On and on went the rant, and the host was screaming. His face red, the veins in his temple throbbing.
The little man said nothing.
“Do you realize, you piece of shit, what would happen if my enemies got this folder. Germany as we know it would be finished—the Wehrmacht are just waiting for me to make a mistake like this. It would be ’34 all over again, but not Röhm this time, it would be me. You’re finished, it’s over, you piece of shit.”
By now, Goering’s hands were shaking.
“Wolf, Wolf, look, you’re right, you are always right. I was wrong, but look, no one other than the three of us needs to know,” Goering pleaded using the host’s nickname that only the host’s closest intimates used.
“Are you a complete fucking moron, you fucking idiot—what about the French who filmed this, what about our agents in Switzerland, what about those cocksucking Swiss bankers, and what about that fucking Greek—he is a total whore, just like you? Just one of these needs talk and we are all fucked—you, me, Paul, everyone. You’re done, it’s over, and you, you fucking moron, are finished.”
Suddenly, Goering remembered the meeting—it was in Paris in ’36. He was in real trouble. That fucking Greek cunt.
“I can retire, I will go quietly. Paul can tell the world I am ill.”
Without saying a word, the host moved to the desk and pressed a hidden electric buzzer. Four SS guards entered the room; the host nodded. With the authority of the German Chancellor, the four lifted Goering bodily and stood him against the cold concrete wall.
Goering’s eyes opened wide.
“You can’t be…”
Before he could finish his sentence the four had discharged their Lugers. The corpse of the former Great War flying ace—leader of the late Red Baron’s Flying Circus—slumped to the floor.
“Get rid of him,” the host said flatly, as if ordering one of his favorite cream tarts.
“Bury him behind the greenhouse. Use the picks to break the frozen ground.”
Paul and the host left, taking with them the folders.
Once back in the great room, the host said,
“What the hell was he thinking; did he not realize the implications? With your radio work and my performances, we’ve neatly been able to trick the world. The rest of the world wonders open-mouthed at the power and the solidarity of the German juggernaut. Damn, if the world actually knew how frail we actually are, how brittle this spider’s web I try to hold together. Jesus. Remember when we marched into the Rhineland in ’36? I know those fools in the Wehrmacht were ready to skin me alive if the democracies so much as farted. But as the British and French did nothing, our Struggle survived to live another day. Do you think the British are weak and as brittle as we are? Surely not—they cannot be that frail and fragile. For one thing, they have a wonderful ruling class. And that big moat, of course. But we have to be so, so careful. You know, I loved Hermann, and he had so many great and redeeming features, but perhaps it was the morphine for the shoulder. Perhaps it was the loss of his Swedish princess. Perhaps it was… God, I don’t know. He was such a tower of strength. Such a titan.”
Paul nodded at the host’s puerile musings. Business-like, as always, he said,
“Well, we’ll announce that he was killed by the Resistance while visiting France. Always good to bank some grievances, real or imagined. If the truth ever does get out, we will simply deny it; we should be safe for at least six months. Now regarding these files, I see absolutely no reason to keep them or the film. Yes, of course you are correct, there are other copies—those fucking French can be depended on to try to fuck us, but thank goodness we found this out now and not later.”
Back in the great room, Paul fed one sheet at a time on to the fire. Even the plain, buff-colored manila folders themselves were burnt. The cellulose film burnt with an acrid smell and filled the great room with lachrymose fumes. After a few minutes, all that remained was the charred steel spool.
“My sister is going to be livid when she cleans the fireplace on Monday,” the host said referring his sister who managed the household and who insisted on cleaning the fireplace herself, in spite of having over two dozen servants at her disposal.
4: Sasaki’s Franklins
THE SNOW HAD STARTED TUESDAY, just before midnight. By mid-morning most of it had melted, but at dawn, for two hours in the soft morning pastels, the city had taken on a new and softer character. At nine o’clock that morning, two blocks from the sprawling 845 acres of the Imperial Palace, Kaito Sasaki looked out the window from his third-floor office. An organic chemist by trade, Sasaki often wondered at the vicissitudes of life that had transported him from his simple and not entirely unpleasant job at the leading paper maker in sleepy northern Hokkaido to the center of power at the Bank of Japan.
“It’s all about the paper,” his boss enthusiastically explained an hour later to the assembled meeting of bored generals and admirals.
“You see, gentlemen, it is the paper that makes a banknote and we’re fortunate to have seconded Mr. Sasaki from the Hokkaido Fine Paper Mill Company. Sasaki is the world’s leading authority on mixing textures and rags from different mills and has written extensively on the topic and the related topic of the varying levels of acidity of rag-to-paper mixtures. I will not bore you with pH levels, but believe me, Sasaki is the expert.”
While trying to politely stay interested, the assembled admirals and generals were fast losing interest.
“Please open the envelopes in front of you. Inside, you will find ten American 100-dollar bills. Please examine each and make two piles to tell me which are the ones Sasaki and his team here at the Bank created and which are the genuine American bills.”
This request suddenly reenergized the meeting and the four admirals and five generals each opened his envelope and enthusiastically examined all ten bank notes. The bank notes varied from pristine to worn, ragged, and torn. As Sasaki expected the two piles were made based on freshness, and the testers proclaimed—to a man—that the Japanese forgeries were the fresh ones, while the old and tattered bills were the real American ones.
Sasaki’s boss smiled slightly and nodded his head.
“I see, so the clean new bills are the ones Sasaki printed and the old ones are the American ones. Of course, this is a completely reasonable and logical conclusion.”
“It is also a completely false one;” this announcement got everyone’s attention.
“You see gentlemen, every bank note you have in front of you was printed in the basement of this building here in Tokyo.
The liberal Admiral of the group—only 49 years old and one of the youngest Admirals in the Japanese Navy—asked,
“Excuse me, but can you tell me the cost of printing these bills?”
“I think I will let Sasaki answer that as it was he and his team that made these earth-shattering weapons.”
The room turned to Sasaki who rose and bowed slightly.
“These bills have a total cost of about three yen each, or, if you like, three American cents.”
“Oh,” the Admiral said.
Sasaki continued,
“That includes the ink, the paper, the electricity for the printing and cutting presses, and I added one-tenth of a yen for rent of the building.”