Kthulhu Reich

by Ken Asamatsu

  “I am part of General Headquarters.”

  “I hope you can stay sane, working in that pit. No, forgive me, that was a slip of the tongue. Let me get to the point. Come to the restaurant Laterne on Nollendorf Platz today at 1300 hours. I’d like to talk to you over lunch. I’ve arranged for the staff to bring you to our private room when you give them my given name. Do not say my surname! Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  “Very well then. I am serious about this. Don’t forget! Goodbye.”

  Claus hung up the phone. He gave a deep sigh. His migraine worsened, and chills crawled from the nape of his neck down his back. He broke out in goosebumps under his uniform. A tiny doubt began to worry at his brain.

  Since when has Rommel been so pushy? And he really is supposed to be in Normandy right now. His doubt grew stronger. What if that wasn’t actually Rommel on the phone?

  Claus pressed his left hand over the patch covering one eye. The migraine flared stronger. Flashing silver particles burst in the darkness there.

  This is just the dregs of that dream I had this morning, Claus thought.

  He pulled the hand from his eye. He picked up his pencil. He moved the strategy draft out of the way and replaced it with a memo pad. He scribbled a note: “Laterne. 1 pm.”

  Next to it, he began to write about the nightmare he’d had. It had begun early in the morning, when it was still dark, and though he woke many times, it always started up again when he fell back to sleep. It had also triggered his migraine.

  The nightmare began with voices. Voices that could not be ignored, that filled him with anxiety. He walked around a street corner, and a girl running the other way ran into him. She was a young gypsy, her long black hair in disarray. She looked up at him with coal-black eyes and said, “His time is coming. He is coming, and when he rises, we will all perish.”

  “He? Who? Whose time?”

  She answered with a name, but her voice was drowned out by the screams and angry shouting filling the street. When he looked around, he saw that the corner was thronged with people: soldiers and civilians, men and women, young and old, so packed together they could not move. All of them bore the same expression.

  Their faces were masks of pure terror.

  Claus could feel that same expression pulling at his own face.

  A terrible rumbling came from overhead, a sound of destruction. A vast shadow appeared standing over the crumbling buildings, the shadow of a giant covering the entire sky. A giant, manlike in shape but... something else.

  The giant was not a man.

  Its head opened wide at the top, gaping in a wide split, and great writhing tentacles spread from the fissure. Tentacles of terrible size.

  The thing let out a sound... It was not a voice, nor was it a bestial roar. It was the sound of the very night sky shattering, a resonance of pure destruction. The power of it knocked the people on the street to the ground.

  To Claus, the vibration sounded like....

  Like … what... ?

  “I’m sorry to interrupt your contemplation, Oberst.” A man’s voice suddenly pulled Claus out of his dream and back to reality.

  He jerked and looked up, and saw that his visitor was a major of the SS. The young man had a long, narrow face, and he looked out from rimless glasses. He appeared to be about twenty-five or twenty-six. Nowadays, it was common to see officers in their twenties. Indeed, it was a time of generals in their thirties. Even Claus, wondering at the man’s youth as he was, had made Oberst before forty, which had once been unheard of.

  “Good morning, Major May,” Claus said with a false smile as he recalled the man’s name. Helmut May.

  “I wouldn’t call it contemplation; I’ve simply got a bit of a migraine. It’s somewhat distracting.”

  “A migraine! That is unfortunate. You should visit a military physician. Or perhaps the psychotherapeutic center?”

  “No, no, it’s not so bad,” Claus said, but as he did so he realized that May was staring at the memo in front of him. He casually balled the paper up and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

  When Claus asked “Did you need something, Major?” Major May stood up straight and clicked his heels. He clearly meant it to come across as official and dignified, but the actual effect was something else entirely.

  “New orders have come down from the Führer as of this morning. You have been invited to a meeting to discuss the new proposals for the Atlantic Wall this coming June 30th. You are to discuss the Atlantic Wall’s completion at that time.”

