Apparatus 33: Dead Man Switch

by Lawston Pettymore

  Halina continued to work with the birth, and Nicolaus, in his anxious state, was almost convinced that hours had passed, and that Zerrissen had rigged the blue microcassette to kill them as the only surviving eyewitnesses of his Nazi days from Die Kuppel. He tried to listen for traffic noises or other clues that they were headed for the North Sea, the Baltic, or the Tiergarten.

  The chronometer argued to the contrary, their insane dash for freedom was only a few minutes old. Not ready to take the clockwork’s word for it, Nicolaus prepared to heave open the hatch and pull Halina to safety, even if it meant the baby would be born in the filthy river.

  As his hands fumbled with the lever that sealed the hatch, positioning his back against it to push the meter of water above it away, the sequencer illuminated a blue lamp on the panel and a buzzer, signifying the hard turn needed to do an accelerated port up the boat ramp, throwing Nicolaus into the bilge water collecting in the back section behind the pilot’s seat.

  The hull resonated with the large clap of the casters hitting the concrete boat ramp at high velocity, while Halina, wincing in pain, oozing, and spraying fluids from all orifices, pulled her baby into her lap. Buttercup was nowhere to be seen was probably already dead.

  Nicolaus braced himself against the hatch, thrust it open before NIX came to a rest, not caring whether she might still be underwater. This sent the heavy lid banging into the side but allowed in the much-welcome fresh air. Inhaling a few gasps, he opened his eyes to find himself face-to-face with his rescue team. Their mouths were gaping wide open as they stood around the boat ramp he recognized as the Tiergarten.

  Nicolaus leapt from the pilot seat onto the boat ramp, the cramps in his legs sending him into a drunk stumble. Then, as he regained balance, signaled to his friends to help Halina, though she had already performed the hardest part of childbirth. As they pulled mother and child from NIX, an agent approached Nicolaus, his hand extended in greeting, but Nicolaus, gasping fresh air, was still trying to process the reality of the unconceivable situation.

  “Damn,” he said to the agent, hands on his knees, watching them carry Halina to the waiting ambulance.

  “Dead reckoning. That shit works.”

  Halina has spoken

  Those who were not attending to Halina or cooing to her baby, were staring at the odoriferous and unclean NIX, pointing to the various structures and controls, and asking Nicolaus questions regarding its performance, and regarding the particulars of the sequencer, which was always a crowd pleaser. An agent from the Israeli Naval Service struggled aloud with the idea that civilians could contrive, appropriate materials for, and then utilize this craft to extract two adults and an infant from East Berlin. Having regained his breath, Nicolaus corrected him.

  “Actually, two people. Two went in. It’s just that three got out.”

  The issue of citizenship would have to be dealt with, the claim being that the baby was born west of the centerline of the river, making it a West German citizen. The mother, being Polish, would have to go through some paperwork, though the agents, according to Israeli policy, would accept both Halina and her child as naturalized citizens of Zion, should they so desire. Notably missing from the negotiations were any American contenders, their noses normally poked everywhere in post-War Germany. Nicolaus had intentionally misdirected them, informing them that they were to be expected at the US checkpoint rather than the actual location they arrived at in the Park. He knew that anything he informed Americans would be in East German and Soviet ears before his tongue formed the final syllable.

  During this impromptu welcome reception, Nicolaus’ thoughts were pulled back across the river to imagine an abandoned Zerrissen, each time his eyes resting on the RETURN lever on the right side of the pilot seat. He wondered if Zerrissen was in any condition or, in fact, dire need to save himself with NIX. An agent who had just learned the purpose of the lever noticed his furtive glances and somewhat reduced Nicolaus’ dilemma by reminding him that this pregnant fish, sequencer and all, had been promised to the Israeli intelligence services.

  Besides, the agent continued, he had just been informed from sources across the river that the workshop had been raided by the Stasi, KGB, and GDU teams ten or fifteen seconds after their departure. In the ensuing scuffle to find NIX, Zerrissen had been shot dead on the spot.

  The news was bittersweet for Nicolaus. He had never liked Zerrissen, but his contempt had been tempered by the awareness that Halina shared no such enmity who in fact saw him as something of a father, the gentlest heterosexual male she had ever met in her tragic life. In the end, Zerrissen did pursue redemption for his deeds at Die Kuppel. With Halina, baby, and Nicolaus now safe, Zerrissen had received a lethal dose of it.

