THE END
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Hitler? What the...? I can hear some of you ask. When I started writing Captive-in-Chief, the perpetrators were always going be a Nazi/KKK collaboration, but I had no intention of involving Hitler in the mix. Argentina and surrounding countries did, without a doubt, harbor a number of senior Nazis after the war; of that there is no doubt and plenty of evidence. However, it was only whilst researching that I realized just how tenuous the evidence for Hitler’s demise in those final few days of the war actually is.
In Hitler we have the greatest villain to have ever walked our planet, a man responsible for tens of millions of deaths and destruction beyond comprehension. A man who we are told shot himself and his wife, and whose bodies were placed in a bomb crater, covered in petrol and burned. All this, of course, sounds perfectly feasible and understandable - he had lost the war and didn’t want to be captured, so he fell on his sword.
The problem begins when you begin to look at the evidence. There is no physical evidence. The body was allegedly removed by the Russians, yet Stalin claimed for years afterwards that Hitler escaped. The remains that were removed were recently analyzed. Hitler’s skull was found to be that of a woman in her forties! We have the eye witness statements of those who found him and Eva Braun. Nobody actually witnessed the suicide, they heard the shots and then discovered the bodies. So there were witnesses, you say. Yes, his closest aides and confidants, those he trusted above all others to share his bunker, aides and confidants who were the architects of the greatest propaganda campaign in the history of the world. They were the men and women who had helped convince a highly educated and intelligent nation that Jews were less than human and should be eradicated! These are men and women who would have given their lives for their Fuhrer. And let’s not forget Hitler had numerous doubles.
Hitler’s cowardly suicide was a convenient end to the war. With him dead, the world breathed a sigh of relief. It was over, the villain was dead. Six long hard, devastating and costly years were over with that one death. The world could move on, the allies could declare victory. The war was over. Of course it wasn’t just the Nazis that had a propaganda machine, everyone did. There were no losers in the acceptance of his death.
Hitler’s death was a death with no evidence other than the words of those people closest to him who believed vehemently in everything he stood for. How do we know the greatest villain in the world killed himself? Because the greatest villains in the world told us so. That is the extent of the evidence that Adolf Hitler, a man with numerous doubles, killed himself.
I’ll leave you with that thought and really do hope you enjoyed Captive-in-Chief.
Murray
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Other titles by Murray McDonald
SCION
CRITICAL ERROR
DIVIDE & CONQUER
AMERICA’S TRUST
TRAITOR
THE GOD COMPLEX - (read on for excerpt)
ROCKLAND (NOVELLA – USA ONLY)
(YOUNG ADULT – THE BILLIONAIRE SERIES)
KIDNAP
ASSASSIN
The God Complex
by
Murray McDonald
The God Complex
Murray McDonald
Published by Murray McDonald
Copyright 2014 Murray McDonald
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
The right of Murray McDonald to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act 1988.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
MISSION LOG – EXTRACT 1-1
Deep Space Mission – New Hope
Log entry 1
Mission Commander
It is with great sadness that I look back on the fading speck in the distance that we have called home since birth. We have said goodbye to parents and loved ones that many, or all of us, will never see again. Our only hope of seeing them again would be the failure of our mission, a failure that would condemn our population to a certain death. Our planet is dying, and with it, our future.
Our mission, steeped in secrecy, is known to but the very few, and our future as a race depends on our mission. A weight that bears heavy on us all as we speed towards a solution that we believe lies out there, amongst the vastness of space. A solution that our descendants will deliver for the future, we are destined never to return, but our mission will live on in our children and their children’s children, until the time comes when our work will save our people.
The end may not come during our lifetime but in the near future, our work will be our only hope. When the time comes and the end seems nigh, we will have prepared for that day and the end will be but a new beginning.
Chapter 1
Lick Observatory
Mount Hamilton, San Jose, CA
2:27 a.m.
His heart nearly stopped beating as the image came into view. It couldn’t be, he argued with his own eyes. The more he looked, the more he realized it was real.
He grabbed his phone and hit the professor’s number on the third attempt. His fingers shook so wildly that he had had to abort two calls to ‘Paul’, whoever that was, in his contacts list. As the line rang, he pleaded, Don’t go to message, not today, not now.
“Good God, James! It’s half two in the morning,” came a groggy voice.
“Professor… you… were… right!” said James excitedly, barely able to get his words out.
Professor Charles Harris sat up, suddenly wide awake. His deputy was not a man prone to excitement. In fact, in the ten years he had known him, he had barely smiled, let alone shown any emotion.
“James, take a deep breath and tell me what you’re talking about,” suggested the professor calmly.
