The Apocalypse Watch

  “I knew you’d come, my dear wife,” said the unseen figure, his voice echoing off the unseen walls. “Close the door, please.”

  “Frederik!”

  “Not Freddie any longer, I see. You only called me Frederik when you were angry with me, Karin. Are you angry with me now?”

  “What have you done? Where are you?”

  “It’s best we talk in the dark, at least for a while.”

  “You knew I’d come here …?”

  “That door’s been open since you and your lover flew into Bonn.”

  “Then you understand they know who you are—”

  “That’s totally irrelevant,” interrupted De Vries/Jäger firmly. “Nothing can stop us now.”

  “You won’t get away.”

  “Of course I will. It’s already been arranged.”

  “How? They know who you are, they won’t let you!”

  “Because they’re out there in four acres of tangled shrubbery and ruins, their listening devices waiting for me to reach others here in Germany and in England, France, and America? So they can accuse others, arrest others, because I talked with them? I tell you, dear wife, the temptation to place calls to the Presidents of France and the United States, and the Queen of England, was nearly irresistible. Can you imagine the utter bewilderment in the intelligence communities?”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because the sublime would become the ridiculous—and we’re deadly serious.”

  “Why, Frederik, why? What happened to the man who, above all, loathed the Nazis?”

  “That’s not quite right,” said the new Führer curtly. “I loathed the Communists first, for they were stupid. They squandered their power everywhere, trying to live up to the Marxist doctrine of equality when no such equality exists. They gave authority to uneducated peasants and crude, ugly louts. There was nothing grand about them at all.”

  “You never spoke in those terms before.”

  “Of course I did! You just never listened carefully enough.… But that, too, is irrelevant, for I found my calling, the calling of a truly superior human being. I saw a void and I filled it, admittedly with the help of a surgeon of great stature and perception who realized that I was the man they needed.”

  “Hans Traupman,” said Karin in the darkness, immediately angry with herself for saying the name.

  “He’s no longer with us, thanks to your team of blunderers. Did you people really think you could hijack his boat and speed away with him? All four cameras blacked out in succession, the radio suddenly malfunctioning, the boat itself heading upriver? Honestly, such amateurism. Traupman gave his life for our cause, and he wouldn’t want it any other way, for our cause is everything.”

  Günter Jäger knew a great deal, but he did not know everything, considered Karin de Vries. He thought Traupman had died on his boat. “What cause, Frederik? The cause of the Nazis? The monsters who executed your grandparents and forced your father and mother to live as pariahs, until they finally took their own lives?”

  “I have learned many things since you abandoned me, wife.”

  “I abandoned you …?”

  “I traded my execution for diamonds, all the diamonds I had left in Amsterdam. But who was going to hire me after the Wall fell? What good is a deep-cover espionage agent when there’s nothing to penetrate? Where would my lifestyle go? The unlimited expense accounts, the limousines, the extravagant resorts? Remember the Black Sea and Sevastopol? My God, we had fun, and I stole two hundred thousand, American, for the operation!”

  “I was talking about the ‘cause,’ Frederik, what about the cause?”

  “I’ve come to believe in it with all my being. In the beginning, others wrote my speeches for the movement. Now I write them all, compose them all, for they are like short heroic operas, bringing those who see and listen to their feet, their voices ringing with my praises, honoring me, holding me in adoration as I hold them enthralled!”

  “How did it start … Freddie?”

  “Freddie—that’s better. Would you really like to know?”

  “Didn’t I always want to hear about your missions? Remember how we sometimes laughed?”

  “Yes, that part of you was all right, not like the bitch whore you were most of the time.”

  “What …?” Immediately Karin lowered her voice. “I’m sorry, Freddie, truly sorry. You went to East Berlin, that’s the last word we had of you, any of us. Until we read that you’d been executed.”

  “I wrote that report myself, you know. Rather sensational, wasn’t it?”

  “It certainly was graphic.”

  “Fine writing’s like great speaking, and great speaking’s like fine writing. You’ve got to create instant images to capture the minds of those reading or listening. Capture them immediately with fire and lightning!”

  “East Berlin …?”

  “Yes, that’s where it began. Certain of the Stasi had ties with Munich, especially with a provisional general of the Nazi movement. They recognized my abilities, and my God, why not? I’d made fools of them too often! After the official leaders I dealt with retrieved my diamonds in Amsterdam and set me free, several came to me and said they might have work for me. East Germany was collapsing, the entire Soviet Union soon to follow—everyone knew it. They flew me to Munich and I met with this general, von Schnabe. He was an imposing man, even perhaps a visionary, but he was basically a martinet, a harsh bureaucrat. He lacked the fire to be a leader. However, he had a concept, a concept he was progressively turning into reality. It could ultimately change the face of Germany.”

  “Change the face of Germany?” said Karin incredulously. “How could an obscure, unknown general of a despised radical movement be capable of such a thing?”

  “By infiltrating the Bundestag, and infiltration was something I knew a great deal about.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question … Freddie.”

