by G. Zotov
The Regent’s quarters were guarded by Germans: a special SD unit, equally orange-clad but gun-toting. Here, his Gestapo ID didn’t cut it. Pavel was told to go to a separate small room for a full body search, then ordered to don the orange robes. He was already happy he didn’t have to do a blood test. Every Third Reich official feared an assassination attempt — even here in Tibet where killing a living being was the greatest of all sins.
The room’s wrought iron door opened.
Pavel removed his shoes and walked in, stepping over the straw mats. The Oracle sat with his back to him. He seemed to be deep in meditation. He must have sensed Pavel’s presence. His eyes opened.
“I knew you would come today,” his wasn’t a voice but the rustle of the wind.
I bet you did, Pavel thought sarcastically. You’re not called a soothsayer for nothing!
Obediently he crouched on the mat Tibetan style, knees tucked in. “Lansang, I need your help. Sorry, I can’t think straight. I’ve come all the way from Moskau with a changeover in Delhi and you know how I hate flying. I have big problems.”
“There’s no such thing as a problem that can’t be solved,” the Oracle replied softly without turning to him. “It’s that what you wanted to hear, isn’t it? Admittedly, I’m surprised. Didn’t I teach you everything already in Tashilhunpo? I showed you how to perceive, how to free your mind, how to feel. I was sure you’d never give me the chance to doubt your ability. What’s changed?”
Pavel heaved a sigh. Every Lebensborn student was told he had to be the best. He couldn’t commit the slightest error. Once he had witnessed a Lebensborn graduate fail a test and shoot himself in the university restroom.
“I really can’t tell you,” he said, studying a mandala on the wall. “It’s very important that I tune into two particular people but… I don’t seem to be able to do it. I just can’t sense them. Neither their electricity nor their auras, nothing. Especially the woman. I’m not even sure whether she’s alive. I feel her as something nebulous like a cloud which you can neither touch nor squeeze. And… it gives me some very unpleasant ideas. If I can’t feel her at all, even when I meditate — what is she then? The man is different. I can tune into him… but not when she’s around. She seems to siphon all of his energy.”
The Oracle sprang from the mat. Turning round, he waddled toward Pavel. This old Lama always knew the deepest nooks and crannies of one’s heart even when it was thousands of miles away from Lhasa, hidden in the depths of a forest overgrowing a different continent. The tiny room could barely accommodate all of his knowledge.
All those gray-bearded mentors in Japanese flicks loved brandishing their swords or breaking their opponents’ bones with their bare hands. Lansang didn’t need any of it. He could defeat his enemies with the power of his mind alone.
“We can rectify that,” he said. “I’ll try to guide you through the maze of the human mind.”
“I have very little time,” Pavel warned him. “I’m very sorry.”
The Oracle shrugged. “Time is only a droplet in an ocean of thought. Very well, we’ll only work with the man to let you sense his aura. It might be easier this way — and faster. It’s quite possible that the woman is out of my reach too. But I’d appreciate you telling me why you want to locate them. I know you. Are you going to kill the man?”
Pavel shook his head. “No. I’m just doing everything I can to… to separate him from her.”
Chapter Five
The Black Sun
Moskau. The city center. Wewelsburg Castle.
The Triumvirate bunker.
THE CLOUDS HUNG SO LOW they enveloped the towers of the Kremlin, submerging its scarlet red brickwork into their snowy depths. The Writers Union Brigadenführer Kurt Vonnegut once said a great thing about those towers: “These pillars are the epitome of Buddhism: at first, frequent changes annoy you. Then you get angry. Finally, you get used to the constant shakeups and you start to view regime changes philosophically: This too shall pass.”
Initially topped with the double-headed eagles of the Russian Empire, the towers had briefly sported the ruby stars of the Soviets, later knocked down by the swastika-clenching eagles of the Third Reich. The swastikas hadn’t lasted, either: once the Twenty-Year War was over, riggers had scaled the towers to promptly take them down.
