As he resumed his statue-like pose, the two halves of the block of ice hit the concrete floor. Uncontrollably, my mouth hung open. Mr. Horikoshi smiled, and said, “Galland-san please inspect the matting.”
I did so and was shocked to see that the cotton mat had itself was deeply cut, cut so much that the bamboo padding was exposed.
I said to Mr. Horikoshi, “I said before that I have seen the most amazing engineering. I was wrong. This is even more amazing, and this technology is over 600 years old.”
Mr. Horikoshi, bowed deeply and said, “With deepest respect, Galland-san, this Japanese technology is older than the Christian Jesus. This particular sword is over 500 years old.”
I simply shook my head in disbelief. Had I been asked before the display, I would have been completely confident in predicting the outcome, and I would have been completely wrong.
But there was still one more shock left for me that day.
I thanked Mr. Horikoshi, and said, “your factory deeply impresses me, and I am amazed at the design on your new fighter. The designer is a man of extra-ordinary talent and foresight.”
Mr. Horikoshi said in a very quiet voice, “Galland-san, I am the designer.”
Roosevelt looked up and said, “so, we’re in a fight.”
Hopkins nodded, and said,
“And remember, Mr. President, the Japanese are a people who plan in terms of decades, not days. And they have such a love of country that they will bear any burden, or meet any hardship to preserve the honor of their country.”
These words would ring in the President’s ears in December.
But then, just as suddenly, the momentary thoughtfulness evaporated, and the demagogue returned,
“Well, I have provoked them as much as possible. Why, if I had been provoked half as much, I would have started a war. These fucking people have the patience of a fucking saint. I started the oil embargo; I’ve stopped them from using our Canal. You know, I’ve played all the cards.”
Hopkins knew this would happen, so he plowed on,
“Well, we need to do a number of things, according to Dulles: put our war industry on a crash rebuilding course; build up the West Coast now, not next year, but now; we need a war and we need a war we can win. The Alaska Territory is our ace in the hole—the Hawaiian Islands to Japan is 4,110 miles, but Dutch Harbor to Japan is 3,583 miles and we have a land bridge—no huge Pacific Ocean to cross. By building up Alaska we have a strong, stable northern base that we can completely control. We build a rail link from Seattle and we can run express trains up there. It would be a dagger pointing at the heart of Japan. Especially if we cut a deal with Stalin. With Stalin on board, we could even lease some bases in eastern Russia like we did in Cuba in ‘03. And, keep in mind, the Soviets still remember 1905, so there is no love lost between the Russians and the Japanese.”
Hopkins paused for effect.
“And, if we promised Stalin war materiel, he could use his railroads in western Russia to bring it east, safe from the Germans.”
“Hmm,” Roosevelt could see the reasonableness of the approach.
“Of course, Winston would not be happy.”
“Yes, but the British are finished; why even the Irish have defeated them and they’re not exactly the smartest race on the planet. So it’s only a matter of time before the colored countries of their so-called Empire do the same as the Paddies have done.”
“Well, that’s a little far-fetched, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps, but look at what the Japanese are doing to the Europeans in Asia and the last time I looked they were not white.”
“Mr. President, here is the problem with Asia: with the defeat by the Germans of the Dutch and the French, their colonies in Asia are ‘fragile,’ and fragile is putting it mildly. Our possession of the Hawaiian Islands is stuck out in the middle of nowhere; Australia is the other side of the world; we have no friends—not that we want any—in South America. While not a state, Alaska is ours and with it a land bridge—no subs to sink convoys. We need to plan on attacking and destroying Japan now, not tomorrow. And we don’t know how long Stalin can hold out. According to our intelligence, the Germans have moved over 700 miles into Russia in the past month. And frankly, Stalin is very weak at the moment. Now is the time to cut a deal—he’s desperate for help.”
Then Hopkins unsheathed the knife, “and what is the current unemployment percentage?”