  Nicolaus broke away from the crowd admiring the new addition to the Israeli Navy submarine force, to join Halina, with her baby in her arms, umbilical cord clamped, inside the ambulance that would take them to a hospital’s maternity ward through ten minutes of traffic. Halina with her sweat dripping hair, soaked in bilge water, and smelling like the floor of a latrine, smiled in understanding as Nicolaus cracked open the small window by her gurney, letting in the sounds of a bustling, vibrant West Berlin, as well as fresh air, in through which a large white bird flew and landed on Halina’s head, staring at the baby, as if memorizing its face. The attendants shooed the bird away, unaware of its relationship to Halina, and it flew back out the window. It was the last Halina or Nicolaus would ever see of Buttercup. Perhaps it was a trade planned by the Universe. A cranky, addicted, profane bird in exchange for a beautiful little girl borne from turmoil and grief.

  Halina called fruitlessly for the bird and handed the baby to Nicolaus to admire. He was still absorbing the idea of being the uncle of the first child ever to be born on the Spree, a perfect little girl, a natural citizen of West Germany with bright sparkly eyes, a pink face, a contented smile, and most importantly, two perfect little legs.

  Halina offered, without being asked, her hands busy holding the baby, she moved expressed herself to Nicolaus using words for the first time he had ever heard from her. The words were mushy, as if her mouth were full of peanut butter. The words required strength, perhaps those muscles being victims of polio. But they were understandable.

  “Raynora.” Inhaling, she repeated, pausing between thickly pronounced words for emphasis. “Her… name… is… Raynora.”

  Nicolaus blinked back his thoughts, the first, to tell her about Zerrissen’s capture and execution; the other, to share his doubts about Zerrissen’s loyalty to them. But he decided against both, because for one, he could never argue with Halina, and besides, the truth in this case would set no one free.

  Absinto

  As unaware as almost everyone else on Earth about this April surprise, Halina and Nicolaus, as guests of the West German state, were separated for the second time since the intervention of the Red Cross twenty years earlier. Nicolaus regarded Raynora as an loving uncle would his niece, despite his lingering contempt for her namesake, and Halina was celebrated for her courage as a polio survivor escapee from Die Kuppel and East Berlin, about which very little was known other than its patina as a Nazi concentration camp.

  In return for handing them NIX and sequencer, Israel granted Nicolaus access to their files on a Nazi immigrant named Helmut Gorgass, who was not on their list of wanted Nazi war criminals. Nazi hunters were satisfied with the cover story that Gorgass was at Die Kuppel seeking a cure for polio, and as this disease no longer existed on the planet, they showed no particular interest in him. The top-most war criminals from the Bunker, according to their calculus, were Raynor Zerrissen and Procrustes Todtenhausen, both now officially dead.

  Out of fondness for Halina and Raynora, however, the Israelis struck a deal with Nicolaus that should he produce some hard evidence that Gorgass was in fact Todtenhausen, then the Mossad would put him at the top of their most wanted list. Their claim that it was Kathe’s voice pronouncing the numbers in the continue broadcasts was int
riguing as well, but even harder to believe.

  In any case, those on their Nazi War Criminal list quickly and unambiguously found themselves on trial in Jerusalem in a public auditorium, exactly as their current defendant recently abducted from the streets of Bueno Aires in broad daylight.

  Halina and baby Raynora were relocated as guests of the State in a kibbutz on Israel’s northern coast, where Halina’s skills with shop tools, welding, and equipment repair, essential to the business of farming to which these settlements were dedicated, would be valued and compensatory. Splicing the tongue of a tractor hitch was not exactly artisanal, but Halina being Halina, made such banalities seem so. Raynora would have her own welding rig and be fluent in Hebrew and English by the time she was six. Halina’s life, as unglamorous as her leg brace, was exchanged from being a charwoman for the State, to one of diesel fuel and fertilizer.

  Halina knew no Hebrew, and no spoken language at all, of course, but she prospered in her with sign language which may be the one universal language on Earth, the only other candidate being Braille, should it ever be modified to serve that lofty purpose.