As almost every evening, the main Nibelung Square was absolutely packed. Crowds of Japanese tourists flashed their cameras at its buildings. Street kiosks manned by ample-breasted young women were busy pouring out a poor excuse for Bavarian beer. Wrapped in filthy trench coats, veterans of the SS Turkic Division — alcoholic despite all the healthy lifestyle propaganda — posed for the Japanese for a couple of yen.
Next to the Lobnoye Mesto where the monument to Minin and Pozharsky used to stand, the gloomy bulk of Ernst Johann von Bühren — the bewigged abomination of the 18th century — glowed bronze on its pedestal. The Germans had erected it in 1944, complete with a little plaque that quoted this much-hated favorite of the Russian Empress Anna Ioannovna,
The only way to govern Russians is by the lash and the axe.
In the 1950s, however, they’d removed the plaque for reasons of political correctness. About the same time, they’d torn down St Basil’s Cathedral with its fancy colored domes: they needed the space to build a copy of the Wewelsburg Castle, the highest academy for the ideological training for SS officer cadets. They’d completed the build in record time. The first initial meetings — “consiliums” — of the Triumvirate had been held in its Obergruppenführer Hall, a large room in the castle’s north tower with twelve columns and the sign of the Black Sun laid out in its mosaic floor.
The Black Sun was the official seal of the Moskau Triumvirate: the invisible center of the Universe, the source of life on Earth casting its phantom light onto our planet. Theosophist Helena Blavatsky had in her time proclaimed it the symbol of the extinct “ice people” that once had lived beyond the Arctic Circle, while Reichsführer Himmler considered it the image of Farbauti, the deity of lightning.
The acoustics of the Obergruppenführer Hall were astonishing. They lent any voice, no matter how dry or high-pitched, the timbre of a nightingale singing. The center of the Black Sun exuded the flames of the eternal fire which had supposedly given birth to the Aryan race.
As late as in the 1970s, SS top ranks used to meditate there together, seeing their skin acquire a tan-like hue cast by the dark star’s ominous glow. Their hearts had harbored the hope that one day the Black Sun would reveal itself to everyone and not only to a chosen few, granting happiness to Aryans and blinding all inferior races. At least that’s what the philosopher Rudolf Mund used to say.
Wewelsburg had actually fitted quite nicely into the Nibelung Square, housing several Reichskommissariat offices. In 1945 Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler, the prominent “wonder weapon” expert, had his laboratories moved there. His secret research had led to the creation of portable nuclear devices, anti-aircraft lasers, invisible tanks and even planetary rovers designed to obtain alien soil samples and battle aliens themselves if necessary.
Everything had seemed hunky dory. Still, Wewelsburg had been destined for other things.
Nine years later, during the visit of the then-Reichschancellor Albert Speer from Berlin to Moskau, the Varangians SS volunteer division had mutinied, demanding their backpay be honored. The SS mutineers took over Wewelsburg, burning it down and fatally wounding Speer in the resulting shootout. The castle had barely been rebuilt when a new tragedy struck the Reichskommissariat: someone had poisoned Hans Kammler’s wine during an official dinner. The government blamed the assassination on the Schwarzkopf Resistance but the fact remained that no one had really found out who was behind it: the Japanese secret service or just some jealous workmates.
All this had resulted in moving the Triumvirate offices into an underground armored bunker complete with an exact copy of the Obergruppenführer Hall with its Black Sun mosaic on the floor. The bunker was equipped with
a complex defense system including gun turrets and a highly evolved security system.
Twilight fell over the Nibelung Square.
The city dissolved into the darkness. Occasional streetlamps exuded a weak glow: the economy of all and sundry was one of the Empire’s base principles. The government liked to call it a “blackout” in case of guerrilla attacks.
Even the street signs of the insanely popular night clubs like Death’s Head and Das Reich barely glowed. Both boasted only two types of gigs: boring symphony orchestras playing The Ride of the Valkyries, and Alpine yodelers in their Tyrolean hats.
The first black-market cigarette dealers sneaked out of the dark onto the sidewalks. Hiding their eyes under tinted glasses, these pale vampire-like creatures lurked in the unlit side lanes, offering Japanese tobacco, black and resinous, or sometimes also homegrown stuff. They would stealthily mete out some fragrant strands into a scrap of paper while shoving a handful of reichsmarks into their pockets.
