Alternative History - Chapter #5 Moskau by G. Zotov

Chapter Five. Daifuku

Hindenburg Lane, next to the Berlin store

“You’re pale. Look at your face, it’s drawn. You’ve got dark circles around your eyes. Would you like a glass of wine?”

Oh no, lady, thank you very much. I don’t drink wine, anyway. Definitely not after what happened earlier today. My whole body is aching like hell. It’s as if they took me apart, limb by mechanical limb, then handed my body parts over to a drunken plumber to reassemble and wrangled some horses over me before throwing me into the path of an Eicher tractor. You wouldn’t want to feel what I’m feeling, girl, that’s for sure.

I blink. “Thanks. Odin’s priests are obliged to celebrate a monthly Vegetarian Day to remember the Führer. So today it’s cabbage patties and Karlsbad mineral water for me.”

She sniffs, then makes a show of helping herself to a slice of turkey. The Schwarzkopfs zealously stick to their diet which is supposed to reflect their convictions. They avoid pork (without even considering the fact that we have Muslims serving in the Idel Ural Legion and the Croatian SS Kama Division), they don’t drink beer (even though the production of Rhine vineyards isn’t limited to grape juice) and ignore sausages, even veal ones. And in view of the Führer’s vegetarian practices, some of the die-hard Schwarzkopfs even refuse vegetable foods. If they eat salad, they make sure it has meat in it: and not the sophisticated Alpine wurstsalat, but an obnoxious local dish which Russlanders call Olivier although the appellation Titanic might have been more apt: a pile of chopped veg and chicken hugging each other in terror as they drown in a sea of mayo.

The bubbles in the water tickle my tongue as I gulp it down. My tablemate has chosen a rather revealing dinner attire: a hugging purple dress with a deep décolleté exposing almost all of her braless cleavage. Her nipples are so stiff they almost pierce the fabric. She must be cold in this airconned room.

Poor girl. Hasn’t she had enough of her own games?

The Schwarzkopfs measure everything with their own yardstick. They think that every priest is dying to have sex, dreaming about it in his wet dreams, closing his hands around his... well, his blanket. Especially if the priest is a Catholic of an Orthodox monk. But I am one of the Waidelottes: the ruling caste of Viking priests (also known as the Legend Keepers). I can have a harem of twenty if I want to. Only Aryan women, unfortunately: the Moskau Priest Council has allowed the servants of Odin, Loki and Thor to take wives, provided they’re natural blondes. Which is a problem to a degree, of course.

But marriage aside, a Waidelotte can sleep with who the hell he wants to.

“Some of humanity's most abominable murderers were known for their sentimentality,” she says, sinking her teeth into the turkey as if it were the Führer himself. “Your darling leader was a vegetarian, he loved dogs and even doted on other people’s children... while hating their parents. This is ridiculous! The whole of Europe is being governed by a ghost! While the authorities pretend this is exactly how it should be.”

Aha, that’s what she’s driving at. Actually, I have to agree. At the end of the Twenty-Year War the Reichskommissariats unanimously decreed that the Führer was to remain the Reich’s supreme leader despite his tragic death. Which meant that officially he was feasting with the fallen Einherjar in Valhalla instead of drinking blood in the underground caves of Hel's, the goddess of the dead. Which in turn also meant, according to the Priests Council memo, that its members could enter a state of trance in order to contact the Führer in Asgard and transmit his orders back to us. The Führer’s decrees were printed in Gothic font with a nice-looking facsimile signature. This state of affairs suited every Reichskommissariat's Triumvirate perfectly: while presenting no threat to their own position in power, it provided them with a convenient front person whenever things went awry. And what better scapegoat than a nominal deadman ruler?

“What’s wrong with that?” I reply in a deliberately bored voice, transporting a piece of a cabbage patty to my mouth. “The Führer’s only been in Valhalla what, a few decades? Your Jesus has been absent for two thousand years and no one has seen him since, apart from a couple of nutters. This doesn’t seem to baffle you, does it? You’re quite happy to accept that he runs the Universe from atop his cloud, even though there’s no documented evidence proving that Yeshua the Nazarene did exist, apart from Flavius’ Antiquities of the Jews. And although he does mention him being sentenced to death, neither contemporary chronicles nor Pontius Pilate’s personal diaries mention his execution, let alone his supposed resurrection. Besides, how sure are you we can trust Flavius in this sensitive matter? He was a Jew, wasn’t he? Sorry for mentioning Jews at the table...”

I bite my tongue. Shit. I overdid it, didn’t I?

The girl hurls her fork at the daifuku plate. The clinking of steel against bone china sounds like a funeral bell to my ears. Great gods, Odin and Thor, save me! Now all hell will break loose.

“Have you ever asked yourself what happened to the Jews and Roma? Where are they all gone?”

Aha, so that’s what she’s driving at. Predictably so. “Gone to Africa on a Crystal Train,” I reply impassively. “As if you don’t know. Open any primary school textbook, and that’s what it says. A perfectly legal deportation, voted unanimously by the Reichstag and supported by leading cultural figures. When Africa received the status of a self-governing colony, the whole of the “black continent”, with the exception of Ethiopia, Morocco, Egypt and the South African Union, was fenced off by a concrete wall surrounded by mine fields and wound with barbed wire. All the government workers were evacuated and all troops withdrawn. From then on, the Africans had to fend for themselves. I don’t think that the Crystal Train passengers had it easy. Africa has neither the Shogunet nor television. The streets of its ravaged cities are the theater of clan wars. Starvation, epidemics, all sorts of new viruses. Still, deportation is more humane than extermination, isn’t it?”

Her face breaks out in crimson spots. “They were killed,” she enunciates. “The Jews. The Roma. The Yaoi. The drug addicts. Even the mentally ill. Why are there no mental hospitals anywhere? Why is psychiatry an illegal business, like tobacco dealing? When someone becomes schizophrenic, their families hide them from the authorities as they've been doing since the 1940s. Society has no place for the useless — or yes, this is one lesson we did learn from the Germans! The Yaoi, the Yuri^[i], the schizophrenics — you’re right, they’re not executed openly anymore. You deport them to Africa through your control posts in the concrete wall. How’s that different from execution? There’re still some surviving eyewitnesses confirming the existence of wartime camps where millions of people were gassed and incinerated like rats. Ever heard about Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Dachau? The monstrous factories that ground their way through tons of human bones every day? Here in Russland the Nazis used to burn people alive by the villageload; they had special gas wagons to dispose of hostages. Half of us were doomed to extermination, the other half were meant to become agricultural slaves for the Krauts’ colonists.”

