CHURCHILL’S GOLD
Jaron Summers & Markus Innocenti
Copyright © 2024 Jaron Summers & Markus Innocenti
This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.
1
CHARLIE TAGGART WAS A GOOD NAZI.
Or so everyone thought. Charlie himself knew that wasn’t true.
At sixteen years old, he knew he was not a Nazi like the others, and he would never be a Nazi. But he couldn’t risk not appearing to be one.
That would be dangerous. No, on the surface he was just as good and as loyal a Nazi as anyone else in Amerika. Today was one of those days when it was important to be counted amongst the Nazis. April 20th, 2016 was, like all the other April 20ths, a special day. A day of parades and celebrations to mark the anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s birth.
If the dictator had lived, he would have been one hundred and twenty-six years old on this bright Spring morning. But his memory and his work lived on, an inspiration to people all over the Greater Third Reich. And no more so than in New York City, where thousands thronged the streets to watch the parades.
Of course, just like Charlie, there were many spectators who only pretended enthusiasm at the spectacle of the massed tanks, rocket launchers and huge missile trucks that passed endlessly before them. But they kept their thoughts to themselves.
They might wave heartily at the ranks of goose-stepping soldiers and give the stiff-armed Nazi salute to the Generals and Party Leaders who passed in gleaming limousines. They even smiled and cheered for the children of the Amerika Youth who skipped by, garlanded in flowers and each one bearing the familiar red and white armband with its black swastika that was the emblem of the Party.
But in their hearts, they resented and hated their oppressors. So, Charlie Taggart was not alone in faking his approval and enthusiasm. It was far too dangerous not to. In a crowd like this one, there were sure to be those who would report any ‘anti-social’ behavior to the feared secret police — the Gestapo. Another cheer went up, as above their heads the crowd saw the twin Führers appear on the gigantic video screens suspended high above the intersection of W. 54th and 6th Avenue.
Since their father’s death in 1984 at the grand old age of 95, Hitler’s sons, Erich and Johann, had ruled the Third Reich. It was a vast territory stretching from the west coast of what used to be the United States, across the Atlantic to Europe, and Churchill’s Gold 7 eastwards to the border with the Japanese territories of the former Soviet Union. Charlie sighed with disgust as he watched the twin Führers wave and smile on the video screens. Beside him, his friend Andy chuckled.
“What’s funny?” Charlie asked.
“Oh, nothing. It’s just the expression on your face whenever you see the Terrible Twins.”
Charlie glanced around uneasily. “Sshh, don’t let anyone hear you…”
“Relax, Charlie,” Andy said. “Who could hear anything above this noise anyway?”
The snarl and roar of passing military vehicles was replaced by martial music as an S.S. Marching Band came swaggering down 6th Avenue, trumpets blaring, drums thumping like a gigantic heartbeat, and cymbals crashing.
Behind them marched the black-uniformed ranks of the S.S.1st Division Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler, the most famous regiment in history.
As every American schoolchild knew, these were the same battalions that had overrun Moscow in 1943, removed the Communists from power, and installed surviving members of the Romanov family to the Russian Czardom.
The same regiment that, in the winter of 1940, had been the spearhead that landed on the English shores, quickly overcoming all resistance, and placing Nazi sympathizers King Edward and his consort, Queen Wallis, back onto the English throne.
A hush swept over the crowd for a moment. All that could be heard was the colossal stamp of leather jackboots in perfect synchronization.
Then, so low it was almost as if they were flying between the Manhattan skyscrapers, came a formation of Heinkel supersonic fighter jets — red, white, and black smoke streaming from the edges of their wings in a fantail of patriotic color.
The noise was immense. The crowd gasped and then cheered, thousands of citizens raising their arms in the Party salute and shouting ‘Heil Hitler!’
At that moment, Charlie noticed a man and a woman pushing through the crowd.