“I’m calibrating the equipment for tomorrow’s inauguration by the President,” began James, trying desperately to calm himself down and make sense of what he was seeing. “I wanted to make sure that when you demonstrated its power, you’d make an impression.”
The professor nodded on the other end of the phone. He certainly wanted to make an impression. Twenty years and $15 billion dollars of funding later, Hubble 2 was about to go live. Significantly more powerful than its dated predecessor, Hubble 2 could look farther into space and farther than had ever even imagined. However, its capabilities were not limited to space. A large portion of the funding was secured on its ability to look back towards earth, in as great a detail as it could look into space. Hubble 2 was not only the greatest telescope ever built, it was also destined to become the greatest spy satellite ever built - a situation the professor was less comfortable with, but after the inauguration, that would no longer be his problem. The spy functionality would be officially handed over to the National Reconnaissance Office, the US Intelligence agency responsible for spy satellites.
“Its power is amazing, the details of the images are exquisi—”
“You said I was right?” interrupted the professor, frustrated with the padding James was adding to his outburst.
“Yes I did,” James replied excitedly. “And you are!”
“I am what?” asked the professor.
“You are right!”
“About what?”
“Everything…” replied James, uttering his last ever words. The bullet passed through his left temple, removing his righ
t temple and destroying his handset, instantly killing the call and the caller.
“James? James?! Are you there?!” shouted the professor into the dead phone line.
The professor dialed James’ number but it went straight to voicemail. He tried the observatory’s landline number.. No answer. He dialed James’ cell again. Voicemail.
“Dad?” a knock on his bedroom door preceded its opening.
“You okay?” asked the professor’s son, Copernicus Armstrong Sagan Harris, more commonly known as Cash. In fact, very few knew that ‘Cash’ was not his given name - a deliberate ploy by a very young Copernicus.
The professor was halfway into his trousers when his son entered the room. “I’m fine, son, but something’s going on at the observatory.”
“Dad, it’s 2:30 a.m., I’m sure it can wait.”
“James was very excited and James doesn’t do excited. He told me I was right.”
“Right about what?”
“Everything, apparently, and then the line went dead.”
“Okay, but I’ll come with you, it’s an hour’s drive,” said Cash. “Just let me throw some clothes on.”
Cash, turning to leave, allowed the professor for the first time to see the battle wounds his son had suffered. A large scar surrounded by burn tissue covered the left side of his back. A tear welled in the professor’s eye. His actions had driven Cash to enlist and, as a result, suffer numerous injuries during his tours in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. It had been almost fifteen years since they had seen each other. Cash’s return for the inauguration had been a wonderful surprise. Cash wasn’t going to miss one of the professor’s proudest moments.
Cash walked back to his childhood room.
“Okay?” asked Rigs, appearing behind Cash.
“Jesus!” said Cash, jumping and pushing his friend out of the room. “Don’t do that!”
“What?” asked Rigs.
“Sneak up on me like that!”
“I followed you,” protested Rigs. Cash patted his friend on the back as an apology. Rigs couldn’t help himself, he was quiet in every sense of the word.
“Copern…?” called out Cash’s father as he made his way along the corridor.
“Dad, Jesus, how many times, it’s ‘Cash’, call me ‘Cash’, okay?!”
“Good morning, Rigs,” said the professor, noticing Cash’s friend hovering quietly in the corridor. The professor had only met Rigs that day and was still trying to work him out.
“Good morning,” replied Rigs quietly, lowering his head as he spoke. He didn’t like to make eye contact at the best of times. Rigs was, as Cash described him, complex. Others found him intimidating or odd. Few had ever heard him speak more than a few words at once. Cash was the only person he could talk to and if possible, he relayed conversations through him. ‘Dysfunctional’, ‘loner’, ‘troubled’ were only a few of the words that had followed Rigs through his life.
“You ready?”
The professor nodded.
“Where are you going?” asked Rigs quietly, looking at Cash.
“We need to go to the observatory. Dad’s deputy called and Dad can’t call him back.”
Rigs headed into his room to get ready.
“No, it’s fine,” smiled Cash. “You grab some sleep, I’ll go with my dad!”
“Sure?” asked Rigs.
Cash nodded. “Yeah, nothing to worry about,” he said, closing Rigs’ door.
“Don’t ask,” said Cash to the inquisitive look from his father before pulling his sweater over his head and leading the way down the stairs.
“Is he alright?” asked the professor.
“He’s not comfortable around strangers but once he gets to know you, he’s much better.”
“Better, but not fine, not normal?”
“Better,” emphasized Cash. “Rigs is…” Cash struggled to find the word. “Special?”
“And you work with him?”
“Wouldn’t work with anyone else,” said Cash proudly.
