Kthulhu Reich

by Ken Asamatsu

  Claus stared at the thing doubtfully, and turned to Lil to ask whether the events of the night before (or rather, the early morning) had been a dream or not. He immediately gave up the plan, though.

  He looked at Lil and knew at once that something was... off. He could not put his finger on the difference, but this Lil was not the same person she had been the night before.

  She was dreadfully carefree, far too cheerful, and without a trace of her former self. Her face was frozen in a virtuous smile, like some ideal German woman on Party propaganda posters.

  Claus was filled with unease. He changed clothes and asked Lil casually, “Where are those photos from last night?”

  Lil brought him the file folder with a bright smile. Inside he saw an ordinary commemorative photograph (The Führer and his Strategic Headquarters Staff sort of thing) and a battle plan carried out from 1940 to ‘41.

  He looked, but could find no trace of deception in Lil’s smiling face when she handed it over.

  “Did you hear that noise from the neighbor’s apartment last night?” Claus asked.

  “No, the neighbors have been quiet as mice for ages.” Lil’s answer convinced him.

  It’s true. It’s not just my imagination. The pictures, the documents... even Lil: they’ve all be replaced.

  And so, Claus headed out early and burned all of the documents he’d gotten from Field Marshal Rommel (all of them fake) in the back garden.

  It was now ten in the morning. Claus came to a decision and picked up the phone.

  “Get me Field Marshall Rommel at Western HQ.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but Field Marshal Rommel was dispatched to the coast of Northern France last night.”

  “I see. Thank you.”

  He hung up after the operator’s polite refusal.

  His migraine returned.

  He thought of Rommel’s parting words the previous day. “I know it’s true. You and I are kindred... We are exorcists.”

  “Exorcists, are we?” he said to himself as he lit a cigarette. The smoke whirled around him and dissipated into the air. He watched it twist and flow, and thought again on the nightmare from two nights ago. The panicked streets, the old Gypsy woman’s prophesy, the great cone-headed beast rising above the buildings, and the Gypsy girl warning him of danger. (In Lil’s voice, no less).

  “Herzog.”

  The name seemed to come from his lips unbidden. He straightened his shoulders and put out his cigarette.

  “Yes, of course. Herzog. Rommel and Lil both mentioned his name. Herzog, professor of Latin at the Technical University of Berlin. He’s the one who translated that inscription.”

  He grabbed the telephone receiver again.

  “Connect me with the administrative office at the Technical University of Berlin, please.”

  He got through this time.

  “Hello, I’m with Wehrmacht Headquarters. Is there a Latin professor there by the name of Herzog? I believe he’s quite old.”

  “Do you mean Professor Johan G. Herzog?”

  “Yes, probably. I think so.”

  “I fear that Professor Herzog was arrested and taken away by the Gestapo this morning.”

  “What?! On what charge?”

  “On suspicion of hiding his Jewish heritage to gain his position as a teacher, and of engaging in criticism of the system with his students.”

  “That’s enough. I understand.”

  Claus hung up, his expression dark. Clearly, Herzog was in for more than just a three-day holding period. If he survived the Gestapo’s torture, he’d likely be sent on to a concentration camp in a week’s time. They were one step ahead of me, he thought.

  He picked up his cigarettes and lit a second.

  The migraine struck harder. The suspicious photograph. Some forgotten old battle plan. The lover who was replaced by a doppelganger while he slept. The crablike silhouette of Lil’s neighbor.... None of these were things he could tell anyone about. In the Third Reich, any soldier who showed signs of mental disorder was “dealt with.” That was the rule.

  If only Rommel were here,... he thought, and meant it in earnest.

  He thought of the men at yesterday’s lunch, any of whom was a match for Rommel in reputation and status. General Halder, Former Chief of Staff Beck, Field Marshal von Witzleben.... And among them, one of the leaders of the intelligence service itself, Canaris, had said, “Let us set July 20 as the day. We’ll devise a detailed plan by our next meeting. And we have to decide who will carry it out by then.”

