EDFRANK CUSTOM JEWELERS 8 page

Why do I cater to them? Due solely to their having won?

Big flaw in my character revealed through this encounter. But such is the way it goes. I have pathetic tendency to… well, shall we say, unerringly choose the easier of two evils. Like a cow catching sight of the trough; I gallop without premeditation.

What I’ve been doing is to go along with the exterior motions because it is safer; after all, these are the victors… they command. And I will go on doing it, I guess. Because why should I make myself unhappy? They read an American book and want me to explain it to them; they hope that I, a white man, can give them the answer. And I try? But in this case I can’t, although had I read it, I no doubt could.

“Perhaps one day I’ll have a look at that Miss Lonelyhearts book,” he said to Paul. “And then I can convey to you its significance.”

Paul nodded slightly.

“However, at present I am too busy with my work,” Robert said. “Later on, perhaps… I am sure it wouldn’t take me very long.”

“No,” Paul murmured. “Very short book.” Both he and Betty looked sad, Robert Childan thought. He wondered if they, too, sensed the unbridgeable gap between themselves and him. Hope so, he thought. They deserve to. A shame—just have to ferret out book’s message on their own.

He ate with more enjoyment.

No further friction marred the evening. When he left the Kasouras’ apartment at ten o’clock, Robert Childan still felt the sense of confidence which had overtaken him during the meal.

He meandered down the apartment house stairs with no genuine concern as to the occasional Japanese residents who, on their way to and from the communal baths, might notice him and stare. Out onto the dark evening sidewalk, then the hailing of a passing pedecab. And he was thereupon on his trip home.

I always wondered what it would be like to meet certain customers socially. Not so bad after all. And, he thought, this experience may well help me in my business.

It is therapeutic to meet these people who have intimidated you. And to discover what they are really like. Then the intimidation goes.

Thinking along those lines, he arrived at his own neighborhood and finally at his own door. He paid the chink pedecab driver and ascended the familiar stairs.

There, in his front room, sat a man he did not know. A white man wearing an overcoat, sitting on the couch reading the newspaper. As Robert Childan stood astonished in the doorway, the man put down his newspaper, leisurely rose, and reached into his breast pocket. He brought out a wallet and displayed it.

“Kempeitai.”

He was a pinoc . Employee of Sacramento and its State Police installed by the Japanese occupation authorities. Frightening!

“You’re R. Childan?”

“Yes, sir,” he said. His heart pounded.

“Recently,” the policeman said, consulting a clipboard of papers which he had taken from a briefcase on the couch, “you were paid a visit by a man, a white, describing himself as representing an officer of the Imperial Navy. Subsequent investigation showed that this was not so. No such officer existed. No such ship.” He eyed Childan.

“That’s correct,” Childan said.

“We have a report,” the policeman continued, “of a racket being conducted in the Bay Area. This fellow evidently was involved. Would you describe him?”

“Small, rather dark-skinned,” Childan began.

“Jewish?”

“Yes!” Childan said. “Now that I think about it. Although I overlooked it at the time.”

“Here’s a photo.” The Kempeitai man passed it to him.

“That’s him,” Childan said, experiencing recognition beyond any doubt. He was a little appalled by the Kempeitai’s power of detection. “How’d you find him? I didn’t report it, but I telephoned my jobber, Ray Calvin, and told him—”

The policeman waved him silent. “I have a paper for you to sign, and that’s all. You won’t have to appear in court; this is a legal formality that ends your involvement.” He handed Childan the paper, plus pen. “This states that you were approached by this man and that he tried to swindle you by misrepresenting himself and so forth. You read the paper.” The policeman rolled back his cuff and examined his watch as Robert Childan read the paper. “Is that substantially correct?”

It was—substantially. Robert Childan did not have time to give the paper thorough attention, and anyhow he was a little confused as to what had happened that day. But he knew that the man had misrepresented himself, and that some racket was involved; and, as the Kempeitai man had said, the fellow was a Jew. Robert Childan glanced at the name beneath the photo of the man. Frank Frink. Born Frank Fink. Yes, he certainly was a Jew. Anybody could tell, with a name like Fink. And he had changed it.

Childan signed the paper.

“Thanks,” the policeman said. He gathered up his things, tipped his hat, wished Childan good night, and departed. The whole business had taken only a moment.

