Moskau

by G. Zotov

  Her face darkened. “I got my answer when I first came to the village of Alexeyevskoe. You can feel there’s something wrong there. Some anomaly. All metallic objects tend to clump together. The sky there can turn pitch black at midday. Every summer there’s one day when it gets really cold. Then the wind brings snowstorms whirling through the village at the exact hour when the SS murdered those children. Apparently, the grenades’ combined explosion inside the house was so powerful it opened a tunnel between the two worlds. No idea what triggered my ability to teleport. It could have been the explosion itself or it could have been the children’s tearful angst, the sheer horror of it all. So basically, I was sucked into your world a split second before I died.”

  Staggering, I head for a side table and pour myself some whiskey. I don’t give a shit about being patriotic at the moment. “If I understand it rightly, my visions and all those weird things that were happening at the temple, including the disappearance of the sacrificial goat… were they also the result of your, ahem, travels to a parallel world?”

  An expiring cigarette sizzles in the ashtray. “You and your goat! I think I’m gonna reimburse you for it when we’re back in Moskau. Yes, you and I seem to be connected somehow. I can’t really tell you how it works. You seem to be transported there too and are capable of seeing the same things as I do. But as you weren’t born there, you can watch the events without influencing them. You’re a visitor. And when you cut your hand to let blood, it sort of brings you back here, preventing you from merging with that world. Mind telling me how you worked out the blood-letting bit?”

  I shrug. “Easy. I thought you were hypnotizing me. It looks very similar to hypnosis, anyway. And one of the first things you learn in Higher Theological College is that a priest should let his own blood whenever the gloom of the demonic morass tries to enshroud you with its magic. I tried, and it worked. But it’s of no consequence. I’d love to know what happened to the Temple walls.”

  She heaves a sigh and gropes for a new cigarette. “If I’m right, my travels have somehow affected your world,” she exhales the smoke. “It’s beginning to corrode, growing almost cancer-like metastases. Your Temple walls are only a fraction of the oncoming Apocalypse. I saw whole mountain ranges disappear, rivers evaporate, forests vanish. No idea what I’ve brought with me to your universe but it doesn’t look good. It’s as if I’ve infected it with some sort of virus, so now it’s dying. And you know what? I don’t feel sorry for it at all.”

  What can you say to that? I know it’s stupid but I have to ask. “Why?”

  “Because a world ruled by a victorious army of children-burning scumbags has no right to exist. It doesn’t make sense. It’s a fault in the makeup of the universe. There’s always been plenty of shit around throughout human history, but until now, no one had thought of killing human beings in their millions by gassing and cremating them in camp ovens. The Third Reich is a sick joke, don’t you understand? Just look at the crazy surreal world you have to live in. That’s their victory backfiring.”

  Here, I’m obliged to butt in. “Women come in two kinds: they’re either heartless or naïve. You somehow manage to combine the two. Do you mean that your world is the best thing since sliced bread? Does is flow with milk and honey? You have no diseases, no smug plutocrats, no trigger-happy generals, is that right? In your world, the poor don’t beg on street corners? No one gets slaughtered simply because they belong to the wrong race or religion? Your powerful countries don’t rob the weak ones — they don’t bomb their cities nor confiscate their museums? In your world, SS squads don’t burn villagers alive in their homes? Well, in that case let me tell you: you haven’t come from another world, no. You’ve simply died and gone to heaven.”

  She gets out of bed and walks over to face me. “You’re right. My world is everything you’ve just said. Life seems to be cursed in the universe. I’m sure other parallel worlds have rotted alive with corruption, too. Their politicians must be the same bunch of treacherous douchebags. Whatever regime they have there, it’s inevitably evil. But I’d rather the lesser evil wins. My world sucks, I agree. But it was so drenched in blood that even now, seventy years later, it’s still wary of waging any large-scale wars. Yes, I do hate National Socialism. I was so keen to fight this regime which lost there but was victorious here. I didn’t give a damn about your beauty parlors, travel tours and shopping sprees. The Schwarzkopfs welcomed me with open arms.”

