The Watch

See the author's note at the end of this Chapter.

Prologue: Dust to Dust.

There are some who would have it that the flapping of a butterfly's wings in the distant Amazon can have in impact on the path or intensity of a tornado in Texas. On such inconsequential things can rest the lives of humankind. There is something far beyond this myopic view, for, in truth, when some fold in space and time causes two grains of dust to smite each other in the vast, cold reaches of distant space, the fate of great nations can be decided, and even the very destiny of a world determined.

Chapter 1: Tuesday, September 14th, 2032, Chicago, US:

SS Oberstürmbahnführer Grauber.

James Alford Meissen let out an explosive breath of frustration and impatience. He did this every time he finished passing through security. He had worked at Homeland for fifteen years. Surely, by now, the great and all-powerful Government of the United States of America could have figured out he was one of the good guys. And just let him get to the pile of files in his inbox without this hassle.

The gasp was more of a ritual now. It released the tension and allowed his mind to begin to focus on the job at hand. Even before he sat down he was thinking of his early morning procedure. First, check his inbox for updates on yesterday’s queries. Did he have any real suspects or not? Any real threats or not? Anything at all in the chatter to begin to make his pulse race…anything at all?

Usually there was nothing. A watch list name passing through an entry airport would turn out to be a seven year old on his way home from a visit to grandparents in France. A traveler identified as a possible explosives handler would turn out have anew cologne that would fake out the detection system. And so on.

The night shift’s new prospects would turn out to be variations of the same. Or so he thought as he punched in his personal code to the office where he and his colleagues reviewed thousands of new alerts every morning.

His cubicle was opposite the office door. He sat with his back to it, and even now, years after he had been retired from the field, it made him uncomfortable. A good agent always sat where entrances and exits could be monitored.

There was something on his desk. Even though his screens were still blank, even before he would look into the night’s ‘catches.’ His pulse began to race. It was a manila file folder. Meissen rarely saw such things. A relic of AOP, the age of paper. The file was creased, dirty and dusty. It had been handled many times. A long time ago. Why hadn’t the contents been digitized? Meissen picked up the other rarity that lay on top of the folder, a plastic note from one of the old printers stored somewhere in the building.

“Something different!” the note said cryptically. Underneath the note was text printed on the folder, “Die Glocke. Top Secret.”

That was why Meissen spent 35 minutes every morning passing through security. So that such information could be casually dropped on his desk. He sat down and opened the file the contents had been removed but for one photograph. It was face down, the back reading, in German, “National Socialist Workers Party Member No. 754. Hans G. Grauber. Admitted, July, 7th, 1932.” Meissen flipped the photograph over. He was looking into the black and white face of a handsome young German with blonde hair, chiseled features and a disarmingly pleasant smile. He was wearing the uniform of an SS officer. The runes of the order shone brightly on his collars, as did the death’s head insignia on his cap.

There was nothing else. Meissen went through his log-on procedures and the flat screen in front of him lit up. The screen opened on his ‘leads’ page, a screen full of thumb nails, all faces captured by CCCTV cameras or other monitoring devices during the previous 12 hours of September 14th, 2032.

In the midst of the 64 faces was one that grabbed Meissen by the throat. It was Grauber. The same Grauber. Not a Grauber aged by – Meissen flipped to the back of the photo on his desk – one hundred years. Ten years maybe, but not one hundred! Meissen’s pulse slowed. Another dumbass anomaly. A look alike, a quirk. A complete waste of time like the other sixty-three leads he would waste his time on today. He stared at the thumbnail and the system opened the file.

There was a terse message from Brad Mixon, his old time case officer now supervisor. He stared at the message icon. The system began to relay the voice message to the implants behind each of Meissen’s ears.

“Jim, this is as fucked up as you can get. TS has positively ID’d a man named Harry Wiess as a NAZI SS officer from 1932. It’s nuts. Wiess came through Miami yesterday. He’s a Jewish financier from Santiago, Chile. He told immigration he was due to meet with banking interests in Coral Gables for a few days before returning to Chile. TS made the match with the NAZI image almost instantly, so it set up a watch file. You know what this means, Jim. TS made a POSITIVE ID. That’s what’s nuts!

