The Queen Susan In Tashbaan
Chapter 11: Means and Ends
Part 3: Ends
"The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end."
Leon Trotsky
"Can you rule these creatures kindly and fairly, remembering that they are not slaves like the dumb beasts of the world you were born in but Talking Beasts and free subjects? … And you wouldn't have favorites either among your own children or among the other creatures or let any hold another under or use it hardly?" Aslan to the Cabby and Nellie, The Magician's Nephew, Chapter XI.
"And all these came in at the Door, on Aslan's right. There were some queer specimens among them. … But [Eustace] had no time wonder about that sort of thing (and anyway it was no business of his)…" Chapter XIV, The Last Battle,
"Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me." Chapter XV, The Last Battle, Aslan to Emeth a Calormene
Stomp Stomp Stomp "Bloody Hell!"
Stomp Stomp Stomp "God damned Americans!"
Stomp Stomp Stomp "Bloody, God damned Americans!"
Even through the locked door, they could all hear the Colonel's swearing, stomping, and swearing again.
Captain Lowrey and Guy were sitting in chairs reading the magazines. Tebbitt was sacked out on the couch, snoring, and his hat over his eyes. The past week or so with the Congresswoman had been very draining for the Wing Commander. Susan had been hearing far too much of the details, with Tebbitt vacillating wildly between extremes – on the one hand, giddy with the attention, gifts, dining, glamor, and events, and on the other hand, exhausted by the demanding woman's very aggressive appetites. Initially, Tebbitt has proudly boasted of his prowess – a tedious business for Susan, surely. Now, he was just fagged. In fairness, she could not say she preferred the sullen, silent fatigue.
In the late afternoon, it was too warm; the fans were going as hard as they dared. Too much breeze and paper would fly everywhere, a snowstorm in Washington in the first week in July.
Gladys was staring at the phone, willing it to ring. Susan found she had been gazing stupidly at the two week's worth of The New York Times and The London Daily Telegraph and could make no organizational sense of the articles at all.
Gladys snatched the phone before the first ring finished. "Hello!" she squeaked. "I mean, Colonel Walker-Smythe's office, may I help you?"
Colonel Walker-Smythe stuck his head out the door.
Gladys nodded and frantically motioned him back into his office. "Of course, let me put you through." Covering the phone with her hand, she hissed, "It's Secretary Stinson's office! The War Department!"
The Colonel slammed his door but they could hear the scrambling as he bolted back to his desk.
It had been quiet before and now the silence was tense and anxious. The only sounds were the hums of the fans and Tebbitt snoring; Susan could not hear the Colonel's words, only that they were being spoken.
"He's hung up," Gladys whispered, watching the blinking red light on her own phone go out.
There was a distinctive pop from the Colonel's office. Lowrey shot out the chair, very much like the cork out of bottle the Colonel had just popped off, and threw open the Colonel's door.
Gladys had glasses ready, of course, and passed them around. The Colonel poured, grinning ear to ear, his cigar clamped in one side of his mouth. Tucking the bottle under his arm, and moving the cigar to his fingers, he raised his glass. "Ladies and gentlemen, a toast, to our Allies, the Americans, and their 300 top-of-the-line Sherman tanks, ordered and now being manufactured in five factories!"
"Five!" Susan exclaimed as Guy whistled. America was simply enormous.
"How long for delivery?" Lowrey injected, trying to shake the Colonel's hand, but bottle, cigar and glasses all seemed to make it impossible.
"Dreadful long time," the Colonel said.
Before they could become downcast, he said, "A month, at most. There will be a convoy leaving New York by the end of July. The War Secretary estimates over 40 million tons of war materiel, tanks, howitzers, tank destroyers, and ammunition, all headed for Port Taufiq at the Suez."
"Chancy crossing, that," Lowrey murmured, taking another long drink.
The Colonel nodded. "One thing at a time, but yes. And even once they make it to Capetown, it's still a long way to the Suez. God willing, it will be there by the end of August."
With a tilt of her head, Susan indicated Tebbitt, sleeping through their racket, and held out an empty glass. The Colonel poured and she took the glass over to the prone pilot.
Crouching next to him, Susan tugged his sleeve gently. "Tebbitt!"
His eyes flew open; a soldier's reflex. He started and blinked. "Hullo, Mrs. Caspian. You're a damned sight better looking than what I've been waking to lately."
"Flattery will not get you anywhere, Cuz." She handed him the glass. As Tebbitt pulled himself up, she joined him on the couch.
"Who says it was flattery?" He stared at the glass of bubbly in his hand. "What is this? Surely you intended it for someone else!"
Lowrey gave the couch a kick with his boot. "Wake up you lug! Have a drink! Cheers!" He loudly clinked glasses with Tebbitt, drank his remaining champagne down in a gulp, and handed the glass to the pilot. "Hold that for me, would you?"
