The Bells of Hell

by Michael Kurland

  ‘You mean you never noticed it either?’ he asked. ‘With all the time you spend staring at yourself in the mirror, I would have thought that surely … Your left, on the top.’

  She contorted her mouth in an effort to get a better look at the tooth in question. ‘I don’t see it,’ she said. ‘I think you’re having me on.’

  ‘I would never,’ he said.

  She turned to look at him. ‘England,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Germany,’ she said.

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘The Duke.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Hmmm,’ she said.

  ‘This is, I believe, quite hush-hush,’ he told her. ‘They’re sending a flying boat for me tomorrow morning. So don’t go mentioning it to any of your women friends. And most especially not to any Italians you happen to be sleeping with.’

  ‘Cross my heart,’ she said, using her pinky to do just that. ‘I’m a patriotic slut.’

  TEN

  America is permanently on the brink of revolution.

  It will be a simple matter for me to produce

  unrest and revolts in the United States …

  – Adolf Hitler

  George Vanders was short and stout, with shoe-polish-black hair parted in the middle and slicked down on both sides of his pasty white face. He squinted up at Blake suspiciously from behind the counter. ‘So where you from?’

  ‘Pennsylvania. Philadelphia. Got here a few months ago to work at a print shop in Brooklyn, but it closed.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Vanders acknowledged. ‘That’s what Jersey said. There’s a lot of that going around. You union?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well I’m not. I pay thirty-five cents an hour, take it or leave it.’

  Blake shrugged. ‘I’ll take it.’

  Vanders thought this over. ‘You a God-fearing Christian?’ he demanded.

  Blake took a step back. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Who says I’m not?’

  ‘You drink?’

  ‘A couple of beers now and then,’ Blake said.

  ‘Dope?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You a user? Reefers? Muggles? Mojo?’

  ‘Do I take drugs? No.’

  ‘I don’t hold with that stuff. Clouds the mind, and if you haven’t got a mind, what have you got?’

  Blake leaned on the counter across from the little man. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you need a typesetter. I’m a typesetter, fifteen years’ experience.’

  ‘Fifteen years?’

  ‘I started young. Do I have the job or not?’

  Vanders considered. ‘Jersey says you’re OK,’ he said. ‘But I thought the last guy, Binchy, Bunchy, something like that, was OK too, but he turned out to be a boozer. You’re not a boozer?’

  ‘Swear to God, I’m not.’

  ‘A lot of you guys turn out to be boozers. Maybe it’s something in the ink. Well … tell you what …’ He reached under the counter and produced a couple of pages of handwritten copy and passed it over to Blake. ‘Can you read this?’

  Blake looked at, and then turned on the desk lamp on the end of the counter and looked at it some more. Much of it was printed in large, irregular block letters ‘Sort of,’ he said.

  ‘Go back to the box,’ Vanders said, with a gesture toward the back of the shop. ‘If you can set it – clean, mind you – in, let’s say, twenty minutes the job’s yours.’

  ‘What are the specs?’ Blake asked, ducking under the counter.

  ‘Eight by ten, half-inch margin all around, ten-point Bodoni. Heads maybe eighteen point, bold if you think it works. Subheads whatever. You figure out the spacing and whatever else. It should scream out at the reader is what Gerard says, whatever that means.’

  ‘Scream?’

  ‘Like I said, you figure it out.’

  Blake took a deep breath and stared at the copy. It was racist garbage. ‘I’m on it,’ he said.

  Blake had spent two days preparing for this interview. He knew, as well as he could, what to say and what not to say. He knew the three big ideas that motivated the people he was going to meet: that Roosevelt was destroying America and maybe he was a Jew, that America First meant we had to stay out of Europe and let Germany march forward to its true destiny, and that It Was The Jews. Everything that was wrong with this country; the reason you couldn’t get a job, the reason your sister’s boyfriend was cheating on her, the reason the landlord was bugging you for three months’ rent, the reason the Giants had lost the Series last year, it was the Unseen Hand of the Jews.

