“Arbiter was given the rank by the high prophet because it was a time of extraordinary circumstances,” Maggie added, “You know, he was chosen.”
Jamie became annoyed with the distraction, tapping Kingston on the arm to get his attention. “Your weapons are holstered on your back. You have grenades and a whole bunch of other cool stuff.” Then he had an epiphany, “Oh, I totally forgot, in this version there’s this cool weapon where you can make the enemy believe the wrong stuff. I love tricking people and then taking their stuff. Halo-2 didn’t have that feature.”
“Sound familiar?” Maggie asked.
Kingston didn’t respond, he was too busy being educated by Professor Jamie. “Watch—I’m going to fire my assault rifle at that bunch of grunts.”
The grunts crashed to the ground. “I killed them!”
Jamie noticed on the split-screen that Kingston’s man, Arbiter, was in trouble. “Put up your bubble-shield! Put up your bubble-shield on your vehicle!” Jamie exclaimed. But it was too late. Kingston’s vehicle was blasted to high heaven by the Covenant Soldiers. He wasn’t as good at saving humanity as he was in his commercials.
“You’ll do better next time,” Jamie said in a consoling tone.
Maggie added, “The Covenant Force that fights against humanity is united under the worship of the Forerunners, who believe they are superior to the humans and ordered their destruction … sounds a little like … um … you know … Nazi Germany.”
Kingston looked to his more receptive audience. “Jamie—I’m going to tell you about a similar fight between good and evil back in the 20th century. The good guys were called the Reich and fought against the evil Bolsheviks and the Zionists. But while the Reich soldiers were off fighting to protect their homeland, the Zionists hid within the homeland that they shared and pretended to be loyal, but were really working for the bad guys to cause the Reich to lose.
“The Reich fought back behind a brave, young Master Chief they called the Führer. But by that time, the Bolsheviks and Zionists had grown too strong. A great war broke out, and while the Führer fought courageously, his enemies were too powerful. With the Führer out of the way, the Zionists fought a civil war with the Bolsheviks to gain ultimate control of the world, called the Cold War. And when the Zionists triumphed, and became the world’s lone superpower, they controlled all the money and food, leaving the world at the mercy of the Global World Order they created.”
“So the bad guys won the war?” Jamie asked, confused.
“The war is still going on, Jamie. The Zionists didn’t know the Master Chief of the Reich had planted the seeds of trees that would bring them back from the dead. And the once barren meadow slowly grew into a forest. And today, each beautiful leaf on those trees represents their glorious return.”
Maggie felt sick. “FYI—the reason the Covenant Elite came over to the good side was because they realized that the Covenant had lied and were really the ones who were trying to destroy the world. And they will win in the end, because good always overcomes evil, even the kind that is hidden behind a lie.”
“Did you learn that in school?”
“No, I learned it from my Oma, Ellen Peterson. You know … your grandmother.”
She paused for a moment to let him know she’d put it all together. “I know you are the son of Josef, the one Hitler chose to lead the Reich back. But there’s one thing I haven’t figured out.”
“Which is?’
“Why was your father chosen? It just doesn’t make sense.”
“I’ll explain that to you when you are old enough to understand. Then you’ll be able to fully comprehend your legacy.”
Maggie viewed the branches of her family tree in her head. “I have no connection to you or your father, so I don’t understand what legacy I would have. Our only link is Oma.”
“Ellen is of royal blood, which makes us both part of a royal bloodline. She was a great woman who sacrificed for us all.”
“Oma was some sort of Nazi queen or something?”
“The royal blood chooses you, Maggie, not the other way around. It takes a while to embrace it. I know this because I fought against it for years. But you must understand that people will try to harm you because of your heritage. So you must be prepared to protect yourself.”
“Sounds like more Nazi lies. Who is writing your material … Goebbles?”
Kingston looked impressed at her knowledge of Hitler’s Propaganda Minister. “The fact is my father was killed by these Zionists, as was your father …”
“My father would never be part of this!”
“You’re a smart girl, Maggie, do the math.”
She began running for the door. “I’m calling the police!”
“The police are already here,” Kingston announced, and shouted for Eddie. He entered on command. “What’s the problem now, Maggot?”
“What are you, some kind of SS Officer?”
“Is that anyway to treat your uncle?”
“Fuck you! Is that better?”
“Watch your mouth. These people are just trying to protect you.”
She lost it. She ran to Jamie and took the controller out of his hand and threw it at Eddie. Then the Xbox. Jamie started screaming, but she didn’t care. She picked up the glass dish of M&M’s and threw it at his forehead. It was a direct hit. Eddie was knocked to the ground and candy spilled everywhere. Maggie ran to him and started kicking him with the tip of her crocs. She picked up the M&M’s scattered at the floor and hit him in the face like she were spraying him with bee-bees. Then something made her pause.
Eddie would never let her get away with this. He was pissed, and his forehead was bleeding, but he couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t touch her. She was royal blood—whatever that meant—and he was just a working stiff for the Nazis.
