John Schettler - Steel Reign

“We did, and Schirmer could not miss at that range.”

“Then you hit it?”

“I saw the hit with my own eyes, and the fires we started. Then… something very strange happened. I thought it was Saint Elmo’s fire at first, all around the ship.” He could see it all so clearly in his mind’s eye. The strange lights in the heavens seemed to descend and surround the ship, finally collapsing inward to a scintillation of jade green phosphor, and then fleeing into the night. Yet his greatest surprise was in finding that the target of Schirmer’s guns had vanished. He could still hear the echo of the ship’s guns, a quavering, hollow sound that seemed as though it was being stretched thin.

“Then it was gone,” he said. “The carrier was not there any longer.”

“Blown up?” asked Raeder.

“I hardly think that possible. The hit was good, but not enough to sink a ship of that size in one blow. Besides that, we would have heard any explosion powerful enough to sink it, and all I heard was the report of our own guns. Furthermore, there was nothing whatsoever on the water. Suddenly the seas were completely calm. It was… Most disturbing.”

“Your first Officer corroborates this?”

“He was standing right beside me. Then, seconds later, the watchmen spotted another ship.”

“The ship you boarded—this USS Norton Sound?”

“That is correct, Admiral. And what you see now before you was taken from that ship, along with the rocket we delivered, and all the other equipment, including the radar sets. There is a second missile on the Goeben , and Detmers has the ship itself, underway with a prize crew aboard. These are facts that simply cannot be dismissed.”

Raeder shook his head, a perplexed expression on his face. “But why litter such a ship with these false documents? And what would a ship like this be doing out there without any crew aboard? This is a real mystery, Heinrich.”

“Indeed it is, sir. Now kindly have a look at this… I hope your English is good enough to read it.” He reached in to produce the Life Magazine, again dated October 13, 1958, which he pointed out to Raeder immediately. Then he opened it to the article on Montgomery.

“What’s this?” said Raeder. “Montgomery?” he leaned forward, studying the cover photograph closely. “I did not know he was quite so old.”

“I know it will seem impossible,” said Heinrich, but that is supposed to be a photograph of the General as he appears in 1958. Look at the article, it all speaks to his great accomplishments in the desert war against Rommel.”

“Our comedian at work again?”

“Possibly, yet I will tell you that the longer you sit with that, the more disturbed you will become. It was one of several such magazines we recovered, and this next one is quite revealing. We found it in a sea locker below decks. Apparently someone kept it as a memento.”

He produced yet another copy of that same magazine, only this edition was much earlier, but still impossibly dated, October 29, 1945, and this time priced at 10 Cents. Its cover showed a black and white photograph of a man out hunting with his dog and shotgun in the woods, with the subtext “AUTUMN.” Heinrich quickly flipped to the relevant article, a two page spread with many photos, and the headline struck Raeder like a cold slap in the face: “Allies Indict 24 Top Nazis For War Crimes – Hitler’s aides are mugged like common criminals before trial by Allied Military Tribunal of Big Four.”

There, spread out over the whole two pages, were pictures worth thousands of words, faces, shown dead on and in profile, of all 24 men. They were faces Raeder knew well, names that were now riveted in the highest echelons of the Nazi power structure. There was Reichmarschall Hermann Goring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, General Albert Kesselring, only this time without the smile on his face that was his trademark. Every face seemed harried, lost, deflated, the eyes vacantly staring at the inevitable fate that had befallen them. It was astounding, photos of Franz von Pappen, Generals Wilhelm Keitel, and Alfred Jodl, and there, last of all in the lower right hand corner of page 39, was a man he had spoken to only two days ago, Admiral Karl Döenitz.

“Commander in Chief of the German Navy? Why, they’ve given Döenitz my title! And this is accusing him of crimes against persons and property on the high seas. Well that is certainly true, if they also want to convict themselves of that same offense.”

“May I, Admiral?” Heinrich took up the magazine and began reading… ‘Less than six months after the end of the war against Germany, the victorious Allies made the first move to punish the leaders of the defeated Axis. In the white-walled chamber of Berlin’s People’s Court, an indictment against 24 top members of the Nazi hierarchy was presented before the International Military Tribunal. All 24 were charged with participating in a common conspiracy to commit crimes against the peace by using the German State as an instrument of war….’ Look at them sir, accused of crimes against humanity; lined up like common criminals.”

Raeder smiled. “That is not too far from the truth.” The Admirals disdain for the Nazi mentality was well known. Heinrich handed the magazine back to him, and Raeder continued reading further. “We must make it clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it.” He turned the page. “Yes, we certainly did. Where could they have possibly obtained all these photographs? My God, look at the expression on that face.” He pointed to Döenitz. “I wonder why they left me out of this little club?”

“Who can say, sir?”

“Why would they concoct something like this?”

“Is it a concoction Admiral? A Fabrication? That is certainly the question. Turn the page—there’s much more.”

Now Raeder stared at a large full page photo of men on cots, spread out, as the article caption claimed, on the hanger deck of the carrier Enterprise . The title was : “The Long Voyage Home—Having won its war in the Pacific, the Navy returns to have its day.” There followed photos of US Navy sailors arriving in Panama, and a dancing girl entertaining a group of enthusiastic seamen in their dress whites. The following page showed an eerily authentic looking photo captioned: “The U.S.S. Enterprise, sunk six times according to Jap claims, enters New York Harbor by the dawn’s early light.”

Kapitan Heinrich could see just the hint of discomfiture in the Admiral’s eyes now. “Every page of this magazine is consistent in its depiction of the time as 1945—just like this other magazine dated to 1958. The message they both convey is quite obvious: from the perspective of those years, this war has ended, and Germany was utterly defeated, our leaders trotted into a courtroom and tried for war crimes. I first entertained the thought that this was all propaganda, but here we find a ship that I believe you will not locate in the registry of American vessels, and with rockets pulled from its hold like teeth from a shark, and all the other equipment—advanced radars, radios, other equipment that we do not yet understand. I suspect, Admiral, that upon closer inspection, we will find this equipment is much advanced. We even noticed serial numbers dated to 1952 or later. Certainly we have nothing to match these rockets now. Yes, as preposterous as all that seems, read further. It leaves you with a terrible yawning doubt, page after page…”

Raeder flipped through the pages. Even the silly advertisements all conspired to speak the same message. One for the New York Central Train Line spoke of how ‘wartime travelers made post-war travel news.’ Another from a baby food company was showing an infant born in ‘The Year of Victory.’ Swift & Company proclaimed: ‘Final, complete victory has, of course, hastened the day when there will be plenty of meat for everyone.’