The Trial of Fallen Angels (27 page)

“I don’t know,” Ott said, uninterested in the question.

“They told the world a new fantastic, unbelievable story. This time their story was about the Germans and the Rabuns, not about God.”

This got Ott’s attention. He stopped watching the game and turned back to Sam.

“The Holocaust,” Sam said. “The early Jews made up a story that they were entitled to Palestine because God gave them special protection from their enemies. But then they lost the land to the Romans. After two thousand years of trying to get it back, they realized they needed to make up a new story. Now the Jews are very smart people. So what they did is come up with a story that’s the exact opposite of the first one. This time, they say that they’re entitled to Palestine because they’ve been singled out for extermination by their enemies, and God can’t or won’t protect them. It’s genius, actually. Pure genius.”

Ott sighed. “The problem with your analysis, Sam,” he said, “is that they’re telling the truth. They
were
singled out for extermination.”

Sam shook his head disappointedly. “Don’t you get it, man? It’s all about
beliefs
, Ott, not truth. Whether the Holocaust actually happened or not doesn’t matter any more than whether God actually made a promise to Abraham. Black into white, white into black. The question at the moment is, Where does the Jews’ new story leave the German people and the Rabuns of Kamenz? Let me tell you where. It leaves you labeled as evil butchers, the devil incarnate, distrusted and despised. It leaves you with Holocaust museums sprouting up everywhere to teach every child every year from now into infinity just how vile and subhuman you are. And where does this story leave my people, the Palestinians, who were living on the land when the Allies took it from them and gave it to the Jews? We’re even less than the Germans! We’re not even worth recognizing as a people on this planet entitled to a home. We’re refugees, vile and subhuman too. I told you. Germans and Arabs have a lot in common.”

Ott was intrigued. For the first time in his life, he had met somebody like himself with a legitimate reason to be angry—somebody who had suffered just as much, if not more, than he had. “You’re right!” he said. “You’re absolutely right. So that’s why your people are blowing themselves up in Israeli markets—because your land was taken from you?”

“No,” Sam said, lighting a new cigarette and exhaling a cloud of smoke in disgust. “We do suicide bombings because we’re stupid, uneducated, and don’t know any better. That only hurts us, not the Jews. I’ve spent time in Lebanon training with these suicide bombers. They’re crazy . . . but in their defense, that’s what desperation does to people. Do you see Jews blowing themselves up? Or Germans? Or anybody else? Of course not. But the Jews have been working on taking back Palestine for two thousand years, while we’ve only been at it for fifty. Who knows? Maybe the Jews were launching suicide attacks against the Romans in the first century when they were desperate. It takes time to see reality and the path from here to there. History is as much a function of the present as the past, and it’s more a function of emotion than fact. History and truth are what we want them to be, Ott. But that leaves us with a dilemma. How do we fix the situation?”

“I don’t know,” Ott said.

Sam winked. “I think the answer is staring us right in the face, Ott. We need to use the same tactics the Jews used. We need our own story. But it can’t be just any story. It has to be a
big
story, a big beyond belief story—like a secret promise whispered by God, or a conspiracy to exterminate a group of people from the face of the earth. If you want to achieve a gigantic goal, you’ve got to have a gigantic story. What made the Jews’ stories work so well is that they’re epic in size, totally fantastic, and so incredibly unbelievable that nobody would dare tell them with a straight face unless they were in fact true.”

“Wait a minute,” Ott said, confused. “I thought you just said they were lies.”

“No,” Sam replied. “I said the truth is irrelevant. It’s all about
beliefs
. The truth is what people believe it is. When everybody believed the story that God promised the Holy Land to Abraham, then that became the truth for them and the Jews lived there for thousands of years. When everybody stopped believing that story, it was no longer the truth and the Jews were evicted. Two thousand years pass and now, when everybody believes the story that the Germans tried to exterminate the Jews, that’s the new truth and the Jews are allowed to live in Israel again. Are you with me? What’s the next logical step?”

Ott thought about this for a moment. He didn’t agree with Sam’s careless handling of the truth, but his argument did have a certain logical appeal. “I guess the next step is that when everybody stops believing the Holocaust happened, the Jews will be evicted again?”