In all Moskau houses, TVs switched on automatically, beginning the obligatory nightly entertainment. One of the presenters, Rüdiger Storm — a sleazy guy with bottle-blond hair — stole toward the microphone,
“Anyone know the meaning of this phrase, ‘Ten dead untermenschen swimming in the sea’? I’ll tell you! It means a good start to the day!”
The Moskau denizens stared at the screens, preparing to laugh their heads off. Hundreds of professional comedians of every caliber — from seasoned Brigadenführer heavyweights to Oberschütze newbies — showered them with their gags and jokes on just about everything, excluding politics. In the “black” districts behind the ring road officially known as the Ring of the Nibelung, brothels opened their discreet doors. Some far-off locations like the Goering industrial zone were absolutely packed with them. Their state-employed staff worked themselves stiff: as civil officers of the Auxiliary Corps, they were guaranteed the right to retirement food parcels and the honorary rank of Forhelferin. The unending chain of wars had resulted in Moskau’s female population being twice its male counterpart, which had caused prostitute’s rates to plummet, reducing their clients’ payment to a symbolic sum barely enough to buy a sandwich.
Saturday night oozed weariness. Reich workers had only one day off: Sunday. Exhausted factory arbeiters left the underground tunnels of the metro (The Holy Roman Station at the very end of Aryan Street and the Nuremberg Station near Henry the Fowler Square, the former Lubianka) and stopped by beer kiosks to down a stein or two of the ersatz Bavarian brew.
Girls winked at them, pouting their lips: in Moskau, initiating sex was a woman’s prerogative while men could afford to pick and choose at their leisure. If you had a mann, you had to grab and bed him while you could, sister, otherwise you’d stay on your own. You had to enjoy life while you could: if a new war started, your mann would have to go fight the Forest Brothers up in the Ural Mountains with a next-to-zero chance of ever coming back. All male citizens of Moskau above fifteen years of age were subject to conscription and could be drafted at any given moment.
Still, girls shouldn’t worry that much. They didn’t know every detail of a man’s so-called “military service” which more often than not was a fake. All you needed to do was slide a wad of Reichsmarks into the draft doctor’s hand and he’d immediately proclaim you handicapped and unfit for duty. Luckily for Moskau’s population, there were no statistics of such dismissals, otherwise it would have emerged that half the male Moskau population had missing limbs or suffered from spinal fractures plus a whole number of terminal conditions. Local officials did their best to combat corruption — at least until they themselves were arrested for the same.
Night gradually snuck up on the city, the TV laughter replaced by groans and the creaking of bed springs. The TVs themselves fell silent only to switch back on simultaneously at 7 a.m.
…Jean-Pierre raised his head. He couldn’t see anything. A special lightproof blindfold covered his eyes, obligatory for all Triumvirate bunker visitors. He’d been urgently summoned from work without as much as a chance to shave. He’d been sitting in an empty room for an hour already, awaiting the country’s leaders who apparently wished to talk to him. Why on earth would the Triumvirate want the information about Pavel’s research? They knew very well who they’d hired, didn’t they?
Jean-Pierre could have sworn he was sitting on the very edge of the Black Sun. He couldn’t have left even had he wanted to: his hands were tied behind his back, his legs cuffed to the legs of the chair. Standard security measures. They trusted no one here.
Footsteps shuffled.
“Good evening,” “Good evening,” “Good evening,” the three voices greeted him almost in synch.
Female voices.
Reichskommissariat Archives #2.
File FD75. Authors.
THE VICTORIOUS THIRD REICH needed to create a very special literature, free from the dubious heritage of the Bolsheviks, Semitic plutocrats and British imperialists. The old literary system had crumbled, burying false writers under its debris.
Upon the fall of Moskau, the leaders of the Russian Writers Union Sergei Mikhalkov and Alexander Fadeev fled behind the Urals where they published the clandestine Forest Daily. The author of the sci fi utopia classic Aelita, Alexey Tolstoi had disappeared: according to a few Gestapo informers, he’d changed his appearance, becoming one of the priests of Loki.
