Prologue
Tapping on the window of the nursery, I pointed to my newborn’s crib, and the nurse held up the swaddled child to me where I wept with gratitude and relief to the point of collapsing on the floor.
“You, OK?” a frail female voice on the floor next to me whispered. I was shocked that someone else was on the floor. It’s not a common venue in a room filled with chairs and a lot of doctors.
“What?”
“I asked if you were OK?” she repeated but continued to stare at the wall across the corridor in front of us. “Because if you are down here with me, then you must not be in a good place.” And she turned her head towards me. “Am I right?”
Although she had on dark sweats far too big for her with the hoodie up, I could see she was pale, weak, and traumatized.
“No, actually, I am elated,” I explained. I just saw my baby—breathing! I’m so thankful.”
“Don’t they all do that?” Her darkness overshadowed my glee. “Breathe, I mean. They’re all supposed to survive, right?”
I laughed uncomfortably, “Yes, I guess that is what God intended, but apparently, it doesn’t always…”
“...God?” she questioned. “God?!” her soft voice became outraged by the suggestion of a holy power. “If there were a God, then it would have been my kid that didn’t breathe.”
“You?” She was so young that she couldn't have been old enough to have had a child. “Did you just have a baby too?” I chose to skim over the fact that she didn’t want a breathing child.
“A baby? No.” She checks her phone. “A spawn from Hell? Yes.” And with that, she ambles to a standing position with difficulty and presses her head against the nursery window with heavy breathing. She speaks into her phone, “Pink blanket. Second from the left. First row.” Ends the call, drops the phone to the floor, crushes it with her black Timberlands, and shuffles her way through the emergency door.
“Miss? Excuse me, Miss?” I hollered, as this was clearly a situation in need of addressing. “Wait, Miss! Please!” I stopped the emergency door from closing and gently pulled her arm towards me. “You look like you need a doctor. Let’s get you some help. We are in a hospital after all.” I tried to make light of whatever she was going through which was ominous.
“No, man. I’m checking out, not in…” and passed out in my arms.
Chapter 1 (17 years later)
“Hitler was not a nice guy.”
Did I really have to sit in AP World History class to know this?
“But more important to note was that he was not to blame for his actions due to a litany of post-mortem diagnoses and analyses. He was born prematurely--and therefore, was a small and sickly child--to his Jewish mother—a fact upon which some base his genocidal mania—and lacked confidence and social skills due to his invalid younger years. Consequently, he grew up exhibiting antisocial behaviors, which directly played into his paranoid delusions as an adult. Additionally, he overcompensated for his pathetic youth by rising to a key political figure in Germany, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder—onset from the stress of his dictatorship--early in his political career, and contracted syphilis just months before his death—a suicide by the way-- which physically deteriorated the rational sector of his brain.” Blah, blah, blah…Lord, but that man could go on.
Most of us knew better. Dr. Markensen was a sad little man with heavy eyeglasses, an unkempt gray beard, and an ill-matched brown toupee and was notorious for baiting his students with outlandish suppositions just to pose a counter-argument and set the stage for he always hoped would be a lively class discussion.
Some idiots totally fall into his little trap:
“Are you saying that what he did wasn’t his fault?!”
“How can you justify his actions based upon the fact that he was a preemie?!”
“Next, you’re going to say a head cold he had conjured up the notion of Nazi Political Party!”
Other students rolled their eyes in silent objection, refusing to lower their intellectual standards to take part in such a ridiculous debate. The rest sat watching the clock. Then, there was me.
Dr. Markensen attempted to goad me into the classroom discussion, “Hedy?” Side note: don’t think I haven’t heard every inappropriate joke about my name. Trust me, I have. Plus, I’m not the kind of person whose shit list you want to be on.
“Yes, Dr. Markensen?”
“Honor student that you are, surely you have some thoughtful argument to be made, no?”
Now, if I contributed to the class discussion, I’d be compelled to do so honestly and accurately…so here goes nothing:
“Hitler was a stupid, spineless, whiney, weak-ass, pissant. Far too gutless to commit suicide…please. You know the guy was like 4’ 9” and sickly, right? He would have never passed a US Military physical exam. He’d have been given a 4F for sure. In fact, he was obsessed with being more of a physical man than he ever could be, and as he felt America was the physical powerhouse of the world, he created a symbol which embodied the antithesis of a weak American.”