The Captain then spun around, grabbed Gladys about the waist and planted a very sound, very thorough, very loud kiss on her lips. Gladys threw her arms around his neck (fortunately her glass was already empty) and Lowrey swung her around.
"So either they are engaged…" Tebbitt said, saluting them with his raised glass, "or the Colonel heard from the War Secretary."
Colonel Walker-Smyth darted around the exuberant couple and clapped Tebbitt on the shoulder. "Well done, Wing Commander.
"If there's any more, I'll take it, Sir, and the bottle it came in." Tebbitt quickly downed his drink, held out his glass and shook the Colonel's hand. "If you would care to distract Mrs. Caspian, I might even manage more than two drinks before glass and bottle mysteriously disappear down a Rabbit hole."
Colonel Walker-Smythe laughed, rare for him, and poured the rest of the bottle into Tebbitt's glass, nearly topping it.
The phone rang. Gladys untangled herself from Lowrey and reached for the phone. "Colonel Walker-Smythe's office."
The secretary frowned.
"Just a moment, Congresswoman. Let me see if the Wing Commander is available." She looked up inquiringly, clamping her hand over the receiver.
Tebbitt groaned, dramatically but with real feeling, and sagged against Susan's side. "Not again! Doesn't she ever sleep?"
Susan wanted to laugh, but she did not have the heart to do so. He was muttering No No No into her shoulder, and it was becoming pathetic. Town clown though he was, she did not enjoy seeing her charge so reduced.
The Colonel took in the tableau with a shake of his head, his more customary exasperated look and frown returning. Moving quickly, he crossed over to Gladys in two long strides and took the phone.
"Congresswoman! Walker-Smythe, here." Pause. "Yes, we just got the word ourselves from Secretary Stinson. We are very grateful for your support. Wing Commander Tebbitt will come round to convey our thanks for your assistance." Pause.
Tebbitt stirred against her and wearily straightened, pulling himself together for the next command performance.
"Thank you, Congresswoman, we think so, as well. Unfortunately, it will have to be tomorrow, as I have the Wing Commander on an assignment today. Thank you again. I will give him your message."
Tebbitt looked gobsmacked, gape-mouthed and staring. Susan tipped his drink closer. "Drink up. You are getting a night off." She shot a grateful look at the Colonel for finding a way to accommodate her request.
"Go home!" the Colonel growled, hanging up the phone. "If you so much as set a toe outside your flat, I'll cut it off and send it and you…"
Tebbitt waved his acknowledgment, not quite so weary, but still gray with fatigue. "I know, I know. I'll be off to the latrines and bedding sheep in Scotland until the War ends."
"Get him out of here, Mr. Hill. You'll need to stay there, to make sure he stays there."
Susan gave Tebbitt a forceful push and wrapped her fingers at his elbow, helping him up. "On your feet, pilot. We are taking you home."
"I finally lure you to my lair, Mrs. Caspian, and I'm too exhausted to enjoy it."
She laughed. "You had better savor that glass, Wing Commander. Or it will be the last you have until you ship out to the Orkneys."
"At least they have Scotch!"
To: All Narnian Residence Personnel
From: Maintenance
Felines, Birds, and Mustelids are warned that they may not eat the fish in the new Ponds!
To: All Narnian Residence Personnel
From: Housekeeping
Will the Crows who stole the silver off the tables from the Residence Dinner please return the items to Housekeeping? The Amnesty will continue for another three days.
To: All Narnian Residence Personnel
From: Personnel
With the High King's departure, dress uniforms are no longer required, particularly with the heat of summer upon us. However, all staff are asked to conform their grooming and uniform to that which is appropriate to a tropical posting. See Narnia Personnel Handbook Section 505(b)(2)(xi)(D) for more information.
To: All Narnian Residence Personnel
From: The Physician
Northern clime Beasts are asked to be especially cautious during these summer months. The local watering holes are available for your use. Anyone suffering apparent heatstroke will be escorted to the Physician for a thorough examination.
To: All Narnian Residence Personnel
From: The Right Honourable Sir Flobber, The Viscount Of Northern Pond, KG OM GCSI GCMG GCIE PC
Sir Flobber's Pond may not be used by off duty personnel.
To: All Narnian Residence Personnel
From: The Right Honourable Sir Flobber, The Viscount Of Northern Pond, KG OM GCSI GCMG GCIE PC
Correction, Sir Flobber's Pond may not be used by off duty or on duty personnel.
To: All Narnian Residence Personnel
From: The Right Honourable Sir Flobber, The Viscount Of Northern Pond, KG OM GCSI GCMG GCIE PC
Correction, Sir Flobber's Pond may not be used by anyone except Sir Flobber.