Sharp-tongued satirists Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov escaped to Uradziosutoku in the Nippon koku where they had written the third novel of their Ostap Bender series, The Chrysanthemum Marmot, in which the indefatigable smooth operator arrives in Tokyo setting his sights on a Daimyo title. The acclaimed author of another sci fi classic Professor Dowell’s Head Alexander Belyaev had been arrested by the Gestapo on charges of spreading Bolshevik propaganda; his books had been banned. It took the children’s poet Kornei Chukovsky four civil processes to successfully prove in court that the character of his evil pirate captain Barmalei hadn’t been based on the Führer.
In the US, surviving relatives of Margaret Mitchell had been sentenced to public repentance while Gone With the Wind was declared “an abominable sample of pro-Negro pulp fiction” and publicly burned.
The young author Ray Bradbury who in 1953, three years before the capitulation of Los Angeles, had published his first novel Fahrenheit 451, was arrested, tried and deported to Africa while the Third Reich supporters arranged his book burnings in squares all over California.
British mystery authoress Agatha Christie turned coat, joining the new regime and even writing a series of books about Siegfried Braun: a fat Gestapo officer with a Führer-like mustache who successfully solved Bolshevik conspiracies from one book to the next.
In 1955, all of the Reich’s libraries and book stores had been subjected to one ultimate purge which resulted in the creation of the Guidelines and Recommendations for Literary Work. Every aspiring writer had to prove that he was at least an Untersturmführer, loyal to the Reich and could recite several chapters from Mein Kampf from memory. Those who could attest to all of the above, received a special “writing clearance”.
The list of the subjects approved for publication:
Science fiction. State-commissioned works on scientific subjects:
What would the Earth be like in a thousand years after the complete triumph of National Socialism?
Mars occupation, to save the Red Planet from the Bolshevik ideas brought there by Stalin who’d escaped the Earth in a starship;
A society of immortal Aryans;
Colonization of other planets with their consequent accession to the Reich, etc.
Military science fiction. The bestselling W.E.H.R.M.A.C.H.T. series featured stories about the seizure of a nuclear power station by a Semitic terrorist group, followed by the leaking of radiation and the special forces’ incessant combat with mutant Bolsheviks and lonely looters[xvi]. The 40,000 titles of the series were hugely popular with its young readership.
Romance. It had to feature em
otional relationships between purebred Aryans. Any such relationship should lead to marriage and polygamy, as the Reich Union officially promoted multi-partner marriages. Novels had to have a happy ending where the handsome hulk of a protagonist and all six of his wives rode off happily into the sunset.
Cozy mystery. The protagonist had to be female, divorced and middle-aged, a housewife or an old-age pensioner, occasionally also an SD investigator who boasted rare crime-solving talents. The most typical examples of such works were The Mysterious Affair of Mein Kampf and Death of the Scharführer which topped the Reich Union’s bestseller lists. “The main task of this type of fiction,” said the Ministry of Public Education’s Pressführer Victor Pilulin in an interview to the Völkischer Beobachter, “is to entertain our women. When they read more, they’re easier to guide.”
Prohibited Philosophies. Those were books for the “intellectual elite” which possessed all the forbidden-fruit charm of underground literature. They were mainly penned by a special literary department under the control of Victor Pilulin himself or his deputy Major von Nachtigall. With a naivety typical of them, the Schwarzkopfs considered these types of books semi-legal for the sole reason that they criticized the regime. Never mind it had been the regime itself that had invented this sort of book to help the more intellectual readership vent safely.
Starting 1971, more and more series and standalone books were published without the author’s name on the cover, written by teams of unknown ghostwriters — like W.E.H.R.M.A.C.H.T., for instance. Star authors are dangerous: they can capture their readers’ minds, leading them into all sorts of unwanted directions. Naturally, Moskau still had its share of acclaimed wordsmiths — not many, about a dozen: those who’d proven their loyalty to the regime and always submitted their manuscripts to the censor on time.
And that’s all we need from them.
Speaker: the Literary Einsatzgruppe Hauptmann Sergei Semyonov.