Brain Storm

17

Lothar Holz remembered being sickened when his father revealed to him what his family had been during the Second World War.

He was eight years old and attending a private academy in Bonn.

While the public perception was one of danger for unrepentant Nazis still residing in Germany after the war, the reality was quite different. During the 1950s, in the little enclave where Holz spent his formative years, there was safety. The authorities tended to look the other way when Lothar's father and friends were about.

Young Lothar knew some of what had happened.

Hushed words. Furtive whispers.

Oftentimes his father would drink to excess. Deep in drunken melancholia, he would curse those forces that had conspired to thwart his dreams. They had crushed all hope of the promised, glorious Reich.

It was only when Lothar had seen pictures of the atrocities committed by his countrymen that he confronted his father. He was a brave boy, in short pants and cuffed felt jacket, standing up to the world-weary drunkard.

He told of the photographs from the book of a boy he had met, the son of an American serviceman who was part of the occupying force in postwar Germany.

He told of the half-naked, emaciated men and women standing in the snow. Of the bodies.

He had expected his father to be furious, but instead the elder Holz grew deathly quiet.

Leadenly he sat down on their gaily printed sofa.

He beckoned his son to sit next to him.

"You have heard of the so-called atrocities before, have you not?" his father had said softly.

Lothar admitted that he had.

"How long ago did you first hear?"

"I do not remember, Father. All my life."

"And why did you wait until now to question me?"

"The pictures," young Lothar had said desperately. He remembered one of a group of German ci-vilians being led past a row of corpses. They were Jewish women who had died on a forced march. Des-iccation had made their faces chillingly deformed.

They almost appeared to have been mummified.

"The pictures were horrible." Lothar shivered at the recent memory.

"And why was that?"

"Well.. .these people were dead. Murdered."

His father stroked his chin pensively. "Would it This was what she said to her young husband—a camp guard who saw his marriage as an opportunity to move up—many times over.

But the person she had the hardest time convinc-ing, apparently, was herself. She had climbed into a bathtub of warm water one sunny afternoon when Lothar was four. With her she had brought her husband's straight razor.

After that, Lothar and his father were alone. The year was 1951.

And from that day forward, not an hour went by in his young life where Lothar did not remember his mother fondly. But the day his father hinted to him what his mother had been during the war would alter his perceptions of right and wrong forever.

Lothar had received a fine education. English, Spanish and French were all taught at his exclusive school, in addition to his native German. He learned each language fluently. Mathematics was never his forte, nor any of the sciences. But he was persuasive and well liked, by students and instructors alike.

However, this early acceptance by his peers was short-lived. Once he had learned the truth about his mother, his grades began to fail.

His father was called, but he didn't seem interested in his son's problems. The elder Holz's drinking had grown worse with each passing day, and though he was still a relatively young man, he looked older and more haggard as his advanced alcoholism ravaged his system.

He died nearly a year to the day he had first told his son the truth about his mother.

At nine years of age, Lothar Holz was an orphan.

He had no other family. The only relative his father had ever spoken of was his father-in-law, but the man had died during the war, a victim of the Russian and American advance in the death throes of the old power system.

He thought he was completely alone.

Lothar was in the small flat where he and his father lived. It was the day after his father's death. There would be a service of some sort, someone had told him, but he didn't wish to attend. Lothar didn't love his father, although he missed his presence in the shabby little apartment. It was a strange feeling for a nine-year-old to have, and with no one to share it with, Lothar had sat in a dusty corner of his father's bedroom and cried for hours.

He was sniffling quietly when he heard a knock at the door.

He assumed it was another woman from the apartment building with a plate of pastries. When he went to answer it, he found a reed-thin old man in a black topcoat and gloves. The man asked if he could come in. Lothar assumed he was a mortician, such were his gaunt features and pallor. He let him inside.

The man had stepped through the apartment carefully, as if he did not want the grimy carpet to soil the soles of his shoes. He seemed displeased at the stack of empty liquor bottles piled on the floor.

