A Key to Treason

A Key to Treason

By

Marvern Wallace

Copyright © 1999 By Marvern Wallace

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,

without written permission from the author.

ISBN 0-7596-9105-3

ISBN 978-0-7596-9104-9 (ebook)

1stbooks-rev.01/28/00

A Key To Treason

Path to Destiny

Uprooted

Letters to Burn

Pitfalls

Detour

Thatch on Top

Royal Hazards

The Bird Lady

Linder

Almost Home

Death Watch

Guile

The Wedge

The Hidden Door

Cyanide

Addie

Welts

The New World

Aftermath of Disaster

The Ten Pieces

Ilsa

Andy

Sherwood Seymour

Gold Ingots

Treason X Three

Hawk and Thatch

Cover art by Dan Chapin, Fabrizio Graphics,

Palo Alto, CA

About the Book

A Key To Treason recounts the struggles of dedicated people in a small European country occupied by the Nazis. The young hero, Thad, holds a high rank which conspirators resent and maneuver to undermine.

Powerful elitists opposing him thwart his endeavors to unite factions and protect the nation’s treasury before the Nazi invasion. Thad resorts to desperate measures, aware he is bending the law. He has custody of the keys and a loyal staff who obey him without question.

The reader is invited to speculate ‘What would I have done? or What could anyone have done?"

Secrets of the underground are still coming to light today.

Dedicated

to

Amnesty International

Grateful Acknowledgment to

Inspiring People

To Barbara Noble, every writer’s dream of a supportive editor, confidant and guide;

To The Honorable Barbara Mouton, First Mayor of East Palo Alto, California, who shows us that courage and compassion can move mountains;

To Eleanor Scheribel, a lovely artist and staunch friend;

To Judy Satrang, a masterpiece lady and a joy to know;

To Donna Peterson, whose heavenly voice and beautiful self prove the artist is a work of art;

To William Byron Webster, Ph.D., composer, impresario, opera buff, historian, and citizen advocate, who claims he does not really know everything;

To Robert Brewster Loudon, Sr., who almost does know everything about cars and trucks;

To his doting parents, Elizabeth Connell Loudon and Kenneth Brewster Loudon, who recommended the straight and narrow;

To his uncle, Chester C. Loudon, a lieutenant in World War I and a stalwart of the American Legion post in East Aurora, New York;

To Henry Allen Nichols, CS, an ambulance driver in World War I, and a Wartime Minister in 1944;

To Anne Wallace Peterson Gasser, harpsichordist, piano teacher and composer, promoter of happy musical events;

To friends in writing classes where useful ideas abound; and

To countless volunteers who make a difference.

FOREWORD

On a hillside north of Half Moon Bay nestles a safe house with a spectacular view of the Pacific. Here behind an electronic security system I figuratively hold a skeleton key to unlock leftover mysteries of World War II. I grieve for my brother whose dregs of recollection the investigators continue to probe.

Thad suspected who bankrolled Hitler at an early date. He might have identified certain conspirators for the Nuremberg trials. Now at last the Swiss agree to negotiate disputed accounts from the Holocaust. What cruel fate allowed this debacle-families wiped out, millions dead, cities bombed to rubble?

Looking back I see myself long ago, a gangly little girl with brown braids flying as I chased after my favorite brother. Thad’s pale hair flapped in the breeze when he raced through the meadow. He’d pause now and then to show me ant colonies in the soil, tadpoles in the brook.

On our peaceful farm I first felt a premonition of disaster when the scholarship wrenched Thad from his family circle. Military school was wrong for him, I feared. Far away in the city his path proved as treacherous as quicksand. Though he gained important friends, the elite faction that despised him turned out to be collaborators during the war.

With Nazi hordes invading our small country, Thad and a trusted few managed to safeguard the treasury, incurring a terrible toll of hostages executed. After liberation, the name of Thaddius Gohr was enshrined among our national heroes. He would have disapproved. He foresaw renewed global conflict unless humanity learns how to prevent it.

Chapter I

Path to Destiny

Thaddius Gohr will make a name for himself in this world, the teacher predicted.

Her habitual austerity melted when she asked permission from Papa and Mama to tutor Thad and prepare him for competitive scholarship examinations. She had promoted him two years ahead of his class, formulating big plans for him.

I listened outside the door of the schoolroom. Doubts gnawed at me.

I was only his worshipful young sister but I realized Thad’s vision went no further than the farm. When the fateful scholarship severed him from us abruptly, dread overwhelmed me.

I dared not voice my pessimism lest Mama chide me. I couldn’t picture our Thad as a military cadet, despite the scholarship, any more than I could imagine myself transplanted to America, learning slang and the jitterbug. Not in a million years.

Thad usually wore a grin. I rarely saw him frown. He appeared to be on the verge of laughing at a secret joke. When he roamed in the meadow or by the brook, he always found something marvelous. He showed me bustling ant colonies in the soil, tiny fish darting among pebbles in the clear stream. After climbing a tree, he’d claim the birds talked to him. I believed him. The sparkle in his eyes mirrored the summer sky and he peered intently from beneath a cascade of sun-bleached hair spilling across his brow.

