Traitor's Gate

by Charlie Newton

  “He did?” Dinah did not seem particularly shaken by the revelation.

  This wasn’t how the Q&A went in the Dashiell Hammett novels. Eddie tried again. “I wasn’t the only American you were asking about, right?”

  No answer, just the eyelashes.

  “C’mon. You have to help. I’m new at this.”

  “Never would have guessed. You seem so . . . authoritative. Quite masculine.”

  Eddie held up both hands. “I surrender. Please tell me why you’re asking questions about me, what you want to know; and if there’s anything secret-agent-ish about you, please include that, too.”

  Dinah patted her dress into reasonable order that Eddie hated to see added, then pointed deeper inside the synagogue. “There.”

  “We’re going to church? What happened to the beach?”

  Dinah laughed, both hands reworking her hair. “That wit again. Amazing the American girls ever get out of bed.” She led Eddie to an undersize doorway. A bearded man watched him. The man was in his late twenties but weathered, like he’d spent most of those years outside, a farmer maybe. He was the same height as Eddie and wearing a New York Yankees cap.

  “Tom Mendelssohn,” he said with no discernible accent. Tom Mendelssohn offered a hand. Eddie noticed the other hand wasn’t visible, above it a leather shoulder holster only partly covered by the unbuttoned work shirt. The holster was empty.

  Dinah said, “I had trouble in the square. Military police heard me mention Irgun to my friend here. We were not followed, but . . .”

  Mendelssohn frowned, waved Eddie to follow through a doorway, then another, then another—each doorway progressively smaller—and finally into an office cluttered with papers. The desk had a pistol atop its corner.

  “Have a seat.” Mendelssohn grabbed the pistol and holstered it. “Keep forgetting this thing.”

  Eddie checked the room instead of sitting. Just the one Tom Thumb doorway they’d squeezed through and no windows.

  “Please.” Mendelssohn gestured at a worn captain’s chair. “You’re from Oklahoma? Small world, huh? I was born in Joplin, grew up in Tulsa working at the Greyhound track.”

  Yeah, Eddie thought, awful small. He glanced at Dinah Rosen and sat.

  “Well, Eddie—I can call you Eddie?”

  Shrug and another glance at Dinah Rosen. Eddie didn’t remember his name being introduced.

  “I’ll make this short, then you’ll want to ask questions and I’ll try to answer, okay?” Mendelssohn smiled at Eddie, then Dinah. “Had to do this quickly. You’re being reassigned in a few days—we didn’t know—to Tenerife, to do the same work as here—”

  “I’m being reassigned? Says who?”

  “I’ll get to that. When you get to Tenerife, you’ll see proof, incontrovertible proof that your employer there is in league with the Fascists and Hitler’s Nazis, conspiring against the US government’s official policies and objectives.”

  Eddie held up a hand. “Ah, who, exactly, are you?”

  “Me?” Mendelssohn patted his chest, offering an innocent smile. “An American just like you.” Mendelssohn’s fingertips bumped the pistol under his shirt, “Well, maybe a little different.”

  “Why am I here, Mr. Mendelssohn? I think you’d be better off with Nick Charles.”

  “We were talking about Tenerife.” Mendelssohn stopped. “Forgive me. I’m doing a bad, hurried job of recruiting you.”

  Eddie shifted in his chair. Maybe he’d missed some of the conversation. Maybe he’d dozed, because this was left field all the way to the fence. “Could we go back just a question or two? Start with who you are?”

  Mendelssohn folded his hands on the desk and smiled again. “You’re right. Sorry. I’m a smuggler. I smuggle Jews. From Europe to Palestine via Marseilles; Lisbon; and, as of this morning, overland from Prague.” He stroked his beard once. “If you’re a Jew, hospitable Europe shrinks every day.”

  “You smuggle people, Jews.”

  Tom Mendelssohn nodded. “There’s an annual immigration quota here set by the British. Completely separate from being allowed in by the British, there is a cost out paid to the Nazis. In order to legally emigrate from Germany, Austria, and now Czechoslovakia, personal property must be forfeited to the Reich and bribes must be paid to Reich officials. Unfortunately, after the property is transferred and these bribes are paid, the Jews in transit often disappear. One begins to fear identification as a Jew, even as a departing Jew.”

