Eric Norden - The Ultimate Solution

“We don’t have any choice,” He held up his hand to stave off my interruption. “Wait a minute, Bill, there are some things you’ve got to understand about this. Von Leeb may be a fanatic, but he’s not so wrong about the impact this thing could have if Berlin exploited it right. The way the international atmosphere is now, especially after the Manchuoko Incident, a proven breach of the Singapore Treaty would blow the whole lid off. Von Leeb realized that the minute you told him about the Jap, and there’s no way we can persuade him otherwise.”

I felt like I was sinking deeper and deeper in quicksand, and the last branch had just broken off in my hand.

“Come on, Ed, so the Japs have overstepped themselves a bit. You and I both know this kind of spying goes on all over the world. We have our guys in the Empire, they’ve got theirs over here, and don’t tell me we’ve never hit anybody in Tokyo. God, you should know better than that, the Gestapo has a whole assassination bureau, so don’t give me any crap about breaches of the Singapore Treaty.”

Kohler sighed.

“That would have been true a year, five years ago, but not anymore. Look, Bill, you’re a cop, it’s not your job to know about international politics. But that’s one of our specialties in the Gestapo, and I know a lot of things going on behind the scenes that you’ve never even dreamed of. For one thing, we are very, very close to an all-out war with Japan.”

I finished my martini without tasting it.

“Sure, sure, the papers have been saying that for years, ever since Siberia. But…”

“No, Bill, it’s different now. It’s not just a hard-line vs. soft-line debate anymore, it’s the real thing. The stalemate’s almost broken, the Contraxists are close to power and Schirach and Speer are on the run. Ever since Milch resigned the Luftwaffe’s been chafing at the bit, they just can’t wait to test their new nuclear missiles on Tokyo and Peking. The General Staffs still holding out, but even there Sepp Dietrich and a bunch of younger officers have swung over to the Contraxists, and they’re putting a hell of a lot of pressure on Guederian. Even Schirach’s reported to be wobbling, and that leaves Speer all alone in the Cabinet except for von Naumann, and he’s never carried much weight anyway. Speer’s fighting hard, sure, after thirty years of rebuilding Berlin he doesn’t want to see it all go up in a mushroom cloud, but it’s anybody’s guess how long he can hold out. The Luftwaffe brass are telling everybody that a preemptive strike would annihilate the Empire, and they can produce studies to prove our anti-ballistics missiles system will knock out the few nukes the Japs could launch back at us. That’s won over a lot of the fence straddlers, and we’ve heard rumors in Washington that Speer’s going to be forced to resign at next month’s Party Congress.”

This was all way beyond me, but I tried to follow. For some weird reason it looked like my life was intimately tied up in these Party machinations three thousand miles away, so I might as well understand what was going on.

“What about the Fuhrer?” I asked. “I mean, he still has the last word, and he hasn’t taken any position, I saw him on the viddy toasting the Nip Foreign Minister at the Duce’s funeral in Rome. So he could still veto the whole thing, I mean, nobody can move without his approval.” The thought was consoling. The Fuhrer had forged the Axis, he must still be behind it, and that would keep von Leeb’s crowd effectively out in the cold. And, hopefully, take the pressure off us.

“That wasn’t the Fuhrer you saw on the viddy.”

“What?” Pretty soon I’d be ready for the lobo ward at Bellevue myself.

“It was his double.” Kohler looked around cautiously. The bartender was chatting desultorily with the hooker down at the end of the bar, way out of earshot, but he still whispered it.

“The Fuhrer’s ga-ga. Senile dementia, total and irreversible, for the last five years. He just lays in that eagle’s nest on the Obersalzberg drooling and crying and screaming he’s been betrayed. Everybody in the Party hierarchy and the Gestapo’s known it for years, but it’s not the kind of thing you tell the great unwashed. I mean, how do you explain to two hundred million faithful that their idol can’t even control his bowels anymore? So they use his double for state occasions, funerals, ceremonies, and the Fuhrer stays a vegetable in Berchtesgaden.”

For a moment, I almost forgot my own troubles. The Fuhrer. It was hard to believe. I’d grown up under his shadow, he was part of all our lives, distant but intimate at the same time, master and father and teacher all in one. And now he was just a senile old man braying at the Bavarian Alps. Shit.

“You can mourn later, Bill.” There was no humor in Kohler’s smile. “What all this means is that it’s up to Berlin whether or not we break the Axis. And it’s going to be broken sooner or later, believe me. If von Leeb could produce a Jap assassin for a show trial in Berlin, prove he’s been trying to protect a Jew and that Jap Intelligence has been systematically liquidating loyal subjects of the Reich—well, that would be the ball game. And don’t underestimate the old man, either—he’s been around a long time, he was probably in on the Reichstag Fire Trial in ’33, and he knows his business. This trial of his would put the Contraxists in the driver’s seat overnight, and after that the Japs could either accept disarmament and Protectorate status or risk nuclear war.” He polished off his martini, and the glass rattled in his hand as he placed it on the bar. “We’ve got a tiger by the tail, Bill, and we can’t afford to let it go. If we did, von Leeb would snuff us out just as quickly as the Japs. And maybe not as painlessly.”

I could feel the acid pouring through my stomach.

“So you’re going along with it. You’re going to let us be set up as clay pigeons for the Japs. And all for the greater glory of the war party in Berlin.”

Kohler snorted.

“Fuck the war party, I’m thinking about Number One. Look, there’s still a chance we could come out of this ahead—sure, von Leeb won’t let us alert the Gestapo, but that doesn’t mean we still can’t use my men as backstops. We’ll bait the trap, but I’ll have a team of our best field agents following us day and night to spring it. We’ll be running a risk, yeah, but if we survive and nab the Jap we’ll be von Leeb’s fair-haired boys. We’ll be heroes of the Reich, for God’s sake, you and me, we’ll be given more power and honor than you could ever dream of.”

“ If we survive.”

Kohler’s momentary euphoria seemed to have dissolved. “Yeah. If .”

We sat over our empty glasses for a minute, and I think both of us were equally drained by the sheer immensity of the thing. Finally, Kohler slapped a twenty-mark note on the bar and got up.

“Let’s get back to Headquarters, I’m going to phone Washington and have them send a team down by the next jet And then we’ve got a trip to make.”

“Where?”

“Westchester. There’s a guy I want to talk to. He may be one of the few people left in the world who can give us some leads on this goddamned Jew.”

“Does the Jew really matter anymore?”

“No, but we’ve got to act as if he does if we’re going to keep the Japs hot and anxious on our trail. The last thing we want right now is for them to lose interest.”

“Yeah,” I said dully. “That would be terrible. They might even let us stay alive a few more days.”

We drove downtown, the traffic bad as ever, and I waited in the car while Kohler went in to call his men and brief Beck on von Leeb’s latest diktat. He was in there about a half hour, and all the time I kept my jacket open and my sweaty palm on the grip of the Schmeisser. I wasn’t going to enjoy my new role of target, that’s for sure.