Martin Tofts, Captain Marcovic and Hugo joined Euphemia on the battlements of the abbey gatehouse, which offered a good view down the road to Medelnbrücke. Euphemia informed them that the refugee Jewish boys of the village had enthusiastically formed a company of the Elphberger Jugendverband a month before, and the boys were now making themselves useful by sneaking through woods and along hedgerows to report on the dispositions of the communists. ‘Horvath’s men clearly mean business.’
‘Elphberger Jugendverband?’ asked Marek, ‘Elphberg Youth Movement? When did that happen?’
For once Euphemia smiled at her brother. ‘The EJV is an indirect result of Hugo’s activities against the SS Hitlerjugend summer camp in Husbrau last year. It may end up as his claim to fame as a resistance fighter. He inspired a cadre of Mittenheimer Hitler Youths to band together in a rival Rothenian youth group. The EJV has since been setting up cells alongside resistance groups in Merz, Husbrau and are even popping up in the cities, Hofbau in particular, the capital less so. The Communists are trying to suppress them where they appear in the eastern cities, and there have been some gang fights in Zenden City between the EJV boys and the rival Kommunistischer Jugendverband.’
Martin also smiled. ‘It’s an unexpected bonus to our fight, but there’s something about Elphberg principles that appeals to all generations of Rothenians, especially in these dark days of Nazi occupation. Parents and grandparents who remember the Elphberg and Tildemann days are happy to support the boys who enlist in the EJV. In some Rothenian towns every boy you see, and many girls too, will be wearing red and yellow Elphberg colours as scarfs, belts, ties or ribbons. We hope it means that their generation are being thoroughly infected with the principles of freedom and honour which King Maxim stood for. It may turn out to be the rock on which a free Rothenia will survive in its people’s heads. Maxim’s next BBC broadcast will in fact be addressed to the youth of Rothenia, and Euphemia will publish it as a booklet in German and Rothenian for circulating to the EJV branches and organisers.’
Captain Marcovic mused, ‘Hmm. You could conclude that Horvath sees an initiative like the EJV as a sign that he’s losing his fight for the soul of the nation. As a result this strike at your Medeln base could be his response.’
Martin agreed. ‘The thing is to avoid violence however. The general can’t be here with reinforcements for a couple of days. So we need to talk, and that’ll be your job, captain.’
Marcovic looked surprised. ‘Me? I’ve not yet been in Rothenia for a full day.’
Martin shrugged. ‘True, but from what Hugo tells me London Centre has been talking to Horvath behind my back for quite some time. And we believe the recent Code Double-X is down to Soviet penetration of MI6. So Horvath’s men have been waiting for someone like you to turn up from London, even though you’re OSS. Take Lucacz with you. Are you two actually related?’
The captain shrugged. ‘He’s from the wackier side of the family, for sure. Okay, I’ll do it. I’m here to learn after all. We need to talk about that Code Double-X soon, by the way.’
Euphemia gave her brother a look. ‘Go and find a white flag, Hugo.’
***
The two Marcovics did not return till well after dark, and one of the Communist leadership came to the abbey with them. He was a stocky individual called Bela Rosvic, who introduced himself as a former worker in Eisendorf’s heavy industry. Hugo noticed however an acuteness to his look that indicated a man of deep thought and convictions; he guessed this was no common partisan, but a member of Horvath’s leadership cadre. He was settled with a cup of tea in the hall of the former abbatial residence. ‘Serving up beer or raw hrotvast in a mug might be taken for condescension,’ said Martin, and then added tiredly, ‘I’m not good with the working class. Leo’s better, oddly enough.’
‘It’s good that the communists are talking at least,’ Hugo replied.