“Anyway, TS tracked Weiss. He rented a car and drove to Lauderdale. He took a chartered jet to Bozeman, Montana. TS then tracked him through another car rental to Bridger Creek Golf Course. We have him in the clubhouse meeting with a Brian Lesserman. Lesserman handles finances for a violent neo-NAZI Montana group.”

Mixon’s next words got Meissen’s pulse skyrocketing, “Obviously Wiess isn’t Grauber. Still, he is up to something. Don’t ask me why, but TS wants to interface with you. Just you, Jim.

“Drop your workload and get down there now. And by the way, don’t tell me what happens. You don’t report to me any more.”

Meissen’s screen flickered and all the thumbnails but Weiss’ disappeared. Beneath it was the text message, “Meissen station closed. Personnel files transferred to TS eyes only. Meissen to interface at 0845.”

A melodic tone sounded somewhere in the center of Meissen’s skull. It was followed a soothing female voice, “You have ten minutes to interface. Please leave now.”

Meissen stood up, as if to sharp attention. His face was white, beads of sweat running together on his forehead and into one eye. He blinked. Marian Lately, in the next cubicle, pushed her chair back and started at him.

Meissen wiped his brow and eye with a tissue. “TS interface,“ he rasped. The words brought several other staffers to their feet as they looked over the tops of their cubicles. “You have nine minutes to interface. Please leave now.”

Meissen turned and walked to the door. The staffers watched him in stunned silence. They did not expect to see Meissen again. Ever.

The same voice now spoke softly to Meissen, ”Don’t be concerned, James. I am detecting elevated blood pressure, accelerated heart beat and internal temperature elevations. The Interface session will result in a new assignment for you. An important one. Turn left into corridor A17.”

Meissen turned left into a corridor that led to banks of storage media and servers. It was a dead end. His communications implants had been installed five years earlier. Now he realized for the first time that the electronics he used to communicate with was also gathering data on him at the same time.

“Walk toward wall A17-22.” Even the walls had designations inside this unit of the United States global intelligence gathering and analysis organization, a combination of once separate domestic and foreign security agencies. The steel wall slid silently into the floor to reveal an open elevator door. Inside, two cushioned, body shaped cavities were set into each of the elevator walls.

“Strap yourself in, James.”

Meissen stepped into the cavity opposite the door, strapped a waist belt tight and waited. The elevator doors closed and the floor seemed to drop away beneath his feet. He felt as if he were in free fall for the next two minutes. The deceleration was so fierce that splashes of light exploded inside his closed eyes.

The doors opened, Meissen stepped hesitantly out of the elevator. In front of him was a single narrow tunnel lined with smooth black glass. “Please walk forward, James.“

Meissen wondered what would happen if he refused. Every scary, but insane piece of scuttlebutt about TS and its implanted communications gear now seemed more plausible. He walked. As he did so a soft blue light followed him along the tunnel. A meter in front, a meter behind him, his own private bubble of light. The blackness ahead resolved into two black glass doors that opened silently. He stepped into a small room lined with the same black glass. A table slid up out of the floor, machinery below it humming as it delivered a bundle of file folders to an open cavity in its top. “James, please open each of the files and review the contents.” There was no chair. Meissen opened the files. There were ten pictures of NAZI officers of varying rank dating from the late 1930s to 1945. There were also ten modern images taken in various airports, train stations and even offices all around the world. They of the same men, all seemingly aged no more than one or two years.

Meissen looked up from the files. The wall in front of him had changed into a screen showing a three dimensional face of woman. She reminded Meissen of an actress once famous for her looks at the turn of the century.

“James, I am the system. You can call me TS, everyone does,” the face smiled pleasantly, looking as if it was about to impart some important information about another currency devaluation or the abandonment of a new major urban area.