I guess they got him, Childan thought. Whatever he was up to.

Great relief. They work fast, all right.

We live in a society of law and order, where Jews can’t pull their subtleties on the innocent. We’re protected.

I don’t know why I didn’t recognize the racial characteristics when I saw him. Evidently I’m easily deceived.

He decided, I’m simply not capable of deceit and that renders me helpless. Without law, I’d be at their mercy. He could have convinced me of anything. It’s a form of hypnosis. They can control an entire society.

Tomorrow I will have to go out and buy that Grasshopper book, he told himself. It’ll be interesting to see how the author depicts a world run by Jews and Communists, with the Reich in ruins, Japan no doubt a province of Russia; in fact, with Russia extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I wonder if he—whatever his name is—depicts a war between Russia and the U.S.A.? Interesting book, he thought. Odd nobody thought of writing it before.

He thought, it should help to bring home to us how lucky we are. In spite of the obvious disadvantages… we could be so much worse off. Great moral lesson pointed out by that book. Yes, there are Japs in power here, and we have to build. Out of this are coming great things, such as the colonization of the planets.

There should be a news broadcast on, he realized. Seating himself, he turned on the radio. Maybe the new Reichs Chancellor has been picked. He felt excitement and anticipation. To me, that Seyss-Inquart seems the most dynamic. The most likely to carry out bold programs.

I wish I was there, he thought. Possibly someday I’ll be well enough to travel to Europe and see all that has been done. Shame to miss out. Stuck here on the West Coast, where nothing is happening. History is passing us by.

At eight o’clock in the morning Freiherr Hugo Reiss, the Reichs Consul in San Francisco, stepped from his MercedesBenz 220-E and walked briskly up the steps of the consulate. Behind him came two young male employees of the Foreign Office. The door had been unlocked by Reiss’ staff, and he passed inside, raising his hand in greeting to the two switchboard girls, the vice-Consul Herr Frank, and then, in the inner office, Reiss’ secretary, Herr Pferdehuf.

“Freiherr,” Plerdehuf said, “there is a coded radiogram coming in just now from Berlin. Preface One.”

That meant removing his overcoat and giving it to Pferdehuf to hang up.

“Ten minutes ago Herr Kreuz vom Meere called. He would like you to return his call.”

“Thank you,” Reiss said. He seated himself at the small table by the window of his office, removed the cover from his breakfast, saw on the plate the roll, scrambled eggs and sausage, poured himself hot black coffee from the silver pot, then unrolled his morning newspaper.

The caller, Kreuz vom Meere, was the chief of the Sicherheitsdienst in the PSA area; his headquarters were located, under a cover name, at the air terminal. Relations between Reiss and Kreuz vom Meere were rather strained. Their jurisdiction overlapped in countless matters, a deliberate policy, no doubt, of the higher-ups in Berlin. Reiss held an honorary commission in the SS, the rank of major, and this made him technically Kreuz vom Meere’s subordinate. The commission had been bestowed several years ago, and at that time Reiss had discerned the purpose. But he could do nothing about it. Nonetheless, he chafed still.

The newspaper, flown in by Lufthansa and arriving at six in the morning, was the Frankfurter Zeitung . Reiss read the front page carefully. Von Schirach under house arrest, possibly dead by now. Too bad. Göring residing at a Luftwaffe training base, surrounded by experienced veterans of the war, all loyal to the Fat One. No one would slip up on him. No SD hatchetmen. And what about Doctor Goebbels?

Probably in the heart of Berlin. Depending as always on his own wit, his ability to talk his way out of anything. If Heydrich sends a squad to do him in, Reiss reflected, the Little Doctor will not only argue them out of it, he will probably persuade them to switch over. Make them employees of the Ministry for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment.

He could imagine Doctor Goebbels at this moment, in the apartment of some stunning movie actress, disdaining the Wehrmacht units bumping through the streets below. Nothing frightened that Kerl . Goebbels would smile his mocking smile… continue stroking the lovely lady’s bosom with his left hand, while writing his article for the day’s Angriff with—

Reiss’ thoughts were interrupted by his secretary’s knock. “I’m sorry. Kreuz vom Meere is on the line again.”