  Eddie listened to the pleasant monotone, thinking it odd that anyone could be calm and pleasant explaining what Mendelssohn was explaining, assuming it was true.

  “And when the transiting Jew arrives here, he fears identification as an arriving Jew. Hence, we smuggle out and in.”

  “Big world out there. Why fight the British quota here? Why not go somewhere else?”

  “Not so big a world if you are a Jew, my friend. Even the USA has very strict immigration laws for foreigners—our Congress’s stated intent is to ‘not upset the current racial balance.’” Mendelssohn grimaced, small but obvious. “And anywhere the Nazis and Stalin’s Bolsheviks reach in the next few years will become a tolerance graveyard . . . then just a graveyard.”

  Eddie looked around. “The Nazis can’t reach this far?” He thought of Erich Schroeder in Iran and Bahrain. “I’ve seen ’em here.”

  “True. Nowhere is perfect. But in some European capitols there’s support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine—get us out of their hair forever.” Mendelssohn laughed and looked both happy and not. “The more we mass, the harder it’ll be for the West to look the other way if things begin to . . . deteriorate.”

  Mendelssohn removed two books from his desk and laid them flat, his hands covering both. “Here goes, Eddie. Not my best recruiting job, but neither of us has much time.” He inhaled all he could. “The Nazis intend to murder all the Jews of Europe, roughly eleven million people.”

  Silence.

  Echoes of water dripping.

  Eddie looked at Dinah, then back to Mendelssohn and tried to keep a straight face. No reason to insult this guy. He had a gun and was obviously crazy.

  Mendelssohn eased back in his chair. “Twenty years ago when Hitler was still campaigning in the beer halls, he laid out a plan to deal with the Judenfrage, or Jewish Question. Hitler blamed us for the spread of bolshevism, calling us racial tuberculosis. His plan’s first stage was Exclusion, then Expulsion, and finally Removal. At the time, Herr Hitler did not define ‘Removal.’

  “Presently, Hitler and the Nazis are well into phases one and two—Exclusion and Expulsion via the loss of citizenship and the sanctioned theft of property. Phase three, the final phase, is now receiving the funding and full attention of highly placed officials in the Nazi government.” Mendelssohn cleared his throat with some difficulty, glanced at Dinah Rosen, and continued.

  “The first written draft of phase three, now called Die Endlosung, or Final Solution, was completed last November right here in Palestine, and just after the Reichstag added the ‘racial purity’ amendments to the Nuremberg Laws. Two low-level SS officers of the Jewish Section authored the Final Solution at the request of Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Gestapo.

  “The authors were SS men Herbert Hagen and Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann has since been promoted to Special Officer for Zionist Affairs. Before he became the special officer, Eichmann was a salesman.” Mendelssohn smiled for effect. “For an American oil company, your company, Eddie, the one that first made your AvGas modifications work—Vacuum Oil Company A.G.”

  Eddie had never heard of Adolf Eichmann, but Harold Culpepper had talked about Vacuum Oil Company. He’d also mentioned “the bankers of Judah.”

  Mendelssohn continued. “In brief, the Nazis’ Final Solution outlines a way to steal all the wealth of every Jew who falls under Nazi territorial control, then exterminate them. Genocide, Eddie, much like what the Japanese are doing to China right now.” Mendelssohn paused. “Make no mistake, the Nazis are buildi
ng the infrastructure to systematically murder eleven million people, exterminate us as vermin.”

  Eddie stayed blank. Not too many responses for that kind of statement, at least none that he knew. He checked Dinah Rosen again to see if she looked any crazier.

  Mendelssohn said, “I mentioned Industrialists who are betraying our government in the USA. They support this genocidal policy by association and default—”

  “C’mon.” Eddie’s skepticism got the best of him. “I can’t believe any US company would—”

  “Wouldn’t think you could. I didn’t.” Mendelssohn smoothed his beard again. “Hitler’s architects and engineers have worked months to design and fail-test these facilities to meet the genocide timetable. Actual blueprints, Eddie, full construction plans with schematics and flow charts and rendering capacities of how these Nazi facilities will ‘process’ vast quantities of human beings. People, Eddie, with names and families.” Mendelssohn nodded at Dinah Rosen. “Like her and me.”