  Settlement expansion required blasting rock, excavation, and other types of earth moving, and Halina being interested in absolutely everything, became intrigued with the art and science of pyrotechnics and the mechanisms to safely control them. She was soon leading her own teams to shape the Gaza plateaus to revive God’s promised land of Abraham. Being himself a gentile, Nicolaus was invited to seek his new life elsewhere.

  That elsewhere, Nicolaus finally decided, was Brazil, the location his Mossad sources informed him was most likely the landing zone for a German immigrant. The Mossad found immigration records for a Helmut Gorgass, but no further mention. Helmut Gorgass vanished upon arrival.

  However, rumors did circulate describing a foreigner who spoke Spanish with a slight German or Greek accent, an elderly recluse by the name of Procrustes Damastes. Damastes lived on his vineyard estate named ‘Absinto’ and never left the fenced and gated property. As such, no good photograph of him could be acquired without alerting him, possibly sending him back into hiding. Damastes did have a live-in housekeeper of an age that matched sister Kathe’s, but the report made no mention of a dog. Damastes sold his grapes, paid his taxes, caused no trouble for the locals, and was therefore of no interest to either the Brazilian or Israeli governments.

  Brazil was still working through their quarrel with Israel over their surreptitious expatriation of the Nazi war criminal and favorite new neighbor, Adolf Eichmann, whom they had been coddling, along with Argentina, since his arrival in 1945. This enmity would not be diminished if they discovered another coterie of armed agents on their soil abducting another esteemed citizen.

  With lives and international relations both at risk, the Mossad insisted on solid, court admissible evidence. A blurry photograph that could have been faked, or one of a face that could be altered by a competent taxidermist, would not do. Instead, they required a blood sample, x-rays of known fractures, and/or dental impressions at minimum. Blood samples, x-rays, or dental impressions did nothing to answer Nicolaus’ questions about Pyotr, and he knew Todtenhausen would not volunteer these to anyone in any case.

  Mossad’s indifference to the possibility that this Damastes was actually Todtenhausen began to infect Nicolaus’ resolve. The possibility that the truth behind the disappearance of his twin brother would be lost in the fog of the war’s end became a possible outcome. But as he was pondering over a bottle of celebratory Arak, an epiphanic voice screamed in his mind’s ear. The name of the man’s vineyard, Absinto, was the Spanish name for the bitter root used as the basis of Absinthe, known in English as wormwood, and in German as Wermut.

  But there was more. He began digging deep in his memory for an opera he had seen a decade ago, he pulled it out, dusted it off, and read it as if cramming for an exam. Damastes was the mythological innkeeper of Greek lore, famous for surgically modifying his guests so they fit his beds perfectly, a metaphor today for the type of logic that bent facts to fit a preferred conclusion. The Romans had the same character in their portfolio, and his name was Procrustes. Todtenhausen’s first name was Procrustes.

  By the time the bottle of Arak was empty, Nicolaus had planned the entire mission. Nicolaus was going to Brazil to confront Damastes. He would not wear a bodysuit or a false nose, or glue on a mustache to get x-rays, blood samples, or teeth impressions for the Mossad.

  After all, how likely was it that Todtenhausen or Kathe, or even one’s own mother, could recognize a twenty-nine-year-old by a glimpse of that person as an emaciated child twenty years earlier? The only mammal in the room with that kind of memory, and the one to truly fear, was going to be Geronimo, and that beast from Hades would surely have poled back across the Styx years ago.

  Instead, Nicolaus was going to Brazil to confront Todtenhausen, trick him into talking, then, with that harpy Kathe watching, kill him.

  AGGREGAT 4

  DEAD MAN SWITCH

  Denouement

  I arrived by rental car as arranged for my introductory appointment with Todtenhausen, under the pretense of buying his entire harvest of grapes, bearing a gift in the South American tradition—a carton of wine, labeled by Halina’s capable hands as from an obscure, California wine producer. But only six of the bottles actually contained wine—a German Gewurztraminer, readily available in Israel. Kosher, of course. The other six were filled with a thick paste of fertilizer and some oxidizer, also blended by Halina from available stores on the kibbutz and resealed as if never opened.

