Eric Norden - The Ultimate Solution

“Why, for God’s sake? You had him in your hands, you said yourself he would have been a great propaganda plum for the Japs…”

Beck just shook his head wearily.

“You don’t understand, Haider, you probably never will. What happened was that I learned the truth, the same truth the old priest tried to give you before you murdered him. Felix is not a survivor of your camps. He comes from a different society, a different plane of existence, a parallel space-time continuum if you will. And in his world the Nazis lost the war in 1945!”

I looked back and forth between the two of them in bewilderment. Either they were crazy or I was. Or all of us.

“Tell him, Felix,” Beck urged. “ Tell him.”

Hirsch looked at me, his eyes anguished. “It is true.-How it happened or why I do not know. My memories of my own world are blurred and distant, when I try to remember it’s like walking through cobwebs. There was another city, another New York, a city I fled to forty years before to escape the Nazis.” He laughed bitterly. “To escape. And there was Rachel, and Hilde, but I can no longer see their faces. Father Francis asked me so much, at the beginning I could still remember things, but now it’s all vague, unreal, insubstantial; My last memory, I was lying in bed, Rachel was there but I cannot remember… And then it was like a great hand, clutching at me, wrenching me away, and then cold and black and a billion stars like eyes…” His voice broke. “When I awoke the first things I saw were the Nazi flags on the buildings, the men in Nazi uniforms. To a Jew in my world they were only a terrible memory. Here, suddenly, they were reality.” He ran a trembling hand across his forehead. “Reality. I’m no longer even sure my world ever existed at all, outside my own mind. Sometimes I wonder if I exist myself. Perhaps it is all a dream, a nightmare. Perhaps I am already dead.” He paused. “God knows, I must have gone a bit mad at that moment of awakening in your asylum planet. I did not recover my senses until Father Francis took me to his loft. Father Francis, the man you murdered.”

His eyes fixed on mine, then fell away.

“You poor innocent monsters, you do not even see your own evil. But Francis did. Of all the people I might have stumbled upon, he alone could have restored my sanity. And did. He thought it was no accident that I was brought to him, he believed all of this was part of some vast cosmic plan. So does Peter in his own way. I do not know. Perhaps I have just died and been plunged into gehenna, the hell of my people. What better devils than you?”

Beck spoke quickly, desperately.

“Don’t you see, Haider, this man is a key, a gateway to another life, another world. If we learn his secret, if he can just grasp and control it himself, we can penetrate the secrets of the universe!” His eyes gleamed hotly, fixedly, and I suddenly realized he was more than a little mad. “Perhaps I can leave this butcher’s world with him, part the veil of time and space, find a place that isn’t drenched in blood, that doesn’t revel in sadism and suffering…”

Hirsch only sighed.

“Poor Peter, he is a. prisoner of his hatreds as much as all of you. He sees me as some magic carpet to Utopia.” He smiled gently at Beck. “I’m just a lost old man, Peter, a Kasper Hauser thrust into an alien world. I’m not your savior. There is no going back for me.”

“ No! ” Beck almost screamed the. word. “There must be a way, there must.” He turned to me, holding out his hands. “Haider, you can come too, all of us can escape. When Felix was with the priest they studied history books together, they traced the dividing point between our worlds. It was only 1934, Haider, just forty years ago. Here, Giuseppe Zangara assassinated President Roosevelt, Huey Long won the Presidency in 1936, and America stayed neutral until Germany had developed the atom bomb and conquered Europe. Then it was too late for us, we were forced to accept the Ultimatum. But in Felix’s world Zangara missed Roosevelt and killed another man named Cermak. Roosevelt lived and went on to lead America in a successful war against Germany. Long was never elected, instead he was assassinated himself in 1936. Don’t you see the symmetry, the threads linking the two events? Our worlds must still be close together, there must be portals, keys, Felix must be one himself…”

“No, Peter. I will never return, I feel that. My life is over.” He regarded me closely, without fear, then touched Beck lightly on the arm, “And I think yours is also. The Lieutenant cannot afford to spare either of us.”

He was perceptive. With the two of them out of the way, it was unlikely the Japs would ever bother me. In fact, it looked like Beck had been my main antagonist all along. I turned to him, as it suddenly dawned on me.

“You were never authorized to kill Grauber, were you? Or von Leeb? Or me? You did it all on your own, didn’t you?”

Beck nodded. His sudden passion seemed to have drained away.

“Tokyo would never authorize assassination of Reich officials on Reich soil. Not even such small fry as you, Lieutenant. I issued the instructions to Komeito in my capacity as New York station chief and they were followed unquestioningly, just as they had been in the past.

But they were never approved by higher authority. When Tokyo learns what’s happened of course, they’ll try to liquidate me. Right now they can’t afford any international incidents.”

God, so von Leeb had been wrong. It wasn’t Tokyo that was taking chances, it was Beck.

“Then you’re a dead man either way, aren’t you?” I asked coldly.

His voice was desperate now, the pale eyes bulging. “Not if you’ll help us, Haider. Listen, we can hide Felix, somewhere in the country, they’ll never find us, we’ll discover the key to his world, together Haider, together…”

“Together,” I repeated, and shot him through the right eye. The blood squirted into the air and he fell to the carpet with a soft plop. I turned to the old Jew.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know who you are or where you come from, all this stuff about other worlds is over my head. But as long as you’re around I’m going to be in the eye of the storm. I could hold you for Berlin, but with von Leeb gone that would just create a thousand new problems, and the more important they think you are, the more likely it is they’d decide to shut me up permanently. Anyway, it would be no kindness to you.”

“No,” he said quietly, “no, it wouldn’t.” The blue eyes fixed on mine. “There is nothing for me here. My only moments of happiness were with a little girl who resembled my daughter, my daughter as she was many years ago. And that little girl was a whore. Yours is a world of ice and fire, Lieutenant. Perhaps Father Francis was right. Perhaps you are being judged in some way I cannot understand, perhaps your script is being rewritten. And perhaps I have some role in that. I am sorry for you all.”

I shot him neatly through the forehead, and I don’t think he felt any pain. When the Japs found out what Beck was up to, they’d trace him here and find them both. The case would be closed, for all concerned. I’d have some explaining to do to the Commissioner, but I still had von Leeb’s letter and that should spare me most of the flak. And I could go to sleep for once without wondering if I’d wake up in the morning. It was a pretty good feeling.

It’s the day after now and I’m dictating all this on a Uher I requisitioned from Communications. I’m going to have to hand in some kind of report, but this is strictly for my own files—if and when there is an official inquiry I’m going to be prepared. But with Kohler and Beck out of the way it should be fairly easy to keep my hands clean, so long as Berlin doesn’t press for a full report, and that seems pretty unlikely after this morning’s headlines. Heydrich has just purged Speer and Schirach from the Council and handed the Empire a forty-eight-hour ultimatum on Siam and Indochina, which means the Contraxists are firmly in the saddle and war isn’t far away. There’s talk of evacuating the civilian population to the Catskills, and if that’s really on, the Department will be working us to death for the next few weeks. When Nygard came in with the tape-recorder he told me all leaves had been cancelled and there was talk of fifteen-hour shifts.