Deaths on the Nile

by Scott Palter

  In answer to Gunter’s yell, a short, disheveled young man in his twenties sauntered in. His clothes were an odd mix and match of various uniform parts and generalized civilian mechanic’s work clothes. All had liberal coatings of oil, grease, and dirt. The hand he put out to shake was quite strong, but he didn’t go for a macho death grip. “OK. Presume I can get you types, not models. What’s available in Naples will probably be Italian makes, not German. I can figure how many cubic meters of space by the amounts of currency involved. Berlin is good at giving us that sort of nuts and bolts. But what are you used to? Key lock? Tumblers? I’d suggest not going with timers. Nothing here happens on fixed schedules.”

  Witt had never had to order a safe before. He’d never dealt in cash, as opposed to payment orders which some other department would issue checks against. “This is completely outside my area of expertise. What would you suggest?”

  Joey started talking to himself out loud. “OK. Gregor can give you 24-hour guards on overlapping shifts, so no one is just walking off with the cash. I’ll pick something heavy enough to need a winch to get it into a truck. We haven’t got that many spare winches and my guys aren’t that stupid. Where could they run in this oven that we couldn’t track them down? Me, I’d go keylocks. Double-key so it will need two keys to unlock. How does this sound? Each of you guys carries one, and Dad has the other. If someone wants to knock you on the head, they need to hit two of you. That, plus a permanent guard section, should do. We have a safe coming already for some special things the unit lugs around. Same guard detail can cover both. We can use a large tent. Front is your office. Place your sleep tent adjacent. For now you just sleep with the damned things cuffed to you. Should have you the lock box in a week, ten days tops.”

  With that, Gunter called in Leutnant Schmidt to get the three new guests bedded down after their long voyage. Joey stayed behind to chat with Gunter. “Now that I’ve seen them, I agree with you. No way we bring these three in on our special treasures. They seem like true blue patriots who will treat their rehabilitation as a gift from the God they don’t believe in. In reverse, that much cash does us no good to swipe. What would we do with it here? If Berlin’s shoveling in this much cash for Alexandria, it will be ten times that for Iraq. Maybe twenty times. I’m not saying we do it. Too many things we don’t know yet. But give me an hour and I can get any safe open. More so one I pick. I’ll just have spare keys sent. Time comes we want to leave this army … ”

  “I hold those keys. Not you. I like you, Joey, but that’s too much temptation for someone who one of these days will get a valid US passport in the mail.”

  Joey smiled. He slowly shook his head. Damned right he’d be tempted. Baghdad was supposed to be a big city. Not New York big, so say Philly. A few million in folding money would buy safe transport damned near anywhere for an enterprising fellow. Fuck! Even split a dozen ways with all the key people doing it as a gang, this was retire-for-life money. Gunter had better not fully trust him on this. Joey didn’t trust himself. Then he thought about Clara and the kids. He didn’t think he’d just dump her like that, but he felt better not having the chance to talk himself into something dumb. Maybe he was starting to grow up.

  1650 hours Eastern Daylight Time; 2250 hours CET

  29 September 1940

  West Wing of the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC

  Hoover’s nasty innuendos had by now spread widely in high-level DC circles. So Harry Hopkins was resigned to knowing smiles about how he had scheduled his mistress for a long appointment. She arrived promptly, dressed in high-quality simple garments and sensible shoes. It was all smiles until they were safely behind closed doors, after which he unloaded on her without even a bit of small talk first. “You rein in your mad dog or we will! Don’t bother peddling me the fiction that Bridges and that union aren’t Party-controlled. After the National Guard took over the Pacific Coast ports, they have been waging guerrilla attacks on trucks, warehouses, and railroads. This ends now, or I turn Hoover loose to take the entire Party structure down.”

  She didn’t quite cringe. She’d been expecting this disaster for days. As usual, her instructions from higher up were absurd. She was to pacify Hopkins with vague promises and sex. Neither would work on this man. This was a person one argued policy and power with. “The entire CIO will walk out in sympathy. No coal for autumn – it will sink your man at the polls.”

  Hopkins could see the connection. He also knew the politics better than she did. “Take them out. Half the CIO will stay with Franklin. If we have to, we’ll nationalize the mines the same as we are doing with the West Coast docks. It’s plain as day that this isn’t a labor dispute. It’s serving as support troops for a Soviet Union that sank a US freighter, that made failed torpedo attacks on three others, that’s allied to Hitler. This isn’t Spain in 1937.”

  “Do you really want Lindy and those fascists in power?”

  “Do you? Does the Party? You always knew there were limits. This isn’t the day for your Leninist Revolution. The New Deal is the best you’ll get here and now. It’s not the perfect progressive utopia, but it’s all that’s attainable.” Hopkins was trying to retain his normal cheerful demeanor. His stomach was on fire and felt as if it would burst from the stress. This election was half or worse lost. He didn’t need sectarian ambushes from the left. “I’ll give you three days. That’s enough time to get the ones most at risk to Mexico. After that, it’s happy time for Hoover.”

