"You allow n.a.z.is in your country?"
Rucker sighed. "Yeah, that"s the problem with people being free to be themselves-they"re free to be themselves. Still, it"s not like they get much traction with folks."
"We said that in 1921."
Rucker shook his head. "That"s the rub. Either you trust people"s better nature and maybe you get hoodwinked once in a while, or you go down the path of a.s.suming everyone"s bad nature, which is what the goose-steppers want when you break it all down. And if we make laws to protect people"s freedom from what the goose-steppers want, then we just did their job for them."
"Your system can"t last, you know, Herr Rucker."
"Maybe not. But I"d rather crash a bird taking her up than nose her into the ground intentional. And you"d be surprised at how well she"s handled so far. I"m figuring not much beyond the propaganda gets heard about the Freehold in the Fatherland."
The band took a break and they could speak in quieter tones.
"Why didn"t you shoot the second two SD men?" Deitel asked. "In the alley? Before you dropped your pistol."
"I was wondering that myself. I reckon I was thinking if I could knock the second two out we might lose the other four. When this thing goes off, it pretty well announces to the world where you"re at."
Rucker pulled out his pistol and offered it to Deitel, handle first. Deitel held it at first like it was a snake that might strike him. It looked like a melding of the old cla.s.sic cowboy pistols and the newer, modern semiautomatics. Along the side Deitel read the inscription-COLT SELF-DEFENSE ENGINE MODEL 35. It was long, wooden-handled, and a combination of brushed steel and bra.s.s. Where a wheel would have been on an old revolver, there was a rectangular cartridge. The workings were beyond him, but there was visceral beauty he couldn"t deny even if, as a doctor, all guns offended him.
Carefully, he handed it back to Rucker, who twirled it on his finger and slid it effortlessly into its holster.
Deitel took another sip of his whiskey and then swept his arm over the group of fliers at the bar.
"Your comrades seem very welcoming. Except the one called Lucky Lindy. Who, I must add, seems very familiar."
"Lindy? Yeah, he was in all the papers back in 1924. First solo flight across the Atlantic-New Orleans to Paris in the Spirit of San Antonio," Rucker said. "A year later he got duped by Goebbels"s propaganda machine and was quoted saying some nice things about old Adolf. After that, when newspaperman Henry Mencken broke the story in the Times Herald about the concentration camps and the starvation in former Poland, Lindy"s stock dropped considerable, even though he was as appalled as anyone by what the n.a.z.is are up to."
Deitel recalled all the press the young aviator had received, even in Germany. And he remembered the man"s intemperate remarks praising the New Order in its early years.
"You and Herr Lindy both appear very young to have served in the war."
"We were. Both of us were barely seventeen, and we lied about our age," Rucker said. "They needed pilots bad."
" "They" as in your country, or "they" as in the Texas mercenary company?"
"Now now, Doc. You know the Freehold sat the war out. This was strictly a private affair for those of us young, dumb, and unbridled enough to want to join in that organized slaughterhouse."
"Ach. Texas and the Swiss. I"m sorry, I do not understand this rigid adherence to neutrality you so treasure."
"Wars ain"t pretty. Most aren"t worth the fuss. Oh, maybe a few were, I don"t know. But even when they"re right, they don"t do much good for anyone. If someone tries to kill you, you have to try to kill "em right back, as my grandpappy Mal used to say. But there"s no profit in it and you lose something even when you win . . ."
Deitel didn"t want to interrupt Rucker"s pause; he could tell the flier was trying to find the right words to something difficult.
". . . Maybe we"re just still gun-shy from the reckoning we had a while back with all the blood spilled after the San Marcos Ma.s.sacre in 1846."
Seeing Deitel"s blank expression, Rucker added, "That"s when b.l.o.o.d.y Santa Ana tried for the third time to take Texas. What his men did at San Marcos was an obscenity. Texans went a little blood crazy. Marched the whole Texas army down to Mexico City"-blank look-"you know it as Jefferson Ciudad now-and, well, it got awful.
"Mexico City was burned to the ground. A lot of people who never wanted anything more than to feed their families and go about their business died, just like had happened in San Marcos. Many Mexicans fled south. Many more chose to swear allegiance to the Republic of Texas. Too many died on both sides."
He took another sip.
"The Union States and the Northwest Alliance had the sins of their Indian Wars. Texas has the sin of the Mexican War," Rucker went on. "That kind of revenge-taking does something to your soul, whether you"re a man or country and whether you"re right or not."
Deitel wasn"t entirely sure Rucker was speaking only of events from the nineteenth century.
