The First Interbellum (1918-1939)

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

Jurgensen now had the information he needed. In the meantime, the body of his
victim was carefully concealed. To provide a believably cause of death (and to
conceal some of the damage he had inflicted on her during the interrogation and
subsequent 'play'), Jurgensen arranged an apartment fire in which she appeared to
have burned to death. The body was recovered, and prepared for burial by one of
his own confederates, already in place.

Even as he prepared for the operation, Jurgensen had infiltrated his own people into
useful positions, this was a technique he had decades of experience with, and at
which he was quite good. Thus he had a man in place to disguise the marks on
the corpse, that plus a closed-casket funeral was more than sufficient to conceal the
actual truth (at least at that point).

(The physical changes to the corpse that would so disturb the Seven Aces would be
produced in the months after burial. Jurgensen would have been just as surprised
by this as anyone else, there were phenomena in play totally unfamiliar to him and
even to the Unity, as we shall see in due time.)

At this point, Jurgensen also (as Conners had surmised) took a moment of time to
arrange for the parents of his deceased victim to discover that she had dabbled in
selling sex at one point. He did this out of sheer dislike of her family, and out of a
sense of pleasure obtained by inflicting pain on an already suffering family. At the
time he did this, he felt sufficiently in control of the situation to indulge himself.

Jurgensen continued his work, and as he had expected, the Rhaemyi and the Avatars
Zadatharion and Aradel showed up in Chicago, drawn by rumor of his personal and
direct involvement in something in that city. He hoped that his apparent interest in
stealing the gems would be sufficient to deceive them, at least until it was too late to
matter. At first, things did indeed proceed more or less as Jurgensen had intended.

Jurgensen had his own inner team of personnel in Chicago, men (and a few women)
who were personally loyal to him as opposed to the Unity, and of whose true loyalty
the Unity was unaware, or so Jurgensen devoutly hoped. The Rhaemyi were in play
and a number of hostile exchanges occurred, with deaths on both sides.

As it happened, there were Rhaemyi operatives who had come to suspect the truth
of his goals, one of them having recognized the Atlantean tiles in the museum for
what they were, or at least for what they might be. This led to a search for a
lead on their nature, and investigation into their background, at the same timat that
Jurgensen and his own people were trying to work out how they had ended up in
the Breymont Museum. This had led to the exchange of gunfire in the library that
we saw earlier, among some other incidents.

Still, though Jurgensen was worried that at least some of his enemies might be on
track to discern the truth, he was fairly sure he was far enough ahead of them in
terms of time that it ought not matter. He had his own people at work creating a
variety of other ‘distractions’ to cloud the issue as well. The robbery of the gems
went off without the slightest problem, as well as the replacement with the false
display and fake gemstones. (Jurgensen wanted to have control of just when the
news of the theft came out, and he also had in mind trying to make it look as if the
Americans had tried to cover up their theft by substituting a fake.)

The incident in the hotel was a mixture of bad luck and carelessness on both sides,
but as a result, Jurgensen took some serious wounds. He escaped with his life, but
was forced to spend time, and psychic strength, in accelerating his recovery. Still,
this would have been no more than a very painful nuisance, a delay and a setback,
but no worse, except for the unexpected interference that came from the Seven Aces.

Jurgensen had no idea that the Aces existed, as such. He had encountered them in
Russia three years earlier, but he still had no idea who those men were. He had no
idea that the United States Government harbored, in its inner circles, people who had
discovered more of the truth of history and the world than he would have liked. He
had no idea that a group in United States Army Intelligence had sufficient sources to
have heard rumors of something going down in Chicago, and had sent in the
Seven Aces to try to find out what that might be, and deal with it as might be needed.
He most especially had no idea that a man named Howard Lake existed, or that he had,
with help from others, created a mechanism able to detect and trace psychic activities.

As we have seen, the Seven Aces discovered the substitution of the false gems, then
used their detector to track down Jurgensen, destroy his field base, recapture the gems,
force Jurgensen to kill a large swath of his own personal inner circle, to keep them
from being interrogated, and then had nearly blocked his improvised attempt to take
the real objective of the whole plan, the ancient mosaic tiles. Jurgensen had been
caught by surprise by attack from a whole new direction, a totally unsuspected and
new threat (other than his long-sensed psychic premonitions about Nathan Conners).