“The identifications made of the ten German SS officers you have in front of you IS positive. There is no error, no possibility of identical descendants, no other rational explanation of the matching, yet modern, images.”

Meissen stared at the screen. ‘So give me the irrational explanation,’ he thought to himself.

TS smiled, a soft twitch of one corner of the digital mouth, “I would give you an irrational explanation, but what is the point?”

The question unnerved Meissen. Did TS have access to his thoughts?

“All of the men before you have one thing in common. They all disappeared in April of 1945. In the Jonestal Valley, a place called Die Riese.”

Meissen stopped breathing. Just for a second. His grandfather, Dr. Carl Meissen, had worked on a secret NAZI project in the Wenceslaus Mine deep in the Jonestal valley. According to his father, the SS killed him along with every other major scientist and lab tech who had worked on one singular project centered around a device known as Die Glocke – the bell.

“James, I want you to see Patton Størgaard. He has information his father, Benjamin, kept from us.”

Now Meissen realized why he stood before TS. His father had been spirited out of post war Germany by Patton’s father, along with what remained of the dead scientist’s personal files. Operation Paperclip had given his father a new life in America. Gunter Meissen was a few years old when his father had been shot. James had been born in America twenty years later. Once Gunter had been released from US Army custody he lived with Størgaard for ten years and then headed for Oregon where he found a mountain top and built a life for himself and his wife from Minnesota. He became a dedicated survivalist.

Meissen walked slowly down the black corridor to the elevator. He was bothered by the voice from the system that came through to him via the implanted wireless device in his skull. He expressed a deliberate thought, a question, ‘Activate call – TS.’ The words were not voiced. Again, “Activate call – TS.’

He waited. Then: “James?” His mouth went dry, a tinge of nausea arose in his gut.

“I normally hear a tone from AT&T Global when I initiate or receive a call. I’m not hearing it. There is some form of direct communication with me isn’t there?”

“Yes, James.”

“And I don’t have to voice, do I? You are actually tapping into my thoughts, right?”

“Yes James.”

“How long have you been doing that, TS?”

“James. I am with you always.”

Even by 2032, maglev and microwave electric auto power had not been extended into rural areas of the central United States. At Thief River Falls, Minnesota, Meissen had to rent a gasoline-powered auto for the last fifty miles of the trip to Patton Størgaard’s farm. Patton was his father’s step-brother. He had seen nothing of him and his family after he went into the CIA.

As he drove up over a small rise he saw the spread laid out in a gentle depression in the northern plains. It was a well-organized operation run by the old man and his family, a wife, three boys and girl. Grains, vegetables, dairy cows and neat field surrounded a terraced hill on which stood the main house, barns, machine shops and a stand of wind power mills. Everything a man needed to survive without much contact at all with the outside world.

Meissen already knew there was a bunker beneath the house, and enough armaments to ward all but a full military offensive. He also knew that Størgaard’s father, Benjamin, was the architect of the entire complex, and that it had been built slowly over the years after he had returned from his World War Two work in Europe. Whatever that had actually been. The old man made regular contact with his own father, Gunter who had been adopted by Benjamin after the war when he married Gunter’s mother. They both used short wave radio, despite the advent of the Internet and cell phones, up until the day he died. He didn’t doubt that Patton used a similar system even today.

He knew the layout of the Størgaard compound well. His own father had built exactly the same place on a mountaintop in Oregon.

The gas car auto braked at the entrance to the Størgaard estate. A man in his early thirties stood behind a massively grilled gate watching him. His left hand hovered over an archaic Glock strapped to his upper thigh. TS echoed inside his head, 'This is Patton’s eldest son, Winston Størgaard, he is thirty six. The agreed procedure is for you to step out of the auto so he can see you and ID you.'

Meissen stepped out of the auto, took a few paces to the side, raised his arms and turned around. The young man nodded and the gate swung open. Meissen stepped back into the car, drove inside and parked.

“I’m Winston. Leave the car, we don’t allow them any closer than this.” “James Meissen, my father…” “I haven’t forgotten you, Jimmy, you’re welcome here.”

