The Goddess Of Fortune

by Andrew Blencowe

  Together they climbed the external stairs to the catwalk that ran along one side of the building. From the catwalk the Swede could see the progress of the work on the five buses. Later, he would inspect them in detail. But first he needed to check the morale and the state of his “troops,” as he called them.

  On the ground floor a single large office occupied the corner by the large double doors. In the office stood 50 men. When the Swede entered, they snapped to attention.

  “So, how are my bridegrooms of death today?” he smiled.

  The question was a rhetorical one. José, whose slouching by the black walnut tree had been replaced with a physical strictness of the professional soldier that he was, answered for the company.

  “The Caballero Legionario are all excellent, thank you, Commander.”

  Two men stepped forwarded and saluted.

  “All five transports are ready, Commander. The new engines have been fitted and tested as have the new tires,” the first man explained.

  “The dynamite, limpets and the magnesium flares have been tested and all are completely acceptable,” the second one stated.

  “Excellent,” the taciturn Swede replied.

  “Time for a dress rehearsal and then equipment check,” the Swede stated, feeling slightly odd using such a feminine term as “dress rehearsal.”

  “Are there any questions about the missions?”

  The silence was what the Swede wanted to hear.

  The men marched out leaving José and the Swede alone in the room. The Swede opened his satchel and withdrew two envelopes, one bulging as it held 50 smaller envelopes, each containing five U.S. 100-dollar bills.

  “Here are the men’s pay and your expenses. Do you need any more?”

  “No, thank you, Commander, this is more than satisfactory.”

  José and the Swede descended to the garage floor for the Swede’s “dress rehearsal.” For the next hour, the company presented their uniforms. First were the uniforms of two well-known private security firms. Then, a little more sinister, uniforms of track workers for the Southern Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad. Most sinister of all were the uniforms of the U.S. Navy.

  From his satchel, the Swede extracted a large map, which he pinned to the wall. He took a broom and unscrewed the brush. He handed the broom handle to each of the company commanders in turn and had each Company commander explain his mission, so all 50 men understood. From time to time, the Swede grilled a soldier at random about any of the three missions. All the company had to understand all the missions so there was “depth on the bench” (he particularly liked the American football expression, one of a number he had learned while stationed at the consulate in San Francisco in the early thirties).

  After the mission plan was completed, the Swede examined the buses. They were defrocked Greyhounds, externally tired but with fresh engines and new tires. The Swede had selected these buses as they were extremely common in the West of the United States and would not draw a second glance. His agents had gotten Texas license plates. Last, but by no means least, the Swede inspected the dynamite, limpets and magnesium flares cached inside the false sides of the storage area of the buses.

  Satisfied, the Swede thought it time for his speech,

  “Gentlemen, all of us are mercenaries and so we fight for money. But we all know it is not as simple as that. We also fight for a cause. We have all seen—most of us first-hand—the enemy ogre; you have seen how our beloved Spain was ignored by the Americans in her hour of need. Spain, the motherland for most of you and my adopted motherland (here the Swede was gilding the lily ever so slightly). This treachery cannot go unpunished. And, we few, we happy few, are blessed with the power to strike a fatal blow to show the world—and to teach the world—that Spain must never be allowed to suffer again. Without men like you, the Bolsheviks would have overrun and destroyed Spain. I earnestly pray all of you, my bridesmaids of death, return safely. The mission is a simple one, we have trained very hard for four months, and most important of all in any battle, we have the advantage of complete surprise. Kickoff is at 0600 tomorrow and I will return to greet all of you on the Tenth.”

  José thought, “He may be a prick at times, but this Swede did the same training with the men, humped the same pack, and never pulled rank.”

  The men nodded.

  True to his word, the Swede was there on Wednesday, the tenth day of December, and he greeted each of the returning men. All 50 men returned safely—their missions had all gone off flawlessly. Train Hard, Fight Easy, the Swede had inculcated in them time and time again, and it was true; true as the dictum that Surprise Is the Greatest Weapon.

