Denier

-June 14, 1955-

“You can’t change the past, Irving...”

“It’s not the past I’m concerned about, Miriam,” I tell her. “It’s the future. Our future.”

I’m regretting my choice of meeting places — St. George’s Gardens in London’s East End. Knowing Miriam’s fondness for Anglican churches and summer gardens, I thought my selection ideal, a place that might becalm her. Yet now, strolling slowly past the ancient burial stones that outlasted former graveyards, the oblong stones all askew, I realize my mistake.

This place is about endings.

She shakes her head tightly. She won’t meet my eyes. Hers are hazy with tears. “We... we don’t have a future. Not one in which we’re together. How can I make you see that? Hardly a decade’s passed since the Russians liberated my father from the camp. My mother was burned to ashes in that same camp. To my father, it’s as though it all happened yesterday—”

“Yes, but what does it have to do with us? I understand your wanting to be considerate of your father’s feelings, and I love you for that. But you have your whole life ahead of you. You can’t live your life in order to please an old man at the end of his.” My heart thumps as relentlessly as if I’d run, rather than cabbed, from Moorgate. “Miriam, when you’re blessed with a love like ours, you don’t throw it aside — you cherish it, you thank God for it, because it most certainly is a blessing from God. You’ve told me yourself your connection to your ancestral Judaism is tenuous, at best, and it only got more tenuous after your parents managed to send you to England as a child refugee just before the war. Your sponsors, the Chatterhams, raised you as a little English schoolgirl, took you to Anglican services... services that you admit you adored...”

“That doesn’t matter, Irving—”

“Oh, why can’t we be married? I’m more than certain I could win your father over, given a bit of time. Once he sees how happy I’m able to make his daughter—”

“It would kill him!” She turns away. “I’m sorry, Irving. This was a mistake. A silly, stupid mistake on my part, childish, really. I thought I could sever myself from the past. I thought I could be selfish and follow my heart. It’s been wonderful, what we’ve shared over this past year. I’ll always treasure it. But it can’t continue. I can’t continue...”

I can’t let things end like this. I can’t bear the thought of never seeing her again. “Couldn’t... couldn’t we just go on as we have? If marriage is out of the question, I mean? Continue seeing one another on the sly? There’s no hurry for permanency. You’ve just begun at university, and I’ll begin my field studies next year. Maybe, given enough healing time, your father will have a change of heart...?”

“My father will never heal.” That sweet voice, the joy of my life, sounds as heavy and laden with moss as the tombstones that line our narrow path. “Never, not if he were to live another five hundred years. His loss is my loss. I have a duty, Irving. A duty that outweighs whatever hopes I might have for my personal happiness. A duty to him and a duty to my people...”

“You can’t bring them back, Miriam. No matter how much you want to, no matter how much your father wants it. You aren’t a wonder-worker. What kind of a ‘duty’ to your people could you possibly have that would override the love we share...?”

“To be faithful! To remain within the fold! You’re right, Irving. I can’t bring them back. But I can help replace them. Help replenish with my womb what we have lost. Deny Hitler any posthumous victory—”

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing! Are you actually stating that our getting married and having children would represent a posthumous victory for Adolf-bloody-Hitler? That — that sort of tribal thinking — it’s positively medieval!” I try to gain control of my myself, realizing too late that my voice is echoing off the church walls. “Look, I’m sorry, I spoke out of turn. I’m just distraught. I — I can’t imagine a life without you, Miriam. I don’t want to imagine such a barren, lonely existence. Please... I beg you... don’t obliterate the heaven we’ve created over the past year... don’t let me go...”

“I’m sorry, Irving,” she whispers. She briefly squeezes my hand. Then she swiftly walks away, her Levantine hips swaying as definitively as those of Judith after she’d hung the severed head of Holofernes upon the walls of Bethuliah.

-November 1, 1956-

“Be a dear boy and fetch me my favorite pickaxe, will you, Irving?”

There are worse fates than being Kathleen Kenyon’s prime factotum, I suppose. She is, after all, the grande dame of British archeology. I imagine hundreds of graduate students would have signed onto this expedition to the ruins of ancient Jericho just to shine her boots.

Only a researcher of her immense prestige could have convinced the reigning government of Trans-Jordan to grant us virtually unlimited access to Tel es-Sultan — the great mound, located two kilometers north of the modern town of Jericho, which contains the remains of a succession of ancient habitations, each built atop the ruins of its predecessors, of which the oldest yet excavated dates back approximately a hundred centuries before the common era.

How glorious to be here in this place! How incredibly fortunate I am to be among the handful of seekers uncovering its secrets! Jericho — perhaps the oldest of all the walled cities in the world, the original hearth of human civilization, the place where Joshua reiterated in rampart-crumbling intonations God’s promise to the Jews that they would come to possess this land of milk and honey...

And therein lies the secret ache of my heart. I ran away from London’s East End to this dry and barren place in a desperate attempt to flee the unbearable loss of my Miriam. Yet here I find myself standing upon the foundation stones of the ancient Jewish conquest of Canaan, where every sunset over low bronze hills, every pungent wisp of burning dung from scattered campfires, and every bleating of a wandering goat remind me of her and of her long-suffering people. The people she will not abandon, not even for my sake.

And so stretch forth the lengths of my days — blind digging of narrow trenches across Tel es-Sultan, just wide enough to allow a man (or woman) space to work, followed by endless jabbings of a pickaxe into the artificial cliff faces we have made, the occasional elation of uncovering a brick or a bit of pottery, at which point the pickaxe is set aside, to be replaced by the snail-like patience of a spade or brush. Pick-pick-pick, forget-forget-forget. Brush, brush, brush, deny, deny, deny. Yet it’s fruitless; forgetfulness does not come and will not come.

Perhaps if I dig deeper, forgetfulness will spring forth like oil and finally envelop me in its black nirvana? When Miss Kenyon is well out of earshot, on the far side of the site, I direct a crew of Arab workmen to excavate another three feet of this latest trench with their picks and shovels. Miss Kenyon would look upon this act as a horrendous waste of manpower. She adamantly insists no extended human habitation of this site took place any earlier than that of the Natufian hunter-gatherers of the Holocene epoch, about ten thousand years B.C.E., and the present trench already reaches that level. Still, I will force it deeper. To China, if necessary, if that is what it takes to assuage my misery.

I have become inured to the stench of sweat, both the Arabs’ and my own. A good thing, too, for there is no end of sweat until night comes. Miss Kenyon somehow avoids perspiring, or miraculously hides it. She seems to take it as her divinely proclaimed purpose to cause others to perspire. She’ll tan my hide if (when) she discovers what I am doing. Am I being nihilistic in forcing these Arabs to dig to no avail? Am I one of those mad colonial overlords that haunt Kipling’s or Conrad’s imaginings? Ah, I shouldn’t worry for the poor bastards — they’ll receive their wages from Miss Kenyon, no matter what sort of useless labors I press the lads to.

Then, just before lunch break, a cry of fearful wonder rises from my Arab workmen. Their foreman, Manu, an Indian, climbs the ladder from the trench and hurriedly approaches. “Sahib Irving,” he says, out of breath, his heavy dark jowls quivering, “the men have found something. Something you must see. Please come.”

I descend the ladder into the trench, struggling to see the source of the sudden fuss. But my view is blocked. The Arabs huddle around whatever it is, jabbering as excitedly as though their holy Mahdi has stepped forth from imprisonment within the trench wall.

I push the buggers aside. And there it is — a big, white bone, jutting from the lowest reaches of the trench wall. A very large leg bone. Some sort of extinct megafauna from the pre-Holocene, a prehistoric camel or mastodon? My heart races. Such creatures had not been known to inhabit this region. What a magnificent find! I can already picture my name on a plaque at the British Museum (perhaps my newfound prestige will be enough to turn Miriam’s head around?) ...

I kneel to take a closer look and lean forward to dislodge more of the crumbly sandstone from the edges of the bone with my whisk. That’s when the glimmering of madness intrudes.

This is not the bone of a mammalian species. Not even a very large, extinct mammal.

You’re not a paleontologist, I tell myself. You’re merely a post-graduate archeology student, and not a particularly smart one. Yet I have spent enough time staring at the gargantuan skeletons mounted within the Dinosaur Gallery of the London Natural History Museum to recognize what this is.

The thigh bone of a large theropod. A member of the Allosaur or Tyranosaur family, most likely. Exceptionally well preserved. And sitting in a stratum of earth where it has no bloody business being.

A sudden gust of wind riddles the back of my neck with stinging sand. The contents of my stomach spin like the blades of a helicopter. I feel as though I’m standing on a high bridge, looking down into raging waters hundreds of feet below. I’m a man of science, not a Biblical fundamentalist. The evolutionary theories of Darwin, the excavations of a century’s worth of paleontologists, the knowledge built up by generations of geologists, all dictate that I should not be seeing what is clearly before my eyes. Only superstitious, dogmatic fools still believe that the age of the Earth can be counted in the hundreds of centuries. That Adam and Eve cohabitated in a garden called Eden before giving birth to children who engaged in incestuous sexual relations and begat the generations of mankind. That the span of time separating the dinosaurs and Adam’s rise from the primordial dust was, at most, a few thousand years — or, for the true Biblical literalists, a few packed days of divine activity.

Yet the geological strata laid bare by the trench tell a different story. A millennium or two before the earliest Natufians followed their game here and decided to set up camp, most likely due to the nearby spring of Ein as-Sultan, thunder lizards roamed this same place, perhaps drinking from the same spring.

It’s... impossible. Modern science tells me that at least seventy million years’ worth of sediments should separate this gargantuan reptilian thigh bone from the primitive tools of the Natufian hunter-gatherers. Yet what I’m staring at — if my eyes could sing, they’d be chanting an old Church hymn of the six days of Genesis.

I fetch Miss Kenyon, heedless of her reprimands for my having ordered an unauthorized excavation. Down inside the trench, she proves far less impressed by the sight of the bone than was I.

“What is all this hysterical blabbering about the Bible-thumpers winning the debate, Irving? That there, that bone — it proves nothing of the sort. Nothing! The Young Earth theory, if one can even dignify it with the label ‘theory’, has been thoroughly discredited. My own excavations have shown that this area has suffered earthquakes in the past. More likely than not, given the archeological evidence, an earthquake precipitated the collapse of Jericho’s fabled walls, not the sounds of Joshua’s trumpets. An earthquake, a geological upheaval, must have pushed this bone from a lower stratum into the place where it now sits.”

“I thought of that, Miss Kenyon. Truly, I did. But look at how the strata lie! They’re as flat and even as a stack of breakfast pancakes. There’s no evidence of a violent upheaval here, not in this section of Tel es-Sultan; not at this depth, at least. And the bone itself — look at its state of preservation! Wouldn’t an earthquake have broken it into pieces, or at least fractured it? But it’s as smooth and whole as though the creature were interred in Westminster Abbey alongside King bloody Edward the Seventh—”

“Mister Davison, you’ll be advised to watch your language.”

“Sorry, ma’am—”

“It’s quite possible that this supposedly missing evidence of a geological upheaval will actually be found in strata below that which your men have laid bare. The earthquake that lifted that infernal bone to the surface could very well have occurred a thousand years before the first Natufians decided to congregate here. And here’s another explanation for you, young Mr. Davison — it is also possible that the Natufians themselves inadvertently dug up this bone, perhaps in the process of burying their dead. Not being Cambridge-educated paleontologists, they would have discarded it, and eventually it was re-buried by the elements, along with their abandoned tools and pottery. Recall Occam’s Razor, Irving. In theorizing cause and effect, always make the shortest possible leap. There’s no need to turn Darwin on his head because of a single displaced bone.”

“I understand your reservations, Miss Kenyon, and your logic. But wouldn’t it be prudent for us to make certain? Shouldn’t we dig the trench deeper to see whether we uncover evidence of an earlier earthquake? Also, with your permission, I’d like to have the men dig out the cliff face around the thigh bone to see whether any other parts of this creature have been preserved in adjacent soils. Whether or not we turn old Darwin on his head, at the very least we might excavate a specimen that the British Museum would highly prize.”

Miss Kenyon pondered this. “I hate to redistribute manpower from the other side of Tel es-Sultan,” she said. “We’re making wonderful progress on the north face. But, still, given the... unusual nature of this find of yours, I suppose it behooves us to see what it is all about. But let me caution you, Mr. Davison — do not sensationalize this. I will not have it said among educated circles that I have provided aid and succor to the forces of moss-backed, reactionary, fundamentalist ignorance. Oh, we will discover the source of the geological aberration that has resulted in this freakish find of yours. I can guarantee that. I have a reputation to uphold, young man. Do not forget it.”

“I won’t, Miss Kenyon. And thank you.”

-November 3, 1956-

I’ve named her Miriam. My big, fine beastie. The skeleton, at least those parts we’ve seen thus far, has survived in a remarkable state of preservation. We’ve even uncovered sections of fossilized skin on her carcass. Most remarkable of all, Miriam was on the verge of having babies. There, sitting in the generous space between her pelvic bones, are the perfectly preserved fossils of half a dozen eggs. I can barely contain my excitement at the thought of what x-rays back in a British laboratory will reveal.

