Freedom's Light: Short Stories Read online

  About Matt Margolis

  Matt Margolis is the co-author of The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama, an Amazon bestseller. Matt has been blogging about politics and current events since 2003, and was one of the first bloggers to receive media credentials to the 2004 Republican National Convention. His writing has appeared on Townhall.com and he has been an invited guest on local and national media. Matt lives with his wife and son and their dog in Upstate New York

  The Stories

  The Tenth Righteous Man

  Nitay Arbel

  It is dawn over the capital — the last dawn I will see. Yet it is not death I fear; it is failure.

  I was born into an ancient noble family with a long tradition of soldiering. For seven centuries we have been “Freelords,” or “barons,” as they would call us elsewhere. Generations before me have worn older designs of my uniform.

  Today is supposed to be a great honor. I will get to personally escort the Leader and his entourage around an exhibition of captured war machinery. Enthusiasm for the war among our population is fickle; as long as we won one easy victory after another, it was high. Now that we have suffered our first serious defeat, it is flagging. The exhibit, here in the capital, will be a propaganda coup that will raise up spirits. People will not ignore it when they hear that the Leader himself came to open it.

  I remember the chaos and despair we were in when he came to power, promising to restore our country to greatness. Many of us in the Army despised him and the people around him, and a few turned to covert resistance after the first purge. Yet many of us grudgingly accepted that “maybe he knows what he is doing,” as one foreign policy gamble after another paid off. And he did make good on one major promise: army, navy, and restored air force were given everything they dreamed of.

  After we heard of the plans for invasion of a neighboring state, some of my friends planned a coup. They had everything at the ready, until lily-livered foreign heads of government gave in to the Leader’s every demand without a shot.

  The war started in alliance with an enemy far to our east. I despise that enemy with every fiber of my being. Cynical tactical alliances are old hat in our business, yet this one I could not understand. Little did I realize that the mirror image of that enemy was sitting right here in the capital. One persecutes and kills people based on class, the other based on their ancestors.

  When we finally invaded the Eastern enemy, I was elated. Some of the people greeted us as liberators, only to realize soon we were as harsh as their own regime had been. In our rear operated so-called Task Groups, whose ostensible job was to deal with partisans. As the intelligence officer of Army Group Center, I was supposed to coordinate movements with them. Subordinates of mine saw things they were not meant to see: entire villages being gunned to death, men, women, and children. Those tales are burned into my soul forever. One of them, a young, very tall 1st Lieutenant, had seen people being made to lay down naked on the bodies of those already dead, ‘like sardines in a can,’ before being shot in turn. He told me he had longed to strip out of his uniform and join them.

  I went to pour my heart out to the Chief Operations Officer at Army Group headquarters, a nephew of the commanding Field Marshal. Henning and I had become fast friends quickly — he came from another deeply religious, noble family.

  Henning told me he had heard what my informants had seen, many times over. He had gone up to his uncle and urged him to go up the chain to the Supreme Commander of the Army and prevail on him to lodge a protest with the Leader. The uncle had tried, the CIC had refused, and then the great Field Marshal had said, “Let it be noted and recorded that I protested.” And, just like that, he had continued with the business of the day. The only thing achieved was an entry logged in the war diary of the Army Group, saying the mass shootings of civilians were ‘a stain on the honor’ of the Army.

  Such a fig-leaf protest wasn’t enough for Henning, or for me. Nor was it for others like us — we saw ourselves as soldiers, not butchers. In secret, a group who thought like us gathered around Henning at headquarters.

  Several attempts had been made on the Leader’s life. One in particular, by a lone wolf, had failed only by the hand of G-d — or more likely of His opponent. Since then, gaining access to the Leader had been made ever more difficult, especially after his favored successor, Ironheart, had been killed in broad daylight.