  Each man had received his mission pay, and for those who stayed in Mexico, a regular stipend of 10 Franklins each month. And when the cost of the finest Mexico City whore, the very crème de la crème—young, tight, with large, soft brown doe-eyes, and a firm and enticing bust—was ten U.S. dollars, the men lived very, very well on a thousand dollars a month, or as Sasaki would have costed it, around 30 yen or about 30 American cents (assuming one-tenth of a yen for rent of the building per Franklin.)

  18: The Valve Maker’s Observation

  Ottawa

  Tuesday, 2 December 1941

  On arrival in Ottawa, Schneider and Louise quietly left the train from Washington. It had been a wonderful trip so far. Earlier that afternoon they had dined on oysters, caviar, and ice-cold Dom Pérignon. Louise liked to encourage Schneider to get her drunk—it appealed to her lascivious side. She was wearing her favorite pair of patent leather nude sling backs with the black highlights on the toe. At the heel were two separate skin-colored straps rather than the traditional one, and these two independent straps made the sling backs far more comfortable to wear. Also, they made it less likely to slip off in a moment of sudden passion. As was her custom, under her knee-length silk skirt she wore just her garter belt holding up her cream-colored silk stockings. Wearing just her garter, she was completely open and available to any man; that alone made her start to lubricate—to be walking around with all these men, and virtually exposing herself. And the pleats in her light silk skirt did their part by swishing and exposing her legs. And her excitement fed on itself—the more excited she got, the more she lubricated.

  She loved to be taken fully clothed and she loved to look down at her nude sling backs with the black toes still on her feet, legs splayed wide apart, while Schneider pushed deep inside her. (In a moment of unladylike sauciness, she told Schneider that she called these sling back heels her “fuck shoes.” With the effects of the champagne, she giggled like a naughty schoolgirl.)

  They travelled as Mr. and Mrs. Holtz, upstanding American citizens; their passports were nicely scuffed courtesy of the forgery office in the basement of the embassy. Naturally, the customs officials did not look twice at them—in Chicago Germans made up the largest ethnic minority, and both Schneider and Louise spoke flawless English.

  Schneider was posing as a Chicago economist specializing in the “Depression within the Depression,” as his typewritten paper proclaimed. To “live the legend,” as he preached to Louise—as well as to his acolytes—he held forth to her in the dining car. He had told her to emulate interest. And he droned on and on, louder than was really necessary, but it was just cover after all.

  “Dear, here are the points I will make at the lecture.” (Of course, there was no lecture; Schneider was just living the legend.)

  “Point One. In ‘37 the unexpected consequences of the new Undistributed Profits taxes meant that companies no longer could keep rainy day funds, and so when it did inevitably rain and sales decreased, these companies had to shed employees instantly. Actually, the headline on Friday the 27th of August, 1937, in the New York Times was Levy on Profits Halts Expansion, which discussed the unexpected consequences of this tax. But you need remember, dear, most governments are run by lawyers who never imagine—and are always shocked by—the unexpected consequences of their actions; often governme
nt fiats generate precisely the opposite of what the bureaucrats expect. The Undistributed Profits tax is a perfect example.

  “Point Two. On Monday, 18 October 1937, the bond market collapsed. Bonds are a measure of the future growth of an economy, as bonds are the cost of borrowing money for future growth, and if people are not borrowing money it is because they see no hope to grow in the future.

  “Point Three. On the same day—Monday, 18 October 1937—as the bond market collapsed, a seat on the New York Stock Exchange was sold for $61,000—the lowest price since 1919—no one wanted to be a stock trader any longer.