Sam smiled. “I told you that we think alike,” he said.

“But how can you get everybody to stop believing the Holocaust happened when it actually did?”

A sinister grin flashed across Sam’s face. “The same way the Jews got everybody to believe God promised them the Holy Land when that never happened.”

Ott was even more confused now. “Which is?”

“With a story!” Sam shouted. “That’s what I just got through explaining. The Germans and the Palestinians need a big, fantastic, unbelievable story. New story, new belief, new truth.”

“So what’s the new story?”

“The best way to counter a conspiracy is with an even bigger conspiracy. The Jews’ story is that there was a conspiracy in Germany to exterminate them. So what do we do? We say the exact opposite—that there was an even
bigger
conspiracy among the Allies to fabricate the Holocaust to demonize the Germans and take over the Middle East.”

Ott shook his head. “Why would the Allies do that?”

“Because the Germans started two world wars that cost millions of lives, and the Allies needed to shame and pacify them so they would never even think about doing something like that again. And because the Allies wanted a friendly presence in the Middle East to secure the oil supplies that make Western civilization possible.”

Ott was slowly becoming convinced. “I think I get it,” he said. “But it still sounds pretty far-fetched.”

“Of course it’s far-fetched,” Sam replied. “That’s the genius of it. That’s been the genius of the Jews’ stories throughout the ages. The story has to be far-fetched to be believable. All you need to do is show that pulling off the conspiracy was possible. That’s critical. With God’s promise to Abraham, it was easy—just say that God spoke to Abraham in private. Does God talk to people privately? Maybe yes, maybe no, but most people in Moses’ day thought it was possible. Same thing with the Holocaust. Was it possible that the Germans murdered millions of Jews? Sure. They built concentration camps, they had most of Europe under martial law, and it was a bloody war.”

Ott glanced up at the game. “Struck out,” he said with a groan. “They lost.” He turned back to Sam. “But how could the Allies have fabricated the Holocaust? It’s been one of the most thoroughly documented events in history.”

“Easy,” Sam said. “By definition, wars are about killing your enemies, right? Well, isn’t it interesting that there was no such thing as a ‘war crime’ before World War Two? Before that, mass killing during wars was taken for granted. But after the Allies won World War Two, they did something that had never been done before. They invented this new concept of a war crime for certain ‘special’ types of killing. And then they categorized Germany’s killing of Jews as war crimes and held trials—even though Germany slaughtered millions more Russians, and the Japanese slaughtered millions of Chinese, and the Allies firebombed German cities and dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan. None of those killings were war crimes, only Germany’s killing of Jews was deemed unusual and deserving of extra punishment. Of course, Germany was in no position to defend itself, it had just been defeated. So,
could
the Allies have fabricated the Holocaust? Absolutely. They liberated the camps, they controlled the evidence, they conducted the war-crimes trials. Motive and opportunity, Ott. And there are plenty of alternative explanations for why large numbers of Jews died in concentration camps that don’t involve deliberate gassing. So, do you see? If we want to solve our mutual problem of restoring the reputation of the Germans and the homeland of the Palestinians, then whether the Holocaust actually happened or not doesn’t matter in the least. We just need people to start questioning their beliefs about it with a new story.”

“Amazing,” Ott said, completely in awe of Sam now, and increasingly intoxicated by the beer. “It’s brilliant.”

“Thank you,” Sam replied, pleased by the compliment.

“So, what’s the next step?” Ott asked.

A confident smiled formed on Sam’s bearded face. “There’s no better way to tell a story than with a film. We live in a visual world, and seeing is believing. So, that’s what I’ve done. I’ve made a documentary that tells the new story of the Germans and the Palestinians, a story that will change the course of history.” Suddenly Sam’s confidence disappeared. “If, that is, I can find the money to get it out to the public. It won’t do any good if people don’t see it. Distributing a film is extremely expensive.”

Now a confident smile formed on Ott’s face. “I’ve got money,” he said, his speech slightly slurred from the alcohol. “My godmother left everything to my mother and me. She was pretty rich.”

