Final Judgment

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Klaus Nitzche prepared his carved ivory pipe, brought for him from his estate in Argentina. The tobacco provided to him wasn’t his favorite blend, but it was tolerable. Anything was better than the cheap, often stale cigarettes with which he had been forced to make do while in prison.

He was cold. Even with the large door shut, and even with his heavy overcoat draped around his shoulders like a cape, the cold seeped into his old bones and made him shiver. It had been cold in his holding cell, too.

It galled him that he still wore the orange jumpsuit in which he had been brought to trial. To deny him the opportunity to face his accusers dressed as a man, to force him to look the part of the criminal before his trial had even begun…these were only some of the many petty insults he had been forced to endure.

Nitzche was a proud man. He had reason to be. From an early age, he had understood that the key to greatness was pride. If a person believed in himself, if he knew himself to be better than others, those beliefs became self-fulfilling prophecies. They drove a man, forced him to be better than his enemies, better than his competitors. They became the measure of what he was. They became everything.

If it was true for a man, it was true for a nation.

He remembered vividly the awful day he’d realized that his nation, his Germany, had no pride. His father was dead, a victim of overwork and a weak heart. Klaus had tried to speak with his mother about it. She was a whipped dog, content to keep her nose down and her standards low. She didn’t understand. She couldn’t help him.

Germany was crippled by war and economic ruin. Its people had the mind-set of the defeated. Its people had lost their pride.

And then everything changed.

Nitzche fussed over the pipe, packing it just so. His fingers trembled. Arthritis threatened to turn his hands into claws. He willed them to work. He wouldn’t be laid low by something as insignificant as sickness. Sickness was of the body, and the body answered to the mind.

Klaus Nitzche’s mind was superior.

From the first rays of hope that were the Führer’s ascendancy to power, Nitzche had known things would be different. He had nothing but hate for those who refused to support Hitler willingly. It was obvious from the outset that Hitler offered Germany everything she had lost: power, respect, position. And something so much more important than the rest: the pride that accompanied these other things, these lesser things.

Indio, faithful Indio, leaned over from his seat and snapped open the chrome pipe lighter he always carried. The enormous Uruguayan had been, in his younger days, a Tupamaro—one of Uruguay’s leftist guerrillas, styled after a legendary Incan leader who once fought a revolution against the Spanish conquistadores. He carried a seemingly endless supply of knives and bore the scars of many a blade fight. The most notable of these was the oldest—a wide runnel marking his forehead, cheek and left eye socket. The socket held a black glass orb Indio affected for its menace. Around his neck, he wore a necklace of six brass rifle shells, which he claimed were the first six shots he had ever fired as a Tupamaro. On his hip the South American giant carried a well-worn Tokarev pistol, which also dated to his revolutionary days.

As Nitzche puffed contentedly on his pipe despite the chill, he chuckled to himself. The thought of one like Indio in his employ, much less as a trusted lieutenant and field commander, would have horrified him as a younger man. He had been so full of idealism at that age. So eager to prove that the Führer and his notions of purity were true to the letter of Aryan law.

Yet those ideas of purity, those assertions to perfection, hadn’t saved Hitler and those closest to him. In the end, even the Führer’s pride had failed him. In the end, he had embraced defeat, reportedly taking his own life rather than be captured by the enemy. Such a waste. Such a tremendous disappointment.

When the time came for Nitzche to abandon Schlechterwald, as the enemy advanced on the camp, it had been the simplest of matters to marshal the men loyal to him and implement the contingency plans he had put in place. A wise military leader always allowed for the possibility of failure. To do otherwise was, well, it could be called prideful, but Nitzche knew there was a line between pride and hubris that could not be crossed. The latter led one to make foolish mistakes, such as holing up in a bunker and refusing to admit that the war was lost, and some other means of continuing the fight had to be found.

Working his way up in the wartime German hierarchy hadn’t been difficult. Nitzche was intelligent, ruthless and enthusiastic. Most importantly, he got results, ringing every possible ounce of blood and sweat from Schlechterwald’s forced labor ranks. With the war well under way, Nitzche’s tendency to get results had saved him from the wrath of his superiors when he’d decided to take leadership of the camp more directly in hand. He had, through the years, even managed to forget the name of the SS officer he had killed in order to take over his job.

Yet he remembered vividly what it had felt like to squeeze the life from the man’s throat. He had grabbed the fool by the neck, placed his thumbs oh so precisely and pressed, squeezed, clenched for all he was worth. The flush brought to the SS commander’s face had been so great that Nitzche could feel the heat radiating from the man’s cheeks. The sound that had escaped the dead man’s lips, when Nitzche had finally released him, was like nothing he had known before or since.

The things one forgot weren’t strange at all, considering. One remembered the important details. One discarded the irrelevancies.

He remembered, for example, the day that Indio had joined his employ. In the period immediately before and after the fall of the Third Reich, many refugees from the Nazi regime had fled to Argentina and its somewhat sympathetic commercial and political climates.