  The All-American Printing Co., on Broome Street just off Elizabeth, a couple of blocks north of Manhattan’s Chinatown, was what is known in the trade as a small jobs press. It had a treadle-operated letter press behind the counter and a small electric rotary press occupying the back room. It did mostly handbills, newsletters, and tickets, much of it propaganda for the German-American Bund and the American Nationalist Party. The handbill Blake had been given to set advertised a coming event, and was to be posted in store windows and passed out on street corners.

  Sixteen minutes later he locked the form and ran off a test page on the letter press. He brought the page up to the front and handed it to Vanders. ‘You ought to get a Linotype,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, I ought,’ Vanders agreed.

  ‘It’ll pay for itself. It’s like ten – twenty – times faster than hand setting.’

  ‘I’ll tell the boss,’ Vanders said.

  ‘Who’s the boss?’ Blake asked.

  ‘I am,’ Vanders told him.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘What d’ya think of it?’ Vanders asked, waving the page up and down in front of him as though he were drying it off. ‘What it says?’

  Blake took the page back from him and read it, something you don’t actually do when you’re setting type.

  MEETINGMEETINGMEETING

  AMERICAN NATIONALIST PARTY

  FREEFREEFREEFREE

  INNISFAIL BALLROOM200 East 56th St.

  Tuesday, April 5, 1938 at 6 pm.

  Open to all true patriotic Christian Americans.

  Hear the Truth!!!

  Come hear the message of Father Coughlin broadcast live from his studio in Michigan and listen to our own Frank Gerard and other speakers. Join with other God-fearing Christian Americans who think as you do. Hear what Henry Ford and Charles A. Lindbergh have to say about the Jews. Learn what we must do today to protect and defend America and the White Race against job-stealing foreigners, Communists and Jewish warmongers.

  Learn why Henry Ford called the International Jew the World’s Foremost Problem. See how International Jewry has been steadily undermining our country and gotten us into every war from the Civil War to the World War. Hear why the Jews want to get us involved in another European War. Learn how the Jewish Cabal is aiding the Chinese in their unprovoked attacks against the Japanese forces in Manchukuo.

  Are you willing to fight for your country? We will show you how. We’ll show you what must be done. We must defend our borders. We must stop Roosevelt and his Jewish bankers from getting us involved in another foreign war! We must be ready!

  **No Jews will be admitted**

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go,’ Blake said.

  Vanders squinted and looked at him hard. This was not the right answer. ‘Whaddya mean, you wouldn’t go?’

  ‘It’s telling me all kinds of stuff I already know, and promising more of the same,’ Blake told him. ‘And even if I agree with it, how many times do I have to hear it? It should talk about some new stuff, so’s I’d want to go and hear what it is.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Blake shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe how Roosevelt is making a secret deal with the Jewish bankers – better if you name one, say Lowenstein – to sell Indiana to Canada.’

  ‘Why Indiana?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You got a thought.’

  ‘And you should say “fr
ee beer” in the handout. That would get people in.’

  ‘Say, you know how much it costs just to rent the hall? We’re having trouble making the nut as it is.’

  ‘I didn’t think of that. How do you pay for the hall?’

  ‘We get some donations from the National org. Also we sell newspapers and magazines in the back of the room. Books too. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and The International Jew are big sellers. Also the collected writings of Father Coughlin. We’ve got some copies of Lindbergh’s We that usually sell pretty good, but we don’t make so much off them ’cause we have to get them through a regular book distributor.’

  ‘There’s got to be some better way to come up with money,’ Blake said.

  ‘You think of one, I’ll pass it on to Gerard,’ Vanders said. ‘You ever been to one of these meetings?’

  Blake shook his head. ‘They don’t have nothing like that in Philadelphia.’

  ‘Yeah? Well they will. We’re going to be all over the country. This is a movement. Father Coughlin’s big. Big.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Blake agreed. ‘I’ve heard of him.’

  ‘Course you have. We have him as a speaker whenever he’s in New York. Come to this meeting, you’ll see.’

  ‘OK, I’ll come,’ Blake promised. ‘Even if there’s no free beer.’

  ‘Free beer!’ Vanders shook his head. ‘Free beer!’

