Moskau

by G. Zotov

  It’s time I snatch the initiative before it’s too late. “Back in the Temple, there was this guy in a gray suit, he was in control of the search,” I say nonchalantly. “I took a picture of him with the surveillance camera and did a quick image search on the Shogunet. It didn’t take long. You may laugh but apparently, he is the spitting image of somebody called Walter Shumeiko who was killed during the Kiev standoff between the SS and the Wehrmacht in 1986. Luckily, this is Russland not Berlin: those idiots forgot to cancel my access to the SS database. And there I found something very interesting. Shumeiko’s personal ID number is still valid even though it belongs to somebody totally different.”

  Even in the dark I can see how pale she’s become. “What do you suggest? That he’s one of the walking dead like those Tibetan Ahnenerbe subjects?”

  Had the situation not been so serious, I’d have laughed out loud. “Ahnenerbe! It’s the ultimate in kitsch, one of those Universum fantasy movies for the masses. Even back in the 1940s, they were never a serious research institute. And now they’re even worse! They’re trying to keep up this phony image of dark mysticism while self-publishing all those book series about their work, like those murder mysteries featuring Marta the Professor’s daughter.”

  I pause. “There’s another office, though perfectly real. They did give their graduates the names of long-dead people complete with their personal SS numbers. I suppose you heard about that old project by Reichsführer Himmler? The Lebensborn?”

  She flaps her eyelashes in confusion. I enjoy my moment of triumph.

  “You mean the adoption society? Of course. There were so many orphaned children after the war.”

  “Not exactly. From the start, the Lebensborn saw its goal in creating an incubator for the Aryan race. Since 1935, they’ve graduated hundreds of thousands of children. A child’s parents had to be of the Nordic type, healthy and have no criminal record. Initially, their orphanages harbored kids from Norwegian girls who slept with Wehrmacht soldiers. But that apparently wasn’t enough. They needed to do things on a bigger scale. Standartenführer Max Sollmann, head of Lebensborn, became interested in the practice used by the Medieval Turkish janissary corps. The Turks had found a way to create lethal bands of cutthroat assassins in Serbia and Bulgaria by taking babies from Christian parents and raising them as bloodthirsty Islamist fanatics. Sollmann just loved it! He thought it was a brilliant idea. Lebensborn workers in Russland, Ukraine and Poland sought children aged two to five years old of picture-perfect Aryan appearance, kidnapped them and took them to their orphanages.[xv] There a child would usually receive a new name and be explained at some later date that they’re lucky enough to live in the Paradise. The Lebensborn was supposed to create the ‘new man’: an Aryan fully devoted to the ideas of his Führer, one who was an expert both in modern sciences and martial arts. Some sort of an intellectual military bomb. Many of the Paradise’s ex-charges have lived on to make brilliant careers which was actually their tutors’ purpose. So I’m not at all surprised that they put a Lebensborn graduate on our tail.”

  She says nothing. I can sense her breathing. The Schwarzkopfs really think they know everything about the inner workings of the Reichskommissariat’s private life. Well, they don’t know a fraction of what I do.

  “How do you know all this?”

  It’s not a question even, rather a groan coming from deep within her heart.

  I chuckle. “It’s simple, really. I’m Lebensborn too.”

  The street has grown dark. Our room is pitch black. I can hear crickets — specially imported from Okinawa — chirping by the front porch. The siren of an ambulance wails at a distance. Someone must have eaten the wrong part of a fugu fish again… and now the meat wagon was hurrying his way, sporting the rising sun on its door.

  The girl is astonished. She hasn’t even heard all the truth yet. Not that she needs it. Only then will I open up to her when she does the same. This is what I’m waiting for.

  Vision #2

  The Day of the Monsters

  THIS TIME I’M NOT at all cold. On the contrary. The heat is suffocating. I feel like a chicken in the oven. The air is almost red-hot with the sun.

  I wipe the sweat away. This looks like a village. Small cottages — but everything seems to be enveloped in a dark haze.

  I look up in surprise. Large flakes of snow float onto my head. What, in this heat? I walk slowly, holding onto the stakes of a wooden fence. I can hear dogs barking. Someone bellows orders in a muffled deep-chested voice.