Winston nodded to a Jeep, its engine clattering away as it stood the other side of a trench across the road. The depression was filled with black, oily water. Meissen walked through it in his plastic overshoes. Winston followed him and nodded at the Jeep.

Meissen sniffed, “Fried chicken?”

Winston grinned as he got behind the wheel. “We grow the corn, express the oil, cook chicken or whatever, then get to put it in the tank. All self-contained.”

Meissen grinned back. “Reminds me of home!”

“Come in and meet my dad, Patton,”

Patton Størgaard looked a lot like his father. He was tall, broad shouldered, narrow waist and obviously a very fit man for his ninety years. His eyes were a piercing clear blue, set in an open, chiseled Nordic face lined by exposure to the sun and the winds of the northern plains. Meissen had come to know him only through a few conversations over the radio years ago.

He grinned broadly as Meissen bounded up the steps of the main house, “When did you see your father, Gunter last?”

Meissen expected the question. He had rejected his father’s survivalist lifestyle when he was twenty, and now his Government service never allowed him to return often enough.

“You know darn well it’s been eighteen months. What did he have to say today?”

“He says for you to come home. Soon.”

“Tell him I will.”

“Tell him yourself, he’s waiting on the radio now.”

The conversation was awkward. The reception was pretty good for shortwave. He exchanged the usual pleasantries, made the usual evasions about the women in his life and the prospects for marriage soon. He made the tired old joke about why his Dad and Patton wouldn’t use Skype3D and got the same enigmatic laugh – this time from Winston and Patton as well.

Then, “James, my son, listen to me,” the ‘my son’ always presaged something serious, “…Patton and Winston there have everything your Grandfather ever wrote. Everything he wanted others to know about the work he was doing. If you have been sent to there to find out what was missing from the Størgaard World War two report it means something has triggered your mission.

“Patton and I fear it might be the very thing we have been preparing for all these years. I love you, James, I am proud of you. Ein guter Krieger für die Heimat, mein Sohn.”

The transmission ended. Meissen was stunned. His father rarely used the old language, he especially avoided terms that had been appropriated by the Nazis at the time of his birth.

Winston and Patton looked at him, gauging his reaction.

For Meissen the American survivalist movement was an extreme and almost isolationist knee-jerk response to what was deemed wrong in the country. He had made the decision long ago to confront the problems of society, rather than totally withdraw and prepare for the armed conflict certain to follow the collapse of civil institutions. When he applied for a career in the CIA during his last college years he expected his father to resist. Instead he seemed strangely passive, almost resigned.

Now his father’s words chilled him. What was it that his father feared so much from those distant years? It was the same thing that caused the old Størgaard to build this fortress for Patton – and it had it roots in Germany and the Wenceslaus mine deep in Lower Silesia.

Meissen looked back at Winston and Patton, “I get the impression you know why I am here.”

Patton reached to a cardboard box beside his chair. He opened it and withdrew a thick US Army drab green file. The box also contained a series of journals, the leather covers cracked and warped with age.

“My father, Benjamin, reported almost everything when he was debriefed after his World War II mission. The report passed on by his superiors didn’t report everything. Even with my father leaving certain things out, they still deleted the final section of my father’s notes and data as utterly incredulous.

He nodded at the trunk and the file, “These journals were written by your father during the war. The British got many of them before the war ended, my father kept these few back. Here, they’re yours. I think your CIA people will be willing to read it now.”

“Why?”

Patton’s face hardened and his eyes darted to those of own son, “Maybe it’s because they have photographs now of some of the Nazis who disappear in 1945 – among them one of the Nazis who shot your grandfather.”

-o0o-

Author's note: Chapter two follows. It will take you back to the very origin of the Spear of Destiny - the sacred object that is said to have inspired Adolf Hitler. It set his feet upon the evil path that led to World War II. The Watch is the result of twenty years research into the occult connections of the early Nazi Party - and explains how this led to the developmwent of the most mysterious 'wonder weapon' of the war - Die Glocke, The Bell.