Though safe, it was a prison and that fact grated on people’s nerves. Today they would have some release. It was the Führer’s birthday and Tomal had a special day of festivities planned to not only celebrate the birth of this great man, but to give everyone a temporary release from their dismal surroundings.
There would be games, fine foods and cakes. Songs would be sung and toasts made in the Führer’s honor. This would brighten everyone’s mood while the generals worked above ground to repel the invaders and bring in reinforcements to envelop and destroy the Soviet forces. Those grand plans changed at eight o’clock in the morning when the ceiling began pulsating with a relentless barrage of artillery fire.
This was all Valnor’s doing, Tomal was certain of that fact. The sniveling whelp was in command of the Soviet offensive against Berlin, and Valnor knew full well the significance Hitler’s birthday held for him. The petty little man chose today of all days to begin his pitiful attempt to take the city from Tomal. He would fail.
Rightly so, Hitler cancelled the planned festivities and ordered all officers to the map room where they would oversee the destruction of the Red Army. On the map, Tomal could see Belorussian artillery moving in from the east. Polish armored divisions were pressing up from the south, while Russian and Ukrainian troops were descending from the north; each with a mind to demolish Berlin.
“We’ve got them now,” Hitler declared and began moving grey flags around the map. “Have Field Marshal Schömer bring army group center up from the south. Then have the IX Army set up a line facing west to press out toward the IV Panzer division north of the city in a pincer movement to envelope these incompetent Slavs. This will anticipate a southward attack by the III Panzer Army to envelope this Belorussian front and smash them between General Steiner’s army detachment advancing north from Berlin. It’s perfect!”
Tomal had his doubts that they had enough men and equipment to take such aggressive action, but who was he to question his Führer’s judgment? Later that day General Steiner had the nerve to report over the radio, since nobody would dare defy Hitler’s orders in person, “I do not have the men to achieve these orders. In fact, unless the IX Army retreats immediately to the west we risk being cut off and destroyed. It is already too late for us to move northwest back into Berlin to help with defenses.”
“You will do as you are ordered,” Hitler hollered back.
“Those orders ensure certain destruction of my men, and I will not give that order. You may relieve me of my command, but no one here will follow that order either,” General Steiner defiantly declared.
Hitler flew into a rage and ordered the general shot on the spot. When informed that there were no SS officers left in that army group to carry out his order, the Führer suffered a complete nervous collapse.
“How am I supposed to run a war while I’m surrounded by such incompetence? My plans are impossibly complex to devise. I am the only one who can fathom them in their entirety. You all only have the simple task of following those orders. How hard is that?” Hitler bellowed with fists flailing about and tearing at his hair.
His longtime mistress, Eva Braun, attempted to console him, but her touch just sent him into another tirade. “My brilliance conquered Poland. It conquered France. It overran Russia all the way to Moscow before you treacherous brood turned on me. Now we are surrounded and trapped; it is all your fault! The war is lost!”
Those last four words landed on the room like an artillery shell. Defeat had never been a consideration, and now the Führer made it a statement of fact. Hitler grabbed Eva’s hand and yanked her toward their private rooms. “Come. We will marry immediately and spend one last night as husband and wife before the end.”
Tomal did not see or hear from Hitler again that day. He stayed locked inside his private chambers while the Soviet forces overran the streets of Berlin. The German defenses, at this point, consisted of severely depleted, badly equipped and disorganized divisions of old men or green as grass Hitler Youth members. They were no match for the battle hardened and hatred fueled forces arrayed against them. Soon the Chancellery building above them came under direct attack.
By this time, the bunker had been completely cut off from communicating with German forces. That morning Hitler and Eva emerged from their private quarters long enough to host a modest breakfast for everyone in the bunker in celebration of their nuptials. During the quiet meal, a radio broadcast of soft classical music was interrupted by a BBC news update.
“We interrupt this broadcast to bring you urgent news from Italy. The Reuters News Service is now reporting that Italian partisan forces have executed Italian Dictator, Benito Mussolini. Mussolini’s body and that of his mistress, Clara Petacci, have been strung up by their heels to hang from meat hooks in the city of Milan. There the bodies are being stoned, spat, and urinated upon by local citizens.”
“Turn it off,” Hitler ordered. “I will not suffer such a public spectacle at the hands of my enemies.” With that said, Hitler and Eva once again retreated into their solitude.
An hour later, a loud gunshot echoed between the concrete walls of the Führer’s bunker. The origin of that dreadful sound was Hitler’s study. Tomal waited a few minutes, before breeching the Führer’s privacy and entered his study. The first thing he noticed was the room carried a heavy scent of burnt almonds, which Tomal knew was associated with cyanide poisoning.
There before him, lying dead on the sofa, was his Führer. Eva lay on his left with her legs drawn up while Hitler lay with blood dripping out of his right temple. He had shot himself with a pistol that lay at his feet and Eva had passed away by taking a cyanide capsule.
