The Reich Legacy Read online

  The

  Reich

  Legacy

  Also by Stanley Salmons

  ALEXEI’S TREE AND OTHER STORIES

  A BIT OF IRISH MIST

  THE TOMB

  THE CANTERPURRY TALES

  FOOTPRINTS IN THE ASH

  NH3

  THE MAN IN TWO BODIES

  THE DOMINO MAN

  COUNTERFEIT

  THE

  REICH

  LEGACY

  Stanley Salmons

  Copyright © 2017 Stanley Salmons

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Stanley Salmons to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  ISBN: 1546642390

  ISBN-13: 978-1546642390

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between the characters and actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For Paula, Graham, Daniel, and Debby

  Stanley Salmons was born in Clapton, East London. He is internationally known for his work in the fields of biomedical engineering and muscle physiology, published in over two hundred scientific articles and twelve scientific books. Although still contributing to the real world of research, he maintains a parallel existence as a fiction writer, in which he can draw from his broad scientific experience. He has published over forty short stories in various magazines and anthologies. This is his seventh novel

  GLOSSARY

  ADCAide-de-Camp

  BDUBattle Dress Uniform (US Army )

  BKABundeskriminalamt, the German federal investigative police agency

  blue on bluecasualties taken from friendly fire

  camocamouflage

  CSAChief of Staff of the Army

  flashbangstun grenade

  goodniteshort-acting gas grenade

  klick, kkilometre

  incomingincoming fire

  infil/exfilinfiltration/exfiltration

  MTPMulti-Terrain Pattern (British Army uniform)

  NCONon-Commissioned Officer

  OROther Ranks

  RPGrocket-propelled grenade

  SAFSpecial Assignment Force (fictional Special Operations Force of the US Army)

  SASSpecial Air Service (Special Forces unit of the British army)

  stagsentry duty

  tabmarch or jog with heavy equipment over difficult terrain

  USACIDCUnited States Army Criminal Investigation Command (also CID)

  XOExecutive Officer (Second-in-Command)

  1

  “Jim, need you here. My office, 1000 hours. Confirm. Wendell.”

  The message had come up on my desk screen. No reason, no explanations, that’s all there was – that and the date stamp: 04-04-2056, 7.03 a.m.

  First things first.

  I buzzed my ADC, Sergeant Bagley.

  “Sir?”

  “Bagley, you have the flight schedules. Can I get to the Pentagon for ten o’clock this morning?”

  I waited.

  “Yes, Colonel, you can if you leave now.”

  “I am leaving now. Book me on that flight. Then get me a driver from the pool. I should be back later today.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I spoke my confirmation message to Wendell, then sat back and took a few moments to wonder what in hell this was about.

  Operations for the Special Assignment Force come directly from Washington, through General Wendell Harken at the Department of Defense. That’s a handy arrangement: Harken was CO of this outfit before I took over, so he knows whether a mission is appropriate and within our capabilities and resources. He’s also well placed to defend our budget. The bean counters who sieve through the Department’s accounts are apt to bellyache at regular intervals about how expensive the SAF is, and despite the successful operations we’ve carried out in the past – operations no other elite force could have tackled – memories are short, especially when they belong to bean counters. Harken is effective, and he’s on his way up; I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes it to the Chiefs of Staff. But that sort of wheeling and dealing isn’t for me: I don’t enjoy it, and I’m too blunt to be any good at it. It suits me to be the next link in the chain of command, looking after things at Fort Piper. So that’s how it operates. If Harken wants us to take on an assignment, he phones or messages me. I go to the holoconference suite at the base, and we set up a secure link for a head-to-head. Then I’ll plan the operation and make sure the men go into action adequately trained, equipped, and supported.

  Except he didn't want a holoconference today. He wanted me in Washington. And he hadn’t said why.

  The heavy tramp of boots outside my window told me the guys were leaving for the 10 k tab with full pack. Normally I’d be with them. Dammit, I should be with them, not sitting on a bloody plane eating roasted peanuts. What kind of crisis was so important that I had to go to Washington?

  Bagley’s face appeared around the door, wearing his usual hurt spaniel expression.

  “Driver’s ready, sir.”

  “Okay, I’m coming.”

  I smiled. I liked poor old Bagley, although I was careful not to embarrass him by showing it. He wasn’t SAF at all – he’d never have made it through the physical for one thing. Wendell brought him along when he became CO here and I’d inherited him. He lacked personality, ambition, or initiative, but he did his job and – no doubt with a monumental effort of self-control – he didn’t actually moan about it, so we got along.

  I picked my uniform jacket off the hook and headed for the car.

  2

  I’ve known sunny days in Washington, but this wasn’t one of them. The air in the Capital was hung with a fine drizzle, in spite of which it was warm and humid. Most people would find that unpleasant but it was all the same to me; in North Carolina I usually trained with the men in conditions a lot stickier than this. The cab dropped me close to the Metro station and bus bays and I walked over to the Concourse entrance and into the cavernous reception area of the Pentagon. A security officer scanned my ID and asked why I was there and who I was planning to see. Of course I had no idea why I was there, so I just told him General Harken was expecting me. He picked up an internal phone, and after a brief conversation clicked it off again.

