The Children's War (9 page)

12

“S
EE
HOW YOU LIKE
this one!” Til announced gleefully. “Two Haitians walked into a shop owned by a Jew in Manhattan—”

“Is your supply of jokes endless?” Richard asked.

“This isn’t a joke. Look, it’s here in this American newspaper.” Til held up the page and tapped the relevant story.

“I thought I told you to look for information on American technology. You shouldn’t even be reading that section,” Richard grumbled.

“What, your wife said no last night? You should beat her, pregnancy is no excuse.”

Richard scowled at him. His underling’s familiarity was getting irksome.

“Anyway, I am doing my job,” Til offered in expiation. “You get much more information from advertisements than from the articles. See?” He held up the paper again. “There’s an ad right here. The article next to it just caught my attention.”

Richard grabbed the paper and looked at the advertisement Til had indicated. It did indeed announce, for all to see, the latest trend in computer technology. Richard shook his head at the stupidity of the Americans. Why, in heaven’s name, did they publish what should be classified information? Well, their idiocy was his department’s gain. With a little knowledge of English, they had no need for espionage; all they had to do was buy some newspapers and magazines either in the North American Union itself or in some convenient neutral country, then ship the information back into the Reich. A few hours of reading gave them invaluable economic, political, and technical information as well as a wealth of anti-American propaganda in the form of stories about crime, disorder, degeneracy, and the general disintegration of American society.

With that last thought, Richard scanned the story Til had indicated. It was quite amusing, and the misunderstandings and violence involved clearly showed the danger of allowing races to mix freely. “Thank God we live in an orderly society,” Richard commented as he finished the article. “You ought to send this over to propaganda. They could make good use of it.”

“Quite a story, isn’t it? What a hellhole that city must be with all its darkskinned people, and its immigrants with their turbans and their strange rituals, and all the criminals skulking in every alley!”

Richard nodded his agreement. “Speaking of hellholes . . .”

“Ah, yes, you’ve got a train to catch. That explains the mood!” Til chuckled.

“Yes, time to visit our little sadist and see what he’s up to. And there’s no point you gloating, I’m taking you with me.”

“What? I . . . ,” Til stammered.

“Yep.” Richard stretched in his seat. “I need some backup. Last time he didn’t give me a minute’s peace while I was there, he was so busy trying to impress me, so this time I want you to go through the files while that little shit amuses me with whatever he’s been up to. Plucking wings off flies, or whatever.”

“Ah, it’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it,” Til joked.

“Yes. Anyway, call your wife and tell her to send a suitcase—we’ll need to spend the night.”

“Don’t have a phone. I’ll just go home and pack.”

“No, we’re too busy. Send one of the lads around with a message,” Richard
said, taking his revenge for Til’s earlier comment.“I want you digging out technical information. And no more Jew stories!”

Til sneered behind Richard’s back, but did as his boss had ordered.

Their little sadist had indeed been quite busy. Til carefully searched through the files to get some meaningful statistics on drug usage, prisoner makeup, and mortality rates, as Lederman enthusiastically dragged Richard around on a tour of the facility, showing him his own separate complex of offices, cells, lecture halls, and workshops.

They stopped to observe a group of women sewing uniforms. Richard looked disinterestedly at the rows of bowed heads and hunched shoulders as Lederman continued a lecture on his techniques.

“It’s one of the more effective ones. No observable injuries, so quick, too!” Lederman enthused.

“Huh?”

“The muscle relaxant. The prisoner just sits there, then all of a sudden they realize they can’t breathe!”

“Then what?”

“Depends. If we want to keep them, we inject a stimulant. If not, well . . . Anyway, after they’ve been through that just once, they are absolutely terrified of any needle brought near them. Absolute terror,” Lederman repeated cheerfully, leading Richard to another room to inspect some electronic devices that had just been imported.

“I’ve found, by experimenting,” Lederman explained as he fondled one of the devices, “that shoving this stun gun into their mouths is singularly effective. Brutally painful. They collapse to the ground immediately.” He replaced the device on its shelf. “Of course, you have to be careful not to break their teeth, and the side effects are somewhat unpleasant.”

“Side effects?” Richard asked, wondering what could be more unpleasant than having a jolt of electricity wash directly through one’s body.

“Muscle spasms, so . . . Well, as you might guess, it makes quite a mess.”

“Where does this stuff come from?” Richard asked, looking at the rows of devices.

“America. They use it in their prisons. Supposed to be humane!” Lederman said, laughing.

After that they stepped outside to see the execution grounds. En route, they stopped at a work crew and watched them breaking up stones in preparation for construction at the site. Richard looked on dispassionately as the men slaved away. Though at his high rank, he could expect never to be exposed to anything similar, the fickleness of the Reich toward its highest political officers was such that he could not feel entirely at ease.

It had been that way all along, he thought. Certainly political rivalries had taken their toll as early as the thirties with its “blood purges,” and Hitler had
made it clear that the Führer would not be above torturing his own men if they stepped too far out of line. There were, for example, the piano-wire hangings of the forties for the traitors who had too loudly questioned the Führer’s continuing appeasement of the Soviet Union and his change of heart about attacking their unwieldy Communist ally. Those, it was said, had been filmed so that Hitler could watch their gruesome deaths over and over.