Rising, Reiss went to his desk and took the receiver. “Reiss here.”

The heavy Bavarian accents of the local SD chief. “Any word on the Abwehr character?”

Puzzled, Reiss tried to make out what Kreuz vom Meere was referring to. “Hmmm,” he murmured. “To my knowledge, there are three or four Abwehr ‘characters’ on the Pacific Coast at the moment.”

“The one traveling in by Lufthansa within the last week.”

“Oh,” Reiss said. Holding the receiver between his ear and shoulder, he took out his cigarette case. “He never came in here.”

“What’s he doing?”

“God, I don’t know. Ask Canaris.”

“I’d like you to call the Foreign Office and have them call the Chancery and have whoever’s on hand get hold of the Admiralty and demand that the Abwehr either take its people back out of here or give us an account of why they’re here.”

“Can’t you do that?”

“Everything’s in confusion.”

They’ve completely lost the Abwehr man, Reiss decided. They—the local SD—were told by someone on Heydrich’s staff to watch him, and they missed a connection. And now they want me to bail them out.

“If he comes in here,” Reiss said, “I’ll have somebody stay on him. You can rely on that.” Of course, there was little or no chance that the man would come in. And they both knew that.

“He undoubtedly uses a cover name,” Kreuz vom Meere plodded on. “We don’t know it, naturally. He’s an aristocratic-looking fellow. About forty. A captain. Actual name Rudolf Wegener. One of those old monarchist families from East Prussia. Probably supported von Papen in the Systemzeit.” Reiss made himself comfortable at his desk as Kreuz vom Meere droned away. “The only answer as I see it to these monarchist hangers-on is to cut the budget of the Navy so they can’t afford …”

Finally Reiss managed to get off the phone. When he returned to his breakfast he found the roll cold. The coffee however was still hot; he drank it and resumed reading the newspaper.

No end to it, he thought. Those SD people keep a shift on duty all night. Call you at three in the morning.

His secretary, Pferdehuf, stuck his head into the office, saw that he was off the phone, and said, “Sacramento called just now in great agitation. They claim there’s a Jew running around the streets of San Francisco.” Both he and Reiss laughed.

“All right,” Reiss said. “Tell them to calm down and send us the regular papers. Anything else?”

“You read the messages of condolence.”

“Are there more?”

“A few. I’ll keep them on my desk, if you want them. I’ve already sent out answers.”

“I have to address that meeting today,” Reiss said. “At one this afternoon. Those businessmen.”

“I won’t let you forget,” Pferdehuf said.

Reiss leaned back in his chair. “Care to make a bet?”

“Not on the Partei deliberatons. If that’s what you mean.”

“It’ll be The Hangman.”

Lingering, Pferdehuf said, “Heydrich has gone as far as he can. Those people never pass over to direct Partei control because everyone is scared of them. The Partei bigwigs would have a fit even at the idea. You’d get a coalition in twenty-five minutes, as soon as the first SS car took off from Prinzalbrechtstrasse. They’d have all those economic big shots like Krupp and Thyssen—” He broke off. One of the cryptographers had come up to him with an envelope.

Reiss held out his hand. His secretary brought the envelope to him.

It was the urgent coded radiogram, decoded and typed out.

When he finished reading it he saw that Pferdehuf was waiting to hear. Reiss crumpled up the message in the big ceramic ashtray on his desk, lit it with his lighter. “There’s a Japanese general supposed to be traveling here incognito. Tedeki. You better go down to the public library and get one of those official Japanese military magazines that would have his picture. Do it discreetly, of course. I don’t think we’d have anything on him here.” He started toward the locked filing cabinet, then changed his mind. “Get what information you can. The statistics. They should all be available at the library.” He added, “This General Tedeki was a chief of staff a few years ago. Do you recall anything about him?”

“Just a little,” Pferdehuf said. “Quite a fire-eater. He should be about eighty, now. Seems to me he advocated some sort of crash program to get Japan into space.”

“On that he failed,” Reiss said.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s coming here for medical purposes,” Pferdehuf said. “There’ve been a number of old Japanese military men here to use the big U. C. Hospital. That way they can make use of German surgical techniques they can’t get at home. Naturally they keep it quiet. Patriotic reasons, you know. So perhaps we should have somebody at the U.C. Hospital watching, if Berlin wants to keep their eye on him.”