Roosevelt flushed with anger and was about to speak.
Hopkins, in a move unprecedented in the history of the Oval Office, put his hand up to signal the President to stop.
“Excuse me, Mr. President, but as of last month, the number was 10.4% and it is not going down. A crash rail building program to Alaska when combined with similar effort for war industries out West could drop this to three or even two percent, now, today. Ridiculous though it sounds, we could build a special high-speed line. Last night, Dulles reminded me of an English engineer from last century who actually built a railroad with a seven-foot gauge. By using a gauge of seven- or even eight-foot, large sub-assemblies could be shipped from the Boeing aircraft plants in Seattle and from California.”
11: The Seasoned Campaigner
Haus Wachenfeld
Saturday, 26 July 1941
As the owner was busy inspecting the new complex recently completed for him in Poland, the mountain house had been closed down for July and August—ever the Austrian penny pincher from Braunau am Inn, the owner saw no reason in wasting a pfennig. From the pile of reports Bormann had gotten from his obsequious and terrified informants and sycophants, the new Polish complex was a horror—hot, damp, fetid, and mosquito-infested; at night the air conditioning was so noisy that it left everyone tired and listless the next morning; the mosquitos were amazing in size and their ability to raise painful bites—Bormann’s Chief had bored everyone by going on and on with boring jokes about how the Luftwaffe was at fault for these obnoxious airborne interlopers.
Bormann expected the owner to return, by Auntie Ju, to the mountain house in early September after attending to party business in Berlin; Bormann did not for a minute believe any of the malicious gossip about a new busty peroxide blonde that the hated little poison dwarf of a propaganda minister had introduced to Bormann’s boss.
As far as Paul himself went, he was always a joke to Bormann. The amazing combination of Paul’s stunted right leg and his breathtaking intellect—he was a Doctorate of Philosophy after all—made for the oddest man Bormann had ever encountered. Once Paul had confided to Bormann the approach he took to dalliance: “First, I have the lady over for a nice meal at my house by the lake, then I play my piano for three hours (I favor Chopin), and then I ask how she feels about the music and does she find it ethereally soothing” Bormann, the former farm laborer on a pig farm, smiled at Paul and asked, “Why don’t you do as I do?” Paul fell into the trap and politely asked what that was. Bormann laughed, “Tell the bitch to sit on the couch; sit next to her; command her to open her legs; tell her to start sucking, and that the sucking better be good.” Bormann laughed at the combination of shock and horror on little Paul’s face.
“Paul, the difference between you and me is that you chase women, whereas I just tell them what to do. You’re like all the others I hear here at the house, talking fancy words, but never getting any cunt. Whereas I have no fancy words, but more women than I can handle. Believe me, women all need to be told what to do and like being told what to do.”
Paul glowered and said nothing.
The house was entirely empty—no kitchen staff, no butler, no gardeners. Even the SS Life Guard—resplendent in their new Hugo Boss uniforms—had been excused; a lone pair of sentries remained at the main gate, and that was a good ten minutes’ walk from the house. Only Eva remained; what she did all day Bormann did not know, nor cared to know.
Bormann had—as always—taken a few liberties. He had stocked his prized new Electrolux Einstein-Szilard refrigerator in the nearby pantry wi
th his favorite weizen bier, without realizing the inventor of the new ‘fridge was a German physicist who had fled to America; no matter—the wheat beer was ice cold—that is all that mattered to Bormann; Bormann was a practical man.
He had checked on Eva that morning and found her in her room and as they were the only two living souls in the house had told her to find him if she needed anything. And the house was as if it was in the city of the dead; the birds outside were the only sound of life. It was a pleasant and relaxing change from the bustle and constant activity when the Chief was at home.