The man was burly, clean shaven and wearing a grey suit a size too small for him. The woman was blonde, her hair tied back severely. She too wore a suit, under a knee-length leather coat.
Both she and the man pushed people aside roughly, without apology, their eyes fixed towards the rear of the crowd. Charlie knew at once that they were Gestapo. He turned to look at what had interested them and saw that an elderly woman had clambered up on the statue in the middle of Pettibone Plaza — the statue of Henry Pettibone himself, the financial genius who had rescued the economies of the failing Western democracies for the Nazi conquerors back in the 1950s.
Charlie tapped Andy’s arm and got his attention. “Look,” he said.
“Leave it alone, Charlie,” Andy said after a quick glance. “Maybe all she wants is a better view?”
“You’re not allowed to climb statues,” Andy said.
“Look away. Don’t forget the cameras. They’re watching everything.”
But Charlie was already following the Gestapo agents through the crowd, and Andy felt obliged to follow. The old woman had managed to climb up onto the pedestal and was hanging on to the statue’s outstretched arm.
Charlie could now see that she was most likely a vagrant of some sort.
Her clothes were filthy and torn, her hair a matted rat’s nest. He’d heard of ‘street people’, but he’d never seen one.
It was against the law not to dress properly or to be without a home. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the old woman began to shout in a thin, tremulous voice that steadily strengthened.
“USA!” she shouted. “USA! USA! Down with the dirty Nazis! USA!” People in the crowd turned in her direction, and the old woman was now screaming, “USA! USA!”
The Gestapo agents broke into a run, pushing people aside. The female agent got there first, grabbing the old lady’s ankles and yanking her down.
Those people nearby quickly moved away, and Charlie saw the Gestapo man kick the old woman, then pull her up by the hair.
The old woman screamed, and the agent punched her in the mouth. A black Mercedes police van appeared, driving across Pettibone Plaza, blue lights flashing.
The two Gestapo agents dragged the barely conscious old woman away. Her heels dragged and both her shoes came off. An officer jumped out of the van and held open the rear doors.
The Gestapo agents tossed the old lady inside. The doors slammed shut, and the van moved off. It had all taken less than two minutes.
“Where do you think she’ll end up?” Andy asked in an undertone.
“Nowhere good,” Charlie replied. “The way I heard it, they’ve got camps in Kanada for ‘anti-social elements’.
A black and red Messerschmitt surveillance helicopter weaved into sight, coming through the skyscraper canyons. It hovered over Pettibone Plaza for a moment, the pilot watching the crowd.
“We should go,” Charlie said. “Before we get our picture taken.”
“Too late for that,” Andy said with a grin. The pair threaded their way out of the Plaza, leaving the crowds behind.
Charlie walked deep in thought. Andy kept glancing at him, and finally said, “Did what happen back there upset you that much?”
“We should do something,” Charlie said.
“Do what? Climb a statue? Yell slogans for a country that doesn’t exist anymore? Get arrested and sent to a camp for re-education?”
“No, I mean really do something,” said Charlie. “Do you remember The ‘Sons of Liberty’?”
“The ‘Sons of Liberty’ was a joke, Charlie. Something we used to play at when we were kids. It wasn’t serious.”
“But it could be.” Andy sighed. “
“We shouldn’t just talk; we should act. I want to get everyone together. Tonight. I’m not joking, Andy. Can you do it? Can you get everyone to come for nine o’clock?”
“No cells, no texts, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay, Charlie,” Andy said. “Just don’t get us all arrested or killed. Promise?”
“Promise,” said Charlie, and smiled.
2
CHARLIE JUMPED OFF THE BUS at the corner of 5th Avenue and Washington Square. He lived in one of eight apartments squeezed into an old brownstone building that overlooked the park.
At one time, the entire house had been the family home, acquired by Charlie’s wealthy great-grandfather, Basil Taggart, at the end of the World War. Charlie had learned that the house had originally been owned by a Jewish family, but they had disappeared after the German invasion of the USA in 1944.