The rest of us had brown hair, except Erik the baby. We were a joyful brood of six until fate separated us. Irmegaard, firstborn, obtained an apprenticeship with a dressmaker. Ursul, eldest son, would inherit our father’s modest plot of ground. Venturesome Rolf, at sixteen, wangled a berth as cabin boy on a merchant ship. We lost golden-haired Erik to pneumonia, while Thad endured ostracism in the city. I eventually studied nursing, which developed into a dire necessity. My premonition came true in gradual stages.

The one-room schoolhouse we attended forced us to hear all the recitations. It turned out Thad listened from the start, gaining rapid promotion. The teacher primed him for a scholarship.

While his classmates plodded through algebra, Thad mastered calculus. He read voraciously-Julius Caesar, Plato, Greek mythology. Bookworm, Ursul dubbed him with mild ridicule.

Looking back, I recall when I first entertained anxiety about Thad. Was he too good-natured, completing Ursul’s share of the woodpile when the older boys went fishing? Was he solitary? In schoolyard games they all wanted him on their team. He pushed himself relentlessly. Rugged and purposeful, he dug rocks for hours in the north pasture which needed to be cleared for cultivation. Stumps would be blasted out later, but he chipped away at them steadily with his ax, amusing himself hitting dead center from a distance.

He sought a scholarship to learn agronomy. An uneducated lad faced years as a fieldhand with scant hope of buying property. As an overseer for some landowner, he might do better than that.

Father talked about hybrids and crop rotation. Thad commented that organic pesticides could free unnumbered children from the bane of picking potato bugs off the tender plants. Ursul said amen.

Rolf and Erik chirped amen over and over. We laughed. The laughter echoes in my memory. Rolf and Erik tussled on the rag rug like a human pretzel, arms and legs twisted, giggling and cackling. When Mama taught us folk dances to strains of the music box, the comic duo pranced and squealed.

Thad twirled me around chanting, Edris is a butterfly.

The day he boarded the rattletrap bus for the competitive examination an hour away, neighbors gathered to wish him well. Ursul pounded his shoulder saying, Show them, Tadpole. I prayed. Results arriving by post three weeks later put Thad at number thirteen on the list. Awards went to the top ten. If he considered it wasted effort, nobody detected it.

Vigorously hoeing in the field one hot afternoon, he looked up to see Rolf and Erik streaking toward him, their shrieks piercing the air. Apollo, the mustard-hued mastiff, bayed at their heels.

Thad, Thad, a man! From the city! To talk to you!

I trailed along behind after Mama pointed the man in Thad’s direction. Lithe as a panther, this person implied something sinister. Hatless, with patent leather hair, he wore severe black. His unhurried gait hinted he could shift into high gear in a split second. He strode past me without a glance.

Thad chased the diminutive duo back toward the house and threw down his hoe. He wiped both hands on his dusty pants and offered a big paw to the man tentatively. The man clasped his hand firmly. Thad plucked his shirt from the branch of a nearby tree and draped it across his sweaty shoulders. The two sat on the stone fence.

How I ached to eavesdrop. I could have crept along the outside of the fence and listened. Mama’s pristine honesty paralyzed me. I saw Thad shove his bare toe into the sod and gaze off at the horizon. The man gestured toward the house and the two rose to their feet.

I ran to Mama pleading for answers. She shushed me as Papa hustled in. He confronted the man.

The deep bass voice filled the room. Your son agrees to this. Further instructions will arrive by post. He bowed and left.

The sleek gray limousine in the lane had attracted neighbor children, who galloped after it until it vanished. Others clustered on our path, buzzing with curiosity. Papa slammed the door.

Thad examined the sheet of ivory parchment the man had given him, then flipped it onto the table. Ursul scanned it and whistled.

Mama breathed, Oh, Thaddius, are you sure?

He’s made his decision, Hulda.

He can change his mind, Josuf.

It’s what I have to do, that’s all, Thad mumbled. Crown service is a duty, Stout said, not a choice. He mounted the narrow stairway to the loft without another word. He’d thrash it out alone.

I resented this intruder, Stout, who urged upon Thad a course he wouldn’t prefer. Papa sat us down on the ladderback chairs by the table and exhibited the official document Thad had tossed there. A cadet appointment at the prestigious military academy! In the capital!

My heart sank. Not the military! He hated guns. He wouldn’t even shoot at rabbits after Papa explained how they raided the crop and multiplied beyond containment.

The single instance of disobedience happened when Thad, age eleven, refused to pick up a rifle. Papa’s definition of predators didn’t sway him. He ate meat, after all, Papa said. They reached an impasse, the stern parent and half-grown rebel. I often thought this was why Thad spent so much time digging rocks.

Everybody knew about the harsh routine of cadets. Injuries and the tally of dropouts were legendary. Lifelong grudges resulted. Rigid class distinction prevailed. A farm boy among the elite broke precedent.