“There’s no evidence of this,” I hurry to point out. “It’s nothing but rumors.”

The dinner is ruined. She has a tendency to do that.

“Yeah, sure,” she says with a bitter chuckle. “It’s bad form mentioning it these days. We may be a dictatorship but all dictators would like to seem hard on the outside and soft on the inside. A bit like a banana. The Triumvirate will never admit that the Führer was going to turn half the planet’s population into garden fertilizer. Did you know that they performed a total archive purge already in the 1970s? Concentration camps paperwork as well as the SS and Gestapo archives were shredded in papierwolfs, camp ovens were converted into bakeries and gas chambers into shower rooms. When you stick to the same lie year after year, people start to believe you. That’s what Dr. Goebbels used to say. Latvian researchers from the Reichskommissariat Ostland keep publishing those articles in the Völkischer Beobachter saying that all labor camp prisoners were paid for their work; that they had brothels and movie theaters, even football clubs, and that apparently Italian labor camp officials even organized free pizza deliveries for their prisoners! And how are you going to disprove it? All the ex-prisoners have been ordered to have their camp number tattoos removed. This is their formula of success, courtesy of the Triumvirate: you need to plunge people into the frenzy of consumption. Then you don’t have to conquer them. Their mental abilities will atrophy naturally. Had the Führer been a bit smarter, instead of invading Russland he could have built a chain of Drakken Kaufhof malls complete with 3D theaters. When the human brain is only used for entertaining, it just goes to mush.”

I appear to enthusiastically munch on tasteless cabbage. Oh Hel, the Lady of the Underworld! These Schwarzkopfs are such goody-two-shoes. So empathic and sensitive they make you sick. Yeah right, shopping malls and movie theaters, how awful, how brain-numbing. But had we still been living under martial-law National Socialism with its ration cards, margarine for butter and saccharine for sugar, they’d have been the first to scream their indignation about the terrible Triumvirate starving people to death.

“Listen, what’s the point in dragging a bunch of seventy-year-old skeletons out of the closet?” I wash the cabbage down with some mineral water. “The Tatars in their time steam-rolled over medieval Russia too, pillaging cities, turning churches into stables and raping village women. You see any Russlanders losing any sleep itching to avenge that genocide? How about the French? Napoleon’s army burned down the cities of Vilno, Smolensk and Moskau — and? The Russlanders absolutely love the French culture. Never mind that Paris has been under the SS Fashion Department since 1940 in the tender care of Oberführer Lagerfeld and his assistant Hugo Boss — still any lady worth her smelling salts will gladly spend a month in a Gestapo cooler for a bottle of French perfume. Even if you presumed, for the sake of argument, that by some fantastical miracle Russland defeated Germany in the war, we’d still have already been buddying up. We love our enemy and can’t stand our neighbor. Take the Reichskommissariat Turkestan, for instance. Every time I see their legionnaires in the street, I can’t help thinking, Are these muttonheads Aryan too?”

The girl is silent. She’s too busy arm-wrestling her stomach into submission. On one hand, she’s dying for a daifuku. On the other, this is a political discussion — as is our every dinner.

“Russland is under foreign occupation,” she says, casting a sideways glance at the dessert. “You’re not going to argue that, are you? We have a foreign state emblem, foreign laws... and foreign rulers.”

There, she’s already switched to the defensive. If I only could, I’d have smoked a cigarette the way some men do after good sex. Unfortunately, Odin’s priests are obliged to lead a healthy lifestyle.

“That’s an easy one,” I finish off my cabbage patty. “As far as the emblem is concerned, Russland used the Greek double-headed eagle for the last five hundred years. It also had German laws for the last two hundred. The Royal court positions were also German: Kammerherr, Frauleina, Hofmeister... The names of Russian chancellors: Ostermann, Bühren, Nesselrode, Stürmer... Might that mean that this so-called occupation has never stopped? All right, so concentration camps did exist. But who might have guarded them? In the Sobibor death camp they were Ukrainians. The burgermeisters, the auxiliary police, the journalists producing newspapers, SS volunteers, Gestapo interrogators — all of them were Russlanders wearing German uniforms. And you know what Russlanders are like: the moment a foreigner hires them, they’re quite prepared to hang themselves with zeal. The ten biggest Russlandish cities now house Wehrmacht garrisons. Five hundred each! These aren’t occupiers, these are toy soldiers. Ceremonial guards. True, we have plenty of German bureaucrats and brass hats everywhere: in the army as well as the police and civil ministries. But it was the same in the Keiser’s times! On the other hand, Russlandish businessmen have bought up wholesale some of Berlin’s most prestigious real estate. In 1984, Russisch became one of the Reich’s official languages. Who occupied whom, may I ask?”

Without saying a word, she springs to her feet. The daifuku remains untouched even though I can see it's still calling her name. I already know what’s going to happen next. First she’ll head for the bathroom to brush her teeth. Then she’ll go back to bed. Her life is boring but rather safe, if I may say so.

The bathroom door slams. Finally I can relax.

When I had come round, lying sprawled on the floor back in the Temple of Odin, I’d immediately thought: what would have happened to her had I not come back? Every morning I replace her handcuffs for a couple of sturdy thin chains allowing her to get to the bathroom. Her bedroom has a small fridge containing everything she might need. But the bedroom door is locked. She can’t escape. If I disappeared, she’d starve to death within a month. I hadn’t thought about that. My mistake. I'll have to consider installing a Zeitschaltuhr — a timer — on the lock and set it for like twenty-four hours. There are also other things I have to consider. I’ve been zoned out for two hours flat. I need to look into a couple of things.

Firstly, I need to find out where the goat is gone. And secondly, whatever has happened to the statue of Rübezahl.

Textbook No 1.