  How sweet. You can’t begin to imagine how fed up I am with these spoiled diamond-laden bitches and their attitudes. They’re constantly on TV, they get the best in cancer treatment, they swill champagne by the bottle and spend fortunes in spas. And if you listen to them, they just can’t wait to topple the regime: oh, the revolution, the holy right of the poor and needy; oh they’d love nothing better than to hurl a grenade at some policeman, then post the video on the Shogunet.

  But if the truth were known… what would I have done in her place? Honestly, no bullshit? If someone burned children alive in front of me? If I knew for sure what kind of macabre experiments that nutcase Mengele conducted, vivisecting his screaming victims? Or if I’d had any idea that the Führer’s entourage was made up of first-class butchers? Would I, knowing all this, still be able to drink my morning coffee, pretending it was none of my business? Would I be able to distance myself from it all and live as if nothing had happened? Or would their constant lies make me sick?

  I really don’t know.

  The likes of Loktev are bound to realize what kind of masters they serve. Not that they seem to care.

  My head is splitting. I don’t want to decide! My faith in the Reich is falling apart, but… I just can’t bear the Schwarzkopfs.

  A red haze begins to fill my field of vision. Can’t they all do me a favor and go take a running jump?

  “Can I ask you something?” I say. “Logically speaking, wouldn’t it have been easier to tell me everything from the start?”

  “Oh really? You reckon you’d have believed me?”

  I have nothing to say to this. Of course I wouldn’t have.

  She lays her hands on my shoulders. Her palms are scorching hot even through my shirt.

  “What do you need me for?” I ask. “It’s about time you tell me.”

  She whispers in my ear, her voice breaking all the time. She doesn’t make sense. Her lips keep touching my earlobe. I find it arousing. Very. She’s rambling, trying to explain. Oh. What an unorthodox explanation.

  Having said that, how much of what has happened to us is normal?

  I have no desire to object.

  “Very well,” I heave a sigh. “That’s not a problem. I do remember your promise. But if I do what you’re asking me to, will it stop the contamination? Or let’s put it this way, will we still have a chance?”

  She nods. “Sorry about all the theory. You shouldn’t think I don’t give a fuck about what’s gonna happen to you. Yes, everything will get back to normal. I tried to take a different route but it doesn’t seem to work. So we’ll have to do it another way. We need to catch a plane. It’s getting a bit urgent.”

  I very nearly choke on my whiskey. “A plane!” I can’t believe my ears. “What, just like that? You suggest we go to the airport like two idiots and book a Junkers flight back? Not transport ourselves through time and space, leaving LA behind to be consumed by flames? Boring.”

  She doesn’t get angry. She explodes. “I’m fed up with your sardonic bullshit! I told you before: in order to teleport, our lives must be in mortal danger. So what do you want me to do? Go out and dial the Luftwaffe, tell them to send a few bombers over here? I can do that! Question is, where will we end up? In Australia? On some desert island in the middle of the ocean? Or in Africa? You don’t make it easy, do you?”

  I just love her bouts of temper. I can’t help wondering what she’s like in bed.

  Actually, why am I so afraid of thinking about that? Why do I always have to quit at the most interesting bit?


  I seem to be prejudiced against any potential relationship with her. For several reasons. True, as an SS officer I don’t want to be pushed about by a Schwarzkopf activist, even if only in bed. For several weeks I’ve been playing hard to get, I’ve been really good at it, suffering her nightly masturbations (and that wasn’t easy, I assure you). I really don’t want to give her the impression she’s finally got one up on me.

  But now… I don’t really give a flying fuck. It’s ten in the morning. We’ve talked through the night. She’s so close, drawing me like a magnet. I don’t want to let her go. Our time has come.

  We hear a screech. A key is turning in the door.

  That’s Doc back. Shit! Your timing is seriously wrong, Teacher!