  I catch a large snowflake in my hand and crush it between my fingers. It leaves a dirty off-gray smear across my palm.

  Now I understand the reason for this summer snowstorm.

  This is ash, not snow. The village is on fire. Flames crackle as they escape cottage windows, opening above their roofs like red blossoms.

  My face turns black. Sweat streaks my skin, washing away the soot. The log cottages aren’t the only ones on fire: the trees, the benches by the porches, children’s swings — everything’s enveloped by the flames.

  An insane firestorm.

  The air is mixed with smoke. You can barely see. It’s daytime but it feels like twilight.

  A woman is running toward me, reaching out blindly in front of herself. She’s young and disheveled. A submachine gun rattles. She drops face down, her flaxen hair sinking into the dirt. Three crimson spots on her back grow fast, merging.

  I recoil and stumble over another corpse. This one is old, his bulging eyes filled with blood. Another one is crouched next to a birch tree: a young woman, her head listing to one side.

  A monster looms out of the smoke.

  It has a weird porcine snout with a flat spongy nose and huge round eyes. It has a large hump on its back and long fat fingers on its black front paws. The monster holds its proboscis in its paws and points it at the window of the nearest house, showering its walls with a jet of liquid fire. Bloodcurdling screams assault my ears.

  “Doing okay? It’s damn hard work,” another monster appears next to the first one. Its face is equally scary.

  “Yes, Sir! Too hot in this wretched gas suit.”

  “What do you want, it’s not some toy carnival mask. I’d have given anything for a beer, and you? Unfortunately, we need to finish up here first. We have orders. The village and everyone in it should be exterminated.”

  They walk on: one holding a flamethrower, the other with a Schmeisser submachine gun at the ready. They’re not alone. A whole platoon of soldiers fuss about in their field-gray uniforms, their black lapels glistening with runes, their faces concealed by gas masks. Flames dance in their round goggles. The loudspeakers mounted on their trucks spit out a triumphant march,

  Es geht um Deutschlands Gloria,

  Gloria, Gloria,

  Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Viktoria!

  Sieg Heil! Viktoria!

  Rifles rattle nonstop, killing everything that breathes. Not just human beings: the soldiers fire at cats and dogs in the back yards. Their high boots are splattered with blood to the knees. An army of faceless killers are doing their job with the nonchalance of market butchers.

  There’s no escape from death. The flamethrowers scorch both cellars and attics, their fiery jets licking roofs.

  Corpses are piled up on both sides of me. Lots of them: dozens, hundreds even. An old woman in a floral headscarf covers her face with her hand as if shielding it from bullets.

  A machine gun rattles away at the edge of the village. People, burning alive, jump out of windows and drop to the ground, convulsing and screaming in agony.

  The gunner (young, in rolled-up sleeves, a silver eagle topping his forage cap) has no gas mask on. He turns to his partner,

  “Look how they dance!”

  Both guffaw. Another couple of gun bursts, then everything’s over. The human groaning dies away.

  The chief monster is standing atop the hill, admiring the burning village engulfed in smoke. A handmade embroidered towel lies forgotten on
the ground. It’s smeared in blood: he’s used it to wipe his boot clean. Another monster walks over to him and clicks his heels, jumping to attention.

  “Sir, the mission’s completed. My men have double-checked everything. No survivors. We’ve put all the children into the remaining house. Should I get a lorry to take them to town?”

  The monster stares at him, then removes his gas mask. The lenses of its goggles are murky. “No need to. Pointless. Sort them out yourselves.”

  “But… Sir… these are children…”

  “Lieutenant, you heard the order. Get on with it!”

  The other monster walks down the hill. He stumbles through the row of blazing houses to the other end of the village where children are crying.

  He makes a sign to his soldiers. They surround the cottage and reach for their grenades, then stand by the windows, awaiting orders.

  Gas masks are great. No one can see what you’re feeling. Provided they can feel.

  They’re robots. Nothing more. Just killing machines.

  “Get ready,” the muffled voice says. The monster raises his hand.

  He must be mad! What’s he doing? Why can’t the soldiers stop him?