What haven’t we found? Evidence of an earlier earthquake. I had the men dig a section of the trench six feet lower than the strata that contain Miriam. We saw no signs of upheaval or distension. The harmonic placement of the fossilized bones, their organic spatial relationships with one another also testify against the notion of these remains having been elevated by a traumatic geological event. The carcass appears to have lain undisturbed until it was covered by mud and sedimentation, perhaps due to a flash flood.

Cause of death? It could have been disease, I suppose, or possibly a fatal attack from a fellow predator. Or even the unlucky happenstance of a toppling tree catching her unawares and breaking her back or heaving in her skull... the men and I have uncovered sections of a fossilized cedar in the immediate vicinity of the bones. Only a more complete excavation of the skeleton will tell the tale of Miriam’s last living moments.

Manu shouts over the din of clanking picks and shovels. He points to a plume of dust drawing near from the northeast. Either a desert dust devil, or vehicles approaching Tel es-Sultan at a good clip of speed. I climb out of the trench to see who our visitors might be. I notice that Miss Kenyon has also emerged from her work on the north side of the mound. She waves at me to join her.

Our visitors are an official delegation from the Trans-Jordanian government. An armed delegation — Mohammed Abu Hosn, the Assistant Chief Administrator of Antiquities with whom we’ve dealt before, leads them, backed up by a dozen soldiers bearing rifles and sidearms of British manufacture. On earlier meetings, he hasn’t brought along an armed escort. The size of this one suggests an effort to intimidate.

“Mr. Abu Hosn,” Miss Kenyon says, shielding her eyes from the midday sun, “what brings you all the way from Amman to pay us a visit? Is there some problem?”

“Your permit to work on this site has been revoked,” he says.

“Good heavens,” Miss Kenyon exclaims, “why?”

“All you British must leave the country within forty-eight hours.” The soldiers flanking him glare at us. “You will not be permitted to take any Jordanian antiquities with you, only your personal possessions. Also, your notes and photographs must remain in my custody.”

“This — this is an outrageous abrogation of cultural and scientific agreements between our two governments! Our work here has reached a vital stage and must not be interrupted. I need warn you, sir, that I will be requesting my ambassador’s intervention in this matter—”

“He will not be able to help you, for he has been expelled, as well, along with all of his staff. This is due, of course, to your British military’s unprovoked attack on our Arab brethren in Egypt.”

Egypt? I suddenly realize I haven’t read a newspaper in weeks. “Say,” I blurt out, trampling protocol, “is there a war on?”

Miss Kenyon looks ready to slap me. The Jordanian bureaucrat sniffs with contempt. “Is there a war on?” he says, mimicking me. “There most certainly is — a war of aggression against the Arab Nation. You British and your allies, the French, have conspired with the accursed Zionists to invade Egyptian territory and steal the Suez Canal. We cannot accept this unprovoked aggression. Until your government restores the Arab lands it has seized and provides compensation for the deaths it has caused, there can be no cooperation between us in the realm of antiquities, or any other. You have forty-eight hours to depart. If you do not, you will be classified as enemy aliens and taken into custody. My military men will take possession of your notes, cameras, and photographs immediately. All documentation of Jordanian antiquities, produced on Jordanian soil, is rightfully the property of the Jordanian people.”

“But the bones!” I cry. “We can’t leave them exposed! The elements — sandstorms, wind, rain — could degrade them terribly—”

“You have forty-eight hours,” he repeated.

-May 12, 1957-

I did all I could to protect the integrity of Miriam’s remains in the short time allotted. I had the men construct wooden caissons around the exposed portions of the skeleton, then fill the caissons with plaster. We barely had time for the plaster to set and for us to cover the caissons with earth, refilling the lower part of the trench, before Miss Kenyon and I and our party had to board trucks heading for the airport in Amman.

The real Miriam — I mean the human one, the living one — refused to see me on my return to London. I wasn’t surprised... only disappointed. I so wanted to share with her what I had seen. I needed to talk about it with someone who I trusted implicitly. The Young Earth theory, strongly supported, if not proven! The words of the Bible, the Old Testament, the Torah of Miriam’s people, borne out! Wouldn’t such evidence as that I’d uncovered turn old Darwin on his bulging, bald head? Wouldn’t it change the world?

I’ve had to tread carefully. Revealing what I’ve seen to the wrong people could result in my permanent ostracism from the scientific community. I’d be branded as a religious crackpot, ending any hope I might have of a career in my chosen field.

If only I still had my photographs! The British government and its allies have retreated ignominiously from Suez, under heavy diplomatic pressure from President Eisenhower and the United Nations. Normal diplomatic relations between Britain and much of the Arab world are in the process of being restored. There’s still a chance Miss Kenyon and I might be able to retrieve our confiscated materials and return to Tel es-Sultan. Apart from a reconciliation with Miriam (the human one), completing the work of excavating the fossilized Miriam is my greatest wish. Fate shouldn’t rob me of the chance to complete my work.

Yet, part of me wonders whether it wouldn’t be for the best if that skeleton remains unseen, for the theory of evolution to remain unchallenged, for the Young Earth theory to continue languishing in the dank corners of crankdom. Would I want my legacy to include throwing open the door for the return of authoritarian theological zealots such as Torquemada and the pope who condemned Galileo?

So which shall it be? Am I a servant of the existing order, or a seeker after truth? I cannot be both, in this instance.

I don’t know whether this emotional turmoil has been affecting my memory. But something certainly has been mucking about with my head, scrambling the clarity of my thoughts concerning my time at Tel es-Sultan. I tried reconstructing my notes shortly after my return to London. The work presented no great difficulties. I recall the words flowing easily, and I was even able to draw sketches from memory of Miriam’s bones and the surrounding geological strata. I know I accomplished this — I recall doing so very clearly. At least, I think I do. But I can’t find my notes or my sketches anywhere.

My apartment is small, only two rooms. I have for my use just two bureaus and one set of drawers. Admittedly, I’ve cluttered my limited space with books and papers, so the search isn’t as effortless as it might otherwise be. Still, I’ve looked for my notes for hours upon hours, to no avail.

So far as I’m aware, the only person aside from myself who has entered these rooms since my return from Jericho has been Miss Haverton, the cleaning woman who comes to tidy up every other week. I typically vacate the premises during the half-hour or so she spends here, removing myself to a nearby pub. Yet I cannot imagine any reason for her to remove my notes and drawings. What for? They were of no worth to anyone but me. Could she have thrown them away by mistake? I’ve asked her about this. She firmly states she has no recollection of disposing of any of my papers, only rubbish from the bin.

I’ve wracked my brain for other possible culprits. Jordanian secret agents? Burglars employed by Miss Kenyon to protect the sanctity of Darwinism? The first seems highly implausible; why would the Jordanians risk worsening their already shaky diplomatic relationship with the United Kingdom over a set of supplementary notes they wouldn’t have any way of knowing I had composed? The second possibility goes against everything I know of Miss Kenyon’s character. She hates, and perhaps fears, the notion of a carnosaur stalking the Jericho plains a few hundred or thousand years prior to the earliest human habitation — her very soul might rebel at the thought of it — but she would never stoop to base criminality to hide an unpleasant truth. Even if that truth goes against her most firmly-held suppositions.

I am flummoxed. Utterly flummoxed.

-May 25, 1957-

I have no doubts now. Some force has been eroding my memory. Not all memories — only those memories of my astounding find at Tel es-Sultan. I can no longer picture in my mind what that partially evacuated cliff wall at the bottom of the trench looked like, the one that contained the carnosaur’s bones. I can’t clearly picture the bones themselves. I could no more reconstruct my notes and sketches at this point than I could willfully sprout propeller blades from my head and soar off above Old Bailey.

Oh, God... I feel like I’m coming apart. Every night before turning in, I write notes to myself of what I am able to recollect about my last three days at Tel es-Sultan and my first few days back in London. I have made this my nightly ritual. But I feel like King Canute, ordering the tides to recede. No matter how hard I struggle against it, each time I succumb to sleep, an ethereal tide sweeps through my skull and erodes more and more of those specific memories, leaving all else untouched. I know this because when I awaken, I immediately read over my notes from the night before. And it as if I am reading a letter from a stranger. The only way I’ve managed to retain as much as I have is that I go back, again and again, through my full set of nightly notes, which extends back eleven entries. Each successive entry is a little less rich with detail than the one from the night previous.

I fear I won’t have even this expediency to rely upon much longer. The oldest of these nightly notes, the ones that are most detailed... they’ve begun fading into illegibility, as though they were decades old and regularly exposed to the sun’s bleaching.

Am I going mad?

-May 26, 1957-

I dare not reach out to Miss Kenyon to ask whether she has been experiencing a parallel erosion of memories. She might consider me emotionally disturbed, even deranged, and lose all trust in me. Then any chance I would have of returning to the bones at Tel es-Sultan would be dashed.

Despite my promise to Miss Kenyon to keep word of my discovery among ourselves, I see no alternative but to try to determine whether other archeologists or paleontologists have come upon similar findings. Perhaps such discoveries were made in the last century, before the science of geological dating was established? If so, that could be the reason the remarkableness of the findings went unnoted. Perhaps if I research such century-old digging expeditions, I’ll find evidence that will validate what my notes tell me I saw at Tel es-Sultan...?

I’ll begin researching tomorrow, at my university’s library.

-May 30, 1957-

I’ve read myself almost blind, but come up with virtually nothing. The only lead I’ve uncovered is an exceedingly dubious one. The writings of Professor Archibald von Heussen, whose increasingly bizarre theories concerning the age of the planet and its shape(!) made him a laughingstock at Cambridge. Those writings caused a scandal among his geologist colleagues, and ultimately resulted in his forced early retirement.

He’s still alive, residing here in London. I’ve sent the old duffer a letter, asking for a meeting. A long shot, certainly, and with considerable risk to my reputation. What am I getting myself into? If any of my fellow graduate students or professors were to get wind of this encounter, I would become a laughingstock myself.

This may end up an utter waste of my time, my meeting with an academic outcast who may turn out to be a senile, silly old eccentric. Yet what choice do I have? I either make every possible effort to corroborate what my notes tell me I have seen, or I resign myself to permanently doubting my own sanity.

-June 8, 1957-

Professor von Heussen shakes my hand with extreme enthusiasm. He’s more vigorous than I’d imagined he’d be, despite his advanced years. “Delighted to meet you, Mr. Davison!” he says, his eyes wide and bright behind thick lenses. I notice the faded black tape that holds the frames of his glasses together. He smiles, revealing a set of ill-fitting dentures. His breath reminds me of days-old fish wrappings. I can’t help but notice the genteel poverty of his lodgings (a rented room in a third-rate boarding house) and his threadbare suit of clothes. “I so rarely receive a visit from fellow academics these days. An opportunity to talk shop — not to be missed! I apologize I haven’t anything to offer you for lunch here. Might we go down the street to the local pub? Their fish is quite good.”

We relocate ourselves to the local pub (I’ll be buying, I imagine). He matches me stride for stride, surprisingly jaunty, telling me my letter had boosted his spirits to heights not experienced since his days as a senior lecturer. Once inside the pub (I spot no familiar faces, thank heaven), I steer us to a booth in the back, far enough from the front windows to be cloaked in gloom.

“So,” he says, once we have given our lunch orders to the barkeep, “your letter was unclear, rather mysterious, even, regarding the nature of the information you seek. Believe you me, young sir, I understand fully that those of us working on the fringes of conventional knowledge — or, as I put it, consensus knowledge — must step carefully.” He peers around him. “We’re quite secure here. I believe none of the other customers are capable of reading much more than the headlines of the tabloid newspapers. I doubt any of them have even heard of Darwin or Galileo.”

The mere mention of those names causes me to shiver, for some reason. I steel myself, then begin telling him my predicament. The time I spent at the ruins of Jericho; the unauthorized dig I engaged in at Tel es-Sultan; the dinosaur bones I excavated from a geological stratum just beneath those which held tools and pottery shards from the Natufian settlement; our being expelled from Jordanian territory due to the Suez crisis; the confiscation of my notes and photographs. He pays keen attention to what I’m saying, as though his life hinged upon the details.

After our food arrives, I wade into more outré matters. Such as the progressive erosion of my memories of my fantastic find at Tel es-Sultan; the disappearance from my apartment of my reconstituted notes and sketches; my frantic efforts to retain my recollections by writing set after set of nightly notes; and how the ink of notes just two weeks old had begun to prematurely fade.

When I told the first part of my tale, his thin, pallid lips turned white with compression. Now, as I speak of my uncanny experiences following my return to London, he’s begun trembling with barely controlled emotional turmoil.

