by Scott Palter
The duchess showed keen interest in the forces of proletariat goodness rescuing more of Afghanistan from feudal reaction. She peppered Kim with questions, elicited details. It was a pity he wouldn’t fuck, but duty before pleasure. The English were so strange about sex to a sophisticated continental.
1600 hours local; 1500 hours CET
3 November 1940
The remains of a village 30 kilometers southeast of Alexandria
It was raining. Klaus had been told by Moustafa, the new police supremo’s nephew, that the rains normally didn’t start till December. Moustafa led twelve hundred ‘auxiliary police’. Gunter had used a different word, Hiwi’s. Helpers. Klaus lacked the worldly experience of Gunter, especially from his days with the Freikorps in Latvia, wherever in the Baltic that was. To Klaus’s untrained eyes the auxiliaries looked like a street gang with looted British rifles. The rifles didn’t frighten Klaus. His men had machine-guns.
The local church was gutted. The street around it was littered with bodies. Many had been beheaded or disemboweled. The females often had their breasts cut off as well. Klaus had done the subtraction before Moustafa called his attention to it. The dead included males of all ages but no nubile females. The ‘Liberation Army’ must have taken the young women as part of their loot, along with the contents of pillaged houses and shops. Supposedly some of these ‘patriots’ were nationalists, some religious, and some just opportunistic bandits. Klaus did not find the distinction interesting. Anyone taken in arms, he shot. Anyone running, he shot. Anyone resisting, he shot. Those who bowed before his authority, whether armed or otherwise, he organized into convoys. These he sent back to the city, escorted by a few of his vehicles and a few dozen Hiwi’s. The refugees got to carry the food his combined force was plundering. He was aware the Hiwi’s were also stealing moveable wealth, what little remained. Klaus was indifferent to that, but insisted his men get an equal share.
“Moustafa, we will need a place to encamp for the night. Where would you suggest?”
“Excellency, surely we are to return to the city?” Moustafa was a man of twenty-five. He knew he had to pretend to be commanded by this German child in an officer’s uniform, but staying out was absurd. “We can leave the city again tomorrow.”
“We will lose too much time coming and going. We were sent for food, and what we have mostly done is gather more people to eat what food we have.” Klaus thought the entire expedition absurd. Long before the warehouses were empty, ships could bring more food from Europe. But Gunter had commanded this. So it must be about showing German might to these rebel Egyptians.
Moustafa shrugged. The resignation of the colonial to the stupidity of the supposed masters. He pointed the column towards a market town. Even through the rain, the smoke of its ruin was easy to see on the horizon of the flat Nile Delta.
1900 hours local; 1800 hours CET
3 November 1940
Makeshift airstrip near Nile River, Upper Egypt
The day’s retreat had been a blur. Ambassador Lampson had been spared the ceaseless air attacks. Those were directed at the main 8th Army units further north on the roads, as these endlessly retreating columns headed upriver along both banks of the mighty Nile. Now London had added a further indignity. The army Lysander aircraft had been sent for him from Khartoum. He was to return via this two-seater tiny plane to someplace where he could catch a flying boat home. Exactly where was left vague. Khartoum? Mombasa? Lagos? In any case, he was to abandon his wife and senior staff to the horrors of this journey so London could have the benefit of his wisdom. How stupid did they think he was? Officially, he remained His Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador to Egypt and Sudan, in practice he was to be the designated goat. Let them try. He knew where enough bodies were buried to take dozens of them down with him. The Lysander bounced down the dirt airstrip and was airborne. Lampson willed himself to sleep. He would need all his wits about him in London. If he was to lose his honor, be denied any chance at Privy Council or peerage, he wanted to slaughter as many high-ranking Tories as he could in the process.