  ELEVEN

  Providence has ordained

  that I should be the greatest liberator of humanity

  – Adolf Hitler

  HRH the Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor, quondam Edward VIII, by the Grace of God, King of Great Britain, Ireland, and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India – a heady mouthful to have given up when he abdicated to marry the woman he loved – was not happy. But then the happiness of an ex-king was not something that the British Government fretted over. It had not been thought proper for him to live in England since he gave up the throne – no, that’s not right, since he married the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson – so he married Wally in France and they had been living there in virtual exile for the past year.

  And now here he was, leaving Wally in their villa in the Bois-de-Boulogne and sneaking across Europe in a private rail car for a clandestine rendezvous with the Chancellor of Germany at some bloody hunting lodge in the Black Forest. Secret meetings were not his thing. Still, he had allowed himself to be convinced. At the personal request of the Prime Minister. For the good of the realm. And perhaps it would improve his chances of being asked to return to England. That would please Wally, assuage her disappointment at marrying an ex-king instead of a king.

  He was to pass on some advice to the Chancellor, a mere suggestion, on behalf of Mr Chamberlain and the British government. He was to convey to Herr Hitler that His Majesty’s government felt that invading Austria would not be a good idea. Let the Austrians have a free and fair election, and if they vote for Anschluss – union with Germany – then so be it, Britain will draw the blinds over the Treaty of Saint Germain and the Versailles Treaty and France will almost certainly go along. If the vote goes against Anschluss, accept the opinion of the majority. Hitler’s desire for a ‘greater Germany’ – a union of all German-speaking people – could be achieved by closer social and political ties, without actually merging the two countries. And His Majesty’s government was willing to discuss the return of Germany’s African colonies, lost after the Great War, except for South West Africa, which was now a part of South Africa. But perhaps a Portuguese colony or two could be thrown in. A carrot, HRH thought, but no perceptible stick.

  Not that it would be of any use in the long – or if it came to that short – run, he thought. Hitler would do what he would do. But it would show those who needed to know that His Majesty’s government had done their best. And it might give the Duke a bit more influence with H.M.’s Government when he pointed out the futility, the unwisdom – was that a word? – of arguing with Hitler over European affairs. After all, Germany was in the midst of Europe, Britain was safely isolated by twenty-one miles of water. And the fleet. What was it the First Lord of the Admiralty had told the peers when it looked as if Napoleon was preparing to invade a century ago? ‘I do not say that they cannot come, my lords, I merely say that they cannot come by sea.’

  Perhaps, after all, the trip would be of some use. It was true that Der Führer seemed to like him. Hadn’t he tried to arrange a liaison between him and that German princess – what was her name? – while he was the unmarried Prince of Wales? Well, the Duke thought, he could but try.

  He turned away from the observation window. ‘You know,’ he told the tall, slender man sitting across from him, ‘just between us, I never wanted to be king at all.’

  ‘So you have mentioned, your royal highness,’ Lord Geoffrey replied.

  ‘I couldn’t tell Wally. She was so looking forward to being queen. But it wasn’t to be.’

  Geoffrey took a complex pipe tool from his jacket pocket, located the proper extension, and tamped down the new load of tobacco in his pipe. ‘There is some advantage in being the second son,’ he observed. ‘The parents don’t expect as much from one. Mine certainly didn’t expect much from me. And now that Percy has produced a son and heir, I seem sufficiently insulated from the title.’

  ‘They wouldn’t let me near the front during the War, not when there was fighting going on,’ said His Royal Highness petulantly. ‘I mean, they gave me a uniform, kept me busy and all that, but kept me strictly away from the action. Supposing I was wounded or captured or killed, they said, it just wouldn’t do.’

  Geoffrey wondered who ‘they’ were, the King or the government. Or perhaps both. He decided not to ask. ‘They had a point,’ he said.

  ‘What would it have mattered?’ asked Windsor, not so much to Geoffrey as to the Universe at large. ‘I have two brothers, I was expendable.’