  Chapter Eight

  Harun al-Rashid

  Moskau, Thor’s Hammer Lane

  IT TOOK JEAN-PIERRE SOME TIME to arrive at the only possible solution. Ever since his Bürgerbräukeller epiphany, he’d looked at hundreds of possible scenarios, from even remotely logical to the most improbable.

  First he’d done it using his home computer. Then he’d visited a friend at the Gestapo audio surveillance department and played the recordings on his professional Japanese equipment. His friends had agreed with him. The voices were identical.

  Stubbornly Jean-Pierre had done everything he could to disprove his own findings, looking for every possible error, inconsistency or technical glitch. The facts, however, seemed to grin back at him as if to say, Sorry man, you’re dead right here.

  The day before, he’d skipped work for the first time in his life without telling anyone. He’d locked himself in his apartment and stayed put. He hadn’t eaten anything for twenty-four hours, only drinking icy cold water as he listened hard into his headphones, replaying the words he’d so meticulously matched.

  He was trying to understand. His head was sore with all the theories. The main one of which was, What the hell did they need this shit for?

  The most loyalist theory was, this was simply a security measure to make sure the Schwarzkopfs didn’t get to the Triumvirate leaders. It was no secret that the Resistance had its moles entrenched in all of the Reich’s offices, including some Wehrmacht officers. They very easily could have planted a few amid the Triumvirate’s staff too. In this case, such secrecy was understandable but… how far could it realistically stretch? The Moskau Reichskommissariat leaders never appeared on TV. Their radio addresses were read by radio hosts. Moskau’s citizens never heard their leaders’ actual voices nor had they seen their actual signatures under published decrees, only the Black Sun seal. Even on Freia’s Birthday — which symbolized the end of the Icelandic Vikings’ lunar cycle between the two full moons — it was Helen Stein, the smiley blonde and the Reich’s most popular actress, who read the Triumvirate’s celebratory address on TV.

  So in this case, such security measures would border on paranoia. Were the Triumvirate leaders afraid someone might work out their real names? As if! If anyone ever learned the terrible truth, their reaction would more than likely be a relieved ‘That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking!’ They’d claim they’d worked out the truth by themselves already, putting two and two together through occasional slips of the tongue, dropped hints and other things they’d never really paid attention to but which must have registered subconsciously, finally falling into a pattern.

  Restless with anxiety, Jean-Pierre couldn’t believe his own deductions. Could it really be so simple? Was it really what he’d always secretly suspected deep within?

  He’d forgotten all about his lab and the trigger agent. He tried not to think about Pavel still not contacting him. He just didn’t care. This was mind-boggling.

  The glow of the Buch screen cast a weak light on the inside of a small room.

  Jean-Pierre had been living on his own for quite a while. His was an average apartment in a standard ten-story block the Gestapo rented for its workers, complete with a steel apartment door, video surveillance and a gunner manning the front desk. No female presence: Mengele’s experiments had rendered Jean-Pierre useless in that particular department. All his male potential, as Pavel used to quip, had been channeled into his muscles.

  Cheeky bastard! He’d been lucky enough to escape this fate.

  Jean-Pierre preferred living alone, anyway. He was obsessively clean; he wiped the phone receiver every time he finished talking; he had his dinners delivered; he had his TV soaps and comedians as well as a steady supply of pepper vodka for whenever he had to speak without stuttering. That was the extent of his life.

  The office hadn’t called him yet. That was weird. Especially considering he’d been working long hours just lately, ever since they’d been involved in the trigger agent investigation.

  Despite their own paranoid secrecy, the Triumvirate leaders in fact tended to summon quite a few visitors. Not just Wehrmacht generals or SS Oberführers: the three Triumvirate leaders were quite happy to meet heroic soldiers, exemplary farmers, prominent scientists and Reichstag deputies. Naturally, all visitors were blindfolded before the leaders meted out their medals and awards, followed by the mentioning of all the boring details of every such event on radio and TV. The Triumvirate was perfectly accessible but still unattainable; it kept a watchful eye on everything in the country while remaining intangible.