  Eddie thought of Franklin Nadler, age nine.

  “There are copies of these blueprints and I’ve seen them, with complete cost and operation budgets. The first extermination camp is already built, Buchenwald near Weimar, ostensibly for ‘political prisoners.’ Other camps are under construction contract to Topf and Sons and I.G. Farben. You’ve heard of I.G. Farben?”

  Eddie had, but still thought Mendelssohn had logged too many days in the sun.

  “After the Rockefellers, I.G. Farben is the largest stockholder in Standard Oil of New Jersey. And Standard Oil owns a large share of I.G. Farben.”

  Eddie couldn’t hide the frown. The implication was ridiculous.

  “I.G. Farben has an American subsidiary, American I.G. On its board of directors is Walter C. Teagle, chairman of Standard Oil and Edsel Ford, son of Henry Ford, the chairman of Ford Motor Company.”

  Eddie shook his head. “No. Bullshit—”

  “Bullshit?” Tom Mendelssohn handed Eddie one of the books on the desk, a first edition copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. “Look at page 639; Hitler has high praise for our famous car builder/philanthropist and his views.”

  Eddie rolled his eyes, happy Mendelssohn was crazy, gun or not. “Right, Hitler’s a fan of Henry Ford.” Eddie flipped to the marked page, read Ford’s name and Hitler’s opinion:

  . . . It is Jews who govern the stock exchange forces of the American Union. Every year makes them more and more the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions; only a single great man, Ford, to their fury, still maintains full independence.

  Eddie checked the book’s binding, obviously a fake, a trick to discredit a man who back home was considered close to a saint. “No way Henry Ford, Sr., thinks Hitler’s plans are the right idea. We’d lynch him.”

  “You might want to reconsider.” Mendelssohn handed Eddie another book, a bound set of four booklets. The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem. Circa 1922.

  In print below the title was, By Henry Ford, Sr.

  Eddie opened the book and scanned three pages. No way. Not possible. “Sorry, this has to be a fake.”

  Mendelssohn continued. “Ford owned a newspaper in Michigan, the Dearborn Independent. He used it weekly to blame us for anything he didn’t like, including starting the Great War to make a profit.” Mendelssohn tapped Henry Ford’s book in Eddie’s hands. “Try page twenty-two.”

  Eddie flipped and read:

  All over the United States, in many branches of trade, Communist colleges are maintained, officered, and taught by Jews.

  Eddie skipped and tried again.

  Until Jews can show that the infiltration of foreign Jews and the Jewish Idea into the American labor movement has made for the betterment in character and estate, in citizenship and economic statesmanship, the charge of being an alien, destructive and treasonable influence will have to stand.

  Eddie looked up at Dinah Rosen. Mendelssohn said, “Page thirty-one, under ‘Name the Enemy.’”

  Eddie skimmed the marked paragraphs:

  Judah has begun the struggle. Judah has made the invasion (immigration) . . . Let . . . civilization . . . know that the attacking force is Jewish . . . It is against this that the Jews protest. ‘You must not identify us,’ they say, ‘You must not use the term Jew.’ Why? Because unless the Jewish idea can creep in under the assumption of other than Jewish origin, it is doomed . . . It is an invasion, nothing less, and it is inspired and helped by influences within the United States. When it is not secret it is thinly cloaked with sentiment ‘these people are fleeing from persecution.’

  “Jesus.” Saint Henry seemed to think and believe a great deal like Hitler sounded. “Henry must not want to sell any more cars.”

  “To Jews.” Dinah Rosen half laughed. “Already translated into sixteen languages. Very popular in Germany, as you might imagine.”

  Mendelssohn continued. “Ford has said worse, but you get the idea. Henry’s not a fan. And he’s not alone. Lots of politicians and industrialists, both in America and Europe, fear the Communists first, and Hitler second or not at all.” Mendelssohn pointed at the two books in Eddie’s hands. “These men and those pages say seventy-five percent of the Communists in America and Europe are Jews bent on taking over their business empires or governments.”

  “Glad I’m Presbyterian; nobody’s afraid of us.”

