Read Online Swastika by Michael Slade - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michael Slade
Tags: Canada
Ads: Link
about one a.m. A pair of articles on the front page required his attention. “Stealth Killer Stalks ‘Boy’s Town’” was the headline of Bess McQueen’s story. That string of disappearances posed the greater threat of arrest, so Swastika studied the piece for clues that might lead Special X to the abandoned Skunk Mine where Ernst Streicher’s companion Nazi sword—his SS-Führerdegen—continued to pigstick young blood.
Nothing.
At least not in print.
With no indication that he was in jeopardy on that front, Swastika switched focus to the other story. This one—written by Cort Jantzen, who was following up on his earlier coverage—had a headline that matched that used for the boy’s town piece, as if the editor had decided to set both stories up as rivals. “Vigilante Kills Alleged Cannibal” it reported. The subhead added, “Settling the Score?”
After he absorbed the angle adopted by the reporter, the Nazi killer nodded in agreement with the heroic myth that had been boxed in a sidebar next to the main text. “Blinding the Cyclops” was its title. The myth wasn’t Nordic, but it appealed to Swastika’s imagination.
Snip, snip, snip …
Having cut the vigilante piece out of the Times, Swastika arranged it with the earlier stories on the “taken care of” side of the dagger box. Then he turned back to the paper to find something suitable for the bare surface on the other side of the desk.
Snip, snip, snip …
From the business section, he removed a story about a corporate exec who had viewed his company as a personal piggy bank, emptying the employee pension plan and divesting stockholders of their life savings. No one knew where the cash was now, but some of it had surely lined his lawyers’ deep pockets, for they had kept the case from coming to trial for several years and would probably hold it off for several more. The money worries he’d caused had driven a distraught investor to suicide. The dead man was the father of three. But there would be no murder charge.
Swastika grinned.
Before leaving the map room, the Fourth Reich assassin snipped a Scrabble tray of letters out of various headlines and arranged thirteen pieces along the edge of the desk.
The word described how he viewed the social outcasts of the Times ’ pieces, for whom his final solution was extermination.
The word was “Untermenschen.”
* * *
When he stood in the deathly quiet corridor outside the map room, a replica of the Führerbunker conference hall where Hitler had said farewell to his diehard disciples, Swastika thought he could still hear the footsteps of all the fugitive Nazis who had slipped into this city in the post-war years to plot the rising phoenix of the Fourth Reich. Hidden in the secret storage passages behind these walls had once been a fortune in Nazi gold. It had been smuggled out of the Third Reich just before it fell, and later was buccaneered up from South America with Flugkreisel hardware in the only U-boat ever sanctioned by the Pentagon to sail this coast. Those whose phantom footsteps Swastika heard haunting this hall were the most elusive Nazi war criminals, all unaccounted for in 1945.
But now those disciples were gone.
And so was Hitler’s gold.
Except for the gold in Switzerland, which maintained the family trust that kept this far-flung estate in Swastika’s hands.
This mansion in Vancouver.
And the ranch in the Cariboo.
The phantom footsteps came to life as Swastika walked along the narrow corridor, reviewing the waxwork figures against the far wall. The rheostat that controlled the ceiling fixtures was dimmed so the lamps would cast evocative shadows. His mother—a woman of many talents—had sculpted the wax much as the display artists do at Madame Tussaud’s. Fittingly, the first figure he came to was the führer. But this führer was taller, to match his father’s height. It wore the uniform Hitler had worn during those last days in the bunker,
Nothing.
At least not in print.
With no indication that he was in jeopardy on that front, Swastika switched focus to the other story. This one—written by Cort Jantzen, who was following up on his earlier coverage—had a headline that matched that used for the boy’s town piece, as if the editor had decided to set both stories up as rivals. “Vigilante Kills Alleged Cannibal” it reported. The subhead added, “Settling the Score?”
After he absorbed the angle adopted by the reporter, the Nazi killer nodded in agreement with the heroic myth that had been boxed in a sidebar next to the main text. “Blinding the Cyclops” was its title. The myth wasn’t Nordic, but it appealed to Swastika’s imagination.
Snip, snip, snip …
Having cut the vigilante piece out of the Times, Swastika arranged it with the earlier stories on the “taken care of” side of the dagger box. Then he turned back to the paper to find something suitable for the bare surface on the other side of the desk.
Snip, snip, snip …
From the business section, he removed a story about a corporate exec who had viewed his company as a personal piggy bank, emptying the employee pension plan and divesting stockholders of their life savings. No one knew where the cash was now, but some of it had surely lined his lawyers’ deep pockets, for they had kept the case from coming to trial for several years and would probably hold it off for several more. The money worries he’d caused had driven a distraught investor to suicide. The dead man was the father of three. But there would be no murder charge.
Swastika grinned.
Before leaving the map room, the Fourth Reich assassin snipped a Scrabble tray of letters out of various headlines and arranged thirteen pieces along the edge of the desk.
The word described how he viewed the social outcasts of the Times ’ pieces, for whom his final solution was extermination.
The word was “Untermenschen.”
* * *
When he stood in the deathly quiet corridor outside the map room, a replica of the Führerbunker conference hall where Hitler had said farewell to his diehard disciples, Swastika thought he could still hear the footsteps of all the fugitive Nazis who had slipped into this city in the post-war years to plot the rising phoenix of the Fourth Reich. Hidden in the secret storage passages behind these walls had once been a fortune in Nazi gold. It had been smuggled out of the Third Reich just before it fell, and later was buccaneered up from South America with Flugkreisel hardware in the only U-boat ever sanctioned by the Pentagon to sail this coast. Those whose phantom footsteps Swastika heard haunting this hall were the most elusive Nazi war criminals, all unaccounted for in 1945.
But now those disciples were gone.
And so was Hitler’s gold.
Except for the gold in Switzerland, which maintained the family trust that kept this far-flung estate in Swastika’s hands.
This mansion in Vancouver.
And the ranch in the Cariboo.
The phantom footsteps came to life as Swastika walked along the narrow corridor, reviewing the waxwork figures against the far wall. The rheostat that controlled the ceiling fixtures was dimmed so the lamps would cast evocative shadows. His mother—a woman of many talents—had sculpted the wax much as the display artists do at Madame Tussaud’s. Fittingly, the first figure he came to was the führer. But this führer was taller, to match his father’s height. It wore the uniform Hitler had worn during those last days in the bunker,
Similar Books