Reiss nodded. Or the old general might be involved in commercial speculations, a good deal of which went on in San Francisco. Connections he had made while in service would be of use to him now that he was retired. Or was he retired? The message called him General , not Retired General .

“As soon as you have the picture.” Reiss said, “pass copies right on to our people at the airport and down at the harbor. He may have already come in. You know how long it takes them to get this sort of thing to us.” And of course if the general had already reached San Francisco, Berlin would be angry at the PSA consulate. The consulate should have been able to intercept him—before the order from Berlin had even been sent.

Pferdehuf said, “I’ll stamp-date the coded radiogram from Berlin, so if any question comes up later on, we can show exactly when we received it. Right to the hour.”

“Thank you,” Reiss said. The people in Berlin were past masters at transferring responsibility, and he was weary of being stuck. It had happened too many times. “Just to be on the safe side,” he said, “I think I’d better have you answer that message. Say, ‘Your instructions abysmally tardy. Person already reported in area. Possibility of successful intercept remote at this stage.’ Put something along those lines into shape and send it. Keep it good and vague. You understand.”

Pferdehuf nodded. “I’ll send it right off. And keep a record of the exact date and moment it was sent.” He shut the door after him.

You have to watch out, Reiss reflected, or all at once you find yourself consul to a bunch of niggers on an island off the coast of South Africa. And the next you know, you have a black mammy for a mistress, and ten or eleven little pickaninnies calling you daddy.

Reseating himself at his breakfast table he lit an Egyptian Simon Arzt Cigarette Number 70, carefully reclosing the metal tin.

It did not appear that he would be interrupted for a little while now, so from his briefcase he took the book he had been reading, opened to his placemark, made himself comfortable, and resumed where he had last been forced to stop.

…Had he actually walked streets of quiet cars, Sunday morning peace of the Tiergarten, so far away? Another life. Ice cream, a taste that could never have existed. Now they boiled nettles and were glad to get them. God, he cried out. Won’t they stop? The huge British tanks came on. Another building, it might have been an apartment house or a store, a school or office; he could not tell—the ruins toppled, slid into fragments. Below in the rubble another handful of survivors buried, without even the sound of death. Death had spread out everywhere equally, over the living, the hurt, the corpses layer after layer that already had begun to smell. The stinking, quivering corpse of Berlin, the eyeless turrets still upraised, disappearing without protest like this one, this nameless edifice that man had once put up with pride.

His arms, the boy noticed, were covered with the film of gray, the ash, partly inorganic, partly the burned sifting final produce of life. All mixed now, the boy knew, and wiped it from him. He did not think much further; he had another thought that captured his mind if there was thinking to be done over the screams and the hump hump of the shells. Hunger. For six days he had eaten nothing but the nettles, and now they were gone. The pasture of weeds had disappeared into a single vast crater of earth. Other dim, gaunt figures had appeared at the rim, like the boy, had stood silent and then drifted away. An old mother with a babushka tied about her gray head, basket—empty—under her arm. A one-armed man, his eyes empty as the basket. A girl. Faded now back into the litter of slashed trees in which the boy Eric hid.

And still the snake came on.

Would it ever end? the boy asked, addressing no one. And if it did, what then? Would they fill their bellies, these—

“Freiherr,” Pferdehuf’s voice came. “Sorry to interrupt you. Just one word.”

Reiss jumped, shut his book. “Certainly.”

How that man can write, he thought. Completely carried me away. Real. Fall of Berlin to the British, as vivid as if it had actually taken place. Brrr. He shivered.

Amazing, the power of fiction, even cheap popular fiction, to evoke. No wonder it’s banned within Reich territory; I’d ban it myself. Sorry I started it. But too late; must finish, now.

His secretary said, “Some seamen from a German ship. They’re required to report to you.”

“Yes,” Reiss said. He hopped to the door and out to the front office. There the three seamen wearing heavy gray sweaters, all with thick blond hair, strong faces, a trifle nervous. Reiss raised his right hand. “Heil Hitler.” He gave them a brief friendly smile.

“Heil Hitler,” they mumbled. They began showing him their papers.

As soon as he had certified their visit to the consulate, he hurried back into his private office.