Some of the success of the Aces against Jurgensen was a matter of luck, but luck was
a factor in any success or failure in war or intelligence work. The Seven Aces
had made effective use of their luck, and especially of their technological surprise in
the form of the psychic detector. Jurgensen had ended up achieving some of his goal,
but at far greater cost than he had anticipated, and subjecting him to enormous risks.

Further, the Seven Aces had managed to prevent Jurgensen from escaping with all
of the tiles! He had two of the five, and had been able to hand-copy most of the
markings from the others before making his escape, but he could not be absolutely
sure of the accuracy of his copy work, and he knew there were gaps that he lacked.

Another cost was the death of one his experts. Jurgensen himself was an expert in
many fields, but he still could not be a specialist in everything. One of his men
was expert in the details of translating the texts and scripts of the Antediluvian Age,
far more so than Jurgensen himself (who was not ignorant of the matter). This was
a great loss, because it took Jurgensen much longer to translate the information on
his tiles and the papers had had copied, and he could not be as sure of the accuracy
of the translation without the assistance of his chief expert on the matter.

Now Jurgensen raced against time, his subtle, delicately balanced plans in ruins and
seeking to take advantage of his remaining assets as quickly as he could arrange. It
was infuriating, intolerable, the rage threatened to overwhelm him whenever he
pondered the entire chain of events (much of which he still did not understand), but
he forced himself to focus. He knew that the chaos and disruption inflicted by his
mysterious new foes would have ripple effects. He knew that whatever else it might
do, it would certainly draw the attention of the Rhaemyi, Zadatharion and
Aradel, and his other known enemies. His only chance to salvage something from
the entire debacle in Chicago was to move very, very fast, and waste no time on any
recriminations, regrets, or plans for revenge.

That could, and Jurgensen was quite determined would, come later.

For the time being, Jurgensen fled Chicago, making his way to New Orleans and
a ship bound for Rio de Janeiro. By the time the Seven Aces had put some
of the pieces together, and begun laying plans for the pursuit, Jurgensen was at
sea, knowing that every hour was precious. He had no idea if his new enemies,
whoever they might be, would pursue him, but he did know that others would.

Regarding those others, and what followed...

MORE LATER.

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

IIRC Percy Fawcett (see Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Fawcettfor a short overview) had some interesting experiences as an explorer of the Amazon basin -- and, in fact, disappeared in 1925 therein.

I read the book Lost Trails, Lost Cities, Percy Fawcett and Brian Fawcett (1953). Not sure how real it was but it did give atmosphere.

[D10]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

“Do tell, Nate,” McLaird said, sitting down on the corner of
the small desk in the makeshift office.

“Brazil,” Conners replied.

I almost spit my juice as I read this

Good read

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

Let us take a look at activities of some of the Seven Aces a few days after they
received approval from their chief to pursue their quarry. Back in Miami, they
were in the process of preparing to set out on that pursuit.

"...shirts, ties, razor...yeah, it think that'll do it."

"All packed, my love?" Melissa Conners asked.

"Hopefully so, I think that's the last of it," Nathaniel Conners
said, as he shut the top of his suitcase. "If not, I'll just have to
make do, because there's no more time."

“Do you have any idea when you’ll be back?” asked the redhead,
as she reached over to brush some lint from the lapel of his suit.

“I wish I did, darling,” Conners said. “I don’t even know quite
exactly where I’m going to be going, after all.”

“Not that you could tell me if you did,” Melissa said, sounding
more resigned than resentful. “As usual.”

Conners felt faintly guilty at her words, because they were all
too true. At the same time, he was grateful to his young wife for
the fact that she was as accepting as she was of the peculiar and
inconvenient demands of his very unusual work.

“No, I couldn’t,” Conners admitted. “But I’ll be back, my love,
as fast as I can. I promised that we’d visit my family, and I mean
to do it, just as soon as I can get back here.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Melissa said. “We’ve been married for
over a year and I still haven’t kept my promise to your family
to come back!”

