North Reich

by Robert Conroy

  Guderian paused. He had just come from a discussion with the Fuhrer which had deteriorated into a screaming argument. A couple of staffers had led the general out of the conference room before he and Hitler came to blows. It was only Guderian's reputation and history as a victorious general that kept him from being discharged or worse. As it was, he was currently a general without a command.

  "My dear admiral, the Fuhrer still believes that the American fighting man is a poorly trained and poorly led coward, and that the American generals are all fools dominated by Wall Street Jews. He looks at the war in the Pacific and sees a United States Army that cannot immediately squash the yellow-skinned savages from Japan. He says that the Japs ran from the Red Army in the Manchurian campaign of a few years ago, and that they were defeated by the Slavic rabble that is the Red Army. Therefore, the Fuhrer’s logic says that the Americans must be lesser men than the Soviets and the Japs. He does not realize that the Japs are fanatic fighters who, while they don't have good weapons, are very well disciplined and willing to give their lives for Japan. The Japanese are insane. The Americans will ultimately win, overwhelming them with the large numbers of planes and tanks that their factories are churning out. I am not confident that von Arnim will be able to hold out until reinforcements arrive. I am also not confident that they will arrive at all."

  Raeder glared. He did not like having his judgment doubted even though Guderian had raised points that made him uncomfortable when he thought about them. If his submarines could not destroy the American and British navies, what then?

  Guderian ground out his cigarette and lit another one. It occurred to him that war with the United States would mean his supply of American cigarettes would be cut off. He made a mental note to begin to stockpile those and other things that made life pleasant. He’d rather die than smoke the paper wrapped dog shit that Germany called domestic cigarettes.

  "Admiral, von Arnim's success depends totally on your Kriegsmarine achieving a level of dominance in the Atlantic so that our forces in Canada can be massively reinforced. I will also admit that I do not like the idea of a two-front war. We went to great lengths to avoid war with the Yanks in 1941. Why are we throwing away that advantage now? We still haven't fully conquered the Russians and the British must be up to something while they stall us. We have almost two million men along the Eastern Front, and another half million fighting partisans in Poland and Russia. Almost every train or truck convoy we send is attacked by the savage Slavs who still control more than three quarters of their own vast land."

  The admiral chuckled. "But that land is Siberia and the Russians are starving."

  "The Russians are used to starving, and they have moved much of their industrial base to the Urals where they are, yes, starving, but building up to attack us again. Their army is larger than ours and their armor is both better and more numerous. Also, their pilots started out as incompetent dunces in miserable planes who we slaughtered in huge numbers, but that has changed as well. The war has paused, but is not over. The Reds are improving at every level."

  "You have a point," Raeder admitted.

  "We would attack and destroy the rest of the Soviet Forces if we could only build up enough of our own supplies, but we can't because our sources of supply are too far away from the front. Our supply forces use up most of what they are bringing in order to get at least a little to the front. And even if we did attack the Red Army, our advance would peter out in the Urals and, even if we did force the Ural passes, we would be confronting the vastness of Siberia. We are fighting a war that may never end."

  "Are you saying we should negotiate with the Russians and then take on the Americans?" Raeder asked.

  "Yes, and that is exactly what I said to the Fuhrer."

  Raeder laughed. "That comment almost got you thrown in jail, or stripped to the rank of private and sent to fight the Red Army by yourself."

  Guderian sighed. "I will apologize to the Fuhrer, of course. My intemperate comments will then blow over like they always have. But I do believe we have the cart before the horse. The Fuhrer believes that defeating the United States will make the British and the Soviets negotiate a real peace. I would agree if I was confident in a German victory over the Americans. Unfortunately, I am not at all confident. We will hurt the Americans, but will we defeat them? Will we drive them to the peace table? I don't think so. What do you think will happen in our conquered countries if we are defeated, or just stalemated, and the French and British and Russians see that we are not invincible? They will take heart and rise up even more than they are now, and we will have another full war to fight. How long do you think the German people will stand for that?"

  Raeder took a step away. It was as if the general had just announced that he had something contagious. "You are very close to speaking treason, general. Be careful. Be very careful. One day you might just say something that cannot be fixed with an apology."

  Hiding in plain sight is always the best way, Detective Sam Lambert had always thought. Seeking safety and privacy in crowds always worked, and what better place than Eaton's Department Store on Yonge and Queen Streets in central Toronto? The massive, multi-storied red brick building covered an entire city block and had a number of entrances. It would be a nightmare for anyone tailing him.

  He and Mike Bradford had arranged to meet for a cup of coffee. Even if anyone did notice them, there would be nothing unusual about two old friends having a conversation over a cup of coffee.

  "I saw the two sons of bitches," Mike said. "They were standing around outside that piece of shit shack they call their Canadian Legion headquarters and they were laughing their asses off about something. I showed restraint, Sam, just like I said I would and I still will, but someday I will kill them."

  "And I'll be there to steady your aim and buy you a drink when it’s done. But just wait. If you do something now, somebody smart will want to know just how you got the information about the Munro brothers, and it might just come back to you and me. If that happens, it could kill — bad choice of words — all of our plans."

