Chapter 30: Return the Favor
The warehouse doors groaned open.
Inside stood a tank, if that wreck deserved the name at all, its body a reddish brown mass of rust and damage. The cannon was gone. The tracks were gone. The chassis barely held up what remained of the hull, like a crippled turtle retreating into its shell.
The reporter from Le Journal de France nearly beamed with delight.
The wrinkles around his eyes folded together as he bent low and began snapping photographs at a feverish pace, already composing tomorrow's headline in his mind:
Germany, the Turtle Brought Low.
The shutter clicked again and again through the warehouse.
Beside him, one of the special commissioners, who had been suppressing laughter the entire way, finally gave in. With a broad smile, he patted Naz on the shoulder and said,
"It was clearly just a rumor, Captain Naz."
Naz stood rooted where he was.
There was no way a piece of scrap like this could be what an entire division had rallied around.
No.
Jörg had hidden the real tanks.
He must have.
"Turn on the lights," Naz barked suddenly. "All of them!"
The anger in his voice was so sharp that it caught even the commissioners' attention. Until that moment, they had regarded the matter as little more than bureaucratic theater. Now, however, they began to sense something more interesting beneath the surface.
The Reichswehr, it seemed, was hardly a unified body.
And perhaps that meant there was no need to watch Germany quite so anxiously after all. Cardboard tanks. Training with scrap metal. Officers undermining one another like petty courtiers.
Germany truly looked as though it had rotted from within.
And was that not exactly what they wanted to see?
A Germany full of cracks.
The overhead lamps flickered on all at once.
But no matter how hard Naz searched with his eyes, he found nothing except Jörg's calm expression and that cold, infuriating hint of mockery in his gaze.
"We'll be taking our leave now, Captain Naz."
The commissioners had no interest in lingering. The matter was already obvious. The so called tank unit was nonsense, and whatever anonymous informant had written that letter had either lied outright or deliberately staged a farce.
If this could train a tank force, then perhaps God Himself had descended to instruct the Reichswehr.
After a brief wave, the three men turned to go.
Had any one of them bothered to inspect more carefully, had they simply opened the hatch of that rust eaten machine, they would have discovered an irony so sharp it bordered on cruelty.
Inside was an almost brand new control system.
"Do you wish to continue the inspection, Herr Inspector?" Jörg asked lightly, a cigarette resting between his fingers.
Naz turned, his face rigid with rage.
"Don't get smug, boy. The First Logistics Armor Division is mine. It has always been mine, and it always will be mine."
He jabbed a finger toward Jörg as he spoke.
"I know you have influence at General Staff Headquarters. That much is obvious. So perhaps I cannot throw you out myself."
His tone grew harder.
"But don't mistake that for freedom to do as you please."
Then he snapped his head toward his adjutant.
"Kam, write this down. All officers and soldiers who have violated the regular training schedule over the past month are to be suspended pending review. They will be reinstated only when I say so."
He looked back at Jörg, almost trembling with fury.
"Do you understand now? That is power."
He wanted to see fear.
Wanted to see panic.
Wanted even a single crack in that composed young face.
Instead he saw only the same cool, almost contemptuous expression, as though he were being studied by a man looking down at an insect.
Jörg said only one thing.
"Goodbye, Captain Naz."
Naz glared at him one last time, then turned and marched out of the warehouse with his adjutant.
The moment he was gone, Guderian and Adjutant Ethan, who had been watching from a distance, hurried over.
Both saluted first.
Then Ethan lowered his voice and asked urgently,
"Sir, should we report what happened here to General Staff Headquarters? This has gone too far. To use outsiders to strike at one's own people, this is…"
He stopped himself, then spat the word out anyway.
"It is the act of a traitor."
Beside him, Guderian's jaw was clenched so tightly it almost seemed painful.
He could tolerate stupidity.
He could tolerate old men refusing to understand new things.
But this kind of ugliness inside the army disgusted him.
Jörg took a slow drag from his cigarette.
The smoke hung briefly in the warehouse air.
"Reporting it to Headquarters will change nothing," he said. "Naz's seniority protects him. Behind him stands an entire bloc of aging conservatives who are nearing retirement. And most importantly, we still have no direct proof."
He flicked ash aside.
"A report will not solve the problem."
For a moment, the light in his eyes changed.
It darkened.
Sharpened.
Like an imperial eagle preparing to descend upon prey.
"I'll handle this myself."
Then he turned to Guderian.
"You've worked too hard recently. Take some time and be with your family."
He looked next to Ethan.
"Ethan, tell everyone that I'm ill. For the time being, I will not be seeing anyone."
Then he added quietly,
"Take me back."
…
In a small town on the outskirts of Berlin, winter was already settling in.
A thin layer of snow covered the wheat fields. The river beyond them moved more sluggishly now, as if the cold itself had pressed weight upon the water. Only the faint sound of its flow could still be heard.
Near the river stood an old villa, and beyond it, several tall horses wandered among the trees.
Jörg loosened the reins and brought his horse to a halt.
He looked over the distant fields and farms, and for the first time felt, in a direct and almost physical way, what it meant to truly own land.
With inflation raging and Cardolan Investment Company operating exactly as he had planned, his machine for making money had finally begun to take shape.
Once money existed, naturally the land had been bought back as well, the land his commercially useless and conveniently absent father had once leased away without a thought.
Still, Jörg himself had never actually lived in the old villa.
In his previous life, he had imagined more than once how comfortable it must be to live in a great house.
Now that he had one, it seemed less like comfort and more like emptiness.
Too large.
Too old.
Too saturated with the stale breath of the past.
"Cardolan," he said, removing his black felt hat and brushing the snow from it, "set aside funds to renovate the old house. And now tell me how the other matters are progressing."
Cardolan, still as thin as ever, stood beside him. Though the darkness under his eyes had lightened somewhat after repeated instructions to rest, the fine blood vessels in them still showed that he remained buried in study and work.
"Master, you were right," Cardolan said. "The largest supplier of arms in Berlin really does have links to the military."
His voice stayed low and efficient.
"Our controlled Southern Baron Gang has already made contact with the suppliers and placed a substantial order through a shell company."
"Excellent."
Jörg's tone did not change.
"After receiving the weapons, do not erase the serial numbers. Resell them into England. I've heard the English Workers' Party is also making trouble in the mines. Sell the guns to them cheaply."
A faint laugh escaped him.
"I want to see the look on England's face when they discover that British leftists are using weapons supplied through the German military. And I want to see the look on General Staff Headquarters' face when they discover that the supervising Captain of the Logistics Armor Division has been feeding arms to left wing radicals."
Since Naz had made the first move, Jörg saw no reason not to make the affair considerably larger.
"Understood, Master. I'll arrange it immediately."
Jörg nodded once.
"And Hermann? Anything worth noting there?"
Cardolan shook his head.
"Hermann's injuries are largely healed. I arranged a house for him and gave him a new identity. Recently, a few former Workers' Party members have approached him, but they're insignificant figures."
Then he added,
"There's one more thing. Imperial Eagle has begun radar research in accordance with your instructions. Their people are confident they can produce a working result by early next year."
Cardolan still wanted, at times, to ask how exactly the Master seemed to understand things like radio detection and industrial design.
But in the end, he never asked.
He had long since decided that the simplest answer was probably the correct one.
If the Master was a genius, then perhaps it was only natural for him to know more than ordinary men were ever meant to know.
.....
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