"After the smoke cleared and people started thinking clear again, they realized they"d rung a bell that couldn"t be unrung. Best they could do was resolve not to do it again," Rucker said. "I always figured that"s why they named the new city after Jefferson. That man always was the biggest champion of second chances North America ever saw. Said that"s what this continent was for."
Despite his extensive and exclusive education, all of this was new to Deitel. The history of North America, its union, its divisions, its many nations today-all of that was barely touched on even in the days of Kaiser Wilhelm"s Germany.
"I"m sorry," he said, "but that was almost ninety years ago. Why is this neutrality instinct still so strong today?"
"I don"t know that I know," Rucker said. "This country was founded by folks who just wanted to be left alone. If you want to be left alone, you gotta be willing to leave alone. Plus, it"s easier doing business with folks in other lands when your government hasn"t been mucking around with the locals. It"s easier to make money than it is to make war."
Deitel shook his head, trying to hide his disgust at these people"s continued, cra.s.s focus on the material.
"Yet you and many of your countrymen-even if it was as a private militia-fought in the Great War."
Rucker nodded slowly.
"Just because we don"t go colonizing and conquering don"t mean we"re pacifists. h.e.l.l, like as not any man or woman you see on the street from here to Cabo is carrying an equalizer," he said. "Nothing sinful about using a gun in defense. It"s only when you pull it first."
"So your free society requires that you walk around ready to kill all the time. It"s barbaric," Deitel said.
Rucker ignored that.
The German and the Texan ordered another round.
"You are right when you say that we Germans do not really understand your culture," Deiter said. "Your government-it is forbidden to meddle in religion and commerce. Your nation"s army, air corps, and navy are a tenth the size of most western countries. Your government enters no protection treaties, even with your beloved French. You have no national manifest and no colonial expansion beyond your endless business ventures, which seem to pop up all over the world and aren"t directed by anyone but their greedy capitalist owners."
"And?" Rucker asked.
"To us-and forgive me if this sounds rude-this lack of direction is anarchy and self-indulgence. I don"t advocate anything like what the National Socialists represent, but a modern nation needs a proper modern state. From our perspective, a modern state cannot be administered efficiently without progressive central planning."
Rucker rocked his head. "Who wants to be administered?" he finally said. "If a man can"t be trusted to run his own life, how is he supposed to run other folks"?"
Again Deitel was at loss. Part was his aversion to confrontation, part because he was sure that Rucker was baiting him.
The bartender told Rucker he had a phone call.
He was back in less than a minute.
"That was Lysander. You"ve been kicked upstairs. They want you in front of the Prometheus Society toot de suite," Rucker said, pouring the last of his bourbon on the sawdust-covered floor.
Deitel thought they had to be-how did the English say it?-"having him on." This couldn"t be the executive board of regents for the Prometheus Society, which was the Freehold"s virtual intelligence service.
He and Rucker had borrowed Chennault"s coupe and driven toward the wooden-domed Capitol building, and Deitel was sure now he"d be taken to the real ministers in charge.
At last.
Only they"d driven right past the Capitol and to a diner about a mile away, which was just closing. Inside, he found six people sitting on the stools, along with Lysander Benjamin.
The six couldn"t have varied more in age or background: Libby Rae Melvin, a thirty-year-old waitress; Don Ricardo de la Vega, a sixty-year-old Spanish cattle rancher; Ludwig von Mises, a middle-age Jewish professor of economics with a German accent; Howard Hughes, an oil magnate and aeronaut turned movie mogul in his early twenties; Fan Chi Sau, a Chinese shopkeeper who taught some sort of physical arts, and Manitou, an architect who hailed from the Apache tribe.
When Deitel pulled Lysander aside to express his disbelief that these people were the regents of the most influential study society in the Freehold, Lysander simply asked if the German thought judgment and wisdom were limited to certain vocations but not others.
These six, he explained, were chosen by other Prometheus members to make important decisions for the society precisely because they represented such a cross section of members, and because they demonstrated the highest commitment to their own ideals and the society"s values. The Prometheus Society had been founded to safeguard the very principles established in the Freehold"s const.i.tution, because implicit in those principles was the belief that the government itself couldn"t be trusted to govern itself, and it needed those on the outside to do so. Further-and hence the name of the society-those who governed needed the wisdom and light of those who refused to govern. It boiled down to a truism: those who most want to govern are those who shouldn"t, and those who have no interest in governing their fellow men are the best ones for the job.
As to the venue? The six rarely had to a.s.semble at all, and when they did they never met at the same place twice.
Lysander made his presentation.