  His hand drops sharply. Grenades smash the windows in their flight.

  There’s no more crying. Silence fills the air.

  Chapter Four

  Eternal Ice

  Lhasa, the Reichskommissariat Shambhala

  PAVEL’S FINGERS PULLED spasmodically at his collar, unbuttoning it. A crimson mark encircled his neck. Air, he needed air! His chest was collapsing. His heart was racing, thumping against his ribcage as if he were about to take the Olympic gold in five thousand meters.

  Which Olympic Games? he thought sarcastically. Since Jesse Owens amassed four gold medals in Berlin back in 1936, no untermensch has been allowed to participate. All the Olympic gold is evenly divided between the Reich Union and the Nippon koku. Silver goes to whoever gets to it first. There’s no intrigue left.

  He stopped abruptly as his head began to spin. One, two, three. He only needed to cross the road but he couldn’t walk fast for fear of hypoxia setting in. He had to take pills at the slightest signs of altitude sickness. Once your lungs filled with blood, you were gone in a few days.

  The monument at the center of the avenue depicted two gold yaks. Flags flew at their sides: a red one with an eagle — symbol of the Reich Union — and the other one sporting the Tibetan Snow Lion.

  The enormous brown and white Potala Palace seemed to be carved into the rock. This ancient abode of the Dalai Lamas counted a thousand rooms as each new Dalai Lama had to occupy his own.

  The flat houses of the Old Quarter with their gold roofs and painted brickwork; the guttural singing of orange-clad monks; the sandal-stick smoke swirling over the altar — and crowds of unavoidable, unescapable pilgrims swarming everywhere.

  Lhasa was the same to Tibet as Trondheim was to Norway.

  But if Norway was the sacred birthplace of the Viking religion, Tibet was the cradle of the Aryan race. Only the best of the Lebensborn’s best got sent here to study at the ancient monasteries, the likes of Tashilhunpo. When human history had still been in diapers, Aryan tribes had marched from the swastika-marked Mount Kailash all the way to Europe: the race of handsome fair-skinned warriors, blond and blue-eyed. The master race, sent by the gods to govern Earth. Mount Kailash didn’t look like itself anymore, dug inside out and covered in holes like a chunk of Swiss cheese after all the Ahnenerbe and Thule Society researchers were finished with it.

  Now they charged two hundred reichsmarks for a guided tour of the digs. Ahnenerbe diggers had advanced almost four miles into the mountain as they were looking for evidence of Hanns Hörbiger’s Eternal Ice theory. According to Hörbiger, there once used to be four moons traveling our skies until three of them dropped to the ground in the vicinity of Mount Kailash, their fragments triggering life on Earth. Every time the archaeologists had run out of money, the expedition leader Schäfer would send a telegram to Berlin:

  Samples of lunar soil discovered bringing us ever closer to a breakthrough.

  Immediately after that, his bank account would receive a new injection of reichsmarks. After decades of fruitless search, Schäfer had joined a local monastery, becoming a humble Lamaist monk in the hope of slipping into nirvana and discovering the route to the magic lands of Shambhala.

  The Thule Society conducted their own research looking for the legendary underground land of Agartha: a round island amid an ocean of the sweetest nectar, inhabited by fluttering firebirds. Apart from the Himmler Fund, they also received their financing from large concerns like Krupp and Heinkel. Agartha was infinitely more important than some old ice deposits. Legend had it that at the center of the island was the Fountain of Youth whose water granted immortality.

  Predictably, they had never found the fountain, either. Just like Ahnenerbe, Thule was just going through the motions, pretending it believed in legends: both organizations were staffed by seasoned cynics who knew how to spend the budget.

  A Panther armored vehicle bearing the emblem of the local Buddha Shakyamuni SS legion froze at the entrance to the Potala Palace. Two Tibetans in black uniforms with orange sleeve badges stood watch next to them, looking utterly bored. Not waiting for their request, Pavel offered them his plastic ID card without a mug shot.

  A brown-faced Obergefreiter slid the card into an electronic reader. It reacted with a long pleading ping and the flashing of a green light.

  The SS man jumped to attention. “It’s a pleasure, Herr Sturmbannführer!”

