Destiny

SIXTY-SIX

The hospice nurse counted pills on the kitchen counter while Tower led Marcus into the backyard. Tower pointed to a sycamore tree. “I planted that tree the year Annie and I and moved from the states. It’ll outlive me, and that’s fine. I’ve become rather fond of my friend, the sycamore. I won’t even pick flowers now. Life, in any form, especially the beauty of flowers, seems like an utter gift to me. I see and appreciate things, the wondrous things, which I never even thought about during the war.” His thoughts drifted, eyes filled with secret memories.

“Why was Patton killed?”

Tower slowly turned his head toward Marcus. “I don’t think anybody alive really knows. I’m probably the last one alive who could, perhaps, most accurately speculate, and I’m not sure. I have my theories. The top guys in the OSS wanted Patton out of his job, wanted to quiet him. He was ranting about the way Eisenhower handled the war and its aftermath. It pissed off some big players. I even met with the OSS head, William Donovan. We called him Wild Bill, and he sure as hell was. I was recruited by the OSS, and I spent a lot of time behind enemy lines, Germany, where I did what was expected. I never liked it, not one damn bit. But, you know, it had to be done. When I was told that Patton, the great general I always believed he was…when I was told he’d crossed the line, I found it hard to believe. But they said Patton was about to drag us into a war with Stalin. They told me Patton was insane, the war had finally broken him, and he had to be stopped from shooting his mouth off.”

“How was it planned?”

“The car accident was set up. The idea was to get Patton in the hospital and take him out there.”

“Is that where you killed him?”

“I didn’t kill him. I actually couldn’t get inside the hospital because it was heavily guarded. Rumor was that the killer used a drug, administered from a needle, which simulated a heart attack.”

Marcus sipped his tea. “Do you believe that’s what happened?”

“They didn’t do an autopsy.”

“You said you thought it was justified, but not now…why?”

“That’s why I’m here in England. One thing I was told I’d have to steal during the accident scene was a small black attaché case that Patton always carried since shortly after Hitler died. Patton had a spear that Hitler had looted from some Austrian museum. It was believed that the General carried it with him always in that briefcase. The OSS wanted the spear.”

“Why?”

“They didn’t say, but I’d heard the spear was some kind of powerful weapon.”

“Did you get it?”

“Yes, but in all the confusion, as Patton was taken to the hospital, I hid it in my Jeep and took it back to my hotel that night.”

“Did you give it to Donovan or anyone with the OSS later?”

“I almost did. But I got to thinking about why the little head of a spear was so important to the OSS. And if it was so damn important and powerful, was it the real reason the general was killed? Did his death have nothing to do with Patton’s politics or the fact he said what he thought…even if it pissed off Eisenhower?”

“What happened to the spear?”

“After Patton died, I met Donovan and another OSS operative, Claude Bremen, at the Connaught Hotel bar in London. We were sitting at a corner table, and Bremen asked if I found the spear. I told him it wasn’t in Patton’s Cadillac; at least I couldn’t find it in all of the confusion. He hit the table with his fist and said I was incompetent and maybe the Russians had found it in the hospital. They ordered a bottle of Irish whiskey and started knocking them back. After a while, Bremen told me how the OSS originally began in a private room at the Rockefeller Building in 1933. At that point, he grinned one of the most chilling grins I’d ever seen on a man. He laughed and said that a group of very wealthy and powerful men, and their heirs, would always control the government because they could manipulate the intelligence that they chose to share with congress or the president.”

“What do you mean?”

“They had a long range plan, a ‘hundred-year plan,’ he called it, a plan to direct the balance of power. I was damn naïve, and thought he meant balance of power in our own government. He smiled and corrected me…said it was to run the balance of power around the world. But it would begin in our own country. So I started thinking hard about that. If congress and the president are stage-managed by powerful shadow groups, then who’s really running the nation…or the damn world, for that matter? Having done what I did in the war, I felt dirty. I was really nothing more than a hit man, and that picture didn’t sit too well with me. I told them that. I told them I’d have no more of the lethal charades.”

“What happened?”