  My God, I really did hear those words spoken at a table full of generals and field marshals. I was there, at a gathering of men conspiring to assassinate the Führer! It was no dream or delusion. It was real!

  He looked around the office. No one was using the phone, no one was paying him any attention. Claus stared out from his cloud of cigarette smoke.

  “It’s real. I’m not delusional. The pictures and documents Rommel entrusted to me, my place in the conspiracy: it’s all real. And to prove it, I’m going to get things moving before anyone expects it.”

  V

  He went alone to the Abwehr offices.

  He left before breakfast to confuse anyone tailing him. If, of course, I am being tailed, he thought.

  As he was heading through the halls toward Building E, which housed the bureau, he was overcome with an ominous feeling. He felt a penetrating gaze fixed on him from somewhere above the too-high ceilings. It seemed as if everyone who passed him was talking about rats the size of rabbits running around the subway tunnels.

  The world had suddenly changed since yesterday, and everywhere he saw sinister omens and felt the looming presence of their traps.

  Yet he kept his face blank and continued down the too-long corridors. He finally reached the admiral’s office.

  “About yesterday—” Claus began right off, his resolve firm.

  But... what if everything that happened yesterday at lunch, at Laterne, was just a vivid dream? How could so many great men be plotting to kill the Führer?

  And yet, on the other hand, Claus, an Oberst stationed directly at Army Headquarters, remembered other plots. January 1933. September 1938. November 1939. January 1943. There had been at least four instances of the Army plotting a coup d’état against Hitler.

  “Is this about yesterday’s discussion at lunch?” asked Admiral Canaris, with all the grave bearing of a medieval knight.

  Claus paused for a breath, and spoke. “Yes, regarding... what we discussed.”

  The admiral placed a finger to his lips, signaling Claus to keep his voice down. The finger then beckoned him closer. Claus obeyed, whispering into the admiral’s ear.

  “Let me do it.”

  “Do what?” Canaris asked.

  “The exorcism.”

  The admiral stared intently for a moment at Claus. Under that gaze, Claus’s mouth began moving of its own accord again.

  “The Führer and his lackeys in the Party have made pacts with things not of this world. They bring destruction for destruction’s sake, and mass murder for murder’s sake. They have betrayed all that is right and moral. The Antichrist spoken of in scripture is here. He is among them.”

  “You have some antiquated notions, Oberst.”

  “Admiral, have you met that Tibetan?”

  “You mean Teppa Tsanpo.”

  “He is no Tibetan. He is a monster, come from beyond this world to control the Führer. The documents Field Marshal Rommel gave me prove this.”

  Admiral Canaris closed his eyes. He placed his right hand on his desk and tapped it nervously with his middle finger.

  “Rommel held similar opinions. That this assassination is for the sake of the Fatherland and that we are no traitors. That we will be as St. George, slaying the barbarous dragon.”

  “I agree. Rig
ht now, in ways we can’t see, in shadow, our own country is changing into... something else. I saw it myself last night.”

  “Those Nazi bastards would say the cause of that change is the Jews, or Freemasons, or the agents of Soviet Russia.” The admiral snorted. “Hmph. Panicking the people by turning real life into something out of the worst nightmare, creating homunculi, like dwarves from the fairy tales, loose in the streets of Berlin, and murdering citizens in sacrifice to some black magician.... What Jew or Freemason or Communist would do such things? Oh yes, there are those in the Third Reich who would gladly perform such madness. The Nazi beasts themselves!”

  “Let me do it.” Claus repeated.

  “Your exorcism?”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  “Understood. I’ll take your opinion under consideration,” Canaris said, his face blank as he turned back to his reports. “I value your opinion.” That was the admiral’s answer.

  After leaving the headquarters on Bendlerstraße, Claus returned home for the first time in three days.

  He parked his car in the narrow drive in front of his house, and placed the On Military Affairs placard in the windshield.