  “Freddie—I like that. We had good times for a number of years, my wife.” Günter Jäger’s voice still seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere in the darkness of the room, the source further obscured by the pounding rain against the shaded windows and the roof. “To answer your question. To infiltrate the Bundestag, the right people simply have to be elected. The general, with the help of Hans Traupman, scoured the country for talented but discontented men, placed them in distressed economic districts, fed them ‘solutions,’ and funded their campaigns beyond anything their opponents could match. Would you believe we have over a hundred members in the Bundestag at this moment?”

  “You were one of those men … my husband?”

  “I was the most extraordinary, my wife! I was given a new name, a new biography, a completely new life. I became Günter Jäger, a parish clergyman from a small village in Kuhhorst, moved by the church authorities to Strasslach, outside Munich. I left the church, fighting for what I called the disenfranchised middle class, the burghers who were the backbone of the nation. I won my seat in a landslide, as they say, and while I was campaigning, Hans Traupman watched me, and made his decision. I was the man the movement needed. I tell you, whore-wife, it is fantastic! They’ve made me emperor, king, the ruler of all we espouse, the Führer of the Fourth Reich!”

  “And you accept it, Freddie?”

  “Why not? It’s the extension of everything I practiced in the past. The persuasiveness I exhibited while burrowing into the enemy camps, the speeches I gave solidifying my false commitments, all those dinner parties and symposiums—it was all training for my greatest achievements.”

  “But you once considered these people your enemies.”

  “No longer. They’re right. The world has changed and it’s changed for the worse. Even the Communists with their iron fists were better than what we have now. You take away the discipline of a strong state and what’s left is the rabble, screaming at one another, slaughtering one another, no better than animals in a jungle. Well, we’ll get rid of the animals and restructure the state, selecting
and rewarding only the purest to serve it. The dawn of a great new day is upon us, my wife, and as soon as it is understood, the truth of its force and the force of its truth will sweep across the world.”

  “The world will point to and remember the brutality of the Nazis, won’t it … Freddie?”

  “Perhaps for a while, but that will pass when the world sees the results of a cleansed state under strong, benign leadership. The democracies constantly extol the righteousness of the ballot box, but they could not be more in error! Ballots are fought for in the gutter, for that’s where the majority of votes are. And bless the Americans, they don’t even understand their own Constitution as it was conceived two hundred years ago. Originally, only the landowners, the men who had proved themselves successful and therefore superior, were to be permitted to vote. That was the consensus of the Constitutional Convention, did you know that?”

  “Yes, it was an agrarian society, but I’m surprised you know it. History was never one of your strong suits, my husband.”

  “All that’s changed. If you could see these shelves … they’re lined with books, new ones brought in every day. I read five or six a week.”

  “Let me see them, let me see you. I’ve missed you, Freddie.”

  “Soon, my wife, soon. There’s a certain comfort in the darkness for I ‘see’ you as I prefer to remember you. The lovely, vivacious woman who took such pride in her husband, who brought me secrets from NATO, a number of which I’m convinced saved my life.”

  “You were on NATO’s side, how could I do otherwise?”

  “Now I’m on a greater side. Would you help me now?”

  “It depends, my husband. I can’t deny that you’re extremely convincing. Having heard your own words, I’m very excited for you. You were always an extraordinary man, even those who disapproved of you said as much—”

  “Such as my friend, my former friend, Harry Latham, who is now your lover!”

  “You’re wrong, Freddie. Harry Latham is not my lover.”

  “Liar! He was always fawning on you, waiting for you to show up, asking me when you would.”

  “I will repeat my statement to you, and we lived together too long for you not to know when I’m telling the truth. It’s your profession, after all, and you’ve heard me tell a hundred lies on your behalf.… Harry Latham is not my lover. Shall I repeat it again?”

  “No.” The single word echoed off the unseen walls. “Then who is he?”

  “Someone who’s assumed Harry’s name.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you want your friend Harry killed, and Harry doesn’t care to be killed. How could you, Frederik? Harry loved you as a—a younger brother.”

  “It was not of my doing,” said the disembodied voice of Günter Jäger quietly. “Harry penetrated our headquarters in the Alps. He was part of an experiment. I had no choice but to agree.”

  “What kind of experiment?”

  “A medical thing. I never fully understood it. Traupman, however, was very enthusiastic, and I could not go against Hans. He was my mentor, the man who put me where I am today.”

  “And where are you, Freddie? Are you really the new Adolf Hitler?”

  “It’s odd that you mention him. I’ve read and reread Mein Kampf, and all the biographies I could get my hands on. Have you any idea how parallel our lives are, at least our lives before we joined the movement? He was an artist, and in my own way, I’m an artist too. He was unemployed, as I was about to be. He was rejected by the Austrian Artists League, as well as the Architectural Academy, for a supposed lack of talent—an ex-corporal with nowhere to go. In my case, the same. Who employs someone like me? And we were both penniless; in his case he had nothing, and I sold all my diamonds to save my life.… Then someone in the twenties saw a street-corner radical screaming passionately, convincingly, against the injustices of social conditions, and years later someone else watched the oratory of a superb, former agent provocateur who had fooled even them. Such men are valuable.”

  “Are you saying that both you and Adolf Hitler backed into your awesome positions?”