Once more, alone, he reopened The Grasshopper Lies Heavy .

His eyes fell on a scene involving Hitler. Now he found himself unable to stop; he began to read the scene out of sequence, the back of his neck burning.

The trial, he realized, of Hitler. After the close of the war. Hitler in the hands of the Allies, good God. Also Goebbels, Göring, all the rest of them. At Munich. Evidently Hitler was answering the American prosecutor.

…black, flaming, the spirit of old seemed for an instant once again to blaze up. The quivering, shambling body jerked taut; the head lifted. Out of the lips that ceaselessly drooled, a croaking half-bark, half-whisper. “Deutsche, hier steh’ Ich.” Shudders among those who watched and listened, the earphones pressed tightly, strained faces of Russian, American, British and German alike. Yes, Karl thought. Here he stands once more… they have beaten us—and more. They have stripped this superman , shown him for what he is. Only a…

“Freiherr.”

Reiss realized that his secretary had entered the office. “I”m busy,” he said angrily. He slammed the book shut. “I’m trying to read this book, for God’s sake!”

It was hopeless. He knew it.

“Another coded radiogram is coming in from Berlin.” Pferdehuf said. “I caught a glimpse of it as they started decoding it. It deals with the political situation.”

“What did it say?” Reiss murmured, rubbing his forehead with his thumb and fingers.

“Doctor Goebbels has gone on the radio unexpectedly. A major speech.” The secretary was quite excited. “We’re supposed to take the text—they’re transmitting it out of code—and make sure it’s printed by the press, here.”

“Yes, yes,” Reiss said.

The moment his secretary had left once more. Reiss reopened the book. One more peek, despite my resolution. He thumbed the previous portion.

…in silence Karl contemplated the flag-draped casket. Here he lay, and now he was gone, really gone. Not even the demon-inspired powers could bring him back. The man—or was it after all Uebermensch ?—whom Karl had blindly followed, worshiped… even to the brink of the grave. Adolf Hitler had passed beyond, but Karl clung to life. I will not follow him, Karl’s mind whispered. I will go on, alive. And rebuild. And we will all rebuild. We must.

How far, how terribly far, the Leader’s magic had carried him. And what was it, now that the last dot had been put on that incredible record, that journey from the isolated rustic town in Austria, up from rotting poverty in Vienna, from the nightmare ordeal of the trenches, through political intrigue, the founding of the Party, to the Chancellorship, to what for an instant had seemed near world domination?

Karl knew. Bluff. Adolf Hitler had lied to them. He had led them with empty words.

It is not too late. We see your bluff, Adolf Hitler. And we know you for what you are, at last. And the Nazi Party, the dreadful era of murder and megalomaniacal fantasy, for what it is. What it was.

Turning, Karl walked away from the silent casket…

Reiss shut the book and sat for a time. In spite of himself he was upset. More pressure should have been put on the Japs, he said to himself, to suppress this damn book. In fact, it’s obviously deliberate on their part. They could have arrested this—whatever his name is. Abendsen. They have plenty of power in the Middle West.

What upset him was this. The death of Adolf Hitler, the defeat and destruction of Hitler, the Partei, and Germany itself, as depicted in Abendsen’s book… it all was somehow grander, more in the old spirit than the actual world. The world of German hegemony.

How could that be? Reiss asked himself. Is it just this man’s writing ability?

They know a million tricks, those novelists. Take Doctor Goebbels; that’s how he started out, writing fiction. Appeals to the base lusts that hide in everyone no matter how respectable on the surface. Yes, the novelist knows humanity, how worthless they are, ruled by their testicles, swayed by cowardice, selling out every cause because of their greed—all he’s got to do is thump on the drum, and there’s his response. And he laughing, of course, behind his hand at the effect he gets.

Look how he played on my sentiments, Herr Reiss reflected, not on my intellect; and naturally he’s going to get paid for it—the money’s there. Obviously somebody put the Hundsfott up to it, instructed him what to write. They’ll write anything if they know they’ll get paid. Tell any bunch of lies, and then the public actually takes the smelly brew seriously when its dished out. Where was this published? Herr Reiss inspected the copy of the book. Omaha, Nebraska. Last outpost of the former plutocratic U.S. publishing industry, once located in downtown New York and supported by Jewish and Communist gold.

