Gods of Manhattan Read Free Page B

out on came and went blindfolded, so they couldn't see his face.
    He remembered once a blindfold had slipped. He'd found the strength to bludgeon her to death, then made some calls to the people he could trust, those in Untergang who still felt he had some value to the organisation. They'd come and cleaned up the mess, and warned him that further mistakes could not be brushed under the carpet so easily. He had to chuckle at the irony. After all, wasn't he a mistake? And had he not been brushed under the carpet, installed in this palatial tomb, a battered relic kept against the day when he might have value again?
    Once upon a time, Heinrich Donner was the heart and soul of Untergang. It had been his idea; a fifth column of Nazi operatives, working within American society to corrupt and disrupt from within, blurring the line between criminal activity and terrorism. After the disasters of the Russian campaign, it had been a reasonable success in terms of destabilising the country and spreading panic among the populace. And because the Führer could plausibly distance himself from Untergang - a terrorist organisation operating outside his mandate - Britannia had little to say on the matter beyond a tired shrug and a veiled warning to keep such tactics on American shores and out of the way of the Empire.
    Of course, Heinrich Donner was not the 'leader' of the group. That honour fell to a man named Mannheim, codenamed 'Cobra', whose job was to send long ranting missives to newspapers claiming full responsibility for the Untergang's actions. It served a dual purpose. Since 'Cobra' was only a man sitting behind a typewriter or a wax-cylinder recorder several miles away from any action, he could never realistically be caught - and if Mannheim was apprehended, another 'Cobra' would take his place. The public would see that those charged to defend them could not even catch one man, and panic and disquiet would spread.
    And, of course, Donner's hands would remain clean and pure.
    Heinrich Donner was a prominent industrialist, a noted businessman, a beloved philanthropist. All of New York had celebrated him when he'd stepped in to help rebuild the city after the horrific events of the Second Civil War. (And damn that fool McCarthy for his stupid, failed attempt. If he'd only swallowed his damned pride and worked with the Führer - but the past was the past, and there could be no going back.)
    As far as America was concerned, Heinrich Donner was a saint among men. They cheered his modest speeches, filled with gentle humility, wept at his tearful account of fleeing Germany as a young husband and father to escape Hitler's tyranny, of losing his wife and child to the madman's grasp. The only one who knew the full truth was Doc Thunder, and he could prove nothing in a court of law, of course. Besides, he knew that to expose Donner's secrets would mean exposing his own. He was effectively stalemated.
    It had all been going so well.
    Why had he become so obsessed with Thunder? Why had he never simply given up, washed his hands of the whole situation, focused on more achievable goals? All those endless attempts to kill him, to steal his blood, to have America's great symbol brought down, brought low... it had brought attention to him, over time. The wrong kind of attention. Eventually, he was caught in an explosion and believed dead, and the Führer had quietly suggested that he should remain that way. For a few years, he had continued to run Untergang's operations, but his heart was no longer in the work, and gradually it passed to other hands, younger hands... until finally he had nothing but this apartment, a monthly allowance for food, drink and whores, and handlers who were only seeing to his needs until the kill order came through and they could dispose of him once and for all.
    And the order would never come, he knew. The Führer had long since forgotten him. Untergang's latest leader had his own master plans and never gave Donner the