Drowned baby TL

                                                 parts 31-40



DBTL 31: And the Banned Played On

Warsaw, Polish Devo, Polish Commonwealth
30 May 1946

"Walter, can we talk a moment?"

Wladziu Valentino Liberace knew there was bad news on the way, because his brother George always spoke English when he had bad news to share.

"Of course, George," said Wladziu, motioning for his brother to join him in the dressing room, "what would you like to talk about?"

"Well, I've just come from a discussion with the network's new director general," said George Liberace, as he carefully closed the dressing room door.  "He said that there would have to be some changes in your programme."

There were alarm bells ringing in Wladziu's head -- out-of-tune ones.  "What needs changing?  We've got the most popular show on the PBC."  Although immodest, this was true.  In the last three months, Wladziu's show, broadcast every Thursday night to television sets throughout the Commonwealth, had created a public sensation.  For half an hour, Wladziu would sit and play an eclectic mix of classical and popular music.  From Chopin (of course!), DeBussy, Addinsell and Rachmaninoff to Sousa, Gershwin and boogie-woogie.  The critics sneered, of course, as critics invariably do, but the viewing public was enthralled, as much (Wladziu admitted to himself) by his charm and showmanship as by his musical talent.  The show was an adaptation of the act Wladziu had crafted in nightclubs across America for five years: a gleaming golden piano with a candalabra, a running monologue with his silent manager/violinist/brother, a chatty introduction for each piece he played, and the immaculate white evening clothes he invariably wore.  As soon as the show had become a permanent fixture in Warsaw, Wladziu had brought his mother over from Milwaukee, and her beaming presence had also become a regular part of the programme.

There were, Wladziu knew, more and more American entertainers showing up in Europe these days, drawn by the booming prosperity that had somehow eluded the United States.  George had booked them a European tour the year before, and Wladziu had found himself drawn to Warsaw.  It had taken the two of them almost no time to relearn the Polish they had absorbed from their mother as children, and Wladziu was delighted by the way Polish impressionists had mimicked his American accent and ready smile.  A guest appearance on a popular PBC variety show had turned into a weekly programme of his own.  But now the PBC had a new director general, and he wanted to make some changes to the network's most popular show.

"He says," explained George, "that it's part of the PBC's new policy.  No more klezmeroll is to be broadcast, either on television or radio."

"Why, that's absurd," said Wladziu.  "Why single out klezmeroll?"

"He says he's received complaints about it, Walter," said George.  "Viewers find it vulgar and tasteless."

"That's absurd," Wladziu repeated.  "I'll admit, nine tenths of it is rubbish, but then nine tenths of all music is rubbish.  Nine tenths of all art and literature too, for that matter.  That's the nature of human creativity.  But there's nothing wrong with the other tenth.  What about the Vontzim's 'Yesterday'?  That is absolutely the most gorgeous song ever written (did you know the tune came to Herschel Grynszpan in a dream?  It's true!), so how can anyone dismiss the whole style as vulgar and tasteless?"

George seemed to be looking everywhere in the dressing room except at Wladziu.  "That's just what he said, Walter."

A nasty suspicion was beginning to form in Wladziu's mind.  "I don't suppose this has anything to do with klezmeroll's Jewish origins, would it?"

George remained silent.  He stared fixedly at the floor.

"That's it, isn't it, George?" Wladziu demanded.  "This new director general is one of Sikorski's creatures, isn't he?  And he thinks klezmeroll is too 'ghetto'.  Well, if this fellow thinks he can force me to toe the party line, he's got another think coming!"

Now George looked up in alarm.  "What are you saying, Walter?"

"I'm saying that I think it's time I did an all-klezmeroll retrospective.  And while I'm at it, I think I'll invite David Bernstein from the Shmoozing Heads, and Grace Selznick from Piast Aeroplane too!"

"Walter, no!  They'll cancel the show!"

"Let them try," said a determined Wladziu.  "We'll see what they say when they find themselves facing fifty thousand outraged fans.  And what's more, when they find themselves facing Mom!"

Standing up from the dressing room mirror, Wladziu Liberace declared, "George, you've got to fight for your right to tummel!"


DBTL 32: And We're Living Here in Speerburg

From the archives of the Polish Broadcasting Corporation
First broadcast 11 June 1946

[opening credit sequence]

AD: Good evening.  I'm Arkadiusz Danilecki, and this is "Poland Tonight".  Our first story tonight takes us to the outskirts of Kiev in the Ukrainian Devo, where a startling new development in architecture could mean an end to the housing shortages that have plagued the former Soviet republics of Belarus and Ukraine since the end of the war.

[cut to exterior view as camera PANS across identical single-story houses]

AD (voice over): These modest houses seem unremarkable at first glance, and so they are.  They could be located anywhere from Moscow to Los Angeles.  What makes them unique is the speed with which they were built.  Just a month ago, the street you're looking at looked like this.

[cut to exterior view as camera PANS across empty field]

AD (voice over): In just thirty days, an entire village of five hundred houses complete with indoor plumbing and hot and cold running water was built in a vacant field.  In another month, another five hundred houses just like them will be built in an adjacent field.

[cut to exterior view as camera FOLLOWS moving van pulling up to house]

AD (voice over): Already the newly-built houses have been purchased by people fleeing a city still bearing the scars of war and rebellion.

[cut to interior view as camera ANGLES on Gradenko family]

MAXIM GRADENKO: When we first heard about it, we couldn't believe it was true.  I never thought I could afford my own house on my salary.

[cut to interior view as camera ANGLES on Maxim and Natalia Gradenko carrying folding table through front door]

AD (voice over): A typical two-bedroom house in Kiev can go for as much as fifty thousand zlotys.  The Gradenkos bought theirs for ten thousand, with a five hundred zloty down payment and monthly payments of one hundred zlotys.  The Gradenkos' new house, together with its four hundred ninety-nine counterparts, was the brainchild of this man: Albert Speer.

[cut to interior view of office as camera ANGLES on Albert Speer standing at drafting table]

AD (voice over):  Herr Speer is best known as the architect who designed the Bundestag building in Berlin and its counterparts in the capitals of Poland's other devos.

[cut to exterior views of neoclassical buildings in Berlin, Konigsberg, Lwow, Breslau, Wilno]

[cut to interior view of office as camera ANGLES on Albert Speer]

ALBERT SPEER: In a way, it was a logical development of my work on the legislative buildings.  They were all basically patterened after the original in Berlin, and it got to the point where I could just call up my suppliers and order so many standard-size windows, doors, wall panels, even corninthian columns.  When the Ukrainian government asked me to assist them with the housing shortage, it was no great feat to apply the same principles to single-family dwellings.

[cut to exterior view as SUCCESSIVE STILL SHOTS show a row of houses being assembled]

AS (voice over): It's rather like working on an assembly line, only instead of television sets or cars we're building houses.  I call them volkshäuser.

[cut to exterior view as camera PANS across identical single-story houses]

AD (voice over): The Ukrainians have named this first village of assembly-line houses Speerburg in honor of their designer.  The devo's Ministry of Housing has announced plans to build thirty thousand volkshäuser over the next year in cities across the Ukraine.

[cut to studio as camera ANGLES on Danilecki]

AD:  Herr Speer is currently in Minsk at the invitation of the Belarus Ministry of Housing.  Coming up next, the growing reaction to the controversial Zagorski Memorial Act.


DBTL 33: Anniversary

Warsaw, Polish Devo, Polish Commonwealth
30 June 1946

"All that we know for certain," said War Minister Stanislaw Skwarazinski, "is that Stalin died some time in the last forty-eight hours."

There was a long pause while the other three men tried to digest his statement.  It was a lot to digest, too.  Stalin had been absolute ruler of the Soviet Union for over fifteen years, during which time he had remade the country in his own image: mendacious, paranoid, ruthless and brutal.  They were still discovering new mass graves in the former Soviet republics of Belarus and Ukraine after a year's effort.

President Josef Beck finally said, "Do we know what he died *of*?"