“And for the last fifteen years—”
“Let’s not go there, Dad. I’m here and I really want us to move on,” said Cash.
The professor held up his hands in surrender. “It’s all I’ve dreamt of for the last fifteen years,” he said, his voice breaking. “It was such a stupid—”
“Dad,” warned Cash.
The professor raised his hands again and nodded in acknowledgment. “So what exactly did your deputy say that’s got you up at this hour?” asked Cash, keen to change the subject and not open a wound that after fifteen years was still very painful.
“Just that I was right about everything, supposedly.”
“What does that mean?”
“It could mean many things.”
“But he was really excited?”
The professor placed one hand on the door handle and paused. He placed his other hand under his shirt and withdrew a chain that hung around his neck with a small flash drive attached to it. “It couldn’t be,” he mused while turning the door handle.
“Couldn’t be what?” asked Cash, increasingly frustrated.
“No, it couldn’t be that,” the professor said confidently, stepping out onto the front porch.
By the time Cash registered the noise, it was already too late. The sound of wet flesh being slapped reverberated in his ears. He tried desperately to pull his father back from the danger, snatching him back into the hallway out of the line of fire, but it was already too late. His father’s chest was soaked in blood; the bullet that had hit his heart failed to stop it pumping.
A barrage of spits from the silenced rifle followed, tearing at the door and floor while Cash pulled his father deeper into the house.
His father’s eyes pleaded with him to stop. Cash stopped moving and tried desperately to stem the blood but knew it was useless. He knew all too well how utterly useless his actions were. His father reached for his hands to stop him, taking his right hand and placing it over the flash drive on the chain.
The professor mumbled something that Cash couldn’t make out. He leaned in closer to his father.
“Sophie…” said the professor with his last breath, pushing the flash drive into Cash’s hand, the last action of a dying man.
Cash stumbled back. His father could not have uttered a more devastating blow to his son. It was the one name he never wanted to hear again and certainly not from his father. The fact that he’d said it on his dying breath made it all the more distressing.
Cash was frozen by his father’s dying word. He held the flash drive in his hand, not sure what to do. Another barrage of bullets tore into the door. Cash needed to move, he needed to take action, fight back, do something. He needed to avenge his father’s murder.
The bullets stopped hitting the door, another change of magazine or an assault on the house. They must realize the house was weaponless.
“Rigs!” Cash whispered urgently.
“Yes!” came the reply from behind the front door.
Cash stood and opened the door to a naked and bloodied Rigs.
“What the…?”
“One sniper, at the end of the drive,” said Rigs, looking despondently at the lifeless Professor Harris.
“Can he talk?” asked Cash.
Rigs shook his head and raised a dripping wet pen. “Sorry, I pushed this up under his skull. He’s dead.”
Cash patted his best friend on the back, it said ‘thank-you’ in a way that words simply couldn’t.
“Do you know why?” asked Rigs.
Cash shook his head and held up the flash drive. “He pushed this into my hand and said…” Cash swallowed hard, his voice breaking, “Sophie.”
Rigs had met Cash at basic training fifteen years earlier, and the two had been inseparable ever since. Cash had taken the quiet loner under his wing, while Rigs had accepted a friendship for the first time in his life. There was nothing they didn’t tell each other.
“Sophie?” he shrugged.
“My ex fiancée.”
“Your what?”
Chapter 2
Santa Cruz, CA
The sound of police sirens killed any explanation.
“Clothes might be a good idea,” suggested Cash when the blue strobe lights cut through the darkness.
Rigs, covered in blood and naked as the day he was born, made no attempt to move. He wasn’t leaving Cash alone until he knew the danger had passed.
“Police!” came a shout from the front door.
“My father, Professor Harris, has been shot, we’re unarmed!” shouted Cash clearly, as he stood next to the body, his hands aloft.
“Copernicus, is that you?” came a reply from the policeman, raising a questioning look from Rigs.
“Cop what?” asked Rigs, it was the second time he’d heard that name being said to Cash.
Cash pointed to his dead father, instantly silencing Rigs, there was a time and a place.
“Yes, it is, Chief,” replied Cash clearly.
“I’m coming in, okay?”
The door opened to reveal a far older version of Harry Kramer, the police chief Cash had once known. He was accompanied by three officers who rushed into the entrance, secured Cash, and ordered Rigs to lie down in the hallway with his arms and legs spread.
The Chief knelt down by the professor’s body and the side of an old and dear friend. “Copernic—”
“It’s Cash, it’s been Cash since I was eight,” said Cash.
“What happened?”
“He got a call from the observatory and said he needed to go there immediately. We were heading out and a silenced bullet caught him in the chest.”
“Someone shot him with a silenced weapon?” he asked, incredulous.
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