Tales of Tinfoil: Stories of Paranoia and Conspiracy

by David Gatewood (ed)

  “No, no, no,” I repeat, not wanting to accept reality. I turn, looking at the fire burning within the control panel behind us.

  Dr. Zizzane is gone.

  The End — One of several

  About the Conspiracy Theory:

  Hitler and the Nazis

  Conspiracy theories about Adolf Hitler abound. Most popular among these is the claim that Hitler did not commit suicide in his underground bunker on April 30, 1945, but instead escaped—perhaps with Eva Braun, perhaps to Argentina or Brazil—and lived out his days in secret anonymity. Other theories involving Hitler and the Nazis stretch credulity even further. The Nazis were building flying saucers; they buried millions of pounds of gold in Lake Toplitz in the Austrian Alps; they had a secret underground base in Antarctica; or was it South America; or the moon? And Hollywood has now built a cottage industry out of claims that the Nazis sought to acquire mythical artifacts of supernatural power: the Ark of the Covenant; the Holy Grail; the Spear of Destiny.

  I, of course, chose to write about none of these things and all of them. None of them are addressed in detail, but according to this wacky story, all of them could be true.

  Conspiracy theories are prevalent in society for an entirely natural reason—we want to make sense of the world in which we live. Our minds are hardwired to seek reasons, to look for answers, but we don’t always like the answers before us, and so it’s tempting to cling to conspiracies as a way of resolving conflicts with our ideology.

  Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy. Armstrong walked on the Moon. Airplanes brought down the World Trade Center. Don’t like these answers? Make up your own. Everyone else does, but beware—reality changes for no one.

  Are there real conspiracies? Sure. The Union Carbide cover up of the disaster at Bhopal is one example; another is the way cigarette companies resisted the scientific evidence about smoking for decades, softening and downplaying the health impact. But the common denominator here in both of these examples is that the conspiracies were exposed with irrefutable, independently assessed evidence.

  Actual conspiracies are rarely as devious and widespread and insidious and evil as people imagine. Humans simply are not that good at keeping secrets and planning such complex calamities. Besides, when it comes to conspiracy theories, truth is stranger than fiction.

  I hope you enjoyed this tongue-in-cheek look at the ultimate conspiracy theory—that they’re all true, but that they happened in different worlds.

  Thank you for supporting independent science fiction. You can find my writing on Amazon, or you can catch up with me on Facebook and Twitter.

  The French Deception

  by Chris Pourteau

  August 1944: Paris, France

  He sat, fidgeting. Waiting wasn’t something he was used to, especially now, in the twilight of the war. When most orders coming down from Allied Command included the words “advance” and “opportunity.” When most of the men and their officers were racing not just to finish off the Third Reich, but to end the war altogether and go home.

  The uncomfortable wooden chair made Maj. Gen. Leonard T. Gerow shift his weight. Placing his elbows on his knees, he stared hard at the floor and twirled his helmet around in his hands. Like his commanding general, he preferred the “steel pot” field helmet to his officer’s cap. More practical when you spent more time on the front lines than you did in Corps HQ. It rolled between his fingers, its three general’s stars flashing like pinwheel sparklers on the Fourth of July.

  Gerow didn’t like feeling anxious. Being nervous—or showing it, at least—was unbecoming a U.S. Army officer. It was certainly inappropriate for the commander of the U.S. Army V Corps, the largest fighting force in the European Theater. If his commanding general realized just how uneasy Gerow really was, the general might just slap him across the face. That was a very real possibility, Gerow knew.

  “You need to pull yourself together,” he said quietly to himself, sitting up straight. “Discipline is first in the body, then in the mind.” Repeating the old drill sergeant’s refrain settled him down inside. He needed to be razor sharp and arrow straight when he finally—

  “The general will see you now.”

  Gerow looked up to see a black man standing in the doorway. He had a kindly smile on his face and snow on the roof.

  About as far from the disposition of his commander as a subordinate can be, thought Gerow. And he’s still able to keep the Old Man in line. He shook his head in wonder at that thought as he got to his feet.