"We don't know," said Skwarazinski, "but we can guess.  In April 'Pravda' announced the discovery of a massive conspiracy among the country's doctors to assassinate Stalin.  Since then, reportedly, the only man Stalin trusted with his medical care was a geneticist named Lysenko.  The fact that Lysenko has disappeared since Stalin's death may be a sign that he was involved somehow."

"What sort of condition is the country's government in?" asked Prime Minister Edward Raczynski.

"Ever since the latest round of purges began last summer," said Skwarazinski, "we've had a difficult time keeping track of who is still in power and who isn't.  The Cheka, which is currently called the Ministry of State Security, was last known to be under the control of V. Abakumov, though of course that may have changed by now.  The post of Foreign Minister has been held for the last five months by A. Gromyko.  The Red Army is currently under the command of General V. Gordov.  'Pravda' seems to have ceased publication for the time being, and all the radio stations have been playing funeral marches nonstop since yesterday morning, though no actual announcement has been made, so we have nothing official to go on.  Our listening posts in Karelia and Belarus have picked up coded radio traffic indicating that several military units are converging on Moscow, though the identities of those units are unknown at present.  It seems safe to say that some sort of power struggle is going on, though we're not sure who the players are, and of course we have no idea how it will turn out.  As soon as we hear anything definite, I'll pass it along."

Beck was thoughtful as he said, "Do any of you have any suggestions about what our official reaction should be?"

First Marshal Heinz Guderian said, "We could offer the Soviets our congratulations and our sincere wish that their late leader stay dead."

"With a wooden stake and a hammer to help make sure," added Skwarazinski.

"Seriously, though," said Raczynski, "we can't really have an official reaction until someone in the USSR admits that he's dead."

"I'll tell you what we *can* do," said Beck.  "We can go ahead with our own Victory Day celebration.  I think the timing here is just too good to pass up.  We may not be able to comment on Stalin directly, but we can remind everybody, including the Bolsheviks, that this is the ninth anniversary of Röhm's death.  A man who seized control of his country, murdered his political opponents, terrorized the people he ruled, ruined his country's economy, launched an unprovoked attack on Poland, suffered defeat, and died with his countrymen cursing his name, and with his crimes exposed for all the world to see.  That is how Röhm is remembered by posterity, and I doubt whether anyone will fail to draw the appropriate analogy."


DBTL 33 1/3: You Spin Me Right Round

Warsaw, Polish Devo, Polish Commonwealth
3 July 1946

"That's got to be the second largest bagel I've ever seen," said Shlomo Kaminsky.

"A bit overdone as well," added Ringo Gold.

"Very funny," said Leonid, their manager.  His heavy eyebrows drew together as he glared at the musicians and shook the vinyl disk at them.  "Mr. Banchek himself explained it all to me.  This is a type of record that's just been developed by the Columbia Record Company.  The disk rotates at a speed of thirty-three and a third revolutions per minute, so that up to thirty minutes of sound can be recorded on each side.  Mr Banchek has licensed the technology from Columbia, and he wants the Vontzim to record Europe's first long-playing record."

"But Leo," said Hershel Grynszpan, "we haven't *got* any songs that are thirty minutes long."

Leonid, annoyed at being called Leo, said, "So you'll play lots of songs.  It'll be just like going to a Vontzim concert.  People will love it."

"And you know," Shlomo pointed out, "the reason all our songs are so short is so they'll fit on the 78 rpm records.  You know that version of 'Free as a Bird' we close our shows with, the one where we jam for ten minutes after the last verse?  We'll be able to put that on the record."

"Hey, that's right," Leon Svirsky said with sudden enthusiasm.  "We could even record 'In the Garden of Eden'!"

Leon's bandmates groaned in unison.  Leon's endless, formless improvisational piece had become a running gag among the other three.  Shlomo could easily see Leon expanding the song to take up a whole thirty-minute record side.  He also had an uneasy feeling that Leon would not let go of the idea until he had made it happen.  Shlomo feared for the future of the recorded music industry.

Hoping to distract Leon for the time being, Shlomo said, "All right, Leonid, you've talked us into it.  When do you want to start recording?"

"After we get back from our Baltic tour this month," said the manager.  "Mr. Banchek wants you to do the recordings in his studio in Odessa.  He figures you're going to need at least a week in the studio to record enough music.  Then we can time the record's release to coincide with your arena tour in the fall.  Not only that, Mr. Banchek says that Columbia might even release the record in America to coincide with your tour there."

That made Shlomo and the others sit up and take notice!  America was still the entertainment Mecca of the world; no performer could truly say he had made the big time until he had won an audience in America.

"Where are we going, boys?" Shlomo called out.

"To the top!" the others chorused.

"Which top?" he demanded.

"The BIG top!"


DBTL 34: Money Changes Everything

Warsaw, Polish Devo, Polish Commonwealth
10 July 1946

Wladislaw Sikorski no longer feared being seen with Boleslaw Piasecki.  That fear had evaporated half an hour earlier in the heat of Sikorski's anger.  Now he made his way through the corridors of the nondescript Warsaw office building that, for the time being, housed the Polish Devo's Sejm.

Functionally, Piasecki's office was identical to that of the Sejm's eighty or so other back-benchers.  However, no other office had the lightning bolt of the National Socialist Polish Workers Party affixed to its outer door, and no other office had a uniformed Naso thug standing guard outside.

Sikorski marched up to the thug and said, "Tell your boss I want to see him."

The thug sneered, "The Duce ain't seeing no one."

Piasecki had clearly chosen the guard for sheer massiveness.  The top of his closely-cropped head was level with the door's lintel, and his bulk nearly obscured the door itself.  However, he proved to be just as susceptible as any lesser man to a sharp groin-kick followed by a blow to the nose and a kick to the knee.

As the thug lay curled up and bleeding on the floor, Sikorski debated kicking in the office door.  He decided against it, since the office belonged to the government rather than the Nasos.  Instead, he turned the knob and quietly swung open the unlocked door.

Sikorski was not surprised to find that Piasecki's office was decorated from floor to ceiling with Naso banners, various lightning-bolt embossed artifacts, and the obligatory life-size color portrait of Piasecki himself.  The outer office had two desks manned with bespectacled clerks whose uniforms did nothing to make up for their obvious lack of physical prowess.  The guardian thug outside had managed to make his black uniform short pants look intimidating.  The clerks achieved the opposite feat of being rendered ridiculous by their own shorts.

The two clerks made nearly identical ineffectual objections as Sikorski strode past them and through another door into Piasecki's private office.  The "Duce" was sitting at his desk, staring at the same newspaper Sikorski himself had been reading not long before.  He looked up as Sikorski entered, and began to open his mouth with what his expression made clear would be a peeved outburst at being disturbed.

"Jesus, Mary and Saint Joseph!" Sikorski exclaimed before Piasecki was able to make a sound.  "How could you possibly be so unutterably stupid?"

"I, I, I didn't know," Piasecki stuttered out.

"Didn't know?" Sikorski bellowed.  "Didn't know that you were getting your money from the NKVD?  Didn't know that you were a Goddamned traitor?"  It was all there in the paper.  The shadowy power struggle convulsing the Soviet Union had disgorged something called the "Gromyko Report" detailing a systematic plot to undermine the Polish Commonwealth.  It had all been there: the names, the dates, and the precise amounts of untracable US currency.

"It's all a pack of lies being spread by Jews and--" Piasecki began.

"Dolt!  Oaf!  Ignorant bloody fool!  Do you have any idea what you've done?" Sikorski screamed.  He wanted to strike Piasecki, but his hand was starting to ache from dealing with the guard.  "You've wrecked me!  You've wrecked Poland!  Bloody hell, I *knew* I should have dealt with Mikolajczyk, I knew it!"

"We can deal with this," Piasecki insisted.  "All we have to do is shut down the paper and arrest the staff--"

"And we'll be staring up the gun-barrels of Beck's Federal troops before night falls," Sikorski interrupted again.