Lothar felt ashamed. He wished he had thought to throw out the bottles. Quickly he tried to pick up a few items of clothing that were draped over the backs of chairs.

"Do not bother with that, Lothar," the old man had said.

He sat down on the sofa, careful to first brush it free of crumbs.

"I'm sorry," Lothar said with a timid half shrug.

He felt as if he was apologizing for his entire life.

"Do not apologize," the man said. "Never apologize for that which you cannot control."

Lothar almost said he was sorry again but stopped himself. He nodded his understanding to the man.

"Good." The man sat straight on the battered sofa. His back was as rigid as a board. He spoke without preamble. "Lothar, did you ever wonder where your father got his money?"

"Excuse me, sir?"

"Surely this flat cost your father money? The rent, Lothar."

Then Lothar knew. This was the landlord. He knew his father paid someone so that they could continue to live there. His young mind raced. He had no money. His father had died the day before, and this man was going to evict him today.

The old man saw the look of fright and immediately sought to ease his fears. He explained that he and his friends had been helping his father out for quite some time. It was a debt, he said, they owed to their past. And their future.

It made sense. Though his father never seemed to work much, there was always food on the table and clothes on his back. Lothar had never thought of it before, but the money must have been coming from somewhere.

"We are a network of friends," the old man had said. "There are more of us than anyone imagines.

We help other friends when we are able. In your case, we weren't as much helping your father, but the grandson of a friend. A great man."

"My grandfather was a member of the Gestapo."

The man seemed surprised. "Your father told you this?"

"I learned some on my own. Some from my father."

The old man smiled. "Then you appreciate his greatness."

"My grandfather was a murderer."

Now there was shock on the visitor's face. "Lothar, you are mistaken."

"I am not," Lothar said. "My grandfather was a murderer. And my mother, as well." His neck and cheeks grew red as he spoke.

"Is this what the drunkard told you?"

"It is the truth."

The old man shook his head resolutely. He tried to explain to Lothar the old ways. He tried to tell him that, though his father was an aberration, he had come from a great family. His mother and grandfather had served the Fatherland well. As their heir, he had earned the help of the old man and his friends.

The orphaned boy was horrified.

Everything he had, everything he knew, his entire life had been purchased with the blood of those poor dead women in that grainy black-and-white photograph he had seen a year before.

The old man offered to continue assisting Lothar, but he no longer heard him.

Lothar left his father's apartment that night for the last time.

He lived for a time on his own. Scrounging for food, working odd jobs here and there. Some of the Americans stationed nearby felt sorry for him. They gave him food, clothing. In the winter, someone gave him an old pair of service boots. It was never enough.

Most times he had barely enough to eat, and more times than he cared to remember he went to sleep hungry.

Not even one year had passed before he sought out the old man.

He was hungry, dirty and frightened. He justified his decision by repeating to himself that, though he didn't agree with what these people had done in the past, he would be foolish to refuse their help in the present.

The old man didn't scold. When his jaundiced eyes settled on Lothar Holz, the old man seemed curiously unsurprised. He smiled warmly at the ragged, emaciated boy.

Lothar returned to school.

He was housed with other boys in similar situations to his own.

For the first time in months, he was able to eat on a regular basis.

Lothar vowed at first to leave as soon as he was able to survive on his own. But that day never came.

As the years went by, his grandfather's friends secured him a position at the German PlattDeutsche.

Though he didn't merit advancement, he found himself moving inexorably up the corporate ladder. And why not? The primary stockholders in the company were all somehow involved in the group that had helped him out years before.

This group eventually consolidated its operations in the small village in South America. This was not long before Lothar Holz—with his flawless command of the English language—was sent to the firm's American plant to oversee the development of the Dynamic Interface System.

Lothar never realized he had been victim of the most subtle kind of indoctrination. What he despised in his youth he learned to accept as an adult. He rationalized that there would always be disagree-ments of opinion in the world and he merely held a different world view from others.