  Some of us realize that eliminating the Leader is not enough — another just as evil will step into his place. Faithful Henny had started out as the head of the Leader’s Protection Squad. What had begun as a handful of men in smart uniforms has grown to a state within our state, encompassing the police force, the secret police, camps for opponents of the regime, and yes, the Task Groups. I have even heard rumors, credible ones, of assembly-line murder factories hidden in forests in the occupied East.

  Unless we stamp out the spider at the heart of that web as well, we will just have traded the plague for the cholera, or Lucifer for Beelzebub.

  So when we heard that at today’s festive opening of the captured weapons exhibit, the leader of the Protection Squads (as they are still called) would also be there, my friends agreed we would never get a better opportunity.

  I will not be allowed my service weapon in such close company to the Leader. But I know my way around explosives. A plastic-like substance captured from the Western enemy will do the job just fine. I will lead the Leader and his cronies around, and when close enough to them, will blow them and myself up. I will die so millions will live.

  As I am a known expert on explosives, nobody looks askance at my having access to a collection of them and of detonators.

  Setting off the explosive at the right time is the trick. The best, or rather least unsuitable, detonator I could lay hands on is a collection of time pencils: the shortest one they make goes off after ten minutes, the longest a day. Once activated, a chemical eats through a wire, which holds back a firing pin. Unlike other available detonators, time pencils make no sound at all. The exhibit is supposed to take half an hour. I will set off two ten-minute pencils before the tour, the second one in case the first misfires.

  Bleary-eyed as I am, I wash up and shave carefully, then put on my best uniform. I am expected to look my best for my Leader, after all.

  Hidden under my uniform is the plastic bomb. The ends of the time pencils jut out into my two pockets, so I can surreptitiously crush them and thus activate them.

  The last touch, as always, is ensuring all my medals are in place.

  I stroll out my apartment, utterly calm on the outside. An officer, if he is to lead men in battle, must-needs learn to project calm and confidence even when he is not feeling it. If anybody were to notice some nerves, I’d explain I have to put on a show for the Leader himself, so who wouldn’t be nervous? It wouldn’t occur to any of them that I’d be afraid of not being blown to bits together with the Leader.

  My walk turns onto the wide, linden tree-lined boulevard that runs down the center of the capital. Energetically, but with no undue haste, I make my way to the Old Armory.

  The huge, imposing High Baroque structure takes up an entire block of the boulevard. Another edge is formed by a canal used for river barges.

  As I enter the Armory’s vast, glass-covered atrium, I see several men in the uniform of the Leader Escort Battalion, clearly an advance party sent to inspect security measures. My credentials are checked, but I am not body-searched; the red General Staff stripes on my uniform trousers still offer some protection, even if my rank badges are just the two pips on silver shoulder braid of a full colonel.

  I had come to scope out the target site yesterday; as I am the designated guide today, my presence was taken for granted. In this large, cavernous space, my bomb would avail nothing unless I could stand directly by the Leader. The actual exhibition of captured equipment, however, is set up in a relatively small hall off to the side. There, the blast wave from the explosion should be lethal.

&nbs
p; Today is also the annual Heroes Memorial Day. The Leader will use the great stairs inside the atrium as a podium and give a short speech from there, after which I will escort him and his entourage to the exhibition. Then I will have my chance.

  Slowly officials filter in, ahead of the Leader. As they become ever more senior, I see my prayers have been answered.

  Faithful Henny is here, as is the Nodding Donkey, chief of the Joint Armed Forces Command. Even the supreme commanders of the Navy and the air force are here. They are a study in contrasts: the former trim in stature, with a lupine face, the latter morbidly obese and grotesque in behavior. Only the Imperial Tadpole — all mouth and tail — apparently could not get away from his Ministry of Popular Enlightenment.

  Aside from him, I may well behead the entire regime. We probably will never get another chance like this…

  Clever Hans, Henning’s superior, is not here — he is sitting on the fence, and Henning started taking a liking for him, so Henning has arranged for him to be tied up elsewhere.