  A bottle in the center contained a timer that would ignite the other five bottles two hours after being armed unless I reset the timer – a dead man switch - by simply twisting the cork stopper. She assured me the explosion would be biblical, leaving nothing standing within a radius of thirty meters, and nothing alive within forty.

  The plan was as unrehearsed as it was unsophisticated. I would keep the charade of being a buyer, presenting the case as a gift, open one of the non-fertilizer bottles, toast our venture, and extract some details in as innocent a manner as possible to avoid rousing suspicion. Todtenhausen’s answers to a few pointed questions that only he could possibly know would be sufficient for me to let the timer expire, well after my departure, of course, and hopefully after finding out more about Pyotr’s demise. Tricking him to confess his identity would be the improbable grand slam hattrick.

  I admit that I was not serving this revenge completely cold, or even fully baked.

  My foot crunched loudly on the pea gravel of the parking area in front of the casita, the sound surely heard through the open cocina window from which wafted the fragrance of recently served lunch, indubitably a German sauerbraten stew. Old habits die hard, especially culinary ones. I was already reassured that I had found him, and this extra bit of evidence had me shaking like a guilty child lying about breaking a family heirloom.

  Hidden by the trunk lid of the car, I set the time to two hours. This conversation will be over in two hours and I’ll be on my way back to my new home in America, or I’ll be dead.

  To calm my nerves, I took some deep breaths, and mentally rehearsed my backstory while carrying the heavy case to the casita door. I pulled the lanyard on the brass bell by the front door, steeling myself to see Todtenhausen himself, but when nothing happened, and I was about to ring the bell again, the door behind the screen moved inwards. An older woman, wearing an apron, hair tied up in a bun, stepped cautiously from behind it. She was rather attractive by heterosexual standards, dressed in the apron and long dress of a typical Brazilian hausfrau. I launched my prepared introduction, a hat in my hand against my chest in the Latin manner, then I stopped dead mid-sentence. Peeling back the layers of twenty years, imagining her gray hair dark, skin not wrinkled, a bit less growth of ears and nose, I recognized her as sister Kathe.

  I dropped the entire case of wine on my foot.

  Nicolaus: Gobsmacked

  Only one bottle broke,
and by the welcome alcoholic fragrance, obviously one of the bottles with real wine. It poured through the cardboard case and onto the ground just outside the door. Kathe tut-tutted her way through a quick clean up, handing me a rag for my shoe, and helped me deposit the case of remaining bottles ignominiously by the muddy shoes and jackets kept just inside the door. I struggled to regain my composure and place the meeting back on a footing that I could control as Kathe ushered me past an enormous grandfather clock. But I failed badly.

  A distinguished gentleman, hair going white over one temple, entered from a room beyond to take in the commotion, introduced himself as Procrustes Damastes. My heart sank. He looked nothing like I imagined Todtenhausen would look, but then, he had twenty years, the skills, and the equipment to fix that. He certainly wasn’t the Helmut Gorgass I saw eaten by the dog. Could there be another on this planet with that name? I had no interest in assassinating a man because he had the misfortune of sharing the name of another victim of wrongful assassination.

  I rushed through the amenities in my best Portuguese, still shaken, as we sat in overstuffed chairs by an unlit fireplace in the receiving room. I gestured to the case of wine positioned next to the grandfather clock, noted the time, 2:30pm, and made my presentation of it as gift for his estate to sample at its leisure, and then finally broached the artificial business of buying this year’s harvest from him.

  My spirits lifted again when he spoke to the housekeeper, in German with a slight Greek accent to open a bottle for us to sample while talking business. I made some silly comment to imply I did not understand what he had just said, and would he repeat it in English? As he did so, I checked the first mental box: Speaks German with a slight Greek accent.

  I rose to retrieve one of the real bottles, but the man motioned for me to sit back down, indicating in English that the reason one had housekeepers was to perform these functions. I am usually quite good at improvising, and in other circumstances might have invented an excuse to prevent Kathe from drawing another bottle. But these were not those circumstances, and I could not stop Kathe from drawing another bottle from the case at random without making an ugly scene. She was drawing from a case of only five good bottles and six explosive ones, a 45% chance that we would all walk away from her selection alive.