North Reich (28 page)

      
“As do I,” said Guderian.
 
He was pleased.
 
The April second date had been bandied around just a little too much for his comfort.
 
The Americans had a phrase – Loose Lips Sink Ships – and he felt that loose lips also destroyed tanks and killed soldiers.

      
“Of course, not everyone will get the word,” added von Arnim.
 
“In particular, I doubt if the men we’ve planted deep in the United States will all get the message of the change.
 
They will begin their war on April second or any time after the twenty-fifth of March when they realize it has commenced.
 
Who knows, staggering our efforts might just be more effective.”

      
“What about Neumann, the Gestapo, and the Black Shirts?”

      
“The Gestapo will recover.
 
Neumann will be angry for a while, but my orders come directly from Adolf Hitler.
 
He will not question them.
 
As to his Black Shirt Brigade, they can all rot in hell for all I care.”

Wally and Jed Munro let their men stretch and get ready.
 
There was a full squad of Black Shirts with them, and they were excited at finally being let off the leash.
 
For too long they felt they hadn’t been permitted to hurt either the enemies of the Reich or those Canadians who hated the Black Shirts.
 
The racially mongrel population of Toronto had begun to make fun of them because of their inactivity, and that was intolerable.
 
They’d even lost a few of the brawls that had taken place.
 
The Munro’s were beginning to lose both heart and manpower as several of the Black Shirts simply quit.
      

Now they were looking forward to both revenge and fun.
 
They had parked down the dirt road and behind some trees so they could not be seen from the two story Victorian house located in a rural area just outside the city boundaries of Toronto.
 
The house was the home of Steve and Sherry Piper, brother and sister, and they were suspected of printing and disseminating anti-Nazi propaganda.
 
Neumann wanted them shut down, but he didn’t want the Gestapo directly involved, not after the uproar surrounding the ship taking the Jews to Germany.
 
The Munros still didn’t understand all the concern about a bunch of kikes on a boat.

      
Jed nudged Wally and grinned wickedly.
 
“Brother and sister?
 
Hell, I’ll bet they’re doing each other.”

      
Several of the others heard and laughed.
 
Yes, it would be good to kick the Jew lovers until they squealed.
 
They knew little about the Pipers except that she was thirty and he was in his mid-twenties and that they were both single.
 
If Neumann wanted them punished, that was fine with the Black Shirts.
 
Hell, maybe they actually were doing each other.

      
Neither of the Munro brothers was a stranger to incest and molestation.
 
Their father had abused them until they were old enough to strike back at him and make it stick.
 
They didn’t mourn when he fell into a sewage pond on the Don River that was so filthy that no one wanted to go in and rescue him.
 
When somebody finally did pull him out, he was dead.
 
No big loss, they thought.

      
Wally gave a signal and the dozen men charged the house.
 
A sledgehammer crumpled the front door and they surged in, yelling and brandishing baseball bats and clubs.
 
Only the two Munros carried guns.
 
Neumann wanted no killing unless it couldn’t be avoided.

      
The Pipers were in their kitchen and, sure enough, there was a small printing press and a stack of paper.
 
“What the hell’s going on here,” snapped Steve Piper in a show of bravado that was cut short by a punch to the gut.
 
It doubled him over and he puked his guts all over the floor.
 
The sister screamed and another stomach punch shut her up as well.

      
While the Pipers lay on the floor and writhed in pain, Wally saw to it that their hands and feet were bound tightly.
 
The other men carried the press outside and systematically smashed it.

      
“She’s not that pretty,” said Jed.
 
“But it is pussy.”

      
Wally disagreed.
 
Even though scared, she was attractive enough and had a decent figure.
 
He wondered if she really was fucking her brother.
 

      
Wally began to beat the brother while his sister moaned and begged him to stop.
 
Neumann had taught him well, so his blows were designed to cause agony rather than break bones or cripple. Tomorrow, Wally thought happily, Steve Piper would be a wreck who’d be bleeding and pissing blood for weeks, and whose face would be so swollen not even his mother would recognize him.
 
But he would be alive and the message would be delivered – fuck with the Black Shirts and this is what happens.

      
“Enough,” Wally said.
 
He grabbed Sherry Piper and dragged her into a first floor bedroom.
 
He threw her on the bed and, while Jed held her down, cut off her clothes with his razor-sharp hunting knife.
 
She screamed in anger and pain when he raped her and then it was Jed’s turn.

      
When the brothers were through, they let the others in their crew have their turns, “Only once each,” Jed admonished them with a smirk, “we don’t want her dead.”
 
Only a couple of the Shirts took them up on the offer.
 
The woman was too bloody.

      
They finished their evening by breaking everything in the house.
 
They untied both Pipers and left them to console each other.
 
The Black Shirts, satisfied and sated, went back to their trucks.
 
Wally and Jed looked forward to a pleasant evening of beer and discussions of what they’d accomplished.

