The Goddess Of Fortune Page 5

  Haus Wachenfeld

  Sunday, 5 January 1941

  The sun feebly struggled—and failed—to warm Haus Wachenfeld. The SS guards tried to convince each other that the winter was not as bad as the ice winter of the previous year—the winter of ‘39 was the coldest in living memory: canals froze; hearty livestock died in the fields before they could be shepherded to barns; and airplane engines refused to start. But the current winter was just as severe.

  A roaring fire in the great room burnt brightly. In front of it, and hogging most of it, stood a very fat man of medium height wearing the extravagant uniform of Reichsmarshall. He looked like a colonel from a Latin America banana republic, his chest was so encrustulated with medals. In his right hand he held a jewel-encrusted baton. He was explaining—or rather pontificating—to the very small man standing beside him how his baton was a full three centimeters longer than any other in the Reich. The other man succeeded in appearing impressed, and flattered the fat man by saying that it was not just his baton that was longer. The fat man liked this phallic reference and laughed.

  “So, Paul, why are we here? I was planning to hunt mountain goats at Oberlech for the entire week. Couldn’t this meeting wait?”

  The small man said nothing.

  Presently, their host entered and approached the fire. He was careful not to catch the fat man’s eye. The host suggested they move to the secure room in the second basement. At this, the fat man’s smile disappeared and he started to sense trouble, as one of his Austrian mountain goats senses danger even before picking up the scent of the hunters.

  The three walked to the lift that Bormann had had installed in a single 24-hour period when the owner was away in Berlin. When the host first saw the miracle, he simply shook his head and smiled, and without thinking, said to all how he could never do without Bormann; a remark Bormann repeated one hundred times over the next few months.

  The three men entered the lift and the host inserted the key in the brass control panel of electric push buttons and pressed the button for the second basement, which could only be accessed via the lift and only by someone with the key (Bormann held the only other key.)

  Silently, the Siemens lift descended and the three men walked to the first room. The entire second basement was uncharacteristically spartan—it was like a prison, or more accurately, a dungeon. Unfinished concrete marked the walls of the corridor and even the room itself was sparse—a large desk, four arm chairs, a moving picture screen and a new electrical phonograph were the only furnishings. The room was well lit by electric lights and heated by two three-bar electric heaters.

  The fat man’s unease increased.

  “I hope you two are not going to do me in here,” he laughed, trying to get a reaction.

  The complete lack of response from the other two really alarmed him. After all, these were two of his oldest comrades in the Struggle, and why he had marched with the host in Munich in ‘23.

  “Please sit here, Paul has something to show you. But before we start, I’d like to ask you just one question: do you know a man by the name of Prodromos Athanasiadis Bodosakis? Here is a photograph of this man.”

  At this, Goering blanched and started to sweat, a little at first.

  “Well, I meet lots of men. Why Paul, this chap looks like your nemesis from the old times in Berlin—the old police chief who persecuted you.”

  Even the reference to the hated Bernhard Weiss generated no response from the slight man.

  “It’s a simple question, Hermann,” the host asked, almost plaintively.

  “Do you know him? Yes or no?”

  The fat man realized his comrade from the old days was trying to help him.

  Goering said nothing.

  After a moment, the host said, with no enthusiasm, “Paul, run the film please.”

  The little man walked to the film projector and started the film. The film was very grainy and the sound was at times inaudible, but the film showed the fat man and the Greek in a hotel room. The room was clearly a large and expensive suite in the old style of a grand hotel of Vienna or Paris or even Rome.

  About a minute into the film, Goering was heard to ask about “the second payment.” The Greek told the fat man that the money was already in the fat man’s bank account in Switzerland. On the film, Goering could be seen rubbing his hands—like a stereotype of the greedy avarice of the bankers he professed to hate.

  “Carinhall needs more work, so this will be most useful” the grainy figure was heard—and seen—to reply.

  A few seconds later the film ended.

  “So I met this fellow, he was simply a business colleague, what of it?” Goering lied.

  The little man handed Goering a folder of a dozen sheets of paper.

  Goering opened it and looked.

  “Fuck—what is this, who forged my signature?” the confused fat man first confessed and then tried to bluster in the same sentence.

  “You supplied the fucking Republicans with arms which they used to kill German soldiers. You arranged for the fucking ship Bramhill to deliver 19,000 rifles, and 100 machines guns, and 28 million rounds in ‘36. You’re a fucking traitor. Brave Germans soldiers you helped kill, you, you fucking piece of shit, you fucking animal, you coward, you killed German soldiers in Spain.”

  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 y
ou 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

  Tokyo

  Wednesday, 8 January 1941

  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.”

  The Admiral laughed, “Well, we must never forget the rent.”