  “I’d put it another way, my wife. We didn’t find our causes, our causes found us.”

  “That’s obscene!”

  “Not at all. The convert’s convictions are always the strongest, for they must be arrived at.”

  “To bring all this about will result in an enormous loss of life—”

  “Initially, yes, but it will pass quickly, be forgotten quickly, and the world will be a far better place. There’ll be no massive war, no nuclear confrontations—our progress will be gradual but sure, for much of it is in place already. In a matter of months, governments will change, new laws will be created that benefit the strongest, the purest, and within a few years the useless garbage, the dregs of society who suck us dry, will be swept away.”

  “It’s not necessary to deliver a speech to me … Freddie.”

  “It’s all true! Can’t you see that?”

  “I can’t even see you, and you do excite me when you talk like this, like the extraordinary man I know you are. Please, turn on a light.”

  “I have a small problem with that.”

  “Why? Have you changed so much in five years?”

  “No, but I’m wearing glasses and you’re not.”

  “I wear them only when my eyes are tired, you know that.”

  “Yes, but mine are different. I can see in the dark, and I see the gun in your hand. It reminded me that you were left-handed. Do you remember when you decided you should play golf with me and I bought you a set of clubs, only they were the wrong kind?”

  “Yes, of course, I remember, they were for right-handed players.… I carry the gun because you taught me never to go to a meeting at night, even with you, without a weapon. You said neither of us could know if you’d been followed.”

  “I was right, I was protecting you. Did your friends outside know you had a gun?”

  “I didn’t see anyone. I came alone, without authority.”

  “Now you’re lying, at least in part, but it doesn’t matter. Drop the gun on the floor!” Karin did so, and De Vries/Jäger turned on a light, a reflector lamp that shone down on a small chapel altar, heightening the gold crucifix on a purple cloth. The new Führer sat on a prayer stool on the right, in a white silk shirt, opened at the collar, his bright blond hair glistening, his handsome, sharp-featured face at its most flattering angle. “How do I look after five years, wife?”

  “As beautiful as ever, but you know that.”

  “It’s an attribute I cannot deny, and one Herr Hitler never possessed. Did you know he was a rather small, pinch-faced man who wore elevator shoes? My looks are a great help to me, but I wear them in brilliant humility, and pretend to be icelike when women make a point of them. Physical vanity does not become a national leader.”

  “Others care. I believed they’re awed by it. I was … I still am.”

  “When did you people suspect that ‘Günter Jäger’ was the new neo-Nazi leader?”

  “When one of the Sonnenkinder broke under questioning. With the addition of drugs, I suspect.”

  “That couldn’t be, I never revealed myself to any of them!”

  “Obviously, you did, whether you realized it or not. You said you had meetings, gave speeches—”

  “Only to those of us in the Bundestag! All the rest were recorded.”

  “Then someone sold you out … Freddie. I heard something about a Catholic priest who went to confession and taxed the conscience of his confessor.”

  “My God, that senile idiot Paltz. Time and again I said he should be excluded, but no, Traupman claimed he had a large following among the working class. I’ll have him shot.”

  Karin briefly breathed easier. She had struck the chord she so needed to strike. The name of Paltz came to her from the identifications made from the tape, and the fact that Monsignor Paltz was an old man vociferously disliked by the Catholic hierarchy in Germany, another fact establi
shed by a call to the bishop of Bonn. The bishop had not minced words. “He’s a misguided bigot who should be retired. I’ve said as much to Rome.” Karin waited until her unwanted husband calmed down.

  “Freddie,” she began quietly, in control. “This Paltz, whoever he is, this priest, said that something dreadful will happen to the cities of London, Paris, and Washington. Disasters of such magnitude that hundreds of thousands will be killed. Is it true … Freddie?”

  The pitch-black silence from the Führer was electric, exaggerated by the pounding rain. Finally Günter Jäger spoke, his voice strained, harsh, sounding like the strings of a taut cello about to snap.

  “So that’s why you’re here, slut-wife. They sent you on the distinctly outside chance that I might reveal the nature of our shock wave.”

  “I came on my own. They don’t know I’m here.”

  “It’s possible, for you were never a good liar. However, the irony is sweet. I said before that nothing could stop us, and that happens to be the truth. You see, like all great leaders, I delegate responsibility, especially in areas where I lack expertise. I’m given the outlines of a plan or a strategy, in particular the final results, but not the technical aspects, nor even the names of the personnel refining them. I wouldn’t know whom to call should I want them myself.”

  “We know it concerns the three cities’ water, the reservoirs or waterworks, whatever they’re called.”

  “Really? I’m sure Monsignor Paltz was very technical in his disclosures. Ask him.”

  “It can’t work, Frederik! Call it off. Everyone involved will be caught. There are troops by the hundreds prepared to fire at anyone or anything that gets near the water. They’ll be captured and you’ll be exposed!”

  “Exposed?” asked Jäger calmly. “By whom? A senile old man who isn’t even sure what year it is, much less the month or the day? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Frederik, there is a tape of last night’s meeting. Everyone who was there has been arrested and kept in isolation! It’s over, Freddie! For God’s sake, call off Water Lightning!”