Something seems to break inside him when I finish my recounting. He lurches across the table, dipping his tie and the edges of his jacket into our lunches, and clumsily embraces me. “My boy, my boy...!” His tears dribble onto my neck. “I know all that you’re going through, all of it! I never thought, never dreamed my own experiences would be shared by another. You’ve validated me! They’ve called me a crank, a drunkard, a senile fool, a lunatic, for years! But you — a young man, in the prime of life, brilliant enough to be selected by Kathleen Kenyon for her latest Jericho expedition — for you to have shared my ordeal, to have witnessed with your own eyes the last evidentiary vestiges of a fading Truth... this makes my efforts to resist my nemesis worthwhile. For I’ve at last found someone willing to take up the flickering torch of Truth from my palsied hands.”

He wraps his fish and chips in a bundle of paper napkins and crams the bundle into his satchel, otherwise filled with a jumble of hand-written papers. “Come,” he says. “There’s something I must share with you. Before it is gone. You must see it, read it with your own eyes, before it vanishes forever.”

I leave my own lunch and beer on the table. We take the Tube and walk the remainder of the way to Great Russell Street. Holding onto the sleeve of my jacket as though I were an errant child, von Heussen pulls me across the courtyard of the British Museum, then between the massive stone columns flanking the entrance foyer. I expect him to lead me into the Reading Room at the center of the museum’s Great Court, but instead he pulls me past that fabulous old library with its iron-framed book stacks and its papier-mâché interior dome, modeled to look like that of the Pantheon in Rome, into a side corridor leading away from public spaces.

“Where is it we’re going, Professor?” I ask, avoiding water drippage from a tangle of overhead pipes.

“You’ll see soon enough,” he says.

He leads me into what must be the museum’s boiler room. Poorly ventilated, the air is stale, thick, and clammy. I again find myself doubting the usefulness of this rendezvous; I half expect him to expose himself to me here, in these forlorn shadows.

Von Heussen pulls me to the corner furthermost from the entrance. He kneels next to an iron grating a foot above the floor, removes a pocket knife from his satchel, and unscrews the four screws holding the grating in place. His face tense with strain, he reaches inside the rectangular opening. His expression lightens. “Ah! Still there!”

He pulls out a book, a very old one, centuries old, judging from its manufacture. In all likelihood, von Heussen purloined it from the Reading Room. “Here!” he says, handing it to me. “You must read it. You must see what is inside. The drawings, and the accompanying captions...”

“It looks too delicate,” I say, afraid to handle it. “Really, Professor, this belongs in the hands of a museum archivist, certainly not stuffed into a ventilation hole in the boiler room wall...”

“But I had to make it inaccessible,” he insists. “I had to. The fewer people who see it, the fewer who know about it, the more chance it has of avoiding the... the vanishing. I’m putting it at dire risk of disappearing simply by showing it to you. But I must show it to you, you see. Someone must carry the knowledge forward. I’m an old man, and I’ve been fleeing my nemesis for so terribly long. I suspect I may soon fade away as irrevocably as the ink my notes are written with... the ink your notes are written with, too. Open it, please. Read what’s there, before it’s too late.”

I take the fragile book to a work table beneath an exposed, hanging light bulb. It’s some kind of an explorer’s journal, the diary of a sea captain. The spelling and grammar appear to be early modern English, Shakespearian or thereabouts. The dates of the entries are a good bit earlier than Shakespeare, actually — from the middle of the fifteenth century, four decades prior to Columbus’s initial journey to the West Indies.

The crew had been surveying the western coast of Africa when a fierce storm blew them far off course, way farther south than any prior documented voyage of an English or Spanish vessel. The captain, Nicholas Smythe, wrote how ice caked all the masts and fittings of his ship, and floating chunks of it pounded ceaselessly against the waterline sections of the hull. Far more startling is this entry, dated August 14, 1451: “In broad Day’s litte, with the Sun high in the Skye, the Skye Behinde us, to the Northe, is Blewe. But the Skye Ahede of us, to the Sowthe, is Blakke as Nitte, with the Starres in full Vewe. I feare we have Reeched Worlde’s End.”

“Read on, Mr. Davison,” von Heussen says behind me, “read on.”

Smythe ordered four men into a small boat lowered from the gunwales and commanded them to row toward the darkness, then return and tell him what they had seen there. The boat vanished from his sight. It suddenly disappeared when it reached the dark horizon, as though it had plunged over a waterfall. The craft and its men never returned.

Smythe noted with alarm the ocean current pushing his ship ever closer to that black region where the tiny boat had disappeared. He ordered his crew to clear the ice from the sails and unfurl them, so that they might make use of the prevailing northerly winds, quite gusty and strong, to counter the southerly push of the current. Once this was done, he ordered another set of men into a second boat. He commanded that this one be tethered to the mother ship by a long rope, then convinced the men to set out by promising them their crewmates would pull them back in.

Smythe climbed to the top of the mainmast to watch the second boat’s progress. This one, too, appeared to plunge over the edge of a night-black waterfall. Smythe shouted for his crew to pull the boat back. It took the combined muscle power of twenty sailors to accomplish this.

Are the aged letters on the page growing less distinct? Or is this a phenomenon of my overstimulated imagination? I remove my glasses, fog them with my breath, then scrub them with the corner of my shirt.

The retrieved boat did not contain all the crew with which it had set out. The remaining sailors had to be hoisted back aboard the ship, ropes tied around their chests and beneath their stiffened arms, as though they were caskets of salted beef. Their eyelashes and nostrils and mouths had become caked with ice, their bodies frozen solid. Expressions of indescribable horror were stamped on their dead faces.

Smythe decided, as captain, he had to see what his men had seen. He would not risk a mutiny by ordering any more of his sailors to accompany him. He climbed down the rope ladder into the still-tethered boat. His crew passed to him a fresh set of oars. He ordered them to begin pulling him back to the ship the instant he signaled them by raising an oar above his head.

Closer and closer he rowed toward what seemed to him must be the edge of the world. The icy wind cut through his thick coat. Tears froze at the edges of his eyes; mucous flowed from his nostrils, then froze on his upper lip and cheeks.

The closer he rowed to what appeared to be the ocean’s end, the more difficult it became for him to breathe. Not only because the air was frigid... it seemed thinner, somehow, as though he had ascended the heights of the tallest Alps. The sounds of the wind in his ears and the pounding of waves against the sides of his boat faded into near silence, until Smythe feared his eardrums had frozen solid.

His following words are muddled, the ones that attempt to tell what he witnessed just before he gave the signal to be hauled back; severely limited by the inability of language to describe phenomena outside normal human experience. Much clearer, however, is the crude drawing he made on the same page — the edge of the Earth, flat as a dinner plate, with his tethered boat held tautly at the terminus... and, judging from the relative scale of the objects drawn, hundreds of meters of ice suspended like stalactites from the Earth’s edge, hanging straight down, with the first small boat and the bodies of half a dozen sailors stuck to the ice like gnats in a spider’s sticky web.

“Do you see now?” Professor von Heussen says from behind me. “According to these journal entries, as of the year 1451, the Earth was flat.”

My rebuttal comes swiftly. “This ‘proves’ nothing of the sort,” I say, more heatedly than I intended. “No more so than all those maps of the period that labeled the interior of Africa as ‘Here Be Dragons’. I’ll admit that Smythe’s account is vivid, certainly. But whatever he saw, his description was skewed by his expectations and the limits of his world view. All this journal demonstrates is that in 1451, virtually everyone believed the Earth to be flat.”

“Yes,” von Heussen says, disarming my vehemence by surrendering to it. “Exactly, my boy.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that in 1451, the bulk of learned opinion, which filtered down to commonplace beliefs held by the great majority of humanity, recognized the Earth to be both flat and orbited by the sun, moon, and stars. Copernicus’s theory of a sun-centered solar system was a radical outlier. A little more than a century later, Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa. By the time of Galileo’s death in 1642, the gestalt of human belief had begun shifting irrevocably toward the Copernican universe and the Earth as a globe orbiting the sun. The balance of human belief shifted. Reality followed, like a dog follows his master.”

This truly has been a waste of my time. Von Heussen is either senile or daft. “You have it exactly backwards, old fellow,” I say, shutting the book with a dusty thump. “Reality comes first. People’s beliefs shift as they discard their ignorance in favor of new evidence uncovered through discovery or experimentation, evidence that better reflects actual reality.”

“I assumed you would say that,” von Heussen says. He opens his satchel. “That’s why I brought these along to show you.” He begins spreading his jumble of typed notes, drawings, and faded photographs across the table.

“What is all this?”

“My studies of a half-century’s worth of mining core samples. Like you with your Jericho materials, I have to constantly re-write, re-type, or re-draw my notes and sketches to prevent their total loss. Unfortunately, photographing my photographs, again and again, results in a progressive lessening of resolution, and none of the original core samples have survived. But let me tell you what I’ve seen. Fifty years ago, even forty years ago, the great majority of the cores, which ranged in length from a hundred meters to more than a thousand, showed identical signs of torsion stress, torque fractures—”

“I’m no geologist. Please explain in layman’s terms.”

“Of course. What I mean to say is that the layers of rock contained within the core samples showed unmistakable signs of having been bent or curled. Folded, essentially. The pattern of fractures I saw was consistent with material that had been forced from a level, flat orientation to a curved orientation. If I had a handful of clay available, I could easily demonstrate the fracture pattern.”

“That’s daft. If what you say is true, why haven’t your observations been replicated by hundreds of other geologists?”

“Back when I started this research, which was prompted by my reading Captain Smythe’s journal more than half a century ago, I was a pioneer in my study of mining cores. Other geologists made use of them, of course, but they weren’t looking for what I was looking for. They were looking for evidence of oil deposits or natural gas or rare minerals. Realizing how revolutionary my discoveries and resulting theories were, I resolved to gather as much data as I could before sharing my findings with the world.

“This was a mistake, you see. I waited too long to publish. Subsequent core samples, those extracted from the same locales fifteen or twenty years after the samples that had shown obvious torque fractures, contained no torque fractures. None. Physical reality is a lagging indicator of consensus belief. Particularly hidden physical reality, those aspects of tangible reality not subject to routine and frequent observation — such as the Earth’s sub-crust, the upper mantle. I’m afraid my own observations hastened the process of subterranean physical phenomena adjusting themselves to be in accord with humanity’s gestalt-mind. But I didn’t know... I couldn’t imagine it, you see... just as you’re having a difficult time imagining it. Not realizing the consequences of my own researches, I was like a mummy-hunter who, in his haste to find his treasures, breaks the entrance seal of a royal tomb and exposes the mummies within to the fresh air, which causes them to crumble into dust before he can have even a good look at them, much less preserve them.”

This is insanity, rank nonsense. My entire being rebels at what he’s saying. But suspicion it could be true blossoms like a seed buried in offal. “So what you’re basically saying is, no proof can be provided for this wild theory of yours, because the very act of your observing evidence to support it makes that evidence disappear? Wouldn’t you say that’s awfully bloody convenient?”

“But Mr. Davison, you’ve experienced the workings of this force yourself. Wasn’t it your sense of perceptual reality warping around you that brought you to my door? The sense that the past was in the process of changing, and that this change was adjusting the present?”

“Yes. Yes, I’ll admit it — such thoughts did occur to me. And after talking with you today, I’m bloody well of a mind to plonk myself down on a psychiatrist’s couch in hopes my sanity is still salvageable.”

“But you aren’t insane, Mr. Davison. I’m not insane.” He reaches across the table and grabs my hands in a palsied grip. “Please. Don’t dismiss me out of hand. You’re the only one capable of carrying my work forward. Of sharing with humanity the hidden truth that orders the perceptible universe which surrounds us. We are God! Our collective mind is God! Not some Omnipotent Power or Unmoved First Mover that inhabits the heavens! We, us, collectively — the force of our gestalt-mind overrides perceptible physical reality and molds it to its changing consensus. The past is not immutable — far from it!

“You’re appalled. Let me explain further. Periodically an ideological juggernaut arises amongst us — I speak not of political ideologies, but more of modes of thought that drive conceptual and scientific revolutions. I speak of the ideologies of our origins, physical laws, the ordering of the universe. Ideologies promulgated by intellectual giants such as Galileo, Darwin, Nietzsche, Einstein, perhaps even Freud — men whose thoughts and teachings have changed our world by changing the way we think about it. But their influence goes beyond simply that — they changed their and subsequently our present by changing our shared pasts. Perhaps at one time, a sky god and an ocean god and a goddess of agriculture and a goddess of love really did dwell together atop a mountain and meddle in the affairs of men, and an underworld really did exist beneath the surface of Earth, presided over by a dark god. Perhaps at a somewhat later time, these gods vanished from their mountaintop, faded before the victorious ideological advance of a unitary God. Perhaps at one time, all men possessed souls in addition to their bodies, souls that survived the death and decay of the physical body and thrived in a Heaven or suffered in a Hell or waited in a Purgatory. Perhaps at one time, the sun really did orbit the Earth—”

“Stop. Just, just... stop.” Ludicrous, all of it, demented ravings... so why is my skull threatening to burst, like a cocoon barely holding back a growing larva? “You must see how impossible this all is. Just — just think through your own theory about the geological evolution of the Earth. According to what you’ve said, in 1451, the Earth was flat as a doormat. Then, less than three centuries later, it had become a globe. You’re a bloody geologist — you know much more about tectonic plates and volcanism and earthquakes than I do, for God’s sake. For argument’s sake, let’s assume this geological transformation you spoke of actually took place. The devastation on the planet’s surface would have been millions of times worse than if the U.S. and Russia dropped every single nuclear bomb in their arsenals on each other — it would have produced a, a holocaust that would’ve wiped out, not just all humanity, but most likely all life on Earth. But we’re still here, aren’t we? We just had a hectic lunch in a bloody pub in the middle of bloody London. The same bloody London that existed back in 1451, the year that Captain Smythe’s expedition cast off from the London docks. Can’t you see how stupid and ridiculous your theory is?”

