TW: Villains will express virulently racist views
Frankfurt am Main, West Germany April 20th, 1985
Adriaan Kruger had a plethora of reasons to be aggravated that day. For one, back at Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City, he was having trouble with security, which was more tight than at Campeche International in the Yucatan. He remembered standing before the security check, in front of a single guard, who was shivering before him.
“Sir, what is your concern?” he snarled.
“We just need to check you, Señor,” answered the guard, a fair-skinned Mexican man, likely of Spanish stock.
Kruger scoffed.
“Is it my mother’s blood?” he snapped.
“What do you mean Señor?” the guard asks. “We just need to screen-”
Kruger gave the guard a long, unflinching glare. The guard’s shivering intensified.
“I will let you know that I am a high-blooded white like my father,” he explained in a low, aggressive growl. “Don’t mistake me for some dirty animal.”
“Señor- you’re going to have to calm down,” the guard stuttered.
I should gut him right where he stands, Kruger told himself.
Instead he let out a deep exhale and marched past the guard, who didn’t bother to check the scarred man’s carry-on.
What a coward, Kruger noted.
Then came the flight itself, which would have gone smoothly had it not been for his fellow passenger. Kruger sat next to a dark-skinned man in a wool turtleneck sweater and round glasses. His black hair was short and curly, and he was reading a novel called Kindred to pass the time on the flight. Adriaan took one glance at the pages and recoiled with disgust. It was a book about Black Americans, like its reader.
Why him of all people? Kruger internally groaned.
“You okay man?” asked the bookworm.
Kruger turned to look at the bookworm. He furrowed his brows and grimaced.
“None of your business,” was his reply.
“I’m sorry,” continued the bookworm, a sympathetic edge to his tone. “Just trying to look out for you.”
He lay a hand on Kruger’s shoulder.
The gall! was all that ran through his head.
“We all have to stick together,” assured the bookworm.
Kruger felt the potent urge to slit a throat, the bookworm’s throat to be precise.
“What makes you think I’m black?” he growled, giving another intense glare.
The bookworm didn’t bother him again.
But what had been most aggravating was the failure of his mission in the Yucatan. It was just a simple mission to acquire an artifact that was of too much value to leave in the hands of savages. It should have been easy. But…
Suddenly, he heard the honking of the cab’s horn. He was seated on the car’s backseat. Kruger didn’t know how long the drive had been. But sure enough, it was over.
“You’re here, sir,” announced the cab driver, stretching his hand out for payment.
The night is rather hazy and dark, lit up only by the streetlamps. Kruger slaps a 50 mark bill into the driver’s palm, as he leaves the cab, heading for the boot to retrieve his gear. As he attaches everything onto his belt and slings his rifle over his shoulder, he notices the driver eyeing him. He slams the boot of the car and, rolling his eyes, grabs a bag of 2 mark coins from his pocket and tosses it towards the driver, who snatches it out of the air.
“Shhhhh,” is Kruger’s explanation for the payment.
With that, the driver revs his vehicle and takes off into the traffic of Frankfurt, leaving Kruger at his destination.
Kruger now stands before Nordmann Tower, piercing the skies high above the common West German (and the rest of Germany for that matter). It is designed in the futurist school of modernist architecture, with a blocky main body with four rounded pillars jutting from the corners. From the front and the back, parts of the building, from the ground floor to around two-thirds up, protrude slightly out of the main body.
Kruger notices that the lights of every one of the countless windows are shut off, except for the highest floor, a penthouse-like extension on the roof from which dim-orange light blasts out of massive fifteen meter high windows, like a lighthouse in the darkness of the Frankfurt night. Crowning the structure on all four sides are massive glowing red neon Ns, the logo of Nordmann Global, a world-renowned multinational corporation, headquartered in this very building, with its reach ranging from banking to shipping to even innovations in the young high-tech industry. And hidden in the N is an F-shaped runic symbol.
Kruger walks through one set of revolving doors, embedded into large, glass windows, entering this literal pillar of international industry. Dim, orange fluorescent bulbs light the plaza-sized lobby of Nordmann Tower, like torches in the grand hall of a medieval castle. A fountain in the shape of a crucified man, hung on a cross, being pierced by a Roman centurion’s spear is in the center of this entry plaza, water flowing like blood from a spout hidden in the “wound” of the statue. Kruger approaches the fountain, eyeing the elaborate, if grim craftsmanship of the stone.
“Never gets old,” he notes with a sadistic smirk.
“Guten tag, Adriaan,” greets a calm, collected man’s voice from behind his back.
Kruger turns around to face his employer. He is a tall man, a palm above even Kruger, and so, so fair in his skin complexion. His hair was graying, though it could have easily once been light brown in his youth. Kruger’s employer had prominent cheekbones with a strong jaw and strikingly blue eyes, a perfect specimen of a man. He was cloaked in a black trench coat above a finely-tailored gray suit and dress pants.
“Guten tag, Herr Nordmann,” Kruger greeted back. “New suit?”
“Hugo Boss,” replied Nordmann, Kruger’s employer. “Not the latest, but it’s vintage. I’ve always had a soft spot for the classics. Like the uniforms they tailored for my father.”
As Kruger nodded, Nordmann put on a more serious expression.