  The Leader is running late. As we await him, music starts playing: the stately first movement of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony. Its funereal second movement had been the music on the radio before the announcement of our first major defeat.

  Furtively I check the time pencils jutting out into my uniform pockets. If anybody even notices anything on the outside, they will assume they are writing utensils I’m carrying.

  More men of the Leader’s Escort Battalion enter the building in a protective phalanx.

  “Attention!” rings out.

  The Leader enters. We jump to attention and salute, and the Leader perfunctorily returns the salute with a wave of the hand.

  It is surprising how unimposing, even pathetic, he looks up close. Only the eyes speak of the monster inside. He wears a simple military tunic without rank insignia, save for one medal from the previous war.

  He ascends the steps and gives a short speech. He is an orator who mesmerizes if you are on the fence or already on his side; if you are not, he would be unintentionally humorous if his very word weren’t law.

  After thunderous applause — not all of it insincere — he and his acolytes descend the steps.

  Hora est! I reach down in my pockets and crush down hard on the copper tubing, releasing the chemicals. Now I have but ten minutes to live. I say a quiet prayer for success and deliverance to my Savior.

  I greet the party and shake the hand of my target.

  “If you would please follow me, my Leader, Imperial Leader, Field Marshal, Great Admiral, Imperial Marshal, honored ministers, gentlemen.” I beckon them to follow me to the exhibit hall.

  I start a long-winded, detailed explanation about all we have captured. The Leader’s thoughts are clearly elsewhere though.

  I need ten minutes for the detonation. I move nearer, “the better for you to hear me.”

  The Leader quickly trots through the hall, his entourage struggling to keep up. Barely three minutes have gone by.

  In desperation, I point at the prize exhibit: a standard left behind over a century ago by another would-be conquering army, in their hurried retreat after losing the Battle of Berezina.

  “Of course, my Leader, we will succeed where the little Corsican failed. This is a unique piece…”

  It is to no avail. The Leader rushes to the end of the hall and outside onto the boulevard.

  He cannot be clairvoyant, can he? Did he sell his soul to the devil like Faust? Not just morally speaking, as he did so long ago — but literally, in exchange for supernatural gifts?

  Outside stands a captured tank. That gets the Leader’s attention — fittingly, since their main battle tanks are arguably better than anything we have right now. If only it had been set up inside rather than outside — then I could still have fulfilled my mission.

  Here in the open air it would be pointless, unless I had been able to melt the plastique explosive and lace it with shrapnel, perhaps.

  Now I have maybe two minutes left on the fuse and no target. I am still prepared to die, but not for nothing.

  As the Leader is clearly engrossed in the explanations of an Armored Corps officer, I excuse myself to go to the restroom.

  Inside, I strip out of my uniform jacket as fast as I can. I tug on the time pencils, then tug again and again. Finally, they come free from the plastique charge.

  Just seconds later, the wire in one breaks through under the chemical assault, and the firing pin slams onto where the percussion cap would have been. The backup detonator follows moments later.

  It is an indescribable feeling, having just escaped certain death, yet knowing that your escape was born of miserable failure.

  I flush the spent detonators down the toilet, put my uniform in order again, and splash water on my face to wash down the cold sweat.

  When I emerge outside, the Leader and his party have already moved on.

  In need of a stiff drink, I go to the officer’s club, where I am a regular guest. There I meet an old acquaintance, an incorrigible braggart, especially if he’s drunk.

  “You’d never guess who I just saw driving down the boulevard in his convertible. The Leader himself. I could have thrown in a grenade just like they did with the Imperial Protector last year, and kaboom!”

  In one gulp I down my glass.

  “Yes indeed, my friend, what a pity. Waiter, another one for both of us!”

  Outwardly calm, I down that one too, then another. Then I leave and swagger to my flat, pretending to be drunk, but inside quite sober.