To: All Narnian Residence Personnel
From: The Right Honourable Sir Flobber, The Viscount Of Northern Pond, KG OM GCSI GCMG GCIE PC
And Sir Flobber's personal guests.
Susan bundled up the memos and sent them directly to the dust bin. Fraxi was humming tunelessly to herself and lightly pruning her rose bush.
"I think you are still greening up a bit, Fraxi," Susan said, now sorting the messages for the morning.
"Cor was able to escape Lasaraleen early so we had a lovely evening!" The Dryad sighed happily. "What about you?"
"I went with Peridan to a dinner at Tarkaan Kidrash's home. I made sure he stayed sober until the Tarkheena made her late and dramatic appearance, and then went with Bardon to visit with his family and other Native Narnians."
There was a flapping of wings and Sallowpad landed awkwardly on her desk. "Kidrash? What news there?"
"More complaining about continuing the Lone Islands campaign when the real risk is Ettinsmoor. Tarkaan Anradin was hoping I would confirm the Tisroc's agreement with Galma to commit Calormene soldiery to an assault on the Northern Marshes that would take the pressure off the Galmans."
"Fools!" snapped Sallowpad.
Having committed fully to aiding Narnia, the Calormenes now felt it their right to dictate the course of a campaign the Narnians knew far better and had been waging far longer. The acrimonious debate centered on whether to follow the advice of the High King or that of Galma. Narnia emphasized first retaking the Lone Islands, securing the Bight of Calormen, and starving the Ettins by cutting off their access to the Islands' port and its ready supply of sheep. Galma and an increasing vocal, vicious group of Calormenes, urged what they perceived as the quicker resolution – sending a force across the River Shribble and reclaiming the Northern Marshes in preparation for a march on Harfang. Whether the Tisroc would listen to the wise experience of the High King or the hysterics of the Calormene isolationists and the radical Galman supporters was anyone's guess.
Dated from the first days of July, this was the last letter in the June series Edmund had insisted he finish first. As Peter read of the controversy concerning whether to secure the Lone Islands and the Bight of Calormen and the opposing pressure by the Galmans and Calormenes to march on the Northern Marshes, Peter knew immediately of what Susan was writing. She was describing debate that had stretched all summer in the newspapers regarding where to open the second front of the War – whether the Allies should go the "direct" route and invade France, or retake North Africa, secure the Mediterranean and then move through the "soft underbelly" of Nazi-controlled Southern Europe. It was chilling to read of this controversy raging in June and July and know now what Susan and the Allies did not know then – that the catastrophic raid on Dieppe would definitively show the sheer folly of attempting to open a second front in Europe.
The high strung Falcon, Liluye, dove through the window.
"Oh! Oh!" she cried, flapping about. "I have urgent news from Narnia!"
"Really!" Sallowpad barked. "And here I thought it might be dull, ordinary news that was worth sending all this distance!"
Susan raised her arm so the nervous Falcon could land.
In Liluye's own opinion, she never carried anything less than absolutely dire news – she was usually correct, but it was a tiresome business dealing with her self-important hysteria. Susan frequently wanted to just clamp her fingers around the Falcon's beak to silence her complaints.
She quickly removed the note from Liluye's leg, and walked the Bird back to the window. "Our thanks, Liluye," she managed through gritted teeth. "Get some rest and if we need anything for a return, we shall summon you."
Sallowpad was trying to open the message, but his claws and beak were ill-suited to it. Susan deftly unrolled the note so Chief could see it.
It was brief, and not in a format Susan had seen before, and she had seen a great many messages thus far in the office.
Prison opened in Witch's Castle at year end. Ettins are using it to imprison and cook Native Narnians.
Susan stared at the cryptic message, not understanding it. "Chief?" she asked, picking up the cue from the Raven who had gone somberly silent. He glanced toward Fraxi, but the Dryad was busy working on the thank yous from the Residence Dinner. Sallowpad shook his head in an emphatic No.
He wanted her silence? Susan put a finger to her lips and Sallowpad nodded. Bending, he pecked at the note, at the words Native and Narnian, and then looked over at the locked strong box in the corner of the office.
Susan nodded her understanding in return. He wanted something on Native Narnians that was in the strong box and was so perturbed he wished for her to say nothing of it even to Fraxi.
Sallowpad scooped up the message into his beak and flew into his office. Susan plucked the keys from the tray on Fraxi's desk and went over to the strong box.
"Don't forget to put the splints back in!" Fraxi called.