Charlie had never met a Jewish person and was curious to do so. There were none in New York City, although he’d heard it whispered that the city used to be home to many Jewish families and businesses.
Charlie often wondered what had happened to them.
He ran up the steps and went inside. As usual, there was the over-powering smell of cooked cabbage, which meant that Frau Schneider on the top floor was making sauerkraut again.
Charlie hurried down the corridor to the back of the house and into the apartment he shared with his grandfather — Grandpa Alex. “I’m back,” he called, and hung up his jacket. “Are you hungry?”
The old man was in his recliner, his feet up.
He was watching the news on a flat screen that hung, a little crooked, on the wall. “Did you go to the parade?” he asked.
“Sure did.”
Grandpa Alex watched the parade on the television. “You’d think after all this time they’d find something better to do than march around in their silly uniforms. They’ve been goose-stepping my entire life… and I’m ninety, by God! Ninety years of stamping around in their damn jackboots, mooning over Adolf and the rest of them.”
“Steady, Grandpa,” Charlie said, “How about I make you a sandwich?”
“I’m not upset. I’m just calling it for what it is. A bunch of jumped-up jackasses strutting around as if they rule the world — “
“They do rule the world, Grandpa.”
It’s not ruling when the only reason people obey you is because you’ve got a gun in one hand and a whip in the other,” Grandpa Alex said. ” One day, somewhere, somehow, there’ll be a bunch of people — young people like you — who’ll rise up and smash the lot of them. And not a day too soon.”
“Grandpa… you never know who might be listening.”
“If you mean that Schneider woman, I don’t care. They can carry me off if they want to. Won’t make a bit of difference. I’m not afraid of their Gestapo. You know why? Because they’re afraid of the likes of me. People who speak truth. There. I’ve said it.”
“Ham sandwich?” “No. Turkey and Swiss. And a pickle.”
“Coming right up, Grandpa.” After their lunch, Grandpa Alex always took a nap and that would give Charlie a couple of hours that were his own.
As soon as the old man was asleep, Charlie went into the kitchen, pulled back the rug by the wall cabinets, and lifted the trapdoor to the building’s original basement.
He went down the creaking steps and pulled the string to switch on the overhead lamp.
This was his private and secret space. He had a desk, and he’d built some bookcases using old planks and bricks. The shelves were packed with books, all of them published before the Nazi invasion — some of them dating back into the 19th century.
Most had come into Charlie’s hands in unexpected ways; a discovery in some boxes when he was helping a neighbor to clear out an attic, a quick exchange with a like-minded student who was too frightened to own a forbidden book, a chance spotting in a used bookstore that hadn’t been fully Nazified, the furtive handing over of a precious volume from an owner who wanted the younger generation to learn the truth.
If the Gestapo discovered Charlie’s library, both he and Grandpa Alex would go to prison. Or worse, in Charlie’s case, be drafted into a Penal Battalion and sent to fight in one of the combat zones in Africa.
Charlie, like everyone his age, had endured Nazi schooling and everything he had been taught reinforced Nazi ideology.
Democracy was a failed system, as was Communism. Both in their own ways were evil. Government was only possible if a single Fascist party was given control. Only the authoritarianism of Fascism would lead to world peace and human happiness.
Fascism, of course, included ideas of racial purity. Charlie’s teachers taught that only those of a particular racial heritage were fit to govern or, indeed, fit to live.
The American Revolution itself had been a failed dream which had led to liberal thinking and had given democracy to people too stupid and inferior to understand freedom.
That is why the American people had welcomed the Nazis not as invaders, but as liberators. Under the guidance of their new overlords, Amerika prospered once again. The American People — provided they did not belong to the ‘Untermensch’ products of Churchill’s Gold 17 racial impurities — could enjoy living in a country where crime was eliminated, law and order were paramount, justice extracted proper revenge on the guilty, and those who could not, or would not, work were removed from society. Including the unproductive elderly and the disabled.