  One of the Viking TV hosts had compared the Triumvirate with Harun al-Rashid, the Caliph of Baghdad, who used to walk the city streets in disguise pretending to be a commoner. “Imagine riding the underground from Horst Wessel Station to Torch Parade Square,” he’d said, “telling a Reich joke. And the guy sitting opposite you is in fact one of the Triumvirate. You’d be naïve to think they know nothing about the mood in the country.”

  On one hand, the regime had done everything to deny its own existence, redirecting the population’s anger to more convenient targets. On the other, it was now well and truly ubiquitous. TV statements like these would render everyone paranoid, imagining the pale face of one of the Triumvirate hovering behind his or her back.

  Jean-Pierre had been scratching his head for another twenty-four hours, thinking what to do with his discovery. Should he tell Pavel about it over a beer and pick his brains about it? That was one solution. Still, Pavel was away — and Jean-Pierre had no idea when he might be back in Moskau.

  Or should he maybe upload the news to some Schwarzkopf forum? Then again, Jean-Pierre had been wearing a blue SS lab coat for far too long to turn it at a moment’s notice. Having to choose between those you dislike and those you hate isn’t an easy thing to do. Yes, so the Lebensborn had turned him into a mental wreck, making him into one of the thousands of walking robots who could harbor disagreements with the system but still had to do what it told them to. The system that had first snatched him from his parents, castrated him like a young pig, then forced him to do the kind of work it wanted him for. Why should he even contemplate it? It was much safer thinking old comfortable thoughts like most Moskauers did, rerunning stale dreams of being promoted first to Hauptsturmführer, then to Sturmbannführer until you could finally retire sporting the proper Standartenführer insignia.

  That’s provided cancer hadn’t carried you off earlier.

  The Schwarzkopfs? Oh, he’d read their mission statements on the Shogunet. Their guerrilla groups spent more time fighting each other than challenging the Reichskommissariat’s armies. They only joined forces once a year during the Wehrmacht’s Great Offensive: then indeed no one could defeat them. The Schwarzkopfs’ ranks were patched like a Chinese quilt: Bolsheviks, anarchists, Imperial White Guards, polizei deserters[xxx] and village militia. If this motley crew ever seized power, it would mean a new Twenty-Year War over city control! Jean-Pierre had no illusions about his own fate among others like him: the victors would simply line them up along a freshly-dug trench and gun them down, end of story.

  So no, he wasn’t so eager to play into the Schwarzkopfs’ hands. But he couldn’t stay silent about what he’d just found out, either. This had b
een the last straw. This freakin’ Triumvirate really took them all for untermensch idiots. They were probably laughing in the safety of their bunker knowing that Moskauers had no other choice but to pull their weight for the regime, cheering the Reich’s decisions. The moment they stopped doing that, the big bad Schwarzkopfs would fall on them like a ton of bricks.

  What a bunch of lowlifes. Never mind. Jean-Pierre knew what he was going to do.

  He would withdraw all the yen he’d saved for his vacation and book a flight to Hong Kong. He had enough to last a couple of months there. In the meantime, Pavel (complete with a new face and new identity) was bound to pay a visit to the safe house in the Springtime of the Glorious Tiger district, the one with all the high-rise towers by the port. And that’s where they’d finally talk: in a bug-free environment devoid of Gestapo agents. He would put Pavel into the picture and they’d decide what to do with the data. Jean-Pierre would have uploaded the audio file and all the comparative analysis to… not to his own email box, oh no. It was too easy to hack. If the truth were known, he wasn’t a hundred percent sure he wasn’t being watched: most (although not all) staff computers were routinely bugged.

  Never mind. He knew of a place where they’d never look for it.

  It took him an hour to upload the massive file. Immediately he felt better. That was basically it. He would catch a few winks, then go to the office. He still had a few hours of sleep left.

  Jean-Pierre walked over to the window and screwed his eyes tight against the blazing sun. He lay both his hands onto the black curtains, parting them.