"Godwin's Backstory"

GODWIN'S BACKSTORY
By Curtis C. Chen

The elevator ride up to the seventh floor seemed to take forever. Michael's hands weren't cuffed, but the three armed guards behind him and Denford made it clear that Michael was not a welcome guest.

Michael said, "Do you remember the first time you learned about 'Godwin's Law?'"

Denford kept staring straight ahead. "I thought you only reported to the old man now."

"I'm not reporting," Michael said. "We're just chatting."

Denford didn't reply.

"I hear it happened on the Russian Far East desk," Michael continued. "A local sport diver sensed Teutonic wards all over a shipwreck near Sakhalin. Nothing of obvious intel value, so nobody was very interested at first—except one World War Two enthusiast, an up-and-coming CIA supervisor named Theodore Godwin.

"It turned out that his division was trying to set up a completely unrelated operation near Vladivostok, and the only reasonable way to get their agents on site was by submarine out of Japan. But it was a high-risk, low-reward situation, and nobody wanted to stick their neck out for it. Godwin really believed, but he didn't have the clout to make it happen.

"Anyway, a few days later, another wire comes across the desk with new information about the Sakhalin shipwreck, and guess what? Somebody who saw the diver's photos is pretty sure that was a Nazi vessel, and there could be military artifacts on board. Maybe even some of Hitler's amulets.

"Well, all of a sudden, everyone and his dog is rushing to greenlight a recovery operation, and Godwin says you know, as long as we're out there near Sapporo with a submarine anyway, why don't we just go ahead and run this op that my division's been trying to clear for the last two months?"

Denford finally turned to look at Michael. "Yeah, I know the story. There's nothing in the shipwreck but some fish skeletons, but the old man lucks out and snags some prize intel on Soviet Fleet deployments. He gets on the fast track to director."

"And nobody could ever prove that Godwin doctored those shipwreck reports, or persuaded someone to do it for him, but that's irrelevant. The real lesson was, if you can draw some kind of line, no matter how thin or how convoluted, that connects your proposal to Hitler, your chances of approval magically and dramatically improve." Michael shrugged. "Godwin's Law."

The elevator stopped, and the doors opened. Denford and Michael marched forward, followed by the guards.

"Was there a point to all that?" Denford asked. "Or were you just running your mouth?"

"We're never going to catch Hitler," Michael said. "We missed our chance in 1945, and it'll never come again. But he's actually more valuable this way.

"As long as there's still some mystery surrounding him, we'll want to know more. And some people can use that. They can sell the question without ever worrying what the answer is going to be."

The double doors to the director's suite opened.

"Sometimes," Michael said, "we don't really want to know the answers."



Photo: 1938 German Nazi Coin by Kevin Dooley, November, 2009

"Godwin's Law"

GODWIN'S LAW
By Curtis C. Chen

"Welcome back, sir," said the gargoyle as Michael stepped through the security gate. He nodded at the creature, not meeting its bottomless gaze, and retrieved his keys from the stone dish.

Michael walked to the memorial wall. The flags were as he remembered—USA on the left, CIA on the right—but the field of black stars floating above the white marble had multiplied. He now counted more than a hundred stars, each one representing a company employee who had died in the line of service.

He stepped closer and looked at the Book of Honor, framed in steel and glass below the starfield. Less than half the gold sigils painted in the book's pages had names written next to them, either in English or Runic.

Is your name in here, Linda? Are you one of these stars?

"Michael," said a gravelly voice behind him. "How've you been?"

Robert Denford didn't look like he'd aged a single day since Michael left the agency. The two men shook hands coolly. "Still suck at golf. You?"

"Took up bowling," Denford said. "Let's go to the archives."

Michael followed Denford into an elevator. Denford pushed a button.

"I hear you made director," Michael said as the doors closed.

Denford shrugged. "War is good for business."

***

Denford opened a portal before the elevator reached the basement. There was no way to tell where this archive was; CIA had secret underground caches all over the world.

The two men walked down a long aisle of bookshelves that looked as if they had grown right out of the rough-hewn rock walls. Michael watched Denford pull one shelf out from the wall and unfold it into an impossible space. They stepped inside, and Denford parted another set of shelves. Michael saw labels reading MONGOLIA and TIBET on his way into a closet walled by what looked like multicolored curtains, but were actually floor-to-ceiling file volumes.

"Curtain files?" Michael looked around in awe. "Nobody's used these since the 1940s."

"World War II." Denford tugged a cloth line, and the material poured into his hand and became a hardbound book. "This is why we're here."

Michael read the cover. "Hitler's daughter? You're joking, right?"

"The old man wants complete discretion. That's why I called you."

"I'm retired," Michael said. "You can get someone more expert to tell you, authoritatively, that this is a crock. Something the Third Reich made up to scare the Allies as a last resort."

"So you've heard the stories."

"Yeah. Nazis raping Romani and Jewish prisoners, trying to breed their supernatural powers into the master race. It didn't work."

Denford held up a modern file folder, bordered in red-and-white eyes-only logograms. "There's evidence that it did."

"If you actually had convincing proof, you'd be talking to the JIC."

"You're right," Denford said. "It's promising, but not convincing. We need someone to run it down. Quietly. The old man trusts you."

"And no one would suspect an elderly college professor."

Denford smiled. "Everybody fights."

Michael took the file. "Nobody wins."



Photo: CIA memorial wall, date unknown (2004?)