"We can fight them!" said Piasecki desperately.  "I've got fifty thousand men ready to rise up--"

Aching hand or no, Sikorski had to slap the fool.  As Piasecki stared at him in stunned silence, the white handprint on his face slowly turning red, Sikorski spoke in a deceptively calm voice.  "Get this through your pointed head, Piasecki.  You and your gang of cut-throats are not worth a civil war.  I'm going to walk out that door and begin the hopeless task of trying to form a new government.  If that means letting the Sejm vote to expel you all, and letting the chips fall where they may, then that's what I'll do.  You're on your own now."

Sikorski left the stricken Naso chieftain, and walked past the two dumbfounded clerks.  He paused at the outer office door, and with one savage motion tore off the red disk with its jagged white sigil.  He sent the wooden token spinning through the air like the discus it resembled, and it rebounded off of Piasecki's head before sailing out through his open office window.


DBTL 35: The Ideal Man

Los Angeles, California
11 June 1946

Ayn Rand was of two minds about attending Orwell's talk that night.  On the one hand, his  recently published book _1937_ was the most brilliant expose of the evils of her homeland's collectivist regime she had ever read.  On the other hand, Orwell was an outspoken Socialist, and thus had to be considered evil himself.

In the end, it was her husband Frank who persuaded her to go.  They had few enough opportunities to go out together, and she *had* admired the book, so she finally decided it would only be fair to go and hear what the man had to say for himself.

Orwell began by describing the discovery of the first mass grave at Kuropaty in the former Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.  When his report reached Marshal Guderian, that worthy man had assigned Orwell the task of investigating the find.  Orwell and his small team had quickly discovered a number of other mass graves in the area, and they began interviewing the local inhabitants, then people in the Minsk area who had had friends and relatives disappear in the night, and finally a few former Party members and NKVD agents who were willing to speak on condition of anonymity.

_1937_ was the final result of Orwell's investigations, a horrifyingly dispassionate and objective account of life in Minsk during the Great Terror.  Ayn found herself becoming more and more confused.  Here was a man who probably knew more about the evils of collectivism than many who had actually lived through them.  He had taken what he knew, and used it to compose an unsparingly graphic description of a nightmare come to life.  And yet, despite all that he had seen, all that he had learned, he continued to advocate a collectivist doctrine.  When Orwell had finished his talk and opened the floor to questions, Rand had taken the opportunity to confront him with the contradiction.

"Probably the most common misconception I've heard since coming to America," Orwell replied in his quietly penetrating voice, "is that Socialism and Stalinism are basically the same thing.  The truth is that Stalinism has no more to do with Socialism than Capitalism has.  In fact, Stalinism and Capitalism have more in common with each other than either has with Socialism.  If you were to take the men surrounding Stalin and compare them with, say, the board of directors of the Standard Oil Company, you would have a difficult time telling them apart.  Both groups are concerned only with their own aggrandizement and are totally indifferent to the welfare of the men working under them.  Both have resorted to violence, even murder, to suppress any resistance to their policies.  Both have subverted the power of the government to serve their own ends.  The only difference is that the Capitalists no longer have absolute power over peoples' lives.  Not all of them, at any rate, though they certainly do seem to be trying.  Next question, please?  The young man in the gray pullover?"

As far as Ayn was concerned, that was that.  Whatever Orwell may have done to expose the evils of Communism, he was thoroughly corrupted by collectivism.  After the talk had ended, Ayn had grabbed Frank and gone right out the door.  Frank had missed lunch that day, however, so they had gone to a restaurant across the street for dinner.

While she was waiting for her food to arrive, Ayn heard a commotion stirring through the restaurant.  Turning to look, she saw Orwell enter, surrounded by a small party of second-handers.  She was turning back when one of the second-handers had exclaimed, "Oh look there, it's Ayn Rand!"

"Ah, the outspoken young lady," Orwell had genially observed.  "Still think there's no difference between me and Joseph Stalin?"

"A collectivist is a collectivist," Ayn had declared.

"And what makes you think Joseph Stalin is a collectivist?"

The statement was so utterly nonsensical that Ayn found herself momentarily stunned.  "It's obvious!" she finally blurted.

"He certainly doesn't behave like one," said Orwell.  "He behaves like every petty, brutal tyrant that's ever lived.  In the Soviet Union they call him the Boss, and that's what he is, boss of the biggest company town that's ever been built."  In the heat of his passion, Orwell's carefully cultivated proletarian facade was disappearing, and his accent grew more refined.  "He rules it with an iron fist, just like every other boss of every other company town, and he rules it for the welfare of himself and no one else.  True, he calls himself a Marxist, but anyone can call himself anything he likes.  If Stalin is a collectivist, then so is every capitalist on Wall Street."

Ayn wanted to speak up, to denounce the way he was twisting words to mean that black was white, but she found herself captivated by his piercing eyes, and unable to speak.

"If you wish to fight injustice, Miss Rand," he concluded, "then you should pay less attention to the labels it wears, and more to the weapons it employs."

And in that moment, Ayn realized that she had found a man who would stand by his principles no matter the cost, no matter the odds.  He was Howard Roark made flesh and blood.  She didn't care about her husband, or his wife, or that he was a Socialist, or that he wore that silly little mustache (well, not much, anyway, and besides she was sure that she could persuade him to shave it off).

Ayn Rand had finally found the Ideal Man, and she would not rest until she had made him hers.


DBTL 36: Meet the New Boss

From: Stanislaw Skwarazinski, Minister of War
To: Josef Beck, President of the Commonwealth
CC: Edward Raczynski, Heinz Guderian
Date: 18 July 1946
Subject: Political Situation in USSR

Josef:

We have received confirmation from several independent sources that the recent disturbances within the USSR have abated, and that a stable political situation has emerged.

The dominant organ within the USSR now appears to be the Ministry of Defense, headed by General (now Commissar) Vasili Gordov.  This is apparently an institutionalization of the military junta which now effectively controls the USSR.  This control is reflected in the newly-established Joint Chiefs of Staff, consisting of Gordov's co-rulers Marshal Rybalchenko, Air Marshal Novikov, and Admiral Nichayev.

 Viktor Abakumov, former head of the MGB (Cheka), has been arrested for complicity in Stalin's death, following the release of testimony by Dr. Trofim Lysenko, who has confessed to murdering Stalin on Abakumov's orders.  It seems more likely that Stalin's death at Lysenko's hands was accidental, and that Gordov has falsely accused Abakumov in the time-honored Soviet way in order to remove him from power.

The MGB, meanwhile, has been carved up into at least four parts.  Foreign intelligence and covert operations are now supervised by the Central Intelligence Secretariat, which is under the control of the Ministry of Defense.  Foreign visitors and immigration are now supervised by the Immigration and Naturalization Secretariat, which is under the control of the Foreign Ministry, still headed by Andrei Gromyko.  The MGB's judicial functions, including control of the labor camps (which are rapidly emptying of inmates), are now under the control of the Ministry of Justice, while the MGB's police functions are now under the control of the Interior Ministry.

The Communist Party still retains its custodial role over certain state organs, including the Agricultural Ministry and the Ministry of Nationalities, and still maintains control over the parties of the remaining Soviet Republics.  The new General Secretary of the CPSU is Anastas Mikoyan, who was most probably chosen for the position by Gordov due to his pliability.

The remainder of the Soviet government is under the direct control of the President of the USSR, Lazar Kaganovich, who is in turn under the control of Gordov.  Kaganovich was making a state visit to Peiping during Stalin's death, and so was able to avoid involvement in the subsequent power struggle in Moscow.  When the military junta under Gordov gained control, Kaganovich was brought back from Peiping to add legitimacy to the new arrangement.