The tiny splints were one of the unobtrusive security measures they used in the office. If someone opened the strong box, the splints in the hinges would fall out, and likely go unnoticed by the would-be thief. It would not prevent a theft or spying, but it might alert the office if a breach had been attempted. Susan opened the strong box, and rifled through it quickly. She had filed things here before: the Ettin Cookbook; the Darkwool prophecies; the very distasteful information on the Calormene General they had obtained from Tarkaan Anradin; the order and delivery of the Gryphons and War Horses; and the recent strategic discussions among Galma, the Tisroc and High King regarding a planned raid on the Northern Marshes. The very last file was one she had not seen before, a very thin, plain folder marked "Ettins/Native Narnians." She removed the file, closed the strong box, and replaced the splints, returning the keys to the tray.
Something nudged her memory. About Native Narnians. Although the Chief was waiting for the file, Susan made herself stop and think. There had been some other reference recently to Native Narnians in the crier sheets. She was sure of it. It had been within the last week, even. With the excitement and near frantic activity of the Gryphons, War Horses, the High King's visit, the Cookbook, and the Residence Dinner, they had all fallen a bit behind on the news.
Sorting quickly through the crier sheets, she found the entry in The Trumpeter, near the very end. She remembered now why it had caught her eye. The story had been so outlandishly lurid, she had gone right by it, assuming that the Narnians had planted it in the Calormene news, or that it was merely another garbled account of the Ettin Cookbook.
Susan collected the crier sheet and the file and took both to Sallowpad's office. The Raven was studying the map of Narnia on his wall. The land around the Witch's castle had been among the first to fall to the Ettins, believing, as they did, that as Jadis had been part Giantess, this territory was part of their ancestral home.
"Please close the door, Mrs. Caspian," Colonel Walker-Smythe said.
Susan shut the door with her hip, and moved toward his desk, trying to understand the reason for his very grim mood. "Sir? I have the file." She handed it to him, along with the newspapers.
"What's this?"
"Something else that I remembered reading in our clippings in the last week. It was first in the London Daily Telegraph, but The New York Times picked it up as well."
She pointed to the cryptic article, buried deep in the paper. "It's about Poland, Sir. It was so outrageous, I thought it was propaganda we had planted. But, given what was in that cable, I thought you would want to see it."
He studied the clippings, the incredible headlines, the few words that followed. Slowly, Colonel Walker-Smythe shook his head. "The problem with disseminating manufactured propaganda is that people tend disbelieve the real thing when it appears."
Susan stared at him, truly shocked. The outrageous story had seemed too preposterous to even be credible. "We didn't plant it, Sir?"
"No." Frowning, he looked again at the map of Europe. "Chelmno," he said, repeating what was in the top secret cable that had just arrived. "It's in Poland, near Łódź."
Abruptly, Colonel Walker-Smythe crumpled the cable and set it in the tin on his desk. He lit a match and set the scrap of paper afire.
"Sir?"
"You should have never seen this cable, Mrs. Caspian. No communications intelligence in all of the Allied forces is more secret than how we came by this message. The very fact of its existence, regardless of its content, is a matter of the utmost security."
She watched the scrap with the ambiguous message burn hot orange to gray ash. It had been an overheard Nazi radio communication, collected in December but only now translated and deciphered. Collected somewhere, somehow, by someone. Even the cable's dissemination had been very selective and highly secretive.
Colonel Walker-Smythe picked up the newspaper and scanned it again, frowning. "It has taken us seven months to understand the same information that is now running in the Daily Telegraph."
The moment of clarity that followed was so horrible and painful, Susan would remember it the rest of her life. Her breath caught in her throat and her heart hammered wildly as she finally connected the disparate pieces of information. Bile rose with the horror and she was suddenly and furiously blinking back tears. In a very small voice, Susan managed, "You think the news story is confirming what is in the cable?"
The Colonel's bleak expression answered. "The cable tells us where and what; the news story..."
Here, even the soldier and spymaster had to pause to gather himself; he passed a shaky hand over his eyes.
"The news story tells us who and how many." The Colonel looked back at the map of Nazi-controlled Europe. "And if there is one in Chelmno, the Nazis certainly have others."
Oh Aslan, no! Not here! Not again!
"Peter? Are you finished with the June letters?"
He was not sure how long he had been sitting on the bed staring at the page in his hand. There was something here. He had seen it in the last parts of Susan's letter, hastily appended, written in a very uncharacteristic scrawl.
I have also been reading a number of back newspapers for information about home. The London Daily Telegraph is especially helpful as it has many entertaining articles and keeps me from becoming too homesick and completely kavossed about it! Though, reading the papers can be quite sad of course, as they can sometimes remind us of the sorts of things that the Witch, the real Miraz, or the evil Ettins might have really "cooked up" for the Native Narnians if this were anything more than a silly children's story!
To his brother's everlasting despair, Peter had never bothered with the "Rat and Crow" cipher of the Narnian Intelligence Service that Susan and Edmund had devised. "Kavossed" though was one part of the cipher he did remember.