A World Geography

The Reich Union, or the Third Reich of Greater Germany.

Founded in 2004 after the end of the Twenty-Year War. Technically represents a confederation of several Reichskommissariats: Ostland (comprising Belorussia and the Baltics), Moskau (the European part of Russland), Deutschland (Austria, Germany and the Governorate of Poland), the Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Kuban and the zonderkommissariats of Chechnya and Dagestan), Turkestan (Tajikistan, Turkmenia, Uzbekistan and Kirghizia), the Ukraine (including the Russlandish cities of Kursk, Voronezh and Tsaritsyn (the former Stalingrad)); Norway and the Netherlands, and Britain (excluding the Republic of Scotland). Other “special territories” belonging to the Reich Union include: Lake Baikal, the Crimea (inhabited by German colonists) and the enclave of St. Petersburg.

The countries allied with the Third Reich:

Slovakia, the Italian Empire, the Independent State of Croatia, Finland (including Karelia and Murmansk), Transylhungary, the Kingdom of Romania (including Odessa and Bessarabia), the Southern French Protectorate (with the capital in Vichy), The Federation of Spain and Portugal, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria (including Greece). In 1951, Ataturk's Turkish Republic was ceremoniously returned its old French colonies of Lebanon and Syria. It was also gifted Armenia. Restored in 1964, the Baghdad Caliphate was comprised of Iraq and the Maghreb sultanates, including Egypt and Morocco. The Free State of India (also known as Azad Hind) is under the joint protection from the Reich Union and the Nippon koku. Korea, the island of Formosa, Hawaii, Karafuto island, the Kamchatka peninsula, the Siberian cities of Khabarovsk and Vladivostok — now known under their Japanese names of Habarosito and Uradziosutoku — as well as Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore all make an integral part of Nippon koku. Technically, the Russlandish territories from Kamchatka to the Urals are also within the Japanese area of interest but in reality it is controlled by guerilla units of “forest brothers”. The Republic of Far East (with its capital in the city of Chita) isn’t independent, being a Japanese protectorate.

Japan’s satellite states are: Manchukuo, China, Thailand, the Indonesian Emirate, the Vietnam Empire, Burma and the Philippines. The Nippon koku also boasts a special territory of Australia which bears the special status of “holiday colony” where rich Japanese come to unwind on its seaside beaches. Australians have all been deported to Alaska.

The government of the United States of America signed their capitulation on April 18 1956 in Los Angeles after the 2nd SS Division Russland battled their way into the city. In 1958, the USA was divided into the California Republic (a joint protectorate of the Reich and the Nippon koku), the colonies of Neuer York, Boston, Washington and Florida (with a Japanese governor), the Reichskommissariat of Texas and the “unclaimed territories of the Wild West”: the anarchic uncontrolled ex-states of Alabama, Utah and Kansas. Alaska makes up part of the Republic of the Far East as an autonomy ruled by a Japanese daimyo. Canada has been dissolved: Quebec has been given to Southern France, the north of the country is the property of Japan while the rest of it is used to deport the Chinese.

Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Chile form the German Community of South America. Even before Wehrmacht troops entered these countries in 1983, their capitals had been taken by armed Landwehr colonists.

Africa received the status of an autonomy. All the racially inferior nations were deported there within the Chrystal Train campaign. African borders were turned into three-mile “security zones”, its waters separated by a twelve-mile “anti-pirate zone”. Having been conquered by Italy in 1936, Abyssinia now has the status of an “overseas territory”, as does Libya. The 1984 coup in the South African Union led to the Afrikaners deposing corrupt pro-British politicians and recognizing the protection of Greater Germany. Six months later, joint Japanese and German troops landed in the Siberian city of Tyumen which is the official ending date for a world war that had lasted forty-five years.

A World Geography. Approved by the Moskau Ministry of Propaganda and Public Education

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[i] The Yaoi and the Yuri — respectively gay males and females in the context of Manga and Anime. The popularity of all things Japanese in the Third Reich has apparently lead to the widespread use of these two terms.

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Another New Chapter - Moskau by G. Zotov

Chapter Four. The Trigger Agent

Keiser movie theater, 1923 Revolution St.

Pavel's RV took the seat to the left of him, as previously arranged. He fidgeted in his place, laying a trayful of popcorn and two paper cups of Coca Cola in his lap. Even the United States’ defeat in the war with Japan had failed to diminish the drink’s popularity.

“H-h-hi,” he whispered, stuttering, without turning his head.

“Hi,” Pavel replied. “Thanks for coming. Long time no see. This calls for a drink.”

The other man studied the dark theater and grinned. They sat in the back row: the “kissing seats”. The house was nearly empty. The feature hadn’t yet started. Pre-trailers and commercials ran non-stop: predictably Japanese, like the one for Godzilla yogurt. The air conditioning wasn’t working. The air smelled of dust and sweaty human bodies.

“W-h-hat would you l-l-like, a sch-sch-schnapps?”

“Oh, do me a favor. Bad enough that all these idiots drink coffee these days instead of tea. As if that would turn them into Germans. Pour me some pepper vodka, would you? I know you always have some on you.”

The other man bared his teeth in a grin. He set his tray onto the empty seat next to his and reached behind his jacket collar, feeling for a flask.

Pavel couldn’t help thinking that this was the first time he was seeing him in plain clothes. Obersturmführer Jean-Pierre Carpe from the special Gestapo science division seemed never to shed his blue lab coat. Admittedly, a scientist’s attire didn’t suit him. Burly with a shaven head and huge fists, he rather resembled a comic-book monster out of the Universum Film flicks. What else could have been born out of a liaison between a Ukrainian peasant girl and an officer of the French SS division Charlemagne? The result was truly explosive.

Looking at him, Pavel couldn't help thinking of a banned book he'd read as a child: about some guy called Gulliver, a clumsy but good-natured giant. Back at school, they used to read hand-written copies of it under their desks, choking with laughter, while the teacher was looking the other way. Not so long ago, the Ministry of Propaganda and Public Education had released a new version of the book and made it into a movie. The main character had received a new name: Arnold, after some guy called Arnold Schwarzenegger, an Austrian butcher who'd risen to fame having starred in three films by cult director Leni Riefenstahl, including her Triumph of the Will: The Sequel. Polls showed that 70% of the population wanted to see Arnold as the new Führer. The new motion picture Arnold's Travels became a mega box office hit the moment it had been released.