"In the less than ten years since their defeat in the Great War, Germany is on the rise again," he began. He clicked on a slide machine and an overhead projector, showing grainy black-and-white photos of German military parades, training exercises, and rallies.
"In addition to rearming Germany"s military machine in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, the n.a.z.is have been pursuing all manner of unconventional weapons programs, including research into transgenics, rocket technology, and atomic fission." As he spoke, the slides reflected various hastily taken photos of rocket experiments.
"Further, Hitler"s number two man, Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and Black Sun, is obsessed with the occult, and he has sent agents around the world searching for historical objects of power. They have undertaken exploration into the paranormal sciences, including psychic manipulation, telepathy, and telekinesis."
Slides showed spy photos of various n.a.z.i archeological digs and expeditions in jungles, deserts, mountains, and ancient ruins from around the world.
"For years now," Lysander went on, "their scientists have been on a quest to use genetic manipulation, modification, and mutation to create the perfect Aryan supersoldier-a warrior stronger, faster, and tougher than any man. Only, their experiments have resulted in mutations and monsters."
Slides showed the hulking nachtmenn-night men in German-in their uniforms. It drew a gasp from at least one member of the Prometheus committee. Hulking, top-heavy bipedal beasts with squat legs and apelike arms, but the most disturbing aspect of the creature was its face. Tusks jutted from slavering jaws over small black, emotionless eyes. The lipless mouth seemed to open too wide. Next, he showed the demon-eyed wolf creatures known as wehr-wolves.
"Yes, nasty things," Lysander said. "And now, thanks to Dr. Kurt von Deitel and Commodore Canaris, we are aware of a new program that represents a threat far beyond any of these previous schemes. Its code name is Project Gefallener-literally, "Project Fallen." "
Lysander gave the committee his estimation of the accuracy of the Canaris report and his own a.s.sessment of the threat potential, based on the doc.u.ments Canaris had provided on the SS research. He described separate, corroborating reports about the Ahnenerbe"s expeditions to Rome and Sardinia, and how the reports filled in some of the gaps in Canaris files.
Then he showed the grainy, silent footage of the lab experiments Deitel had brought, taken somewhere in the darkest recesses of the German Reich,. The film had been smuggled out at the cost of more lives than even Deitel knew.
Deitel and Lysander had seen it. It was the first viewing for Rucker and the committee.
On the screen, a technician in a lab coat stood beside a hulking, slouching creature that was once a man but had now been changed. Its shoulders were hunched and enlarged. Its jaw jutted too far. Its eyes and expression were dead. The technician held up a sign with some numbers in a sequence-identifying the experiment-and stepped back. There was no sound. Two black-uniformed storm troopers stepped into the frame with machine pistols at the ready. The chains on the creature were released. The guards opened fire, emptying-by Rucker"s estimation-a good thirty rounds each into the thing at point-blank range. The creature barely reacted to the bullets.
Then the creature lunged for the troopers, going out of frame. Moments later the scientist came back into frame facing the camera, his face a mask of terror and his screams silent. The creature appeared behind him and struck. For just a moment its face was visible-the eyes looked dead, the lower half of its face was covered in black gore, and what could only be flesh hung from its mouth.
The diner was silent.
Other reels showed the same kinds of creatures shrugging off grenade explosions and ignoring limbs being torn off. It showed the things being pushed from great heights, only to rise and hobble away on shattered legs.
The worst, though, came when it was clear one of the creatures had been placed in a chamber with a family of four emaciated souls dressed in ragged clothing with six-sided stars st.i.tched crudely on them.
Two committee members had to go to the lavatory to vomit.
"It"s easy for us to think of Herr Hitler as a master magician, an evil wizard spellbinding an unwitting German people to become his mindless servants," Lysander Benjamin said, wrapping up his presentation. "How convenient it would be if this image were correct. National Socialism could be defeated with garlic. The truth, however, is that millions of ordinary German workers, farmers, and businessmen support the National Socialist program, and are in knowing denial of the darker side of its agenda."
The room was silent.
"Men like Dr. Kurt von Deitel are a rarity. You see, the fact is, Hitler"s loyal followers consider themselves good citizens, which is far more terrifying to me than if they were all mind-controlled demons or sociopaths," Lysander said. "And thus I continue to argue that the whole leadership poses a direct threat to the Freehold and should be dealt with."
The committee had heard this before and many scoffed at the argument. It was off topic, but important to frame the existing debate. No regent objected to giving Lysander the lat.i.tude.