  Claus nodded at May, while inside he was groaning. Another meeting....

  “Understood. May I ask, what about that Mongolian fellow? Will he be attending?”

  “He is Tibetan. Guru Teppa Tsanpo.”46

  Major May corrected him coldly. There was not a trace of humor in his expression. Indeed, there was not a trace of humanity at all there. He looked more like a well-made mannequin.

  I feel as if I’ve suddenly started seeing more of these faces on the street since last year. Or am I just imagining things?

  “Oh, yes, of course. The guru. I stand corrected and I do apologize,” Claus said, keeping his own face expressionless.

  “Keep it in mind. The Führer admires Guru Tsanpo deeply. And his theory of the Tibetan origins of the Aryan race....”

  May let his words trail off as if to offer some kind of warning. Then, he turned stiffly and walked down the corridor. He walked perfectly straight, his back ramrod stiff, his legs moving smoothly in unison. It gave Claus the oddest feeling, as if he were watching a tin clockwork soldier walk away, rather than the flesh-and-blood Major May.

  “God, not again. This damned migraine,” he muttered, then reached into his pocket. He took out the note and carefully spread it flat again. The pain came in waves along with his pulse. The throbbing agony made the letters on the note warp in time with each stab. Big, then small. Big, then small. The four lines of writing throbbed along with the rest of him.

  Laterne, 1 pm. Lunch with Erwin.

  Rumors about “His time is coming.”

  A god with cone-shaped head. Its terrible shadow.

  Cthulhu fhtagn.47 The giant shadow’s emanation.

  II

  Laterne, or streetlight, seemed a fitting name for the restaurant. It had a metropolitan look to it, and was decorated to evoke the good old days of the Weimar republic of the 1910s. Even the light brown tables and chairs had a nostalgic look to them. The fact that the place could maintain regular business even in these terrible times was likely due to the Wehrmacht clientele.

  Claus heard the clear sound of the door closing behind his back. The atmosphere of the place felt round and smooth, like quiet static. The dining room was full, and suddenly it felt as if they weren’t in a Berlin at war. Claus spoke quickly and softly to the manager who’d come quietly up.

  “I have a lunch appointment with Erwin.”

  The manager nodded slightly and led Claus to the back of the restaurant. The oddly proud bearing of the manager’s round back was likely due to his knowing just how important the guest waiting in the VIP room really was.

  Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, a hero whose name was known to every German.

  “Follow me, sir. They are waiting for you.”

  “They? I thought he would be alone?”

  “Right this way, please.”

  The manager pulled the door open in front of the suddenly dubious Claus. The bright lights of the VIP room pierced his eyes. It must be the chandelier, he thought, but as his eyes adjusted, he thought perhaps the dazzle hadn’t been because of the light.

  “Welcome, Oberst.” It was not Rommel who greeted him, sitting at the head of the long, ten-person table.

  “Chief of Staff Beck... ?” Claus blurted in shock.

  The man sitting in the head chair was Ludwig B
eck, former general and Chief of the Army’s General Staff. As he looked around the table he saw a further sampling of the elite of the German military. There were eight men, including Rommel, and all were members of proud noble families. Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the Abwehr military intelligence bureau. Hans Oster, head of counter-espionage. Field Marshal Günther von Kluge. General and Army High Command Chief Franz Halder. General Erich Hoepner. General Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben. The sight made Claus feel slightly dizzy.

  “Be welcome, Oberst, as our ninth member,” Rommel called out from the eastern end of the table. “Please, do sit down.”

  Claus did as the great hero suggested, diffidently pulling out a chair and sitting next to him.

  “It appears our tenth man isn’t coming. Gentlemen, shall we eat?” Former chief of staff Beck called for lunch to begin.

  “Who is the tenth member?” Claus asked Rommel quietly.

  “Not a military man. The former mayor of Leipzig, Carl Goerdeler. It appears he’s under close surveillance for ‘anti-Party activities.’ But there’s nothing to worry about, he’d never betray us.”