  Everyone laughed. Some so as to not stand out, and some to appear to understand. Those who did understand instantly saw the astonishing new weapon Sasaki had built.

  Sasaki showed he understood the Admiral by adding,

  “So, one million U.S. dollars consisting of 10,000 bills would cost about 30,000 yen or about 300 real U.S. dollars.

  “Fuck me,” an old Admiral from the days of Tsushima said in the succinct way that all navies speak.

  “Indeed, gentlemen, indeed. Do remember gentlemen all this paper money is actually just paper. It has no value. It is not like silver or gold, that have real value and value across the world—one country’s 100-dollar bill is just another country’s toilet paper,” Sasaki’s boss politely explained.

  “Look at this,” he said as he passed around another American 100-dollar bill.

  Frowns ensued.

  “You see this is also an American 100-dollar bill, but this fragile piece of paper was issued in 1864 by the rebel southern states. And its value today is, of course, zero. It’s an interesting relic to people like us here at the bank, but it simply serves to remind us of the completely worthlessness of paper money. Here is another, this one is a 100-billion Reichmark note from 1923. Again, just another silly slip of paper.”

  Sasaki’s boss turned philosophical,

  “Remember what the Russian revolutionist chap V. I. Lenin liked to say, ‘The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.’ Well, Sasaki has created an amazing weapon that we can use to destroy the enemy with paper, ink, and a printing press. Gentlemen, I will also remind you that in most parts of the world the American 100-dollar bill is the de facto currency, and that 80% of all U.S. currency is denominated in 100-dollar bills. Moreover, all the paper, ink, plates and printing machinery are Japanese. And with the development in 1939 and 1940 of the New Trunk Line—the Shinkansen—modern steam locomotives now being developed that travel at 200 kph. So the time to carry the paper from northern Japan to Tokyo has been compressed to under 10 hours. And with our presses in the basements of this building we can create silly slips of paper with the nominal value of one hundred million U.S. dollars per day.”

  Sasaki’s boss paused, and then said:

  “Our respectful suggestion at the Bank is that we supply our Army and our Navy each with 100 million dollars’ worth of currency each week. You gentlemen can use it for whatever purpose you see fit.”

  A doubting voice asked,

  “This is all well and good, and this is a wonderful plan—or perhaps I should say ‘scheme.’ But we in this room are not experts—will these bank notes be accepted? Are they good enough?”

  Sasaki’s boss smiled,

  “A very, very wise question. Since January of last year, we at the Bank have been supplying Sasaki’s new weapon to our agents in the American possessions of the Hawaiian Islands and the Philippines, as well as to the American cities of San Francisco and New York. In total, close to seventy million dollars of Sasaki’s currency has been spent, and not one bill has been rejected.”

  This raised eyebrows.

  The doubter congratulated Sasaki who quietly rose and bowed deeply.

  Another voice asked about the old papers,

  “If these bills were made recently, ho
w is it that some of the bills look so old?”

  Sasaki explained it was actually a simple process; the first step was agents in the United States collected 1,200 real Franklins of all grades (here Sasaki inadvertently slipped into jargon). By tabulating the dates of the bills and then grading each bill, Sasaki’s people could determine the average life of a real U.S. 100-dollar bill to be between seven to nine years. Sasaki smiled and explained that the early Japanese bills’ paper was a little too robust and the rag content had to be reduced to better mimic the bills printed by the U.S. Treasury—the Sasaki bill lasted longer than the genuine ones printed in Washington. Sasaki had printed bills with dates from 1928 to 1939. To age the bills, the Bank had bought and installed 200 of the latest Bendix automatic clothes washing machines, all bolted to the floor on the second basement and third basement of this very building. Sasaki smiled and explained that these machines had been bought in San Francisco and shipped to Tokyo in 1938 and 1939 had been paid for with Sasaki’s own notes. At this last revelation the room burst out laughing.

  Sasaki continued,

  “So once cut, we dry the newly printed bills in an array of air dryers. Once completely dry, we then wash the bills in the Bendix machines one or more times with a small amount of water and a tiny amount of white vinegar to mimic human sweat. Then we dry the bills again in dryers that rotate and tumble the bills to create a used appearance and texture.”

  Until this meeting, just about everyone in the room was aware of the terrible and wasteful bickering that never stopped between the army and the navy. As one of the older admirals had explained to one of his military cohorts,

  “It’s like a scab—you know you should not pick at it, but you cannot help it.

  The senior general listening to this agreed,

  “God alive, we’re all Japanese but we’re constantly doing this. It’s all because we have too much time and too little to do, but these times are when we should be using this precious time for planning, not fucking fighting.”

  This meeting might just heal this canker and end the scratching—a printing press more powerful than the world’s largest dreadnought.