  She cut the appointment short. Every hour would count for those most at risk. She would have to risk jail herself. This connection was precious to the COMINTERN.

  0800 hours local; 0100 hours CET

  30 September 1930

  Paddy fields a dozen miles south of the Yangtse near Shanghai

  The entire mission was a glorified show-the-flag. A company of the new Chinese army. A company from the 2nd battalion, 4th US Marines. A company from the new provisional US Marine regiment, recruited from English-speakers in Shanghai. The standard of ‘English’ required amounted to a vocabulary of some two hundred words, which allowed simple commands. The USMC had made do with worse. The commanding officer of 2nd battalion of the 4th had been granted the power to hand out stripes and lower officer ranks, like candy, to anyone who could make a plausible claim of prior service anywhere with anyone. Lieutenant Colonel Chesty Puller had commanded worse in both Haiti and Nicaragua.

  These lands south of the river had been bypassed and then ignored by the Japanese. This left them a no-man’s-land contested by partisans of both Japan and Chiang, along with bandit gangs and the odd platoon of Communists. Further away from the river were large, formed units of Chiang’s army. They hadn’t done much more than rice raids in years, but given guns and money they remained a threat.

  The new Chinese government Washington supported had decided to assert control. Step one was show-the-flag sweeps like this. March around with flags flying and bands playing. Let the villages see you. Stop for tea. Pay for the food you take. US dollars were regarded as real money in much of China. After a few sweeps, start leaving garrisons with radios. Some of the bandits and partisans would come over to whoever could pay and feed them. The formed units back in the hills could be left till later.

  They were a mile past the last village when the sniping started. Puller had his company from the 4th up front. They went into line quickly, laying down suppressive fire. The provisionals shook out into a column to make their way across the paddy lands and chase the shooters away. This was a chance to see how the new blood could perform. Exercises were all well and good, but you only really learned when you saw them under fire. He kept the Chinese company back. On this march, they were there to observe how it was done.

  0430 hours local; 0330 hours CET

  30 September 1940

  Ambush position 300 meters in advance of the Italian lines

  The sand fleas were most annoying. More so as Greta had to stay still and let them bite. This Di Salo vo
lunteers for ambush patrols. He even borrows Gregor’s Magyar company to rotate with his men. Klaus asks to be allowed to bring a company of his own. He’s never done ambushes and wants to learn. The Italian’s stuck-up slut accompanies him, so of course Greta and her girls must go with Klaus.

  Greta was not even really sure she could accurately aim her weapon. She had never even range-fired further out than 30 meters. None of that mattered. Naiomi and the other girls had been well trained back in Romania. If Greta was to pretend to be their commander, she must also be there to maintain that fiction.

  The Italian division’s line was more a set of battalion strong points than a fully connected trench line. Every night there were raids and probes from the British. Gunter said that these ‘British’ were in fact Palestinian Jews. Strange, she becomes a Zionist by trying to kill them.

  So far it’s been five hours of uncomfortable boredom. Suddenly she feels one of the girls tap her shoulder and point. Greta squints and can sort of make out dark shapes. They look more like night spirits than young men. As she was instructed before they set out, she waits for the men to open fire. This takes almost ten minutes. There must be a logic to why they let the ‘enemy’ sneak around, crossing in front of them from left to right. Then suddenly machine-guns are firing and flares are shot up in the air. She expends half a clip from her machine pistol so as to be seen doing something. She’s pretty sure she is firing in the right direction, but presumes all she is accomplishing is making violent noise.

  The Italian has led a party in close. There’s a short time with grenades flying in all directions, then the firing stops. People are screaming “Cease-fire!” in German, Italian, and Yiddish. She hears some boy screaming for his mother in Magyar. She gets up and her ladies follow her. They find the poor wounded lad. He’s badly gut-shot. He doesn’t weigh much and looks about fifteen. No one thinks he has a chance, but four of the girls each take a limb and start carrying him back to the aid station. His Magyar didn’t sound Transylvanian, but with that much pain and shock, she isn’t sure. It’s so easy to die in war. The thought doesn’t make her happy. Her duty to her remaining family demands this of her. Doesn’t mean she has to pretend to herself that this is what a nice Jewish girl was raised to be.

  The Spanish puta is having a gay time of it all. She is yelling at the five prisoners in abysmal Yiddish. To Greta’s ears it’s more German, cut with some Slavic language and badly chopped up. Greta feels bad for the five guys they captured. Risking their lives in someone else’s war. Probably think they are defending their families, same as she does. War is strange.

  1200 hours local; 1100 CET

  30 September 1940

  SS GHQ Ploiesti, Romania

  The trial had gone quickly. The ‘jurors’ Schellenberg’s staff had picked were clear on what was expected of them. When the Reichsführer arranges to have a man charged with ‘usurpation of command authority’, the conclusion was obvious without the need for formal instruction on how to vote. Gruppenführer Paul Scharfe, the chief judge of the whole SS establishment, had kept things moving at a rapid pace. He was a strict legalist. He had also presided over a prior trial of Fegelein, where the weasel had barely avoided conviction on corruption charges.

