Games of State

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

As she cleared a patch of trees and looked ahead, Karin Doring allowed herself a very rare smile.

The camp was one of the most beautiful sights she had ever seen. The spot on the Leine River had been bought by Manfred's family over a decade before. It was twenty acres of sweet-smelling woodland, with the river to the east and a high hill to the west, directly behind them. A deep gorge protected them to the north, and the trees provided cover from spying eyes in the air. The camp her followers had erected was a series of tents arranged in four rows of five, with two people in each tent. The tops were covered with foliage so they couldn't be seen from the air when the authorities went looking for the stolen movie prop van. The cars and vehicles which had brought them here were parked in rows to the south and were also camouflaged.

The nearest town of any size was Garbsen, which was nearly twenty miles to the south. The ground search for the terrorists who attacked the film set would start there and move toward Hanover, the seat of Chaos Days activities.

That was well southeast of them. The authorities would not look for them here, in the middle of this Grimm Brothers fairyland. They couldn't spare the manpower. Not for three days, and by the end of Chaos Days Karin and her followers would be gone. Even if the police did conclude that the assault was her handiwork, and even if they did manage to find her camp, they would never take her and her followers.

Sentries would warn her and attack dogs would delay the police while the mementoes were dropped into the lake or burned. A sad but necessary precaution, for there must be no evidence to tie them to the attack.

Let them try to catch us, she thought defiantly. And if it became necessary, they would fight to the last soldier. The German government could pass its apologetic laws, deny its past, kowtow to the United States and the rest of Europe.

She and her followers would not bow. And in time, the rest of Germany would embrace the heritage she had helped to preserve.

The forty members of Feuer who had come here were among Karin's most devoted followers. Cheers rose from those nearest the perimeter as the van pulled up. By the time Rolf had parked beside the line of cars to the south, her Feuermenschen, her "Firemen," as she called them, had arranged themselves in a semicircle before the van. They raised their right arms diagonally, held their fists thumbside up, and shouted over and over, "Sieger Feuer!" "Conqueror Fire!" Karin said nothing as she emerged. She walked to the back of the van, pulled open the door, and grabbed a steel helmet. There were hints of rust, and the black leather chinstrap was brittle and cracked. But the red, white and black, white shield on the right side and the silver-white Werhrmachtadler, an eagle and swastika on a black shield on the left, were vivid and clean.

Karin held the helmet in her open hands and stretched it before her, face high, as though she were crowning a king.

"Warriors of the cause," she said, "today we have enjoyed a great victory. These trappings of the Reich have been snatched from the curio-seekers and professors and resigned warriors. They are once again in the hands of fighters. They are once again in the hands of patriots." The Firemen cried "Sieger Feuer!" in unison, and Karin hand the helmet to the young man nearest her. He kissed it, trembling, and held out his hand for more as Karin handed the relics to her followers. She kept an SA dagger for herself.

"Keep them safely," she said. "Tonight they will be reactivated. Tonight they will once again be the tools of war." As she handed out the items, assisted by Rolf, Manfred walked from around the cab.

"There's a phone call for you," he said.

She looked at him as if to say, "Who?" "Felix Richter," Manfred told her.

Karin's expression didn't change. It rarely did. But she was surprised. She didn't expect to speak with him tonight at the rally in Hanover, much less talk to him before then.

She handed Manfred the rifle she was holding. Without a word, she made her way to the driver's side of the van, climbed in, and shut the door. Manfred had left the phone on the seat. She picked it up and hesitated.

Karin disliked Richter. It wasn't just the old rivalry which made her feel that way— his political movement versus her military movement. Both were different means to the same goal, the realization of the dream that had been launched when Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany in 1933: the establishment of an Aryan world. Both knew that this could only come about through formidable nationalism followed by an economic blitzkrieg against foreign investments and culture. Both knew that these goals would take more organization and diversity than each now possessed.

What troubled her about Richter was that she had never been convinced of his devotion to Nazism. He seemed to be more interested in making Felix Richter a dictator of anything, it didn't matter what. Unlike Karin, who wanted Germany more than she wanted life itself, she always felt that he could be content ruling Myanmar or Uganda or Iraq.

She killed the mute button. "Good afternoon, Felix." "Karin, good afternoon. Have you heard?" "About what?" "Then you haven't or you wouldn't ask. We've been attacked. Germany has. The movement." "What are you talking about? By whom?" "The French," said Richter.

The word alone was enough to blacken her day. Her grandfather had been an Oberfeldarzt, a lieutenant colonel in the medical troops in Occupied France. He was killed by a Frenchman while caring for German soldiers wounded during the fall of St. Sauveur. Growing up, she would lie in bed and listen as her parents and their friends swapped tales of French cowardice, disloyalty, and betrayal of their own country.

"Go on," Karin said.

"This morning," said Richter, "I met with Dominique's emissary to Chaos Days. He demanded that I fold my organization into his. When I refused, my club was destroyed. Burned." Karin didn't care. The club was for degenerates, and she was happy to see it gone. "Where were you?" she asked.

"I was led out at gunpoint." Karin watched the parade of her Feuermenschen as they made their way through the trees. Each soldier bore a symbol of the Reich. Not a one of them would have run from a Frenchman, gun or no gun.

"Where are you now?" she asked.

"I've just arrived at my apartment. Karin, these people intend to build a network of organizations to serve them.

They imagine that we will be just another voice in their chorus." "Let them imagine that," she said. "The Fhrer allowed other governments to imagine whatever they wished. Then he forced his Will on them." "How?" Richter asked.

"What do you mean?" she asked. "He did it through his will. Through his armies." "No," Richter said. "He did it through the public. Don't you see? He tried to overthrow the Bavarian government in the Beer-Hall Putsch in 1923. He hadn't enough support and was arrested. In jail, he wrote Mein Kampf and set forth his plan for a new Germany. Within ten years he was in command of the nation. He was the same man saying the same things, but My Struggle helped him to win over the masses. Once he controlled them, he controlled the Fatherland. And once he did that, it didn't matter what other nations thought or did." Karin was confused. "Felix, I don't treed a history lesson." "This is not history," he said, "this is the future. We must control the people and they're here, Karin, now. I have a plan for making tonight an evening history will remember." The woman did not care for Richter. He was a conceited, self-serving fop who had the Fhrer's arrogance and some of his vision, but very little of his courage.

Or did he? she wondered. Could the fire have changed him?

"All right, Felix," she said, "I'm listening. What do you propose?" He told her. She listened carefully, her interest high and her respect for him rising slightly.

The glorification of Germany and Felix Richter permeated his every thought, his every word. But what he had to say made sense. And though Karin had undertaken every one of her thirty-nine missions with a plan, a result in mind, she had to admit that part of her responded to Richter's impulsive idea. It would be unexpected. Daring.

Truly historic.

Karin looked out at the tents, at her warriors, at the artifacts they were carrying. This was what she loved, and it was all she needed. But what Richter had suggested gave her the opportunity to have that and strike at the French.

The French… and the rest of the world.

"All right, Felix," she said. "I agree that we should do this. Come to my camp before the rally and we'll arrange it.

Tonight, the French will learn that they can't fight Feuer with fire." "I like that," Richter said. "I like that very much. But one of them will learn it before then, Karin. Definitely before then." Richter hung up. Karin was sitting, listening to the dial tone, as Manfred wandered over. "Is everything all right?" "Is it ever?" she asked bitterly. She handed him the phone, which he placed in his windbreaker. Then she got out of the car and resumed the work she really enjoyed, putting arms into the hands of her followers, and fire in their hearts.