After checking on Eva, he roamed the empty house, it was like a deserted ski hotel that had closed for the summer—a little musty and damp in the carpets on the stairs. He entered the master bedroom and snooped and spied, opening drawers as he had done so many times before. Regardless of how often he did this, he always felt a small frisson of excitement at this petty sacrilege. He proceeded to the master bathroom, a very small and boring affair for such as great man of state as his boss was. He weighed himself on the Chief’s bathroom scales, and, leaving the door open in an act of petulance, he proceeded to use the Chief’s toilet to move his bowels. Afterwards, he weighed himself again on his boss’s scales and was pleased to see he had lost almost half a kilogram.
It was hotter than Hell—the day was one of the hottest of that very hot summer. Bormann sat at the long table in the great hall. The monster was a full four paces long and had six, not four legs, and the surface was a deliciously cool marble, not one slab but three triangular pieces the Chief had personally selected from a very, very nervous Swiss stone merchant; what was the Swissie frightened of—the Swiss had been neutral for over 200 years? The delicious coldness of the marble was a refreshing contrast to the day’s heat.
The great hall where Bormann sat was still, cool, and completely silent. At the long table, he had set up his store of ledgers and pencils; he never used ink—too hard to change. The large table sat along the far wall facing the picture window; he had used the electric switch to automatically raise the steel shutters so he could enjoy the panorama of the mountains from the huge floor-to-ceiling picture windows. Not for the first time sitting alone in the long room, he imagined himself as the lord—as the king of the manor, and why not; he was the Chief’s right-hand man, after all? Here, he slowly and carefully checked the figures of deliveries and of produce delivered; “you can never be too careful with peasants—they are the shiftiest of all of God’s creatures.” In truth, he was simply playing at working—he had succeeded in terrifying all the peasants with threats of damnation or worse if Bormann was overcharged by as much as a pfennig.
A noise at the door made him look up. It was Eva. Apparently, she had been exercising on the small side terrace under the shade of the long canvas awning as she was wearing her customary silk gym slip and top—a delightful soft peach pink.
“I hope I am not disturbing you, Martin. Am I?”
He stood up at the table, and bowed slightly.
“Of course not, Miss Braun; how can I be of assistance?”
(Always keep the tone with heavies very formal, was a Bormann dictum. He always kept this slightly stilted formality even when they both knew they were the only two in the house.)
“Oh, I was just so hot and thirsty so I thought I would ask you for a glass of water from the pantry.”
“Certainly, would you like some ice, Madam? It’s so hot today.”
He knew his boss was a very busy man, busy with the affairs of state, busy with international affairs, and—understandably—had no time for the softer affairs of the heart. On a more practical level, Bormann knew from the housekeepers that the owner rarely, if ever, made any visits to Miss Braun’s room—“you can always tell if two people have slept in a bed,” the grizzled head housekeeper had confided. The sad truth was that the chief’s eye had moved to the more buxom starlets in Berlin that little Paul was able to supply in large numbers as controller of the Reich’s film industry. As happened with many men, Bormann’s boss was able to maintain the little wifey at home while getting a roster of new, fresh and exceedingly nubile young starlets in Berlin, all looking to please to further their careers; “after all, it is just the same as eating or shitting,” one of the girls from the provinces had proclaimed with charming candor.
Even from the doorway, Bormann could see Eva was already excited and Bormann loved to savor the observation of an excited woman. Thousands of conquests let him sense it like a prize fighter relishes an opening in his opponent’s defense. Some boxers were close to perfect with just a tiny flaw, but that tiny flaw—if exploited properly—would put them on the canvas, or at least put one knee down. In Eva, it was her modest chest, or more specifically, her nipples—the light reflected on her silk top and he could see clearly two bumps which she made no attempt to hide. Why should she—they were completely alone?
And he knew from the housekeepers’ discrete observations that Eva’s monthly was only two or three days off—she was in high heat, like a cat screeching at night for relief.
“Madam, would you prefer a cold beer? I have an exceptionally good cloudy German wheat beer with an excellent after-taste.” (Bormann had heard Albert drone on and on about wines. So Bormann had decided to use the same approach with his beloved beers—it would certainly make Bormann look smarter; at least Bormann thought it would.)