“As for our business, Adriaan,” began Nordmann, his voice soft and dry, “Have you acquired the Ball of the Ancestors? It would certainly be better kept in Aryan hands than by those savages who abandoned their cities to dwell in the mud.”
“My apologies, Herr Nordmann,” apologized Kruger, his tone laced with venomous fury. “Something got in the way.”
Nordmann raised an eyebrow.
“Or should I say someone,” snarled Kruger.
“Tell me more,” requested Nordmann, unfazed in his tone.
Kruger explained everything. The memories of this botched mission flooded out of his tongue. The arrow scar on his left cheek from Chief Horado. The constant bumbling of Jim and Joe, those idiots. Joe’s death from rattlesnake bite all because Jim was too dull to realize he could have saved his friend.
But he especially focused on that Arab woman with the Crusader sword. She ruined everything. She swiped the ball from under Jim’s and Joe’s noses. She was the one who landed Joe into the rattlesnakes. She escaped him once. She gave him another facial scar with that blade. Then she escaped again, returning the Ball of the Ancestors to rot with a tribe who knew nothing of its value. And she clearly thought she was so funny with her pathetic, pathetic quips. She had guts, sure. But that stupid nickname “Rambo” echoed in Kruger’s head like the incessant buzzing of a gadfly harassing a bull buffalo. And he was the bull.
“A Crusader sword?” inquires Nordmann, his eyebrow raised.
“Yes,” Kruger reiterates. “I don’t know what she is! It’s like she’s trying to play knight in shining armor! Next time I see her, she will beg for my mercy! She will-”
Kruger stops as Nordmann raises a hand.
“Is that all you think of her choice of arms?” asked Nordmann.
“I honestly don’t know what else it could mean,” admitted Kruger.
“Adriaan, my friend, to understand the enemy takes more than just surface level-analysis,” explains Nordmann.
Nordmann paces around the fountain.
“I’ve been collecting artifacts with my father since I was a boy,” he narrates. “He often brought me on trips with the SS’s archaeology division which I am sure you are well acquainted with, Adriaan.”
“Of course,” Kruger replies. “The Ahnenerbe.”
“Excellent,” Nordmann says with a devilish smirk. “Well, my career has shown me that each item tells a story. A story of people who make and use them.”
He pauses in front of the statue, gazing upon the piercing of the crucified man.
“I would use this fountain as an example to remind you of my method,” continued Nordmann, his voice reserved and calm, “But you already know its story well.”
Kruger nods with a smirk. Indeed he did.
“Instead, I shall use your new friend and her Crusader sword,” declares Nordmann. “You also said she had a fishnet scarf, right?”
“Yes she did sir,” affirms Kruger, listening intently.
“A keffiyeh,” Nordmann says, his eyes appearing to light up. “She’s from Palestine.”
Kruger watches him clear his throat.
“My personal opinions on that wasteland and its people aside,” he continues, “Palestine was once a target of the Crusaders. Actually, it was the target. Fascinating history, if I must say.”
Kruger watches him continue a carefully-paced march around the statue.
“They set up kingdoms of their own in that land at the expense of every Jew and Muslim in sight,” Nordmann elaborates. “They were the most notable colonizers of Palestine since the Romans.”
Kruger nods along.
“In more recent history, Palestine was under the Mandate of the British,” Nordmann continues the monologue. “With them came many more Zionists to settle the land. Some of them had the right ideas about the world. You’re familiar with Avraham Stern, right Adriaan?”
“The leader of the Stern Gang,” answered Kruger. “They tried to make an alliance with our forefathers. I’ve worked with some of its members. They’re good people.”
“Ah yes, our forefathers,” whispered Nordmann, his tone like soft silk. “A shame the Führer refused to use them to our own ends.”
Kruger watches his employer hold his head down in evident shame.
“Then, those Judeo-Bolshevik Bundists made an alliance with the Arabs of Palestine,” he hissed, though his fury was audibly held back. “They drove away any chance of western countries civilizing the place.”
He takes a deep breath before looking back at Kruger.
“It has always been my father and I’s belief that the Arabs of Palestine were just Jews, among others, who forgot their roots and intermixed with their conquerors,” explains Nordmann. “It brings me grief to know that they have found harmony with their brothers, even after the riots under the Mandate. They could destroy civilization now that they are reunited.”
“Herr Nordmann, I’m sorry, but what does this have to do with the woman?” Kruger asks.
“Adriaan, she wields a Crusader sword,” Nordmann specifies. “It is a symbol of colonizers, wielded by a woman who lived in a land long colonized by a variety of world powers. What does that say about her?”
Kruger stares blankly at his employer.
“Well, I think it tells me the whole story,” Nordmann suggests.
Author's Note:
Unlike the history described by Hugo Nordmann in this chapter, real-world Palestine is under a brutal occupation. The people of the Gaza Strip are currently being subjected to a genocidal war at the hands of the apartheid regime. If you want to learn more, use the links below to educate yourself on the history of Palestine and the occupation its people are suffering under. I hope you all learn something and are inspired to take action. While we may not be able to do much alone, together all of us can move mountains, affecting change in the world.
Best wishes,
-Benedict Sky
Links:
https://decolonizepalestine.com/
https://bdsmovement.net/
https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/
