Look Behind You (The Order of the Silver Star) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Gestapo swiped—er, confiscated—the books while Chris was out of his quarters, he stifled a smirk and sent a message to London requesting that the BBC start airing The Lone Ranger . It wasn’t very much more accurate than the Old Shatterhand stories, but hey, at least Tonto was an actual Apache name, even if the character wasn’t.
    The request was denied, however. England was suffering heavily under the Blitz, and the BBC felt it needed to focus on British content, not American imports. Chris was annoyed, but he did understand. Instead, he settled for humming the William Tell Overture at appropriate moments while advising Goering on which types of planes to withdraw from the Luftangriff —namely, moments when he suspected SS agents were listening in.
    The SS was twitchy, had been since the meeting with the Mexican consul, but it got worse as September rolled on without any sign of capitulation from the Brits. More than once in the first part of October, Chris walked past a bomb silo and felt a wave of malice coming from it that made his hair stand on end, and a couple of those occasions coincided with SS inspections of those same silos. But while he did believe in God and in good and evil, he didn’t believe in magic. It seemed incredible that the SS would be trying to practice black magic, never mind that they would actually believe that the Rangers were in England trying to thwart them. Chris enjoyed rattling their chain, but he had a hard time taking any of it seriously. Goering certainly wasn’t; he was more worried about the mundane fact that planes and pilots were dropping like flies at the hands of the RAF. Why should magic even be a factor?
    Once Hitler called off the daily bombing of London and postponed Operation Sea Lion until spring, tensions eased around Goering’s office, though no one except Chris was happy about the Brits’ refusal to give in or the extremely high losses of men and planes on the Luftwaffe side. Goering assigned Chris to the task of analyzing what had gone wrong, and life went more or less back to pre-Blitz normal. Chris was so busy with his report and figuring out what inaccuracies to slip in that he almost forgot about the SS and their crazy paranoia about the Rangers.
    Nimrod evidently hadn’t, however, because when Chris accompanied Goering back to Berchtesgaden at the end of November, Nimrod pulled him aside. “Meet me at the Rathskeller tonight, will you, Eric?” he asked. “I’ve still got that five Marks I owe you.”
    Five Reichsmarks—a cinco peso , the Mexican coin used by the old-time Rangers to make their silver badges. Chris nodded. “Sure, Onkel Johann. See you tonight.”
    Nimrod clapped a hand on Chris’ shoulder and moved on.
     
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    3 Oberst was the Heer (German army) equivalent of a colonel.
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    ~~~~~
     
    Chapt er 2
    Uncanny
     
    November 28, 1940
     
    For the rest of the day, Chris kept his eyes and ears peeled for any clues as to what Nimrod might need to talk to him about regarding the Rangers. What he heard was a lot of talk about invading the Soviet Union, and what he saw were a lot of astrological charts that he didn’t bother to try to decipher and a dictator hopped up on Dr. Morell’s vaunted Vitamultin. Stifling his qualms, Chris gave his report on the Blitz and answered Hitler’s questions as tactfully as possible. And when it became apparent that Hitler wasn’t going to accept any negative assessment of the Luftwaffe’s ability to participate in the attack on the Soviets, Chris disclaimed that intel on Russia wasn’t his field but agreed that with enough time, the Luftwaffe could be ready. Then he refused to give estimates, and Hitler wasn’t pleased, but at least he wasn’t mad enough to have Chris arrested.
    Chris escaped to Königssee as soon as he could. The Rathskeller was fairly deserted that night, but Nimrod already had a table with a beer waiting for Chris when he arrived. After the initial exchange of pleasantries,