  “Thank you, Colonel. Do you know your way?”

  “Yeah, I know my way.”

  I caught the lift to the third floor and went through further security checks at each of the inner rings. Harken’s windowless office was in D ring. As I took the corridor nearest his bay I was still wondering what had made him drag me up here. I reached the office, knocked on the door, and opened it.

  Harken was sitting with his clasped hands resting on the big desk. It was a posture familiar to me from countless briefings, and just what I expected to see. What I hadn’t expected to see was another man in the room. He was seated at the short end of the desk, which he’d covered with papers. Late thirties, clean-shaven, close-cropped hair, dark blue business suit. Despite the suit there was a look about him that said “army” to me. Both rose briskly to their feet as I came in.

  Harken shook my hand. Despite the desk job he hadn’t put on an ounce. He probably ran five or ten ks before going to work each day.

  “Thanks for coming up here, Jim,” he said. “We have a tricky situation on our hands. I thought you should hear about it at first hand. This is Mr Mark Godstall. He’s a Special Agent with the CID.”

  For a brief moment my English background took over, and I wondered what the hell a plain-clothes detective from the old country was doing out here. Milliseconds later it clicked. CID was easier to say than either United States Army Criminal Investigation Command or its full abbreviation, USACIDC. I’d come up against so
me of these boys in the run-up to my court martial, when I was still Jim Forbes. Even without that history I’d have been familiar with this particular command. As a CO it was my job to know who did what, and who reported to whom. I’d know, for example, that Special Agents like this one could be civilian or military, but I was still backing the army for this guy.

  “Colonel,” Godstall said, extending his hand.

  I took the hand warily. Some of his colleagues hadn’t been too kind to me in the past.

  At Harken’s invitation I drew out the chair opposite him and the three of us sat down.

  Harken turned to the agent. “Mr Godstall, would you like to lead off?”

  The man nodded, then looked at me. “This is a sensitive matter, Colonel. Right now my job is simply to investigate and report back.”

  A sensitive issue involving the army. The army would certainly want to keep a sensitive matter within the family, so my guess was correct: he was army, an NCO in the Military Police Corps. And to talk to a General and a Full Colonel about a sensitive matter they’d send a Warrant Officer, or even a Chief Warrant Officer. That’s why Wendell was calling him “Mister”.

  He continued, “I’ll have to fill in a little background as we go along, so maybe you can help me out.”

  Helping these guys out usually meant falling for their tricks, so I waited.

  “In 2052 you faced a General Court Martial, accused of murdering your fellow soldiers.”

  I must have looked as surprised as I felt. I’d learned to put all that behind me. Why was he bringing it up now? I quickly reassembled my thoughts.

  “Wrongly accused,” I corrected him. “I was exonerated.”

  “Yes – too late, unfortunately. You were found guilty and condemned to death. What’s more, the sentence was carried out. Yet you’re still here.”

  He paused to look at me, evidently waiting for an explanation.

  I frowned. “You know the score, Mister. Executed murderers are used as organ donors, have been for years. Corneas, heart and lungs, liver, kidneys, bone marrow, blood – nothing wasted. In my case it was a whole body transplant: everything but the brain went to someone whose own body was failing.”

  “Sure, I understand that much. But normally the brain that was taken out of your body – a brain that belonged to someone seen at the time as, ah, a non-contributor to society – would have been disposed of. Obviously that didn’t happen; your brain was transplanted into another body. They call it a domino transplant – don’t they? It’s a difficult and expensive procedure, and I’m wondering if you could tell me why it was done in your case.”

  Harken interrupted. “The information is classified.”

  “I thought so,” Godstall said, nodding at Harken. “That makes things harder, but I don’t think we need to go into it now, or worry about who got the Colonel’s original body.”

  Oh good, because as it happens I know who got it and I haven’t the slightest intention of telling you.

  This guy had got off on entirely the wrong foot with me. I was still chewing on “non-contributor to society”. The phrase had been carefully chosen and better than some expressions he could have used, but I was still smarting. I’d contributed plenty to society, both before and after they operated on me.

  “Mr Godstall,” I said. “Is all this really relevant?”

  “I’m afraid it is, Colonel. Bear with me a little longer.” He looked down at the papers on his desk as if he needed to remind himself of something, which he almost certainly didn’t. He looked up again. “These procedures we’ve been talking about. In the normal way they never become public knowledge. Surgery of this kind is only conducted by judicial order, and such orders prohibit the keeping of medical records. Secrecy would have been even more crucial in this case – I’m aware that the Special Assignment Force is mainly designated for black ops.” He glanced quickly at Harken and back to me as if expecting a response. He didn’t get one. Harken’s face was set like stone, and I was still waiting to find out what he was leading up to.