A large number killed.
Ed had indeed circled the word with arrows back to the London Daily Telegraph. There were question marks next to Ettins and Witch. Real Miraz was underlined.
Peter absently fingered the blotches under Susan's words. He thought they were his sister's tears, spilled almost two month earlier, long since dried.
Kavossed. A large number killed. What was so remarkable about this above and beyond the thousands dead in North Africa or Dieppe, or Asia?
Something buried in The London Daily Telegraph?
An Ettin plan to cook the native Narnians? What the Witch had done? Something that Miraz, not the Empire of Japan, but the real Miraz, had done?
Peter looked up at his brother, who was clutching thumbed, greasy newspaper scraps. "I assume that is every back issue of The London Daily Telegraph you were able to locate in Cambridge?"
Edmund nodded. "Some others as well. First things first, I suppose."
Pushing the letters to the side, Edmund sat next to him on the bed and handed him a Times covering Tobruk and Churchill's visit to America. "This is about a speech President Roosevelt gave."
Peter began reading it:
"I have in my possession a secret map, made in Germany by Hitler's government-by the planners of the new world order. It is a map of South America and a part of Central America as Hitler proposes to reorganize it..."
He stared at his brother in amazement. "I remember this speech! I heard it on the wireless. I saw it on a newsreel!"
"Keep reading, Peter, down toward the bottom."
"I have another document made in Germany by Hitler's government. It is a detailed plan to abolish all existing religions -- Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish alike."
"The clergy are to be ever liquidated. In the place of the churches of our civilization there is to be set up an international Nazi church, a church which will be served by orators sent out by the Nazi government. And in the place of the Bible, the words of Mein Kampf will be imposed and enforced as Holy Writ. And in the place of the cross of Christ will be put two symbols: the swastika and the naked sword."
Peter stared at his brother, sickened. "You think this is what Susan was writing of? These documents are the Ettin cookbook?"
Edmund nodded. "There is a lot of hysteria in the newspapers afterward, and some allegations that the map is a fake. Roosevelt wouldn't produce it, but it was leaked in one of the Washington scandal sheets."
"Her deal with the Tarkaan."
Edmund nodded.
So the map, the document about religious persecution, the documents the President of the United States had spoken of in a speech to the whole world, they were frauds. And Susan had helped create them and disseminate them.
"This is the reporting in The Times a few days later." He handed him the paper, but Peter could not bring himself to look at more than the headline celebrating the American aid to the British. Lies. It was all lies.
His brother recited from the paper for him. "There is reporting on a massive award to England. Millions of United States dollars are allocated for armaments and war materiel." Edmund swallowed. "You are not making this easy, you know."
"And the Tarkheena?" Peter bit out, thinking of the pandering that his sister had encouraged. "The one Peridan bedded? Any evidence of that?"
"There are several paragraphs devoted to the remarkable turnabout of a Republican Congresswoman from the State of Connecticut on the Armed Forces Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. She was expected to oppose the aid, and instead spoke unexpectedly…"
"In support of the British," Peter concluded bitterly.
"If you look at the date on Susan's letter, on July 1, she writes that the order went in for the Gryphons and War Horses. There's more about them later, but…"
"It worked, you are saying."
"Yes, Peter, it worked. They…" Edmund hesitated, shook his head and corrected himself. "It is not they, not someone else who did these things. We did them. We lied, we planted fake documents, we seduced an American Congresswoman, and it worked. From Susan's letters, we can assume there are now a couple hundred tanks and planes headed to North Africa for Field Marshall Montgomery."
"But it's all fabricated, Edmund. How…" Peter stopped, seeing his brother's grim, bleak expression.
Kavossed. The native Narnians.
"You don't think it's all lies, do you?"
"No," Edmund replied quietly. "You saw the difference in letter? Something that happened after they got the order for the Gryphons and War Horses?"
"Yes. What does she mean? There's something about kavossing. And the Ettins cooking Native Narnians? Just like the Witch and the real Miraz?"
Edmund handed him the newspaper clippings.
A May 18 article from an inside page of The New York Times: 100,000 Jews machine-gunned by Nazis in the Baltic countries; 100,000 in Poland, and 200,000 in western Russia.
A clipping from June 25, The London Daily Telegraph: The Nazis have exterminated 700,000 Jews in Poland.
A clipping from June 30, The London Daily Telegraph: "More than 1,000,000 Jews killed in Europe."
"Surely these are fakes," Peter said, hating himself for even thinking such a thing, yet also disturbed that he had not noticed these scattered articles before. "The document about Hitler eliminating religions. You think that one was a fake."
"I don't know; it may have been." Edmund hesitated then pushed out, "Or, it may have been a fake with a foundation in truth."