It is still too early to tell which domestic and foreign policies the junta will follow.  However, an article appeared in last Tuesday's _Pravda_ which may indicate a change in the USSR's China policy.  The article, "Ominous Deviations", attacked the Chinese Communist leadership in general, and Party Chairman Chou En-Lai in particular, for "unacceptable deviations from the proper course of Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist thought".  This may be a prelude to a change from Stalin's policy of attempting to mediate a settlement between the Nationalists and Communists, to a policy of openly aiding one side against the other.  Judging from the tone of the article, Gordov may have decided to support the Nationalists.

Any future developments in the evolution of the Soviet government will be communicated as quickly as possible.

Best regards,

Skwarazinski


DBTL 37: Bad to the Bone

Bone, Algeria, French Empire
24 August 1946

The soldier snapped off a sharp salute and said, "The prisoner Juin is here as ordered."

Major General Charles de Gaulle returned the soldier's salute, but his attention was focused on the prisoner.  In the month since de Gaulle had last seen him, Alphonse Juin had been transformed from a confident conspirator to a demoralized traitor, and the change had not improved him.

The sight of Juin took de Gaulle back to that earlier meeting.  In answer to a brief, cryptic message, de Gaulle had gone to a quiet, out-of-the-way bistro in the French quarter of Tunis.  After perhaps a quarter of an hour spent nursing a cup of coffee by himself, de Gaulle had been joined by a man in a white cotton suit and panama hat.  Despite the anonymity of his clothing, de Gaulle had immediately recognized his companion as Brigadier General Alphonse Juin, commander of the French garrison at Bone in Algeria.

The sight of a fellow general skulking around in civilian clothing a hundred and fifty kilometers from his post had raised immediate suspicions in de Gaulle, and Juin had quickly confirmed the worst of them.

"That vile Jew has gone too far!" Juin had declared emphatically.  "It is not to be endured!  It *will* not be endured!"

"I take it then," de Gaulle had blandly replied, "that you do not wholeheartedly agree with Premier Blum's new Algerian policy."

"Policy!" Juin had said scornfully.  "Madness, rather!  That Christ-killer and his godless allies will not be happy until they have gift-wrapped Algeria and delivered it into the waiting hands of the bloodthirsty infidels!  Violette's scheme was bad enough, but this is a hundred times worse!  Granting full citizenship to every Mohammedan in Algeria!  It is the Jew's final revenge upon the faith he has so perversely rejected!  That can be the only possible rationale!"

As it happened, de Gaulle agreed with Juin about the lack of merit of Blum's proposal.  Algeria's Muslims were simply not ready for full citizenship, and there would be no end of trouble if the Chambers voted to ratify the Blum Plan.  However, there was a hysterical edge to Juin's protests that de Gaulle found unpleasantly similar to the rhetoric of the late unlamented Ernst Röhm and his Brownshirts.  He said to Juin, "The French people have grown weary of the endless bloodletting in Algeria, and weary as well of General Weygand and his eternally receding 'light at the end of the tunnel'.  That is why they voted Blum and his Socialists into power, to end the conflict once and for all.  If the Chambers vote to enact Blum's scheme, then that is the will of the French people."

Juin snorted.  "It is the will of the corrupt politicians, and of their Jew masters.  We who have fought for so long to restore order to Algeria will not allow our work to be undone by these criminals.  The time for words is over, old comrade; now is the time for action!  It is time for patriotic, Christian Frenchmen to take back their country's government!  We of Algeria are ready to strike.  We have allies in Morocco who will heed our call, and friends within France itself who will do what needs to be done.  You are a man of patriotism, sir, and you stand at the head of our forces in Tunisia.  When the day comes to take back France, will you stand with us?"

De Gaulle stared unblinking at Juis as the latter's ringing oratory shrank away into nothing, and his fierce expression lost its excitement to became progressively more uneasy.  Finally de Gaulle said, "You call Blum's proposal madness, yet you somehow fail to see that your own is madder still.  France is not Germany, to cringe submissively before a self-proclaimed leader and let him lead her to her destuction.  If Monsieur Laval -- it is Laval, is it not?  -- thinks to make himself a new Napoleon, then he does not understand the nation he seeks to control.  France is no longer the uncertain, self-doubting nation that stood unmoving while the Germans ejected her from the Rhineland thirteen years ago.  France has faced the Germans in the field of battle, and prevailed.  France has stood eyeball-to-eyeball with the Italians in Africa and the Balkans, and prevailed again.  France is a great nation, conscious of her greatness, and of her rightousness.  A great nation will not lie passively and let a small man like Laval attempt to master her.  France will defend her honor, and she will prevail once more!"

De Gaulle had risen from his table and said, "You have done good service in the past, Juin, so I will allow you to return to Bone.  But I urge you and your so-called allies to give up this mad scheme of yours, for if you do not, you will all come to ruin."  Leaning forward, de Gaulle added, "I will see to it personally."  He had turned away from Juin then, left the bistro, and he had not looked back.

Now it was a month later.  Leon Blum was still Premier, and Pierre Laval was on trial for his life.  The ports of Algeria and Morocco lay under the guns of blockading Loyalist ships.  In the south, the Secret Army Organization was being driven back, commune by commune, by the Free Algerian Army.  In Bone, de Gaulle himself was triumphant, and was preparing to move against his next objective, the Secret Army stronghold of Constantine.

But first, he had some unfinished business to take care of.

Alphonse Juin seemed to have grown smaller.  Partly, of course, it was because the prison uniform he now wore had been intended for a larger man.  Mostly, though, it was due to the aroma of defeat which clung both to him personally and to the cause to which he had rashly pledged his honor.  Juin stood silently before de Gaulle, face expressionless, eyes cast downward.

"When last we met," de Gaulle said at last, "I promised that I would personally see to it that you would come to ruin, and I have kept that promise."

Juin interrupted.  "Must you gloat?  Is it not enough that you have betrayed France?"

De Gaulle was momentarily struck speechless by the brazen effrontery of Juin's comment.  At last he said, "You and I, Juin, seem to have very different ideas about what constitutes 'France'.  I have remained loyal to the chosen representatives of the French people.  You, on the other hand, seem to feel that the French people may be overruled if they act contrary to your wishes."

"The people are cattle!" Juin snarled.  "They are sheep!  France is more than a rabble of ignorant peasants and vulgar mechanics.  France is an ideal, a symbol of Christian civilization, a shining city on a hill!  *That* is the France I serve!"

"I see," said de Gaulle.  "You love France, but you hate the French.  And there is no contradiction, because the one has nothing to do with the other.  That strikes me as being an excellent rationale for doing whatever you please."

"You cannot understand," Juin sneered.  "It is beyond your comprehension."

"I understand perfectly," said de Gaulle.  "I understand that you and your allies are a danger to France, and when you have been eliminated France will be a safer place."  To the escorting soldier de Gaulle said, "Return the prisoner to his cell."

As Juin was led away, he called out, "Long live France!"

"France will indeed live long," de Gaulle said to himself after Juin was gone.  "But you will not."


DBTL 38: As Sweet As Any Harmony

Gevena, Switzerland
18 September 1946

Werner Heisenberg was engrossed by an article in Time magazine describing the frenzied crowds that were greeting the Vontzim upon their arrival in New York City.  He was a trifle startled when the door suddenly swung open, for reflexes honed by five years under the Röhm regime and another four years directing a top secret military project are not easily put aside.  He relaxed when he saw it was Stanislaw Skwarazinski, Minister of War for the Polish Commonwealth.

"Herr Minister, what news?" he asked Skwarazinski.

"The news is good, Herr Director," Skwarazinski answered.  "Negotiations have been successfully concluded.  We will all be present at the conference room tomorrow to sign the treaty creating the League of Nations Atomic Control Commission.  The terms are substantially those we have been pursuing for the last year."

Heisenberg closed his eyes in relief.  "That is good."  For the last six years, ever since the publication of his paper on uranium fission, he had been prey to fears of  Europe being wracked by wars fought with atomic weapons.  Those fears had grown ever greater as Poland and the other Great Powers had pursued their own independent atomic weapons programs.  Just one year ago, he had been sleepless with anxiety as he followed Mussolini's attempt to blackmail his way into control over Yugoslavia, and as the other three Atomic Powers had counter-blackmailed him into withdrawing.  The whole episode remained unknown to the world's general population, who to this day were unaware of the existence of atomic weapons.