  Pavel nonchalantly raised two fingers to his fedora hat in salute. He disliked all that Heil! stuff. He retrieved his card from the guard and slid it blindly into his gray plastic wallet. All visitors to the Reichskommissariat Shambhala were subjected to a thorough body search. No items made from animal or avian flesh, skin or bones were allowed here.

  This was one of the local peculiarities. Back in 1937, the first Ahnenerbe expedition had only been allowed in on condition that they wouldn’t squash a single cockroach nor swat a single mosquito. There was nothing you could do: reincarnation was part of the Tibetans’ religion.

  “Keep going straight on, then upstairs and turn to the left. Would you like me to show you there?”

  “It’s all right. I can find what I need.”

  He climbed to the third floor and squeezed his body into a narrow passage: a realm of tiny rooms smelling of dust, mold and mouse urine.

  Pavel smiled. He’d forgotten what it was like here. His breathing took time to slow down. And back then, it had taken him no time at all to come to grips with the constant lack of oxygen, obnoxiously bitter-tasting food and austere furnishings.

  As he walked, orange-clad monks bowed to him politely from their cells. Their walls were hung with portraits — but the weak glow of yak fat candles prevented him from getting a good look at the man’s face with a scar running across one cheek, his hands put together in the traditional Tibetan greeting. The Ocean of Wisdom, the 15th Dalai Lama, the great Ngawang Tashi.

  Back in 1944 in Lhasa, the Abwehr had pulled off one of its most brilliant missions: the New Buddha. The previous Dalai Lama, the nine-year-old Tenzin received a shot of cyanide while the leader of the SS special forces, Hauptsturmführer Otto Skorzeny, was pronounced to be his reincarnation.

  At the time, the Reich put a great deal of hope in Tibet as both Ahnenerbe and the Thule Society pointed at it as the future birthplace of a great new religion. Reich leaders planned to gradually destroy all pictures of the Führer, including all photos, drawings and statues. Then — say in three hundred years’ time when the memory of his appearance would have sufficiently faded — they were going to declare the Führer to have been a blond, blue-eyed giant born of a block of Shambhalan ice: a god and arch father of the Aryan nation.

  Skorzeny had quickly got used to his role as a living incarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion — even quicker than Berlin had expected him
to. He’d so warmed to his role that he started his term by prohibiting any archeological digs outside of Mount Kailash because they “threatened the life of earthworms”. Next, the 15th Dalai Lama proclaimed the Swastika’s spiritual affinity with Dpalbe, the Knot of Eternity: the symbol of Tibetan Buddhism representing the Five Original Wisdoms.

  Skorzeny began spending more and more time in the meditation cave, staying there for months and years at a time. He’d gotten so engrossed in Lamaism that he completely forgot all about his mission. The ex-Hauptsturmführer’s lectures were especially popular in the universities of Neuer York: How to Attain Inner Bliss While Practicing National Socialism. Female students achieved nirvana right there while listening to the charismatic Dalai Lama (who incidentally also was Reichskommissar of Shambhala).

  In any case, it was all in the past now. The ancient Ngawang Tashi (who’d recently celebrated his hundred-and-fourth birthday) had long ceased to control Tibet. His soul now permanently resided in the astral world while his emaciated body was sustained with mountain herbs alone. All religious and laic authority had been handed over to the Oracle — a person even more powerful than the Reichskommissar himself.

  It was to his quarters Pavel was heading now.

  The Oracle determined the Dalai Lama’s schedule by prophesizing everything, including what the Divine Keiser was meant to eat for lunch. Skorzeny’s illness allowed the Oracle to take power into his own hands — both literally and figuratively. To give you an example, he would tilt the Dalai Lama’s head at moments when he was supposed to nod his approval.

  Prophets have one hell of a life, Pavel thought, smiling back to the monks as he walked past. Has anyone ever thought how hard they have it? Your wife comes home from work in the evening and you start a row because you know that in a year seven months and four days from now she would cheat on you in the toilet with a delivery man at the Führer’s birthday party. You always know the outcome of a football game. You don’t need to check the weather forecast. I’m surprised he hasn’t lost his mind yet.