  Arriving at his front door, he heard the thunderous sound of a radio from inside. Gundi was a passionate Nazi Party member.

  He rang the doorbell. While waiting for Gundi to answer, he glimpsed something streak past the corner of his eye, to the left. Something with fuzzy golden fur. A dog, he thought.

  He looked over as the golden-furred thing stretched out, its pink face now visible. It was a rat the size of a rabbit. It sat there on the concrete, stretched out calmly as it cleaned its whiskers with its front paws.

  Claus met its gaze.

  “What do you think you can do?” it said in a high, squeaking voice. “An exorcism? Even the Catholic priests in Germany are Nazis now. What can you do on your own?”

  Claus turned back to his front door and ignored the creature.

  “Of course, exorcism is a rite to drive off the enemy of the Christian God. Unfortunately, the being currently spreading its tentacles throughout this land is nothing so trivial as that. It is a being older than humanity itself, more evil than the devil.... Your mind cannot conceive of what you face.”

  Claus bit his bottom lip. It felt as if a spring in the back of his head was almost ready to give. His hand went to his holster and drew his Luger—but the creature escaped in a bounding run.

  The door opened.

  “Welcome home.”

  Gundi answered the door without emotion. She was too thin, her eyes too wide and sunken. He couldn’t stop looking at her face. She noticed the gun in his hand and went on, her voice cold. “Surely you don’t mean to kill me now?”

  Oh no. I intend to kill an even greater devil than you, Claus thought to himself, and holstered the Luger. The spring in the back of his head began to quietly unwind.

  VI

  Every little thing his nonchalant wife did stretched Claus’s nerves another notch. It was like she was running a giant metal file over his brain and nervous system.

  For example, those little brown speakers: one in the bedroom, one in the hall, one in the dining room—everywhere the Volksempfänger. No matter where he went, he was pursued by the hollow shouts of the Nazi leadership and was forced to listen to the unending lies spewed forth by the government announcers.

  For dinner, he was served a stew filled with some unidentifiable meat, more fat than anything, and a cup of brilliant pink liquid.

  “What is this?” he asked, and Gundi answered emotionlessly:

  “Ration meat. They said it was lamb.”

  “And this liquid?”

  “It’s like soy milk. Made from Tibetan beans. It’s apparently quite good for the body and mind,” Gundi said matter-of-factly, and drained her cup of the vividly colored liquid. Then she dug into the “lamb” stew with obvious relish.

  Claus stirred his stew halfheartedly. Something at the bottom of the bowl clinked against the porcelain. He lifted it out with his spoon.

  Sitting in his spoon was a sparkling, pointed lump of gold.

  “Wha-?!” Claus stared at it. He quickly realized that it was a gold tooth filling.

  Lamb. Oh, damn them! These lambs came from God’s flock. They’re feeding us human flesh!

  Claus was overcome with nausea. He leaped to his feet, one hand on his mouth to hold back his vomit as he ran to the toilet. He emptied what little was inside him. As he did so, he heard a humming motor sound and the suppressed giggling of a woman, not Gundi. And then a whispered voice mingling with a high-pitched murmuring.

  He washed his face thoroughly with water from the tap.

  He leaned toward the bathroom mirror. There was a crab claw resting on his right shoulder. Claus gave a small cry and slapped it away.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Gundi. She stood there, smiling, after he had knocked her hand away.

  Claus was reminded of that middle-aged man he’d heard yelling earlier, when he’d been on the way to Großer Stern. He’d shouted, “It’s them! They’re here! We’re already under occupation! They’ve intercepted all of our thoughts, it’s all part of their plan!”

  “I know everything. You, and Lil, and everyone else. You’re part of them,” Claus muttered to himself, and smiled stiffly.

  He was invited to the second lunch on July tenth. This time it was not Rommel who invited him, for the Field Marshal was in Normandy.