That was the glory of Fascism. So much for ideology. Charlie listened, he understood, he passed all their tests — but he hated it. It was through his secret books — publications that had been banned, many of them burned in public displays — that he got an insight into different ways of thinking.
He had devoured every book and had been astounded and fascinated by the real story of the United States of America. He marveled at the audacity of those who had committed their lives to revolution, determined to free their country from Mad King George of England, a malevolent and oppressive ruler who had never even visited his American colonies. In his reading of the lives of Washington, Franklin and Jefferson, Charlie understood the spirit of real freedom.
Those early revolutionaries and Founding Fathers became his heroes and role models. But the most important book that Charlie owned wasn’t a history or a book of political philosophy. It was a book published in 1949, long after hostilities had ceased. It had been written by an Englishman named Eric Blair on a remote Scottish island and then smuggled to France, where it had been published in several translations.
The Nazis had suppressed the book and destroyed the clandestine press where it had been printed. All those involved were arrested. In 1950, there had been a ‘show’ trial.
Blair and his co-conspirators were found guilty and sentenced to death for high crimes against the Nazi state. The precious copy of this banned book that Charlie owned was tattered, and some pages were missing.
He’d found it in a dumpster. It was called ‘1984’ and one sentence in it was seared into Charlie’s memory. ‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.’
It was this sentence which had leaped into Charlie’s mind at the parade when he saw the Gestapo thug kick an old woman and punch her in the face. That was the future. That was the destiny of all those of his generation.
Charlie couldn’t bear the thought that it would be forever. It had to change. But books were not the only forbidden items in Charlie’s secret basement. Being a science nut — it was the subject he excelled in at school — Charlie was always tinkering with one device or another.
He’d built a shortwave radio transmitter from parts scavenged in dusty electrical repair stores, military surplus supply shops, and swap meets.
Late at night, Charlie would scan the dials, listening to broadcasts from as far away as Argentina, where the Peron family held sway in their version of a Nazi state.
He listened to Cuba, where the Batista regime maintained an iron grip, their impoverished citizens in subjugation to fascist ideals. Charlie would Churchill’s Gold 19 patiently monitor the wavelengths and would sometimes listen to exchanges between combat units, especially those fighting revolutionaries in the Central Americas.
He’d even picked up faint messages that seemed to be from resistance groups, but they were sporadic. Sometimes he’d hear from a group every night at a specific time for a week — and then never hear them again. He knew, of course, that they’d been tracked down and arrested. For that reason, Charlie was careful to never transmit. He knew his signals would be monitored, identified as unauthorized, and his position located. Gestapo and SS troopers would arrive in minutes. He wasn’t going to risk that.
However, he practiced sending messages by code. He taught himself Morse Code — at one time the most widely used form of rapid wireless communication.
He had become fast and accurate with the simple telegraph key, taping the code at an impressive rate of 40 words per minute, careful to keep the send key disconnected from his transmitter. One day, browsing in a military surplus supply store in Brooklyn, he’d found an old code book from the War in Europe.
It described a coding machine that the Nazi submarine fleet had used in the 1940s. The book bore a red stamp on the front cover, declaring it to be ‘Declassified.’ Using the book’s descriptions and diagrams, Charlie built his own coding machine, and then practiced sending out coded commands to a ‘pretend’ Resistance group.
It amused him to think that using a long forgotten, obsolete code might, one day, help the Resistance that he longed to be a part of.
3
LOOK, CHARLIE, WE ALL THINK the same way — but there’s nothing we can do about it. Sure, we could form some kind of Resistance. But what could we do? I mean, really do. Sabotage? Print subversive pamphlets? What?”
Charlie shrugged. There were five of them, standing in a circle around a hurricane lamp — the flickering yellow light casting their shadows against the brick walls of the empty room they stood in. “I don’t know, Maynard,” Charlie said. “I just know we have to do something. Something to push back.”