He squeezes my wrists more tightly. “Mr. Davison, don’t you think I’ve considered all that? I’ve had decades to ponder the implications. Perhaps the worldwide holocaust you insist must have wiped out all humanity failed to produce that consequence, because the people who experienced their planet’s geological transformation did not know about tectonic plates and the mechanics of volcanism and earth tremors. They didn’t realize they were supposed to be burned to ashes and crushed, so they weren’t! Perhaps in such an environment, the Earth transformed itself as it might in a Walt Disney cartoon — everyone was bounced into the air and spilled their soup and fell on their arses, then picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and carried on as before. Or perhaps all the people and every speck of human civilization and all the Earth’s flora and fauna really did perish in that planetary conflagration three or four centuries ago, but the planet got better. Healed itself, you see, because the believers in Galileo’s ideological revolution believed and continue to believe that the Earth has always been a globe and has always orbited the sun — so no catastrophic change in the planet’s shape ever occurred! But of course it did occur, because my studies of mining cores showed that it did. Captain Smythe’s journal showed that it did.

“It is possible, likely, even, that at one time, centuries ago, the Pyramids were reduced to dust and the Parthenon and Coliseum in Rome were obliterated. But they reappeared. Or maybe they appeared for the first time — for perhaps they had not existed prior to the planetary cataclysm — but the post-Galileo gestalt-mind believed them to have existed. The surface, the visible and tangible, they fall in line with shifts in the gestalt-mind first. Hidden phenomena, such as subterranean layers of the Earth’s mantle, those things change more gradually, you see. The rapid geological evolution of our planet from a flat plane to a globe did occur. But once Captain Smythe’s journal is gone, once my re-written and re-re-written notes are gone, once I’m gone — the transformation of Earth will not have occurred. Earth will have always been a globe... just as Galileo said.

“But if you, my lad, take up my cause, share in my witness of the hidden truth of all things... the gestalt-mind may be resisted, at least for a while. The past may remain as it was, for now. Whether that original past is preferable to what it is transforming into is beside the point — it’s worth defending because it was true, and as men of science, we must always champion the truth.”

I pry my hands from his grip, then stand and back away. He stares up at me as though he intends to blurt forth yet another fantastical assertion. But then he stops himself, and his eyes grow infinitely sad.

“Ah, well,” he says, quietly. “At least I tried. No man can do more than that...”

Before leaving the boiler room, I look back. He’s returning Smythe’s journal to its hiding place behind the grating.

-September 10, 1957-

They’re gone. Miriam’s bones are gone.

We returned to Jericho this morning, thanks to the governments of the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of Trans-Jordan having smoothed over their differences. I immediately went to the south side of Tel es-Sultan, where I had ordered my men to deepen the trench last November.

The wooden caissons we’d constructed to shelter the excavated bones from the elements remained just as we’d left them almost a year ago. Still filled with protective plaster. Yet when I carefully chipped away a section of the plaster, I found... only more plaster.

My first thought was that the Jordanian government had removed the bones themselves. By why would they have left the caissons in place? Why would they have refilled the caissons with plaster?

I ordered my men to remove the now useless materials so that we could resume our dig and get at portions of the skeleton the damned Jordanians hadn’t pilfered.

But there are no more bones. The men removed the caissons for me. The side of the trench against which the caissons had sat appears undisturbed. The unmistakable lines of the geologic strata run unmolested clear across the portion of the trench wall in which the skeleton had been entombed. So it’s not as though the Jordanians, in our absence, excavated the remaining bones and then, for some unfathomable reason, repacked the displaced earth into the hole they’d created.

It’s as though the skeleton was never there.

Some of the Arabs working with me today were part of my crew a year ago. They remember hurriedly constructing the wooden caissons just before we British were expelled. They remember pouring plaster into the caissons. They don’t remember why I ordered them to do this. They don’t remember the bones.

Manu, the Indian foreman, tries to diplomatically deflect my increasingly impassioned assertions that we partially excavated the remains of a large carnivorous dinosaur last November. Despite his obsequiousness, he sticks to his polite but firm insistence that he never saw any bones.

Miss Kenyon chides me for making a fuss over nothing. Why, she asks archly, am I wasting time on the played-out southern side of Tel es-Sultan when all the exciting finds are being dug out of the northern side?

That evening, I fabricate a lie. I tell Miss Kenyon I received a cable — that my father had come down with a serious illness, and I must return to London.

I do, but not for my father’s sake. I must speak again with Professor von Heussen.

-September 15, 1957-

“I’m very sorry, sir. You must have the wrong establishment. I’ve never rented rooms to any such individual.”

I haven’t made a mistake. I know I haven’t. This is Professor von Heussen’s landlady. I spoke with her in June, barely more than three months ago. I remember her crooked teeth, her breath stinking of gin, that crude necklace of plastic pearls around her throat. She showed me to the professor’s rooms on the third floor. I remember.

I take the mid-morning train to Cambridge. The head of the geology department, a Professor Miles Haversham, has never heard of Professor von Heussen. I go to the university’s office of personnel. They have no record of any Archibald von Heussen ever having been employed by the university or granted lecturing privileges.

Professor von Heussen taught at Cambridge for nearly forty years.

-September 16, 1957-

I’m among the first visitors to enter the British Museum when opening hour strikes. I head directly to the boiler room. I unscrew the dusty grating from the ventilation shaft with my pocket knife, just as I watched Professor von Heussen do back in June. The dust caking the grating is so thick, it appears the shaft cover has not been touched or moved in years. But I watched Professor von Heussen replace Captain Smythe’s journal in that shaft just three months ago.

I know what I’ll see — or rather, what I won’t see — when I pull the grating from the wall. Still, upon my peering inside, my stomach flops like a dying fish on a dock. The book is not there. The shaft is empty. The dust and grit on its floor have not been disturbed in a dog’s age.

I consult with the Reading Room’s head librarian. I describe the journal and tell him when it would have been pilfered from the rare volumes collection. He leads me to the card catalog.

There’s no record of any such volume. Captain Smythe’s journal never resided within the British Museum’s rare books collection. So far as the British Museum is concerned, the book never existed.

I could consult the Admiralty’s historical archives for a copy. I could search for a record of Captain Smythe’s expedition to chart the coast of East Africa. But I don’t bother. It would be an exercise in futility. I know what I won’t find.

-September 17, 1957-

What do I do? Simply wait to vanish from existence, as Professor von Heussen did? The horror of it...

I could stop copying my old notes every night before going to sleep. I could allow myself to forget that I ever discovered dinosaur bones at Tel es-Sultan. Allow my memories of Archibald von Heussen to vanish, forget that there ever was an Archibald von Heussen, that I ever read Captain Smythe’s journal, that there ever was such a journal or such a sea captain.

But would that protect me from obliteration? What if this “gestalt-mind” postulated by Professor von Heussen, this hidden arranger and re-arranger of consensus reality, is especially thorough in its tidying up? What if my having seen dinosaur bones at Jericho and my having listened to Professor von Heussen’s theories is enough to irrevocably mark me for disposal, no matter how much I allow myself to forget?

I’m terrified to sleep, fearing I’ll never awaken. Psychologists claim the mind is incapable of imagining itself not existing, of mentally inhabiting its own extinction. Yet I can sense obliteration’s lackeys nibbling away at my edges, hungry mice eating the brown crusts of the bread of my being.

I need a distraction, or I’ll go out of my mind. Anything will do. There’s a second-run film theater not far from here. It’s showing a war picture. Yangtze Incident: The Story of the H.M.S. Amethyst. Good enough. With assorted newsreels and short subjects and perhaps a second feature, it should help me kill most of an afternoon.

All traces of my appetite have been extinguished; the mingled scents of popcorn and overcooked sausages from the snack stand in the lobby turn my stomach. But it’s still better than sitting at home alone, waiting for an invisible guillotine blade to drop. Richard Todd and his gunboat crew perform with the stoic heroism expected of the Royal Navy, as they hold off what seems like the entire Red Chinese Army during the Chinese Civil War. We may have been humiliated by Eisenhower in Suez and knocked down to a second-rate power, but by God, we can still kick sand in the faces of the bloody Chinese!

The second feature is an obscure little war picture called Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer. Shot in Israel. Concerns itself with the 1948 war for independence. It includes a few British characters, hangers-on from the Mandate period who found themselves caught up in the fight between Palestine’s Jews and Arabs and the invading Arab armies. Maybe if we Brits had managed to maintain our control of Palestine, the damned Israelis wouldn’t have led us by the nose into the Suez debacle, because there wouldn’t have been any damned Israelis, just rebellious Jewish Palestinians. And had that been the case, Miss Kenyon and I would not have been expelled from Jericho by the Jordanians. And I would’ve had the chance to fully excavate Miriam’s bones and take them back with me to London. I would’ve made a name for myself by now. A big, famous name. And enough people would have been exposed to the reality of dinosaurs stomping through Trans-Jordan a few centuries before humans arrived there — it would have been worldwide news, surely — that perhaps that aspect of the past wouldn’t have been erased. And maybe I wouldn’t now be in the bloody situation I find myself in, sitting in a rundown theater with a sticky floor and burnt sausages, waiting to be vanished along with Miriam’s bones, Smythe’s journal, and Professor von Heussen.

Hell, the damned Israeli picture’s over. What can I do with myself now? Find another theater? Walk the circumference of London? Surrender to sleep?

Wait — there’s another feature or short subject spooling up. Some Hawaiian thing, from the looks of it. Trek to Makaha, whatever that means. Whoever selects the programs here certainly has eclectic tastes. This one looks almost like a student film. Grainy images, amateurish narration. Probably shot on the budget one would set aside for a used Vauxhall saloon car. Interesting, though... seems it’s all about those surf enthusiasts, young Americans who drag buoyant boards out to sea to ride waves big enough to capsize an aircraft carrier. Crazy buggers have to time it just right to avoid being pounded into jelly and then dashed against rock jetties. Yet somehow they do it again and again — manage to stand atop those floating boards just in time for the building waves to push them along at twenty knots or so, rather than drown them.

It’s mesmerizing. Just the distraction I hoped for. I almost feel as though I’m there with them, balancing atop those shining boards. I’m caught up in the power and fury of inexorable Nature, yet harnessing that fury as though it were a race horse, riding it...

Riding the wave to avoid being drowned by it...

Good Lord, that’s it! That’s what I must do in order to survive. I must ride the wave, harness its power, or be drowned. Professor von Heussen didn’t do it. He didn’t ride the wave. He pushed against it, and it vanished him. Who, it seems, managed to ride the gestalt-mind’s reality-altering wave? Galileo. Darwin. Einstein. Men whose pronouncements changed enough minds to alter reality and change the past. The bloody wave riders.

I must become a wave rider myself, not a wave victim. I have to change the past, somehow. Reach enough minds, convince a critical mass of humanity that what they thought was true of the past is actually false. Most people are gullible. Stupid, really. I merely need a big enough and loud enough megaphone. ‘Merely’, huh!

But what aspect of the past should I attempt to change? The American colonies’ revolt against the British crown? Surely we would remain a preeminent world power today if we still retained under our rule the bulk of the North American continent and its huge, productive populace. That could have bad knock-on effects, though. What if the Americans never developed their tremendous arms industry, for fear of competing unduly with arms manufacturers located in their mother country? What if Parliament never allowed such American firms to come into being? Such change could’ve left us in a serious ditch during both the Great War and the more recent European unpleasantness. And how could I manage to convince a hundred and fifty million Americans that their country never came into existence, not to mention persuading a critical mass of Canadians, Mexicans, South Americans, Germans, and Japanese that there never was a United States of America?

Yet I shouldn’t attempt to bite off too little, either. Say I picked an incident in my own past — being picked on by a bully at school, that lout Donald Sykes, for example. I happen to know that Sykes works in the local brewery. I could arrange to bump into him when he’s released from his shift at the factory, could hail him as a long-lost mate. He’s thick as a brick. With a bit of “hail-well-met” and a few rounds of beers at his favorite pub, I’m certain I could convince him that we were chums during school, that his assaults on my person never happened, or that his loutishness was directed at some other poor bugger. Yet would that be enough? Would changing such a tiny bit of the past, known only to me and to one or two others, matter enough to take the target off my back? Would it be riding the wave, or stepping over a puddle?

But if I go bigger, attempt to change beliefs regarding a past event known to a much larger group of people, there’s the problem of credibility. I would have to pick an event that a huge mass of people would want to believe had actually taken place differently than commonly thought. That way, I could harness individuals’ tendencies toward wish fulfillment and preference confirmation, rather than struggle against firmly rooted convictions.

