by Ward Wagher
“Yes, yes, but you know things no one on Earth should know.”
“And so do you, Herr Schloss. How do you explain that?”
He shook his head and smiled sadly at her. “I suppose sometime I should tell you a fairytale.”
“About the boots of foreign soldiers treading in Berlin, a man named Schloss who grew up an orphan, and a woman named Trudy?”
Schloss's heart skipped a beat, and he felt short of breath. “How can you know that?” he whispered.
“It was my choice to be here. It was a chance to right a great wrong.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Frau Marsden. This is my job.”
“I really do not understand,” Schloss said.
“All you should understand is that you have come home, Herr Schloss. This is where you belong. That other land will fade from your memory over the years. The Creator placed you here. This is your calling.”
“God did this?” He looked incredulous.
“The direct cause was a scientist five hundred years in the future, in another universe, who made a grave mistake. However, there are no accidents in God’s economy.”
“I simply do not believe this.”
“Do you have another explanation?”
He stared at her for a while and finally shook his head. “I must go.”
Schloss turned and walked back through the house to the front door. He opened it for Renate and then stepped out himself. The car was waiting at the curb.
“What was that all about?” she asked when the car began moving.
“I have come to the conclusion that governing a nation is easier than dealing with that woman.”
Renate laughed and slipped her arm through his. “Poor Hennie.”
# # #
December 11, 1941; 10 AM
SIS Headquarters, London, England
Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair sat at his desk with his head in his hands and watched his morning cuppa grow cold. The bombing raid on Bletchley Park the day before resulted in a complete disaster for the British war efforts. The Admiral had managed the British foreign intelligence services since 1922 and had never seen an operation as totally devastated as this one.
Not only had most of the scientists and support personnel been killed in the raid along with the equipment, but the resulting fires had also destroyed the building which stored copies of all of the project documentation. The years of effort, risk, creativity and endurance now lay in rubble along with the mightiest weapon Britain had ever forged against its enemies. Sinclair was at a loss as what to do next.
The admiral had left orders not to be disturbed, so he was initially irritated when the door opened. He then immediately rose to his feet as Prime Minister Winston Churchill marched into the room.
“We had quite the day yesterday, I understand,” Churchill said without introduction.
“Prime Minister, yesterday was the worst day of my life. I have prepared my resignation for you.”
Churchill marched past Sinclair and planted himself in the chair in front of the desk. Sinclair briefly looked confused and then made his way behind the desk and sat down.
“I was not able to see you yesterday, Sir Hugh. I spent the day closeted with Ambassador Winant trying to make some sense of what our cousins across the Atlantic have done to us. I must say the ambassador was beside himself.”
Sinclair shook himself and tried to fit himself into the conversation. “Er... right. Jerry are not behaving predictably, I must say. Moving the bulk of his U-Boat flotilla to the Med was a master stroke.”
“Indeed,” Churchill replied. “We will likely lose all of North Africa and possibly Egypt up through the Levant. And now we have suffered an attack on our boffins – just how bad was it?”
Sinclair lost his brief animation. “Prime Minister, it is just about as bad as it can get. The morning crew had just arrived and we lost most of them. That included the scientists. The buildings and equipment are completely gone. The records are up in smoke as well.”
Churchill stared at his spy-master for a full minute. Clearly he was thinking very hard. “Unfortunately I cannot accept your resignation just yet, Sir Hugh. We cannot allow the Huns to realize they scored a signal triumph yesterday. Fortunately, I have a pretext for cutting off the flow of intelligence to the Americans after what they did to us in the Atlantic.”
“The Americans have their own problems now, I am afraid.”
“Indeed they do. Unfortunately, this will further distract them from Europe just when we most need them.”
“And the Germans and Italians are not going to join the Japanese in this war.”
“Is that confirmed?” Churchill snapped.
Sinclair nodded. “We have completely underestimated Hess. He has outmaneuvered us with the Americans and the Japanese.”
Churchill's normal cocky smirk was in abeyance. “Just how bad was the attack on the Americans in Hawaii? It seems my normal communications with Washington are somewhat strained at this time.”
Sinclair picked up a folder and handed it across the desk to the Prime Minister. “I was just getting ready to review the report before I sent it to you, Sir. I believe the answer to your question again is: just about as bad as it could get.”
“Their battle fleet was in port?” Churchill asked.
“Indeed. They may be able to salvage one or two of the battleships. Another was slightly damaged. Worse yet, all four aircraft carriers were in port, and all were sunk.”
“And so the American west coast is mother-naked to the Jap. And we have our own problems in the Far East as well.”
“Singapore,” Sinclair said.
Churchill nodded. “And I do not believe there is anything to stop them short of Australia.”
“And the Aussies are fighting with our boys in North Africa.”
“If the Americans are tied up fighting the Japanese, there will be strict limits on what they will be able to send us,” Churchill said.
Both men stared into the distance, each captive to their own morose thoughts. After holding off the Germans during the Battle of Britain, the national mood was upbeat. They had a tough job, but they were English – they were up to it. Now in the space of a few short weeks, the skies had darkened again.