Pavel took a swig from the helpfully offered paper cup. The pepper vodka scorched his palate.

“W-w-what do you want t-to know?” Jean-Pierre hunched over the flask. “Thi-thi-this is weird. They p-pulled you out of Hong Kong w-w-without telling you anything. V-v-very st-range.”

Pavel paused, waiting. The lights began to dim. The feature began.

“You think I don’t know it’s weird?” he said calmly. “I had an excellent deal going. I was about to meet the local yakuza boss. And just as I was going to give my contact a ring, I receive a message to my e-funk. A minute later, I was emailed an economy class ticket for a Moscow flight. What was I supposed to do? I took a taxi and went directly to the airport. All I know is that the Gestapo want to show me a picture of some sort. Not a photo: a drawing. A portrait. They didn’t even bother to say whether it was of a man or a woman. They want me to locate that person.”

He took a large gulp of his drink. “To tell you the truth, I’ve never had such a ludicrous job in my life. But the money they offered... you can buy the moon with it. Or the sun. Or the earth, even. Money’s no object. And the main thing is, once I've completed the job, they've promised never to bother me again. You know what’s funny about it? I still haven’t seen the picture. Still waiting for my clearance. I haven’t been back in the Reich for quite a while. Their bureaucracy has only gotten worse. The Gestapo is inundated by its paperwork. Very soon they’ll make you fill in a form every time you want to take a dump.”

Jean-Pierre took a large swig of his drink and began crunching on popcorn. “You kn-n-now, don’t you, that we’ve n-n-never had th-th-this conversation.”

“Absolutely. I’ve never seen you. I’ve no idea who you are. These seats are sure to be bugged. The office might have tabs on this place, anyway. But I don’t think it’s got anything to do with us. I’m pretty sure that the Gestapo are just as clueless about the person in the picture as I am. Otherwise they wouldn’t have needed to get the Triumvirate to issue the order."

“The Tri-tri-triumvirate was only re-re-recently p-p-put in the picture,” Jean-Pierre pointed out. “Our d-d-department received the research material two years ago f-f-from the Main Security Office. That was wh-wh-when the v-v-very first cases began to occur. But a month ago they conducted an ex... experiment near Novgorod. Wanna know what h-h-happened? Three lab workers ended up in a m-m-mental fa... facility. One more d-d-disappeared into th-th-thin air. I th-thought it just couldn’t get any w-w-worse. But t-t-trust me, the w-w-worst is ye-ye-yet to come.”

He stopped, then launched the remaining vodka down his throat. “That's better,” he said in a clear voice without a trace of stuttering. “You can’t imagine how many times I went to the speech therapist. But this is the only thing that helps. And you have to agree I can't drink vodka four times a day at work."

“Why not? Oh yeah, I see. Your French blood won’t take it.”

The Obersturmführer ignored the quip. They’d been friends long enough — ever since their Berlin days where both had been part of the MG Project — to indulge in occasional familiarity. It was during that experiment that Carpe had begun to stutter.

The theater’s sound system assaulted their ears with rousing music.

“I’d venture a guess that the contamination might have started earlier. Probably, right after the end of the Twenty-Year War,” Jean-Pierre crunched on the last of his popcorn. “The Moskau office had no idea. The local Kommandaturs... they must have ignored the phenomenon at first. And once they couldn’t do so any longer, they did their level best to keep it under wraps. You know what they’re like in Russland: hoping that if you pretend there is no problem, it’ll just sort of go away by itself. Well, it didn’t. The phenomenon became more and more widespread. Concealing it became dangerous. The Main Security Office began receiving the first classified reports. They got the Gestapo involved who put together a secret research group to look into it. They enrolled me — as much as my clearance allowed. This was something, I tell you...”

“Wait,” Pavel whispered. “What contamination are you talking about?”

“That’s exactly what I’m going to tell you now. Point by point."

Groping couples in the darkness paid no attention to the two alcoholics boozing in the back row. Moskau’s government encouraged a healthy lifestyle. The city was hung with Aryans Don’t Drink in the Morning posters (featuring the omnipresent Schwarzenegger). That only applied to hard alcohol, though. Beer had been proclaimed part of the national heritage and a symbol of the 1923 Revolution^[i] and received the status of “Aryan nectar”. Smoking too had been banned.^[ii] SS patrols from the Health Service checked all nacht clubs and fined them a thousand reichsmarks for every cigarette they found. They'd tried to ban alcohol too in the 1980s during the Twenty-Year War. Initially, the Triumvirate demanded a mandatory death sentence for both the sale and consumption of schnapps. Twenty-four hours later, the order had been revoked. Someone must have explained to them that they couldn’t just sentence virtually all of the country’s population to death.

The theater screen rattled with advancing tanks.

The Reich Union loved making war films: trench dramas, comedies like The Good Soldier Ivan and epic battle scenes. Nobody cared about their box office performance: patriotic propaganda was key. If one wanted to lay his or her greedy mitts on a wagonful of dough, all one had to do was submit a query to the Ministry of Propaganda and Public Education and pitch to them their idea for yet another movie about the Great Battle.

Hundreds of such half-baked flicks had come out even though no one really bothered to watch them. As an example, The Sea Lion — a film about the Wehrmacht’s successful invasion of Britain on May 11 1942 — had been shot in two parts and cost fifty million yen. Its entire audience consisted of five hundred: the director, the acting crew and all their numerous relatives. Filmmakers could get away with all sorts of goofs which were fobbed off as the “author’s vision”. And if one of the Völkischer Beobachter venom-spitting critics dared to question the merits of the dubious masterpiece, Shogunet trolls would start a rumor that the critic was in fact a Mischling: a half-breed unable to appreciate the Aryan film creator’s artistic bent.

Pavel, however, wasn’t interested in the movie in the slightest. He was too busy listening.

Very busy.

A couple of times the left corner of his mouth twitched. Those who’d known him for a long time might have realized he was quite agitated. He reached for a handkerchief and began to mechanically wipe the paper cup clean.

