Black Sun Reich Part 5

CHAPTER FOUR.

Driskill Hotel Austin Texas Freehold The clock on the mantel said it was past 11:00 P.M., and yet on a Tuesday night the main-what did they call it here? Saloon? Bar?-in the Driskill Hotel was still rowdy and raucous. The activity hadn't abated at all over the past hour. Half a dozen card games had only picked up momentum. The jazz band was into its fourth set of the night, and half the room was dancing. Some apparently higher pedigreed ladies of the evening prowled, as did dealers of all sorts of diversions-coca leaves for chewing, the marihuana cigarettes he'd first seen in Rio, personal cards that granted access to underground opium dens. There had only been one fight, and they'd taken it outside at the insistence of the bartender.

Dr. Kurt von Deitel left his meeting with Lysander and immediately sought a decent schnapps. He needed one after he'd delivered his report, straight from the intelligence masters at the Abwehr. The work of delivering his report was unlike any previous debriefing the doctor had undergone.

Now, granted, he wasn't exactly a veteran in the world of espionage. In fact, this was only his second task since his recruitment by the Abwehr back when he was a third year medical student. But Deitel, a newly graduated medical doctor and the scion of a significant house of Prussian n.o.bility in Konigsberg, was exactly what the Abwehr's spymaster, Commodore Wilhelm Canaris, needed.

The Abwehr was officially the counterintelligence arm of the traditional German military, but Canaris-a traditional German naval officer-had grown increasingly uncomfortable with the n.a.z.i regime. Over time, he'd secretly undertaken a dangerous strategy of undermining Hitler's government and the SS intelligence branch. He viewed the New Order as a dishonorable cult of common thugs and criminals in designer uniforms. Canaris maintained his agency's appearance as an effective, loyal source of human intelligence for the Fuhrer, while doing everything he could to scuttle the ship of state.

It was a dangerous game. One mistake and Canaris and his confederates would end up in a concentration camp. Or serving in the Russian Dead Zone, which was the same as a death sentence only slower.

The information Deitel now brought to the Freehold for Canaris was so unprecedented-so fantastic-that Canaris needed Deitel's medical background to explain, well, the inexplicable, to his counterparts in the Freehold.

Deitel remembered how, after initially reviewing the materials and watching the grainy black and white photos and moving picture films in his Rio apartment, he vomited like a first year medical student. That's when he realized it was no longer an abstraction-the New Order was a threat to every man, woman, and child in Germany and throughout the world. It had to be stopped.

The doctor hadn't expected the Driskill's hotel bar to have schnapps at all, much less a wide and decent selection, along with several German beers of respectable pedigree. It shouldn't have surprised him. For starters, the hotel was magnificent. Built just four decades ago as the showplace of a cattle baron, the Driskill was an internationally renowned landmark of Texas hospitality. Located in the heart of downtown Austin, it was surrounded by the gin mills, music halls, and saloons of Sixth Street. They formed an ongoing street party where country music, ragtime, bluegra.s.s, and jazz blended in the streets as freely as the people. Bourbon Street West, it was called.

So of course they'd have good schnapps on that point alone.

And from his recent briefings he knew there was a second reason. The Freehold had lots of German immigrants.

Texas was founded in 1835 as a republic, then reformed in 1876 into a Freehold. Most of the initial settlers were German and Scot-Irish immigrants from the old "United States," as it was called then. The Freehold had since grown a good deal beyond its initial boundaries-almost exclusively by land purchase, not conflict.

The Freehold of the twentieth century stretched from Phoenix in the west to New Orleans in the east, and from the Red River in the north to Cabo San Lucas and the Yucatan peninsula in the south. The settlers of Scot-Irish and German descent were now part of a melting pot of Latin American, French, Spanish, Chinese, Indian, and Caribbean newcomers-a great contrast to many of the other North American nations.

In many of the states of the CSA there were still segregation laws-legalized racial separation-for the fifteen percent of the population comprised of colored people. In the Union States, discrimination was less overt though no less embraced, and bigotry was more directed at Jews, Eastern Europeans, and Orientals than at those of African or Caribbean origin.

