Page 39

“And you, Super Spook, can talk to Sergeant Major Feldman about getting permission to marry. I got the credit for helping Fat Freddy’s friend, but Alex did most of the work for me. He’s genius at cutting through the damn red tape.”

Cohen pushed a button on his phone and almost immediately the door to the outer office opened. A trim, dark-haired male in his early thirties with an earnest face stood in the doorway. He had on a well-pressed uniform bearing the stripes of a sergeant major.

“Yes, sir?”

“Sergeant Major, when we are finished here, Captain Cronley requires your expert assistance, much as you provided Freddy Hessinger, in getting him to the altar as quickly as possible. We don’t want him bursting into flames.”

“Yes, sir . . . Flames, sir?”

Cohen grinned, then explained, “When I asked Father McGrath what he thought of the impending nuptials, he said Christian scripture tells us it’s better to marry than to burn.”

“I’ve heard that, sir,” Feldman said, grinning.

“And, Sergeant Major, shortly I’m going to deliver my lecture on Saint Heinrich the Divine. While I’m doing so, (a) I am not available to anyone but Justice Jackson and (b) you will prepare a copy of my notes for Captain Dunwiddie. He will use them to deliver the lecture to everybody at the Mansion.”

“Yes, sir.”

Cohen turned to Cronley. “And what are your other plans, Super Spook, after speaking with Sergeant Major Feldman?”

“First, to get Heimstadter over to the Mansion, and then I’m going to talk to Standartenführer Müller.”

“Good luck with that,” Cohen said. “Give Colonel Rasberry and me ten minutes to talk to the OD at the prison and then have at it. You and Ginger can speak with Feldman in the meantime. Meeting over until the lecture.”

[THREE]

Twenty minutes later, Colonel Cohen took the chair behind his desk. Father Jack, Ginger, and Tiny Dunwiddie filed back into the office. Cohen motioned for everyone to sit down, and said, “Super Spook on his way to the Tribunal Prison?”

“Yes, sir,” Dunwiddie said.

“Did my sergeant major get all he needed, Ginger?”

“Yes, he said he did. Thank you.”

Cohen nodded as he pulled a polished wooden box about eighteen inches long and a foot wide from a bottom drawer of his desk. He put it on the desktop and opened it.

“If I use this thing, I will have to sit here during my lecture, but I have decided that the best way to do this is to presume no one knows anything and to start from square one and make a record of what I say.”

“What is that thing?” Father McGrath asked.

“Sort of a Dictaphone. But instead of mechanically cutting a groove on a plastic whatchamacallit, it electrically records what’s said on a wire.”

He held up a reel and then attached it to the device. He then turned in his chair and plugged an electric cord into a wall socket.

“Siemens invented it. One of the technical teams the Army was running found about a hundred of them in a Siemens plant in Hesse. I heard about it, then promptly stole twenty of them.”

He flipped several switches, examined several dials, then placed its microphone to his lips.

“Testing, one, two, three . . .”

He then flipped several more switches. With remarkable clarity, his voice came from the speaker: “Testing, one, two, three . . .”

“Amazing!” Father McGrath said.

“The Thousand-Year Reich Lecture at fourteen-oh-five hours, 18 April ’46,” Cohen said into the microphone. “Okay, here we go.

“In 1933, Heinrich Himmler started looking for a castle near Paderborn where, legend had it, a fellow named Hermann der Cherusker had, in 9 A.D., won a decisive battle against the Romans, thus saving the German people from being absorbed into the Roman Empire.

“On November 3, 1933, Himmler visited Wewelsburg Castle and decided that same day to lease it for a hundred years and restore it so that it could be used as an educational and ceremonial center for the SS.