  The three military observers from the services had been somewhat startled that the charge had been usurpation and not murder. Obersturmbannführer Karl Siegel, Schellenberg’s chief henchman for ‘affairs in the South’, had refused to explain further. Had told them that all would be explained to their superiors in Berlin. Just see what happened, and report up their chains of command.

  Siegel had commanded the firing squad himself. The dim-witted piece of pig shit that had somehow become an SS field officer, Fegelein, had completely disgraced himself. He had wept and wailed like a toddler while being dragged to the place of execution. Had both pissed and shat himself. Was vomiting so badly he was choking on it as he was being tied to the post. Siegel had stopped the proceedings for some minutes while the guard sergeant bent him over and beat him till he cleared his airways through both drooling and projectile vomiting. The swine was not going to be allowed to cheat the executioner.

  There had been a small change in normal firing squad proceedings. Unknown to the participants, they all had live rounds. The poor state of training of Fegelein’s troops could be seen in that despite this, he was only hit twice, once in the gut and the other in a quite superficial graze to his cheek. Siegel walked up to finish him off. The lowlife was screaming in agony, alternately for the God he never believed in and for his mother. Siegel propped the head up with his left hand, looked the convicted idiot in the eye and told him to convey the Reichsführer’s best wishes to Himmler when they met in Hell. Siegel then emptied his pistol into the man’s head until he was clearly dead. Pity that his uniform would need a serious cleaning from the blood and brain matter. That was wasteful but necessary. His bosses in Berlin wanted a certain set of images to be seen, to be passed along the service grapevine. Command authority would not be usurped without consequences. Policy was made in Berlin.

  1600 hours CET

  30 September 1940

  A large brewery near the American Danzig enclave

  Heydrich’s liaison man for this enclave operation had been an ‘adult beverage executive’ during Prohibition in Milwaukee, before his quick relocation to the Reich mere hours ahead of an arrest warrant for an unfortunate incident involving multiple corpses. His formal liaison duties normally didn’t take much time, so he had looked to opportunities. He had made a few connections in the proper offices, leading to his acquiring at nominal cost a large brewery that had been Aryanized in 1939 and sat idle ever since.

  An active port means large numbers of sailors, stevedores, warehousemen, truckers, river boat crews, and other working men with powerful thirsts. The people he had worked with in Milwaukee and Chicago had connections with other Italian entrepreneurs in Brooklyn who had arranged for cargoes of hops, barley, and other key ingredients to somehow find their way into relief shipments. The payment for these in dollars and precious metals made a fair number of ship’s officers somewhat wealthier. Indeed, the quality of his product was such that some ships were buying from him in barrel lots for ‘return voyage provisions’. The brewery owner was no fool. The US since Prohibition had limited most legal beer to glorified donkey piss. A fair number of his barrels would find their way past customs. These same Italians would then make a further profit both wholesaling and retailing the product.

  All of this in turn meant that the various American organizations he did liaison with often found it more convivial to meet at his place of business. They would bring good coffee and swap for beer. It was a nice sideline for all concerned. This was especially true of the Marines who formed the guard force for the enclave. Their barracks were in theory dry. In practice …

  This day he was meeting with Marine Colonel Hermele, the commandant and nominal battalion commander. The so-called battalion had the strength of a regiment, but not its firepower. It had no artillery and few crew-served weapons. Indeed, many of its local recruits had only shotguns or pistols. They used their riot sticks as the main weapon in keeping order. Hermele had a small problem. The two of them were working on a solution. “Washington wants to use me as a recruiting station. Some joker added up the payroll and decided we have surplus men. Wants them for China service.”

  “No problem, as far as that goes. We just tattoo your globe and anchor on everyone who leaves. They ever show up fighting us, we shoot them. Use them to fight whoever you want. Just not us or our allies.”

  Hermele was sure enough humanitarians and legalists in Washington would have kittens at this. He was equally sure that it was always easier to beg forgiveness than get permission. If Willkie won, the US wasn’t intervening in Europe. If FDR got re-elected, let whoever was USMC Commandant deal with the mess. The Corps needed warm bodies in China now. A force he would get to lead into combat if he agreed to this. “How about this? I can’t agree to that.
So you just make the tattoos and give me a copy of the edict on Berlin stationary. State Department will squeal, and we let someone else fight over it?”

  “You are halfway there. You take the working-age men, you also take their families. If they are orphans, we assign families. Otherwise we get stuck with the useless eaters. Someday their kin may get tired of feeding them.”

  “Immigration laws. We can’t.”

  “Of course you can. You are shipping these to Shanghai. You ship the parents, the wife, the widowed grandma, whatever, with them. US law doesn’t apply in China. Easy for them to pay the upkeep on their kin at Chinese prices. Since you alerted me on this a few days ago, I made a run to Berlin. Big boss says he’ll let you send recruiting officers into the Polish POW camps. Take as many as will come. Berlin will be happy to be rid of them. We’re already letting the French do this. They don’t want to be Germans, so let them be Poles in Africa or China. Gets them out of our hair.”