But here in Texas, Rucker had explained on the flight, the Freeholders were more guided by the experience and example of the first Texas ranches, where the ongoing need for reliable, skilled ranch hands and later oil field roughnecks trumped traditional racial barriers. The subsequent close partnership with Brazil and France-the first true melting pots of the West-further shaped the Freehold's character. A voraciously trade driven people, Freeholders cared more about the color of money and gold than any other hue.

Of course, Deitel thought, by every axiom of conventional European wisdom and every tenet of the New Order, this freewheeling, decentralized, mongrelized society shouldn't have worked. It should be balkanized and chaotic. Ungovernable.

But Deitel wasn't sticking much with conventional wisdom anymore. After all he'd seen so far, and after his exhaustive time with Lysander Benjamin, he was having doubts about nearly everything he thought he knew.

He went over the extensive debriefing again. Benjamin had immediately taken the microfilm he'd brought and sent it off by way of a pneumatic tube. The man then listened to his report without comment. Then Benjamin asked him to repeat the story, and asked questions-sometimes pertinent, sometimes wholly irrelevant-after almost every statement he made. Then the man had chatted about his bursitis, about his days as an altar boy, wheat beers, and other irrelevancies. Benjamin never once spoke of his authority within the Texas government, nor of how this would be handled by the Freehold's intelligence services.

What was happening now? Deitel wondered.

He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't notice Rucker slide onto the stool beside him.

"So, how you doing?" Rucker asked, as he signaled the bartender. "How'd that whole 'end of the world' thing go?" He sounded amused and flippant "Your Mr. Benjamin was . . . what is the English? Surprisingly nonchalant. Much like your tone," Deitel said.

Rucker grinned. "I conjured as much. Don't take it all personal like. It's his job to vet you," he said, handing the bartender a silver coin. "Finish that candy water. I'm taking you to a real bar. Saddle up and twenty-three skidoo."

Some of that had to be English, Deitel thought.

Minutes later they were on Sixth Street. The pace Rucker set-Deitel idly wondered, was this a "mosey"?-carried them casually down the walkway. The cobblestone avenue was crowded still. Did these people go out carousing every night of the week?

He marveled at the seemingly endless variety of fashions and livery among the people. The women with their modern flapper bobs and some with softer long hairstyles. Some wore cloche hats. There seemed to be no single fashion that dominated. Women wore dresses and outfits that would have scandalized even the most urbane metropolitans in Germany for their daring and s.e.x appeal.

Meanwhile, men wore everything from short jackets and lightweight sport coats to dungarees with shirtsleeves or light jumpers. He even saw some in gauchos with silk shirts-the influence of the Freehold's sister nation to the south, the Propriedad de Brazil. Fedoras and cowboy hats were the primary men's headgear, and he saw no formal suits-which would have been inappropriate to this climate anyway. Then there were the colors of the men's and women's clothing-not just blues and grays and brown and blacks so uniformly, and somberly, common in European fashion, but every color in the palette.

He also noticed at least two saloons with signs that were surprising and gauche. One said, NO IRISH OR DOGS ALLOWED. The other had the same message, about RED INDIANS.

"I thought you said there was no segregation here," Deitel said, indicating the signs.

"There's not," Rucker said. Then he saw what prompted the remark and sneered. "But there's also no law against being a jacka.s.s. It ain't right, but it's the owner's right."

Deitel drank in the cityscape. High rises were lighted like it was a festival, and airships of all sizes and models sailed about the skies. He wondered at the maze of electric signs, neon signs, the billboards and Art Nouveau advertis.e.m.e.nts along the gaslight streets. They touted all manner of goods from all over the world. It bespoke the decadent indulgence that made this society soft.

At least that's what his Prussian schoolmasters said. On the other hand, advertising seemed a sign of prosperity. It wasn't so much that it was banned behind the Black Iron Curtain, just that there was little to advertise and not a lot in the way of disposable income.

Here, though, the merchants had to compete for all the disposable income these people had, which they spent on everything from French cigarettes to motorcycles imported from the Confederacy.