Maynard adjusted his spectacles — they kept sliding down the bridge of his nose. He was tall and skinny, his glasses giving him a professorial look.
Next to him stood Billy, a tough-looking kid but always ready with a smile. His parents, devoted Nazis, had named him Wilhelm — but he didn’t respond to the name and insisted all his friends address him as Billy.
Andy scuffed his foot on the concrete floor. He was frowning in concentration. “Cindy,” he said, “why don’t you tell them what you told me?”
They all turned to look at the only female member of their group. Cindy was a slender young woman with a friendly, open face framed with dark brown hair.
The derelict building where they stood was, in fact, hers. It was a former bakery which had belonged to her father, now dead.
Cindy didn’t have the resources to improve it but didn’t want to sell the building that was the only remaining thing she had of her father. “It’s kinda crazy,” she said. “But you know how my brothers work for NPR?”
“Nazi Party Radio?”
“Yeah. Except it’s not just radio anymore. They have a broadcast station — television — on the first floor of the Thyssen Building.”
“Yeah, they do live interviews from there,” Billy said. “With Party Big Shots and the like. My parents make me watch,” he added with disgust.
“What are you thinking, Cindy?” Maynard asked.
“I’m thinking that we get my brothers to let us in there, and we make a broadcast. A revolution can’t succeed unless people are made aware that others feel the way they do. The more we can convince people that there are more of us than there are of them — the faster change will come.”
“Too dangerous,” said Maynard. “Besides, even if we managed it, it would only take them a few minutes to work out that your brothers were involved — and that leads them to you — “
And all of us,” Andy finished.
“You know what?” Billy said. “We could create a distraction. Instead of Cindy’s brothers helping us out, we attack the building —”
” — now that is crazy,” Maynard scoffed.
“No, hear me out,” Billy said. “There’s a weapon the Russians used during the War. They’d run out of everything — food, ammunition, you name it. So, one of their guys invented a homemade bomb. Molotov was his name. You fill up a bottle with gasoline, stick a rag in the neck, light it up and throw it. The bottle breaks and the fire spreads like crazy…”
The others stared until Andy laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding, Billy,” he said.
“No, think about it,” Billy argued. “We throw a Molotov through the window, and they have to drop everything to deal with the fire. We sneak in and make the broadcast. We’re in and out in two minutes. Distraction, guys — that’s the name of the game.”
“With our luck,” Andy said, “we’d end up dropping the darn thing and setting ourselves on fire.”
“I’m just trying to be helpful,” Billy said.
“There’s another way we can do it,” Charlie said, “and we don’t have to make bombs or risk Cindy’s brothers.”
“How?” Cindy asked.
“All the stations use one central uplink. Every TV feed that is broadcast in New York goes first to the uplink, which sends the signal to the geo-stationary satellites and the program then gets beamed back into everybody’s homes, right?”
“Yeah…” Maynard said with an uncertain frown. “The central uplink is a micro-wave transmitter. It’s brand new, so they’ve been talking about it in the scientific journals I’ve been reading — they call it PBS.”
“PBS?” “Propaganda Broadcast System. It’s state-of-theart. It can uplink five hundred station feeds simultaneously, and the satellite does the rest.”
“You’re losing me, Charlie,” Cindy said.
“No, I get it,” Maynard said. “If we can jump on the PBS, our broadcast will go up to the satellite and… and… well, I’m not sure what would happen next…”
“What would happen,” Charlie grinned, “is that if we override all the other feeds, then our broadcast will go out on every channel here on the East Coast and maybe reach as far as Chicago. It will be the only broadcast that goes out to millions and millions of homes.”
“Ooh,” grinned Cindy. “That’s going to make them Nazis mad.”
“Yeah, but how do we do it?” Billy asked.