Still, that time had been the low point.  Mussolini had fallen from power shortly thereafter, and the new government of Marshal Badoglio had been receptive to Skwarazinski's proposal for international control of atomic weapons.  Prime Minister Attlee had concurred as well, and the last impediment had been removed with the fall of the Weygand ministry and the return of Leon Blum to power in France.

"I cannot tell you," Heisenberg continued, "what a relief it will be to have this burden lifted from my shoulders at long last."

Now the glowing expression on the War Minister's face dimmed.  "Ah, Herr Director, there is one final item of business from the negotiations that you ought to know."

Heinsenberg felt the blood freezing in his veins.  "Is there something wrong?"

"Oh no, nothing wrong, it's just that, ah, when it came time to choose the new head of the commission, the delegates all felt that, ah ..."

Heisenberg was dumbfounded.  "They chose ME?"

"Well, you *did* write that paper, and you *are* the Director of the Sklodowska Institute."

"Why not Einstein, or Fermi, or Bohr?"

"Einstein and Bohr know nothing of the work that has been done in this field, and the Italians would never agree to Fermi.  I'm afraid it has to be you, Herr Director.  The delegates could agree on no other candidate."

As he gave the matter consideration, Heisenberg found that the prospect was not quite so terrifying as he had initially thought.  After all, his new job would be to *stop* the terror weapons from being used, and that had to be a more noble pursuit than building them in the first place.  And from a strictly scientific point of view, it would be wonderful to follow developments in the field firsthand, instead of having to rely on military intelligence briefings of dubious provenance.

"Very well, Herr Minister," Heisenberg said at last, "I will accept this appointment."

"Excellent, Herr Director, that is excellent.  After the ceremony tomorrow morning, you can meet with Attlee's intelligence people.  He says they've got some fellow named Kurchatov who's turned up in New Delhi claiming to be the head of a Soviet bomb project."


DBTL 39: Every Breath You Take

Alice Springs, Australia
4 November 1946

There are two seasons in the Australian outback, hot and hotter.  With the coming of spring, Klaus Fuchs knew he was in for another scorching summer.

The trouble with the British was that they had gotten so used to running their empire on a shoestring that they would economize on the most ridiculous things.  Like air conditioning.  Here he was in the middle of a scientific project that had, all told, cost the British government almost five hundred million pounds, and they couldn't even splurge on air conditioning for the laboratories in the middle of the vast, stinking Australian desert.

Ah well, a man had to deal with these sorts of inconveniences.  At any rate, it was still bearable in the daytime.  When he had first arrived in Alice three years before, he had purchased one of the peculiar local hats with the cork-tipped tassels hanging down from around the brim, and in the summer it shielded him from the worst of the sun's heat.  He was walking through one of the typically dusty residential streets on the way to one of his usual dead drops, a rubbish bin, when he noticed a young man slouching next to a wall nearby.  He was dressed like a local workman, except for his shoes, which were not the sort of shoes a local workman would wear.  Fuchs had just decided not to make the drop when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

Fuchs turned slowly to find himself looking at an exceptionally ordinary man with an exceptionally ordinary face.  "Good afternoon, Herr Fuchs," said the ordinary man.  "My name's Smiley, George Smiley.  I'm with the Atomic Control Commission."

Fuchs knew without having to look that the slouching young man he had seen was no longer slouching, but was standing quietly a meter or two behind him.  He sighed a slight, noiseless sigh and said, "Good afternoon, Mr. Smiley.  How may I help you?"

"You and I will be going into that question in considerable detail later on this evening, Herr Fuchs," said Smiley.  "For now, I would like you to accompany us to our rooms."

"Are they air-conditioned?" asked Fuchs.

"I'm afraid not," said Smiley sympathetically.  "We're on rather a tight budget."

Sighing again, Fuchs followed Smiley up the street.


DBTL 40A: The Long Auf Wiederseh'n - Book One

Hello, My Lovely

Danzig, Polish Devo, Polish Commonwealth
22 May 1947

It had been a good long while since anybody had come through my office door except me and the cleaning lady.  I had gotten into the habit of spending my days conducting research on how long it took a bottle of schnapps to put me under my desk.

I usually postponed my chemical research until after the day's mail came, and it had been late that Thursday morning, so I was in an unaccustomed state of sobriety when the girl came through the door.

If she had waited until the afternoon I might have fooled myself into thinking I was schnappsgoggling, but when I saw her I knew that it was nature and not alcohol that had given her a face like an angel.  She had dark hair and a pair of eyes that could give the sky lessons on how to be blue.  A modestly tailored skirt and jacket were arranged across an immodest figure, and sensible shoes supported legs that deserved better.

Those astonishing eyes quickly swept across the architectural disappointment that was my office before coming to rest on my face.  I couldn't help wishing I'd bothered to shave sometime in the last few days.  A pair of lips that were unenhanced by lipstick and didn't need it parted, and a breathy voice said, "I'm looking for Herr Bednarski."

"You've found him," I said.  "What can I do for you, Fraulein ..."

"Strassmann.  Marta Strassmann.  I'm hoping you can locate my father."

"If you want to find a missing person, Fraulein, you should go to the police," I said.  "I understand some of them specialize in that kind of thing."

"My father has been missing now for three years, Herr Bednarski," said Fraulein Strassmann.

I was about to make a witty remark about how the police usually needed that long just to fill out a missing persons report when my mind suddenly connected the name Strassmann to the year 1944.  What I ended up saying was, "Are we talking about Professor Fritz Strassmann?"

The look of hope that brightened her face made her look like an angel that had just remembered where it had misplaced its halo.  "You've heard of my father then, Herr Bednarski?"

"Everybody in Danzig has heard of your father, Fraulein Strassmann.  If you want my advice, you'll walk out that door and carry on with your life.  Fritz Strassmann is dead."

Fraulein Strassmann's eyebrows drew together, and her face now resembled an angel that had just decided to invade Hell and beat the stuffing out of every demon it met.  "That's what everybody else says, but they never found his body, or the bodies of any of the other passengers, or any wreckage from the ship.  I'm determined to find him, Herr Bednarski, alive or dead.  If you won't help me, then I'll just find another private investigator who will."

She had turned on the heels of her sensible shoes and had her hand on the doorknob when I said, "All right, Fraulein Strassmann, you've talked me into it.  I charge two hundred zlotys a day plus expenses, with a thousand up front."  After all, if she was determined to waste her money, better she should waste it on me than on one of my less scrupulous colleagues.  And there was even a small chance that I might find her father.

*****************************

With Fraulein Strassmann's thousand zlotys adding some comforting heft to my billfold, I set out for the Danzig Municipal Lending Library.  There, after payment of a nominal sum, I spent a fascinating afternoon reading three year old newspaper accounts of the disappearance of Professor Strassmann and his fellow passengers.

On the morning of 6 June 1944, Strassmann and four other passengers had set out from Danzig on what was supposed to be a three hour tour of the Baltic coastline.  A storm had blown up during those three hours, and when it ended the next day the tiny ship had vanished from the face of the earth.  In addition to Strassmann, who was a respected member of the Maria Sklodowska Institute in Berlin, the passengers had included a wealthy industrialist from Breslau named Max Silberberg and his wife, the film actress Emmy Sonnemann, and a farm girl from Czechowice named Janina Wojas.  In addition, the ship's captain, Joachim Gromburg, and first mate, Adolf Gilligan, were also missing and presumed dead.

The disappearance of the ship (which Gromburg had unaccountably named the _Minnie_ after the American cartoon mouse) had created a considerable stir.  The Silberbergs, Sonnemann and Strassmann would each have merited the two week search and rescue operation that followed.  The three of them together had insured that no metaphorical stone was left unturned by the Commonwealth Navy.

