Eric Norden - The Ultimate Solution

“Move over next to Beck,” I said finally, fighting back a mounting sense of unreality. “Then empty your pockets, carefully, no fast moves.”

He moved slowly, like a man walking under water. When he’d strewn the floor with a lot of junk, scraps of papers, a briar pipe, a couple of pens and a plastic tobacco pouch, I told Beck to back away and walked to within a foot of the old man.

“Hands in the air.” He obeyed, in that same dazed slow-motion, and I patted him down. Nothing.

“Both of you, down on the floor, cross your legs and put your hands in your pockets.” Beck groaned involuntarily as he struggled to his knees and I could see the blood welling from underneath the wire around his wrists. The Jew—shit, the Jew!—settled silently to the carpet, his eyes fixed dully on the gun in my hand.

“All right, Beck, how did you find him?”

He was silent for a while, his eyes squeezed shut, but after a minute or so he looked up, his old self again, the shock of failure apparently assimilated. Beck was resilient, all right, and still dangerous.

“I had a head start.” He smiled drily. “Five weeks’ head start, to be exact, from the minute I saw a dupe of Fiske’s report in Washington. It had already been forwarded to Berlin, so I knew we had to move quickly.”

More blood was running from under his trouser leg. I had to give the bastard credit, he wouldn’t beg.

“How many Jap agents are there in the Gestapo?”

“A few. Enough.”

I shook my head.

“How do they pay you, Beck—a fixed salary, or so much per murder?”

“I don’t do it for money.” His tone was still calm, almost patronizing. God, I’d love to get some electrodes on the son of a bitch.

“An idealist?” I forced what I hoped was a scornful laugh. “I didn’t notice any slant to your eyes.”

Beck looked up at me.

“I’m not a mercenary.” There was a sudden, fierce throb of pride in his voice. “I hate this filthy system of yours and everything it stands for. I’ve been fighting to destroy it for years.”

“That’s why you work for the Japs then—‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’?”

“Yes. And for other reasons.” His eyes were fixed on the floor, the only sign of strain a slight tightening of his facial muscles. “The Empire is a feudal, autocratic system, but it’s still on a human scale. It robs men of their territory, just like the Reich, but at least it leaves them their souls.”

What hypocrisy. I snorted, and turned to the old man.

“And you—you really are a Jew?”

He didn’t answer.’ I thrust the gun forward.

“I asked you a question.”

“Yes.” The faintly accented voice was barely audible. “Yes, I am a Jew.”

“How does it feel, Haider?” Beck asked bitterly. “How does it feel to see the last of a species? You might as well be standing in front of a golden condor, or a Kodiak bear, or a snow leopard.” His composure vanished as his voice rose, taut with barely repressed fury. “How many men, women and children did you butchers slaughter to make him the last, Haider? How much blood is on your hands?”

This was getting out of control.

“Just quiet down, Beck, I’m only a policeman, save your lectures for somebody who makes policy.” I got up, still keeping a safe distance from the two of them. “I’ve got more questions, but first I want to talk about me.” I aimed the gun at his gut.

“Who took over from the Jap I killed? Who else have you got on my trail?”

Beck looked at me with something close to contempt.

“I would have taken you out myself, Haider. The Japs wouldn’t have known anything about it.”

I looked at him blankly.

“But then why…”

“Haider, you still don’t understand. The Japs don’t know I’ve got him, nobody knows. This is my own show, the rest of my agents are still searching Manhattan for him, I’ve kept them compartmentalized from the beginning. I had to call in the Komeito to help eliminate Grauber and Fiske, and I made the mistake of giving them a crack at you, but I handled everything else myself. I was just as worried about my own agents finding the scent as you and Kohler.”

This was losing me.

“Wait a minute, Beck, you’re working for the Japs, why…”

“I told you, I’m working against the Nazis.” He paused for a moment, then looked up at me and spoke softly, intensely. “I don’t suppose my motives would mean anything to you, Haider, you’re just another one of their programmed zombies. But I’ve been fighting this foul system all my life. My father was with the Resistance in ’46, one of the regular army officers who defied Eisenhower over the Ultimatum. The collabos hanged him with Patton and the rest after the Chicago A-bombing.” That same fierce look gleamed in his eyes again. “I was weaned on bitter milk, Haider. I’ve never lost the taste.”

I listened to him with fascination. I’d known there were some Patties still hanging on in dark corners, but I never would have believed they could penetrate the Gestapo.

“My mother and a small circle of friends carried on after Federation,” Beck continued. “I was groomed to enter government service from the very beginning. I put on a good ideological front and I was already a district leader in the Viking Youth when the Japs recruited me. That was back in the fifties when they were contacting a lot of Resistance survivors to build their network here. They needed us because they were too damned visible on their own, and we needed them because they were the only force left opposing the Reich. They may have been doing it for their own imperial reasons, but along the way they managed to preserve some of the values that’ve disappeared in the rest of this madhouse world.” He paused. “But my first allegiance is to those values, not to Tokyo. That’s why once I found the Jew and talked to him, I wasn’t going to let him out of my hands. Not for anything.”

This was getting deeper every minute.

“How the hell did you find him?”

“The same way you did, through the skull. Although you were one up on me there, I never thought of the kids as witnesses. I came to New York on my own from Washington the day after I saw that first report. I alerted our apparatus here and went to see Fiske, and then Pickett. That was why they both had to die once you started—either of them could have blown me if you’d ever started asking the right questions. Pickett gave me a description, not very good, but enough to start on.” God, I’d never even asked Pickett who he’d talked to before me. “And then I thought, was it pure accident that he buried the skull in Washington Square Park? Was he just passing by and decided it was as good a spot as any? Or was there some connection, some specific reason he chose that location. It was a long shot, but I hung out in the park day after day, striking up conversations with every gray-haired elderly man who seemed to be a habitué of the place, looking for anything off-beat, anything furtive or suspicious. I must have gone through around sixty possibilities before I found him. Playing chess, maybe even with that poor old priest you knocked off. I followed him, waited till he was alone, and then pulled him in.”

It had been that simple. “And you managed to keep it a secret from your own men?”

“Yes. At the beginning I just planned to wait a few days, talk to him, find out how he’d escaped. That’s when I took him here, for secure interrogation. Then I would have got him out of the country and into Japanese territory. After all, he’d have been safe there, and the Imperial psy-war people could have made an idiot out of Heydrich, maybe even blackmail him with it, pressure him to tone down his demands for parity in Southeast Asia. No, I planned to hand him over, I would have allowed him to be used as a political pawn as long as it would hurt the Nazis or delay the Contraxists’ war plans. But only until I talked to him. Then everything changed.”