Alone with his inner circle in the public privacy of the deserted parkplatz, Blacksturm lit a filterless cigarette and inhaled deeply.
“Schneck has planned well. Let us hope he executes with equal precision.”
“He will, Herr General,” replied Col. Klaus Hemmler. “Have no doubt. I have watched his rehearsals. They are complete even down to the bayoneting of any survivors.”
Blacksturm nodded.
Behind Hemmler one of Blacksturm’s subordinates coughed. Blacksturm turned on him.
“You have something you wish to say, Colonel Fowler?”
“Schneck’s plan is indeed a good one, Herr General. Yet I cannot help but advise caution. Our pressure upon the Americans has only begun, and their own generals wish to withdraw their forces to save money. Four of our people were placed in Parliament during the last election, and times have worsened since then; we shall surely see more elected in the next round of voting. If we wait, the Americans will depart peacefully and we shall control Parliament in due time. We risk much by acting so drastically and so soon.”
Karl Blacksturm’s heavy face tightened. “A hundred marks buys today what ten bought yesterday. The citizens of Germany starve while fat cosmopolitans grow rich. The Russians have disintegrated into impotence. Every month brings another reduction in the scraps the politicians throw to the army.” Blacksturm spat. “We waited four and a half decades for our ‘allies’ to eject the Communists from German soil, only to do it ourselves. We have waited for ten years for the English and the French to quit whining and come to the economic table, only to still contend with their sniveling. We have waited for that American conspiracy NATO to cease looking over our shoulders, yet they insist on remaining our overseers.” Blacksturm raised a clenched fist overhead to drive home his point. He was warming to it, his face flushing, words rolling off his tongue to transfix his small band of colonels in the spell of rhetoric. For a moment the sun cut through the haze, spotlighting Karl Blacksturm on the center of a political stage.
“Even now,” Blacksturm continued, “those who once held half our nation captive are unable to do more than shoot words at each other, unable to decide even who is in charge, unable even to feed themselves without half the world’s assistance. Have our leaders made one move to free us from the chains of our Anglo-Saxon keepers and our greasy, hook-nosed bondsmen? Have they taken one step to put our Germany in its rightful place? Our Germany: the nation that once held Europe in its grasp, the only nation with the sufficient strength, intelligence, and purity of race, to lead. Has just one of our country’s so-called great modern leaders so much as suggested that we take our rightful position at the head of Europe’s table? The collapse of the Soviets has left the place empty. Not one man has moved Germany forward. Instead we wait as Germany’s soldiers — its strength and its heroes — are turned out to an empty pasture. No, Herr Colonel, I will wait no longer. I did not see to it that the officers of the German Democratic Republic found positions in the Bundeswehr by waiting. I did not become the second most powerful man in this army by taking my time.”
Blacksturm turned to the woods, looking beyond them toward his destiny. “Over fifty years ago Germany suffered as she suffers now, and then one man possessed the courage to act.” He turned back to face them. “Yesterday, or rather only a few yesterdays ago, I was no more than a colonel in a German army that was the Russians’ proxy. But all that has changed. Today — here, now — I am the man with the courage to act. All the nuclear arms that NATO so carefully dispersed have been collected in preparation for their removal. The time is right. The time is now. Schneck’s ambush, Hohl’s attack, and Hemmler’s abductions will give us the pretext we need. The American withdrawal is steady, to be sure, but entirely too slow. I want the pressure on the Americans increased; they don’t seem to have gotten the message. If their soldiers choose to show their faces at night, see to it that their faces are bloodied.”
Karl Blacksturm turned back to the forest. “Do you not think it odd, gentlemen?”
“Herr General?”
“That the rise of a new world order, one with Germany at its head, shall begin in a quiet highway rest stop and an American officers’ club?” “There have been other beginnings even less prestigious.”
“How so, Herr Colonel?”
“The one before began in a beer hall.”
The four men sat in the sedan, watching the light filter out of the gasthaus windows and the seconds tick off their watches. The occupant of the driver’s seat and the man beside him were in their midforties and dressed conservatively, the collars of their tan trenchcoats pulled up close against the evening chill. The length and the bulk of their overgarments concealed the silenced 9mm pistols the men carried.
The two men occupying the back were both much younger and much more colorful. The T-shirt the taller of the two wore under an armless denim jacket did little to ward off the cold, and the variety of rock band patches and the stuffed dead mouse hanging from the left-front jacket pocket provided no warmth. Except for a two-inch-wide, four-inch-tall strip of blue and orange hair down the middle of his head, the young man was closely shaven. Star of David earrings dangled from each ear. The man in the driver’s seat had carefully selected the jewelry. He reasoned that there would be survivors and that they would remember that kind of detail. The other man wore his hair dyed black and permed into tight curls. His skin was tanned a Mediterranean olive-brown by the skin bronzer he’d used — also at the direction of the man behind the wheel. He looked normal enough in his windbreaker and slacks — if you discounted the gauntness of his face and the bagginess of his clothing, which would tell a keen observer that the young man had not eaten in far too long. This was the detail that had prompted the driver of the sedan to recruit him.
Each of the backseat’s occupants carried one additional accessory: an Uzi submachine gun.
The driver checked his watch.
“It is time.”
“Ja, so it is,” replied the young man in the denim vest. He shoved a magazine of ammunition into his weapon and opened the car door. His partner did the same, pausing as he left the sedan to lean into the passenger’s window.
“Remember, you promised me enough food for my family.”
“And money,” added the man in the denim jacket. “Lots of money. More than I could make in any job, even if there were any jobs for me.”
“We will fulfil all the necessary obligations,” answered the driver.
That seemed to satisfy the two, and they stalked off together toward the gasthaus. In the front seat, the driver and his companion carefully readied their weapons in preparation for the pair’s return.
Seated inside the Hilltop View, Col. Steve Wilmington, deputy commander of the U.S. Army’s 195th Infantry Brigade (Separate), and his operations officer, Lt. Col. Gus Brubek, ordered their third round and talked shop.
“Not bad getting a holiday in the big city, eh, Steve?”
“Shit, Gus, between Gen. Hagan’s damn victory celebration shindig, the paperwork involved in redeploying back to the States, and the sorry state of brigade maintenance, I’m glad to get two hours away from that martinet, much less a couple of days.”