“We’ll do the broadcast from here,” Charlie said. “Cindy, do you think you could get your brothers to let us have a camera without anyone knowing?”
“If it was only out of the building for a little while… sure, they’ll do it — no problem.”
“Then all we’ve got to do is build a microwave transmitter to send our signal to the PBS and figure out the access code that’ll override the other feeds.”
“But how do we get that?” Andy asked. “Those live interviews NPR does with Party Big Shots? — they’re broadcast on every channel simultaneously. That means there is an override or all-access code so that only their signal gets broadcast. All we need to do is hack into the PBS and look back until we find the most recent live interview — and we’ll find the code in the uplink command.”
“There was one last night,” Andy said. “Reich Minister Schacht and his three-hour lecture on how adorable old Adolf was. I kept switching channels, and it was Schacht on every one of them.”
“What if they change the code every time?” Maynard said.
“I bet they don’t,” Charlie replied. “There’d be so much paperwork and signatures needed, it wouldn’t be worth it.”
The group chuckled, well aware how incompetent the Nazi authorities were and how every little detail of life had to process through committees and stamped documents and signed authorizations.
“We’ll still have to hack into the PBS,” Cindy said.
“Which is why we have Maynard,” Andy grinned.
“Give him enough time and he can hack into anything — can’t you, Maynard?”
Maynard pushed his spectacles back. “You know,” he said, “this just might work.”
“Okay,” Charlie said. “Cindy’s going to talk to her brothers and get us a camera. And Cindy, if you can get cables to connect to my transmitter, that’ll be great.”
“And some lights,” Andy said. “Cindy, can you arrange to put the power back on in here?”
“I’ll get on it.”
“Billy. We need to build a little stage or set. With a backdrop. Like the news programs on State TV. Can you do it?”
“Sure can.”
“I’ve got a flag that’ll work for the backdrop,” Andy said. “My grandad kept it hidden.”
“You mean the old flag? The Stars n’Stripes?”
“Yeah. It’s huge. Will that do?” “It’ll be perfect.”
The group discussed everyone’s tasks for a little longer. It was getting late.
One by one, they slipped out of the old bakery into the alley and headed home. For Charlie, going home meant a three-block walk down Thompson Street and across Washington Square Park.
He’d only gone a short way when he felt someone was following him. He stopped and looked back, but saw nobody. When he entered the park, he stepped off the walkway and stood out of sight beside a tree.
He could see back towards the park entrance. After a while, a man appeared. He seemed hesitant as he crossed the street to the park, and he stopped by the entrance. In the light from the streetlamp, Charlie could make out a thin, anxious face.
The man was in his 50s or 60s. Not very tall. He wore a brown overcoat belted at the waist. His hair was thinning, receding at the temples.
He looked up and down the street, and then into the park. Eventually, he put his hands in his overcoat pockets and walked back the way he had come.
Charlie waited until he could no longer hear the stranger’s footsteps. Then he hurried home.
4.
CHARLIE AND GRANDPA ALEX were in the kitchen having breakfast when they heard a sharp knock at their door. “I’ll get it,” Charlie said.
“It’ll be the Schneider woman snooping around,” Grandpa Alex said. “Don’t give her the time of day, Charlie.” She’ll have a complaint about something.”
I’ll go see what it’s about.” But when Charlie opened the door, it wasn’t Frau Schneider standing in the hallway. Instead, it was two men, tough and unsmiling. Charlie immediately knew they were Gestapo.
“Can I help you?” Charlie asked.
The smaller of the two, a weasel of a man, flipped open a wallet and showed his identification. Charlie made a show of looking at it, his heart pounding and mind racing.
He barely had time to read “Inspektor Ernst Diels,” and take in the photograph, the corner of which was officially stamped with a swastika.
“You are Charles Taggart?” the weasel said.
“Yes.”
“May we come in?”
“Of course, Inspektor.” Charlie stepped aside to let the pair go past him. The young man closed the door and called out, “It’s two gentlemen from the Staatspolizei, Grandpa!”
