The Gemini Divergence (7 page)

Schwerig was surprised and baffled, he
thought to himself, “Why would the General associate me with
this?”

Then terror seized Schwerig as he thought,
“Oh my God, has Von Sterbenbach found out about the Volmer papers
as well?”

All of the other meeting attendees started to
immediately exit, some stood to salute, causing Von Sterbenbach to
grow impatient, until he screamed at the top of his lungs,
“Jetzt!”

At that the remaining officers dropped their
salutes and anything else they were still doing in the room and
quickly left. The last man from the room shut the door.

Schwerig now in horror but trying not to show
it, turned towards Von Sterbenbach, who still had a stern look in
his eyes.

After a few very uncomfortable moments, Von
Sterbenbach and Toelke burst into laughter.

Schwerig looked on with dismay. What the hell
was going on, and what the hell did he have to do with it?

General Von Sterbenbach tried to compose
himself as he turned to Schwerig and said, “I am so sorry Major
Schwerig that I was not able to clue you into Major Toelke’s and my
little spiel, but for the purpose of believability to the others, I
could not.”

“So… the Peenemunde project was not really
captured?” asked Schwerig, still trying to make sense out of this
confusion.

“Oh, indeed it was. Exactly as I have
planned, but there are only a selected few officers that may be
privy to that truth,” explained Von Sterbenbach.

Schwerig then asked, “But who captured them,
the Americans, the British, or the Russians?”

Toelke answered, “Exactly half to the
Americans and half to the Russians. Half of the people… half of the
rockets… half of the documents.”

“But why?” asked a still very puzzled
Schwerig.

The General then started to explain, “A few
months ago, we had a double agent that the British were under the
impression they had implanted into the SS without our knowledge,
send a message back to England, in full knowledge that it would be
intercepted by British Bletchley Park. The message was to make the
British think that they had discovered our biggest secret wonder
weapon of all, The V2 program at Peenemunde.”

Toelke then added, “Which wasn’t really a
secret, as the British had already been being bombed by the same
new rockets.”

Von Sterbenbach then continued, “But they
didn’t know where they were being made, so we sent the message with
the intention to be intercepted. A few weeks later we had an
operative drop off an anonymous note to the British Embassy in Oslo
Norway, tipping the British about Peenemunde.”

Toelke started removing the ribbons,
decorations, and insignia from his uniform as he said while he was
working, “The British immediately bombed it.”

Then the General said, “And as soon as the
Allies fought their way into Germany, they made a beeline for
Peenemunde, and arrived yesterday. They first tried with ‘Market
Garden’, but that failed.”

Schwerig was still baffled. He was wondering
why the hell Toelke was removing all of his decorations, and laying
them in a pile on the table, he then asked the two, “Still I do not
understand, why the hell would we let the Americans and Russians
capture equal parts of our rocket program?”

Toelke and Von Sterbenbach both started
talking at the same time but Major Toelke conceded and the General
continued, “If the Allies are totally oblivious to our new Gocke
Glocke,
Schauburger
turbines and Schriewer
Kugelblitzen, they will all totally focus on the rockets as our
most secret and technically advanced program. Since neither side
trusts each other, and both have an equal head start, they will get
hopelessly involved in an arms race and hopefully ‘our’ selected
few will be able to escape undetected.”

“So this is a con inside of a ruse inside of
a deception,” suggested Schwerig.

“Exactly, and you and Major Toelke have made
the grade and have been selected to be part of the exit program.
You are both now to leave here and report directly to Riese,”
ordered the General.

Schwerig still had to know, so he asked,
“Major Toelke, why on earth have you removed all of your
decorations?”

“Keeping up appearances, of course,” answered
Toelke. “When all of those men left this meeting, they were
convinced that General Von Sterbenbach was extremely angry with me,
and about to deal with me in a very severe way. When we leave this
room together and get into the same vehicle, it will appear as
though I have been stripped of all rank and been placed under
arrest, and the General held you behind in the meeting in order to
entrust you as the arresting officer.”

“I highly doubt any of them will ask you a
single question,” added Von Sterbenbach, “but I will wager that
they all will certainly be spreading the word as to what they have
witnessed.”

“What will I tell Feldwebel Stark when I get
into the car with a prisoner?” asked Schwerig.

“Tell him nothing,” ordered the General, “and
you are still to carry out every last part of your orders that you
received in the first meeting. Verstehen Sie?”

“Of course Herr General,” answered
Schwerig.

Schwerig rose to his feet, put on his hat and
unholstered his parabellum as he said, “Well prisoner Toelke, I
guess that I am to take you to meet the Holy Ghost.”