But what Deitel noticed as they "moseyed" along was what was missing from this place. It was something he hadn't realized he'd come to expect as the norm until he first arrived in Rio, where it, too, was missing. It was an all-pervasive, chronic sense of fear and anxiety. People here didn't walk at a hurried pace, eyes downcast. There were no police-secret or otherwise-checking papers. No watchtowers. People greeted one another on the street and they smiled. They did not march quietly and quickly to their destination. They strode. They meandered. They looked one another in the eye. They claimed their own s.p.a.ce.

It took a second for Deitel to realize Rucker was speaking.

"I was saying, it was nothing personal. Lysander hears stories like yours more often than you'd reckon. Anytime someone wants you to do something you wouldn't normally do, they always bring up the end of the world or wave some other b.l.o.o.d.y shirt," Rucker said. "Heard that back before the Great War your own folks were telling stories to the Union States about Frenchmen bayoneting babies or some d.a.m.n thing. When someone waves the b.l.o.o.d.y shirt, you have to do your due diligence. Caveat emptor."

Deitel nodded. That seemed reasonable. "Ja."

"Plus, there's plausibility. You don't exactly strike me as the intelligence type. No offense."

"Vas?" Deitel said with an insulted tone, not realizing he'd slipped into his native tongue.

"Intelligence. Not intelligent."

"Herr Rucker, I resent the impli-"

"Oh, don't get your knockwurst in a knot, Wilhelm."

"Kurt."

"Right. It's just, from what I hear around the campfire, Himmler's been shoveling out more disinformation than Goebbels does horse apples every week on the radio. Planting stories all over. Who's to say he's not trying a different tack here, sending us someone who doesn't even know who's pulling the strings, or getting us looking at the left hand while the right hand is up to no good?"

This, too, was a reasonable surmise, Deitel thought, in the unreasonable and Byzantine world of spycraft.

"And that's why, Doc, I say you don't strike me as the intelligence type. There's no hardness to you."

Deitel didn't argue.

"You're pale-ish."

Well, yes.

"You have soft hands."

Deitel looked at his hands.

"You're powerful fussy. You're-"

"Enough," Deitel said. "I am aware of my appearance."

"What I mean is you seem bookwise and range blind. Which, you being a doctor, isn't surprising. You may not even know if you're being made a patsy. Or, alternatewise, you have the perfect cover. Lysander can't know until he runs you through the wringer. You savvy?"

What Rucker was saying, however clumsily, was plausible and prudent. But it was simply the case that he had a perfect cover. Still, he understood that his own a.s.sertion wouldn't carry any weight.

"Ja. I understand."

"Lysander will take your story to the society. They'll mull it over and check your bona fides to make sure they're, um, bona and fide."

Deitel did a double take.

"I'm sorry, 'society'?"

" 'Course, if you are a patsy, you're pretty well and proper boned. The Gestapo knows you're willing to betray the New Order. Soon as you get back to the Fatherland," Rucker mimed a throat being cut, "kaput."

"I'm sorry, Herr Rucker, 'society'?" Deitel asked again.

"Also, if that Gestapo stoolie tailing you wasn't just a cutout to make your cover story seem plausible and you really are a Canaris man, then the Gestapo may already know you're willing to betray the New Order, and soon as you get back, kaput."

"Herr Rucker!" Deitel said. " 'Society'?"

Rucker did a double take and furrowed his brow. Then the light came on.

"Oh, that's right. See, here's the thing, we don't have much in the way of an intelligence service like y'all do. It's . . . how do I explain this? Sure, folks at our emba.s.sies gather information, and President Coolidge does have an agency that gathers all the newspapers and radio news from around the world so that Austin isn't completely blind to the world. But there are some mighty strong prohibitions on Austin actively doing much else. It tends to lead to meddling."

"You're saying there is no national espionage and intelligence gathering agency?"

"Well, I mean . . . not like you're saying. The world's got monsters and we got to protect our own, they say. Knowing is half the fight. But it seems too important to most folks to turn something like that over to the government to handle on its own. And how do you keep government accountable when they start keeping secrets?"

They paused while Rucker fished out a cigar to chew on.

"But Austin does get information. It's a long tradition that started with some of our more respectable academic societies and explorer clubs. One group would bring home maps or finds or news, and the other type of group would figure out what it all meant. It grew over the years with more and more companies going overseas to do business and more people traveling and exploring," Rucker said. "Don't look at me like that. That's how the British still do it, I read.