He often argued with his comrades that a different view was not necessarily a superior one. They were always shocked when he said this. It was Lothar's way of holding on to the shreds of his idealistic youth. To harken back to those few brief months when a warm bed and a hot meal did not matter to him. He felt it made him somewhat of a rebel, but the sad truth was that Lothar Holz justified his life the same way his mother had justified her misdeeds back before Lothar had been born.

Lothar Holz had heard the story of the Master of Sinanju during his youth in Bonn. It wasn't something that was public knowledge, but it was known to the men who controlled his group.

The aged Korean was notorious for an act he hadn't even committed. But the cowardly suicide of one man had dispirited his leaders, forcing them underground for half a century. It had been a crushing defeat. And the House of Sinanju was linked inexorably to that defeat.

Now it might be possible to use the same man to create a victory more far-reaching than any previously hoped for—lasting maybe for millennia.

It was all attainable. Right now.

But Lothar Holz was disappointed to find his hopes stifled by bureaucratic inaction.

44You must le t me do something, Adolf," Holz pleaded into the phone.

"No. You will let the doctor continue his experiments."

"The doctor can complete his experiments with or without them," Holz said, using the same argument von Breslau had used against him an hour earlier.

"We have an opportunity here. We should begin to act now."

"I am open to suggestions," Adolf Kluge said.

"What is it you wish to do?"

Holz stammered as he searched for words. The truth was, he had nothing concrete in mind.

He had hoped that Kluge would suggest something. And Holz assumed that his experience with the interface technology, coupled with his imprisonment of the men of Sinanju, would make him more valuable to the organization. "Surely something..." he said. "We could go to Berlin."

"And?"

"The government there is never strong. We could foster insurrection. We could even assassinate the new leader."

Kluge laughed. "Insurrection in Germany. Lothar, my friend, there is always insurrection in Germany.

at least the threat of it. You will have to do better than that."

"I do not like this feeling of impotence."

"The scientists are at work, and you feel left out,"

Kluge said sympathetically. "Do not worry, Lothar.

You have done well. There are forces already at work that you do not know of. Having the services of Sinanju at our disposal is valuable to us in many ways.

Your success here will not be forgotten by me."

Holz felt his chest swell with pride. Adolf Kluge said his goodbyes and severed the connection.

Kluge had practically promised him a higher post-ing. It was long overdue. He was stagnating here at his current job.

Today was the beginning of his inexorable climb up the inner command structure. And tomorrow?

Well, Kluge wouldn't live forever.

But Holz still wished he could do something with the awesome power at his disposal. It was like having unlimited credit and not being able to spend a dime.

There was a knock at his door. After a second's hesitation, his secretary entered. "The custodial staff promises your door will be repaired by five o'clock, Mr. Holz," she said. She carried with her a stack of envelopes and company correspondence. "You were so busy this morning, you didn't have time to look at your mail." She set the pile on his desk and exited the room.

Holz checked his watch. His assistant wouldn't have arrived at the sanitarium by now. Newton and von Breslau would be busy with their work, with the pair from Sinanju standing like statues in the corner of the fourth-floor lab. Even with his compliment from Kluge, he was beginning once more to feel left out. He needed something to do.

Holz shuffled through the mail halfheartedly. One of the daily New York papers was at the bottom of the pile of envelopes.

He glanced at the headline. Nothing of interest.

Besides, there could be nothing more important happening in the world than what was going on in this very building.

He was about to throw the paper in the trash when a minor article caught his attention. It was a sidebar column. A puff piece on United States Secretary of State Helena Eckert. It accompanied a larger story on proposed sanctions against the Middle East country of Lobynia.

He read the column more carefully, an idea evolv-ing even as he scanned down the lines.

He hadn't even gotten halfway through the article when he realized what he would do. It was a brilliant idea. Something that the higher-ups—especially the older ones—would savor for its irony.

In a way, it was fitting.

And most important of all, it was the sort of thing that would advance his career.

He left the newspaper on his desk and hurried downstairs.

To stir up the embers of the past.