Maybe this Abendsen is a Jew.

They’re still at it, trying to poison us. This jüdisches Buch –He slammed the covers of the Grasshopper violently together. Actual name probably Abendstein. No doubt the SD has looked into it by now.

Beyond doubt, we ought to send somebody across into the RMS to pay Herr Abendstein a visit. I wonder if Kreuz vom Meere has gotten instructions to that effect. Probably hasn’t, with all the confusion in Berlin. Everybody too busy with domestic matters.

But this book, Reiss thought, is dangerous.

If Abendstein should be found dangling from the ceiling some fine morning, it would be a sobering notice to anyone who might be influenced by this book. We would have had the last word. Written the postscript.

It would take a white man, of course. I wonder what Skorzeny is doing these days.

Reiss pondered, reread the dust jacket of the book. The kike keeps himself barricaded. Up in this High Castle. Nobody’s fool. Whoever gets in and gets him won’t get back out.

Maybe it’s foolish. The book after all is in print. Too late now. And that’s Japanese-dominated territory… the little yellow men would raise a terrific fuss.

Nevertheless, if it was done adroitly… if it could be properly handled.

Freiherr Hugo Reiss made a notation on his pad. Broach subject with SS General Otto Skorzeny, or better yet Otto Ohlendorf at Amt III of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt. Didn’t Ohlendorf head Einsatzgruppe D.?

And then, all at once, without warning of any kind, he felt sick with rage. I thought this was over, he said to himself. Does it have to go on forever? The war ended years ago. And we thought it was finished then. But that Africa Fiasco, that crazy Seyss-Inquart carrying out Rosenberg’s schemes.

That Herr Hope is right, he thought. With his joke about our contact on Mars. Mars populated by Jews. We would see them there, too. Even with their two heads apiece, standing one foot high.

I have my routine duties, he decided. I don’t have time for any of these harebrained adventures, this sending of Einsatzkommandos after Abendsen. My hands are full greeting German sailors and answering coded radiograms; let someone higher up initiate a project of that sort—it’s their business.

Anyhow, he decided, if I instigated it and it backfired, one can imagine where I’d be: in Protective Custody in Eastern General Gouvernement, if not in a chamber being squirted with Zyklon B hydrogen cyanide gas.

Reaching out, he carefully scratched the notation on his pad out of existence, then burned the paper itself in the ceramic ashtray.

There was a knock, and his office door opened. His secretary entered with a large handful of papers. “Doctor Goebbels’ speech. In its entirety.” Pferdehuf put the sheets down on the desk. “You must read it. Quite good; one of his best.”

Lighting another Simon Arzt Number 70 cigarette, Reiss began to read Doctor Goebbels’ speech.

After two weeks of nearly constant work, Edfrank Custom Jewelry had produced its first finished batch. There the pieces lay, on two boards covered with black velvet, all of which went into a square wicker basket of Japanese origin. And Ed McCarthy and Frank Frink had made business cards. They had used an artgun eraser carved out to form their name; they printed in red from this, and then completed the cards with a children’s toy rotary printing set. The effect—they had used a high-quality Christmas-card colored heavy paper—was striking.

In every aspect of their work they had been professional. Surveying their jewelry, cards, and display, they could see no indication of the amateur. Why should there be? Frank Frink thought. We’re both pros; not in jewelry making, but in shopwork in general.

The display boards held a good variety. Cuff bracelets made of brass, copper, bronze, and even hot-forged black iron. Pendants, mostly of brass, with a little silver ornamentation. Earrings of silver. Pins of silver or brass. The silver had cost them a good deal; even silver solder had set them back. They had bought a few semiprecious stones, too, for mounting in the pins: baroque pearls, spinneis, jade, slivers of fire opal. And, if things went well, they would try gold and possibly five– or six-point diamonds.

It was gold that would make them a real profit. They had already begun searching into sources of scrap gold, melted-down antique pieces of no artistic value—much cheaper to buy than new gold. But even so, an enormous expense was involved. And yet, one gold pin sold would bring more than forty brass pins. They could get almost any price on the retail market for a really well-designed and executed gold pin… assuming, as Frink had pointed out, that their stuff went over at all.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 547