Nitzche was no refugee.

Power over a camp like Schlechterwald was power over a means of production, over a lot of resources and their distribution. Nitzche had used his power to divert funds and supplies to his contingency plan. As the war effort grew more dire, and Germany’s chances less certain, he had accelerated his own planning. Were his beloved country to know another military defeat at Hitler’s hands and on Hitler’s watch, Nitzche would nonetheless continue on in the spirit of the Führer’s best teachings.

So when he was forced to withdraw from Schlechterwald with his private forces, the loyalty of which he had cultivated through long familiarity—and more than a few bribes—Nitzche traveled to Argentina not as a fleeing refugee, but as a determined soldier.

Through the years he’d focused on building his organization. That was made both easier and harder by the fact that Heil Nitzche had no clearly defined goal. Klaus followed global politics keenly and watched as other political and terrorist movements waxed and waned. He followed the social protest movements, too. Without exception they were unfocused, poorly led and ineffectual, even when abundantly funded and resourced.

Over the years, his perspective on the superiority of the Aryan race also evolved.

Yes, it was true that those of Aryan descent were superior, but that was no longer a guiding philosophy in and of itself. It simply couldn’t be. Were innate superiority all that mattered, Hitler couldn’t have lost to the coalition of race-mixing inferiors who’d stood against him.

In time Nitzche had come to liken the idea to a pack of wild dogs. In every pack there were stronger dogs and weaker ones. The latter deferred to the former, but the pack worked toward common goals.

It would be foolish for Nitzche, as the leader of his own pack, to discard a specific powerful, fearsome dog simply because he judged that dog’s breed inferior. And while ultimately the pack might operate toward some idealistic goal―in Nitzche’s case, the overall ideal of Aryan supremacy represented by political power in Nitzche’s hands—every pack’s more immediate purpose was the protection and furtherance of itself.

Nitzche and HN had therefore built an organization whose purpose was simply to strengthen Nitzche and his men. This focus on strength for its own sake had allowed HN, and its many resources, to remain below the radar of the many counterterrorist units that operated around the globe.

It was also that focus of strength as the end goal that had brought to Nitzche’s banner a variety of men who might never have sought his protection otherwise. He was currently alone among those of his contingent who had traveled to Argentina from the collapsing Third Reich. He had outlived them all. That was just as well, for many of the neo-Nazi soldiers Nitzche now cultivated would have caused his old supporters more than slight pause.

He had begun recruiting from many light-skinned races of color, most extensively those from South America, uniting them as neo-Nazis under the philosophies of national socialism and of might was right. The type of men Nitzche needed to form the ranks of his soldiers―simple, ruthless, obedient, but vicious—responded well to his modified approach. In showing them kindness, in lavishing on them resources and even gifts, in showing them that he valued their devotion to him, he succeeded in creating a cult of personality. Heil Nitzche wasn’t just a neo-Nazi organization. It was an organization devoted to Nitzche first and foremost.

Indio passed him a thermos of coffee. From the taste, Nitzche knew it to be decaf, but in truth, his doctors had forbade him anything stronger. Still, the gesture mattered, and he patted the enormous man on one rock-hard shoulder, smiling and nodding. Nitzche sipped the coffee, enjoying the warmth if not the flavor.

Indio had been close to death, that day in the alley behind a decrepit bar in Buenos Aires. Nitzche and his convoy had been passing through, taking the side streets as they customarily did, when Nitzche ordered his driver to stop. There, inspiring in his indomitable will, Indio fought no less than eight men, all of them armed with pipes, bricks or knives. They had bloodied the giant, but Indio’s opponents couldn’t break him, even as they swarmed him from every side and dragged him to the bloody pavement.

How perfect a metaphor for Germany’s own defeat! Nitzche could see in Indio’s fierce determination shades of the nation he had been forced to leave behind. His brown skin might mark him as inferior, but Indio was a worthy dog nonetheless. Nitzche had ordered his men to wade into the battle. They had reduced the odds until Indio could fight back, then stood aside at Nitzche’s orders. The giant had smashed his enemies with renewed energy, then turned and bowed to his new benefactor. He had been Nitzche’s most ardent supporter ever since, paying lip service to his neo-Nazi philosophies, while clearly interested only in protecting Nitzche himself.

Indio’s only other interest was rape, Nitzche had to admit. On the streets of Buenos Aires, the local prostitutes knew his name and feared it. No man was without flaws, Nitzche supposed.

The arrangement suited Klaus Nitzche. Fate had smiled on them both. Every one of Nitzche’s men secretly hoped that he would be selected to adopt the mantle of leadership after Nitzche’s passing. Indio alone made no mention and gave no sign of this ambition. He was content merely to serve, his personal honor wrapped up in the debt he believed he owed the much older man. In truth, it didn’t matter to Nitzche who assumed leadership when he was gone, or even if Heil Nitzche survived. It existed to serve and protect him, and after his death, what happened to its members mattered to him not at all.