  “Thank you, Sergeant.” As he walked past the aide-cum-butler, Gerow patted his left breast pocket. Yes, it was still there. And checking for it also afforded him the chance to wipe his sweaty right palm on his uniform.

  “Gee! Come in!”

  Bombastic and slightly nasal as always, thought Gerow. He noted the fire burning in the huge fireplace. Odd, that, in the heat of August. But the general did so like his stage props.

  “How fares V Corps? Ready for the parade down the Champs-Élysées?”

  Gerow took the hand offered him, careful not to outgrip his commander. He returned the general’s smile, which was soaked in victory. Gerow was glad he’d dried his palm.

  “Yes sir.” As a simple soldier who usually avoided the spotlight, Gerow rarely indulged in small talk or spectacle. But he knew it was expected here, part of the ritual of comrades-in-arms. “The boys are ready to receive the accolades of the French people, sir. And, I wager, the grateful kiss from a mademoiselle or two.”

  His commander’s smile broadened. The mention of the mademoiselles had been a calculated risk. The general ran hot and cold on any form of levity suggesting a woman’s virtue was anything short of perfect. Clearly, the spirit of liberating the world’s most romantic city had swept his commander away with it, as it had everyone else.

  “Glad to hear it. Damned glad! Although, I must admit, the prospect of an end to this war brings me a bit low. I do so enjoy killing those Nazi bastards! Maybe once we’re done mopping up here, Ike’ll send me to the Pacific and I can kill Japanese. Now wouldn’t that be grand?”

  Gerow nodded politely, though it was not a sentiment he shared. He was one of those soldiers racing toward the war’s end, longing for the warm hearth of home.

  “What brings you in, Gee? Leclerc giving you trouble again? I’ve never seen a man so anxious to free his own capital and so inept at going about it, all wrapped up in one body. The man’s a prima donna! And there’s only room for so many of us in this goddamned war!” Gerow’s commander winked. “Especially with Monty taking up space enough for two!”

  “Er, no problems with Leclerc, sir. He’s fine, sir.”

  “Right.” The general shoved a cigar in this mouth and smiled around it. “What then?”

  Gerow felt his heart beating in his chest—right behind the document in his left breast pocket, in fact. Maybe if his heart pounded hard enough, it would shoot through his uniform like a cannonball and blow the frail document to smithereens. Now, wouldn’t that just solve all their problems?

  “Well, sir…” Gerow had no idea how to proceed. And his hesitation was visibly irritating the general. Gerow thought he felt his cheek twitch.

  “Gee, you were the first corps commander on the beach at D-Day,” the general said. “You were the first ranking general to enter Paris while the Huns were still tucking tail and scurrying down alleyways like the sumbitch cowards they are. I’ve never seen you delay in even acknowledging an order, much less carrying one out. But something’s got you rattled. What is it?”

  Gerow stood up a little straighter. Discipline is first in the body, then in the mind.

  Reaching inside his uniform coat, he withdrew the weathered pages scrawled with longhand script and handed them over.

  “General, I never thought I’d ever say this to you,” said Gerow, his eyes coming up to meet his superior’s. “But I think you’d best sit down. And read this.”

  Puffing his uneasiness into the room on the back of cigar sm
oke, the general took the yellowed papers with reverence for their obvious age. His cigar fiddled back and forth between his teeth. Ash flicked unnoticed on the floor.

  At least he’s nervous too, Gerow thought. Oddly, he found that comforting as the two men sat down. The general donned a pair of glasses and began to read…

  * * *

  April 14, 1865

  I am not Abraham Lincoln.

  Despite my mummer’s farce of the past four years, I would like to begin with that simplest and starkest of factual statements. As best I may, I will lay bare the sincerity of my claim for your consideration and hope that you—whomever you may be who reads this—understands my motivations to first betray this country, then work so very hard to preserve her whole. I am in earnest in my desire to sweep away the smoke of recent events and balance the numbers on history’s ledger.

