This brought the statue to life. “I told you not to ever call me that!”
“Call you what?” Jamie replied with the most innocent of looks.
“Maggot,” she informed him with an earsplitting screech.
Jamie laughed as he pointed at her. “You called yourself Maggot.”
Maggie’s face turned bright red. “Only Uncle Eddie calls me that!”
Eddie flicked Jamie’s ear. “Ouch,” the boy said, baffled by the response.
“Only I call her that,” he re-asserted his authority and returned his attention to the girl. “C’mon, Maggie—stop being such a wuss.”
“I’m going to stay here,” she stated. The terms didn’t sound negotiable.
This set Eddie off again. He was the jolly mall Santa Claus until someone disagreed with him. “I wasn’t asking, Maggie—now come on!”
“You’re not my father.”
Zach winced; she was bringing out the heavy artillery. Eddie’s anger began to overflow … but this time it was directed at Zach.
“If you think you’re going to walk into their lives and then leave when you feel like it, you’re going to have to answer to me.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at
—
I’m just trying to help out.”
Eddie got up in his face. “I did some checking up on you. Seems like you have a reputation for not protecting those close to you, and leaving when it’s convenient.”
Zach kept his cool. The guy obviously was trying to bait him and he wasn’t going there. Eddie wasn’t the one who had to endure those painful visits to Bedford every weekend. He never left.
“Like I said, I’m just trying to help out. I didn’t mean to step on your toes.”
“I’m here for the long run to protect this family. It’s how my brother would want it.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing—I’m just not a big fan of speaking for the dead. I think they can speak for themselves.”
With a sharp jab of the hand, Eddie struck like a cobra, grabbing Zach’s tie and pulling him close enough to smell lunch. Zach realized if he didn’t take the bait, then Eddie was intent on starting the confrontation, regardless.
“Don’t mess with this family!”
He whipped out his gun and jammed it against Zach’s temple.
As Maggie and TJ might say, or rather, type—
OMG!
The patrons at the neighboring tables began wildly scattering.
Maggie looked horrified, but Jamie seemed enthralled by what might happen. The kid was a little scary.
Then Eddie surprised Zach again.
He lowered the gun and handed it to him. He read Zach’s confused look and barked, “If someone comes after her, what are you going to do—stab them with your pen?”
Zach forced a nervous smile. “I once had an editor who said I could bore someone to death.”
Eddie turned his back and headed off with Jamie.
A scared looking waitress took their order. Zach got the traditional club sandwich, while Maggie ordered the vegetarian lasagna.
“I didn’t know you were a vegetarian,” Zach tried to make conversation, acting like the whole gun incident never happened.
Maggie didn’t seem as affected—maybe it was just a typical day out with Uncle Eddie—but what he thought was a mundane comment raised her ire. “How would you? You don’t know me.”
She had a point.
A long awkward pause hovered, before Maggie said out of the blue, “My mom likes you.”
Zach tried to mask his surprise. “She said that?”
“No—it’s just that she gets all weird when you’re around. Gets all forgetful and stuff.”
He forgot the basic rules of a twelve-year-old—never let your guard down, and never underestimate their powers of perception. And sadly, eliciting memory loss from Maggie’s mom was the best response he’d gotten from a female in a while. Maggie seemed to be gauging his potential response, and he felt he needed to clear things up, whatever those things were.
“We just have a lot in common. Kind of like you and TJ.”
“What could you possibly have in common with my mom?”
“Well, we’re both raising twelve-year-olds. And as much of a special treat you might think that is, you aren’t always a picnic.”
“What happened to TJ’s mom? He never talks about it.”
“She got sick.”
“Is she in the hospital?”
“Something like that.”
Another awkward silence filled the air until the waitress returned with their meals. She dropped off their food and scurried away before Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday made a reappearance.
“So you’re a big Jim Kingston fan?” Zach asked, pointing at the T-shirt that Maggie broke school rules to wear. Using the old baggy-sweater trick to fool her mother.
“I’m a supporter, not a fan. A fan is someone who paints their face when they go to hockey games.”
“Okay, what do you
support
about him?”
“For starters, he’s the only candidate who’s backing our friends in their time of need.”
Wow, twelve years old
, Zach thought, when he was her age all he wanted was a BMX bike.
“But I remember you mentioning that you volunteered for his campaign last summer, and there wasn’t any potential conflict then.”
“I’m big on environmental issues—I think it’s our job to leave the earth a better place than we found it, and Jim Kingston believes that. I think Theodore Baer’s policies are selfish and shortsighted.”
“You’re deeper than most kids your age.”
“My mom says kids who grow up in the city are like five years older than the average kid.” She shrugged. “So who are you voting for?”
“To be honest, I’m not a fan of either guy. But I still have twenty-four hours to figure it out. I usually work better when I’m up against a deadline.”
She didn’t seem thrilled by the response, but moved on. “Do you believe what my Oma said?”
“I think she believed what she said. And I’m convinced that Sterling believed her, or he wouldn’t have shown up.”
She sighed. “Get off the fence. Did you believe her
or not?”
“I’m a reporter. My job is to observe and report the facts.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to change your order to waffles?”
Good one—underrated sense of humor. Like her mother.
“Okay, I believe the part about your Oma being taken in by the Nazis. And I trust your mom’s analysis of the painting. That is important, because it’s physical evidence that links Ellen’s relationship with Hitler, and gives credence to her claim that she had a child with Müller.”