At any rate, no stone that had been within the Navy's reach had been left unturned.  The _Minnie_ had disappeared during President Smetona's final illness, when Poland and Lithuania were literally not on speaking terms with each other.  I ran across a line in one story quoting a Navy spokesman named Canaris denouncing the Lithuanians' refusal to allow Polish ships to search in Lithuania's territorial waters.  Then had come the Second Polish-Soviet War, and everyone had forgotten about the _Minnie_.  As far as I could tell, nobody had ever actually conducted a search of the area around the Lithuanian coast.

I left the library a contented man.  When I reported to Fraulein Strassmann the next day, I'd be able to give her a hopeful report, and present her with clear evidence that I was doing my level best to earn my fee.  Of course, the chance of turning up anything by searching the Lithuanian coast was practically zero, but I had a feeling my client wouldn't let that deter her.  I might well be looking at a good week's work, maybe two, before Fraulein Strassman's patience or money gave out.  I could catch up on a lot of overdue bills, return to my landlord's good graces, and spend a leisurely time relaxing at sea.

*****************************

I was in my office the next morning looking up charter boats in the telephone classifieds when there was a knock on my door.  At first I thought it might be another client, but my luck is never that good.  As soon as my door opened and I got a good look at the man who entered, the word "police" popped out of my brain like a punch card from General Kowalewski's talos.

"Herr Bednarski?" he said, in that accusing way of confirming your identity that all policemen quickly master.

"What tipped you off?" I asked.  "Was it that big sign on my door that says 'Bednarski Investigations'?"

"A wise guy," he sneered, making it clear that in his world being a wise guy was only one step up from running pyramid schemes.  "My name's Wolfgang Hochstetter," he continued, pulling an ID card from an inside pocket of his cheap suit jacket.  "Atomic Control Commission."

The ID card had that silly orbiting-electrons sigil that the ACC uses, along with Agent Hochstetter's name and a blurry photo of a vaguely humanoid being.  I gave it a cool once-over even though both of us knew that I'd never be able to tell the real thing from a library card.

"If you're here about my atom bomb," I said, "I already sold it to the Belgians."

"I'm here to talk to you about your new client," Hochstetter said, ignoring my sally.

"Specifically, you're here to tell me that she's not really Fritz Strassmann's daughter," I said.  "I figured that one out a while back.  Professor Strassmann never had a daughter named Marta."

Hochstetter glared at me, but I could tell I'd gone up a tiny notch in his estimation.

"All right then, smart guy, who is she?"

"Since you know and I don't," I said, "it would be pointless for me to answer.  How about you?"

The conversation wasn't going quite the way Hochstetter wanted it to, but he evidently decided to let that pass.  He said, "Her name is Norma Jean Baker.  She works for the American Office of Strategic Services."

"So why would the OSS want to find the _Minnie_?  Do they want Emmy Sonnemann to do training films for them?"

Hochstetter gave me another look at his Glare face.  "They want Fritz Strassmann to help them design their own atom bomb."

"Then they're in for a disappointment.  Like I told Fraulein Baker, Professor Strassmann is dead.  They all are."

"If that's what you believe," said Hochstetter, "then why are you looking for him?"

"For two hundred zlotys a day plus expenses," I said with what I hoped was disarming honesty.  "I get paid the same whether I find him or not."

"Taking money from a foreign government doesn't sound very patriotic to me."

Now it was my turn to glare at the ACC spook.  "I figure that the year I spent in a Polish Army uniform being shot at by the Brownshirts is all the patriotism I need to show.  You're about my age, Agent Hochstetter.  Were you in the war?  Which side?"

"I spent the war in Dachau, with my wife," said Hochstetter quietly.  "She was Jewish."

If Hochstetter was hoping to elevate my opinion of him, he succeeded.  There was a long silence, and I finally broke it by saying, "Is that it?"

Hochstetter said, "That's it.  But we're going to be watching you, gumshoe, and don't you forget it."

"I'll be sure to include it in my diary," I said.

He sneered at me again and left my office.

************************

I rang up Fraulein Strassmann/Agent Baker that afternoon to give her a status report.  I told her that I'd chartered a boat to follow the _Minnie's_ old course, and that I'd be departing the next morning.

"That's wonderful," she replied in that breathy voice.  "Where should I meet you?"

"You're not meeting me anywhere, Fraulein Strassmann.  An investigation is no place for a woman."

"Oh, Herr Bednarski," she sobbed, "I've waited so long to find my father.  I couldn't bear to wait here by myself, not knowing what was going on!  Please let me go with you, Herr Bednarski!  Please!"  Agent Baker had missed her calling; she should have been an actress.

"Very well, Fraulein Strassmann.  Be at pier 94 tomorrow at seven o'clock sharp."

Agent Baker showered me with profuse thanks before hanging up.  I had three reasons for letting her come along.  First, if I turned her down she would just follow me anyway.  Second, I wanted to have her where I could see her.  And third, I knew it would annoy Hochstetter.


DBTL 40B: The Long Auf Wiederseh'n - Book Two

The Big Shlep

Danzig, Polish Devo, Polish Commonwealth
24 May 1947

The ship I'd chartered was the _Marlin_, a small powerboat like the _Minnie_ that catered to pretty much the same tourist trade.  The captain, an old fellow named Raeder, nodded thoughtfully when I gave him our course.  "You're going after the old _Minnie_, aren't you, Herr Bednarski?"

"What makes you think so?" I said.

He gave one of those wheezy chuckles that old sailors seem partial to, and said, "Every charter boat captain in Danzig knows the _Minnie's_ last reported position.  Some of us make a point of passing through it.  Gives the punters something to ooh and aah over.  You're the first charter I've ever had who wanted to make for it on purpose."

The old salt was sharp, I had to give him that.  "Aren't you curious to know what happened to her?"

"Oh, I expect so," Captain Raeder said with a sigh.  "You know, I told old Joachim that he oughtn't to go out.  Awful weather we were having that week, but it cleared up Tuesday morning, and he figured he could do one of his three-hour coastal tours."

"You knew Captain Gromburg?"

"You could say that," Raeder said with another of his wheezy chuckles.  "Met him back in the old days, when he was a crewman on the _Moltke_ with the old High Seas Fleet.  Joined the merchant marine after the war, knocked around a bit.  That's where he met that sidekick of his."

"You mean Gilligan?" I prompted.

Raeder nodded, but his expression became mournful.  "Now, I'm not a man to speak out of turn, so I won't say there was anything wrong with Gromburg and Gilligan.  Maybe the old man thought of the lad as a son, and that's all there was to it.  But there wasn't a sailor here in Danzig who couldn't tell straight off that that Gilligan was a jinx.  Every ship he served on came to a bad end, and soon as Gromburg took him on as mate on the _Minnie_ I knew she was headed for trouble."  Shaking his head at Joachim Gromburg's folly, Raeder went off to make the _Marlin_ shipshape for the cruise.

Fraulein Baker/Strassmann appeared at pier 94 at a quarter to seven, dressed in a check flannel shirt, denim slacks, and tennis shoes.  I saw Captain Raeder's eyes widen at the sight of her, but he just gave her a friendly wave and went back to stowing supplies.  After Fraulein Baker had brought her own luggage on board, she joined me on the dock and said, "Do you really think you can find my father, Herr Bednarski?"

"If I can't, Fraulein Strassmann," I assured her, "nobody can."  It was up to her to decide whether my words were calm confidence or foolish bravado.  As long as she (or the OSS) was willing to pay for my services, she could think what she liked.

It wasn't long after seven that we were pulling away from the dock.  I sat on a grubby locker and looked back as Danzig receded into the morning mist.  Fraulein Baker sat on another and did the same.

It's two hundred kilometers or so from Danzig to the coast of Lithuania.  Being a thoroughgoing landlubber, I have no idea how much that is in nautical miles.  Captain Raeder assured me he could make it there in the _Marlin_ in ten hours.  I told him to let me know when we were there.