It was all Tomal could do not to dive upon his idol’s body and weep bitter tears at the loss of such a great man. The heart of Germany had ceased to beat. Tomal eventually willed his feet to exit the tragic scene worthy of Shakespeare and announced that the Führer was dead.
Soon after his discovery, the two bodies were carried up the stairs to ground level. They were carried out the bunker’s emergency exit and brought into the garden behind the Reich Chancellery building. There the bodies were doused with diesel fuel and set on fire. Looking on, a small group of loyal party officials raised their arms in one final salute while standing just inside the bunker doorway.
While standing there in the doorway watching the body of his mentor disintegrate in the flames, reality came crashing in around Tomal. Vice Admiral Voss stood next to him and said, “Leadership of the Third Reich has fallen to you now. We should begin discussing terms of surrender with the Soviets.”
“No,” Tomal said with deep sorrow. “I was the Reich Minister of Propaganda and led the fiercest activity against the Soviet Union, for which they would never pardon me. Nor can I escape because Hitler charged me as Berlin’s Defense Commissioner. It would be disgraceful for me to abandon my post.”
“What will you do then? Those are not just artillery shells you are hearing fired from twenty miles away. That is gunfire just a few blocks from us. The city is lost,” the Vice Admiral concluded.
“I am going to spend time with my family,” Tomal declared and descended back into the bunker.
Unlike many other leading Nazis, Tomal had proven his faith in Hitler by moving his entire family into the bunker. He entered the two rooms dedicated to his family and found the young ones playing with toy trains on the floor. His two eldest children lay on their beds reading books while his wife, Magda, read in a recliner.
What Tomal realized at that moment was that he did not fear death; it meant nothing to him as an immortal. Nor would he particularly regret never seeing his family again. Never during all this time on this hellhole of a planet had Tomal ever considered taking a wife. Limiting his sexual exploits to one woman was just unnatural and confining for his taste, but over the years, he watched Gallono derive so much satisfaction from his experience that he decided to give it a try.
The children he would not miss either. Yet again, he watched Gallono
take great joy and pride in fatherhood. Tomal could not stand the thought of Gallono enjoying a more fulfilling and thorough experience on this planet than him, so he gave fatherhood a try; six times in fact thanks to Magda’s nagging.
Try as he may, he simply found no pleasure in it. The children were an intolerable distraction, draining his precious time and money away from other endeavors. No, he did not fear losing his family. His greatest fear was dying a meaningless death.
To that end, he made arrangements with the bunker’s dentist to be a propagandist for himself. During dinner, the good doctor injected each child with morphine to make them fall unconscious. Next, an ampoule of cyanide poison was crushed into each of their mouths.
Shortly after the children’s passing, Tomal rose from the dining table, put on his hat, coat, and gloves. He then hauled his wailing wife up to the same Chancellery garden that held Hitler’s remains. There he shot Magda in the temple to end her incessant blubbering and carrying on about the children.
He then turned the pistol toward his own head. He was so close to foiling Hastelloy’s secret plans with the Jews. More than anything else, he regretted that he would now have to start over with a new existence to try and bring down Captain Hastelloy.
With that final notion, Tomal pulled the trigger without a single thought given toward the grievous violation the act of suicide brought against his Novi heritage. He was something else now, beyond such limiting considerations.
**********
“Your crewman is a piece of work, that’s for sure,” Mark declared. “What sort of man can do that to his own family without remorse?”
“Remorse,” Hastelloy repeated. “I feel quite confident in stating that remorse never even entered his thought process. What he feared more than anything else was a death devoid of dramatic effects. To the end, he was what he had always been: the propagandist for himself. Whatever he thought or did was always based on this one agonizing wish for self-exaltation, and this same objective was served by the murder of his children. They were the last victims of an egomania extending beyond the grave. However, this deed, too, failed to make him the figure of tragic destiny he’d hoped to become; it merely gave his end a touch of repulsive irony.”
“What end?” Mark countered. “He just got regenerated through that Nexus device of yours to terrorize yet another generation.”
“I don’t mind saying, I would love to get Tomal on my couch for a few sessions,” Dr. Holmes said with a hint of shame touching his words and betraying the preamble.
“That conversation would be quite difficult to arrange I’m afraid,” Hastelloy replied dispassionately. It was obvious that it was not his favorite topic, but questions needed to be answered about the matter.
“Where is he now?” Mark demanded. “One of the greatest war criminals to ever exist is still around under a new identity. Is he standing outside the Oval Office right now waiting for us to arrive? If you want to get anywhere near the President you had damn well better be forthcoming about Tomal’s whereabouts.”
Chapter 42: Controlling Interest
“Have you gone completely mad?” Colonel Azire demanded of Terrance as he helped the handcuffed man to his feet. “Ordering an unprovoked military strike on a sovereign nation. My country; you must be stark raving mad.”
“Protecting the interests of all humanity is an act of patriotism, not lunacy,” Terrance answered without turning around.
“You know what, I don’t even care about your motives or mental state,” Azire countered. “Fancy connections within my government or not, you’re going to hang for this and I will lobby hard to be the one who kicks the stool out from under your feet.”