“Are you sure?” he touched Jean-Pierre’s arm, stopping his soliloquy. An admittedly inane question, but he had no one else to ask.

Carpe gave a calm nod. “Absolutely. Otherwise they wouldn’t have summoned you. We’ve wasted a lot of time looking for the source of all the problems but now we think we've located it. We've set up a radioelectronic trap at the testing grounds near Novgorod. It registered an unclear reddish outline on their radars. Survivors offer confused accounts but they’ve managed to approach it within arm’s reach. This unidentified object seemed to exude inordinate amounts of energy. It was almost leaking radiation. Which leads our experts to conclude that this object must have triggered the contamination."

He turned to Pavel. "That’s why the Triumvirate has summoned you to solve the problem. They don’t know what it is. Whether it’s a god, a ghost or a human being — we need to get to the root of this evil. I dread to think what might happen if this lasts for another six months or so. Are they going to show you the drawing? This is excellent. I’ve never seen it myself. I’m waiting already a month for the proper clearance, pushing pencils in the meantime. You’re right: the Gestapo has gone paper mad."

Pavel produced his e-funk and marked something down in its Notebook. “This is crazy,” he admitted. “For a moment I thought it might be the entire Gestapo staff gone loony, and not those three researcher idiots in the mental facility.”

Jean-Pierre grinned. “That’s what I thought at first. Before I saw it with my own eyes. You’ve no idea. N-n-never mi-mi-mind.”

His stutter was back just as abruptly as it had left him.

“If you say so,” Pavel agreed. “In any case, I’m going to talk to one of the eyewitnesses. Thankfully, my rank still allows me to do that. The drawing is all good and well but I’d like to hear the description of this so-called ghost straight from the horse’s mouth. And I want to do it before the Triumvirate and the Security chief approve my clearance. When I’m back at the hotel, I’ll email the Gestapo. Then I’ll sleep through the night. The gods know I need it.”

“Th-th-thanks for t-t-taking the precautions,” Jean-Pierre whispered. “There’s no one h-h-here who can re... recognize you.”

Without saying goodbye or waiting till the feature was over, he rose and walked out first, using his phone’s screen to light the way. The theater door slammed. Pavel cast a sad glance at his watch.

A corpulent Unteroffizier usheress — an old-age Russian babushka complete with floral headscarf — watched Jean-Pierre disinterestedly as he walked out. Normal, she thought. Not many moviegoers can sit through a war epic.

When Pavel followed, she turned pale and brought a hand to her mouth, but couldn’t produce a sound. She felt a sudden urge to do something she hadn’t done for many years — something she couldn’t even remember how to do.

She wanted to make the sign of the cross.

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[i] By “the 1923 Revolution” the narrator means the Beer Hall Putsch — a Nazi coup attempt in Bavaria in 1923.

[ii] The Third Reich is considered the first country in the world that began a government-supported anti-smoking campaign.

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Another New Chapter - Moskau (Alternative History thriller) by G. Zotov

Chapter Three

The Odin Temple

(Aryan St., 46 opposite the Kommandatur)

I had to leave the car at a remote parking lot. Even though I have the clearance, no one’s allowed to park their cars by the walls of the Kommandatur. The place is wallowing in paranoia, they see terrorists everywhere.

I receive a token made of hard cardboard and head for the turnpike. A fat bespectacled middle-aged guy in a brown uniform with an Obergefreiter lapel badges is manning the booth by the barrier. His tongue hanging out from the effort, he’s studying a fresh issue of Völkischer Beobachter plastered with glossy pictures of scantily clad girls. That’s crisis for you. The party press was obliged to adopt the tabloid format in order to survive in the free market.

I knock at the glass of the booth. We've known each other for ages.

“Heiley heil,” he mumbles unceremoniously, turning a page.

I wave a greeting. “Heil to you too.”

I know every inch of the Aryan Street which stretches from Berlin Station all the way up to the Reichstag. I can walk the whole length of it blindfolded. Its sidewalks are lined with the blackened skeletons of tanks fenced off with strap barriers: a reminder of the street fighting of the Twenty-Year War. Half a dozen charred Tigers are grouped together opposite the Luftwaffe Heroes Boulevard like a small herd of droopy-trunked elephants. The walls of the state-of-the-art office buildings touch the rotting ruins of bombed-out houses. Apparently, in Bolshevik times there used to be a monument to the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin here. He’s long been removed both from the square and from the school curriculum. He was of African descent, wasn’t he?

Actually, the Ministry of Education did a great job. They banned Tchaikovsky’s music — apparently, the composer was a closet homosexual. They destroyed some of the most popular old movies which had featured Jewish actors, no matter how minor the part.

The center of the boulevard gapes with black holes edged with fire-licked scabs. These are bonfire sites. On weekends, the Aryan Street becomes a scene of multiple book burnings. They confiscate books from the Schwarzkopfs, like they used to do at the Opernplatz in Berlin. The books by Herbert Wells, Vladimir Mayakovski and Jaroslav Hašek squirm as they reduce to ashes.

When I was still a young Führerjugend activist, I brought here a copy of The Three Musketeers that the school janitor had been hiding in his cubicle. I threw it in the fire. Its author Alexander Dumas wasn’t Aryan. There was African blood in his veins too. Have you heard this ripping noise made by burning paper? It sounds like a heart being ripped apart.

In place of the old Pushkin monument, they’ve got Nietzsche standing now. At first, lots of people confused him with Gorky (another banned author) because of his fat moustache. The Führer used to love Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Unfortunately, he didn’t know something that Nietzsche had said, “Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins.” Having said that, it’s probably all slander spread by the Shogunet forum trolls. Trust them to write all sorts of sick nonsense.

The government buildings on the Aryan Street are a sorry sight. Most of them are just copies of Berlin’s gloomy edifices. Take a look: the Moskau Ministry of Propaganda and Public Education, perfectly in keeping with Dr. Goebbels’ old office. Gray columns, colorful mosaics depicting young Aryan people flashing white smiles as they applaud National Socialism. A piercing wind invigorates the fluttering Reichskommissariat flags: the scarlet-red banners with a black eagle clenching a wreath of oak leaves. The swastika is long gone. Only souvenir vendors at the Richard Wagner pedestrian zone still sell merchandise featuring Die Hakenkreuz, the “angled cross”. The swastika on the flag was banned soon after the Twenty Year War. Regardless of how much everyone worships the Führer, not all of the Reichskommissariats were happy with his legacy, especially those where constant uprisings of the “Forest Brothers” were the norm.