  Now that the war is over, now that the Righteous Cause of these United States has proven its Holy Mandate, I possess the liberty of thought and circumstance to set these truths down for posterity. As I will relate to you, I have evidence to fear for my own safety, which is why I feel compelled to write down this secret history.

  I suspect my scribblings should remain hidden for another hundred years or more to prevent the very war I worked so hard—eventually—to avoid. But that future is hazy and out of my hands. I must needs follow my conscience, as I have always done, and hope it leads to a just destination. So let us begin with the nominal necessities.

  My name is Jean-Pierre Barras, and I am a French Creole from New Orleans. In 1861, I was approached by the Sûreté, the French intelligence bureau, with a mission: to insinuate myself into the role so recently won by Mr. Lincoln in the national election and, in so doing, ensure the defeat of the Union in its struggle with the Southern Rebels.

  I will not waste your time in attempting to justify my agreement to aid that agency in its treasonous acts against the United States. For me, joining that cause was, in fact, an act of patriotism to my home state of Louisiana, so recently itself having become a component state-nation within Jefferson Davis’s Confederation. But as I came to learn the true intent of my recruiters, my role reversed—like some trickster in a play who moves from hero to villain or vice versa. My story, as you might guess, is not a simple one.

  I had but one qualification for the task for which the Sûreté enlisted me: I looked amazingly like a certain gangling, awkward backwoods lawyer. Though my Creole accent was no proximate match for Mr. Lincoln’s Kentucky speech, many maneuverings of the tongue over long months of labor provided me a passable drawl. I committed to memory the names of key political figures and learned the strengths and animosities of Mr. Lincoln’s chosen cabinet. I practiced to an art form the execution of his left-handed signature, which required I learn once again to write, as I am naturally right-handed. There was much training to be had on many fronts, to be sure.

  I was also fortunate that Mr. Lincoln had chosen to wear a beard not long before I took his role from him. He adopted the whiskers at the behest of a little girl, Miss Grace Bedell, who wrote him a letter during the election of 1860, insisting that if he wore a beard, all right-thinking women would recognize in him a semblance of their own bewhiskered husbands and naturally urge those men to vote for him. I say I was fortunate that Mr. Lincoln took the young girl’s advice, because I have a rather pronounced chin and Mr. Lincoln did not. Thanks to Miss Bedell’s letter, copying Mr. Lincoln’s appearance was made all the easier.

  To appreciate the reason for the Sûreté’s recruiting me, one must first understand the rebirth of nationalism in France in the middle of this century. Napoleon III, nephew of the most famous of dictators by that moniker, took over France with a coup d’état in 1851, a decade prior to my involvement in affairs of state. With the excuse of debts unpaid to its European lenders, he managed to convince Spain and England to join France in an invasion of Mexico late in 1861. But when Napoleon III’s two venerable nation-allies discovered his real intent—to conquer Mexico and lands beyond—they pulled out of the coalition early in 1862, leaving the descendant dictator to prosecute his mission alone as a solitary conquistador.

  But what had Spain and England discovered that—after forming the compact and sailing halfway around the world—influenced their rapid departure? Popular speculation amongst newspapermen and politicians alike limited their motivation to fear of being engaged in an extended war with Mexico. But, to a certainty, that tells only half the tale.

  Napoleon III’s real intent was the invasion of a certain North American power currently engaged in a distracted action of its own; I of course refer to the War Between the States. In short, Emperor Napoleon III proposed to invade the United States from a subjugated Mexico.

  Why, one might wonder, was Napoleon III so set on invading the Union? Certainly, he appreciated the vulnerability, and attendant opportunity, an internal civil war afforded to an external power with imperial intent. Such was the lesson of history in Ancient Times. The inability of the Greek States to unite effectively against Persia. Rome’s internal strife opening the door for the Visigoths. Napoleon III saw this as his moment in history, and the United States was a power he sought to humble. One can always make one’s reputation with great dispatch by flattening the biggest bully on the playground, after all.