  “Afraid might not be the only benchmark. What if a specific group of Americans became a burden? The Nazi’s solution for Jews has been previously applied to Chinese and Africans for their lack of value to the ‘new way.’ Why couldn’t the Nazi solution be applied to ‘Okies’? Families like yours or those already on the desperate trail to California? Labor camps have already been proposed. What happens when those people can no longer work?”

  Eddie palmed his forehead, sick to his stomach. “Don’t imagine I’m here for the history lesson, so . . . why are you showing me this stuff? Your extermination-camp evidence should be in front of the FBI or Congress or Walter Winchell.”

  “You’re at my table, Eddie”—Tom Mendelssohn unrolled a large set of architectural drawings and schematics—“because you are very valuable to the oil companies, Standard Oil in particular; you’ll be in the Canary Islands for at least a year, and you can read complicated blueprints. You’ll know these are authentic. I’d like to trade these very unpleasant documents”—Mendelssohn tapped the blueprints—“the already-built and to-be-built plans for extermination camps, facilities with railroad spurs, gas chambers, and four-story ovens. I’d like to trade these architectural and engineering plans stolen from Standard Oil’s Nazi partners . . . return them, in principal, to the Rockefeller family and their senior executives at Standard Oil.”

  Dinah Rosen handed Eddie a half-inch-thick, ten-by-ten envelope.

  Mendelssohn tapped the horror documents on his table. “In exchange for not making these public, we’d like you to help facilitate Standard Oil’s participation in our human import/export business . . . starting next week, via your next stop, the Canary Islands. You can smuggle these documents out of Palestine and into a very threatening position. You won’t be searched.” Mendelssohn paused. “Or executed if you’re caught.”

  Thirty very troubling minutes later, Dinah Rosen and Eddie walked out of the synagogue. Eddie had the large, incredibly damning, sealed envelope of papers flat against his back under his shirt, doing his best to calm his stomach and pass for stable. What he’d been shown and read would be devastating blackmail if a guy had the balls to play it against the biggest oil company on planet Earth, guys with Nazi partners who invaded other countries and built human extermination camps as . . . a goddamn business.

  Mendelssohn had tried to run the blackmail himself from Palestine, but the response he’d received from his target had scared him, he said, and then almost killed him. Mendelssohn wanted an intermediary; no more negotiations that were “close to home where the blackmail target could compromise my entire network.”

/>   Eddie had hedged participation, not out of principle—because on principle he thought the blackmail scheme was a damn good idea—but out of confusion, unsure if Tom Mendelssohn and Dinah Rosen had just conned a guy from Oklahoma who’d never seen pure evil in blueprints before. But Mendelssohn had picked the right guy to recruit—Eddie could read complicated blueprints. He understood engineering—temperature management, burn limits, the movement of material through a system. These plans were for a high-volume rendering plant, an interconnected series of intake, processing, and killing-floor stations . . . with a new twist that burned the finished product to ashes.

  Not a slaughterhouse. It was a disposal system.

  The oven designs were a first of their kind. The plans were undisguised, unapologetic. They were signed. The ovens were patented and trademarked. Eddie shook his head as he walked away from the synagogue, struggling to absorb the scale, the moral comfort with systematic murder as a business.

  Beyond the nearest corner, two men moved fast, as if something were chasing them, one checking over his shoulder . . . Eddie followed the guy’s eyes back to the synagogue, said, “Shit,” and grabbed for Dinah. An explosion flashed white, sucked the air off the street, and knocked Eddie flat. The synagogue’s roof erupted red; the front wall drove across the street as a solid piece then burst into massive blocks of stone and mortar. The largest section missed Eddie by three feet and knocked down the wall behind him. He rolled. Flaming debris rained on him and the pavement. The smoke mushroomed. Eddie sucked air, couldn’t hear, and blinked for focus. His clothes were scorched and smoking. The ragged crater that used to be the synagogue pumped dense, greasy smoke at the sunset. Eddie blinked left then right . . . more scorched plaster, gaping holes in walls. He patted cobblestones and touched Dinah’s dress. Part of her dress. Some of her was in it, about half. Vomit choked him and Haifa went black.