Next, the dilapidated office of the Labor Front. A long time ago, this trade union organization used to be headed by Robert Ley. Reichsleiter Ley was killed in 1968 by some partisans during his visit to Kiev. They sent him a messenger pigeon carrying a miniature grenade.

A blood-curdling screech of car brakes shakes the air.

“Where do you think you’re going, you motherf- Or, sorry, Priest. My mistake.”

I was so busy staring at the Labor Front windows that I didn’t even notice myself stepping out into the traffic and very nearly being hit by a green Nissan. Nissan, what a funny name. One of those words you can’t help but tweak to make them sound more lewd, if you know what I mean. Nissan, pisspan, that sort of thing. Most of Moskau cars are Japanese. The Mercedes, Opels and Volkswagens are reserved for official missions. Their production just isn’t viable anymore. Even street buses are all Mitsubishis. I won’t even mention the Tokyo-imported pushbikes.

I flash him a benign smile. “It’s all right! Alles in ordnung!”

I didn’t even notice saying it. We use Germanic words and phrases mechanically. Nobody refers to an “ID card” anymore: it’s an ausweis. Russlanders soak up foreign words naturally, me being no exception. Still, I can only think in the local tongue.

I wipe my forehead. The sun is blazing.

Odin’s priests don’t have it easy. Sacrificial rites call for a special uniform: chainmail, a pair of fur-lined high boots, a wolf pelt thrown over your shoulders and a fifteen-pound ritual sword hanging from your belt. It does take some stamina, I tell you.

I can’t walk any faster but I’ve almost arrived at my destination. I walk past a Hashi sushi bar – hashi means chopsticks in Japanese — and there I am, entering Odin’s Temple.

If the truth were known, I’m not a hundred percent happy with my workplace. The building is far too large and ponderous, shaped as a medieval cave with a central grotto and several branching tunnels. Admittedly, it's quite comfortable. There's a hot water source inside: very convenient when one needs to clean blood from swords. By the entrance, there's a sculpture: Tyr the God laying his hand into the mouth of Fenrir the wolf. The year 1947 saw Norse mythology being adopted as the official religion of the Third Reich, in compliance with Reichsführer Himmler’s last will and testament^[i]. No one was going to destroy the existing churches or cathedrals: their congregations were free to worship whoever they pleased. But what is the popularity-driving engine these days? Exactly. Publicity. Billions of reichsmarks were channeled into the promotion of new ideas. TV, radio, even the leading movie stars including the-then star Marika Rökk and the publicly repentant Marlene Dietrich. It worked. It took less than ten years for half the Reich’s population to reject their religions and start worshipping at the altars of Greater Germany. A sensation? Not at all. The entire history of humanity is proof of the fact that people find it very easy to denounce their religion, provided the publicity is right. The two thousand years of Christianity had left a bad taste in their mouths. The new version of the same old (or a remake, as they call it in the California Republic) was extremely timely. Everyone was already bored to death with the four riders of the Apocalypse. Now the story of Fenrir the wolf devouring the sun — that was fresh and original. After all, why shouldn’t religion be fun?

I use my magnet key to open the door and barge into the lobby, panting and sweating like a pig. Nobody inside. The black sacrificial goat bleats plaintively. Of course. Trust my assistants to go on vacation. This is Russland, after all. Even a nuclear war won’t stop them from retiring to their summer cottages.

A written prompt shaped as an axe hangs over the altar. I know it by heart:

Monday: Moon’s day

Tuesday: Tiu’s day

Wednesday: Woden’s day

Thursday: Thor’s day

Friday: Freya’s day

Saturday: Saturn’s day

Sunday: Sun’s day

Moskauers aren’t particularly attentive. They still use the old week names, out of habit. But an experienced priest like myself who was interned in Norway and Tibet can’t let his tongue slip.

I walk over to the goat. He stinks and tries to gore me with his horns. He has the right not to like me: he’ll be slaughtered soon.

My to-do list, the one in the altar box, renders me speechless. How am I supposed to find time for all this? The very first item on the list is a funeral. This isn’t what it used to be: do a bit of singing and incense-burning, bury the poor beggar, end of story. Oh, no. It’s not just having to load the stiffs onto disposable plywood Mitsubishi boats to be burned on the Moskva River. It’s the priests’ duty to cut the dead men’s nails! Oh yes. When Ragnarök — the world’s end — comes, the earth will disgorge Naglfar, the ship fashioned entirely from dead people’s nails. The ocean will freeze over and the ship will slide over the ice, taking an army of jötunns — mythical giants — to their last battle. To prevent Ragnarök from happening, dead people’s nails should be cut short: this way Naglfar can’t form, you see. My scissors are always here. What’s a quick manicure? Surely not a big deal.

You really think no one believes it?

Not the Schwarzkopfs, no. They’re either Bolshies or Orthodox Christians or just plain good pagans. But the rest... there’s no zealot like a convert, you know. You won’t believe the extent of it. Old ladies gossip on boulevard benches about the Goddess Angrboda: were her children begotten by Loki or by Thor? The mind boggles.

I walk over to the statue of Rübezahl, the forest sprite and the king of dwarves. A tiny, hunched old man with a large beard. I mustn’t forget to lay a bunch of mushrooms at his feet.

A new bout of pain pierces my head like a red-hot needle.

I clench my teeth. My fingers squeeze the head of a goat lying on the altar. Great gods...

The haze before my eyes refuses to dissolve. I gasp. My mouth fills with blood.

Darkness devours everything around me. Rübezahl explodes in a cascade of tiny little stars.

Vision One. The Black Skies

The wind screams. Icy cold, it reaches under my clothes, its skeletal fingers clenching my throat, constricting my movements. My eyelashes have frozen together. I sniffle, wary of opening my mouth. The wind’s not screaming anymore: it’s howling like a fatally wounded animal, making me colder still.