Another piece of the puzzle fell into place, causing her to stop the candy Blitzkrieg. She’d figured it out, but he hadn’t. They never told him, or more likely they lied to him. “You don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?” he asked, half angry, half dazed.
“Rose Shepherd—the one we went to visit today—she’s one of them. They killed your mother!”
Eddie glared at her, stunned. His eyes trailed to Kingston, who looked away like a coward. Eddie’s look changed from surprise to sadness, and then to anger. But there was nothing he could do.
Silence filled the room, until a distraught Jamie shouted, “Maggie, you always ruin all the fun!”
Chapter 60
Kingston’s mansion in Kings Point was only five minutes away. Yet Veronica knew the likelihood of the future president keeping kidnapped children in his home the day of the election was minuscule. And the possibility of him revealing their location to her was zero. But it still seemed like their next illogical step.
Any attempt to get there by car would be near impossible. The small town was packed with heavy security, clashing supporters and protestors, and practically every news outlet in the world. So Veronica began to run toward the mansion.
Zach caught up to her and made a convincing argument that her mad dash might garner some unwanted attention from the security force. She thought of those guys outside of Sterling’s with the machine-guns, and knew he was right.
So they walked. Veronica’s fashion slavery was backfiring, as the boots were killing her feet. But she figured they might come in handy when she put her foot into Kingston’s ribs. And Mr. Head of Security, Eddie Peterson, better be wearing a cup when she got a hold of him.
As they walked, Veronica mentally untangled the branches of Ellen’s family tree; from the dark roots to the blooming of the new buds, Maggie and Jamie.
“So if Joseph Kingston was the Chosen One, then Ellen was his mother and his father was … ” she blanked. All the Nazis were melding together in her mind.
“Heinrich Müller—head of the Gestapo—captured by the CIA after the war, and later became Gus Becker,” Zach informed.
“Why couldn’t sh
e just have told us this in the first place, instead of sending us on this crazy chase?”
“Because nobody would believe her. If she made such a claim against Kingston, it would’ve been laughed off as the ramblings of a crazy old lady. She was counting on a respected journalist getting the proof she needed, to give her claims credibility. Only then could it be stopped.”
“Don’t hurt yourself patting yourself on the back.”
“I didn’t mean me—I think she meant Maggie.”
Veronica looked surprised, as Zach continued, “I also think Ellen wasn’t just trying to stop it, but to also protect her family in the process. She didn’t want Kingston to be harmed. I think she considers him to be a victim of all of this. Just like her other children, whose heritage led to their demise.”
“If she wanted to protect her family, then why put Maggie in harm’s way?”
“I don’t know, but I get the feeling that before this day is over we’re going to find out.”
“Do you still think Kingston isn’t connected because his political views differ from Hitler’s?”
“I guess I forgot something else that Hitler said—that the great masses of people will more easily fall victim to the big lie than the small one.”
Veronica nodded. And noted for future use, that one of the first signs you’re with the wrong man is when he starts quoting Hitler. “Is there any reason I should believe you this time?”
“You shouldn’t, but I’m all you have right now, so I have desperation on my side.”
They pushed their way toward the gates. Veronica thought maybe if she could see the house, she could feel the presence of her children. She was banking on one of those special innate powers to finally kick in—the ones she thought she’d naturally obtain upon becoming a mother—but no such luck.
Zach suggested that before they start banging on the gates and demanding entrance, they regroup to come up with a more plausible plan, or at least one that would reduce their chances of being shot by security. Veronica didn’t want to leave at first, but eventually agreed.
They re-traced their steps to Zach’s Audi. Veronica’s feet felt like someone was driving knives into them, but that wasn’t even close to the sharpest pain she was feeling at the moment. They drove to the Great Neck Public Library. It was housed in a modern-looking stone building that was located a couple of miles from the Kingston mansion.
On the short ride over, they looked up Joseph Kingston on the Internet. All the information they found was in relation to his more famous son. This past Father’s Day, Kingston gave a speech at the Merchant Marine Academy in King’s Point, about his father and the qualities he believed he’d ingrained in him. For most candidates, the family rhetoric could be taken with a grain of salt, or in some cases a salt mine, but Veronica believed every word in this case, especially the parts about his father instilling loyalty into young Jim. This family had been loyal to each other for generations, never divulging their secret.
On the official Jim Kingston website there was an entire page devoted to his family. One picture stood out to Veronica. It was of a twelve-year-old Jim Kingston with his father. They were sailing on a boat in matching striped rugby shirts. The mother in Veronica was attracted to the father/son dynamic. But the cynic in her saw a politician trying to exploit the heart strings.
With little information on the Internet about the elder Kingston, and since the local newspapers only archived articles on their websites going back fifteen years, Veronica and Zach headed for the microfilm room in the library. They weren’t so much interested in information on his father’s life—they were more interested in his death.
According to a local newspaper, Joseph Kingston, 33, of Kings Point was gunned down at the local marina after getting off his boat on a September afternoon in 1972. There were no witnesses, and no arrest was ever made. Veronica winced at the gory picture of Chosen Joe, sprawled out on the pavement in a pool of his own blood.