Throughout my short life thus far, I had assumed Mama and Papa understood everything. Within a frugal budget, we managed, but the tuition for university dangled beyond reach. Apprenticeships were scarce and menial work provided subsistence for our neighbors. Most were tenant farmers lacking their own plot of ground. My father’s property legally passed to Ursul, eldest son. Thad would have to scratch.

Long years later I gleaned from Thad’s piecemeal reminiscences the tortuous steps that led to his ultimate act of desperation. I was a Brooklyn housewife when he and his ill-equipped garrison braced themselves against the Nazi juggernaut. The world went mad for a time.

Austria and the Sudetenland were swallowed up by Germany while observers took no notice of a tiny postage stamp kingdom crushed under the Nazi boot. Einland at last became as renowned as valiant Finland which paid off its debts after the Great War. It had a tradition of integrity, small as it was. The Einlanders declined Marshall Plan aid after World War II. Their genius for survival covered centuries of European conquest and reconquest. Thad fit into this pattern. Though he resisted it to the hilt, there was no escape.

Who in 1931 anticipated the millions of dead, cities bombed to rubble, entire families wiped out, an unspeakable debacle? To write about it is very difficult for me because English is my second language with limited fluency. Raw emotions warp my vision. These memories are painful. I’m only reviewing this to oblige Sherwood. I owe him. He still investigates Nazi atrocities.

As a GI in April, 1945, he saw the walking skeletons in a liberated death camp. Why were some resuscitated and others not? When he discovered a pulsating corpse in an isolation cell, he insisted on plasma to coax dying embers into a flame. He determined that this one must be restored to life and sanity.

Chapter II

Uprooted

Abashed by the excitement swirling around him, Thad begged off the big farewell party neighbors proposed. He craved peace and quiet, saying his good-byes in private. It was not to be.

That very Sunday in the cozy chapel where visiting clergy alternated with local people reading Scripture, a stranger slid into the back row. He carried a black boxy camera. He scarcely waited for us to file out before grasping Thad’s elbow and hurling questions at him. Did he have any qualms? What about the famous hazing rituals at the Academy? Was he afraid? Father and Ursul intervened, suggesting that the dandy in his checkered suit climb back into that yellow roadster and retrace his route to the city whence he came.

Under the trees, women were preparing a lavish spread on trestle tables. Children were admiring the flashy car. This would be as close to a party as Thad permitted. Most summer Sundays these collective libations rewarded churchgoers, many of whom came from considerable distances. A larger throng marked this day. Their attire ranged from traditional embroidered vests to homespun and gingham. The alien person wearing knickers and a bow tie created quite a diversion.

Rebuffed with finality, the man commenced shouting as he was ushered toward his car. You’ll be sorry, you dumb clods! Your touselheaded genius will be mincemeat. He won’t last through the first day of ‘Fright Week’ at the Academy. The cadets are already planning how they’ll dispose of him. After I write about the surly stock he comes from, people in the city will applaud when he’s flattened into dirt. Gunning his motor, the man drove away, raising a cloud of dust along the road.

Oh, Mama, I sobbed, burying my face in her skirt.

Thad put his arm around her shoulder. Don’t worry, Mother; I’m really made of fieldstone.

Made of what? I glimpsed the stubborn resolve in him when I was four. I often ran along the lane to meet my brothers and sister after school. Where were they today? Nobody in sight? Then I heard yells and thuds from a shady copse nearby. Taunts of Smarty! Faker! Cheater! Show-off!

Drawing closer, I saw five of the older boys pounding Thad with sticks and fists and vicious kicks. He didn’t cry out but suddenly erupted into a small whirlwind, flailing about with arms and legs in a storm of energy that startled the bullies, enabling him to break free. He ran toward home and I couldn’t keep up with him. When he headed for the brook, I followed. There I found him, prone on the bank, splashing cool water on his bruises.

Hesitant to intrude, I paused, but he must have heard me sniffling. He rose to his knees ad beckoned me beside him. I wept openly. His cut lip oozed red and his left eyelid puffed up rapidly. The rips and stains on his shirt qualified it for the rag bag.

No use crying, Edi. When I was your age, I cried over a rabbit that old Apollo killed. The sight of its limp body in the dog’s bloody jowls made me sick. Father explained to me about predators but I didn’t understand. I do now. Human predators have strange reasons. That gang resents me because I’m promoted ahead of them. The squall will blow over. Promise you won’t tell Mama and Papa. We’ll say I fell out of a tree again. I can weather this by myself.

Now more formidable opponents were arrayed against him, the callow aristocrats at the Crown Academy. It ranked with America’s West Point and France’s Ecole Militaire where Napoleon honed his tactical genius. In our stratified society, people accepted their status without question. Violation of the pecking order offended members of upper and lower echelons. Thad aspired to nothing but a farm of his own, certainly not a military career. What malevolence meddled with his future?

Babble in the churchyard escalated with speculation about him. He put a stop to it with a gesture toward the tables. Food! All dig in and enjoy.

Afterward,