So attempting to convince a majority of Britons, say, that the U.K. never lost control of the Palestine Mandate would be a non-starter. As much as changing that aspect of the past would help me, personally, most of my countrymen, having witnessed the savage tribal passions of the Middle East, are more than happy to be done with the bloody place. No wish fulfillment there for me to work with.

Where have I wandered? I’ve been swimming so fiercely inside my head, I exited the theater and let my legs aimlessly navigate. Abandoned tombstones, flowers...? I’ve wandered into St. George’s Gardens, the place where I last spoke with Miriam. The very grounds upon which she cast me adrift, saying she couldn’t bear to “abandon” her fellow Jews, not after the trauma of the Nazis’ holocaust. Not after her mother’s murder at the hands of the mass exterminators...

And there it is. Yes. I stare at a weathered tombstone, the name once carved on its surface as gone and forgotten as the names of those millions of dead Jews, and it comes into focus. My bloody wave to ride.

I’ll make it so the Nazi extermination of six million Jews never happened.

The Germans want to believe it never happened. That the chemicals sprayed on the Jews at Auschwitz were meant merely for delousing, not asphyxiation. That only a few hundred thousand Jews died in the camps — work camps, not death camps — and those deaths were caused by disease and the lack of food brought on by wartime shortages and the Allied bombing campaigns. The Germans don’t want to see themselves as bureaucratic-minded barbarians. They’re the people of Goethe and Beethoven, after all. Hitler did many good things, according to his apologists — he halted the ruinous inflation of the Weimar years, he built the Autobahn, and he gave the Germans back their pride after the humiliation of Versailles. Sure, he went too far, he got himself in over his head, but isn’t that the risk faced by anyone who strives to accomplish great things?

And then there’re the Muslims. Nearly a billion of them, when you include the impoverished multitudes of India and Indonesia. Of the whole Muslim crew, the Arabs hold the hottest grudge against the Jews, for certain, but that whole lot tend to think alike. The Jews gave their prophet Mohammed a hard time, apparently, and so the Muslims’ Holy Koran is filled with commandments to slay the beastly Jews or reduce them to servitude. The Arabs already think the Nazi extermination of the European Jews was a Jewish hoax, a fiendishly clever plot by the Zionists to garner sympathy with the United Nations so that the Great Powers would put their stamp of approval on the Jews’ stealing Arab land to found Israel. Lots of fertile soil there for the right sort of historical revisionism. I wouldn’t even have to advance a particularly airtight argument; just raising questions and sowing doubt would be enough. The Muslims’ eagerness to believe in conspiracies, combined with their general backwardness, would do the rest of the work for me.

If I could do it... if I could change the Nazis’ holocaust from the most heinous planned slaughter of civilians the world has ever seen to merely a regrettable, but understandable, unintended consequence of war, on the level, perhaps, of what the British Army did to the Boers at the turn of the century... I could make it so that Miriam’s mother survived the conflict. I could abolish Miriam’s father’s grief. I could remove Miriam’s objections to our being married.

I could save millions of lives and rescue my own life at the same time.

-June 28, 1958-

I’ve been going about this all wrong. I’ve wasted nearly all my sabbatical, spending almost five months rummaging through wartime archives in West Germany. I should’ve minded that old commonplace: you can’t prove a negative.

Oh, I managed to obtain marvelous access to archival records from the Nazi period, those that weren’t packed up and shipped off to Washington or London. I found plenty of allies; scratch the surface of a “reformed” National Socialist, now a city official, and the old Jew-hater is there underneath, eager to sympathize with any aspersions cast on the State of Israel or hints that perhaps the vilification of old Adolf H. has gone too far. And yes, I can report that five months of searching failed to uncover any clear and unambiguous orders from the former Führer to carry out the mass extermination of Europe’s Jews. Yet the absence of a direct order to execute the Final Solution cannot constitute proof that such a Final Solution was never carried out. At least not proof compelling enough to initiate the shift I require in mass belief about Germany’s treatment of European Jewry.

No, I must have physical proof the holocaust has been mischaracterized, not just an absence of documentary proof of official directives from the top ordering an extermination. I need to find a way to get into Poland and visit the remains of the death camps. Particularly Auschwitz. Only there, with an archeological analysis, can I acquire evidence that strongly indicates to the average layman that the existence of death camps was a massive hoax, a piece of wartime Allied propaganda later instrumentalized by the Jews to grease the rails for the establishment of Israel.

But there’s the damned inconvenience of old Winston’s Iron Curtain standing between me and the most infamous of concentration camps. And the more time I waste before inducing a wave of reality-change to ride, the more time von Heussen’s nemesis has to ensnare me.

-September 17, 1958-

I’ve made a thorough canvassing of Miss Kenyon’s Red associates in the archeology field, of which there are no shortage (all the fashionable academics have been Red, or at least Pink, since the early ‘forties). Yet none of them have evinced the sort of contacts on the far side of the Iron Curtain that could grant me access to Communist Poland.

Von Heussen’s nemesis is drawing closer. I swear I can feel it in my room with me at night, scuttling from corner to corner, shadow to shadow.

I can’t delay my visit to Auschwitz much longer. I must find a way.

Time to pursue a different tack. Oswald Mosley’s back from his self-imposed exile in Ireland. The bastard’s making a run for a seat in Parliament representing Kensington North, this time standing under the banner of the Union Movement, rather than his old crew, the disbanded British Union of Fascists. Seems queer to pin my hopes for getting the Iron Curtain lifted for me on a former fascist. But recently Mosley’s been pushing the notion that Britain is destined to unite the nations of Europe into a super-state that can counterbalance the international influence of the United States. So the Union Movement is exactly the type of movement the Soviets would look upon favorably... and likely secretly fund.

Why would he help me? Contrary to his claims of having turned over a new leaf, Mosley’s never abandoned his Jew-hatred. I’m sure he’d be delighted to hear of my efforts to discredit Jewish claims of monumental victimization during the recent war. For all his unsavory reputation, the man maintains extensive connections, as an aristocrat, the founder of several political movements, and as a former Member of Parliament. I’m fairly certain the old spider can pull upon strands of his nasty, sticky web and obtain for me the papers I need to enter Poland.

-October 4, 1958-

“I must say, I am delighted with this plan of yours, Professor Davison. It’s long past time someone with intellectual integrity pushed back against the extravagant, ahistorical claims of the Jews and their abominable slanders against the German people.”

I thought this meeting with Sir Oswald Mosley would be no worse, no more abhorrent, than my meetings with former Nazi functionaries in West Germany had been. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I found it easy enough to distance myself, psychologically, from the Germans, the Former Enemy. But not Mosley... it’s as though we’re too closely related, members of the same “English race”. He reminds me too much of my father. Particularly that wry, self-satisfied smirk that never leaves its spot from beneath his thin mustache.

“Of course I’ll make inquiries on your behalf,” he says. “I have my resources, you know, in and out of government, never you doubt!”

So says a man who’s never doubted himself, despite his series of political debacles and being imprisoned by his own government for much of the duration of the late war. Sir Oswald has learned nothing from history, either the world’s or his own. Shaking hands with him is like grasping the oily claw of Kafka’s human-sized cockroach. Yet he is precisely the sort of man I’m forced to rely upon. If I am to be successful in changing the past, I’ll need to ally myself with millions of Sir Oswald Mosleys. Lord help me.

-December12, 1958-

It’s surreal to walk, enshrouded in a winter’s fog, through the main gate of Auschwitz II-Birkenau, along the very railroad tracks that transported nearly all the Jews of Hungary on their final journeys. It’s surreal that I should stride into genocide’s ground zero, intending to strip it of its infamy, to reduce the unspeakable to the unremarkable. If I am successful, this dreadful place will become either an ugly, forlorn, forgotten shell of a wartime factory or an empty field, home only to rodents and flocks of migrating geese.

My guide is Kazimierz Smolen. A Pole, he was a former inmate of this place, and is now its caretaker and foremost historian. He’s arranged for an interpreter to assist me. Through the interpreter, I ask Smolen to take me to the gas chambers.

Smolen explains there are four major ones, Crematoria II through V, as well as two much smaller buildings, one known as Bunker 1 by the Germans and ‘the little red house’ by the camp’s inmates, the other labeled Bunker 2 by the SS and ‘the little white house’ by the inmates. None are very far from the rail terminus. This, of course, made matters convenient for the SS guards and doctors who performed selections on the newly arrived prisoners.

“These buildings are remarkably well preserved,” I say, “considering they survived at least one inmate uprising and the incursion of the Red Army.”

The interpreter relays my remark. “The barracks and administrative buildings survived the war reasonably intact,” Smolen replies. “These crematoria and gas chambers, however, have been reconstructed by us Poles. The Germans blew up the crematoria before they retreated in the face of the Russians. They wanted to leave behind no evidence of their crimes. I assisted in the reconstruction. Having spent five years imprisoned here, my memories of the camp’s architecture are quite reliable.”

“How badly were these crematoria damaged?”

“They were reduced to rubble. Piles of bricks. We had to entirely rebuild them, from their foundations on up.”

I hadn’t realized this. “Is this common knowledge, this reconstruction?”

“The matter is shared with those who ask.”

This obscure fact can work to my advantage. The chemist with whom I consulted back in London told me that cyanide, the active ingredient in Zyklon B, only penetrates brick to a depth of about one millimeter... and obviously, only on the wall’s exposed surface. With these gas chambers having been reconstructed from piles of blown-apart bricks, who can say which bricks were replaced in their original orientation, and which were not? It’s not as though each brick was inscribed with assembly instructions.

I ask permission to remain alone for a few hours in the crematoria. I state I wish to take a large selection of photographs and shoot a few canisters of sixteen millimeter film (I rented a movie camera in Warsaw). Smolen and the interpreter leave me on my own in Crematorium II.

The film camera wasn’t the only tool I picked up in Warsaw. I didn’t bring my own hammer and chisels from London; I figured such odd implements might attract too much unwelcome attention from Polish customs officials. The ones I bought in Warsaw, crude Communist tools, will suffice.

I set up the film equipment. I intend to visually document every act I undertake at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, in all six of the gas chambers, in the barracks, and in the clothing delousing facilities. If, as Churchill supposedly said, truth in wartime is so precious that it requires a bodyguard of lies, the inverse is also true — this lie is so precious that it requires a bodyguard of truths.

Demonstrating to future viewers what a thorough documentarian I am, I mark with chalked numbers the various spots on the interior walls of Crematorium II where I will extract my samples. I neatly set out the equivalently marked sample collection bags. Then I take up my hammer and chisel.

Blow after blow I strike, placing the resulting shards in my sample bags, filming myself the entire while. Wielding the chisel and hammer makes me think of the stone masons of long-ago London, who inscribed the names of the dead, their life spans, and their epitaphs on the gravestones at St. George’s Gardens. They were helping to inter the dead. But with each hammer blow, I strive to disinter the dead, to remold bones from ashes and place warm flesh on those bones. I will resurrect the dead by blotting out their murders and the memories of those murders. I am reshaping history and reality with my chisel the way Michelangelo, with his chisel, reshaped a gargantuan block of marble into David. But unlike Michelangelo’s, my Davids, risen from the ashes, will dance and feast, marry and grow old.

-January 15, 1959-

The analysis results I’ve obtained from Abbetty and Harcourt, Industrial Chemists, bear out my bad-faith hypotheses to a tee. I did not reveal to the testers that the samples I presented to them had been purloined from buildings at Auschwitz. Instead, I indicated that, for purposes of insurance claims, I had undertaken an investigation of an industrial accident in Surrey, one involving a production and storage facility operated by a manufacturer of agricultural pesticides.

Of the three lots of samples I provided for testing, the lot chiseled from the interior bricks of the clothing delousing building presented by far the highest concentration of cyanide traces. The samples from the interiors of the six gas chambers, on the other hand, in terms of cyanide concentrations barely rank above those taken from the interiors of the barracks. In fact, the difference in cyanide content between the latter two is statistically insignificant. Perfect for my purposes.

There are good reasons for these seemingly incongruous results, of course. Reasons I shall not allude to in the pages of the book I have already begun to write. Here’s a fact known only to entomologists — hard-shelled insects are way more resistant to the lung-deadening effects of cyanide than humans are, and thus far higher concentrations of the poison, and longer periods of exposure, are required to kill lice and other insect vermin than to asphyxiate human beings. The Germans knew that only five minutes of exposure to the emissions of the cyanide gas pellets they dropped through tubes in the ceilings of the crematoria would kill the several hundred inmates crammed inside, whereas lice would require a half-hour’s exposure to exterminate. The Nazis aired out the gas chambers as quickly and efficiently as they could, so that the Sonderkommandos, the forced collaborators, could clear out the corpses of their fellow Jews and stuff them into the cremation ovens, and a fresh batch of non-useful inmates could then be done away with. After all, what is a German without a time-table?