  Bradford took a deep breath. "I know."

  The report copied by Tinker was not only graphic in the manner in which Mary had been tortured, likely driven mad, and subsequently killed herself, but also named names. Wally and Jed Munro were the ones who had forced her to give them oral sex and then raped her. Both detectives wondered if they hadn't actually held the knife and slashed her wrist so she couldn't tell the Gestapo chief, Neumann, that they'd disobeyed him. If so, they'd overreacted. Neumann simply didn't care that much.

  Lambert had decided that Bradford was too emotional to plan and think clearly and dispassionately, so he was told to sit tight.

  Lambert was a good solid cop who knew how to develop a case, and he used those skills to contact others who felt as he did about the Germans, the Canadian Legion, and the Munro brothers. He'd even found a RCMP officer who told him that a third Munro brother had been killed in a shootout with American soldiers while trying to steal something from a military courier.

  Lambert had enlisted a cadre of twenty current and retired cops who felt that the Legion had to be destroyed and the Germans expelled. Although their numbers were very small, he felt that they might just be able to make a significant difference when the time was ripe. That assumed, of course, that he could keep Mike Bradford from going to pieces and doing something violent and irrational.

  He too would like to eliminate the local Nazis, but how to do it without bringing down the wrath of the government in Ottawa? Before the war, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King had visited Hitler in Germany, and had only reluctantly agreed that Canada should fight the Nazis when the war with Great Britain started. When disaster befell England, he attributed it to American cowardice. He then determined that it would be best to deal with Hitler, and that fighting the inevitable defeat would be bloody, disastrous, and futile.

  Perhaps there was a way the Munro boys could be eliminated without exposing them
and their plans. He would have to get Mike Bradford to give up his dream of putting bullets into their skulls, however personally satisfying that might be.

  Wet snow lightly covered much of the ground with tufts of brown grass peeping through. From a weather standpoint, it wasn't the best of days to walk through the sacred grounds of Arlington Cemetery, but the damp cold meant that Tom and Alicia had the place almost to themselves this gray and cloudy Sunday afternoon in January.

  It had been a week since the party thrown by Missy Downing and it was generally considered to have been a big success. Morale was higher, and a few social barriers had been broken. Nobody had made a fool out of themselves with the exception of one very new second lieutenant who wound up vomiting off the veranda before passing out and being taken home by some of his friends. He was embarrassed for a couple of days after, but got over it.

  Alicia smiled and looked around at the gently rolling hills and the rows of white tombstones. "This is one of my favorite places. It is so serene and noble. I think it's sad that so many Americans don't come here and recognize the price that others paid so that we could have our country. God, I hope that doesn't sound too pompous, but that's how I feel."

  Tom told her he agreed completely. He mentioned that there were many other cemeteries where thousands of other American dead were buried.

  "I've seen a few of them and would like to see others." Maybe someday you can take me, she thought.

  Per their agreement, they both wore civilian clothes to disguise their differences in rank. He wondered if it mattered any more since they were becoming so comfortable together. He wore a jacket, dark slacks, and a sweater, which she laughingly said looked almost like a uniform. She wore the roughly the same ensemble, but slacks were plaid and, of course, were tighter where it counted, and reinforced his opinion that she had a lovely figure. The bruises and scars on her face were continuing to fade and were now barely noticeable. She thought she would have a hairline scar above her lip where the stitches had begun. A badge of honor, she'd said.

  Tom was curious about her hair. Many women died their hair, but a lot did so to look blond, which meant they had to contend with dark roots. Alicia, on the other hand, had blond roots intruding on her darker hair. When she caught him looking, she said she'd tell him the story some time, but not now. He was smart enough to keep still.

  "Along with the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier," she said, "this is a part of the cemetery that enthralls me."

  They were beside the strange and stark structure that had been the mast of the U.S.S. Maine, the battleship that had blown up in Havana harbor and caused the United States to go to war with Spain in 1898.

  "Do you wonder how it happened?" he asked. "I have. In fact I wrote an essay on it back at West Pointe."

  "What was your conclusion?"

  "That the cause was unknown and likely to stay that way. There are two major theories, of course. One is that the ship was hit by a mine and the second is an internal coal fire explosion. Both theories are a stretch. Along with getting a mine to make contact, the Spanish would have been either careless with their mines, or stupid to attack the ship. As to the fire, the Maine's captain and her crew knew full well the dangers of coal fires and would have been on the lookout for something smoldering and the heat that would have been given off. Their lives literally depended on it."

  "So what does that leave?"

  "Something else, maybe. Perhaps it was a rogue bunch of Spanish officers acting on their own, or a crewman on the Maine doing something incredibly careless or stupid."

  "What did you get on the essay?"

  "I got a 'B'. The instructor said I had a great imagination."

