“What happened?”
“A strange look came over their faces. They seemed to sober up pretty damn fast. They left the bar, and I never saw either one again. But I did see others. I moved back to Albany, New York. I knew they were watching me. A stalker left his tracks in my tomato garden one night. Our dog was a barker and must have scared him away. When he came back a few nights later, I was waiting for him. Before I snapped his neck, he told me his superiors — the top of the food chain, said I’d been seen meeting with known Russian spies. I was set up and all in the name of national security. I dumped his body in the Hudson. I knew they’d keep coming, so Annie and I left — left the country I’d fought for and almost died for many times. We lived all over Europe, even Cairo, never staying too long in one place. Years past and they started dying off, and then we settled in England.”
“This one-hundred-year plan you mentioned. Have there been any events since your meeting with Donovan and Bremen that you think might connect to that plan?”
Tower’s unkempt white eyebrows rose. He nodded his head. “Hell yes. The financial crisis is one of the most recent. What these people have done is criminal. But it’s America’s middleclass taxpayers who are the casualties of an undeclared war between them and the men who would be kings.”
“How far do you think this secretive group would go to set and achieve their agenda and goals?”
“If someone could rise to be potentially a big thorn in their side, nothing is off the table. They’re ruthless. I’ve tried to follow their mongrel pedigree line from the people I knew to their associates that came into office or great financial power.”
“If John Kennedy Junior had not died in that plane accident, if Kennedy had become president, would he have been a thorn in their side?”
Tower coughed, his eyes watering. “I don’t think a Kennedy would fit well into this group.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the last twenty years, look at the number of U.S. Senators and members of congress who died in plane crashes a few weeks before the elections. Senator Paul Wellstone is one example. When Kennedy Junior’s plane went down…I had my doubts as to it being an accident. Look, his father and uncle were both taken out. If he had plans to seek the office his father once had, I’m sure he would have interfered with some of the goals in a one-hundred-year plan. If they’ll kill John Junior, they’ll kill anyone who gets in their way, just like they did to a war hero like Patton.”
“What happened to the spear Patton carried?”
Tower pursed his lips and grunted. “Lawrence Foster, the man you first mentioned, was working as an assistant prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trials. He’d introduced me to David Marcus, a man I came to know and really respect. Over drinks one night, I told him I’d hidden the spear in a bank deposit box in London. David said he knew an antiquities dealer, a gent who bought and sold religious art, someone who would have a huge interest in the spear. Also, he told me that he heard Stalin had a standing offer of a hundred grand to any of his men who could find the spear. David had access to the Russian and German POWs, so I didn’t doubt him for one second. I was hurting for money. David set up a meeting between me and a Frenchman…can’t recall his first name but his last name was Fournier.” Tower coughed and sipped his tea.
“Did you meet with Fournier?”
“Yes, twice. He said he wanted to get to know me, and for me to know him, as friends. Fournier was cut from a different tree. I remember him as a deeply religious man. He told me he’d bought some papers from a Sotheby’s auction in London in 1936. The papers had to do with something Isaac Newton had left — notes on how science and religion were both part of what and who God is and always was. Fournier was a scholar, philosopher, theologian, and now I believe he was spy, a damn good one, too. He said he was authorized to offer me money for the spear.”
“Authorized by whom?”
“He wouldn’t say. It didn’t make much difference to me. We met at a public park, the Jardin du Luxemborg in Paris. He was waiting for me at the Fountain de l’Observatoire. The fountain is a work of art. The world, like a globe, is held up high by statues of four women. Fournier said the women represented the four quarters of the earth. We made the exchange, shook hands, and that was the last time I ever saw him.”
“Do you remember if there was anything engraved on the blade of the spear?”
“My memory isn’t that good. There was something, though…numbers or letters…I can’t recall. It looked like Latin or maybe Roman numerals.”
“Do you speak Italian?”
“Used to, but not much anymore.”
“Did Fournier speak Italian?”
“As I recall, he was fluent.”
“Did Fournier tell you what he planned to do with the spear?”
Tower inhaled deeply, his lungs wheezing. “He told me that he was returning it to the Temple of David. I told him I thought the Temple was destroyed a lot of centuries ago. He said the cornerstone exists. And he said something else.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve thought about that often through the years. I can close my eyes and hear his voice when he was standing next to the fountain in the park. He said that cornerstone could be seen through a dark glass with the purest of white light. And in this place a rose without thorns blooms under a new sun.” Tower slowly turned his head toward Marcus. “I never knew what that meant. Don’t suppose I ever will.”
“Did Fournier tell you anything else?”
Tower looked down as his hands, fingers knotty from arthritis. He slowly raised his head and met Marcus’s eyes. “Yes, he did. He said in August 1944, a secret meeting was held at the Maison Rouge Hotel in Strasbourg. I believe he was there, in what capacity I have no clue. Anyway, a Nazi official, who had close ties to Heinrich Himmler, presented a document titled the Red House Report. They knew the war couldn’t be won. So they wanted to set up a Fourth German Reich, but this one was to be an economic force, not an army. And to pull it off, they planned to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars in looted gold and money out of Germany. They wanted a secret escape route through Rome and Switzerland to transfer some of their Nazi brethren out of the country. It was called the ‘ratline,’ because rats board boats by crawling down the rope lines. It became better known as the Odessa Plan.”
“Did that route lead to Argentina?”
“Yes.”
“Who was in this meeting?”
“They were industrialists, men representing some of the largest companies in Germany. I. G. Farben, Thyssen Steel, to name two. Later, during the Nuremberg trials, a half dozen of I.G. Farben’s executives were tried and convicted for using slave labor in their plants, the same plants that manufactured Zyklon B, the poison used at Auschwitz and Dachau. Farben manufactured pharmaceuticals, too. They bought Jewish women, prisoners, from the Nazis and used these women in horrific experiments, mostly involving new drugs they would bring to market after they worked out dosages that wouldn’t kill or disfigure a person.”
“How did the prosecutors know which men from Farben to put on trial?”
“It wasn’t hard to discover that. They all turned on each other as the shit hit the fan. David Marcus culled it down to the worst of the worst for prosecution.” Tower stopped and raised one white eyebrow. “Is that why you’re here?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said your name’s Paul Marcus? Is this about David Marcus, are you a relative?”