Horvath’s proposals were simple enough, though not necessarily easy to meet. He wanted a share of the latest supply drop, though he did not specify how much of a share. The main proposal was more difficult to process. Mr Rosvic was willing to confide that the Communist resistance was under heavy pressure from its NKVD cadre to take action against the POW camp at Kaleczyk. With the Red Army sweeping across Ukraine and the German army in full retreat, it was almost certain that Russian forces would reach the Rothenian frontier by the end of summer 1944. Now was the time for high profile independent action in Rothenia. Rosvic didn’t hide the fact that Horvath still needed to establish his credentials with Moscow, and a successful strike against the SS POW camp in the eastern mountains followed by the liberation of hundreds of captured Russian army officers and pilots would do just that.
Marek Marcovic urged them to consider the proposal. ‘After all, cooperation between resistance organisations can only be good for the war effort. How can you lose by it?’
Martin growled out his aversion to the idea. ‘There’s a bigger game behind this plan. Horvath is looking beyond the defeat of the Nazis to the Rothenian republic that will follow liberation. He wants it to be a Communist satellite soviet, with himself as its petty Stalin. So he’s got to look bigger in the eyes of Moscow, like Tito in Serbia. Horvath’s enough of a Rothenian to know that a blow against the occupiers which liberated Russian soldiers and returned them to the fight would seem noble and honourable to his countrymen. Nobility and honour is not something otherwise he can make much claim to.’
Hugo hastened to back up his boss. ‘Don’t you see there’s something really off about this proposal? Horvath’s not to be trusted. We’re picking up some indications that he’s in communication with the Waffen-SS commandant in Rothenia, Count Vasselot, who has a reputation for being a clever bastard, devilish even. It would certainly suit Vasselot if the resistance could be lured into an assault on Kaleczyk and then crushed.
Marek shrugged. ‘But if you stand in the way of a noble and honourable action, then the Tarlenheim resistance has failed a test too, hasn’t it?’
Hugo groaned. ‘Devilish, as I said.’
Martin was silent for a while, then he sighed. ‘It looks like we’re trapped. If we refuse Horvath’s offer, we can’t do much to stop him seizing our assets at Medeln. So we go along with him, for now, but cautiously. Send Herr Rosvic on his way with reassurances, and the promise of a third of the supply drop.’
***
General Henry von Tarlenheim turned up in Strelzen in the aftermath of the Medeln confrontation. He was not a happy man, of course, but he had the grace to admit that Martin had done the best he could with a bad hand.
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘Horvath can go fuck himself, as far as co-operation over Kaleczyk is concerned. From what you say his scheme is compromised before it even begins. Do we know any more about his link with the mysterious Count Vasselot?’
Martin sighed. ‘Vasselot was one of Heydrich’s bright young queers in Bohemia, promoted colonel before he was twenty. He was in charge of the torture of Allied agents in Prague, and he is said to have quite a talent that way, a talent he is beginning to exercise in Strelzen. There was a sweep of teenagers in EJV colours in Hofbau. Six boys were taken up by the Gestapo, and delivered to his cells in Strelzen. The bodies eventually released to the Church had been hideously treated. They’d been apparently raped by Vasselot and his men and then mutilated: their balls and cocks were cut off after the usual electrical torture, while they were still alive. The kids knew nothing useful to the Nazis. The youngest boy was only fourteen.’
‘I’ve authorised the assassination of the Hofbauener Gestapo agents involved,’ the general said quietly. ‘Vasselot of course is safe from that sort of retribution. We all know what happened to the Czechs after his boss Heydrich was assassinated by their resistance fighters. But retribution is creeping up on him and his fellow monsters nonetheless. The Reich is stumbling towards annihilation, as all can see.’
Hugo raised his hand. ‘General sir, my friend and partner Lucacz Marcovic is related to the American OSS captain. He and Lucacz shared some OSS intelligence on Count Vasselot and Horvath.’
The general shook his head. ‘We know they are talking, and that Vasselot is not discouraging.Horvath from any plan to assault Kaleczyk. Why this should be so is something of a mystery, but Vasselot is a devious bastard. Rumour has it that Hitler’s fallen out with the Slovak high command, and we think Vasselot’s been ordered to prepare to neutralise the Tiso regime in Bratislava in the new year. You may not have heard, but the Slovak units in Rothenia were placed under SS command last week, and Vasselot has been brevetted as Generalmajor in the Waffen-SS to match his new responsibilities. He’s Himmler’s new pet, to make up for the loss of Heydrich.’