“Really?” Sam said, feigning surprise.

Ott puffed out his chest. “I don’t like to talk about it, but I could probably buy and sell everybody in Die Elf. How much do you need? I want your documentary to be seen around the world.”

Trudy, the barkeeper, changed the channel on the television, and now the Channel 10
Evening News
was coming on, with its triumphant music and flashing montage of scenes from central Pennsylvania, ending with the camera zooming in on the handsome, graying anchorman.

“Good evening,” he said in an authoritative baritone. “Football star O. J. Simpson is questioned in the slayings of his ex-wife and her friend, and President Clinton is set to announce a plan for national welfare reform . . . but the big story tonight on Action News is our exclusive undercover investigation with startling revelations that thousands of dollars of curriculum and textbook funds from the Snow Creek Area School District were diverted by the financial controller of the school district to a local white supremacist group in which he is a member.”

“Oh my God,” Sam said. “Can you turn this up?” he hollered to Trudy.

“Here with the story is Action News investigative reporter Bo Wolfson . . .”

Trudy increased the volume on the television, and the camera panned back to show Bo Wolfson sitting next to the anchorman.

“Thank you, Rob,” he said, before turning to look directly into the camera. “Over the past six months, Action News has been conducting an undercover investigation into a secretive local white supremacist group known as Die Elf that has a paramilitary training camp near Huntingdon. During our investigation, we discovered that one of the prominent members of this group is Harlan Hurley. Mr. Hurley also happens to be the chief financial controller of the Snow Creek Area School District.

“Our investigation led us into the public books and records of the school district, where we found that over the past three years, nearly one hundred thousand dollars of taxpayer funds dedicated to the curriculum and textbook budget of the school district has been paid to a shell company called TechChildren, controlled by Die Elf. We’ve also learned that these funds were used to make a documentary claiming that the Holocaust, in which more than six million Jews were murdered by Nazis during World War Two, was a hoax. In an interview earlier today, we confronted Mr. Hurley with these allegations and undercover videotape of his attendance at a Die Elf meeting several months ago during which the documentary was discussed.”

Sam and Ott looked at each other in disbelief as the screen filled with an image of the front of the Snow Creek High School, then the main office reception area, and finally Harlan Hurley. He was a large, balding middle-aged man with no chin, a slightly lazy eye, and pasty white skin, wearing an overstretched blue short-sleeve dress shirt and a red polka-dotted tie. He was seated at his desk with a wide grin on his face, apparently excited about his fifteen minutes of fame and having no idea of what was about to happen.

“Mr. Hurley,” said Bo, after some preliminary questions, “are you familiar with a company called TechChildren?”

Hurley’s lazy eye involuntarily shifted toward the ceiling, thinking, stalling. “Why, yes,” he said, his smile forced now. “I believe I have heard of that company.”

“What is TechChildren?”

“Well, I believe they create textbooks and other educational materials.”

“Does the Snow Creek Area School District do business with TechChildren?”

“I’m not certain. You see, we do business with so many companies. You’d be better-off asking the curriculum director, Mrs. Biddle, that question. How else can I help you today, Mr. Wolfson? We’re particularly pleased with the new budget the school board just passed.” With this diversion, Hurley relaxed slightly and his original smile returned.

“You do sign all checks for the school district, correct?” Bo asked, unwilling to be distracted.

Hurley cleared his throat. “Yes, yes, of course. I’m the financial controller. I pay whomever I’m told to pay by the principal.”

“Have you ever heard of an organization called Die Elf?”

Hurley’s face crimsoned, but his smile remained, like somebody who has just accidentally walked into a post in front of a crowd and wants them to believe he intended to do it.

Back inside Trudy’s bar, Sam Mansour watched the interview with increasing distress, seeing all his plans unravel before his eyes. “I don’t believe this,” he said to Ott. “I don’t believe this.”

“No, I can’t say that I have heard of that,” Hurley replied to Bo on the television. “Is that another textbook company?”

“No,” said Bo. “Die Elf is a white supremacist group, Mr. Hurley. Are you sure you’ve never heard of it?”