“Good morning, Herr Taggart,” Inspektor Diels said as he strode into the kitchen.
Grandpa Alex looked up from his coffee cup and muttered, “G’morning, to you too.”
Diels pulled back a kitchen chair and sat at the table opposite Grandpa Alex. His thick-necked colleague leant against the worktop by the stove and folded arms bulging with muscle. “I am Inspektor Diels, and this is my associate Kriminalassistent Knab. You, of course, are Alexander Taggart — at least, that is the name by which you are known now.”
“I’ve had that name longer than any other,” Grandpa Alex replied. “Coffee, Inspektor?”
“Thank you, no.”
“What’s that about our name?” Charlie asked, sitting down beside Grandpa Alex..
Diels ignored Charlie and pulled a file folder from a briefcase. He read it, all the while glancing at Grandpa Alex. “You were born in 1925 in London?”
“Yes.”
“And you were given permission to come to Amerika in 1946?”
“With my father. Yes. I was 21 years old.”
“You married in 1964. Your son, David, was born in 1965. The mother died in childbirth. Correct?”
“Yes.” “David Taggart was forcibly conscripted in 1983 and served with the Waffen SS until he deserted in 1989?”
“Again. Correct.”
Charlie stared at his grandfather. Until this moment, he’d had no idea that his own father had been in an SS regiment. To hear that he had been a deserter was astonishing.
“He evaded capture for several months but was caught and sentenced to seven years penal servitude. Released in 1997, he married Barbara Wilkie, daughter of the dissident democratic socialist Bernard Wilkie. David and Barbara had one son. Charles Wilkie Taggart, born 1999 who is present here now. My facts are correct?”
“I beg you go no further, Inspektor,” said Grandpa Alex.
“That will not be possible,” Diels replied, with a glance up from his file folder. “This interrogation includes you both.”
“We’re being interrogated? Is that what you call this? We’ve done nothing!” Grandpa Alex said.
“In my line of work, Herr Taggart, I usually find that everyone has done something. In 2003, your son David and his wife Barbara were arrested for criminal and subversive activities. They were tried in State Court and found guilty of sabotage, incitement to violent revolution, damage to State property, and spying on military installations. They were executed by firing squad on February 12th, 2004.”
Charlie felt his gut lurch. He looked at Grandpa Alex. The old man’s head had sunk down on his chest.
“Grandpa…” Charlie whispered, mouth dry, “… I thought there’d been an accident. I thought they died in a car crash…”
Grandpa looked at Charlie. His eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry, Charlie,” he said. “They were so brave, and they loved you so much…”
“I’d hardly use the word ‘brave’ to describe them,” Diels said, his mean little mouth twisting. “Traitor is a more appropriate word for them. A word I think you are more than familiar with, Herr Taggart, given your own father’s history.”
“What do you mean by that?” Charlie asked, hating the pompous little man. He struggled to control his feelings, worried that the Gestapo men would sense that all he wanted at this moment was to kill them both.
“The reason your grandfather came to Amerika in the first place, Charles, was because his own father was no longer welcome in England. The English considered him a traitor who had sold his country out. For his safety, and that of your grandfather’s, his wish to be relocated was granted.”
Diels gave Charlie a malicious smile. “I can see you are uninformed regarding your family history,” he said. “That is disappointing, Charles. The Party places great importance on family and lineage. Despite being the son of an executed criminal, you come from good stock. Your great-grandfather held an important post in Britain until the war and our victory in Europe came about.
“He was a wealthy and highly regarded man. He’d been knighted for his services to the British crown. People throughout Britain knew of him. Even the populations of Britain’s overseas colonies had heard of Sir Basil Cadogan, the Governor of the Bank of England. I am surprised your grandfather has not told you all this.”
“There was no need,” Grandpa Alex said. “And there is no need for him to be told now.”