The whole class stared at me as if I was about to reveal a Taliban vest beneath my clothes, so I went to the board to demonstrate.
“So, OK,” I walk to the front of the room and grab the dry marker from the desk caddy on Dr. Markensen’s desk. “In some pathetic desperate attempt to assert his manhood, he took the characters 4 and F,
(image)
and doubled it--to be twice as lame, I guess? --,
(image)
then he inverted them (for the obvious symbolic purposes)
(image)
and finally, he intersected them to create the ultimate symbol of evil,
(image)
the Swastika…you guys have seen this before, right?”
Nothing but stoned expressions looked back at me. Didn’t stop me though.
“Well, anyway, back to his so-called ‘suicide’...Adolph managed to piss off the entire Chinese Communist Party in ’45 by making some off-the-cuff comment about how China’s Dictator at the time, Chiang Kai-Shek, had a serious opium habit—which, of course, was not true, but you can’t un-ring a bell, right?--, and when you’re a political tyrant, you can’t have negative propaganda floating around out there about you. WTF, Adolf? I mean isn’t there supposed to be some kind of honor among evil political leaders? Know what I’m saying?” I glanced at Doc Markensen, but he gave me the same look of bewilderment or fear, so I cleared the front corner of his desk to sit and continue my history lesson. “So, Chiang put a hit out on him (Lord, but could I go on).
“The problem with putting someone from The Chinese Boxer Rebellion in charge of killing Hitler was that Chinese physical features don’t blend well into the German social fabric of the 1940s, so word of a pending international contract on the current Nazi Dictator made its rounds in the assassins’ underworld. Enter the Hinterschotts.” I posed two thumbs toward myself as a proud member thereof.
“On paper, the Hinterschotts were a 500-year-old German family-owned logistics company—you know, imports and exports—so they had interests in The Far East trade lanes, but they could never get their foot in the door. So they proposed a counteroffer that if Chiang could allow Hinterschott vessels access to their ports, then they would 'export' Hitler, free of charge.” I could sense I was losing the class, so I decided to interject some death and mayhem.
“Now, ‘exporting’ in the traditional sense of the word in the logistics industry means 'to transport from one area to another', so you might think The Hinterschott Logistics Company simply arranged to have ol’ Adolf moved from Germany to China, so The Boxers could do at will whatever they wanted with the guy. First of all, that might have been the case if The Hinterschott Logistics Company was solely a transportation business…but it wasn’t. And second of all, logistic companies move products, not people.
“Hinterschotts Logistics wasn’t just a transportation company: it was a family of assassins-for-hire shell organization, and the word ‘export’ did not mean to transport iron from Wankendorf to Shag Island, but rather to transport someone into the afterlife, case in point, Hitler.
“As soon as the ink dried on the contract--figuratively speaking, of course. You can’t leave a document like that just lying about--Lothar Hinterschott was quick to get the job done within the week. His younger brother, Chadrik, wanted the assignment but lost in an arm-wrestling match to Lothar and was given the less glorious contract to string up Mussolini later that week. Apparently, Mussolini welched on a bet to a Prussian Prince or some damn thing and became a marked target, so the Hitler Gig went to Lothar, 5th generation family assassin, who was known as a clandestine chameleon, specializing in disguises…and killing.” Now I had them. They were on the edge of their seats now…I so had them in the palm of my hand. Dr. Markensen…not so much.
“So, Lothar had become alarmed at how fast The Red Army was closing in on Hitler, so as a matter of integrity, he couldn’t let the Russians get to him first. After all, he had signed a contract, and his family’s reputation was on the line. His intelligence liaison…OK,” I conceded, “his wife, Eloisa,” which actually merited a chuckle from a few students, “…indicated Da Fuhrer retreated to his bunker nightly, which was the perfect opportunity into which Lothar could infiltrate The Reich Chancellery as Hitler's valet, Heinz Linge, and put cyanide in his nightly pussy drink of warm milk.” That last comment evoked a throat-clearing from Doc Markensen. Apparently, he didn’t approve of the word, “pussy”, but that did not deter me from my quest to teach the children well.