The mist burned off in an hour or so, and as the bright May sun lit up the Baltic like a searchlight, I put on a straw hat I'd bought five years earlier in Minorca.  Fraulein Baker dug into her bag and brought out something that looked for all the world like a ten-gallon hat from a Wild West picture.

As the _Marlin_ made its way along the Prussian coast, Fraulein Baker and I mostly kept to ourselves, she staring out to sea, I making use of a fishing rod I'd found stowed on board.  I've never been one for small talk, and I'm sure Fraulein Baker wasn't eager to share long reminiscences with me about growing up with her "father".

The sun was low in the western sky when Captain Raeder came back from the wheel to tell me that we had just entered Lithuanian territorial waters.  I told him that I'd like him to steer a course north by northwest, angling away from the coast.  I pulled out a chart of the Lithuanian coast and asked him to keep me appraised of our position.

We had been under way for about two hours on our new course when the sun slid behind a band of clouds, and night began stealing upon us.  Captain Raeder suggested that we drop anchor for the night and resume our course in the morning, and I agreed.  There was no point in looking for survivors from the _Minnie_ when we couldn't see anything.

There was a small cabin belowdecks with a cot that Raeder usually slept in, which went by mutual consent to Fraulein Baker.  Raeder slung a hammock near the stern, and I unrolled a sleeping bag along the deck.  It had been a long day, and I was soon out like a light.

My first clue that all was not well was when I was awakened in the darkness by two hundred liters of seawater splashing over me.  I fought my way out of the sodden sleeping bag to find that the _Marlin_ was heaving like a college freshman after his first keg party.

"A storm's come up!" Captain Raeder shouted to me over the erratically blowing wind.  As though to prove his point, another wave came sloshing over the ship's bow.  "I had to weigh anchor!" he called again.  I was soon joined on deck by an equally sodden Fraulein Baker.  A flash of lightning was followed a few moments later by thunder, and the sky chose that dramatically opportune moment to open up on us.  The only thing that could be said for the downpour that soon had us drenched was that at least it wasn't seawater (though of course we had plenty of that washing over us as well).

"Can you tell where we're going?" I called up to Raeder.  He answered, "The storm came up from the south, but there's no telling where it's blowing from now!"

The night that followed seemed an eternity, but actually lasted only a few thousand hours (or five by my watch).  Dawn was theoretically less than an hour away when our situation became an order of magnitude worse.  Captain Raeder had begun to call out, "I think I see --" when the _Marlin_ abruptly pitched over on its side.  Raeder was thrown overboard, while Fraulein Baker and I clung to the rails that topped the ship's sides.  Another wave served to jerk the _Marlin_ in a semicircle, then roll it over on top of us.  We were trapped underneath it for far too long before another wave caused it to break apart.  I tried to fend off fragments of the ship while my life jacket dragged me up to the surface.  I was barely managing to remain afloat when I felt a hand seize my ankle and try to drag me down.  It took all the willpower I could muster to keep from kicking out, even though I knew it was one of the others trying to keep from drowning.  Instead, I tried to lever myself in the water to bring whoever it was up to the surface.  I felt like I was about to drown when the hand let go of my ankle and grabbed my arm, pulling my head back above water.  I was able to shake the water from my eyes long enough to make out Fraulein Baker's face next to mine.  Then another wave swamped us, and when it withdrew at last I realized with a shock that one of my feet had touched bottom.  We were submerged again, and this time it ended with both my feet touching firm earth.  Ten minutes later, as the sky was finally beginning to lighten in one direction (the east, obviously), Fraulein Baker and I made it up above the waterline, and collapsed onto dry land.

The next time I woke up, it was somewhat (though only somewhat) less rudely accomplished by someone standing over me, bellowing at the top of his lungs, "Skipper!  Skip-perrrrrrrrrr!"


DBTL 40C: The Long Auf Wiederseh'n - Book Three

The Little Buddy

Somewhere in the Baltic Sea
25 May 1947

The sun was glaring down on me, and there was an idiot standing nearby bellowing inanities at me, but I was alive, something I would not have given long odds on too much earlier.

I somehow found the strength to roll over, which brought my eyes into blessed shadow.  I opened them slowly and found myself graced by a closeup view of sand.  Squinting, I raised my head to give myself a better view, and found that Fraulein Baker was doing likewise from a couple meters away.

Standing equidistant from both of us, forming the third apex of an equilateral triangle, was the bellowing idiot.  He had tangled black hair that fell down past his shoulders, and an equally tangled beard that reached halfway down his chest.  He was dressed in a mix of tree bark, animal skins, and the patched-together remnants of what had once been a red jersey and white trousers, all topped off with a torn and battered sailor's cap.  Through the numerous gaps in his clothing, I could see how thin he was, looking almost like those pictures of the concentration camp inmates after Pilsudski's army crashed through the gates.

"Mein herr, are you all right?" the tattered apparition asked me, then before I could answer he had spun around and begun to bellow "SKIPPER!" again.  I knew without having to ask that I had found Adolf Gilligan.

A second figure dashed through the foliage at the edge of the beach, calling, "What is it, little buddy?"  He looked much like Gilligan, only his long hair and beard were white, and the tattered remains of his jersey were blue.  He bore very little resemblance to the newspaper photographs I had seen of portly Captain Joachim Gromburg.

"People, Skipper," Gilligan informed him, as though Gromburg were incapable of seeing for himself.  "I found people!"

"I can see that, Gilligan," Gromburg replied with irritation.  "Who are they?"

I stood up then, trying with little success to brush the sand off my trousers.  "The name's Bednarski.  I'm a private investigator.  I'm looking for the survivors of the _Minnie_."

"Well, you've found them," Gromburg confirmed.  "My name is --"

"Joachim Gromburg, and this is your first mate, Adolf Gilligan." I finished for him.  "The young lady here is my client.  She claims to be Professor Strassmann's daughter, but her real name is Norma Baker.  She's an OSS agent."

Fraulein Baker was staring at me, open-mouthed.  She finally said, "How long have you known, Herr Bednarski?"

"It took me about an hour to figure out that you weren't Strassmann's daughter, but I didn't find out your real name until I had an interesting conversation with a fellow named Hochstetter Friday morning."

"What's going on here?" Gromburg demanded, and even after all this time, he could still bark out commands like a petty officer.

"Fraulein Baker here is an American spy," I explained.  "She hired me to find Professor Fritz Strassmann so she could recruit him for her country's secret atom bomb project."

"You mean the Professor can build an atom bomb?" said Gilligan in astonishment.

"Before he was shipwrecked here," Fraulein Baker explained, "he was a top scientist in the Polish atom bomb project."

"Unfortunately," I added, "our rescue attempt has run into a little snag."

Gromburg shook his head in bewilderment before saying, "We'd better go back and see the others."  He turned and headed back into the foliage, and we followed him.

The trail Captain Gromburg led us along wound through the trees and ground vegetation of a hardwood forest, sloping gradually upward until we came into a clearing.  There were three primitive-looking log cabins built low to the ground with smoke rising from holes in the center of each roof.  Behind them was a large vegetable garden, with newly-sprouting tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins and other things.  There was a pigpen next to it, and a small patch of barley beyond that.

"How did you manage all this?" I asked Gromburg.

"Janina did most of it," Gromburg answered with respect in his voice.  "We were lucky to have her along."  It took me a moment to place the name: Janina Wojas, the farm girl.  "She knew just where to look to find all these vegetables, and she was able to grow all that barley from half a dozen plants.  And the Professor was able to make fertilizer from bat dung in the caves, and from the fish I caught."

Gromburg was interrupted by an avian cry of pain above us.  I looked up to see a gray bird spiral down through the air to land near us.  Gilligan rushed over to the bird, hanging a slingshot around his neck.  He caught the bird and wrung its neck with a quick motion.  "That's three so far today, Skipper!" he exclaimed.

"Good work, little buddy!" said Gromburg.

The noise had evidently attracted some attention, because an elderly couple emerged from one of the cabins, dressed as Gromburg and Gilligan were in a mix of tattered clothing and scraps of animal skins.