I scramble through the darkness. There’s not a single light here. The flashes of submachine gun fire slice through the pitch black night.

Human hands poke out of the ice. People stagger through the city, sinking knee deep into the snow. Not people: rambling shadows, lice-ridden, in filthy trench coats. There’s nothing human left about them. Their frost-burned cheeks are wrapped in women’s shawls, their boot legs are stuffed with rags against the cold. Some of them seek warmth by bonfires, wrapping bundles of blankets around themselves.

This is crazy. I turn a corner of a collapsed building. A group of soldiers is swarming around a dead horse. They’re delirious with starvation. One of them has crawled toward the horse’s head and is busy nibbling at its stiff frozen ear. Not a star in the sky. Its blackness merges with that of the earth. They’re one now. There’s not a single house around still intact. Nothing but ruins, their jagged walls like the tooth marks of a mysterious monster.

The earth begins to shake. The starving lunatics duck into the snow, choking on horse meat. An air raid. The howling of bombers adds to the screaming of the wind, growing into a symphony of the Apocalypse. Orange flashes rip through the darkness.

Death.

It’s everywhere here.

Each of us knows what they are going to feed on once all the horses are dead and all the cats have been trapped. We’ll feed on each other. Warmth and food: this is what these ragged people hunt for. A tin of canned meat goes for a gold signet ring. Only who might need it here?

Barbed wire-wound stakes are hung with frozen bodies. Nobody buries them. They’re just too many. Those still alive have gotten used to the dead men’s company. I see shell cases scattered amongst the collapsed brickwork. Tank crews are still alive inside their white machines but they have no gas left. The tanks turn their turrets this way and that, unable to move. They're dying like broken-legged mammoths.

I can see a deluded soldier rip his trench coat open baring his chest, yelling at an Oberleutnant. The soldier is young and drunk as a skunk. The Oberleutnant is older, his face covered with stubble, a bloodied bandage on his forehead. The shrapnel scar on his cheek is semicircular.

”Why did they send us here?” the soldier screams. “We’re all gonna die!”

Alcohol is never in short supply. Without it, all wars would have ended before they even started. Facing death is scary. Alcohol dissolves the panicky fear. Not for very long, but still.

He hurls his submachine gun at the Oberleutnant’s feet. His face is distorted.

“This isn’t my country! Let me go! I want to leave!”

The Oberleutnant shakes his head. His pale blue eyes reflect the falling snow. The soldier collapses into a deep drift and struggles to scramble back to his feet, then tries to crawl away.

The officer pulls his right hand out of his trench coat’s pocket. His hand looks so funny in a women’s fingerless mitten. His index and little fingers are black — apparently septic with frostbite.

He clenches the handle of his eight-round Walther and takes aim in the snowstorm, mumbling something through clenched teeth. The soldier has already made it to the trenches.

He fires.

The soldier drops on his back. The helmet flies off his head. His blond hair is covered in blood.

Immediately another shot resonates through the air: the heavy sound of a far-off rifle. An enemy sniper, shooting blindly. The officer’s muzzle flash had betrayed his position.

The Oberleutnant sinks to his knees, drops his Walther and lies down on his side as if to have a nap. It takes the snowstorm but a few seconds to bury the two new corpses.

How strange. Only a moment ago, two men were alive. And now they’re not. Every man who goes to war thinks he’s going to survive. Human history might have been completely war-free had we known that we were going to be killed. Yes, killed.

A new swarm of bombers dives. Explosions. More explosions. And yet more.

I rub my cheeks with snow. I don’t sense the cold. It's frostbite.

I know very well why I’m seeing it all. The dead cities. The dead bodies. The ice desert.

She makes me see it.

---

[i] In the real world, in 1943 the Reichsführer of the SS Heinrich Himmler prepared a plan to adopt Scandinavian mythology as the country’s official religion. The plan provided for the building of Viking temples as well as the execution of the Pope. However, he never proposed the plan to Hitler.

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New chapter - Moskau by G. Zotov (The Alternative History thriller)

Chapter Two

Moskau, Sakura Hotel

A sixth floor office, three hours later.

From a classified audio transcript,

“I’m highly disappointed in you, Itiro san,” a male voice said bitterly.

“And so am I, Onoda san. Allow me to write a poem on the subject, followed by my performing seppuku. I will be very careful in ripping my belly; I won’t soil the floors. I’ve brought a waterproof cloak and twenty feet of plastic film specifically for the purpose.”

“And what am I supposed to do with your body? Cut it into pieces and burn them in the fireplace? Thank you very much! As far as I know, you and your wife received two million yen for the job. The imperial Kommandatur in Hong Kong made sure you boarded the plane without being checked. No, don’t start. I’ve heard all your excuses. But somehow I doubt they’ll convince the others.”

A heavy sigh. “I understand. What am I looking at?”

“Nothing good, really. The Mikado Bank account where you placed the money has been frozen. Your family isn’t getting it until the job is complete. Excuse my being so blatant, Itiro san, but how much time have you got left until your meeting with Amaterasu, the solar goddess?”

The other voice paused. “About a week, according to the doctors. I appreciate your concern.”

An expiring cigarette hissed against the ashtray. “In this case, I have the displeasure to state that you have seven days to complete your mission. In any case, the government will pay for your funeral. Out of pure respect of your past services, Itiro san.”

“I do not deserve a single crumb of respect, Onoda san.”

“Excellent. In this case, try to retrieve it, as well as your money. This is the only way to secure adequate living standards for your children. I’ll make sure that you have everything you need this week, including reichsmarks. The reichsmark isn’t as stable as the yen, but at least you can use this Monopoly money all over Europe — both in Moskau and in the Reichskommissariats of Norway, Ukraine and Netherlands. Italy is the only country now not accepting the reichsmark. They prefer their hand-soiled liras. What a joke of a nation! They still exploit the bygone glory of Cesar's legions while in fact they struggled to conquer those barefoot Abyssinian savages. War just isn’t their thing. They should stay at home and eat spaghetti. All those weekly Hello Duce! TV shows! Romano Mussolini is just as eccentric as his father was. He’s eighty, for crissakes, and he’s prancing around like a college student. All that drunken sax playing of his at the Axis countries summit; his courting the ancient Sophie Loren... the man is a joke. You should rent an apartment by the day. Hotels are crawling with Gestapo agents. You know, don’t you, that this so-called empire of theirs is a rather loose structure? It’s not a single state but some sort of hostile competing Reichskommissariats. Even their capital is alternating. Last year it was Amsterdam. This year it’s Moskau.”