  From what Claus could see, Rommel’s position had worsened terribly over the last two weeks. This was likely due to the Führer hearing that Rommel was skeptical of the Third Reich’s battle strategy.

  With that in the background, Strategic Command was finalizing Hitler’s New Atlantic Wall plan, which could only be called a fairy tale. The plan called for building 150 gun emplacements across Northern France, from Cherbourg to Calais, and also a protective wall like the Great Wall of China, with a total disregard for technical ability, budget, or manpower.

  The plan manifest was signed by the Führer himself, and the Tibetan man sitting at the foot of the table when he did so had proclaimed “The Third Reich will unleash the day of wrath willed by God upon the whole world in 1945.” Claus received his invitation the very next day.

  Admiral Canaris, chief of the Abwehr, had invited him, along with General Oster, also of the Abwehr. The location was once again Laterne. However, this time it would not be in the VIP room, but in a quiet window seat.

  He looked out of the large window over Nollendorf Platz. Everyone walking through the square was dressed in military uniform. There were barely any civilians to be seen.

  “Look! An Asian wearing an SS uniform,” Admiral Canaris muttered angrily. The Asian in his gray SS uniform stood out clearly from the crowd.

  “That’s one of the Tibetans who came with Teppa Tsanpo. The Führer has bought into this Tibetan Roots of the Aryans idea and now they walk the streets as SS!”

  “I’m not so sure they really are Tibetan.” Claus frowned as he poured liqueur into his coffee.

  “Indeed. There are Asian Russians, as wel—” General Oster tried to interject, but Claus kept speaking.

  “No, I’m not sure they’re from this world at all.”

  The admiral and general both caught their breath at the same time. They stared at Claus, but he did not sense their doubt of his mental stability.

  “Rommel has a very high opinion of you. He says you have an eye that can see through them, just like he does. I suppose he got some kind of mental powers from all that magnetism in the desert!”

  “If so, then I must have gotten my special perception from that old Gypsy woman’s prophecy,” Claus answered, and sipped his coffee.

  “Gypsy prophecy?”

  “Yes. When I was five years old or so, a Gypsy caravan stopped on my father’s grounds and there was a fortun
eteller among them. She looked at my palm and my face and told me, ‘You should be a priest of the Catholic faith.’ And she said that I was born to be an exorcist—”

  “Well, this is a kind of exorcism,” nodded Admiral Canaris. He looked over at the general next to him. “Show him.”

  General Oster laid a briefcase on the table with great care.

  “July 20th. The place is East Prussia, at Wolfsschanze, the Führer’s eastern headquarters. Let’s set the time for 12:50 exactly. There’s a timer inside, along with a detonator attached to plastic explosive.”

  “Is our target Hitler alone?”

  “The Führer, Göring, Himmler.... All three are our targets, but unfortunately the only important person who will be at the Wolfsschanze with the Führer on that day will be the Tibetan guru.”

  “So... I will also be eliminating Teppa Tsanpo?”

  “Indeed.”

  “But Tsanpo has unearthly powers. What do we do if he notices something?”

  “As long as he doesn’t have x-ray vision, he won’t be able to see what’s inside. And if we can kill him along with the Führer, then this superstition and fanaticism that’s taken over our leadership will die as well,” said General Oster confidently.

  “Is there any danger of it going off prematurely?”

  “None. It’s the same time-bomb setup our sabotage unit in the Abwehr uses. Flip the switch twenty minutes in advance. Leave the briefcase in the meeting room. Leave the room... and that’s it.”

  “There will be a lot of collateral damage. Officers and generals apart from our targets.”

  “They’re all supporters of the Party and have refused to oppose what’s going on for the sake of their own careers. They deserve it for that alone.”

  “Understood. However, I do have one request.”

  “What is it? If you’re trying to weasel out—” Claus shook his head at Admiral Canaris.

  “No, I only ask two things. First, have a proper priest pray for my success.”

  “We can ask one of the fathers of the anti-Nazi Protestant churches for that. And the other?” asked the general.