  She laughed and then turned grim. She tucked her arm in his as they walked around the graves. "I taught American history a couple of semesters and the Spanish American War was part of it,” she said. “One of the crewmen killed was an officer named Friend Jenkins. I thought it strange that someone named Friend would be killed in an event that started a war. I went looking for his grave here in Arlington, but found that he was buried somewhere around Pittsburg. There are a hundred and sixty or so crewmen buried here and nobody really knows why they died. That's one of the reasons I feel compelled to come here. It's also in honor of the men who died at Pearl Harbor and who are either unknown or entombed in the Arizona and the Oklahoma. I think everybody who dies should have an honorable burial and everyone should know just why a man dies."

  "I have no idea how to respond to that."

  "Then don't try. Someday I think I'd like to come out here and serenade the dead with my violin."

  "I'll come with you when you do."

  She squeezed his arm. "I'll have to practice some more. Right now, even the dead wouldn't like the way I'm playing. They might get up and leave. In the meantime, why don't you take me to lunch? Someplace away from Washington would be nice and not just because nobody would recognize us. To paraphrase Rhett Butler, I frankly don't give a damn."

  Tom grinned. Neither did he.

  Secretary of State Cordell Hull was seventy-four years old and had served in that position for eleven years. Prior to that, he'd been in the House of Representatives and then in the U.S. Senate. At one time he'd had aspirations of becoming president, but those had faded as reality set in.

  Hull was in ill health and had been contemplating retirement when the war began. He felt that he should stay on to ensure that American interests were best served. He had no illusions. He knew he wasn't irreplaceable. No one is. He had a reputation for bluntness and his illness was making him irascible as well.

  Hans Thomsen, the German Charge d'Affairs sat across from him in Hull's office in the Main State Building on C Street NW in the Foggy Bottom area of Washington. There had been no German ambassador in Washington for a few years, just as there was no American ambassador in Berlin. Hull sometimes thought that was a mistake. However, one plays the cards one is dealt. Thomsen was in his early fifties and rumor had it that he was not a fervent disciple of Hitler.

  It didn't matter to Hull. As Hitler's representative, Thomsen was due for a scolding.

  "My dear Mr. Thomsen, please tell me, do you want war with us or not?"

  Thomsen smiled at Hull's bluntness. It was expected. "I would hope not and I would never want war. Our two countries should never clash over matters that are so trivial."

  Hull glared at him. "Trivial? What is trivial about German warships on the Great Lakes and what is trivial about them shooting at American soldiers who were simply doing their duty? And why was that damned E-boat in American waters in the first place? And what was it doing shooting up small craft that might have been American boats containing American citizens who were simply out fishing or some other legitimate enterprise? It seems damned rash to me."

  Thomsen was prepared and responded quickly. "The shooting of your soldiers by our boat was regrettable. The captain thought he had been taken under fire and retaliated. The death of an American soldier is more than offset by the two dead and five wounded on the E-boat. And the E-boat is scarcely more than an armed patrol craft, and not a warship."

  "Then get rid of those torpedoes. A patrol craft in the Great Lakes does not need torpedoes. Torpedoes are intended to sink major warships and that makes the E-boat a major warship herself."

  "I will take that point under advisement. As to the fact of the E-boat firing on small craft, it was in hot pursuit of what was believed to be a number of smugglers and simply didn't realize they were so close to shore in the night."

  Smugglers my ass, Hull thought. "You know as well as I do that they were refugees and not smugglers. And you also know that the E-boat's skipper knew precisely where he was."

  "Regardless, the resulting mistake was tragic."

  "There have been too many tragic mistakes lately," Hull snarled. "And, yes, that includes the botched attack by the Canadian Legion on an army courier in Washington itself."

  Thomsen wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. "I think we can
safely say that a number of young men in the Canadian Legion were far more enthusiastic in support of the Reich than they should have been. As in so many new situations, the matter is fluid and the men uncertain."

  Hull sat back in his swivel chair. He felt so tired. "So, we have another mistake and another apology. Frankly, sir, I am getting damn sick and tired of them."

  "As am I, Mr. Secretary. May I remind you that the Reich has repeatedly complained that you have given sanctuary to the major portion of the Royal Navy and the ships’ crews? I would also remind you that the Reich has complained about the existence of so-called governments in exile that fled from England to here. I mean, of course, the shadow and illegal governments of Norway, Holland, Denmark, and Belgium. We would also like Mr. Churchill returned so he can be tried as a war criminal in accordance with the rules established by the League of Nations."

  "The League is defunct and Germany quit it in 1933, around the same time that Japan quit, while the United States never joined. Therefore neither of us is bound by the League's unenforceable rules."

  Both men recognized the irony that, with the Soviet Union's expulsion from the League in 1939, it meant that none of the world's major powers were members of the organization that was supposed to prevent wars by the time World War II broke out.

  Hull smiled coldly. "Good. Now let's set some things straight. There will be no more incidents. You will keep the few E-boats you have, but there will be no additions. Nor will any other Nazi warships enter either the St. Lawrence or the Great Lakes. I hear rumors that a squadron of submarines is going to traverse to Erie and beyond. That, sir, will not be permitted to happen."

  "I am not aware of any such plans,” Thomsen said truthfully. Berlin had kept him in the dark about many things, the German thought ruefully. Of course, what he didn't know he couldn't give away.