Franz Steckel was far more than a mere civil servant. He served as an SS-Obersturmfuhrer of the SD-Ausland, a lieutenant in the Nazi Party's foreign intelligence service. He had been assigned to Tokyo station three months earlier, on the direct orders of Reinhard Heydrich, who suspected that the Reich's embassy harbored a small clique of homosexuals.

Lieutenant Steckel, an attractive young man, had resigned himself to the most bestial depravities in the service of National Socialism. The world was full of perverts, and it was his unpleasant duty to hunt them down and ensure the purity of the Aryan race.

At first he had been annoyed that so important an investigation should be compromised by the lunacy of Commander Hidaka. But one visit to the Indonesian vessel changed all that. After nervously sending the initial details back to Berlin by safe hand courier, he now found himself reporting directly to Reichsfuhrer Himmler on the miracles in the East.

The grand inquisitor surprised Steckel by accepting the extraordinary tale of time-traveling Untermensch, apparently without demur. So Steckel was ordered to finalize the embassy investigation, personally sanction the deviants, and concentrate all his efforts on the mystery ship. Like Yamamoto, Himmler was less immediately interested in the technology than in the information contained within the Sutanto's electric archives.

Steckel had nearly fainted away when confronted with the first Web pages relating to the Jewish state known as Israel. Shock and nausea-imagine the very notion of a Jewish state in a world without the Reich!-quickly segued into mortal terror at the prospect of informing Berlin of his findings. He expected that his next message from home would be a recall to the Fatherland where he was certain to face a people's court, before his execution.

He'd panicked and foolishly attempted to remove the offensive files. But of course, he soon realized there was no point. The Americans and British-the ones the Indonesians had come with-all knew of the Jewish eradication program. It was part of their own history. There would be no suppressing it. Dr. Gobbels would certainly try, and any number of sacrificial goats would die during his attempts. But it would come out, and probably soon. The Allies would doubtless make a great play on it for propaganda purposes. The fucking hypocrites. They all hated the Jews just as much, but they had not the will to rid the world of the problem forever.

Still, it wouldn't do to be caught in the crossfire over the next few weeks. No doubt that liberal idiot Brasch would be sending his own communiques back to the army. Good. Let him take the heat.

Steckel resolved to take some time away from Hashirajima to settle the matter of the two queers. Time enough to get well clear of the shitstorm he knew was coming.

Admiral Yamamoto was very understanding. He'd even been kind enough to spare a seaplane to take him back to Tokyo. Steckel did not elaborate on the reasons for his unexpected leave of absence, and Yamamoto did not ask.

So Steckel had returned to Tokyo and settled back into the routine work of the embassy, liaising with his opposite number in the Japanese Kempeitai about the exchange of medical data between the Reich and the empire. Both had invested significant resources in experiments carried out on captive human subjects, but they'd concentrated on different areas. The limits of physical endurance for the Nazi camp doctors; the study of chemical and biological warfare agents for the Japanese.

His work gave him opportunity to reacquaint himself with the queers, Schenk and Oster, who worked in a related section, exchanging information with Japan on Allied weapons systems and codes. He intended to gain their trust, then lure them to a small bar a few miles from the embassy. They'd met there once before, retiring after too much rice wine to a nearby bathhouse, where the diplomats had openly incriminated themselves. But the Sutanto had arrived before Steckel was able to personally organize their arrest and, quite frankly, he'd let the matter slip after that. It seemed less important than accompanying Brasch to Hashirajima.

This time, however, Steckel had alerted the mission's security chief, who would be waiting for the right moment to seize the perverts in flagrante. They could be executed on the spot. Nonetheless he intended to keep them alive for a while. Their interrogation would give him an excuse to stay away from the Sutanto while this ugly business over the Jewish question and the Reich's ultimate failure worked itself out. It surely wouldn't take long.

As the SD man picked his way through a narrow alley that stank of fish guts and human waste, he couldn't throw off his nagging concerns. A world without the Reich? Without the fuhrer! It didn't seem possible. And a Jewish state? That was an abomination. He huddled deeper inside his black trench coat as a light rain fell. The evidence he'd seen and touched with his own hands was undeniable. But what to do? Reichsfuhrer Himmler was surprisingly open to the mystical and otherworldly. The fact of the ships' emergence may have stunned and troubled him, but he hadn't rejected the idea out of hand, as Steckel had expected him to. Indeed, he had leapt on the first reports, demanding more information and asking for clarification on dozens of points.

The Indonesians, for instance. Where did they fit on the human evolutionary scale? From Steckel's preliminary notes, Himmler thought they seemed almost subhuman. What did the Nipponese think? Were they an Asian subrace? And if that were so, how did they acquire their technological sophistication? Himmler had pressed him for evidence of the triumphs of the Aryan race, as well.

Steckel had replied that it seemed as if some vast Jewish conspiracy may have thwarted the inevitable march of the German people to their destiny. He'd placed a flexipad, containing some very carefully chosen files, in a diplomatic pouch, and sent it back via a Spanish airplane.

An ominous silence had been his only answer from Berlin, until another flurry of demands and questions had suddenly come back, along with news that Himmler was sending even more men out to help with the investigation.

Perhaps, thought Steckel as he picked his way through the ancient wooden city, Himmler could be persuaded to protect him, if it appeared to be in his interests to do so. The SS-Obersturmfuhrer decided that, when he returned to the Sutanto, he would devote his energies to researching the future of the Reichsfuhrer himself. Things would not have gone well for him if the Allies had won, and the Soviets overran the country. Surely he would want to know how to avoid such a fate.

The Soviets. His stomach turned at the thought. Steckel was well informed of SS policy on the Eastern Front. To have Bolshevik savagery visited upon the soil of the Fatherland itself-it did not bear pursuing.

Steckel was so absorbed in thought that he tripped on a cobblestone and lost his footing on the wet ground. Twisting as he fell, he jarred his arm quite badly, sending a burst of pins and needles shooting up from his elbow. He cursed as he felt the filthy groundwater leaching into his pants. It was dark, with only wooden lanterns to light the way, and he realized, as he looked up from his ignominious perch next to a mound of rotting garbage, that he had wandered off his path.

He was lost.

Steckel had only a superficial familiarity with this part of the old city. He knew how to navigate to the bar and bathhouse, and that was it. He would have to ask directions. That realization led quickly to another. There was nobody about. The alleyway, framed by facades of ancient stone and wooden cottages, curved into blackness some twenty meters on. Steckel turned on his heel, but it was the same behind him, too. He stood in a small, isolated pool of flickering lantern light.