They all laughed then Schwerig and Toelke
left the meeting room.

~~~**^**~~~

The Big War / The
Inquisitive RAF Clerk At Tea

“I don’t feel right about the American’s
Operation Paperclip… It was far too easy I tell you,” Quipped the
RAF clerk while sipping tea, “Do you really believe that the
Jerries would have allowed such a large amount of people and
documents to slip through their fingers? …I would believe
discovering fragments of a program or a few documents, or the word
of a few witnesses. But I find it very hard to swallow that the
Americans and the Soviets have simultaneously captured almost
entirely intact and similar secret rocket programs.”

His RAF sergeant was sipping tea as he was
looking out of the window, and responded, “It’s always a conspiracy
with you. I tell you, you’re a good clerk, you catch things others
would not, but you read far too much into things… Do you really
think that thousands of scared disorganized Jerry soldiers running
for their lives from the Americans as well as us on one end and the
Russians on the other, could actually hatch a plot that big, and
still not save their own skins? …Really, I know the Jerries are
always a formidable foe, but you always seem to give them far too
much credit. You need to stick to your bean counting and leave the
plots to the brass.”

“Pardon?” The clerk questioned sarcastically.
“I shan’t let this theory easily pass. As far as I can tell this
Operation Paperclip and the Kriegsmariner losses anomaly, may be
two pieces of a much larger puzzle that I am yet to uncover.”

The sergeant laughed so suddenly that he
started coughing up his tea.

Turning to the clerk with a large grin he
boasted, “Well bless my soul, I seem to be in the presence of
Sherlock Holmes… Yes sir, something is surely afoot.”

The clerk lowered the tea that he was sipping
and grimaced, as he parleyed, “Well only time will now tell. If we
win, and we surely will, then we will be in charge of the history
books. We may, in ignorance, omit the truth entirely… God alone
will know then.”

“And I’ll bet he’ll roll his eyes at your
wild theories as well,” mumbled the sergeant under his breath.

“What was that?” queried the clerk. “It
sounded as if you’ve mumbled something.”

The sergeant conspicuously cleared his
throat, then responded,

“I’m quite sure he’ll have your attaboy ready
and waiting for you in heaven, my dear boy.”

“Oh… Quite,” sarcastically sassed the
clerk.

~~~**^**~~~

The
Big War / Ad Infinitive Deception

Upon exiting the castle and reaching the
court yard, Schwerig could see that no one had left the court yard
yet. He had figured
that they would all wait
around to see what had transpired.

Toelke paused at the top of the stairs, just
outside of the door.

Schwerig yelled to Sergeant
Stark, “Feldwebel Stark, we will be transporting a prisoner today.
Please retrieve your field arm from the kofferraum of my
auto.
“Jawohl, Herr Major”, responded
Stark as he saluted and quickly retrieved his Mauser from the trunk
and chambered a round.

Schwerig poked his Luger into Toelke’s lower
back and said, “Let’s go HERR Toelke.”

Schwerig deliberately called him Herr,
purposely omitting Toelke’s rank, as a form of admonishment.

Toelke descended the stairs to where Sergeant
Stark had opened the rear car door, and was waiting with his weapon
ready. Toelke stepped into the car and Schwerig followed suit,
never lowering his weapon.

Once they had both been seated, Sergeant
Stark closed the door and stepped into the driver’s seat. He
started the vehicle and drove away as all of the meeting’s
attendees and their drivers watched in dismay as Schwerig’s staff
car rolled away.

*~*

Driving down the mountain road now, Toelke
turned to Schwerig and said, “Don’t you think you can put that down
now,” referring to Schwerig’s pistol.

“Not as long as you are a prisoner in my
charge,” responded Schwerig in a commanding voice. He then
continued in a lower tone, “We must keep up appearances for the
Feldwebel,” as he gestured toward the sergeant.

“Can he hear us back hear?” inquired
Toelke.

“Not if we keep our voices down,” said
Schwerig maintaining a low tone.

Once they had arrived at the end of the
castle drive and came to the main road, just across from the field
where Sergeant Stark had dined a few nights before; Stark looked at
Schwerig in the rear view mirror and inquired, “Begging the Major’s
pardon, but where is it that I am supposed to drive too?”

“Riese, in Poland,” answered Schwerig.

“Jawohl, Herr Major,”
responded Stark as he thought to himself,
why on earth are we going all the way to Riese to deliver a
prisoner?

After they had been driving for a while
Schwerig turned to Toelke and asked, “Are you and General Von
Sterbenbach certain that it is not a mistake that we are
deliberately allowing our rocket program to be captured by the
allies?”

“At first Yes, but still for the most part I
believe it is best because the Americans and the Russians will
divert all of their funds, their intelligence, and their industries
towards competing with each other. They will then lose all focus on
us.” explained Toelke.

Schwerig queried further, “What do you mean
at first? So you do have doubts… Why?”

“Well at first I thought that all Von Braun
had been working on was the V-2 vengeance rocket program. After I
got there, I found he had secretly been working on other plans.
Plans that I believe would have greatly aided us at our ultimate
destination, New Swabia, in Antarctica.”

This is the first time that Schwerig had
heard anything about New Swabia or Antarctica, but he held his
tongue in order to try and pry as much information out of Toelke as
he could.

Toelke continued, “Once I arrived there to
ready him for his capture, under the guise of being an auditor from
the SS, I discovered that he had a full set of plans for a space
station, with functioning artificial gravity. He also had been
working on a three stage rocket to deliver atomic bombs all the way
across the ocean to New York, and could eventually be used to ferry
human beings to the moon.