  “Betray? Worry?” The words carried such a weight of paranoia and conspiracy that Claus felt weak, not even able to stand from his chair and run away.

  Lieber Gott. This migraine, again.

  He frowned and gently closed his eyes. His temples throbbed with pain. Behind his eyelids, he glimpsed fragments of the morning’s dream. The gypsy girl stared at Claus, but she was no girl anymore. She was old, unbelievably old, a crone like a witch in Grimm’s fairy tales. She stared at Claus and said,

  “You have received a great blessing from God. You have eyes that can see the true face of evil. You have the courage to do what other’s fear to try. Yes.... You should be a priest of the Catholic faith, to deliver the righteous from evil. Yes. I see it. You were born to be an exorcist.”

  The five-year-old Claus had shaken his head at this.

  “I am going to be a brave soldier like my father, like a nobleman should be!”

  The gypsy woman disappeared while he said this, and Claus regained his current, older body. And yet he spoke on. “Right, and strong.... An officer of the Wehrmacht.”

  A man bumped his shoulder. He heard the voices of people running, screaming. “He’s here!” “He has risen!” “His call will shatter the world!”

  Soldiers and civilians, men and women, young and old. They thronged the street, running about in a panic. They were fighting in their fear. Weeping and crying. They’d become a pack of rats trapped in a burning maze. They ran about, knocking into each other, desperate to escape. There was no escape.

  They look like the people of Berlin the first time an air raid struck.

  Amid the terror and panic, a young, beautiful gypsy girl ran into Claus. She looked up at him. She took his shoulders and leaned in close. She spoke, and it was in Lil Hollander’s voice.

  “His time is coming. He is coming. It will come. When he awakens, we will all perish. For we are but his dream!”

  “He? Who? Whose dream?” When Claus moved his lips to ask this, he woke from his daydream.

  He realized that Field Marshal Rommel was explaining something.

  “... and so, the Nazi leadership is rather optimistically ignoring the American air raids on Berlin that began March 4th, and is instead focusing on the ridiculous plan to build a massive base in Northern France.”

  “According to my information, the Führer plans to create a Volkssturm citizen’s militia comprising every man in the nation between the ages of sixteen and sixty. And if the state of the war still doesn’t go in our favor.. .”; Admiral Canaris, who’d taken over the conversation, paused briefly. He looked over all present, and his countenance fell. He went on: “He will enact the Nero Decree.”

  “What is the Nero Decree?” asked Field Marshal von Witzleben.

  “Before the Allies enter German territory, our army is to destroy the entire nation’s infrastructure. To leave nothing but scorched earth. If Germany is to be destroyed, it will be by our own hand, no other!” Former Chief of Staff Beck answered in the admiral’s stead.

  The sound of someone gasping echoed through the suddenly silent room. It was a dry sound. It was much like that made by a bomb from a B-17 tearing through the air.

  “We cannot wait a moment longer. For our nation, for our people, we must resolve here and now to assassinate the Führer and push the Wehrmacht to mount a coup d’état,” said General Halder, his voice and face grave, and he pounded one fist on the table.

  “We are in communication with the central Catholic leadership, members of the Social Democratic Party, anti-Nationalsozialistische protestant congregations, and certain hidden communist leaders. As soon as the Führer’s death is confirmed, the Wehrmacht will disarm the SS and arrest the Party leadership. The Gestapo’s absolute authority will also be stripped.” Field Marshal Rommel’s voice rang out clearly as he followed up General Halder’s pronouncement.

  “And former Chief of Staff Beck here will serve as temporary regent,” the admiral said, and all eyes were on Beck.

  “A new time is coming,” said Field Marshal von Kluge, his cheeks flushed with excitement.

  “Our time, with no more of this dark Nazi magic,” General Hoepner added.

  “Let us set July 20th as the day. We’ll devise a detailed plan by our next meeting. And we must decide who will carry it out by then,” said Admiral Canaris, rising.