      
Wally was just getting in the passenger side of his truck when a shot rang out.
 
One of his men howled and fell to the ground, grabbing his thigh where blood began to gush out.
 
A second shot and a bullet ricochet off the truck.
 
“Down,” Wally yelled and no one needed urging.
 
Where the hell had the shots come from?

      
Shit.
 
A line of men could be seen in the moonlight crossing the field towards them and it looked they all had rifles.
 
A couple of them knelt and fired.
 
Another Black Shirt fell – a bullet had ripped through his skull.
 
Damn it, Wally thought, why hadn’t Neumann let them carry more weapons?
 
He pulled out his pistol and fired a couple of shots in the general direction of his attackers.
 
They paused and it was enough.
 
The Munros got their ragged and bloodied caravan on the road and headed back towards the safety of Toronto.
 
Both brothers were mad.
 
Instead of teaching the Pipers and others like them a lesson, it looked like the Black Shirts had been the ones whipped.
 
Sure they had beaten and fucked the Pipers, but one of Wally’s men was dead and another was likely going to die since they couldn’t stop the bleeding from his leg.

FDR looked in dismay at the brief one page report from Camp Washington.
 
“When did we get this?”

      
“It arrived at Camp Washington a couple of days ago,” General Marshall admitted.
 
“It didn’t seem too important at first, just a change in a schedule, so it wasn’t pushed to the front of the line until someone recognized its significance.
 
Still, we have plenty of time to do something if that’s what you desire.”

      
“But what do we desire?” Roosevelt said slowly.
 

It was difficult for him to speak at times like this and he was feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders.
 
The stress of an unprecedented three presidential terms and the thought of a fourth one were preying on his mind. Worse, were the decisions he would have to make.
 
The message on his desk seemed to stare back at him, daring him to do something.

      
“Can you confirm it?”

      
“As well as we can confirm anything,” Marshall said. “The message is from Keitel and is directed only to von Arnim.”

      
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel was head of the OKW, Germany’s supreme military command.
 
It was understood that he was a puppet for Hitler and that anything coming from Keitel came from the Fuhrer.

      
Roosevelt wheeled his chair so he could look out the window of the Oval Office.
 
The trees were beginning to come to life.
 
Another day and it would have been beautiful.
 

      
“So the bastards are going to attack a week early, damn them.
 
Yet you still recommend we do nothing about it, general?”

      
Marshall looked at the president.
 
His features were iron.
 
The president was trying to shift responsibility and he didn’t blame him.
 
Still, they both knew that the ultimate decision would be Roosevelt’s.
 

“I do.
 
If we do anything now to prepare for an earlier attack, the Germans might find out and then they’ll know that we have broken their codes and are reading their messages.
 
If that happens, they will change them and we will be in the dark for God knows how long.
 
We must keep our secret no matter how painful it might be.
 
Just remember Coventry, sir.”

      
More than five hundred English civilians had been killed in Coventry during a German bombing raid in November, 1940.
 
The English had foreknowledge of the raid yet had let it take place. They could not run the risk of divulging the fact that they had broken Germany’s codes, the same codes that Americans and British were reading at Camp Washington.
 
Hundreds had died in Coventry, but how many thousands had survived and how many more would survive because the secret was kept?

      
The devil, Roosevelt thought.
 
Did it matter very much if the attack took place on April 2 or March 25?
 
The commitment had already been made.
 
The United States had to be seen as being attacked and absorbing the first blow.
 
He hoped to God that his terrible secret wouldn’t come out, until, at least, after the fall elections.
 
He didn’t want a fourth term, but who else could lead the nation?
 
Henry Wallace?
 
Dear God no.
 
His vice president was a complete ass.

      
He wadded the piece of paper and threw it in the trash.
 
“I never received any such message, general.
 
And God help us all.”

Major Charley Canfield laughed, itself a rarity in these stressful days.
 
“Well, look what the cat dragged in.
 
I must admit you look a hell of a lot better than you did the first time I laid eyes on you, what with your pecker all frozen and blue.”

      
“As the saying goes, I clean up well.”

      
He and Tom shook hands and the two men sat down.
 
The each took a cup of the viscous tar that passed for army coffee.
 
They were in a tent that served as Canfield’s office.
 

      
“So what is a spy from the Pentagon doing up here?” Canfield asked, just a little cautiously.

      
“Spying,” Tom responded facetiously.
 
“Seriously, several of us are up here just trying to get a feel for the situation.
 
Even General Truscott is having a sit down with your man Fredendall.”

      
Canfield rolled his eyes.
 
“I wish Truscott well.”

“Really?”
 
Tom and others had heard a lot of rumors about the general.
 

“Fredendall is, well, a truly unique individual.
 
He’s digging in and waiting for a massive German assault.
 
He’s turned his headquarters into a citadel defended by a whole battalion.”

      
Tom was surprised.
 
“Didn’t he get the word that we consider it very unlikely that the Nazis will do anything but launch raids?”