“Wrong,” Diels said. “Nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of State security.” He reached into his briefcase once more and came out with a photograph, which he placed on the table between Charlie and Grandpa Alex. “Do you know this man?” Diels asked.
Grandpa shook his head.
The photograph was of a balding man in his 50s. He stared out of the photograph with a harried and anxious expression. Charlie realized that this was the man who had followed him the previous night when he’d left the bakery. He was a little younger in the photograph — but his worried, nervous features were unmistakable.
Charlie could feel Diels and Knab watching him. He knew that to lie at this moment, in front of experts, would be a mistake. “I think I’ve seen him,” he said.
Diels let out a satisfied sigh. “Good,” he said. “Tell me ‘where’ and ‘when.’”
“Last night,” Charlie said. “On Thompson Street. About ten-thirty probably.”
“Did he approach you?”
“No.”
“But you saw him?”
“I felt that someone was following me, so I stopped when I got into the park and waited — out of sight. After a moment, a man — the man in the photograph — appeared. He stood under the streetlamp, which is why I was able to recognize him…”
“Then what happened?”
“He walked away. Turned around and went.”
Diels half-turned and glanced at Knab — who shrugged as if he’d heard it all before.
“Who is he?” Charlie asked.
“His name is Dieter Straube. He is a Professor of Advanced Aeronautics and Quantum Physics, attached to the Nazi Aeronautics and Space Administration.”
“You mean, ‘NASA’?”
“Precisely.”
Charlie looked again at the frightened face in the photograph. “He’s a rocket scientist?”
“One of the best. His own father worked with SS Sturmbannführer Wernher Von Braun who, as you know, is revered as the Architect of the Space Age.
“Straube’s father, Magnus, was Sturmbannführer Von Braun’s right-hand man and led the team that helped put our glorious swastika flag on the moon in 1969. His son, Dieter — the man in this photograph — is also an important scientist. There are many who say that he is a genius.”
“Why would he be following Charlie?” Grandpa Alex asked.
“That is our question, Herr Taggart,” Diels said. “Why indeed?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie said, puzzled. “Maybe it’s a mistake. A misunderstanding. Oh, it could be because… I … that is… I write letters to some of the Scientific Journals. Party-approved, of course.”
“We’re aware of that, Charles. We know that you consistently grade higher in science than 99% of students in the entire country. Which is why you will be drafted into the Military Institute of Technology college when you turn eighteen. But your correspondence with various journals and your scientific skills are only part of why Professor Straube might be interested in you.”
“Then what’s the rest of it?”
“It’s something to do with my father, isn’t it?” said Grandpa Alex.
“We have been informed,” Diels replied, “that Professor Straube has been researching a certain event that occurred in 1940, a few weeks before the English surrendered to Germany and became part of the Greater Reich. We want to know why.”
“What event? And what has it to do with us?”
“The incident which the Professor is researching was instrumental in the defeat of England and, by extension, the entire British Empire. Naturally, Germany would have won the war in any case, but this incident was a mortal blow to the British. Something they could not recover from.
“If it hadn’t happened, the war might have continued for several years, and Germany may not have been able to turn and defeat the Russians so easily in 1943.”
“I realize you may not be comfortable answering questions, Inspektor,” Grandpa Alex said, “seeing as you are more used to asking them. But what are you talking about?”
Diels gave a thin smile. “In June of 1940 — with the defeated British army evacuated from Dunkirk and a Nazi invasion imminent — your father, the Governor of the Bank of England, arranged with Winston Churchill to send Britain’s gold reserves, the entire British treasury, to Canada to prevent it falling into our hands. But it did, Herr Taggart.”
“The shipment was intercepted in mid-Atlantic by the valiant men of the Kreigsmarine. Losing the gold meant that Britain no longer had the ability to wage war. What most people believe — especially Englishmen, both then and now — is that the man responsible for that loss was your father. Sir Basil Cadogan himself.”