  “Let them all stew for a while…” Warnock decided with little consideration. “Any word…?”

  “It’s in progress as we speak, but nuthin’ confirmed,” O’Connell replied with a grimace and a shake of his head. “Those buggers out there won’t wait forever though, and it’s a dangerous game we’re playin’… if we can’t secure that bloody scientist, the Americans can just walk away from the whole thing free as a bird, and we’ll be left holding the bloody bag…! You think the Nazis will shake hands and ‘play nice’ with us once all this comes out… and you know it’ll all come out eventually, right…? If we don’t have the Yanks at our backs, this could all end very badly, very quickly…”

  “You think we’d have a chance in hell anyway?” Warnock shot back, angry more at the situation than at the man standing before him. “I know you know about the plans they’ve already drawn up to invade Ireland. Intelligence suggests the only thing that stopped ‘em doing exactly that two years ago was that they were already stretched to the limit of their naval resources against the Brits. This bloody stand-off we’ve had since 1940 is nothin’ more than a marriage of convenience for these bastards while they’ve been clearing up in Britain and securing North Africa. Now that’s done with, it won’t be long before they start taking another hard look our way, I guarantee y’ that: they want Russia – we all know that – and they’re not going to make their move east with their western frontier unsecure.”