  “Point Four. I was reading a newspaper that had printed a letter from the clever English economist John Keynes. In the letter, Keynes said, ‘it is a mistake to think business men are more immoral than politicians,’ and I have to agree with him. I disagree with most of this man Keynes’s ideas, but this remark did seem germane—his ideas on the Paradox of Thrift are typical of English homosexualists and the mad notions they screech from the roof tops, as they see themselves as intellectually superior to mere humans. Keynes wrote his letter in ‘37; this is the same year that the New York Stock Exchange dropped precipitously because business men were unsure of what Roosevelt was going to do and so they wanted to keep their money and not invest until the outlook was less uncertain.”

  At this point, Louise interrupted and asked, “Is that Englisher the one who told his lady friend Lyn that she should go to Tunis because that is, quote, ‘where bed and boys were also not expensive,’ unquote. Is that the one?”

  Schneider, slightly annoyed to be interrupted (but quietly please that the legend was now truly being lived), corrected her,

  “My dear, it was actually to a man that Keynes wrote this reprehensible suggestion. The man’s name was Lytton Strachey. The letter to this man was about replicating Keynes’s own visits to the Maghreb to exploit poor, bewildered, and terribly frightened little boys of 10 or 12. These English homosexualists thought nothing of abusing young boys of 10 for their own weird sexual satiations. Actually, hard though it is to believe, some of these terrified young boys had been castrated to better appeal to these English homosexualists. It’s so odd that these self-same people are so keen on talking about economic exploitation, yet seem oblivious to this far more horrible attack on a child’s innocence. These pompous and pious homosexualists consider themselves to be a class of their own—just as the U.S. government today does; Roosevelt thinks he can exploit people, just as these English homosexualists think they can destroy the innocent childhoods of these tragically poor and terrified young boys in Tunis.

  “People call this Keynes fellow ‘Pozzo’—like a sewer—as his private conversation is often scatological. And this pedophile Keynes harped on about what he calls the ‘Higher Sodomy.’ You won’t find it listed in any library’s card index of course, but while at Cambridge he and this Strachey would prowl for young undergraduates to corrupt. And they thought it a great lark and adventure to visit Tunis to permanently injure these sad little boys who were not even teenagers. And this Keynes is highly thought of in the United States and worshipped in England. What is the world coming to?”

  Louise looked at Schneider; she had struck a nerve, a deep nerve that she felt uncomfortable exploring. Fortunately Schneider almost instantly resumed his cover, his legend.

  “Point Five. Stock flotations on the New York Stock Exchange in the Calvin Coolidge era were about 1,000 million dollars a year, but now during the current Roosevelt regime, where they have sunk to just 50 million dollars a year.

  “Point Six. And this is the most important point. Government bureaucrats do not realize that businesses are fragile flowers that are more often than not created by irascible and driven fanatics whose own identity is in these companies—a company is often the founder’s child. And what these fragile flowers hate most—and fear most—is uncertainty. So when President Roosevelt gets on the radio and boasts of ‘unbridled experimentation,’ and changes his mind daily, then my dear, companies become frightened by this uncertainty.”

  “I hope you will not say ‘my dear’ to the professors,” Louise teased.

  She smiled.

  At the next table in the dining car, a tall, slim man with aquiline features rose and walked over.

  “Excuse me sir, I hate to be rude and interrupt, but I couldn’t help but overhear your lecture notes as you read them to your exceedingly beautiful wife. I must say that it is as if you are inside my own head. I am a manufacturer of valves for cars and my company makes the finest valves in the world. Inlet valves, exhaust values, high-temperature valves for racing engines at the Brickyard—my gosh, we make just about all kinds of valves. I work with all the big companies in Detroit. And I am proud to say I have met Mr. Ford himself on a number of occasions. And Mr. Ford is a very stern taskmaster, a martinet as it were. Yes sir, he is tough and demanding. I have to tell you that the points you just made are so true that I want to shout ‘Hallelujah’ out loud for you, sir, are a man who truly understands that uncertainty is the killer of enterprise, and that the current President and all his highfalutin know-nothing experts are killing freedom in this country. I just had to tell you that, so thank you, sir.”