This was news to Martin. ‘Kaleczyk commands the direct route from Rothenia into Slovakia,’ he commented. ‘Are you saying that Count Vasselot is looking for an excuse to shift the POWs out of the fortress, so he can set up a regional command centre and redoubt there to mastermind the defence of Slovakia and Rothenia against potential traitors to the Reich and the oncoming Red Army?’
The general shrugged. ‘It’s one explanation for what we’re seeing.’
The meeting broke up soon afterwards. Hugo and Lucacz headed out towards Postgasse and the White Tree. Hugo summed up the problem, as they walked. ‘That fucking Tobias-thing is really extending himself. Protektor Korngeibel seems to be becoming just his glove puppet, and he’s gained military control over Rothenia. He can do whatever he wants to subvert the Elphberg future.’
‘What can we do?’ Lucacz replied. ‘He’s a Jonas-Niemand-sized problem.’
‘Or even bigger,’ sighed Hugo.
‘Fuck, the Nazi queers are out on the town tonight,’ commented Lucacz. German soldiers were scattered around the bar, with a table of SS uniforms next to the dance floor. Several of the club’s boy whores were hanging round them. They were all hopeful blue-eyed blonds; the local market had shifted to accommodate the tastes of the new clientele. Some of the boys were in fact resistance informants, so they were in their way principled whores, though they were deeply amused when Hugo had suggested they form an EJV cell.
Hugo and Lucacz found Theo Ignacij on a sheltered corner table. ‘Evening friends,’ he said. ‘Our Gottleib was in the club till the SS queers marched in, then he took off out the back fast. We were going to meet Waclaw, but he’ll not be coming now I’d guess. I should be going myself, but you’re here now and you’ll look after me, yes?’
Hugo went over to get drinks in and was joined at the bar by a late-coming Waclaw. ‘Nasty smell of murderous scum in here tonight,’ he commented. ‘My Gottleib gone, excellency? I expect he didn’t feel comfortable with the company here. I’ll be off myself soon I think.’
It was as they were about to move back to their table when one of the SS officers joined them at the bar. He was young, slim and handsome to the point of high aesthetic beauty, and it was with a sense of cold fear and danger that Hugo recognised Tobias, Colonel the Count Vasselot von Regne. Worse, he seemed to want to talk.
‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ he said, mildly. ‘Please don’t let me drive you away. Adult company is in such short supply here tonight.’ The words might have been mild and polite but there was a weight behind them which meant that, like it or not, they were trapped. But did he know them for what they were?
Vasselot nodded towards the dance floor. ‘My colleagues over there do so like slim and pretty boys, and such are the conditions of wartime that hungry and poverty-stricken teenagers make themselves available in some numbers. But as for me … ah well, I find them all too easy to rip and to break when I play. I am being driven to the conclusion that I am only going to find the sexual satisfaction I crave under powerful and large males, and that is something of a problem.’
‘Er … why so, your excellency?’ asked Hugo, as he was apparently required to by this weirdly confidential monster.
Vasselot shot him a sharp glance. ‘Recognise me do you, young man? Interesting. I tend to think of myself as an anonymous power behind the throne in Rothenia. But I imagine I underestimate you people’s monkey curiosity. However, it’s not you who interest me this evening, but your friend, so do please excuse me.’
‘Me?’ Waclaw exclaimed. ‘I’m no one important.’
Vasselot smiled. ‘My growing experience with human males tells me otherwise, sir. You seem to me to be, as my sergeant-major says, a “shagger”. I would imagine you give your all to the sex act, you thrust and thrust away at the person under you, boy or girl, until you ejaculate, with only your own satisfaction in mind. All you want from your partner is submission.’