  The Duke fell silent, and Geoffrey pondered his part in the coming proceedings. While HRH and Der Führer were exchanging pleasantries and negotiating on the fate of Europe, Geoffrey was to locate a man he’d never met, in a place he didn’t know, ascertain that the man was who he said he was, whoever that might be, arrange a clandestine meeting with the gentleman, find out what he wanted and what he had to offer for it, make sure that it wasn’t a complex ruse of some sort, and negotiate whatever deal was to be had. All that while keeping HRH out of whatever trouble was to be had in the middle of the Black Forest.

  ‘And,’ he had asked, ‘how am I to make sure that it isn’t some sort of trick?’

  ‘Use your best judgment.’

  Right. And just how …

  ‘He’s an artist, you know,’ HRH said, interrupting Geoffrey’s thoughts.

  ‘Excuse me, your royal highness?’

  ‘Stop calling me “highness”, His Royal Highness said crossly. ‘Call me David. When we’re alone, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Geoffrey agreed. ‘Sorry. What were you saying, David?’

  ‘He’s an artist, Herr Hitler. Did you know? Wanted to be a painter before the war.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ Geoffrey said.

  ‘He was also something of a poet in his youth, apparently. One of his aides pressed a chapbook of his poetry on me when I met him last year.’

  ‘Was any of it any good?’ Geoffrey asked.

  HRH shrugged. ‘Couldn’t tell you,’ he said. ‘German poetry always sounds to me as though someone was coughing at you in an aggressive manner. Have you ever read Shakespeare in German? “Zu sein oder nicht zu sein, das ist die Frage!” I mean, I ask you.’

  ‘I always liked Rilke,’ Geoffrey said.

  ‘Now it’s architecture,’ HRH went on. ‘He has great plans for the city of Berlin. I saw a model when we were here last year. Quite impressive.’

  ‘I believe I saw a rendering of the plans in some popular magazine,’ Geoffrey offered.

  ‘Fellow named Speer or some such does the design for him, but Hitl
er knows what he wants and he means to have it.’

  ‘That’s sort of why we’re here, isn’t it?’ Geoffrey asked. ‘Because Herr Hitler knows what he wants and he means to have it.’

  ‘How’s that? Yes. Yes. I see what you mean.’ HRH fell silent.

  It was nine in the evening when they detrained at Karlsruhe, stepping out into a fine, chill mist that somehow seemed to cheer the Duke up. They were met by a discreet four-man guard detail, who discreetly marched to the door of the railcar, discreetly stood at attention, and discreetly gave the Nazi salute to greet the Duke’s party. The other people getting off the train looked discreetly away; it seemed the wisest course in the New Germany. Besides, they couldn’t make out enough details through the mist to have much of a story to tell.

  A man in a gray overcoat came forward, clicked his heels, bowed, snapped back to attention, and introduced himself as Obersturmbannführer Rabenvogel. ‘Welcome to Deutschland, your royal highness,’ he said in excellent English, ‘In the name of Der Führer I greet you. I am to take you to the Schloss.’ He led HRH, Lord Geoffrey, and His Royal Highness’s manservant to the first two of the two Mercedes sedans that awaited them. The second, apparently, was for their guard detail. A small van then pulled up to accept their pile of luggage.

  An hour and some minutes later the cars turned off the narrow dirt road they had been on for the last ten kilometers and drove between a matched pair of huge, hulking stone figures. ‘The famed gryphons of Schloss Eichenholz,’ Obersturmbannführer Rabenvogel told them. ‘Perhaps eight hundreds of years old.’

  ‘Impressive,’ the Duke commented. ‘They look almost new.’

  ‘They were very weatherworn,’ Rabenvogel, told him. ‘But it was four years ago that they were recrafted and refaced, and now they once again look as new.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the Duke. ‘The old is new again.’

  They pulled up in front of a pair of massive doors of some very light wood that had grown gray over the centuries since it was hewn. A line of servants stretched out from the doors to greet them, the men in Lederhosen and the women in white aprons over gray smocks. Several SS officers were standing at ramrod attention to one side, and a covey of official greeters in mufti stood by the door. HRH emerged from the car, accepted the bowing of the assemblage and the handshakes of the greeters with the aplomb of a royal duke, and entered the Schloss, the rest of his entourage following behind.