  With that the man bowed and left the dining car.

  “Well, looks like my lecture may be a success after all, my dear,” Schneider smiled.

  Louise nodded. It was clear from her demeanor that she felt she had done her duty as the spy posing as the dutiful wife, and that now she expected her reward. A reward that was a little more down-to-earth than all this economic jargon. In short, she wanted to be fucked hard.

  On arriving at the station, Schneider hailed a Checker to take them to the Majestic. Once ensconced in the hotel, and after one very quick but highly satisfying standup, Schneider told her to rest then to go shopping at the hotel’s boutiques, which were open until 8 p.m. He would be back about 9 p.m. She nodded.

  Schneider left the hotel and took a cab to the printing company. The company was very small and in the industrial part of town. Even for an early evening it was still bustling and he was just another man—a travelling salesman with a samples case, perhaps? On entering the printing works, Schneider greeted the old German, Heinrich, and his three brothers. The printing business was a family affair and that is how Schneider liked it. Schneider was a welcome visitor and the packages he had arranged to mail each month from Chicago had helped to smooth the partnership. Each package had contained twenty U.S. 100-dollar bills. In Ottawa, as in all of southern Canada, U.S. currency was readily accepted by all.

  Of course, the bills were all from Schneider’s close friend Hiro, of the Japanese embassy in Washington. The arrangement was mutually beneficial, not only did Hiro encourage Schneider to keep half of the notes Hiro supplied, but Hiro also paid for all the visits to their favorite whore house on K Street. Hiro spoke reasonable English, but was a little shy in public, especially as the bashing of Japan by the American papers had escalated over the past months. So Schneider made the running, and Hiro slip-streamed in behind. Louise was not aware of his visits to K Street, but would not have cared had she known—powerful men active in one area of life are active in other areas, she would have quite reasonably concluded, and after all, Schneider is her boss and a very, very generous and accommodating boss at that (her mind pleasantly drifted back to thoughts of his desk in Washington).

  At the printing company, Schneider passed the suit case to Heinrich who in turn passed it to his youngest brother, who curtly nodded and disappeared into the plate room to create the plates. Schneider had tried to find a newspaper press, but as Heinrich explained these were rare and more importantly took almost two dozen pressmen to operate. After discussions with Hiro, they had compromised on Heinrich’s small and very discreet press.

  Two hours later, the press was running and the first pages were being printed. In reality, it was the last page of the report. As Heinrich explained, they would print the pages in reverse order as this made t
he collating machine’s job easier.

  By eight that evening, the first batch of 5,000 copies was completed. The two middle brothers then left to each steal a car. The two stolen cars appeared 30 minutes later and the five men loaded the first two thousand copies into the back seats of the cars. It was cold and a snow had started to fall, which suited Schneider—fewer pedestrians to watch their nocturnal deliveries.

  Schneider bid the brothers farewell and returned to take Louise to dinner.

  The cars made their way on the two well-rehearsed routes. At each Catholic church on the route, the rear door opened, and a brother dashed to the front door carrying a bundle of 25 copies in each hand. Each bundle was loosely tied with twine—easy for even the oldest parishioner to open. The brothers dropped bundles at each front door. Once, they were disturbed by a startled priest, who was too shocked to do anything. Completing their church run, the two stolen cars were dumped in a grocery store parking lot. The entire operation had taken under four hours.

  Returning to the Majestic, Schneider shaved and showered. He also carefully trimmed his fingernails.

  19: The Smell Of Burning Rubber

  Washington

  Thursday, 4 December 1941

  After a leisurely breakfast, as the President was pushed in his wheel chair from the residence along the veranda, the Marine Honor Guard snapped to attention. Call it professional bias if you will he thought, but my jarheads are the best: best saluters, best marchers, best uniforms. He allowed himself the indulgence of the pronoun. In reality, he was Commander In Chief of all the armed forces, not just of the Marines.