Edmund reached over and took the discarded June letter, the one blotted with Susan's tears. "Queen Susan asks Sallowpad about Ettins murdering the Native Narnians. She has seen the report buried in a crier sheet and she, at first, dismissed it as propaganda. 'Did we not plant these stories, Chief?' And he tells her that they did not. He also tells her about a note in his file of a winter meeting between the Ettin King and Miraz. I don't know what that means, but I think she is saying that Sallowpad believes it was significant to a Nazi plan to kill Jews."
"Ed, it's impossible! A million dead?" Peter could not wrap his mind around the horror of it. "The scale alone. This is unprecedented. How could such a thing be done?"
"That's what I think the significance is of this new report Sallowpad received from the Falcon about the Witch's castle being turned into a prison camp."
"For POWs, surely."
"No, it's not. Susan writes that it is for Native Narnians, civilians. I think this intelligence report is confirming the news reports smuggled out of occupied Poland that the Nazis have a facility in some overrun part of Europe for killing Jewish civilians."
Peter felt his resistance crumbling in the face of mounting horror. "Edmund, this just can't be possible. The world would rise up in outrage."
Edmund stared at him, and Peter saw in his brother's face the same rising nausea of uncertainty he felt.
"I'm not sure the world would, Peter."
He stared again at the tattered clippings. He had not read the Daily Telegraph that frequently and had missed these entries entirely.
"Look at Roosevelt's speech – Jews are inserted after every other faith, after Hindus and Buddhists, not a significant European population to be sure." Peter heard Edmund's most Just rage, bottled up for almost two months, now unfurling.
"You see the same thing in the newspapers. The New York Times ran stories in July about Nazi religious persecution, but even there it only discusses Jews as if they were afterthought." Edmund was spitting out the words and it was his brother's fury that was more damning than anything else. "Murdered Jews by the hundreds of thousands do not seem important enough to warrant more than a passing mention."
Edmund stared steadily at him, eyes reddening. Peter felt his heart and mind wrench and rebel as the awful depravity of it crept over them. Hitler's vitriol was filled with hatred against Jews. Kristallnacht, the work camps, the transportation camps, the ghettos, the oppression of Jewish Germans, these things had been known, condemned, certainly. Even there though, Peter found the memory uncomfortable. Had the condemnation been loud enough? Strong enough? Frequent enough? Even after Kristallnacht, England had only allowed Jewish children into the country; there had been little support for Jewish adults and a half hearted effort to settle Jews in British Guiana. There was no denying that an undercurrent of anti-Semitism ran deep, even in England.
"Are there other stories about this besides these?" Peter asked.
"Not much. There are some dodgy things in August, suppressed, possibly, and a report from a press conference in New York. Susan writes of those later."
For all that Nazi brutality was well-known, the tale Susan wove was on an altogether more ghastly and inconceivable scale. A prison? Solely for… murder? Of civilians, non-combatants? By the tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? Simply because they were Jews? It smacked of the same propaganda the British had themselves planted.
It would be comical, if it were not so ghastly.
And, Peter realized, it had to be true, for Susan of Narnia was bearing witness to it. Confidence in his sister and her clear judgment allowed, no, compelled, Peter to see the awful truth, to believe her more than newspapers, politicians, Rats, and Crows. If Susan believed it, he too, must believe it, as Edmund did.
It was beyond comprehension. Inhuman. Wrong by any law or standard. Utterly indefensible. The Witch had not been human. But Miraz and the Telmarines before him had been men. Jadis and the men of Telmar had been driven to kill, to wipe out a population, without regard to morality, sanctity, worth, right, or being. Twice before, Narnia's Kings and Queens had marked how populations had been brutally targeted for murder simply because they were different.
Queen Susan would not have been blinded by centuries of intolerance and distrust that encouraged her to look the other way with indifference. She carried, they all carried, from Aslan himself, the charge of compassion even to those who thought differently, looked differently, or lived differently. Narnians knew, in small ways and profound ones, those things that bound them one to the other transcended differences of appearance and culture.
"Susan of Narnia would not have let this pass unremarked upon," the High King finally was able to say.
"And, the Gentle Queen would have seen the parallels immediately," the Just King said, "because we have seen it before."
Susan stumbled out of the Colonel's office, every bit of self-control she possessed working to keep her from breaking down right there. She would let the Colonel make her explanation, if any, to Gladys.
Again. The Witch. Miraz. It was happening again. She was seeing it again. All the cautions and warnings the Colonel had delivered rang hollow and meaningless. Again. Murder, again. Over and over, a hundred thousand fold.
Her rage, shock, and horror were almost beyond tears. Almost. Her heart ached for her brothers and sister, for Aslan. There would be no solace, only the certainty that they would not be blinded, or coolly and clinically indifferent.
