but there was no way to open the steel door, no bell, no signal, nothing at all.
"Drew was emphatic, he wanted me here, but how do I get in?"
"Trust a young old lieutenant," replied Anthony, having spotted the palm-release space in the wall.
"We're going to set off an alarm. . These things were old hat a couple of years ago."
"What are you talking about?"
"Watch me." Gerald Anthony inserted his hand in the opening and pressed his palm down. In.seconds the steel door was opened by a startled Latham, the alarm inside ear-shattering.
"What the hell have you done?" shouted Drew.
"Shut the door, boss man, and it will go off."
Latham did so and the bell went off, "How did you know that?"
he asked.
"Hell, it's not even high tech. Simple circuit breakers that don't roll over."
"How did you know that?"
"I didn't actually, but rollovers in these systems are relatively new. This is a pretty old place, so I took a chance. What the hey, we've got the place secured anyway."
"Don't argue with him, Drew," said Karin, briefly embracing Latham.
"I know, I know, it's no time for emotions. Why do you want me here so quickly?"
"There's a room-two rooms actually-all filled with computers. We have to break into them."
An hour passed and a perspiring Karin de Vries walked out of the door.
"You caught it in time, my dear," she said, standing in front of Latham.
"On the premise that this isolated chateau in the Loire Valley could never been unearthed, all the records are kept here.
There are nearly two thousand printouts, who is and who isn't a member of the Nazi movement. All over the world."
"Then we've got them!"
"Many of them, yes, my darling, but not all, never all. These are merely the leaders who shout and scream, rousing crowds to hate, to despise anyone but their own. And many do it in subtle ways, pretending generosity on the surface but hating underneath."
"That's philosophical, lady, I'm talking about indictments, goddamned Nazis!"
"Those you now have, Drew. Go after them, but understand what follows them."
In a topsecret government laboratory in the hills of the Shenandoah Valley, a be smocked doctor of forensic pathology looked across the table at his much younger colleague, both studying their computer screens.
"Are you coming up with what I am?" asked the first pathologist quietly.
"I don't want to believe it," said the second.
"A switch, the switch of all history!"
"The reports from Berlin can't lie, young man, they're right before our eyes. DNA wasn't known in the forties, it is now. They match.. .. Start the fires, Doctor, the world doesn't have to put up with this. We'd only fuel a legend, and that obscene old man died last night."
"Exactly my thoughts. You fuel a legend, you only transfer the fuel, giving rise to other legends."
"Worse you glorify them, immortalize them."
"Right on, Doctor. Hitler shot himself in that bunker over fifty years ago. We're all screwed up enough without believing the impossible, which the fanatics would latch on to in a second, glorifying it. The worst son of a bitch in the world swallowed cyanide and put a bullet in his head when the Russians were outside of Berlin. Everyone believes it, why contradict accepted history?"
The contrary evidence was destroyed by two Bunsen burners in the Shenandoah Valley.
EPILOGUE
he, directors. of the intelligence agencies of France,
England, Germany, and the United States, under the Tinstructions of their civilian leaders, moved swiftly, silently, and finally efficiently throughout their countries, for they had the truth, not speculation. Over two thousand computer printouts identifying the bona fide adherents to Die Brziderscbaft der Wacbt. According to the combined agreements among the four nations, the government press releases would essentially say the same thing, as exemplified by the Paris edition of the Herald Tribune. Backbone of Neo-Nazi Movement Broken.
All the articles went on to report that numerous men and women in and out of governments had been taken secretly into custody, their names, known only to a few, withheld until indictments were returned. The frenzied media went briefly apoplectic, "but the government authorities would not budge in the area of naming names, which only the few could provide but did not, and eventually the frustrated media went on to other, more fruitful "exposes."
Within two months the attention spans' of their readers, listeners, and watchers waned, and the Nazi witch-hunts withered as rapidly as had the paranoid search for Communists when the loathsome McCarthy fell from power. The entrepreneurs understood that you did not get advertisers or ratings when you bored the