1800 hours Eastern Daylight Time; 2400 hours CET
3 November 1940
Executive Office Building, Washington DC
The large cloth carpetbag had lain all day on Harry Hopkins’s desk awaiting this meeting. As a piece of luggage it was decades out of fashion. Why this particular type of container had been chosen seemed a mystery. Hopkins had too many other things on his plate to satisfy his idle curiosity on this. The election was in two days, and his man Roosevelt seemed likely to lose. He needed to thread a needle in a few key states. Hence the bag and this meeting with the vainglorious Lyndon Johnson.
Johnson looked even more shifty-eyed than usual this day. “The election’s going badly. Roosevelt is fading. I’ve got a new list of House members who urgently need ‘walking around money’ to get out the vote.” He started to hand the list to Hopkins, who waved it away. “You said come to you. These are good, loyal New Dealers. We will need them in the new Congress.”
Hopkins gave a wan smile. “More than half of these have been voting with the biparty opposition coalition since 1938.” He didn’t need to read the paper to guess most of the names. He saw Johnson start to retort, and waved him to silence. “A good number of them are in Midwestern districts where nothing short of divine intervention could save them. Doesn’t matter.” Hopkins gave a sigh. He still had enough decency to find what was about to happen unpleasant. “Open the bag.” He waited while Johnson opened the bag and almost recoiled in shock. “One hundred and fifty thousand dollars. You had asked for eighty-five. So you can be a hero to even the hopeless members, in case they win back their seats in 1942. You can afford to send people on overnight express trains or rent airplanes to deliver before Election Day.”
“This much cash, there’s a price. What is it?”
“Lame-duck session you are personally going to logroll a private citizenship act. There are always members with such requests. You will bundle them all together and add one more name, a Charles Luciano of Manhattan.”
“The gangster?”
“The gangster. Don’t look so shocked. You do Klan business where you need to, to turn out votes. Up North these people can deliver votes in the tens of thousands. They are the party’s only chance to carry New York and New Jersey. You can hide your hand by getting someone who wasn’t reelected to propose the name. But this is your personal responsibility. There’s enough extra in the bag to buy some friends in the Senate. If there’s anything left over, keep it. If this fails for any reason, you will not live out next year.”
Johnson looked Roosevelt’s man over. He’d never figured Hopkins for a hard man. He was an affable do-gooder. An educated man with poor health. Johnson had dealt with hard men in Texas, especially in the little colonias down in the Rio Grande Valley. They ran their village or county like feudal lords. “Just like that?”
“Just like that. You, your wife. I won’t know who or when, but these people don’t accept excuses. This money can make you a big man in both houses. When you get your Senate seat you’ll already have friends. Do this man’s business and mine, and there can be more bags like this. Cash. No telegrams for Hoover to put copies of in a file. Cash. Think of it this way. This man and the city bosses allied to him are really no different than your friends at Brown & Root, in the oil industry, with the big cattle spreads. They need favors. He needs favors. This man sells liquor, women, and gambling. Don’t tell me Texas has never seen those sins.”
Johnson laughed in spite of himself. Hopkins was right. One more name in a list of a thousand or two, would sail through by acclamation in a lame-duck session. He could find a sure loser who would take the petty scandal as the price of Lyndon, and by implication Rayburn, owing him a big favor. Politics ran on favors and cash.
0630 hours local; 0530 hours CET
4 November 1940
Brigade Strauss cantonment
Breakfast had been at dawn, almost forty minutes ago
. Clara Fischer had sent Joey and her brother Carl on ahead to the work area, alleging unspecified ‘chores’ she needed to do. As soon as the parade of people left she had run for a trash can to puke up breakfast. If she was a fool she would try to kid herself that it was food poisoning or some local endemic illness. A local fever sounded good. She’d use that excuse with Joey. This strange wilderness sickened many of the Europeans now there to make war. Bug bites, miasmas, strange variants on common European diseases. That was why travelers often got intestinal problems. The locals would be mostly immune to what was common in a place.