That's not fair.
The Colonel was horrified as well. Not shocked, perhaps, but not disbelieving either. He had been looking for it, dutifully searching for the evidence, filing it away for the day when someone else might actually care that a million people, likely more, had already been murdered in pursuit of hate. Sinking to a bench overlooking the newly installed ponds, she choked back her sobs, her grief for the dead overflowing and overwhelming. Seeing without comprehending, she blankly watched the construction workers and gardeners toil about in the oppressive, sticky heat.
Warm fur brushing her leg made her look down. She stared into the gentle, upturned face of a huge, orange house cat.
"Aslan," she breathed. He had come to her even when her pleas had been incoherent with grief. The cat jumped into her lap and she buried her face in his soft, spicy fur. "Thank you," she murmured, over and over. "Thank you for hearing me. I know you always hear me, but thank you for coming." The cat's purring rumbled so loudly, she felt it in her bones, deep to her shattered spirit. Susan gratefully took the comfort he offered.
The cat rubbed against her, under her hands and arm, and then pricked her lightly with a claw.
"I know," Susan said with heaving sigh and a touch of annoyance. "You are telling me to get on with it. I am trying to be strong. Please be patient with me."
The cat jumped down again, circling her bench, purring his approval, and peering and blinking back along the path Susan taken from the Annex. With one last look over his shoulder, the cat slipped into a thicket of vibrantly blooming hydrangeas. Susan did not try to follow him.
The acrid smell of cigarette smoke drew her attention back to the path and the Shoemaker appeared. Susan realized she did not know his real name.
He pulled up suddenly, undoubtedly noticing her crying.
"Mrs. Caspian," he said with a nod. "Sorry. I'll just be going."
He started to retreat in the direction he had come.
"Wait!" she called, her throat still raw. "I'm sorry, but I don't know your name."
Slowly, he turned back around and deliberately inhaled deeply on his cigarette. "Halpern."
"May I ask you something, Mr. Halpern?"
He shrugged and flicked some ash on to the path.
"When Tebbitt and I met with you about the map, you mentioned the Nazis had targeted your kind too. What did you mean?"
He snorted, as if she was naïve. "Sodomites don't propagate the Aryan race, you know."
"I had thought that was what you meant," Susan responded. Still shaking but no longer weeping, Susan tried blotting her tears on her handkerchief. I must be quite the sight.
From his pocket, Mr. Halpern withdrew a pack of cigarettes. "Want a light?"
She shook her head, "No thank you. Would you like to sit down for a moment?"
This snort was more disdainful still. "You sit with a criminal like me? I don't think so, Mrs. Caspian."
He took another angry puff on his cigarette and Susan thought of Trumpkin and the Native Narnians branded as criminals by the Telmarines.
"You need not be rude with me, Mr. Halpern. A simple no thank you would have sufficed." Again she was reminded of what Trumpkin had said, how treating someone as a dumb beast long enough would reduce that person to a dumb beast.
Peering at her through sharp, shrewd eyes, he blew smoke from his nose. "You are a very strange woman, Mrs. Caspian."
"I suppose so," Susan had to admit. "But this is a strange place and I think it attracts us. The Colonel said you were an artist?" she asked.
He nodded and the angry lines hardened in his face. "In Berlin, between the wars."
Susan wondered if Mr. Halpern was Jewish besides; his King's English was flawlessly brittle.
"It's strange to think that Berlin was ever something other than what it is today," she mused aloud, remembering what the Colonel said had likely been plotted there in January.
"You're too young," he said bluntly. "Berlin was an amazing place. Germany, too. There was nothing else like that city and its people in the whole world. Now all anyone knows are the damned Nazis." He trailed off, sullen and resentful.
Who else did the Nazis hate, Susan wondered. The people like Mr. Halpern? Poles? Russians? Romany? Catholics? Those who were blind or crippled? Who else would die? How many more millions?
There were the sounds of firm, quick steps. "Mrs. Caspian?"
"Over here, Colonel!" she called.
Colonel Walker-Smythe came around the path's corner, his face flushed even more florid in the heat and the cigar in his pocket rather than clamped between his teeth. He acknowledged the Shoemaker with a nod. "Mr. Halpern, would you mind leaving us?"
"Fine," the Shoemaker muttered, and slouched away.
The Colonel said nothing until Mr. Halpern was well away. Susan scooted over and he sat silently next to her, staring in the same unseeing way at the gardeners weeding the flower beds.
"Any better?" the Colonel finally asked. Susan accepted the consoling pat between her shoulders he gave her.
"No," she replied, honestly. "More composed, but not better. Helpless, angry, and wanting to do something about this."
"You cannot do anything, Mrs. Caspian." He spoke so emphatically she flinched. "You do understand that, don't you? We must not reveal that we even know of that cable and what was in it."