In response, Terrance stood there with a look of indifference upon his face. Seeing he was getting nowhere with the NSA operative, Colonel Azire looked toward his other captive. The supposed alien met Azire’s eyes for a brief moment and then slowly and with purpose directed his vision down toward Terrance’s hands cuffed behind his back. Azire followed the line of sight until he saw the fingers of those shackled hands tapping and twitching against the palm of his hand.
Azire found the nervous tapping of Terrance’s fingers at odds with the serene look upon his face. His next spoken words were equally calm. “After everything you’ve seen, how can you stand there ready to hang me instead of shooting him? The threat we face is bigger than you, me, even your nation and mine. It’s a global threat that must be removed. How could you with a clear conscience stop an attack of conventional weapons that would have eliminated that threat?”
“I see no new threat,” Azire declared. “You Americans, the Russians, the Chinese, any of you have the ability to end the world at a moment’s notice with your nuclear weapons. From my perspective, this is just another player wielding the same ghastly power over the world. Other than a display of their weapon’s power to establish yet another state of mutual annihilation, this new player shows no signs of wanting to use the weapon. Why then are you taking such reckless actions?”
“Control,” Terrance admitted. “The Russians, the Chinese, we control them with money, trade agreements, even assassinations. There are any number of tools at our disposal to keep their actions aligned with our interests.”
Terrance motioned his head toward the communications officer. “These creatures controlling the pyramid weapon; we have nothing, no leverage. They are beyond our ability to control, and that is unacceptable.”
“The alternative you chose then was to start a war with this country and its allies? That has to be equally unacceptable,” the alien declared.
Terrance let a sly grin touch the corners of his mouth while allowing his twitching fingertips to come to rest. He then looked directly at the alien as if they were the only two in the room. “They would never have known what caused the destruction of the pyramid and Sphinx without you betraying my plan of action.”
“But we do know,” Azire interrupted. “We have you, your men, your orders, and your illegal incursion into our airspace with intent to drop bombs on us. The world will know all about this.”
Terrance closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them once more to look at Colonel Azire with an almost apologetic stare. “Yes, the damage to public perception is already done. That means I have nothing to lose by destroying this site with the only means left to me now.”
Colonel Azire found his eyes dancing from side to side as he struggled to comprehend the implications of that last statement. He suddenly felt like a sucker punch hit him square in the stomach when he enunciated the conclusion he reached. “You’re going to nuke. Your fingers; somehow you sent a message to initiate a nuclear strike.”
“I had no wish to harm anyone, least of all myself, but safeguarding the planet for the next generation now requires it. Even killing a million people here in Cairo serves the greater good of humanity,” Terrance declared. “As of right now, I’d say we have less than twenty minutes. I suggest you make peace with your god as I have already done.”
Colonel Azire looked to the alien standing before him for help. If they truly were extraterrestrials with advanced technology, they just might have a way to intercept an inbound ballistic missile. Any hope in that being the case vanished the moment his gaze fell upon the individual sporting a look of complete panic. Now out of options, Azire reached for his cell phone and quickly dialed the only individual who had any chance of helping them now.
**********
All hell broke loose the moment the warning claxon began blaring its screeching wail. This was no drill, and the nuclear silo beneath the hardened soil of Minot, North Dakota came alive with activity.
“Major, we just received an order for immediate launch.”
“Very well, verify the order and target with launch control center, and begin validating the launch code attached to the order,” the commanding officer responded without hesitation. It was not Major Houston’s job to debate the wisdom of his orders. He and his men were there to execute orders when
given, no matter how appalling the implications were of following such orders.
“Negative, this order is not coming from launch control. It’s coming through the National Security Agency channel and the target is Cairo, Egypt. What should we do?”
“Let me see the whole message,” Major Houston ordered and soon had a printed transcript placed in his hands. The original transmission had come from a bio-comm unit, a device implanted in each of the twelve NSA executive committee members.
The major took a moment to marvel at the lengths that some men were willing to go to in order to serve their country. Major Houston had sacrificed many aspects of his personal life to live in an underground nuclear silo facility, but he never subjected his body to mutilation. These NSA executive types though, they thought nothing of having wiring and tiny mechanical devices laced into their nervous systems to allow communication, even while in captivity.
The original message had been tapped out in Morse code:
Taken captive by hostiles in Cairo, Egypt. Stop
Transponders and comms compromised to the Egyptian military. Stop
They have everything. Stop
Proceed with final solution. Stop
Execute now, now, now. Stop
The rest of the message was targeting coordinates and authorization codes.
Major Houston drew a deep breath and then gave his orders. “Lock down this silo from the other nine. Sever all communications with launch control center and strategic missile command. Then begin the launch order authentication protocol.”
“Sir, we can’t launch without presidential approval. We just…we can’t.”
“We’ve had presidential approval since the moment President Truman signed the establishing documents of the NSA. We are NSA operatives first and Air Force Officers second. All of us in this silo are bound by that originating presidential order above all others, even when it comes to this. Understood?”
Origins: The Reich Page 26