Churchill scanned through the report quickly, then spent several minutes pondering it. Finally, he shrugged, closed the folder and tossed it back onto Sinclair's desk. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and extracted a cigar. He carefully clipped off the end with a pen knife and then extracted a match from another pocket. After lighting the cigar, he puffed energetically and began filling the room with glorious clouds of tobacco smoke.
He looked up at the admiral and the twinkle was back in his eye. “Well, Sir Hugh, the Almighty never promised us an easy time in this life. But, I do know the world lives in healthy respect for mad dogs and Englishmen. We have a job to do. You have a signals section to rebuild. I need to scheme, bully and blackmail my way back into the good graces of my friend Franklin Roosevelt.
And with that, Winston Churchill stood and marched out of Sinclair's office.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
December 12, 1941; 8 PM
Reich Chancellery, Berlin
The Fuhrer's Meeting Room had become a prison, Heinrich Schloss thought. He had spent the last thirty hours in the building, leaving the room only for a couple of short naps and to visit the toilet. Other than Rainer and Schlempke, who alternated taking notes and running errands, Schloss decided there was not a more disagreeable group of inmates to share his incarceration.
Through the previous day and into the night the Berliners had begun gathering in the streets outside of the Reich Chancellery. Initially they seemed to be politely waiting, and now in this second evening they were becoming more anxious as their numbers grew. The word of the Gestapo murder of Rudolf Hess had spread rapidly and the people were furious.
The local polizei guarded the entrances to the building, and so far t
he people outside had been respectful. This evening it looked as though their patience was growing threadbare.
The impasse inside was worse. Schloss and Himmler had been unable to come to an agreement for moving forward. Goebbels and Goering were bystanders in the drama. Goebbels seemed to support Himmler, although he was wavering. Goering was resolutely in Schloss's corner. Ribbentrop was a non-entity in the room. After some early participation in the discussions, he was mostly silent, since everyone ignored him anyway.
“We do not have much more time,” Himmler said hoarsely. “The people in the streets are getting restive.”
“And your solution?” Schloss asked.
“Why we order them back to their homes, of course. By force, if necessary.”
“And what does that solve?”
“We've been over this time and again,” Himmler said. “You agreed with me that Hess was out of control. We give things a few weeks to blow over, and then after Yuletide we can begin quietly easing a story out to the people.”
Goering walked over to the windows and eased a curtain slightly aside as he looked out. “I do not think this is going to blow over, Herr Reichsprotektor.”
“What do you know, you fat blowhard?” Himmler snarled. “You do not know anything about the folk. All you want to do is prance around Carinhall in those ridiculous costumes. The people will listen to authority.”
“And everyone knows what that authority did.” Goering said.
“And what would you have done?”
“I am not sure what I would have done, but I do know I would not have shot Rudolf's brains all over the auditorium curtains in a very public fashion,” Goering said. “That should rank as one of the most asinine acts of the past decade. How can you say it was the right thing to do, Herr Himmler? Look out there.” he pointed to the windows. “That is the direct result of your actions.”
Himmler paled. He pointed his finger at Goering. “You are way out of line, Hermann. I am charged with protecting the Reich, and I will do so. If it requires blood running in the streets, so be it.”
“What is the Reich, Heinrich?” Schloss asked. “Look out there. Those people are the Reich. You would destroy the Reich to save it?”
“If necessary. There will always be good Germans who will stay in line and help keep things orderly”
Schloss shook his head and dropped into a chair.
“I have a statement prepared,” Goebbels said. “It will state that we had recent concerns about Herr Hess's sanity. He had an episode of madness in the auditorium and was accidentally killed in the confusion.”
Schloss snorted. “And who will believe that, Joseph? That horse left the barn days ago.”
“But Hess was unstable. We all saw that.”
“Unstable covers a lot of ground, Joseph,” Schloss replied. “Other than his unfortunate ideas about becoming the new Fuhrer, he was doing exactly as we instructed him. And doing it well, I might add.”
“And he was going to let the people put him in the Fuhrer's office,” Himmler said. “What about that?”
“When it came right down to it, he always did what we told him to. And to tell the truth, a Fuhrer we could control would have been useful.”
Now Himmler snorted. “A Fuhrer you would have found useful. I seriously wonder if what you are doing, Herr Schloss, will not eventually tear down everything the Fuhrer built. If he were still alive we would be sitting in Moscow right now, and we would have made a good start in eliminating the Jewish pestilence.”
“You think?” Schloss retorted. “When reasonable men pointed out the array of forces that potentially faced the Reich, all I have heard from you and Goebbels was bleating about how the Fuhrer would have won in the end. Wake up, Herr Himmler! Hitler was a remarkable man, but he was not a god.”
“So the truth comes out!” Himmler yelled, his voice cracking. “The ideals of National Socialism mean nothing to you. I suppose you think the superiority of Aryan blood is a myth.”
“I have never said that,” Schloss said quietly.