"Captain," the elderly man said to Gromburg, "who are these people?"

Gromburg looked at us and made vague motions with his hands, but he had clearly forgotten our names.  I introduced myself and Fraulein Baker again and said, "I presume you are Herr and Frau Max Silberberg."

The elderly man smiled at me through his beard and said to his wife, "You see, Lovey, I told you the Board of Directors would send someone to find us."

"But Max," said Frau Silberberg, "it's been three years."

"That's how long it usually takes the Board to make a decision when I'm not there," Silberberg chuckled.

"I have to hand it to you, Herr Silberberg," I said, "the two of you seem to have come through the shipwreck in good shape."

"We've had practice, my boy," Herr Silberberg replied with a grim smile.  "We spent five years together in Buchenwald."

I remembered then a story from the paper about Silberberg.  After the Röhm Coup, he and his wife had been arrested and their company nationalized.  They had emerged from Buchenwald in 1937 with nothing but the clothes on their backs, but by the time they disappeared on the _Minnie_ seven years later, Silberberg had amassed a second fortune.  Looking at him now, I had no doubt he would be back in complete control of Silberberg Industries within a week of leaving the island.

My trip down memory lane was detoured by the sound of Gilligan calling out, "Hey, Janina, look what I found!"  I looked behind me and saw a young woman.  If the men all looked like Robinson Crusoe, the newcomer looked like Red Sonja in the latest Hollywood "Conan" film.  She was dressed as the others were in animal skins, but on her they looked *good*.  Her red hair hung in two braids down her back, and she carried a homemade bow slung across her back and what looked for all the world like a machete on a belt around her waist.

"Good morning, Fraulein Wojas.  My name is Bednarski."

Her look was an appraising one.  I had spoken to her automatically in German, but she answered me in Polish.  "Is that a gun in your pocket, Bednarski, or are you just happy to see me?"

"I left my gun back in Danzig," I responded in Polish.

She gave me a cool nod, then gestured toward Fraulein Baker.  "Who's the frail?"

"My client, Agent Norma Baker of the OSS.  She's here to bring Professor Strassmann back to America with her."

"Is she?" Wojas said, and a slight smile came to her lips.

"I am," Baker answered her, also in Polish.  If I saw two women trading looks like these over me, I'd feel three meters tall; I'd also be frightened out of my wits.

"Whyever would I wish to go to America?" a man said, and now I finally got a look at the object of my search.  He was in his late 40s, thin and bearded like the other men, though his white shirt and trousers were in better shape than theirs.  He moved to stand beside Wojas like it was the most natural thing in the world.  I remembered that Professor Strassmann had a wife back in Berlin.  I also remembered that she had had him declared legally dead two years back, so I guess it all evened out.

"I think you'll wish to come to America," Agent Baker answered him, "because, unlike Herr Bednarski here, I did *not* leave my gun in Danzig."  And just like that, it was in her hand, produced from heaven knows where, pointed right at Janina Wojas' heart.  "And if I were you, sister, I'd leave that bow right where it is."

Prompted by Agent Baker, Professor Strassmann left Janina Wojas' side and followed her to the far side of the clearing.  When they had disappeared into the foliage, a middle-aged woman with long blonde hair and nothing else emerged from the third cabin.  "Is she gone?" she said vaguely.  It didn't take much imagination to figure out how Emmy Sonnemann had managed to survive.

A look passed between Wojas and myself, and we both sprinted to the edge of the clearing.  There was no sign of Baker and Strassmann, but Wojas was quick to spot a scrap of white clothing.  It was the first of a series of scraps, and they led us through the trees to a section of beach.  For some reason, I was not the least bit surprised to see a submarine surfaced offshore, an American flag painted on her conning tower. Four sailors were climbing into a black rubber raft beside it, while Baker and Strassmann waited on the beach next to the water.  Wojas had nocked an arrow, but Baker was keeping to the far side of Strassmann.  I head Wojas swear under her breath.

The raft had come halfway to the beach when I heard a low murmur coming from back the way we came.  As it grew louder I recognized it, and I turned my head to face the sun just as the helicopter flew overhead.  It was grayish-green, and painted on its side were the red-and-white square of the Polish Air Force and the silly orbiting-electrons sigil of the ACC.

The amplified voice of Wolfgang Hochstetter came booming out of the helicopter.  "This is the League of Nations Atomic Control Commission!  Drop your weapon and keep your hands in sight!  You are under arrest!"

Baker fired at the helicopter, and Strassmann took the opportunity to hit the beach.  Less than a second later, Norma Jean Baker was staggering back into the sea with an arrow sticking out of her chest.  As the waves rolled over her, the sailors in the rubber raft turned back to the submarine.

************************

It took two trips to ferry all nine castaways back to the waiting Polish cruiser.  As short as the trip was, it was still pretty uncomfortable sitting there while Agent Hochstetter glared at me.

"I don't know what's got you so upset," I told him.  "I think it was pretty clever of me to get shipwrecked on the same island as the _Minnie_ castaways.  The fine men of the ACC get the credit for locating and rescuing the castaways, I get a well-earned thousand zlotys, and all these good people get their lives back."

"What the hell were you thinking, Bednarski, bringing an American spy with you on the search?"

"Come off it, Hochstetter," I sneered back, "you were just as sure as I was that Professor Strassmann here was dead."  Strassmann didn't seem offended by my remark.  He was too busy thanking Janina Wojas for saving him.  "And like I said, all's well that ends well."

He didn't find my arguments at all convincing.

When we got back to the Commonwealth, Strassmann returned to Berlin with Janina in tow.  The Silberbergs returned to Breslau, and it took Herr Silberberg maybe twenty minutes to get his Board of Directors eating out of his hand.  Gromburg, Gilligan and Sonnemann wound up in Warsaw, where their torrid tale of triune lust was soon dirtying up the bestseller lists.

As for me, I've got an ACC gag order to keep me off of publisher's row, but that's all right.  I've still got my tiny office, my name in big letters on a door, and a battered desk with a bottle of schnapps in the bottom right hand drawer.

THE END


DBTL 40D: The Long Auf Wiederseh'n - End Notes

I fear that Mr Pez is capable of even more horrific scenarios than the one you have just described.
Sydney Webb, 18 May 2001

Well, there's these seven castaways, see, shipwrecked on a deserted Baltic island...
Johnny Pez, 20 May 2001


Who are these people?

Bednarski is very loosely based on the character Philip Marlowe created by Raymond Chandler.  He is named after the hero of the 1987 Polish private eye drama "Na Klopoty Bednarski.”

Agent Wolfgang Hochstetter is based on the character played by Howard Caine on "Hogan's Heroes".

Joachim Gromburg is a very slightly Germanized version of Jonas "The Skipper" Grumby played by Alan Hale, Jr. on "Gilligan's Island".

Adolf Gilligan is based on the character played by Bob Denver on "Gilligan's Island".  Now you know why they never called him by his first name.

Norma Jean Baker became a successful film actress under the screen name Marilyn Monroe.  She died of an overdose of sleeping pills in 1962.   Then Elton John wrote a song about her.

Erich Raeder was head of the German Navy from 1928 to 1943.  At Nuremburg he was found guilty of conspiring to wage aggressive war and sentenced to life in prison.  He was released in 1955, published his memoirs in 1957, and died in Kiel in 1960.

Fritz Strassmann's experiments with Otto Hahn bombarding uranium nuclei with neutrons in 1938 led to the discovery of atomic fission.  From 1945 to 1953, he served as the director of the chemistry department at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Berlin.  He died in 1980.

Janina Wojas married Mieczyslaw Kurek of Biurkow and raised four children. She lives in Krzeczow, Poland.

Emmy Sonnemann married Hermann Göring in 1935.  In 1948 she was convicted of being a Nazi and was banned from the stage for five years.  She died in Munich in 1973.

Max Silberberg and his wife were murdered by the Nazis in 1935.

To parts 41-50