  “For the Fatherland!” Field Marshal von Witzleben called out.

  “For the Fatherland!” Everyone answered, and saluted in the old, forgotten way, the way soldiers of the Wehrmacht had once done.

  Claus joined the generals and field marshals in the salute. He felt the pride of a son of a noble family filling his chest.

  After the meeting broke up and Claus was leaving the VIP room, a voice called out to him.

  “Oberst. I have something I want you to see.” Field Marshal Rommel stopped him and held out a large file folder.

  “What is this?” asked Claus, as the file was pushed into his hands.

  “Look at this when you get home, in your room. Make sure you are alone. There are three pictures and a bundle of documents inside.”

  “Is it the plan for the coup d’état?” Claus asked.

  “No, it’s not exactly connected. However, it might offer some insight into the real cause of all this,” Rommel said, and closed the VIP room door. He and Claus were the only ones still left in the room. He jerked his chin and said, “Take a seat.” Claus did so.

  “It started for me two years ago, when I was in command of our Northern African campaign. We were encamped south of El Alamein....” Rommel lit a cigarette.

  “Some of my men found some ruins there, buried in the sand. They were made of stone, buried deep underground. It appeared that the stones had been brought in and put in place beneath the earth. They were abandoned after they were completed, and the sands had swallowed them.

  “I ordered them to investigate the interior. I thought we might be able to use it as a base, you see?”

  “Was it an ancient Egyptian tomb or some such?” Claus asked.

  “No. The ruins were old, but not that old. The walls bore the figures of Christ and the blessed virgin, and figures appearing to be the twelve apostles. It was apparently an old Coptic temple from the ninth century or so.”

  “Coptic?”

  “The Copts are an Egyptian Christian sect. It might help you to know their beliefs are strongly rooted in Christian mysticism. They often built their churches underground to keep them hidden from Muslim rulers.

  “The inscriptions on the wall were all in ninth-century Latin. Eventually, one of my men found three stone tablets in the church’s altar. They shone a brilliant green—almost as if they were made of emerald. They were inscribed with four lines of Latin, as well
as the figures of fantastical creatures, all inlaid in gold. Clearly, they were made to leave some message to future generations.”

  Rommel tapped his cigarette on the lip of his ashtray. The long ash fell silently away.

  “That file holds pictures of the ruins and of the green stone tablets. I want you to look closely at them when you get home. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.”

  “What about the ruins?”

  “I was right to order those pictures taken. A few days later the ruins were obliterated by tank fire. I’d had the stone tablets taken out and wrapped carefully in leather, but again... a few days later, they’d crumbled to green dust.”

  Rommel gave him a cynical smile and set his cigarettes and lighter in front of Claus. It was most unsettling, seeing this rigid general offering someone of inferior rank a cigarette like an equal. It appeared he was asking Claus to try to relax while he listened.

  Claus nodded his thanks and lit a cigarette.

  “I showed the pictures of that Coptic church to a professor at the Technical University of Berlin. Herzog, it was, a professor of Latin, and a man who knows how to keep a secret. Not a member of the Party. There’s a copy of the texts he translated in there as well.”

  “I understand. I’ll go over them when I get home.”

  “Please do.” Rommel smiled weakly.

  “Well then, I’ll take my leave, sir.” Claus put out his cigarette and stood up, tucking the folder under his arm as he did so. He saluted Rommel, who remained seated, and headed toward the door.

  He’d only gone two or three steps when Rommel spoke. “Oberst.... Aren’t you wondering why I gave you those things? Don’t you find it odd?” he asked.

  “Hm?” Claus turned back to him.

  Rommel held the tiny stump of his cigarette between his lips. “It’s that look in your eye. You had that same look in my dream. And that beautiful gypsy girl told me in my dream; she said, ‘General, you and he are kindred.’ I know it’s true. You and I are kindred.... We are exorcists.”

  Field Marshal Rommel said this last with passion. Then he nodded at Claus to go and lit another cigarette.