Waclaw was confused. To begin with, he was not used to being hit on by younger men, and this particular young man was his nation’s enemy, and a very dangerous one at that. But Vasselot was unfortunately just the sort of male he lusted after, and the body on offer was just the sort that aroused him. Had the colonel and nobleman offering himself been human it was just possible that he might have ignored his scruples and better judgement and taken and used the dangerous youth’s offer. Yet Waclaw knew Vasselot was no fit consort for a human, but a powerful being more monstrous than the monstrous creed he represented in Rothenia, a deceitful sadistic spirit that was intent on defying the power of Heaven. Hesitantly he said, ‘Sorry sir, but I’m not interested … really.’
Hugo watched the reactions to this rebuff as they crossed Vasselot’s face. Puzzlement swiftly gave place to irritation, which shifted to anger. Probably the creature was unaware that its facial reactions could be read by the onlookers, like those of any other primate. Most interestingly the last reaction Hugo observed was for the creature to turn down his mouth. It was momentarily overwhelmed by sadness, and looked quite like a very unhappy boy child.
Then Hugo remembered what had been said of Jonas Niemand, another such celestial being, how his inner sadness was the thing that had brought him nearer the human condition. And with that Hugo no longer feared Tobias quite so much, for it appeared that he might be after all redeemable and vulnerable, despite his power and capricious cruelty. Tobias stood, and seemed to catch the look of pity in Hugo’s eyes. He stood and overcome, it seemed, with frustration, he stalked out of the club without another word.
‘We go. Now. Fucking fast,’ hissed Lucacz.
***
When the encounter was reported to Martin he immediately ruled the White Tree out of bounds in future. ‘Too dangerous by far.’
‘What about the boy whores who work for us there?’ objected Hugo.
‘Well, Theo has a number of excuses why he can still haunt the place and he still may, but only irregularly and with great caution. But nonetheless, you’ve given us a fascinating insight into our enemy’s mind, gentlemen, and I thank you. I’m just glad you managed to escape unscathed.’
‘Yes, Mr Tovutz sir,’ sighed Waclaw, ‘apart from my view of myself.’
‘Hmm? What do you mean?’
‘I see myself as a sort of fun uncle to young kids, showing them what their ass is for and how to have fun with my cock. That Tobias creature described me as a brutal predator subjecting the innocent and weak to my will. It’s an ugly vision.’
Gottleib was aghast. ‘Oh Waclaw, don’t say that, liebchen. I love you for your strength and care for me. I’m no victim of your lust. You brought stability and meaning to my life at Heilbrod.’
Martin shook his head. ‘Vasselot is a creature of deceit. His view of humanity is warped by the disgusting Nazi creed he embraces; violence and hatred is all he stands for. But let’s think more about what we’ve learned signifies for Horvath and his schemes.’
Hugo gave a wistful chuckle. ‘He can’t be happy. For a while last year his movement was on the rise, as the Russians shifted the balance on Germany’s eastern front. Enough people were ready to go along with him as the workers’ tribune in the eastern cities, even though it was the general’s organisation that had got effective worker resistance going in Eisendorf. But now Stalin and the NKVD want to see results from his campaign in Rothenia, and he has little to offer.’
‘Is that why his people have been talking to Vasselot’s?’
Hugo shrugged. ‘Vasselot knows what we know about Horvath’s weakness. So if he could use it to create fratricidal tensions within the resistance movement, he will. The skirmish at Medeln shows us that he’s having some success. The question for us is what he will do next.’
Martin sighed. ‘That’s not one we can easily answer. There’s no getting close to such a creature.’
***
Haupttruppführer Ernst Brückner was Count Vasselot’s driver and valet, but he was more than that, he acted as his general interpreter of the human world of 1943. Tobias had engineered his own appearance in the Schutzstaffel the year before with an unsubtle directness. If asked he would have said he was doing no more than his celestial rival did, the Accuser, sometimes known as Jonas Niemand.