A knock on the door marked the arrival of Brady Joneson with
the car. Conners looked at the clock on the mantle, and saw
that he really was out of time. If they were going to make their
departure time, he had to go.

Not for the first time, Conners considered whether it would be
worth quitting his unusual career to be able to spend more time
with his bride. A long kiss and a few heartfelt goodbyes later,
he was out the door, still wondering.

At just about that same time, a few miles away, aboard what looked like a fairly
ordinary freighter, Howard Lake and Bill Miles were looking at a large engine
assembly. Unlike the apparently ordinary freighter around it, this engine looked
somewhat unusual, indeed it had a strangely unfinished appearance.

“Are you sure this thing will even work, Howie?” Miles asked.
A former Navy man, Miles was still slightly skeptical of the new
engine design.

“It had better,” Lake replied. “It’s the only way we’re likely to
be able to catch up to the bastard we’re chasing, given that he’s
got a five day head start on us!”

“Even if it does work,” Miles said, “he’s sure to reach Rio way
before we do.”

“True,” Lake replied. “But if this works, we could cut a couple
of days off his lead, which ought to help. If it doesn’t work...if
it doesn’t work, we’re no worse off than we would be anyway.”

The engines were unusual in several ways. To begin with, the
engines were fueled not by coal, but by refined petroleum. This
was not unheard of, Miles knew that many of the newer Naval
vessels and some civilian ships were converting to burning oil
in their boilers. It provided greater efficiency, a pound of oil
provided more energy than a pound of coal.

Usually this improvement in efficiency was used to extend the
range of a ship, enabling it to cover the same number of miles
with a smaller supply of fuel, or to cover more miles using the
same mass of oil than could be done with coal.

These engines, on the other hand, were designed to burn oil at
a rate that would enable them to produce considerably more
power than engines of the same size could produce using coal.
They were optimized for speed, rather than for fuel efficiency.

That was not the only unusual thing about them, however.

At the same time that Lake and Miles were observing the engines of their vessel,
Tom Hicks and Charles Adams were taking a quick inventory of the armory, yet
another item that would not match the relatively unassuming exterior of the ship.

MORE LATER.

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

The engines were unusual in several ways. To begin with, the
engines were fueled not by coal, but by refined petroleum. This
was not unheard of, Miles knew that many of the newer Naval
vessels and some civilian ships were converting to burning oil
in their boilers. . .

Actually by the mid 1920s oil-fueled engines were common. The RN had been using oil in their new destroyers since the early part of WW I (the M's) [see D. K. Brown, "The Grand Fleet"] and the USN was about at par. Note that the first battleship to use oil exclusively, USS Nevada, was laid down in 1912. [see entry in Jane's Fighting Ships 1919, (reprint)]

Now if they were diesels . . . those were still pretty scarce then in merchant ships. Some had been converted using engines left over from the U-boat program. (See Conway's History of the Ship, "The Golden Age of Merchant Shipping," the chapter on propulsion.)

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by fredtheobviouspseudonym

Actually by the mid 1920s oil-fueled engines were common. The RN had been using oil in their new destroyers since the early part of WW I (the M's) [see D. K. Brown, "The Grand Fleet"] and the USN was about at par. Note that the first battleship to use oil exclusively, USS Nevada, was laid down in 1912. [see entry in Jane's Fighting Ships 1919, (reprint)]

Exactly. Bill Miles is a Navy man by background, and in 1925 he still thinks of oil propulsion as a 'new thing', and 1912 as recent history.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The 'freighter' actually had more than one armory, but the primary example of this
facility was to be found below the main deck, in a room behind a well-disguised
door. Within this room, Adams and Hicks were going down a checklist of those
items that were intended to be present.

“...ten thousand rounds, check.” Hicks said.

“All right, that covers the ammunition,” Adams said. He let out
a breath, and added, “Finally.”

“I think that’s everything,” Hicks said, taking another look at the
checklist. “Enough to fight a baby war.”

“Hopefully we won’t need most of it,” Adams said, as he double-
checked a crate of grenades. “But better to have it with us, anyway.”