“And what did you want to say? I saw that look on your face.”
And I just forgot that Himmler is a skilled interrogator. It's almost magical how he reads people. And he just read me. Time to be very, very careful Hennie.
“That look on my face is the indigestion from too much coffee, and spending too much time with you,” Schloss shouted. “We have wasted two full days arguing while the Fatherland is teetering on the brink. If we wait much longer the situation will not be retrievable.”
“You are right,” Himmler said, now with a normal voice. “We have wasted too much time. We should do what I should have done in the first place.”
“And what would that be.”
“I am going to call out the SS divisions and clear the streets. This is going to stop right here, right now, tonight.”
The background rumble of voices outside rose to a collective shout as they spoke. The people were working themselves up to take action.
Okay, Hennie, can you do what you need to do? This is where you throw the dice. This is where you win or lose everything.
Schloss took a deep breath. “And you think you will succeed?”
“I know I will succeed. There is one thing the people understand, and that is force.”
“Have you looked out there, Herr Himmler? The crowd there is on the edge of going out of control. They may be in here tearing us apart before your intervention battalions can arrive.”
“Nonsense, Schloss. The shock troops are but minutes away.”
Schloss's heart was hammering madly when he stood up. He wasn't sure his knees would hold him.
“Seriously, Heinrich, have you looked?” he said as he walked to the windows. He nodded towards the glass. “Come, take a look.”
Himmler rolled his eyes. “I don't know what you are trying to do, Schloss. One crowd is much like the other.”
“Not this one,” Schloss said as he managed to stride over to that side of the room. “Come, Heinrich.”
“Oh, very well, show me what you need to show me. Then, we will call the intervention troops. You are right. There is little time.”
Himmler yanked the curtains apart and stood looking outside. “Now what is it? I am about out of patience with you as well.”
Schloss stepped next to Himmler, and pointed to the crowd with his left hand. “It is just this, Herr Himmler.” Then he pulled his pistol from the holster with his right hand. He jammed it against the lower part of Himmler's skull and pulled the trigger.
“Mein Gott!” Goering shouted as the blood and brains splattered against the glass and the curtains. “Schloss, what have you done?”
The door to the room opened and Rainer walked in, staring at the tableau. Goebbels suddenly scrambled towards the door. Schlempke stuck out a foot, and the propaganda minister crashed to the floor.
“I think you remain here for the time being, Herr Goebbels,” Schloss said.
He turned to Goering. “This was one of the men who would have destroyed the Fatherland. He was so blinded by his ideology he could not see what he was doing to the Reich.”
Rainer walked over to the table and picked up the telephone. He dialed a single number and listened.
“Golgotha,” he said. “Please confirm.” He listened again, then hung up.
Schloss looked at him. “Defanging the SS?”
“Yes, Herr Partieleiter. I have been working on the plan for months. By tomorrow morning, the party will be back in control of Germany.”
“If we are fortunate.”
Ribbentrop finally found his voice. “What now, Herr Partieleiter?”
I have just permanently changed the game, Schloss thought. For all intents and purposes I am now the master of the Reich, and had better begin thinking about what to do next.
“What now, exactly?” Schloss asked. “Rainer has opened the ball, and I have a lot of confidence in him. We must now prepare an announcement that Himmler is dead. Someone will n
eed to go out and tell the crowd. Then we need to form a new government.”
“If it has to be said,” the Foreign Minister said, “I am completely at your disposal.”
“Thank you, von Ribbentrop,” Schloss said. He turned to Goering. “What about you, Hermann?”
A very pale Reichsmarshall gazed at Schloss. He clicked his heels together and gave a short bow. “I am with you, Herr Partieleiter. I believe we have a lot of work to do.”
He turned and walked over to the door and opened it. A major in the Luftwaffe Air Police stood at the door.
“Herr Schloss is now in charge,” Goering said. He pointed to Himmler's body along the wall. “Please arrange to have this offal removed, and have the room cleaned up.”
The major saluted. “At once, Herr Reichsmarshall.”
“And give Rainer's security group every cooperation.”
Goering turned to Schloss with a crooked smile. “It seems I can also accomplish a few things tonight, Herr Partieleiter.”
# # #
It was well after midnight when Schloss took a sip from the coffee cup. He spat the brew back into the cup.
“Baah! That stuff is going to dissolve a hole in my throat. I probably should go lie down somewhere. Tomorrow is going to be another long day.”
“The first of many, I am afraid,” Goering said. “Things are going very well, though, I think.”
“Don't get complacent, Hermann,” Schloss said. “That’s usually when a wheel comes off.”
Goering chuckled. “We are using the skids now, anyway.”
Peter Schreiber chuckled. Schloss had ordered him to the Chancellery to help with the effort. “I fear there will be some improvisation.”
“Nothing like being on stage without a script,” Schloss said with a weary smile. “I trust you will have a speech prepared for me to give over the radio tomorrow morning.”
“I have the outline roughed in,” Schreiber said. “I would suggest you look at it soon, so that I can be sure it is what you desire.”