"The committee can debate that later," he said. "I simply present evidence to you that Herr Hitler and the Black Sun are upping the ante. They are talking about creating real demons with an eye toward devouring the whole world-either intentionally or because they can"t control it. We"re the one thing that stands in their way, ladies and gentlemen."
His last sentence wasn"t a plea. It was a statement about the survival of the human race.
"Project Gefallener must be stopped. We must stop it."
The deliberations were short but heated. The Freehold"s commitment to neutrality was constantly tested by threats that advocates of security said required preemptive action. But such action would undermine the very fiber of the Freehold, others argued.
"Even acting independent of Austin, our every action contrary to neutrality taints the very core of our souls," Fan said. "Everytime we make an exception, it becomes easier to make an exception."
"We aren"t the government," Don Ricardo said. "Our bylaws, in fact, forbid members of the committee from ever holding office, and prevent those who have held office from becoming committee members. We do what we do precisely because we don"t want a government doing these things."
"Yes," Manitou said, "but every time we act, I wonder if we don"t wear away at that wall of separation. It"s so easy to look into the abyss and become the monster we behold. To become what we hold in contempt. I will vote for action, but I do so with the gravest of reservations. It"s one thing when we act against external, individual threats. Acting against a sovereign nation is a dangerous precedent to set."
"Any step toward the path of war is a step in the wrong direction," said von Mises, a Great War veteran who had served in the Austrian army before defecting. "But we can"t be so cautious that we invite the very aggression we want to deter."
The committee voted for action, with two votes in dissent.
Libby Rae Melvin, who headed the committee-mein Gott, the fate of the world in the hands of a woman who served coffee and sausages? Deitel thought-said the committee was backing Lysander Benjamin"s move.
"But what is your plan?" she asked, demanding detail.
Lysander slid on his gla.s.ses and pulled out several of the napkins in his pockets to go over his notes.
"Ah, yes. We"ve engaged the university"s Difference Engine to run the probabilities on the genetic architecture that Himmler"s scientists have been working from. The contamination in the d.a.m.ned Lands, you know. We, er, already have some knowledge, including the sample of nachtmann tissue that our agent Alissa Rosenbaum brought back from Russia," Lysander explained. "The catalyst, though-the unknown driver here-was what the Ahnenerbe team found in Rome and Sardinia and wherever else they"ve been of late. We, er, believe it"s connected to the Lance of Longinus. This has been confirmed by our man inside the Black Sun, Robin."
"The Lance of what?" Fan asked.
"Also called the Spear of Destiny, the Holy Lance, or the Spear of Christ," Lysander said. "It was, um, the spear used by a certain Roman soldier to pierce the heart of a rabbi who was crucified by Pontius Pilate. The legend holds that it was sanctified in the blood of the living Christ, and that whoever wields it will be invincible. Naturally, the legend doesn"t say how. Oh no, that would be too useful."
He pulled more notes from his pockets. Deitel noticed they were all written in some kind of cipher-meaningless scratches and scribbles to anyone but Lysander.
"It has been referred to in old literature and even appeared at various points in history, but it was last rumored to have been taken under guard by a Jesuit sect following secret papal orders in 1634," he said. "But there are other scholars who have more current research we"re looking into. There are conflicting records and, as is usual with these things, a frustrating number of forgeries involved."
Lysander paused.
"We don"t know how exactly this piece of the puzzle fits in, but there"s a ninety percent certainty among our a.n.a.lysts, and likewise according to the Difference Engine, that it is the key. Somehow, the Spear of Destiny is involved in the genesis of these creatures. That"s what all the intercepted communiques and the matrix of data indicate. So we must start with that. The n.a.z.is don"t have it yet, even if they had a sample of it or whatever the spear does," he said. "We have to find the Spear of Destiny and make sure the n.a.z.is don"t get it. Meanwhile, I have Nikola already working on some ideas . . ."
Over the next half hour, the committee members listened as Lysander outlined his plan. A team would seek out the foremost expert on the history of the Spear of Destiny, and try to beat the n.a.z.is to it.
When the old man was done, most of the committee filed out of the diner, one by one.
Only Rucker, Deitel, and Lysander remained, along with the waitress who had to lock up. Lysander pulled Deitel aside.
"Son, I have some bad news. What you"ve suspected since yesterday on Airstrip One is true-the Gestapo knows about you. But worse, they, er, know who you are. The only saving grace is they don"t know anything about Commodore Canaris"s involvement, otherwise the old spymaster would have disappeared by now. But you know what this means: you can"t go home again. Ever. I"m sorry," Lysander said.
Deitel had known. He just hadn"t accepted it.