She knew better. She had had this disease before. She was pregnant. She could feel the subtle signs in her body besides the morning sickness. Child was no longer a theoretical question. Unless she aborted it, she was having Joey’s child. She’d been pregnant before and had never thought twice about keeping it. Yet she was thinking of doing so now. Shit!
1000 hours local; 0900 hours CET
4 November 1940
Headquarters Italian XX Corps, 15 km south of the former British positions on Alam Hafyla ridge
Generale di Corpo d'Armata – Lieutenant General / Corps General – Giovanni Messe had just finished giving a briefing on the overnight fighting to his commander, General Carlo Geloso. His corps had taken many prisoners and vast numbers of much-needed British trucks, but the main body of British Eighth Army had gotten away clean. The air force was claiming that they were hammering the retreating columns. Neither army general had much faith in the boasts of pilots.
“You have done well.” Geloso paused to let Messe absorb the praise. “Now I am going to give you instructions you will not like.” He let Messe compose himself. “You will temper your pursuit. I am less concerned with the possibility of a great victory, than of you risking a great reverse.”
“Do you doubt my competence, sir?”
“My reservations are as follows. Our equipment is obsolete. Our current battlefield predominance is based on air and artillery superiority. Firepower. Neither of those can be rushed forward. The air units will have to be staged to Cairo. Then staged to new bases ever further up the Nile as you advance. Your supply will have to come from Alexandria. An entire new supply line must be organized on a north-south basis after Egypt is pacified. Organized while at the same time Germany goes due east 90 degrees away from you. So, win what tactical victories you can, but do not risk serious reversals. It’s a bit over two thousand kilometers from Cairo to Khartoum. It’s another sixteen hundred kilometers to Juba in Sudan’s south. The British have gone into a bottomless bag. Our risk is you getting ahead of your supplies and support while the British finally send reinforcements from home. If you advance twenty kilometers a day you are talking six months to Juba. Six months of slogging through rear guards and stragglers, of having to rebuild roads after British demolitions. Of having to replace your worn-out vehicles and men with fresh ones. The chance to pocket their entire army was lost when they ran away too quickly. Italy never planned for such a long campaign. Our Germans friends will help at the margin but their real desire is east, not south.”
Messe stared at the map taking this all in. Napoleon’s deployment from Paris to Moscow was only twenty-nine hundred kilometers. This was going to be a true operational challenge.
1000 hours CET
4 November 1940
Office of Oberführer Schellenberg, Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, Berlin, Germany
The Oberführer’s administrative secretary was a young Hauptsturmführer with a legal degree from a provincial university. His school’s faculty had been so decimated by Nazi purges that it was only kept going with forced transfers of professors from other, better institutions. The Nazis had renamed the school in Halle-Wittenberg for Martin Luther, but the unofficial nickname was ‘Vorkuta’, a camp in the Soviet GULAG. The Hauptsturmführer had been an exemplary Nazi through his student days, using that as entrée to an SS career.
The file on the Brigade Strauss safes had entries from NL Leutnant Schmidt, the Witt family of finance officials, the head of the German Army depot at the Naples docks, the finance officials in Italy who had made the payment. Brigade Strauss had ordered two large safes. One was for the cash sent with the Witts. A prudent action. The other was for … ? No one precisely knew, but it had been ordered within weeks of their arrival in Libya. The inference was that Strauss and his brigands had acquired bulky, valuable loot, probably during the Malta operation.
The annotation from the Oberführer ordered monitoring to continue on the safe and on unusual expenditures by Brigadier Strauss or his senior officers. It also said the Reichsführer was aware of this situation. The secretary put the file in his locked drawer. Data this sensitive should be away from random prying eyes. Advancement would come from anticipating the wishes of Schellenberg.