He believed Jonas’s method was simply to dump himself in the mundane world and recruit helpers to get his chosen task done, and that was how Tobias himself decided to proceed. What he did not realise in his arrogance was that the Accuser had countless millennia of experience with humankind behind him. The Accuser chose his helpers with subtlety and knowledge, he favoured particularly talented children too, because he had found children evaded notice and could go most places unquestioned.
On the very rare occasions the Great Council deployed Tobias in the world, he did not realise it did so only after first taking an expert briefing from the Accuser. So it had been in fact by Jonas’s plan that Tobias was sent to test and recruit Henry Atwood for the great struggle against the Antichrist, and to invest that unusual boy with seraphic power for the task. And unprepared for the fact that Henry Atwood was going to be an exceptionally talented, charming and courageous being, Tobias was seduced by the unusual sort of human Henry was. Later commentators would suggest that Jonas’s selection of Henry Atwood in that crisis might have been one of the Accuser’s devious practical jokes, a selection not made just because of Henry’s fitness for the task, but because he might destabilise Tobias’s seraphic arrogance and subvert his poor opinion of humanity. If so, Jonas’s success must have shocked even him.
Tobias knew enough about human society to know that in some lands titled aristocrats got a lot of undeserved deference. So through a very sophisticated seraphic spell he generated a strand in European history by which an Alsatian landowning family by the name of Vasselot achieved the dignity of a Graf within the German empire and produced a nineteen-year old count called Tobias Vasselot von Regne, into whose identity he fitted himself, feeling very pleased with it.
So in April 1942, two months in real time after he had left Henry Atwood in Jerusalem, Tobias walked into the Prazsky Hrad headquarters of the sort of human he felt he could use to forward his self-appointed mission, to thwart the divine plan and blight the Elphberg restoration of a free Rothenia. As his own personal script dictated Tobias was a handsome, blond and blue-eyed Aryan in the uniform of an SS Hauptsturmführer. For his human identity he had opted to be an aristocratic boy who had chosen entry into the SS regiment Deutschland over university, and the coveted regimental cuffband of the elite unit was around the arm of his grey service uniform. Tobias rather liked the way the human guards snapped to attention as he passed and offered the Führer salute: he so loved deference and order. The young aide at the Acting Protector’s office door was presented by Tobias with what the aide found to be credentials in favour of Captain the Count Vasselot by the hand of the Reichsführer SS himself. And Tobias was respectfully ushered into the office of Obergruppenführer Reynhard Heydrich.
That first day, for all his powers and intellect, Tobias discovered a flaw in his plan: he simply had not appreciated the complexity and subtlety of human interaction. He was hopeless at the nuance of it. But within a week he had found one solution, SS-Haupttruppführer Ernst Brückner. The warrant officer was a large, muscular and phlegmatic man, and somehow projected a social calm that soothed any feelings of incipient panic in Tobias, and apparently the man realised that the captain was out of his depth in Prague. It was a simple matter to have Ernst assigned to him as driver, aide and valet and they fell into a tacit arrangement, with Ernst as his interpreter to the human race.
For some reason — perhaps Tobias’s undisguisable coldness and arrogance — his new boss, the Obergruppenführer Heydrich, decided to deploy the young captain in the exacting role of torturer and executioner. Tobias had no human sympathy to appeal to, and he found no difficulty in inflicting pain on humans, or terminating their lives economically. He did find some sexual titillation in the role, and found he rather liked orchestrating the rape of male prisoners, the younger and more horrified the better. To him they were no more than hairless monkeys to experiment on. And it was that feeling of sexual arousal he still most sought to find and analyse.
His last job in Bohemia was in the weeks following his boss’s assassination by the resistance and his funeral in Berlin, when he was one of the pall bearers. He despatched hundreds of guiltless Czechs in an act of vengeance in the aftermath. His dispassionate efficiency in the role was what decided Reichsführer Himmler to promote him colonel and send him to the Ruritanian Protectorate to tighten up the Korngeibel regime.