Furthermore, in order to carry out the tests I required, the industrial chemists crushed my entire samples into powder, improperly diluting any traces of cyanide. Had the testers known the true origin of the samples, they would have analyzed only those surfaces of the brick fragments that had actually been exposed to Zyklon B. Of course, the Poles’ postwar reconstruction of the gas chambers makes it impossible for anyone less omniscient than the Heavenly Father to know which bricks originally lined the interiors of Crematoria II through V and Bunkers 1 and 2, and which surfaces of those bricks had been fogged by clouds of Zyklon B gas.

Who might see through my deception? Only certain chemists, materials engineers, doctors, and biologists, a small enough contingent. But for the average reader of my forthcoming book, The Holocaust Hoax: The Zionist Plot to Steal the Sympathies of the World, other, far more apparent and self-evident ‘facts’ will burrow into their brains like earwigs; ‘facts’ given weight by widespread Jew-hatred and suspicions of Jewish conspiracies of world domination. I can predict those readers’ thoughts with fair confidence—

Surely, if the crematoria had been used as death chambers, rather than sanitary disposal facilities for victims of typhus, the brick samples taken from their interiors would show far higher concentrations of cyanide than samples taken from the bricks of clothing delousing chambers. After all, wouldn’t far more poison be required to slay full-grown adult persons than to exterminate tiny insect vermin? Yet Professor Davison shows that the concentrations of cyanide found in the crematoria chambers are barely above those found in the prisoners’ barracks. Therefore, it must be that small doses of Zyklon B were used in both barracks and crematoria as insecticide and disinfectant agents.

Where are the missing Jews, then? Where did the supposed ‘gassing victims’ go, if they were not burned to ashes? It’s not such a mystery, after all. Tens of millions of people were displaced after the Second World War. The ‘missing’ Jews simply mixed in with the far larger masses of involuntary migrants and displaced persons, abandoning outward signs of their religion to blend in and thus avoid expropriation of their ill-gotten riches.

So claims by the Americans, British, and Russians and their Jewish puppet masters that the Germans used poison gas to exterminate millions of Jews are just updated versions of the Belgian Atrocity propaganda fables circulated by the Allied Powers in World War One. What a monstrous slander of the Germans! Horrendous! And all to facilitate the Zionist theft of Arab lands!

Yes, I expect a handful of scientists and historians, and perhaps a larger cadre of death camp survivors, will excoriate my book. They’ll point out my sins of omission and label me an abhorrent fraud. But by that time, millions of readers will have accepted my facile logic. I have already gotten my publisher to commit to German, Arabic, Spanish, Hindi, Bengali, Japanese, and Indonesian editions. Apart from my international readership, hundreds of millions more will have heard of my assertions through greatly simplified distillations spread by radio, the popular press, and word of mouth.

People will believe what they want most to believe, what they yearn to be true. Nothing is more readily accepted than the seeming confirmation of an already established prejudice. All efforts by scientists, historians, and death camp survivors to refute my work will simply confirm in the popular imagination the existence of a worldwide Zionist conspiracy to smother the truth. The more such experts rail against me, the more credence I will gain from the souk merchant in Cairo, the school teacher in Islamabad, the manual laborer in Munich.

Therefore, I must chain myself to my typewriter’s keyboard like a galley slave is chained to his oar.

-March 30, 1960-

A celebratory telegram from my editor. Huzzah! The Holocaust Hoax has sold more than a million copies in its English edition, reaching that milestone faster than any other book put out by my publisher in its sixty-year history. But those results are dwarfed by those of the foreign language editions — in aggregate, more than fifteen million sold. The Royal House of Saud has subsidized the distribution of a good chunk of that, five million Arabic copies, whipping up a fresh fervor against Israel and the perfidious Zionists throughout the Arab world.

-June 2, 1960-

An unfortunate occurrence took place last night, one I should have foreseen but did not. The Deutsche Reichspartei (the German Imperial Party of West Germany) invited me to speak as guest of honor at their annual party conference. Whereas prior to the publication of my book, this right-wing throwback to the National Socialists had been polling in the very low single digits, the widespread popularity of The Holocaust Hoax has been credited with elevating their numbers into the mid-twenties — higher in some of the more conservative German states.

Although addressing a football stadium packed with neo-Nazis is not my idea of a fun Saturday night outing, one must sacrifice for the greater good. So I found myself exhorting a mass of former Luftwaffe pilots and U-boat crewmen and munitions manufacturers into paroxysms of orgasmic cheering, feeling like a chip off the old Adolf H. (the Germans certainly do enjoy their mass rallies, particularly ones in which Jews take it on the chin). Suddenly, a glass bottle shattered on the floor next to my podium, peppering me with fragments.

It had been thrown from my left. I looked to see a commotion in progress. A balding, middle-aged man had been restrained by security officials, not far from my podium. His face was florid, and he screamed at me in strongly German-accented English. During his struggles, he had torn the sleeve of his jacket clear off. I saw numbers and letters tattooed on his forearm, black scars on his pale flesh.

The crowd, ninety-nine percent of whom were unable to see what I saw, nevertheless seemed to sense who and what the man was. Their raucous cheering shifted to vehement booing. Fearing some of the more zealous might rush the platform and seize the man from the guards’ custody, I pleaded with the crowd to quiet itself. I announced they would enjoy the privilege of witnessing an unscheduled debate — I would grant the stranger the opportunity to take the podium and refute my findings, if he could.

The rally was being filmed by television crews from across Germany and from other European countries. I had chanced into an ideal opportunity to spread my world-altering lie, through a hugely emotional confrontation that would make for riveting television.

I called the man to the podium and asked him to introduce himself. Yitzchak Oldenburg claimed to have been an inmate at Dachau, a forced labor camp ten miles from Munich, Germany. He said that, due to his medical background — he had been a medical student before Jews were expelled from German universities — he had been forced to assist Nazi doctors in their sadistic medical experiments, as well as culling those survivors too weakened to work in the armaments factories, sending them to their deaths at the extermination center near Linz, Austria. The American Army freed Oldenburg and thousands of other survivors on April 29, 1945. Oldenburg claimed the conditions the Americans found in the camp were so horrific that some of the liberating infantrymen disobeyed their commanding officers and machine-gunned about thirty of the German guards who had surrendered. He also said the American general forced civilians from surrounding towns and villages to bury about thirty thousand emaciated corpses piled about the camp.

How, he asked in anguished tones, could I deny that which he had seen with his own eyes? Atrocity piled upon atrocity? What sort of a monster was I — a British citizen, not even a German — to strive so greatly to exonerate the Nazi regime?

I replied calmly that I was not a monster at all, merely a seeker after truth. Orderly civilization, I lectured him, must be built on a foundation of truths, not falsehoods or misconceptions. Had he personally seen this so-called extermination center at Linz? No, he admitted, he had not. So how could he be certain it had truly existed, not merely as a rumor embellished by the fogs and passions of war? The German doctors had ordered him to determine which subjects of medical experiments could no longer work and should be sent for euthanasia procedures at Linz, he insisted. Was that the term they used, I asked, euthanasia? Yes, he replied, they called it euthanasia. Could not euthanasia be considered a merciful medical procedure in some situations, such as for those patients with agonizing terminal conditions, or those with crippling ailments or abnormalities that could not be ameliorated? Was this not taught in medical schools? It was, he admitted. Was not euthanasia sometimes administered by doctors in countries that had fought on the Allied side during the Second World War — including the United States? To this, he merely nodded.

Dachau had been a labor camp, had it not? Again, he nodded. Did Mr. Oldenburg know that every American state in the great and free democracy of the United States of America compels its prisoners to perform uncompensated labor? Furthermore, was Mr. Oldenburg aware that the universally admired American President Franklin Roosevelt had ordered the imprisonment in camps, for the duration of the war, of tens of thousands of Japanese Americans, both legal residents and natural-born citizens, and that the Supreme Court of the United States had upheld this order on the basis of national security during the wartime emergency? How was Dachau, a camp for the containment of political prisoners, so different from the vast internment camps established by President Roosevelt for Japanese Americans? Yes, living and sanitary conditions, as well as nutrition for prisoners, were far poorer at Dachau than at any of the American concentration camps. Yet Germany experienced years of daily and nightly bombings by aerial armadas of American and British heavy bombers, whereas the continental United States never suffered the fall of a single Axis bomb. Could not that fact constitute the primary reason for the disparity in prisoners’ living conditions in German camps versus American camps? To this, Oldenburg, trembling in silent frustration, could offer no counter-argument.

I pressed on, exploiting my advantage, playing for the television cameras. Advancements in medical science required experimentation, correct? Ideally, of course, such experiments would be carried out in hospitals under carefully controlled conditions, with the full consent of patients who volunteered to undergo clinical trials. Myriads of horrendous injuries caused by war, as well as the diseases set loose by crowding, unsanitary water supplies, destruction of sewage systems, and the spread of vermin abetted by the proliferation of corpses in ruined cities, all cried out for new, advanced medical treatments and techniques. But American and British bombs destroyed many German hospitals and universities in firestorms, did they not? Robbed of their hospitals and universities, what else could German doctors and scientists do but make use of the only resources at hand? Of course, I said, given your situation, you viewed your doctor superiors at Dachau as immoral sadists. But looked upon in a different light, could they not also be seen as heroes of the German people, selfless men forced by circumstances to perform cruel acts for the greater good?

No, he said, you are twisting my words, my meanings! I know what I saw, I know what I heard, the cries of children, the screams of the tortured! I know what I smelled for months without end — the smell of decaying corpses, the stench that infested one’s clothes, so that you could not escape it even in sleep...!

Unfortunate but unavoidable consequences of war, I said. Had Americans in Chicago suffered the same as Germans in Munich, the former would assuredly have committed the same ‘crimes against humanity’ as did the latter, merely to survive.

I’m winning the debate, I thought. The thought filled me with a sense of exultation. The Germans, I continued, pressing my advantage, had been subjected by their conquerors to the basest slanders and libels ever arrayed against a defeated people. I then summarized my findings from Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Point by point, I explained with seemingly ironclad scientific logic how the supposed gas chambers could not have been used to kill masses of Jews, homosexuals, or gypsies with Zyklon-B. Those facilities and others like them had been used to delouse newly arrived prisoners, to attempt to control the spread of vermin and disease in the camps. The German regime, in fact, far from committing atrocities, had expended its dwindling resources on efforts to limit death and suffering in its detention camps, at the very same time its own soldiers had been perishing from starvation and hypothermia in the Russian winter. Were these the actions of an immoral, genocidal government?

The crowd rewarded each of my successive assertions with louder and louder cheers. The tendons in Oldenburg’s neck stiffened like steel cables. The muscles of his arms and shoulders twitched, as though he were about to throttle me. Yet he held himself in check — as well he should, considering where he stood, mere meters from hundreds of my impassioned defenders.

The effort cost him. His face seemed to cave in upon itself. He sagged, engulfed in violent sobbing.

I had triumphed. Acting as defense attorney for the late Nazi regime, I had demolished the prosecution’s witness. I had reduced a survivor to incoherent tears. My victory would dominate European, then world airwaves for days to come. This was possibly the greatest advance yet of my campaign.

Exultation is a fleeting emotion. I exited the stage directly for the water closet, where I vomited into the toilet. My heaves continued long after my stomach was empty.

The taste of rancid bile still lingers, as does my shame.

-September 15, 1960-

My alma mater has disowned me. Today I received official notice from Cambridge that the Student Union, supported by the faculty, voted overwhelmingly to disavow all ties with me and to remove my name from the rolls of graduates in good standing.

Preening moral narcissists. Socialist twats. They have no idea of what I seek to accomplish, the pain of my lonely crusade.

Banishment from polite society aside, I must focus on the upside. Fifty million copies now sold — closer to a hundred million, if the estimates of pirated copies printed in the Soviet Union and Red China are included in the totals (even Communists love to hate the Jews, especially when they pay no royalties for the pleasure). The Holocaust Hoax is bested in sales only by the King James Bible. I’m becoming richer than Croesus or Midas. Soon I’ll be swimming in mounds of my money, like that miserly uncle of Donald Duck. And Cambridge University shall not see a damned cent of it, ever. The twats.

-December 28, 1960-

The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day always feels empty to me. Empty and forlorn. Like the aftermath of a tremendous, extended feast, a month of extravagant gluttony that leaves one’s stomach distended. I bought myself a new Jaguar saloon car on Christmas Eve. I selected every option — the works. It was delivered to me yesterday. I find I have no desire to drive it anywhere.

When will things change? Have I outrun von Heussen’s nemesis, or does it still lie in wait for me, reserving the moment when I feel most safe to strike?

London’s snowfall, unbroken for the last three days, has finally ceased. The sun emerged from its blanket of clouds. I need to walk outside, to feel the sun’s light on my face. Sheltering alone within my townhouse does my spirit no good.

Where do I go, tromping through the snowdrifts in my galoshes like a clumsy kangaroo? St. George’s Gardens. A handful of my fellow Londoners shared my desperate yearning to be outside, I see. We stare across the snow-smothered gardens at one another like deer who have emerged from woods at opposite ends of an open field, startled at the one another’s presence. Friend, or foe?

And then I realize who it is I’m staring at, who stares back at me.

My Miriam.