  A most practicable reason for French ambition to extend the glorious boundaries of empire derived from the fact that most of the world’s supply of cotton came from the South. Nearly eight in ten pounds used in Great Britain alone freighted from Southern ports. Whereas cotton rated 10 cents a pound in 1860, at the height of the War Between the States, it climbed to nearly $1.90 a pound. By controlling America and its cotton supply, Napoleon III could control much and more a great deal closer to home in Europe.

  Such was his intent when he, by way of the Sûreté, recruited me.

  One might ask why I, a Southerner and Louisiana man, would sign on to an undertaking that promised to visit strife upon my own home. I admit, my sight was limited at the time. I saw advantage in a covert ally for the Confederacy as an impermanent thing.

  It is true that, should Napoleon III’s plans reach fruition, some of the South—namely Texas, and perhaps even Louisiana—might suffer in the short run by way of French occupation. But I had assurances from my new allies that France was a friend of the South and that, while French forces would need to cross Southern soil to reach their Northern targets, France would leave unmolested both the people and the lands of the South. There was even talk of Napoleon III joining Jeff Davis in an alliance against the North. These thoughts inured my mind toward my principal mission and away from concerns over its possible long-term ramifications for my home state and her allies.

  Moreover, I knew for a certainty that, in the end, the South had no real chance of turning aside Northern Aggression. The North had resources, industry, and tough men. The South had the men, but little else.

  You are no doubt familiar with the illustrations in Harper’s Weekly. Frame one now in your mind of two players sitting at a Faro table, one from the South, the other a Yankee. The Southerner would be the scrappy man of spirit but of little wherewithal; the Northerner, the well-dressed dandy with the greater share of chips in front of him. Were you to come back to the table two hours later, whom would you expect to see sitting there? In short—Southern defeat in the war, like at the Faro table, was only a matter of time. And so I grasped the French straw that dangled in front of me. It was, to my mind, the South’s only hope in securing its secession.

  In August 1861, a spare four months after the American Conflict began, Prince Napoleon—the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte and cousin of Napoleon III—visited the White House. It was an unmitigated disaster. There are numerous caricatures evident in broadsides and newspapers since the Revolution of 1776 that set in contrast coarse Americans against their well-bred European cousins. The one is rough, ill-mannered, poorly dressed, and usually smells of the farm. The other impeccably dressed, of effete but p
erfect social character, and perfumed with the richest of scents.

  Prince Napoleon’s visit with President Lincoln might have been the sitting model for such artists in their studios of satire. Bereft of the ability or willingness to make conversation, President Lincoln occupied the visit with shuffling chairs about to and fro under the guise of hospitality, and shaking hands with the visiting delegation no less than two times. Later in the evening at dinner, one political faux pas after another followed. To say the least, Prince Napoleon and his entourage were not impressed with America’s leadership.

  Following this farcical state visit, the Prince reported back to his cousin with an unflattering portrait of a President who some in Mr. Lincoln’s own administration referred to as a baboon. Napoleon III took this as further evidence that an opportunity was at hand to disabuse a weak leader of his position of power. He no doubt reasoned that a man so despised by those closest to him would not sorely be missed by the same.

  One might wonder at which point I began my playacting. In February 1862, Mr. Lincoln was struck by tragedy. His young son, Willie, perished from a fever. It was during this time that Mr. Lincoln took to isolation and suffered bouts of despair. His staff and, in truth, the entire Executive Branch of government became acclimated to functioning in his absence.

  This is the moment the Sûreté chose to sweep its cloak across the eyes of the nation and stab its dagger in her President’s back. All was accomplished in secret and silence. I was introduced into my role seamlessly, as the magician reveals his assistant at the end of a parlor trick.

  My odd manners, my awkward personal interactions, my desire to stand apart and sit in shadow—all appeared perfectly natural under the guise of a grieving father. And by the time I recovered from my professed dyspepsia of the heart, those around me came to know me—that is to say, myself in the mask of Mr. Lincoln—anew.