“But?” she read his doubts.
“I’m not sure I believe the whole Apostles thing. If there ever was such a group, I doubt it ever materialized into anything significant. I think your Oma was looking to validate the importance of her existence as she neared the end, so when she read Youkelstein’s book about some of these Nazis possibly being alive, her imagination began to run and she created a history that never existed.”
“She was telling the truth,” Maggie remained steadfast, and irritably dug into her lasagna.
Zach shrugged. “Her timing is a little suspicious, to say the least.”
“The timing makes perfect sense. If Theodore Baer gets into power tomorrow, then our freedoms will slowly be taken away, allowing the Nazis to move in.”
Zach’s face creased in skepticism. “She told you that?”
“No, I figured it out on my own. But there’s still one part that doesn’t make sense.”
“And that would be?”
“The part about her son Josef being the one chosen to lead them back to power. It makes no sense. It would be like Kingston or Baer naming Jamie as their running mate.”
Zach looked out at the grounds where Eddie was giving Jamie a piggyback ride. Zach was pretty sure that Jamie would make a more capable vice president than Officer Eddie.
“So you
don’t
believe he was chosen?”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t chosen, I said it didn’t make sense,” she replied with a frustrated sigh—the grownup just wasn’t getting it. “I think to get to the bottom of this we have to answer the question
why
he was chosen.”
For most kids, losing their father at such a tender age would have knocked the passion out of them. But Maggie was still oozing with idealism and an overactive imagination that only a novelist could love. Zach got the idea that Ellen took advantage of these qualities, and part of him felt bad for the girl.
“Listen, Maggie, parents often glorify their children. And when children die at a young age they practically saint them. In the video, Ellen alleged that Josef died before he was able to fulfill his promise. I think she made him out to be this Chosen One because it raised him to heights his short life was never able to reach.”
Zach thought of his stillborn daughter, Abigail, who would have been TJ’s twin sister. Like most parents, Sara assumed that Abigail would’ve gone on to do great things if she had lived. Maybe. But nobody truly knows where life will take you. Maybe Abigail would have acquired the same sickness of addiction as her mother and ended up a junkie. The scenario was just as likely. Klara Hitler probably thought that her little Adolf would achieve great things. Or at least not become a mass murderer.
“But she didn’t glorify him. She knew he wasted his life, and she blamed herself.”
“Maybe she used the burden of being ‘chosen’ as an excuse for his demise?”
Maggie looked out at Eddie and Jamie rolling around in the grass, despite Eddie wearing an expensive suit. At that point, she decided to talk to herself because she seemed to be the only person who understood Maggie Peterson.
“Why was he chosen?” she asked.
Otto sat beside the Candidate in the back of the stretch limo as they moved through the thick Manhattan traffic.
The Candidate’s father, Josef, was originally chosen for this role, but greatness clearly had skipped a generation. His father never possessed his charisma and courageous vision. You’re either born with that or you’re not. Otto hadn’t seen such a combination since the Führer—a comparison that gave him chills.
Otto viewed the landscape outside his window. He laughed to himself at the contradictions of this strange wasteland called America. A society that demonized the Führer’s racial philosophies, yet built their dynasty on the ethnic cleansing of the Native American and the slave labor of Africans stolen from their homelands. He wondered how their celebrated Manifest Destiny was any different from the Führer’s quest for territory called lebensraum.
The Führer understood that certain races were genetically superior to others. And Otto had observed the appeasement of the lesser races divide the United States, weakened its core, and made its structure vulnerable. But he wasn’t complaining—it’s what they had been counting on all these years.
There was a time when he doubted if this moment would ever be presented to them. As decades passed, and with his aging troops growing restless, he knew he’d have to spark their opportunity himself. And to do so, he re-created the spark that ignited Germany—the Reichstag Fire.
The fire was purposely set by members of the Nazi Party, made to look like an attempt by the communists to overthrow the German government. It was an act that woke up the nation from its slumber and caused then-chancellor Paul von Hindenburg to put out a decree nullifying many of the key civil liberties of the German citizens. The country had remained in a malaise since WWI, too busy feeling sorry for itself to reclaim its birthright of world domination. But the Reichstag Fire on February 27, 1933 restored Germany’s fight, and led to the rise of the Führer.
As the new century began, America had slipped into a similar malaise. But unlike Germany, it was based on a different emotion—overconfidence. The United States believed themselves to be an impenetrable fortress, and it was Otto’s challenge to alter their mindset.
He’d heard of a group that resided within Germany, which had picked up their battle to fight off the attempts by the Zionists to seek world domination. But while this ragtag militia was based in Germany, they weren’t of German descent.
The German people couldn’t even fight for their own causes anymore,
Otto sadly thought. This was a group of Arabs—a race he believed to be far beneath the Germans. But when he traveled to Hamburg to meet with their leaders in an apartment the group rented at Marienstrasse-54, near the university in the Harburg section, Otto found what they lacked in genetics they made up for with fearless delusion. Just the men to deliver a modern day Reichstag Fire.
The leader of these genetic mutants was a hypnotic brainwasher who hid in the caves of Pakistan. He had already done the legwork, setting a plan into motion where a cell based in Hamburg would hijack commercial airliners and crash them into symbolic US buildings and monuments. While Otto doubted their ability to pull off such a grandiose plan, he didn’t doubt their commitment to the cause.