“Notice the shirt,” Zach said. “It’s the same one he had on in the photo on the website. I think there was a witness. I think young Jim Kingston witnessed his father being murdered when they returned to shore that evening.”
“Maybe that was his fishing shirt, or his favorite. My kids would wear the same clothes for a week if I’d let them.”
“With all the father/son photos he could have used on the website, he picked one related to the boat his father was murdered by, wearing the same shirt. I think it’s a symbol.”
Veronica thought he was reaching, but nothing would surprise her at this point. Zach scrolled through the next six months’ worth of articles that followed the murder. Microfilm was a slow and tedious method of getting information, but Zach plowed ahead skillfully.
There were plenty of related articles over the remaining months of 1972, but none of them shed any light on the motive, and despite a couple of locals being brought in for questioning, no real suspect ever materialized. There were rumors in some of the gossip pages that the murder was connected to the terrorist group Black September that had been responsible for the murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, just weeks earlier. That they had targeted Joseph Kingston for marrying into a prominent Jewish family.
The marriage reference sent Zach off in another direction. “They love society stuff out here,” was all he said.
He searched until he found what he was looking for—the society section of a 1959 paper. It was coverage of the wedding of Joseph Kingston and Erika Sterling.
“I should have identified her as Erika Sterling from the photo on Ellen’s Facebook page,” Zach said. “Besides the visibility of being the mother of a presidential candidate, I had attended a couple fundraisers that she was at.”
“Stop being so hard on yourself. That wedding photo is from over fifty years ago. How were you supposed to recognize her?”
The only photos that Ellen had posted on her page were of the bride and groom. But the newspaper had complete group shots of the wedding party and assorted guests.
“In the letters Flavia showed us, Ellen mentioned that Josef’s wedding was the only time that all of the Apostles were in the same room,” Zach said, intently studying the photos. “We’re probably looking at some of the most notorious war criminals in history, including Himmler and Rudolph Hess, hidden right in plain sight. And there’s our old friend Gus Becker,” he said, pointing at the screen.
Veronica picked out Erika Sterling’s brother, Aligor. “I don’t get it. I thought he might have been responsible for Ellen and Carsten’s deaths to protect his legacy, but I never thought in a million years that he’d be part of this group. He dedicated his life to getting justice for persecuted Jews, and he was in that concentration camp with Ben.”
“Just like Ellen was,” Zach said. “And I don’t think it was a coincidence that he paid her a visit the last week of her life.”
As did Eddie. Veronica now saw those visits in a different light.
She again looked at the close-up shot of bride and groom. Veronica couldn’t shake what Ellen wrote in the letters about this wedding “merging” two Apostles families, which allowed the Apostles to associate closely without suspicion.
She now feared that the strategy for growing the family business had changed from merger to acquisition. And her children had been part of a hostile takeover.
Chapter 61
For Ben Youkelstein, it was a race against time. He needed to get to the children before they were taken away forever. He also had to stop this sham of an election.
He knew where he needed to go. The bigger challenge was his hand-eye coordination, which had admittedly regressed since he’d hit eighty. He rarely drove anymore, so trying to maneuver Veronica’s large vehicle was a struggle.
Getting near Kingston’s house was an even steeper challenge. He was forced to park about a mile away and walk. His legs often struggled to make it from bed to bathroom these days, but if this were the last thing he did on this earth, he would stop t
his horror movie from having a sequel.
He passed Kingston supporters, protestors, and media. But suddenly his slow journey was impeded, and his umbrella went flying to the pavement. Standing in front of him were two plain-clothes security guards. Modern-day SS stormtroopers dressed in brown uniforms with black boots. One of them smiled smugly at him, while the other picked up the umbrella.
“Sorry about that, old man,” the smiling one said. The one who’d “accidentally” kicked it away in the first place.
His partner handed it back to him. “It’s a long walk for an old timer like yourself. We’re going to offer you a ride.”
“I think I’ll walk, thank you,” Youkelstein said politely. “It’s not often you see such sun this time of the year.”
“I think you should reconsider,” Smiley said.
“A car will stop beside you in thirty seconds, the door will open and you’ll get in,” said the one who’d retrieved the umbrella. With his bright blond hair, and being that he was a lapdog for the Nazis, Youkelstein thought they should call him the Golden Retriever.
True to their word, a stretch limo with dark tinted windows eased beside him and the back door opened. Youkelstein maneuvered his old bones into the car—no reason to put off the inevitable showdown. A hand reached out to help him—it belonged to an old friend.
“Hello, Ben,” said the man he’d known for so many years as Aligor Sterling.
Chapter 62
They drove past the hordes of people outside the gates of the estate with help of the police escort. The gates opened and they pulled up to the grand front entrance.
Youkelstein and Aligor exchanged no words as they were whisked into the mansion.
“It’s such a beautiful day, Otto,” Youkelstein broke the silence. “I’m surprised you didn’t choose to walk instead of ride … in your chair.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ben.”
The Heritage Paper Page 21