Indio wore a headset, as did several of the men, so they could communicate despite the noise of the helicopter. He offered one to Nitzche, then helped him put it on his head as Nitzche continued to smoke his pipe.

“Yes, Indio?” the old man asked.

“My leader, the pilot reports there is no sign of pursuit.” Indio’s command of English was superb. He hadn’t spoken a word of it until Nitzche asked that he learn. English served as the language in common among all his recruits, because many of them spoke it. Since the death of the last of his original lieutenants, Nitzche hadn’t had occasion to speak German to any of his supporters. The emotion this thought brought him might have been regret, but on the whole, Nitzche wasn’t sentimental. He cared only to be as strong as he could be and to make those who had hurt him pay.

“That is excellent,” he said. “And not unexpected.”

“How did you know, sir?” Indio rumbled. He had the deepest voice of any man Klaus had ever encountered. “How could you be certain the authorities wouldn’t simply pluck us from the sky, force us down?”

“For the same reason that I should have anticipated the interference of that wretched bounty hunter,” Nitzche said, spitting the last two words. “On whose shoulders rest the blame for this entire miserable affair.”

“The Berwalds?” Indio asked.

“The very same.” He nodded. “No one among the Jewish Nazi-hunters has more tenacity than Berwald, except perhaps his bastard son.” Klaus paused to take a long puff from his pipe. “And who among our enemies, who have for so many years rooted out our fellows, would have the political clout to make sure the police didn’t simply shoot us down or somehow make us land? I sense the Berwalds know that, free of the fools who would jail me, I will not be caught twice.”

“They wish you free… .” Indio began.

“Yes,” Nitzche said. “They wish me free so they may deal with me themselves. They will not trust the courts to do it a second time. We have amassed as much information about the Nazi-hunter groups as they have amassed about us. We knew almost everything there was to know about Lantern before they ever had me in their clutches. Doubtless I have few secrets from them, either. That is how they knew where to send the bounty hunter to take me. How goes that operation, incidentally?”

“Our men in Hawaii are closing in,” Indio said.

“I want him killed,” Nitzche stated, nodding, “but slowly. Make him suffer. Record it, so that we may distribute the video online. I wish it known what happens to all who presume to make a fool of Klaus Nitzche.”

“Of course, sir,” Indio said. “My leader, I have taken the opportunity of…disciplining the men assigned to guard you the day the bounty hunter captured you. Had they followed protocol, they would never have been separated from you.”

“Such,” Nitzche said, “is the price of one’s appetites.” The old man had, in fact, been visiting Buenos Aires’s most exclusive brothel the day the bounty hunter captured him. Nitzche had grown somewhat complacent in his later years, making a habit of visiting the establishment every Sunday. This practice had no doubt become known to Lantern’s intelligence network. He’d made such trips with minimal guard for the sake of discretion, something he would know better than to indulge in again.

Nitzche knew, too, that Indio’s idea of “discipline” was to gouge out a man’s eyes with his knife before killing him. It was one of the things that made his assistant so valuable. A fit of rage on the big man’s part made it possible to extract the harshest penalty for failure, while maintaining the fiction that he cared deeply for all his men and would never treat them so harshly. What was it that old Italian had said? “It is better to be feared than loved when one of the two must be lacking.” Yes, it was something like that.

Nitzche understood the value of creating both emotions in his followers.

Feeling his belly full at last, he handed the thermos back to Indio and gestured with his pipe. The rear portion of the large transport helicopter was full of the kneeling hostages and their armed guards. Among those Nitzche had captured was the judge, one Amy Ballard. She was a gray-haired, severe woman with a matronly demeanor and a miserable tongue. During his preliminary appearances before the court, she had grandstanded from the bench more than once, expressing her contempt for Klaus Nitzche and everything she believed he stood for.

Also present were the court reporter―a fairly attractive young woman—and a handful of other court functionaries and spectators. The prosecutor, an older man named Lars Kinsey, was there, as was Nitzche’s own sniveling court-appointed defense counsel, Kevin Orwin. There were also two bailiffs. Their weapons had been taken from them.

“Have you heard from the men we stationed to cover our departure?” Nitzche asked.

“No, sir,” Indio said. “There has been no call. Each man had a prepaid wireless phone, but they may have fallen to the operative in black.”

“That wouldn’t explain why the men stationed in the courthouse itself also fail to report,” Nitzche said. “But no matter. There are two court guards among the hostages.”

“Yes, my leader,” Indio said.

“Bring them to me. Separately.”

“Yes, my leader.” Indio produced a shoe box from under his crash seat and opened it. Inside, swathed in a soft cloth, was a beautifully maintained presentation-grade Luger pistol. As Nitzche watched, Indio checked the magazine and chambered a round, operating the toggle action. He reversed the burnished, heavily engraved weapon and handed it over almost reverently, bowing his head.

Nitzche felt the grip of the familiar weapon fill his hand. The sensation of the steel and wood against his palm chased away the pain of his arthritis.