  “Your mission in Africa, though,” Godstall resumed. “That attracted a lot of public interest.”

  Harken said, “The mission you’re referring to was an outstanding achievement. Colonel Slater was promoted and awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.”

  Everyone had been pleased with the outcome. Harken was pleased because he was promoted from Full Colonel to one-star General. Bob Cressington, Director of National Intelligence at the time, was pleased because it cleared the way for his eventual appointment as Secretary of Defense. And the media was pleased because there’d been a dearth of major news stories during the anticlimax that follows a Presidential election, and when this dropped in their laps they couldn’t believe their luck. So everyone was pleased – everyone except me. I was the target of so much media attention that from then on I was a write-off for operational duty. Perhaps it didn’t make much difference. Harken’s growing responsibilities in Washington meant he was spending more and more time away from Fort Piper, leaving me there as acting CO. Soon we both bowed to the inevitable and my role was made permanent.

  Godstall nodded vigorously at Wendell. “Absolutely, sir. But unfortunately it gained Colonel Slater a certain notoriety. As a result he’s been recognized.” He turned to me. “In short, a party wants your body back. So as to give it a decent burial.”

  3

  The room went deathly quiet.

  So this was it. This was why I’d been summoned to Washington. This was what the preamble was about. Someone was claiming my body.

  I got to my feet, turned, and walked as far from the desk as the confines of the room would allow. A bunch of worms was wriggling in my stomach. I knew they were watching me, and I put my hands in my pockets to hide the way they were shaking.

  Head bowed, eyes closed, I relived the whole nightmare journey: the post-operative weeks and months, the long, ghastly process of waking up in a new body; the helpless anger and horror as I realized what they’d done to me; my revulsion at the hideous mismatch between the original body image stored in my brain and the body I was now stuck with. It was taller, and more heavily built. My hair had been brown and curly, now it was straw coloured with a slight wave. My lips had been thin, now they were full. The brown eyes were mine – they’d been transplanted with the brain as a single unit – but now they had someone else’s eyelids and blond eyelashes. I hated this face and I hated the body it had come with.

  Then rehabilitation. Relearning everything: to talk, to stand with quivering limbs between parallel bars, to take a few faltering steps. Then standing and walking unsupported, swimming, running, training with weights, on rowing machines and stationary bicycles, relearning my skills in unarmed combat. It was a full year before I was finally out on the street, a bitter man with scores to settle. And settle them I bloody well did[1].

  I straightened up. This body had to see a lot of action before I could make it my own. If anyone wants to tell me it belongs to someone else now they can go to hell. Fuck them. It’s mine. They can’t have it.

  I turned to face the desk.

  “Why are we even talking about this?” I said. “When this guy was convicted he forfeited any rights to his own body. That’s why the State could use it as a source of organs, isn’t it?”

  Godstall’s tone was measured and patient. “The way the law was drafted, Colonel, the body can be returned to the family, minus corneas, heart, lungs, kidneys, and so on. In practice no one ever claims it; funerals and burial plots are very expensive. Even if there are friends or family they don’t want to foot the bill, and most of them are happy to look the other way. This situation is slightly different. The law was passed before the whole body transplant came in, and it’s never been redrafted. They’re suing the US Army for the return of the body and technically, under existing law, they have a case.”

  I looked from Godstall to Harken and back to Godstall. “That’s ridiculous!”

  “Of course it is, but that’s t
he way things stand.”

  “Come and sit down, Jim,” Harken said.

  I walked forward and took the chair. “Who’s bringing the suit?”

  “His one-time partner,” Godstall said. “She claims they were in a long-term relationship before his, ah, demise.”

  “Law suits are even more expensive than funerals. Someone must be bankrolling this. Who is it?”

  He grimaced.

  “Well?”

  “I was trying to spare your feelings, Colonel.”

  “Why, because I’m inhabiting the body of a convicted murderer? Mister, if there’s one thing I’ve learnt from this episode it’s that the body doesn’t have a mind of its own. Whatever this one was obliged to do before, it carries out my orders now. So just tell me.”

  “All right.” He placed his wrists on the edge of the desk and put his fingertips together. “Because of the nature of the suit the claimant had to reveal the name of the donor. I don’t suppose you want to know it?”

  I was breathing hard now. “Damn right I don’t.”

  “Sure, I understand. Well, as soon as we had that information we looked up the record of his trial. The man’s victims ranged from small-time drug dealers to prominent gang leaders. The details didn’t make pleasant reading. To judge by the methods and the nature of those targets the man was acting on orders. He wouldn’t say where the orders came from.”

  “What, facing a rap like that?”

  Godstall shrugged. “We assume he was a hitman for a powerful criminal syndicate, and he was trying to protect himself. These mobs have a long reach. If he’d plea bargained they could have had him killed before the trial or in prison afterwards. He had nothing to gain.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  “Large syndicates always have lawyers working for them. Someone must have come across your picture in the media and brought it to their attention.”