1200 hours local; 1100 hours CET
4 November 1940
Former Cohen Company offices, now Aryanized as Schwabe & Sons, Ploiesti
The new district police commissioner, Florin Prezan, was enjoying a late morning coffee with his new patrons, Luke Schwabe and Dieter Baring. The Romanian had known Schwabe and his family under the name of Cohen. For a three-rank rise in his position, Florin was prepared to believe the young man had been transformed by magic djin or German forest trolls. To him, whether a man’s phallus was cut or not mattered not at all. The sexual organ that interested him was the vagina, and in the dark they all looked the same. He worked for the German Baring, a deputy of the German economic Supremo Speer. The Romanian government had made that crystal-clear. Give the German whatever he wanted. Yet what the German wanted was quiet and order. Nothing nasty, nothing that hurt Romania. Whatever the idiot Iron Guard thought, these Germans were all that stood between Romania and the traditional Russian enemy. An enemy that had recently stolen one province and a large part of another.
Florin worked for Herr Facility Director Baring, but Herr Schwabe had chosen him for his position. What was given could be taken away. “Excellencies, how may I be of service?”
Baring was content to let Schwabe do the talking. “Two issues but they are linked. We have returned many of the original workers from Italy. The Iron Guard will not be happy at Jews and other foreigners living and working here. More are coming as this facility expands. You will need a unit of reliable men to police the residential and shopping district, to keep out the Iron Guard. Do you need a formal directive from the Ministry in Bucharest, or will an order from Herr Director be sufficient?”
“If the note from Herr Director is on letterhead and with his official titles, that will be quite sufficient. However, may I contact Herr Director’s administrative secretary on addresses in the capital to carbon copy? We will want multiple places to be on formal notice. I would also like a liaison officer appointed from the German garrison. The Iron Guard is prone to armed riot. It would be nice to know there is an alarm company or two tasked to support my constables in the event of a large-scale disturbance. There are rumors those fools will attempt a coup against Marshal Antonescu. The liaison officer could also be kept aware by myself on such intelligence about disturbances, so the facilities can stay secure.”
Baring nodded, and Luke went on. “We now have a large garrison of Aryans and a large workforce of foreigners. They are both mostly young men. Young men need similar diversions: liquor, women, gambling. They also tend to get into fights when celebrating at these facilities. We don’t need the trouble. I propose that two new red-light districts be created. One will be for the Aryans. The other will be for our oil workers. Send two officers to my old transit camp at Bari to see how to properly arrange these things. But separate places, and wired off so local toughs don’t interfere.”
Florin smiled. He was thinking of who he would contact and what the kickbacks would be like. “You are aware that you are giving my police a license to get somewhat wealthy?”
Luke nodded. “Yes. It will be a most desirable job. It will also be immune from Romanian military conscription. We will
get a note from Berlin to your General Staff on this. You in turn will have certain duties. The girls will be clean. Medically inspected daily. The whiskey will be neither watered nor diluted with industrial additives. The games of chance will be honest. Drunk soldiers or working men will not be rolled for their wallets. You will personally be responsible for this. Failure means you will be executed and your successor charged with the cleanup. In turn you will have the power of life and death over the business people you bring in for these concessions. Clean, orderly, efficient from our point of view means a license to get moderately rich for you and your men. Did you ever wonder why my family chose you and cleared out the ranks above you?” Florin thought he knew but let the ex-Jew continue. “The others were either too greedy to stay bought or too lazy to do what was promised. You always needed little fees and gifts, but your word was good. Let it continue to be so.”
Florin assured the Excellencies of this. His wife had already seen the pattern and beaten him with words on what he must do. Obey, and keep hiring relatives who would be properly grateful. This was a chance working police seldom got; and the big prize never comes twice in the lottery of life.
1400 hours local; 1300 hours CET
4 November 1940
British Army traffic control point south of Gaza, Palestine
The major was being difficult. Sergeant Billy Lincoln replied with the proper sort of barely subordinate mulish intransigence. “Sir, you have seen my orders. Signed by a major general. You have called the colonel I am ordered to report to in Haifa to confirm that my orders are valid.”