I’m torn between a desire to speak with her and an impulse to flee. Judging by her expression, she feels the same tension.

God, I want to be near her. To look into her eyes. To smell her skin. The snow crunches beneath my galoshes as I head toward her.

She hesitates, then turns away, returning the way she came. The snow hinders her more than it does me, however. I overtake her. Only then, breathing hard from my exertion, do I realize I haven’t thought of what to say. “Miriam...?”

She stares at me as though I’m an unfamiliar dog, trying to discern whether it is safe to extend her hand to be sniffed. Then she blushes and looks away. “Irving, please leave me alone. We haven’t a thing to say to one another...”

“No, that can’t be right,” I say. “I’ve missed you, Miriam. Missed you terribly...”

“And what a fine way you have of showing it.” The barely contained heat in her voice could melt the snow from here to Dover. “Oh, Irving, how could you? How could you write the things you have, say the things you have? How could you so cruelly defame the memory of my mother, and millions of others? I thought I knew you, Irving. I thought I was a decent judge of character. Do you know what it’s like, to realize your own competence at choosing friends — lovers! — is so horribly lacking? I hate myself for having ever loved you!”

It nearly spills out of me, everything I’ve experienced since the day I discovered dinosaur bones in Jericho. I want so much to tell her that what looks black is actually white, whiter than the frost that covers the ancient gravestones. That I’m trying with every power I can muster to raise her mother from the dead — no, to change the past so that her mother never died at all.

But I realize what it would sound like. How her hate might turn to horrified pity at my ludicrous self-exoneration. So I say nothing at all. I stand immobile... burning, burning in the snow.

“You terrible, terrible, beastly man,” she whispers. Then, hindered by her winter carapace, she strides as quickly as her petite legs can manage past the frozen rose bushes, their thorns still capable of drawing blood.

I return home, sinking within a funk the bottom of which I cannot imagine. I consider becoming stupefyingly drunk. But no amount of liquor will erase the memory of her scathing denunciations, of her livid, hate-filled glare.

No, there’s only one escape open to me. Forgetting. Releasing my stubborn hold on my memories of all the steps I have taken since first setting eyes upon that carnosaur’s thigh bone.

The only way I’ve managed to remember why I set out on this quest to subvert the past is my nightly renewal of my notes to myself. Years have passed since I retained any true memories of my last two excursions to Tel es-Sultan, of my visit with Professor von Heussen, and of my reading Captain Smythe’s journal of the flat Earth. All I have now is the equivalent of a smudged photostat copy of a smudged photostat copy of a smudged photostat copy. Those bizarre experiences I nightly write about seem to have happened, not to me, but to some character in a poem composed by a Chinese courtesan during the Han Dynasty.

What will happen if I refrain from re-transcribing my ever-fading notes? I’ll stop riding the wave, the gestalt-mind’s reality-altering wave. I’ll fall off my surfboard, and the wave will at last engulf me. What will become of me then?

I won’t know why I’ve done what I’ve done. I will come to assume, I suppose, that I truly believe what I’ve written in The Holocaust Hoax. I’ll remember this morning’s encounter with Miriam with a far different set of emotions. Quite possibly, I’ll berate myself for ever succumbing to a Zionist seductress’s erotic lures. If not morally preferable to my current state of mind, at least easier to live with.

Or perhaps once I’m no longer riding it, the wave will cause me to vanish entirely, as it did poor Professor von Heussen. In either case, matters are now out of my hands. My effort to un-do Hitler’s destruction of European Jewry will either work, or it will not. The spread of my Big Lie is no longer dependent upon my exertions. Tens of millions of readers, hundreds of millions more recipients of resultant hearsay, will make their own decisions whether to believe or not to believe.

Twilight settles over London. I think I’ll go to sleep early tonight. Easily done, since I won’t bother to spend two hours transcribing my fading notes. Let them fade, let them fade into nothingness. They are thorns in my flesh.

I believe I’ll have a glass or three of cognac, after all.

-March 21, 1969-

There’s no doubt about it now. The bloody Asiatics have got themselves the Bomb. It’s all over the papers; the Japs’ atomic test in a Pacific atoll lagoon was captured on film by one of the Yanks’ spy satellites. So despite the best efforts of the Americans and the Germans and our own government to keep the lid on atomic know-how, the Asian Co-Prosperity Empire has joined the nuclear weapons club.

Old Adolf H. must be ruing the day he ever granted his former Nip allies the status of honorary Aryans, instead of crushing them as potential rivals after forcing the Soviets to back down and retreat from Eastern Europe. And the Americans must be kicking themselves that they didn’t tell the Nazis to piss off in 1945, then go ahead and invade Japan anyway, despite German threats to do to New York what they’d done to Moscow and Kiev if the Americans dared continue their war against Nippon.

The Americans shouldn’t have been all that intimidated by the smoking atomic craters in the centers of Moscow and Kiev — they successfully tested their own atomic bomb in New Mexico just three weeks after the Germans dropped theirs. Yes, the German bombs forced a Soviet capitulation worse than that of Brest-Litovsk in 1918. But the Nazis had no aircraft carriers or land bases within bombing range of the U.S., whereas the Americans had access to numerous airfields within flying range of Berlin. The Nazis would’ve had to load an atomic bomb aboard one of their U-boats and sneak it into New York Harbor for a suicide run... a dicey operation under the best of circumstances, given the overwhelming force preponderance of the U.S. Navy. Still, I suppose Truman preferred not to put London at risk of becoming a glowing crater. We Londoners can thank the crude-mouthed little haberdasher for that, at least...

“Irvink, you know I find it disturbink, when you hide in your newspaper to avoid talk.”

Ah, the voice of the beloved mother-in-law. The shrewd woman who simultaneously manages to be both my financial burden (along with her sickly husband) and the comandante of my cramped household. “Sylvia, for the hundredth time, I’m not hiding behind my newspaper. Important events are transpiring in the world. Important events take place every day, and it is my responsibility to stay abreast of them. My job, as a citizen.”

“Vas, your ‘job’? Your job is to study the past, no? That is what they pay you for at the university, yes? Not so much what happens in the present. And truly, you avoid what happens in the present. The things that happen here, in your home, rather than in Germany or America. Little David is not so little anymore. My precious grandson is nearly twelve years old. Twelve! And yet you and Miriam make no arrangements for his bar mitzvah... a shanda, a disgrace...”

I wish this newspaper were made of sound-proofed steel, and that I could fold it about my head. “Sylvia, my dear one, you’re inserting yourself into a decision that is for me and Miriam alone to make. You aren’t making matters easier for your daughter. For your information, I’ve told Miriam many times that I have no objection to a large party when David turns thirteen. A birthday party. You and Josef are certainly free to buy him religious items as gifts, if you wish. But I see no reason whatsoever to insert some nasty old rabbi whose beard smells of mothballs into the business—”

Sylvia crosses her plump arms sternly and juts her chin at me: the very image of a female, Yiddish Mussolini. “You know, Irvink, under Jewish law, the child of a Jewish mother is Jewish, no matter what the father may be...”

Again she flings this in my face! “For your information, the only law I observe is stolid old English law. And English law says that David is an Englishman, and that is the only designation that matters on this island.”

“He is a Jewish Englishman. And Jewish Englishmen must have their bar mitzvah—”

“Why must you constantly press me, Sylvia? You push, and you push, and you push — everything must be your way. When is good enough good enough? I mean, you and Josef celebrate your holidays in my home, making my son participate and forcing me to pay exorbitant sums on Kosher cuts of meats. When have I refused you this? Never. And then there was that horrible business about the bris when David was just eight days old. A gory butchery that will poison my dreams forever. You’ve had your gram of flesh, Sylvia, from the most tender portion of my son’s anatomy. Why must you demand more and more?”

“Feh!” she cries, throwing up her hands in that seaside vaudevillian way she has. “It is clear I am no longer velcome in my son-in-law’s house. I vill begin packing my and Josef’s things immediately. We vill move immediately to Yisrael so as to no longer be a bother to you. Herr Hitler shows more velcoming to Jewish people there than does the British Queen here...”

My mother-in-law has acquired the martial expertise of a General Montgomery when it comes to prodding my sensitive bits. I’m about to launch a furious retort when I see Miriam standing in the doorway, holding two sacks of groceries.

How long has she been standing there?

Valuing my marriage, I unfold my newspaper and hide behind a Japanese mushroom cloud.

-May 5, 1970-

“Why the glum face, Irving? Mother-in-law been chewing your ear off again, eh?”

Under better circumstances, I couldn’t see myself chumming about with MacDonald. He’s rather common, verging on crude, and he has a streak of cruelty that flashes about his eyes and mouth when he thinks he’s merely being funny. But he’s the only other Anglican left in the history department. So fate has made of us confidants, if not quite allies.

The sun appears pleasant, and my legs are tired, so I head for a bench beneath the branches of one of the oaks that adorn the academic commons — far enough from sunbathing students that my remarks should not become a source of undergraduate gossip. “Reggie,” I say, “I feel like an outsider in my own home. It’s exhausting, not to mention humiliating.”

“What is it now, mate? Mother-in-law nail one of them mezzuzahs to your bedpost? Force you to wear a skullcap while you’re stickin’ it to your wife?”

“Nothing quite so dramatic, no...”

“Aye, the bar mitzvah then, was it? I take it you surrendered on that?”

“If you must put it that way. I didn’t attend the service. Only the party afterward. I wouldn’t set foot inside that synagogue. That rabbi has never treated me as anything but a pariah.”

MacDonald grunts knowingly. “Family give you the cold shoulder at the party, I take it?”

“I was cast in the role of the guest who crapped in the punch bowl, yes.”

“Hope your turd was kosher.” He laughs, enormously pleased with himself. “Aw, look on the bright side, mate. At least you’ve scored some shiny points with old Goldberg. A son who’s been bar mitzvahed? Why, you’re practically an honorary member of the Tribe, old son. That’ll do you good at faculty meets. Me? The only reason Goldberg keeps me on is that I’m a representative of the ‘indigenous working class’, my pa having been a coal miner and all, and my grandpa before him. The pre-war faculty crowd would’ve accepted me, too, so long as I was a good Stalinist and not a Fabian or a Trotskyite. Trotsky was a Jew, wasn’t he? There’s your connection — Jews and Communists, natural organizers and conspirators. The Yids have been just as successful at taking over the Departments as the Reds were back in the Thirties — I mean, before Stalin got his balls blown off by Hitler’s A-bombs, and the British Communist Party found itself able to fit all its members in a bobby’s call box. You want a Department where faculty meetings aren’t catered with bagels? Try Classics or Theology. Forget about History. The Yids own History, lock, stock, and pickle barrel. They just keep us Englishmen around for laughs.”

My shoulders slump. “It just doesn’t seem fair, that’s all. We offered them refuge when Hitler ordered them out of conquered Europe, before his Afrika Korps captured Palestine and Rommel set that up as a quarantine zone for stateless Jews. We took them in, with open arms, hundreds of thousands of penniless refugees, despite the security risks. Now they’ve taken us over.”

“‘Open arms,’ huh? Maybe if you hadn’t been so quick to offer ‘open arms’ to Miriam, you wouldn’t be in your current fix, you think? You kind of made your own bed, old son.”

Part of me wants to smash MacDonald’s smug face. But another part of me knows he’s right. I did make my own bed.

“I love my wife, Reggie.” It’s all I can think to say.

-October 11, 1973-

I cannot believe what is happening in my own household. My own son, born and raised in London, an Englishman, being propagandized by his grandfather into fighting for the German Reich!

Although I know all too well what is going on, I decide it’s best to play dumb. Draw them out. “Josef,” I say, holding the Passport Office papers I discovered just moments ago, “why have you applied to get a passport for David? Is there some international travel coming up that I’m not aware of? We haven’t the money for it.”

The old man’s cheek twitches. He looks away from me, staring down at the frayed edges of the living room rug. “The boy... he has relatives in the Holy Land, you know? Aunts and uncles and cousins he has never met. I thought that — after this new war is over, after the Germans have restored peace and order — I thought he should go to Israel, to meet his relatives. A boy should know his own blood. I meant to talk of this with you, Irving, but you have been so busy lately, writing your research monographs...”

What a damned, preposterous lie. “How can you be so sure there’ll even be a Nazi protectorate called Israel in another month? Hmmn? You’ve been watching the BBC news on the telly rather obsessively these past few days. David, too. It looks to me like the Arabs are performing rather well, what with the up-to-date warplanes and tanks and missiles the Japanese have traded them for their oil. Hopped across the Suez Canal and broached the Germans’ defensive line as though it were a mere line in the sand. Perhaps the old Wehrmacht has lost its touch, hmmn? First the Germans get themselves sucked into a decade-long quagmire in Vietnam, constantly bloodied by the Japanese-backed Viet Cong. The vaunted Wehrmacht, the terror of the industrialized world, pouring men and equipment into a meat grinder, a war of attrition that the local ethno-fanatic guerillas seem to be gradually winning. Stalemate’s the best the Germans can hope for, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of bloody militarists. And now, with the Nazis bogged down in Southeast Asia, the Arabs — the lowly ‘sand worms’ who’ve been continuously humiliated and cowed by the German Army ever since 1942 — see their chance to avenge the Nazis’ theft of their land and subsequent handing it over to resettled European Jews. Can you blame them, can you really blame the Arabs for wanting to push the Jews into the sea?”