  I would gladly try again and again until I succeed, but I know I will never have another opportunity to get this close to the Leader. There are others who feel like me — that he must be cut down like a rabid dog, as were Henning’s literal words— and who are willing to give their lives. I will supply them with explosives from my cache.

  I may yet die before the war is over, in another attempt, or on the front, or at the end of a rope after long tortures. If I do survive the war, I will dedicate my life to another profession entirely; extending help to the ill and injured, without regard to faith or origins.

  There may be nothing left of this country by the time this Leader will finally go burn in Hell for all Eternity. Yet there will always be my fellow men who are in need.

  As I lie down to sleep, I remember Henning’s words to me:

  “G-d promised Abraham to spare Sodom if only ten righteous men could be found in the city. Whatever it cost us, we must ensure He will spare our country.”

  Sometimes, history is more fantastic than fiction. Our first-person narrator really existed: his name was Rudolf-Christoph Freiherr [Baron] von Gersdorff (1905-1980). While my descriptions of his thoughts and reflections are a writer’s educated guesses, my narration of the events in Berlin on March 21, 1943 is as factual as I could make it. Of the dozens of attempts on the life of Adolf Hitler, four came very close to succeeding. Best known to the general public is the July 20, 1944 plot under Colonel Count von Stauffenberg, depicted with minor dramatic license in the movie “Valkyrie.” Another, involving a time bomb smuggled onto Hitler’s airplane, is shown early in said movie: the detonator failed, presumably owing to the cold. A third attempt, referenced early in the present story, was Georg Elser’s on November 9, 1939, at the Munich beer hall where Hitler was to give his annual speech commemorating his 1923 failed coup. Elser, a joiner and master clockmaker who had worked at a quarry to gain access to explosives and experience working with them, had left nothing to chance, and even built redundant clock detonators into his large bomb, which was hidden in a pillar behind the rostrum. It would certainly have taken Hitler’s life, if not for a last-minute change in schedule: Elser’s bomb killed over a dozen people and wounded several dozen more. It, however, had the fateful unintended consequence of causing the Führer and his Begleitkommando to become extremely circumspect about access, and — this has been conjectured by Nigel Jones, among others — to deliberately make his movements unpredictable throug
h last-minute schedule changes.

  Gersdorff’s attempted suicide bombing, told here, was the fourth. It is nearly forgotten inside Germany, and unknown outside except to some WW II buffs. Yet it stands out in that, if successful, it would have been a ‘decapitation strike,’ eliminating the main contenders for the throne as well as the Führer himself. This would have ensured that the new Germany would not simply have been the old Nazi state under new management.

  As fate would have it, just a month later, our protagonist would be showing around officials and journalists at the mass graves in Katyn, where three years before, several thousand Polish officers had been shot by the NKVD in the service of another form of totalitarian collectivism.

  Gersdorff’s friend ‘Henning’ is of course none other than Col. Henning von Tresckow, linchpin of the conspirators at Army Group Center. After the failed Operation Valkyrie, Tresckow committed suicide for fear he would reveal names under torture. Before doing so, he spoke a short farewell to his adjutant and fellow conspirator, Lt. Fabian von Schlabrendorff, in which he referred to G-d’s promise to Abraham to spare Sodom from destruction for the sake of ten righteous people. I conjectured that he used that metaphor previously.

  The Lieutenant who on October 5, 1942 witnessed the massacre at Dubno was Axel Freiherr von dem Bussche. He would later attempt his own suicide bombing in Gersdorff’s wake: with his recruiting-poster looks, he was to model new uniforms for the Führer, in which he would place a bomb with a five-second hand grenade detonator. He planned to mask the sizzle of the detonator with a loud little speech. However, the boxcar on which the shipment of new uniforms traveled was destroyed in an air raid on Berlin, and the presentation ceremony had to be cancelled. Shortly later, he lost a leg on the Eastern front and spent the rest of the war in hospitals. In the new Germany, he became a diplomat and a school principal, as well as a senior official in the Lutheran Church.