"Anyway, there are probably five formal societies in the Freehold that keep an eye out on the world and provide information to Congress and the president on an informal, unofficial basis. That man you talked with, Lysander, he works for one of the oldest ones, the Prometheus Society. It grew out of the old Dallas Safari Club and the Freehold Geographic Society," Rucker said, pausing on the sidewalk.

The look on Deitel's face suggested his cognitive facilities had seized up like a radial engine pulling too many gees.

"I'm sorry, it's the queerest thing, Herr Rucker, but I could have sworn I heard you just tell me that your people trust your nation's security to hunt clubs and traveling salesmen, all of whom have competing agendas?"

Rucker smiled and nodded.

"Everyone's got an agenda, Doctor. Fair to say if anyone of 'em peddled baloney, they wouldn't be making any more sales, if you get my meaning. You live and die by reputation and repeat business in this part of the world. Plus they all keep an eye on one another."

Deitel could scarcely fathom any of this, and what he could fathom appalled him. It had to be a ruse-a cover. He tried another approach as they turned down a side street.

"I'm sorry, but even if these a.s.sociations and societies say they have the interest of your nation first, one's definition of best interest may be radically different than another's, nicht wahr?" he asked.

Rucker, to Deitel's dismay, spit something on the ground. Mein Gott. He was a walking Western moving picture stereotype.

"Doc, aren't you here on a mission from one of your state intelligence agencies? A mission that the other state intelligence agencies-especially the Gestapo-would put you against a wall and ventilate you for?"

Verd.a.m.ndt!

"Let me see if this makes sense, Doctor. I once told this Russian I met before the war that there are no state bread stores in Texas. He asked me how I could count on getting bread without one."

Another point.

"a.s.suming it's all true," Deitel continued, sounding more perturbed, "how does your government act on a threat that one of these societies discovers?"

"They don't usually. They can't unless it's real dire and direct. In those other cases-well, Austin also ain't got the power to tell a private citizen-or even a group of them meeting someplace with fancy leather chairs and books on the walls-that they can't go do something outside our borders. You need to read between the lines there."

"I'm sorry, but this doesn't strike you as hypocritical?"

"Okay, look, I know you're as nervous as a cat in a rocking chair factory being out here in what you were told is the Wild West and all, but you can't keep starting every sentence with an apology."

"I'm sor . . . Jawohl."

"But to answer, I suppose that if, hypothetically, someone or some 'social organization' were to do something in Austin's interest but without its sanction, then those people doing the acting would still be accountable for what they do. If they break some law in a foreign land, they're not acting in the name of the Freehold and they have to take the consequences. And if they break Freehold laws, they're held to account for it like anyone else. You can't say that of Hoover's FBI up north in the Union, or your own state police, them that operate above and beyond the law. Hypocritical? Maybe."

It worried Deitel that there was some merit-hypocritical though it was-in what he was hearing.

"Not that it bothers me," Rucker said. "I'm strictly nonpolitical."

Deitel noticed there was something in Ricker's voice that sounded at once haunted and resolute.

He also noticed there were fewer and fewer bars and the streets had grown darker. Foot traffic was almost nonexistent now.

"So what is this 'big bad' you're bringing to our doorstep?" Rucker asked.

"I'm not certain I should . . ."

Rucker rolled his eyes. "Doc, you think it's some grand coincidence it was my bird you chartered from Colombia? You think I'm here with you instead of out carousing because I like talking politics with shavetail Hun doctors? No offense, Hans."

He's doing that on purpose, Deitel thought.

"Kurt."

"Right. So make with the story."

Deitel considered: this man had been entrusted by Herr Benjamin and, by proxy, Commodore Canaris. He'd heard half the story, anyway.

"What do you know of the d.a.m.ned Lands in our eastern provinces?"

"I've been back to Europe plenty since the war. Heard tell how most everything in eastern Poland most of the way to Moscow is a dead zone, like that forest that's on your western border in the Rhineland, only worse. Everyone and everything wiped out, the land poisoned, like something out of the Old Testament. That the size of it?"