Maybe this Abendsen is a Jew.
They’re still at it, trying to poison us. This jüdisches Buch–He slammed the covers of the Grasshopper violently together. Actual name probably Abendstein. No doubt the SD has looked into it by now.
Beyond doubt, we ought to send somebody across into the RMS to pay Herr Abendstein a visit. I wonder if Kreuz vom Meere has gotten instructions to that effect. Probably hasn’t, with all the confusion in Berlin. Everybody too busy with domestic matters.
But this book, Reiss thought, is dangerous.
If Abendstein should be found dangling from the ceiling some fine morning, it would be a sobering notice to anyone who might be influenced by this book. We would have had the last word. Written the postscript.
It would take a white man, of course. I wonder what Skorzeny is doing these days.
Reiss pondered, reread the dust jacket of the book. The kike keeps himself barricaded. Up in this High Castle. Nobody’s fool. Whoever gets in and gets him won’t get back out.
Maybe it’s foolish. The book after all is in print. Too late now. And that’s Japanese-dominated territory… the little yellow men would raise a terrific fuss.
Nevertheless, if it was done adroitly… if it could be properly handled.
Freiherr Hugo Reiss made a notation on his pad. Broach subject with SS General Otto Skorzeny, or better yet Otto Ohlendorf at Amt III of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt. Didn’t Ohlendorf head Einsatzgruppe D.?
And then, all at once, without warning of any kind, he felt sick with rage. I thought this was over, he said to himself. Does it have to go on forever? The war ended years ago. And we thought it was finished then. But that Africa Fiasco, that crazy Seyss-Inquart carrying out Rosenberg’s schemes.
That Herr Hope is right, he thought. With his joke about our contact on Mars. Mars populated by Jews. We would see them there, too. Even with their two heads apiece, standing one foot high.
I have my routine duties, he decided. I don’t have time for any of these harebrained adventures, this sending of Einsatzkommandos after Abendsen. My hands are full greeting German sailors and answering coded radiograms; let someone higher up initiate a project of that sort—it’s their business.
Anyhow, he decided, if I instigated it and it backfired, one can imagine where I’d be: in Protective Custody in Eastern General Gouvernement, if not in a chamber being squirted with Zyklon B hydrogen cyanide gas.
Reaching out, he carefully scratched the notation on his pad out of existence, then burned the paper itself in the ceramic ashtray.
There was a knock, and his office door opened. His secretary entered with a large handful of papers. “Doctor Goebbels’ speech. In its entirety.” Pferdehuf put the sheets down on the desk. “You must read it. Quite good; one of his best.”
Lighting another Simon Arzt Number 70 cigarette, Reiss began to read Doctor Goebbels’ speech.
9
After two weeks of nearly constant work, Edfrank Custom Jewelry had produced its first finished batch. There the pieces lay, on two boards covered with black velvet, all of which went into a square wicker basket of Japanese origin. And Ed McCarthy and Frank Frink had made business cards. They had used an artgun eraser carved out to form their name; they printed in red from this, and then completed the cards with a children’s toy rotary printing set. The effect—they had used a high-quality Christmas-card colored heavy paper—was striking.