Tobias had the peculiar experience of witnessing his commander’s death. The general had seemed to have survived the grenade wounds he had suffered in the attack. Heydrich was able to receive Himmler four days after his wounding and talk coherently about his chances. He exchanged some observations with Tobias, who was in the room, about fate, chance and destiny. Tobias was surprised to find that this human seemed unmoved in contemplating his own death, a thing which he had assumed their weak minds shied away from, the more so the more powerful they were in worldly matters. When he returned to the room after ushering Himmler out to take his leave of Heydrich he found him lying back and a man in a Werhmacht uniform he did not at first recognise occuping the chair next to his bed.
‘You are the Count Vasselot,’ the man looked up and said evenly, ‘who was formerly a seraph of the Heavenly Choir and who now calls himself by the name of Tobias, a name given you on the Temple Mount by God’s chosen warrior, the great Mendamero, for which reason it is a name you will carry until you meet me again.’
‘Who the fuck!’ Tobias cried, astonished. He looked closer at the man, and realised that he was no man, but one of his own order. ‘You can only be the Nameless One,’ he said, momentarily puzzled. ‘But you do not come into this world to receive souls.’
The Angel of Death gave a light chuckle. ‘That is usually true, but there are exceptions: the transcendentally good human for one, and the grotesquely evil for another.’
‘So you are here for General Heydrich.’
‘His death will be within the space of a day. My brother, you seem not to know much of what my job involves, but then I suppose we have never yet talked. However I am glad that we can just this once. I come into this world to summon those whose way of living offends Heaven, and I offer them one last solemn moment for repentance, from which there may eventually come their soul’s salvation.’
‘And … did he?’
‘Look at his face, brother.’
Tobias looked, and it occurred to him that the general, a handsome man, seemed peaceful and indeed pale and spiritual in looks, slumped into his pillows. When he looked back the bedside chair was empty. Tobias walked out into the corridor of the hospital, and informed a nurse in the ward station that the general appeared feverish and weak. Then he wandered out into the hospital gardens and sat alone and quiet on a bench for some hours. He rather feared that the interview he had just had was no accident and that his meeting with the Unknown Seraph was orchestrated to give him a pointed message from the Great Council.
***
When Tobias went to Strelzen his aide Ernst Brückner went with him. The sergeant major had apparently developed a strange paternal pride in the young psychopath who was his commander. It was home to Ernst Tobias went after his thwarted night of passion in the White Tree. Ernst made him a tea, which Tobias pretended to sip, for his seraphic body needed no sustenance, though curiously he felt he had to pretend to drink it. He didn’t want to disappoint this big man, who took care of him in so many ways.
‘Well sir, the lads and I saw the newsreels showing General Heydrick’s funeral in Berlin. We saw you on guard beside the coffin, and at the graveside in the Invalidenfriedhof. And you met the Führer, sir?’
Tobias shrugged. ‘He was shorter than I imagined he’d be.’
‘Tall enough to bestride the world, sir.’
‘He gave me this … trinket. What do I do with it?’
‘Sir! That’s the Iron Cross, 2nd Class! You fit it from the second button of your tunic, like this. There’s also a medal ribbon to add to your bar.’
‘I see, it is a distinction of sorts. Very human.’
‘It’s an honour, sir, and from the hand of the Führer himself.’ Tobias found his valet’s expression a little puzzling, being both pleased and sentimental. Then it occurred to him that Ernst was proud of him, and he felt a corresponding reaction. He had made an emotional connection with this man, and so he was a step forward in his mission. Unfortunately Haupttruppführer Ernst Brückner was not such a man that could have advanced his mission much, unlike General Heydrick, but it at last indicated that he could seduce a powerful man.
Tobias smiled up at the big man and reached for his hand. Then Ernst smiled hesitantly and lent over to whisper urgently in Tobias’s ear, ‘Nun, wie wäre es, wenn ich diesen großen dicken Schwanz in deinen engen Jungenarsch stecke.’
There followed the second landmark in Tobias’s journey into human male sexuality, as he discovered the joys of intercourse with a big strong man above him, making him his own.
Posted 1 February 2025