The men worked unceasingly, sweat dripping from them, even in the damp early-March chill. Though they were trembling with exhaustion and it was obvious some were having difficulty even lifting their tools, they continued to swing their sledgehammers and pickaxes at the stone. Whenever one of them paused, even for a few seconds, the entire crew was punished.

This must be why they were standing there so long, Richard thought. To prove his toughness, his host was waiting for one of them to collapse. As he observed the wretched theater, Richard wondered what his own fate would be if he ever fell on the wrong side of that fine line. Certainly not reeducation, he would be spared this nonsense, but would it be a pistol placed discreetly on his desk or would it be worse? He supposed it depended on the nature of his asyetunknown offense, and on the politics and personalities of the time.

After Hitler’s death things had calmed down a bit with those who were out of favor simply being disgraced and kicked out of the Party, only occasionally to be quietly murdered afterward. It had continued that way, working toward a normalization of the politics, well into the sixties, but then things had begun to go wrong. Strikes, riots, and uprisings had spread throughout the Reich; there had been confusion in the hierarchy about how to handle such things, and the response had oscillated between repression and appeasement. The result of such confusion had been disastrous, and it had looked for a time as though the entire Reich would collapse into anarchy under the strain, but then a strong-arm faction took control, put their man into power, and regained the upper hand.

That Führer’s peaceful demise in ’81 had occasioned a renaissance of sorts. There was a period of “openness” and “restructuring.” Those repositories for all who were considered unfit to live within the Reich, the concentration camps, were downsized, and some of them were even closed altogether. It had looked as though the Reich might bumble its way into a limited democracy or a benevolent dictatorship, but in the late eighties, a series of Freedom Movements, coupled with rampant inflation and unemployment, led to yet another period of crisis, which ended with heavy-handed repression, a reopening of the camps, and a “return to the old values.” The racial laws and strict discipline were applied with renewed vigor, and state employment was expanded to the extent that there was now a labor shortage. The vast resources thrown into keeping a lid on the unrest had absorbed a huge number of young men into the services, taxes had to be raised, and the repression had to be stepped up even further to maintain order. It was a vicious cycle of overemployment in parasitic government services, taxation to support the expenditures, and repression to support the taxation.
The government had calcified, the Führer had surrounded himself with a series of yes-men who belonged to either his first or second “ring” of advisers, and the entire system was creaking its way toward another crisis.

Dangerous times, Richard thought, but dangerous times also meant opportunities. He and all the other men waiting to take over the reins of power walked a tightrope, never knowing which way the wind would blow, never sure when a purge would be necessary to “encourage the others,” never knowing if now was the moment to grab that brass ring. Still, Richard did not feel as exposed as many of his fellows, for he lacked the vices that caused most of their downfalls. He was not interested in mistresses or money, he had no desire to spend or show off. He was not addicted to anything: not alcohol, nor gambling, nor sadism. He did not believe a word of the Nazi mythology and so was unencumbered by any idiotic ideology, and he was willing to lie, to cheat, to smile, and to charm his way to his goal. He was intelligent, charming, handsome, and fit; he was perfectly placed to obtain whatever he wanted, and what he wanted was power, pure and simple.

One of the prisoners stopped working. He did not collapse, he simply stood still, leaning on his sledgehammer, ignoring the commands shouted at him. Richard and his host watched as the guards flailed wildly at the entire group. The guilty prisoner remained unmoved, so the guards changed tactics and beat at him alone. Richard suggested that they continue the tour. Lederman seemed disappointed that they were not going to wait to see the man die, but he did not object and they continued on their way, eventually returning to Lederman’s office. There they discussed the effectiveness of various drugs and therapies, assessed the success rate of different members of the staff, and ended up chatting about Lederman’s youth and his sports achievements.

“. . . the knees ended it all,” Lederman explained. “Just as well, it is hardly a fit career for a gentleman.”

“Indeed,” Richard agreed.

Suddenly Lederman glanced at his watch and exclaimed, “Goodness, I almost forgot! I have someone to show you.”

They left the office and paced rapidly down the hall and out the door. Richard’s shoulders slumped as he realized they were heading back toward the prison. He was led down a series of hallways containing heavy metal doors set into the uniformly gray concrete walls. Lederman came to a stop in front of one of the doors and had it opened.

Semidarkness and an unidentifiable stench greeted them. The room had concrete walls and a tiny window that provided the dim light; it was completely empty except for a prisoner who stood in the middle of the room as if placed there and told to stay put. He had an air of having been there a long time, standing an eternity, waiting for them.

The prisoner wore chains: a short length across his ankles, another binding his wrists, and another that led from his wrists down to his feet so that he could not lift his hands much above his waist while standing. A length of rope was also
tied around his neck, the end of which dangled a few feet and was not attached to anything. Since there was nothing else in the cell Richard could conceivably observe, he approached the prisoner and looked him over, trying to determine what had made Lederman single him out. Though the prisoner was reasonably tall and well-built, he was emaciated and filthy with hair that was caked with dirt, or worse.