"Because then the Axis forces might know we knew?" Susan dropped her voice even lower than the whisper in which he spoke.
The Colonel nodded. "And thereby jeopardize our ability to know anything. It is the peril of what we do, Mrs. Caspian. Sometimes, it truly tests us."
"Have you ever been tested like this before, Sir?"
The admission was a very long time coming. "No," he finally said, rubbing his palms on his trousers.
For all the power and trickery and guile and skill, they were only a tiny office in the Annex of the British Embassy, in the middle of a war raging across the world. She glanced over toward the bush and thought she saw the warm golden eyes staring back at her. As you will, Aslan.
"I suppose there is one thing we can do, Sir," Susan said, folding up her handkerchief and putting it back in her pocket.
"We can win the war," he agreed in reply.
Colonel Walker-Smythe proffered a hand, not the courtesy of gentlemen to lady, but such as that offered to a colleague and soldier.
"Thank you, Sir," she said, for more than the offered hand.
Susan rose, took a deep breath and let the competent, clear-eyed, mature mask of Mrs. Caspian settle on her again. "Shall we get back to it then?"
Next? A little break. Then…
Chapter 12, Keep Your Friends Close, and Your Enemies Closer
Phew. Really long notes to follow, which almost warrant a chapter on their own.
Where precision and accuracy is especially warranted:
It is hard to imagine now, knowing what we do, that there was a time when the murder of a million people would pass with very little comment. You have to go back to a time before Federal Express, the Internet, fax machines, Twitter, satellites, and sophisticated electronic surveillance. I have tried to be scrupulously accurate about "what we knew and when" regarding the very slowly growing awareness of the plight of the Jews of Eastern Europe. The references to intelligence circulating in June 1942 that are repeated here come from a 2005 report by the U.S. National Security Agency, Eavesdropping on Hell, Historical Guide to Western Communications Intelligence and the Holocaust, 1939-1945. The citations to the public news reports come from the timelines and documents of the Jewish Virtual Library and that site's page "What We Knew and When We Knew It," and worldwar-2 dot net. Links to these sources are on my LJ.
I have spent a far bit of time reviewing the NSA Report as it discusses at length why the intelligence community and then politicians and military leaders were so very, very slow to comprehend what was occurring. It is both gentle (time lags in encryption, difficulty in understanding cryptic messages, the unprecedented, unreal enormity of the situation) and brutally harsh (general anti-Semitism in England and America, possible anti-Semitism by the codebreakers themselves). Some of those explanations are offered here. In chapter 7, Susan also reflected on the difficulties inherent in dealing with encryption.
From the NSA Report, I learned that the concentration camp in Chelmno, Poland, to which the Jews imprisoned in the Łódź ghetto were eventually sent and gassed, began operation in December 1941. However, the Enigma-coded message about Chelmno was not decrypted at Bletchley Park until June 1942. Later de-crypted messages would include only the initials or numbers for camps and numbers dead. Based upon a speech Churchill gave, the Nazis also suspected that they were being listened to and understood, and so made it more difficult to eavesdrop on their communications.
That being said, the view of contemporary scholarship is that the Allies should have understood the magnitude of the death camps far earlier than they did. The work camps, transportation camps and oppression were known -- the wholesale collection and murder of civilians was new information. How early the Allies should have appreciated the enormity of the death camps is open to debate and is not answered here. By all accounts, however, mid-1942 is very early in the process of the developing awareness of the death camps.
The winter meeting between the Ettin King and the Telmar Ruler refers to the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942 outside Berlin. Top Nazi leaders attended, including Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann, with discussion focusing upon implementing a "Final Solution" to the "problem" of European Jews. The total meeting time was less than 90 minutes. Death camp operations began in earnest thereafter.
The things I tweaked for the sake of timing but did not invent:
As mentioned, the BSC planted a fake map purporting to detail Nazi designs on the Americas in a Nazi safehouse in Cuba and President Roosevelt used the document in a speech – however, this event and the speech were in fact in 1941, not 1942. The religious document referred to in the same speech and quoted above may have been a fake planted as well – I did not try to confirm it. For these purposes, it does not matter.
Also, as stated, Tobruk fell on June 21, 1942. Nine days later, on June 30, the order was placed in America for hundreds of Sherman tanks and other war materiel that would eventually be shipped to New York and then sent on to the British Eighth Army in North Africa via the Suez Canal.
My thanks to Cap Red for her support and advice as I pieced together the What We Knew parts of this. Thanks also to Metonomia as sounding board. Thank you to all who continue to show support and encouragement for this peculiar story.
This one took a bit out of me. Look for Chapter 12, Keep Your Friends Close, and Your Enemies Closer in a few weeks.