“However, on this particular night, Hitler decided to get married in a rush ceremony to his long-time mistress, Eva Braun. Apparently, Hitler, in a desperate last-ditch effort to make some good of his life as the Russians were closing in, decided to make an honest woman of Eva. Why he grew a conscience at this stage in his life, God only knows, but they became man and wife nonetheless…but I digress…where was I?
“Pussy drink,” some engaged young mind put me back on the right path.
“Oh, right, so Eva was in the wrong place at the wrong time, drank Adolph’s milk, and he had a huge hissy fit. Apparently, Hitler wasn't big on sharing. Anyway, best-laid plans didn’t pan out, but this was no means to bail for a pro like Lothar.
“As he stood in the shadows of the honeymooners' bunker and watched Adolf yell at Eva for drinking his milk, Lothar called an audible. As Eva turned away from Hitler sobbing from his petty selfishness—no doubt questioning her choice in men--, Lothar, in that very instance, slid up behind his back, forced Hitler’s hand to draw his own pistol from his holster, guided it towards The Fuhrer’s mouth, squeezed the finger which triggered it, and withdrew himself back into the shadows, all in a matter of 4 seconds, completely undetected. In shock of the gunshot, Eva spun around only to find her groom with a bullet through his head and a smoking gun in his hand. But before she could fully process what had just happened, she began to gag and convulse from the poisoned milk, and she died right beside her newly betrothed. Poor Eva…she was not supposed to be in Berlin, let alone in the bunker, and became the fallout of a political assassination dressed up as a double suicide. But those are the risks you run when you marry a genocidal megalomaniac.
“With the job complete, Lothar made his way back home to Rostock and made a full report to Eloisa. Case closed. Chiang didn’t offer a bonus for the job on Eva but was satisfied with the outcome, nonetheless.”
The class stares at me agape as I make my way back to my seat, and I am quite pleased with myself for revealing the true events behind Hitler's death. A single clap, followed by a few more, some whistles of approval, and then just full-on applause fills the room from everyone. Everyone but Dr. Markensen, but I don’t care much. I sit there relishing in the moment of truth…
But if truth be told, I, of course, don’t say any of that. Not because it sounds nothing remotely like what’s in the history books, and they would lock me up. Not because I’m a total conspiratorial buff, which I am not. But rather because it’s part of my family’s history and our business, Hinterschott Logistics, and I, Hedy Hinterschott, am the 9th generation of that proud establishment.
Chapter 2
“Hedy…Hedy…snap out of it…Hedy!” a forceful whisper from the desk behind me pulled me out of my dreamscape, but it was the pencil poke—the harsh and toxic, pointy and leaded end, not the kind and gentle, soft and pink eraser end—between my shoulder blades that shocked me back into the here and now.
“Yes, Dr. Markensen,” I snapped to attention, “Agreed…uh, Hitler was a victim of circumstance, and his case of poor parenting, improper diet, chemical imbalance, lack of emotional support, and absentee father figure would most likely hold up in a court of law in today’s bankrupt and convoluted legal system. I dare say, if given proper legal counsel—provided pro bono, of course, from every major defense lawyer in our capitalistic society due to the legendary publicity this noteworthy case would bring toward future cases from, no doubt, even more sinister yet high-paying criminals and non-humanitarians—, he would die of old age in a very comfortable psychiatric facility in the Hamptons--perhaps, Upstate New York--before he ever saw a lethal injection.”
This sarcastic rant shut Dr. Markensen down. Again. The guy keeps trying to catch me off guard. Must be torture for a high school teacher with a doctorate in Global Studies to be constantly undermined by a 17-year-old girl. I don’t know which is more pathetic: his lame-ass toupee or his lame-ass attempts to demean my intellect. Poor guy. But he sets himself up for failure e-ver-y-sin-g-le-time. I give him a very self-satisfying look of Give it up, already, Doc. As he collapses in his chair, his fake hair flops up, then down off-centered. And with a dead stare, he dejectedly mutters, “Class dismissed.”
We’re all a bit stunned as there are another 30 minutes of class left but leave quietly,