“Oh yes! My husband told me he loved the German wheat beer when he was in Munich in the early days. He was drinking this beer with chicken the day when that terrible, terrible thing happened with his niece in his apartment. But that is all in the past now, isn’t it? I mean my husband has you and me now, doesn’t he?”
Eva used “husband” all the time around the house to everyone from the maids to Bormann, even though there had never been any ceremony. It was her way to assert an ascendency over all in the house. And it worked with everyone apart from Bormann, as he was the Chief’s right hand, and Eva knew this.
“You know, beer is far more refreshing in summer,” he lied.
He rose and returned from the pantry. He brought a coaster as well. I was one of the cheap, coarse leather coasters he had made by the hundreds, with the party insignia and “Wachenfeld” stamped on it. As with all supplies to the house, Bormann skimmed his normal eight percent.
“We have to give the tourists something to steal,” he had told his boss. When the Duce’s party had left after their last visit, all these coasters—and a lot else—had disappeared. “They are Italian,” he told his boss, as if that explained their mendacity. The Chief nervously laughed briefly at Bormann’s comment—perhaps it was a little too close to the truth.
Eva sipped the beer.
“You are right, this is so refreshing.”
Bormann noticed how she had emphasized the adjective.
Then she did the classic action of a woman on the prowl—she brushed her hair slowly with her free hand, then touching her neck as she slowly rotated her head, affecting the appearance of bearing the problems of the world on her shoulders—Atlas had no burden compared to poor Eva.
Bormann smiled to himself—he should write a book on women; for all their artifice and haughty distance, they were as transparent as petulant children.
She put down the beer and started sliding up and down the huge room. She was still wearing the ballet slippers she wore when exercising, and she slid on the polished marble floor of the great hall like an ice skater.
“Martin, you know we are the two luckiest people in the world, do you know? You and I are the Chief’s right-hand man and his right-hand woman.”
He expected a giggle, but none was forthcoming.
Instead, she slid over to the table and leaned forward, to give Bormann his first clear view of her décolletage. Her nipples were slowly getting larger. While she was looking at him, he looked directly at her nipples so she could see him looking. He loved this part of the seduction, when the woman was so excited and was trying so hard to tease, and to please, but her exci
tement worked against her—they both knew what she wanted and he was far too seasoned a campaigner to make any rushed moves.
It was like when he was playing checkers with the other farm hands before the Struggle had started; some days he could look three or even four moves ahead, it was as if he was a machine and his hands simple implements to move the pieces on the board.
She knew this as well, and his sense of control—and thus power—made her more excited. She sat down in the large green chair at the end of the table, and how she sat did start to stir the old trooper in him.
When the boss was home, Eva played the Vestal Virgin perfectly—often not even making eye contact, but soft, sweet, demure, innocent and pure.
But now, alone in the huge house—the house that could now rightly be called the center of the great new German empire—she sat with her legs splayed. For the first time since she entered, Bormann could see the clear outline of her camel toe, and she made no effort to hide it; clearly there was nothing under the pink silk gym shorts—she was a screeching cat and she could not help herself.
She sat there slowly drinking her beer. She was teasing herself as much as she was teasing him—she knew as well as he did what was about to happen.
While she offered herself to be ravished, Bormann leaned against the wall, as the table was next to the wall with cushions in the old Austrian farmhouse style; the instructions given by the owner to Albert were “simple but friendly;” Albert—as always—succeeded in hiding his disdain of the “taste” of the Austrian peasant, who had flattered Albert with “the greatest genius the world had even seen” and such like nonsense.
“You look like you need another,” Bormann said after a while.
Eva readily agreed.
Bormann went to the refrigerator, which he insisted on calling “his icebox” and fetched two more bottles.
He poured another beer for Eva.
The Goddess Of Fortune Page 12