“A strange look came over their faces. They seemed to sober up pretty damn fast. They left the bar, and I never saw either one again. But I did see others. I moved back to Albany, New York. I knew they were watching me. A stalker left his tracks in my tomato garden one night. Our dog was a barker and must have scared him away. When he came back a few nights later, I was waiting for him. Before I snapped his neck, he told me his superiors — the top of the food chain, said I’d been seen meeting with known Russian spies. I was set up and all in the name of national security. I dumped his body in the Hudson. I knew they’d keep coming, so Annie and I left — left the country I’d fought for and almost died for many times. We lived all over Europe, even Cairo, never staying too long in one place. Years past and they started dying off, and then we settled in England.”

“This one-hundred-year plan you mentioned. Have there been any events since your meeting with Donovan and Bremen that you think might connect to that plan?”

Tower’s unkempt white eyebrows rose. He nodded his head. “Hell yes. The financial crisis is one of the most recent. What these people have done is criminal. But it’s America’s middleclass taxpayers who are the casualties of an undeclared war between them and the men who would be kings.”

“How far do you think this secretive group would go to set and achieve their agenda and goals?”

“If someone could rise to be potentially a big thorn in their side, nothing is off the table. They’re ruthless. I’ve tried to follow their mongrel pedigree line from the people I knew to their associates that came into office or great financial power.”

“If John Kennedy Junior had not died in that plane accident, if Kennedy had become president, would he have been a thorn in their side?”

Tower coughed, his eyes watering. “I don’t think a Kennedy would fit well into this group.”

“What do you mean?”

“In the last twenty years, look at the number of U.S. Senators and members of congress who died in plane crashes a few weeks before the elections. Senator Paul Wellstone is one example. When Kennedy Junior’s plane went down…I had my doubts as to it being an accident. Look, his father and uncle were both taken out. If he had plans to seek the office his father once had, I’m sure he would have interfered with some of the goals in a one-hundred-year plan. If they’ll kill John Junior, they’ll kill anyone who gets in their way, just like they did to a war hero like Patton.”

“What happened to the spear Patton carried?”

Tower pursed his lips and grunted. “Lawrence Foster, the man you first mentioned, was working as an assistant prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trials. He’d introduced me to David Marcus, a man I came to know and really respect. Over drinks one night, I told him I’d hidden the spear in a bank deposit box in London. David said he knew an antiquities dealer, a gent who bought and sold religious art, someone who would have a huge interest in the spear. Also, he told me that he heard Stalin had a standing offer of a hundred grand to any of his men who could find the spear. David had access to the Russian and German POWs, so I didn’t doubt him for one second. I was hurting for money. David set up a meeting between me and a Frenchman…can’t recall his first name but his last name was Fournier.” Tower coughed and sipped his tea.

“Did you meet with Fournier?”

“Yes, twice. He said he wanted to get to know me, and for me to know him, as friends. Fournier was cut from a different tree. I remember him as a deeply religious man. He told me he’d bought some papers from a Sotheby’s auction in London in 1936. The papers had to do with something Isaac Newton had left — notes on how science and religion were both part of what and who God is and always was. Fournier was a scholar, philosopher, theologian, and now I believe he was spy, a damn good one, too. He said he was authorized to offer me money for the spear.”

“Authorized by whom?”

“He wouldn’t say. It didn’t make much difference to me. We met at a public park, the Jardin du Luxemborg in Paris. He was waiting for me at the Fountain de l’Observatoire. The fountain is a work of art. The world, like a globe, is held up high by statues of four women. Fournier said the women represented the four quarters of the earth. We made the exchange, shook hands, and that was the last time I ever saw him.”

“Do you remember if there was anything engraved on the blade of the spear?”

“My memory isn’t that good. There was something, though…numbers or letters…I can’t recall. It looked like Latin or maybe Roman numerals.”

“Do you speak Italian?”

“Used to, but not much anymore.”

“Did Fournier speak Italian?”

“As I recall, he was fluent.”

“Did Fournier tell you what he planned to do with the spear?”