“I thank you, Onoda san. The diamonds of your thoughts enrich the poverty of my mind.”

A lighter clicked. “I swear by the Mikado, you won’t find it easy. Yes, you do speak a bit of Russisch, that was part of your profession... still, theory and practice aren’t the same thing. The Russlanders are a very peculiar nation. They’re terribly xenophobic — but they love all things foreign, especially with some well-targeted promotion. You know, don’t you, that Japanese food is extremely popular in Moskau? In less than ten years it has become a sensation."

The other man coughed. “Please accept my admiration for your work, Onoda san. I always found it strange that the Third Reich eats nothing but sushi, considering them a national Japanese dish and the ultimate in health foods. If this is the work of the promotional department at the Mikado’s court, they deserve being immortalized. Turning Japanese cat food into the local jetset hors-d’oeuvres!”

“Oh, yes! Thanks to this idea, the Nippon koku has no problem getting rid of raw fish leftovers. As for the rest, it’s all the same. Did you notice the abundance of blond people in Moskau?”

The voice paused again. “I did. Everybody’s either blond or a redhead. Not a single dark-haired person.”

“Exactly. Itiro san, this is something you need to understand. In Moskau, being Aryan is considered cool. The Führer’s initial doctrine considered the inhabitants of Russland as an inferior nation of untermenschen, as they called them. Substandard people. But closer to September 1945 the Reich's generals realized they weren’t going to defeat the guerrilla movement. Which was when the opposite idea prevailed. Reluctantly they recognized the Russlanders as an Aryan nation which allowed them to recruit them into the SS. Moreover, the Berlin racial department officially recognized all Slavs as Aryans, including the Bulgarians. Everyone but the Poles, that is. From that moment, Russland women started receiving alimony for the children born from German soldiers^[i]. It’s been half a century since. The European nations have all cross-bred: it’s a true melting pot here. These days you’d be hard pressed to guess the origins of anyone. But here, Aryans are obliged to dye their hair blond. It’s not a trend even. More of a necessity.”

“You don’t want to say there’re no dark-haired Russlanders left, do you, Onoda san?”

“Oh, yes. Plenty of those around. But they either wear wigs of shave their heads. Those who have the guts to be seen with their natural hair are called the Schwarzkopfs — Black Heads. It’s the slang word for dissidents. I told you already that Russland is a very peculiar area. It eagerly soaks up any foreign filth — but by the same token, it resists any foreign invaders. The guerrilla movement is still going strong all over the Reichskommissariat of Moskau. They control entire areas in the Urals, in St. Petersburg suburbs and around Yekaterinodar. You won’t want to go picnicking in the woods, oh no! Even in Moskau, Resistance is quite active. Two months ago they killed the city’s Oberkommandant Gruppenführer von Travinsky.

“This is crazy," the other voice burst out coughing. "Overzealous fanatics.”

“You would think so, wouldn't you? But this is simply a local tradition. The Russlanders have lots of habits they inherited from the Mongols. Corruption, for one. An Oriental love of creature comforts. Sucking up to the authorities. Cronyism. And with all this, they resisted the Yoke for two hundred years until the Golden Horde gave up and left them well alone. The Russlanders’ ties with the Germans are much stronger than you might think. They were ruled by Kaiserins, Empresses of German blood, like Katharina I and Katharina II who is also known as Catherine the Great, the best queen in Russland’s history. Every Kaiser of Russland starting with Peter the Great married a German princess. The very first Royal Russian dynasty was the Rurik, descendants of Danish princes. They were followed by the Mongols followed by the Germans. After the Bolsheviks had seized power, Jews came — followed by the Georgians followed by the Germans again. Basically, Russland has always been controlled by a foreign power. So there’ll always be some who hate it. Unfortunately, neither the government of Russland nor the Schwarzkopfs have noticed that the Wehrmacht is long gone. They’re at war with themselves.”

“How can I express my gratitude to you, Onoda san? All this is highly informative.”

“Don’t mention it. What a shame that Amaterasu is in such a hurry to summon you. You won’t have time to get a feeling for Russland. I’ve been working here for ten years already. You can’t imagine some things I’ve seen — even in the Siberian cities of Uradziosutoku and Habarosito which are thriving in the Mikado’s care. You can make the locals take Japanese names but they’ll still drink moonshine instead of sake!”

The other voice trembled. “How truly awful...”

“I haven’t told you half of it. No one wants to study Japanese. Women are the only ones who agree to wear geta sandals and kimonos. No one makes rock gardens over here. They prefer to dig the ground up and grow those wretched cucumbers, of all things! The only things that took were yakitori and right-hand drive cars. Oh, they love them in Uradziosutoku! This is something they won’t let you take away from them! I completely agree with the Mikado’s position: in order to ensure our empire’s world leadership we do need natural resources. And still sometimes I wish that our acquisitions didn’t go beyond taking the second half of Karafuto Island.”

“I completely agree with you, Onoda san.”

“Sorry for keeping you so long, my dear Itiro san. Here, take these reichsmarks," the voice said, accompanied by the rustle of paper notes. "I’ll give you the address in a minute. Go to the first street kiosk and buy yourself an oxygen mask and a Geiger counter. Do you have the Hong Kong equipment with you? Excellent. But be careful. Don’t use it unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“If you don’t mind me asking..." the other voice shook with anxiety, "could you issue me a handgun, please?”

“You don’t need it. Whatever you do, you can’t shoot him.”

---

[i] In March 1943 Adolf Hamann, the commandant of Orel — the Russian city occupied by the Germans — issued this little-known order about “alimony payments to children born of Wehrmacht fathers”. The reason for the Slavs’ recognition as Aryan was simple: Germany needed to replenish its troops after its Stalingrad losses.

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