Josef clenches his fists but continues staring at the floor, saying nothing.

“Stop bullying him, Father!”

Another voice heard from — my partially feigned tirade has succeeded in flushing David out of hiding. Now the truth will burst forth, like pus forced from a lanced boil.

“The Holy Land has never belonged to the Arabs!” he says, stepping boldly into the room. “There’s never been Arab sovereignty over Jerusalem! And Jews have continuously lived there for more than three thousand years! The Romans conquered Judea and exiled most of its inhabitants, but some stayed. The Byzantines inherited the Holy Land from the Romans, and then the Turks wrested it away from the Byzantines. The Turks were on the losing side in the Great War, so the French and British split up the Holy Land between themselves, only to have the Germans take it away from them a quarter-century later. All the Germans did was to open up the Holy Land to the descendants of the same Jews who were pushed out of conquered Judea by the Romans back in 70 A.D.!”

“Thank you for the potted history lesson, David. As a professor of ancient and modern history at our country’s leading university, I certainly appreciate my woeful ignorance being dispelled by your worldly expertise. Since you are such a skilled explainer, perhaps you could explain a matter of considerably greater import, at least insofar as this household is concerned.” I thrust the papers from the Passport Office at him. “This passport application. Would you kindly explain to me how your date of birth is listed as April 24, 1955, rather than April 24, 1957? And that your age is thus listed as eighteen years, rather than the correct sixteen years?”

Now it’s David’s turn to blush and mumble. “They... they got the date wrong on the papers, that’s all. It was a mistake, obviously. A clerical mistake...”

“Somehow, I rather doubt that, David. Here’s what I think. I think your grandfather here has been filling your ear with horror stories about what might happen if the Arabs succeed in their war. I think he’s encouraged you to betray your country by signing on with the German Foreign Legion and fighting for Nazi interests in the Middle East.”

David’s eyes blaze with indignation. “No! It wasn’t Grandpa’s idea! It was mine! He only helped me at the Passport Office after I begged him to!”

“Your idea...?”

“Yes! My idea! After almost nineteen centuries, we Jews finally have a homeland again! And I — I couldn’t live with myself if I just watch the Arabs destroy it and do nothing!”

“Balderdash! Your homeland is England! The only homeland you’ll ever need! The notion of your fighting for that old bastard Adolf Hitler — one of history’s worst anti-Semites, mind you — why, it’s nothing more than absurd! Obscene!”

“Of course I agree that Hitler is personally abhorrent, Father; I’m not an idiot, after all. But so was King Cyrus of Persia — a pagan tyrant who ruthlessly ruled the mightiest empire of his day. Yet he restored the exiled Jews to their homeland and allowed them to rebuild their Temple. Evil as King Cyrus was otherwise, ha Shem, hallowed be His name, chose to use him as His anointed one, His instrument in the redemption of the Jews and their restoration to their promised land. Adolf Hitler is nothing more, nothing less, than our century’s King Cyrus!”

I can’t take this! My own son—! “By all that’s holy, I knew I never should’ve let you get within spitting distance of those pickled old rabbis! Damn me for a fool, I should’ve stood firm! But I could never resist your mother’s tears for long — and, oh, how your grandmother made her fret and wail, until I thought my heart would wither and die. But this — this is a different story, David my lad. This I forbid. You are my minor child. You live in my house. So long as those facts remain true, you are my charge and my legal and moral responsibility. If you disobey me in this, if you persist in this... this obscene disloyalty... I will disown you, David. I will consider you to no longer be my son.”

-November 24, 1973-

The Germans managed to pull off a victory in the Middle East, even absent David’s help. It was a close-run thing. They were short of troops, having drawn down their defensive cordon around their Jewish protectorate to funnel more troops to Vietnam. So when the combined Arab armies began pouring over the Suez Canal and down from the Golan Heights, the Nazis, caught with their swastika-emblazoned pants down, were forced to airlift in men and equipment from across the Reich and Southeast Asia. Much as I detest the Nazis, as a historian I’m forced to grant the Wehrmacht my grudging admiration. They successfully undertook one of the riskiest and most audacious airborne campaigns in military history, an operation that made their airborne invasion of Crete look like a school fire drill on a sunny afternoon. They suffered fifteen thousand casualties in all, the cream of German youth, in the process of slaughtering five times that number of Arabs. And all in defense of nine million Jews crowded between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Why? Why would Adolf Hitler, an eighty-four year-old anti-Semite, sacrifice so much blood and treasure to protect the world’s biggest collection of Jews?

Has the old bastard gone senile? That can’t be the answer. He’s been sitting on the edge of his deathbed for years now, and, according to every Foreign Office intelligence report that’s leaked to the newspapers, leading officials of the Reich recognize this all too well. They’ve been gradually edging Hitler out of his customary solo decision-making, turning him into more of a national-party figurehead. So even if he’s losing his noodle, he’s no longer in complete control, able to force through his whims as ironclad dictates. That aside, Hitler has been a staunch defender of his Jewish protectorate since its founding thirty years ago, when he was a much younger, more vital dictator.

There must be some quid pro quo between the Jews in Israel and the Nazis. There has to be; nothing else makes sense. There’s some secret partnership there, a partnership that goes back to the most desperate days of the Big War for the Germans, those months in mid-1944 when the Russians were closing in from the East and the British and Americans successfully landed in Normandy. And I think I’ve figured out the ground zero of that partnership.

Jewish scientists. More specifically, Jewish physicists. The Jews, brilliant, scheming bastards, gave Hitler his atom bombs.

It’s the only answer that fits. From the days of Mein Kampf, Hitler wanted the Jews out of Germany. He considered them a corrupting influence, an alien infection in the German volk. Later, after he’d gotten his hands on most of Europe, he wanted them off the Continent, too. But conquering Palestine and settling Jews there was far from his only option. The Nazis had considered seizing Madagascar and using it as a dumping ground for Europe’s Jews. They could’ve herded Jews to Europe’s beaches and invited the Allies and the world’s neutrals to collect them — Britain obliged the Reich in that respect, to an extent. Or, given the Germans’ amoral efficiency, they could’ve figured out an effective method to wipe the Jews out entirely.

Yet the Reich pursued none of these alternatives. Hitler wanted the Jews kept away from his precious Germans — that much is certain — but he also wanted them at his beck and call, far away but not too far, available to work for him and his regime. He hated them, but he recognized their genius. And he recognized that his Reich needed that collective genius if it was to permanently triumph over the inexhaustible manpower of Russia and the industrial might of the Americans.

To induce the Jews’ brightest minds to work for him, he would have had to offer them something they wanted more than life itself, something even more precious than the safety of their families. Something the Hebrews had lusted for ever since the Romans sent them packing in 70 AD. Their bloody Promised Land.

Why else would the Wehrmacht, stretched thin by its epic invasion of Russia, have insisted on continuously reinforcing Rommel’s Afrika Korps, even after its defeat at El Alamein? Why else would they have continued a seemingly Sisyphean, even Pyrrhic military campaign to conquer Palestine — an impoverished mandate territory with not a drop of oil or any other strategic raw materials to speak of?

Hitler gave his despised but indispensable Jews their Holy Land, clearing out every last Arab from the Old City of Jerusalem and pushing the inconvenient sand wogs into adjacent Vichy French mandate territories. The Nazis even dynamited the Muslim shrines atop the ancient Temple Mount, paving the way for Jewish fundamentalist irredentists to rebuild a Temple (and earning the eternal enmity of the Muslim umma, incidentally). In return, the Jews cracked the atom for the Nazis and gave them their war-winning bombs, allowing the Germans to turn a crushing defeat into a negotiated cold peace that left them in control of Central and Eastern Europe, with their boot resting on the neck of an irradiated, enfeebled Russia.

This ‘special relationship’ has obviously continued beyond the end of the war. The Wehrmacht’s arsenal of ‘wonder weapons,’ intended to cow the Asian Co-Prosperity Empire and keep the Americans isolated... how much of that arsenal is due to Jewish scientists working like colonies of genius-savant ants in those vast, secretive, underground warrens the Germans constructed beneath the sands of the Negev Desert? Mere bomb shelters, as claimed? I think not.

All supposition on my part, of course. Strong supposition, but lacking definitive proof. If I can document this, the most monumentally perverse marriage of convenience the world has ever known, I’ll make a name for myself that will outlast even the Thousand Year Reich.

-March 30, 1974-

Damn their obstinacy! Her Majesty’s Government refuses to release the wartime documents I need for my book.

Thirty years on, and they still claim the intelligence dossiers compiled by British spies on the Germans’ World War Two atomic bomb program fall under the purview of the Official Secrets Act. How can the knowledge of how the Nazis gained the bomb in 1944—45 be vital to present-day British national security? If MI6 is still relying upon ‘sources and methods’ used three decades ago, our national security is in much more dire straits than the journos at the Guardian and the Times let on.

They’ve bloody stymied me. The Americans have rebuffed me. The Russians are still too dysfunctional and paranoid, too busy gnawing off their own legs while psychotically retreating to their fantasy of a second coming of Ivan the Terrible, to consider opening their files to a British researcher. The Japanese were too preoccupied fighting the Americans in 1944—45 to spy on their German allies, so they have nothing to offer, even if they’d prove willing to share. The Germans, of course, have no reason whatsoever to reveal state secrets to someone they view as a hostile foreign national.

Regarding Her Majesty’s Government, there has to be more to their obstinacy than protection of ‘sources and methods’. The bloody Tories have been taken over by the Jews, top to bottom. PM Oderheim has obviously sniffed out trouble for his tribe in MI6's wartime dossiers, what with that big, hooked nose of his. Fully half his inner cabinet are Hebrews; some, like Health Minister Niedermeyer, are bearded, black-hatted throwbacks to medieval Polish ghettoes. I’m sure it would prove right embarrassing to the reigning Jewservatives if word were to break that their co-religionists gave the Nazis the A-bomb in 1945 — that the Jews robbed Britain of her hard-won victory.

I won’t stop trying to obtain my proof. The Tories won’t remain in power forever. Sir Oswald Mosley’s Labourites will chuck that lot to the back benches eventually. No people as proud of their own heritage as the British are will permanently countenance handing over their governance to a pack of clannish immigrants and sons of immigrants. The British lion will shake loose of all such encumbrances, given time.

Or so I pray.

-April 19, 1974-

First occasion I’ve made use of a prostitute since I was nineteen. I must say, standards have fallen off a great deal since the early Fifties. All that NippoPop nonsense, ridiculous fashions purloined from Japanese cartoons and comics. The contagion isn’t limited to the members of the world’s oldest profession, of course... the young ‘ladies’ who attend my lectures all dress like Japanese tarts and android whores, too.

So, rather icky, all in all. But how long can a man be expected to remain abstinent? It’s been a full year. I marked it on my calendar. It was a year since Miriam’s father was buried and she moved from our shared bed into my office and made it her bedroom. Making it so that we share an apartment and a son, but not a marriage.

How can a man love someone so dearly and hate them at the same time?

-October 8, 1974-

At last, at long last... Schicklgruber the house painter is dead. Or, as the Times more respectfully put it, “Reichsführer Adolf Hitler, 85, one of the founders of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and Germany’s head of state since 1933, has been laid to rest in a mausoleum beneath Berlin’s famed Brandenburg Gate.”

Hitler, defender of the Jews. The public displays of mourning in the heavily Jewish neighborhoods of London turn my stomach. I dare not peer out my own window, lest I expel the contents of my breakfast.

Still, I must admit I’m grateful they’re being so open about their feelings, the Jews. Let everyone see them as I see them — disloyal bastards, curs who turn and bite the fingers of the soft-hearted, soft-headed altruists who so trustingly took them in. Apart from the Jews, Herr Hitler has few admirers here in Britain. He’s best remembered for the Blitz of 1940, for Dunkirk and buzz-bombs and the silent, deadly rain of V-2 rockets. Then, when we finally had him beaten, when we and the Yanks and the Russians were on the verge of crushing him in a massive encircling pincher movement, the Jews, having been bribed with Palestine, stabbed the Allies in the back.

Let everyone in Britain see how much the Jews revere Hitler. Then let’s have an election. How will Oderheim and his Jewservative Tories fare at the polls after such a spectacle of treason?

“Dad, I’m going out for a bit. Do you, uh, need anything from the store?”

I glance away from the television to look at my son. “What’s that pinned to your coat, David?”

His hand swiftly covers something pinned to his lapel. “Oh, uh, nothing, Dad. It’s a, y’know, a new coat... I forgot to remove the store’s tag, that’s all.”

“Remove your hand, David.”

His face reddens. “No, I’d, I’d rather not...”

“Remove your hand, I say!”

He complies.

“So... a torn black ribbon.” I don’t know whether to be furious, ashamed, or grief-stricken. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with today’s headline news, would it? Would it, David?”