Tower inhaled deeply, his lungs wheezing. “He told me that he was returning it to the Temple of David. I told him I thought the Temple was destroyed a lot of centuries ago. He said the cornerstone exists. And he said something else.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve thought about that often through the years. I can close my eyes and hear his voice when he was standing next to the fountain in the park. He said that cornerstone could be seen through a dark glass with the purest of white light. And in this place a rose without thorns blooms under a new sun.” Tower slowly turned his head toward Marcus. “I never knew what that meant. Don’t suppose I ever will.”

“Did Fournier tell you anything else?”

Tower looked down as his hands, fingers knotty from arthritis. He slowly raised his head and met Marcus’s eyes. “Yes, he did. He said in August 1944, a secret meeting was held at the Maison Rouge Hotel in Strasbourg. I believe he was there, in what capacity I have no clue. Anyway, a Nazi official, who had close ties to Heinrich Himmler, presented a document titled the Red House Report. They knew the war couldn’t be won. So they wanted to set up a Fourth German Reich, but this one was to be an economic force, not an army. And to pull it off, they planned to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars in looted gold and money out of Germany. They wanted a secret escape route through Rome and Switzerland to transfer some of their Nazi brethren out of the country. It was called the ‘ratline,’ because rats board boats by crawling down the rope lines. It became better known as the Odessa Plan.”

“Did that route lead to Argentina?”

“Yes.”

“Who was in this meeting?”

“They were industrialists, men representing some of the largest companies in Germany. I. G. Farben, Thyssen Steel, to name two. Later, during the Nuremberg trials, a half dozen of I.G. Farben’s executives were tried and convicted for using slave labor in their plants, the same plants that manufactured Zyklon B, the poison used at Auschwitz and Dachau. Farben manufactured pharmaceuticals, too. They bought Jewish women, prisoners, from the Nazis and used these women in horrific experiments, mostly involving new drugs they would bring to market after they worked out dosages that wouldn’t kill or disfigure a person.”

“How did the prosecutors know which men from Farben to put on trial?”

“It wasn’t hard to discover that. They all turned on each other as the shit hit the fan. David Marcus culled it down to the worst of the worst for prosecution.” Tower stopped and raised one white eyebrow. “Is that why you’re here?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said your name’s Paul Marcus? Is this about David Marcus, are you a relative?”

“No. But I know he was killed. Do you know who was behind it?”

“I’ve often suspected one of the Farben guys had it done. This Red House Plan, the economic recovery of Germany, eventually became the European Union. After the war, there was rebuilding money available, and it came from some of the same places as the money to finance the war did.”

“Where was that?”

“Thyssen Steel for one. Thyssen was a huge German conglomerate. It and some other German companies with connections to American banks and investment companies were a part of the financial supply chain. Fritz Thyssen, using some of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil money, helped finance the Nazi buildup. A lot of Thyssen Steel money was deposited in the Union Bank Corp in New York. Prescot Bush, the father and grandfather of two former presidents, and George Herbert Walker were members of the Union Bank’s Board of Directors. They may not have known anything about all this stuff. I haven’t a clue. But I do know the U.S. government seized and shut down that bank in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act.”

The nurse entered the room and gave Tower his second morphine pill of the day. He looked at Marcus through weary eyes. “I just remembered something else connected to that spear, something I’ve often thought about.”

“What?”

“Fournier told me that one of the reasons he was hiding it was to keep it out of the hands of someone who could become the next Hitler.”

“Who was that?”

“I can’t recall his first name. He was a historian and an industrialist, someone who had controlling interests in a number of American companies. This included an investment company with connections to Thyssen Steel and the Farben Company. Man’s name was Chaloner. I think the emphasis was on the loner part of the name.”

“This group you mentioned — of the powerful and wealthy — do they have a name?”

“Through the lips of a drunken man, I heard they were called the Circle of 13.”

Marcus stood to leave. “Thank you for your time.”

“What do you plan to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“There are rats in the ship. Somebody would have to sink the ship at sea to drown them. I’m not certain that’s possible. I’m keenly aware of one thing, Mr. Marcus. You’re treading in dangerous waters. You’ll have to be smarter than them; I just hope you are. Hellfire, I wish I were young enough to join you.”

The old man gazed out his bedroom window, the ghost of memories as obvious as the cataracts in his eyes.