The two men stepped through the door, and Adams swung it shut.
As the door slid into place, it appeared to be flush with the metal
on either side, the opening had been designed to be effectively
invisible when the door was shut, and the combination lock that
sealed it was set into what looked like an electrical junction box
on the opposite side of the narrow corridor.

“Is the story I heard true?” Hicks asked. “About the chief wanting
Howie to investigate designing a whole new kind of gun for us?”

Adams laughed. “Not exactly. Nate wants us to have guns with
a double safety catch. There would be the normal safety, and there
would be a second, hidden one that trumps the first. If the second
safety switch is off, the regular switch won’t actually do anything,
if the hidden safety is on then the regular safety will work like a
normal one.”

Hicks looked at Adams for a moment, as the two men reached a
ladderwell that led up to the main deck.

“Charlie, that sounds like a damned dangerous feature,” Hicks
said. “A gun like that would look like it was secured when it was
really free to fire!”

“That’s the idea,” Adams said, as they climbed up on deck. On
the open deck, they immediately changed the subject to matters
innocuous, since they could be seen from the docks and the shore,
but as soon as they were safely out of sight again, inside the upper
superstructure, they reverted to their previous conversation.

“The chief’s been thinking about what happened up in Chicago,
Adams explained. “When the enemy ‘witched’ our guns, putting
the safeties on with their damned magical whatever it is they do.
With the new guns he wants us to have, we could override the
safeties beforehand, so when somebody tries that trick on us, the
guns will still be ready to fire, hopefully without the enemy being
aware of that little fact.”

Hicks let out a breath. “I can see why the chief wants it, but it’s
still strikes me as really, really dangerous. Let one of ‘em get
into the hands of some careless idiot, and...”

“I know,” Adams said. “But I don’t want to come as close to
getting carried by six as we did in Chicago if we can help it, too.”

“How soon are these guns likely to be ready?”

“Not soon enough to use ‘em on this operation,” Adams said.
They’re not even out of the ‘idea’ stage yet. “But probably not
very long.”

Even as Hicks and Adams were speaking, Nathaniel Conners was arriving at the
pier, having driven through the pre-dawn darkness of Miami. The Sun was just
rising above the horizon when Conners came aboard the vessel.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The Sun was bright on the deck as the ship made southeastward, making as fast a
pace as the engineers believed the engines could maintain over time. Conners
gripped the railing, watching as the bow cut through the water, leaving a rather
impressive wake. Had there been anyone close enough to see, the rapid pace being
maintained by what looked externally like a battered tramp freighter might well
have been quite noticeable. Fortunately, the seas were clear in all directions to the
horizon, and they were taking a route deliberately chosen to make it less likely that
they would encounter other ships anyway.

Even so, the region was heavily traveled, there was a high chance that they would
be seen at some point. Time being of the essence, however, they had little choice
but to run at full speed and hope for the best.

Conners glanced at his pocket watch, seeing that it was almost thirteen hundred,
nodded to himself, and headed below decks, to the room that served the Seven
Aces as their main ‘office’ and meeting place while the vessel was at sea. There
he found the other ‘officers’ of the unofficial force waiting for him in a comfortably
furnished room, with maps of the South American continent spread out on the table
at the center of the room, and an ongoing debate about their next move occurring.

“Ten hut!” Adams intoned on seeing Conners enter the room.

“At ease,” Conners said almost in the same moment, before his
officers had even been able to finish rising.

Conners took a seat at the table, gesturing the others to join him,
and then he poured himself a glass of Glenlivet and took a sip.

“Gentlemen, I’m pleased to be able to tell you that we’re making
excellent time,” Conners said, sitting his glass on the table. “The
engineers think we can hold this speed all the way to Rio, which
will help.

“Unfortunately,” Conners went on, “there’s still no way that we
can hope to catch up to our quarry before he reaches Brazil. He
has far too big a head start on us, he’ll have reached Rio before
we get halfway there.”

“Any luck with any of our people already on-site?” Joneson
asked.

“What people on-site?” Hicks asked sourly.

“Unfortunately, that’s about the size of it,” Conners said. “There
are a few American operatives in Rio who might be able to do
something, but not many, and not all of them are necessarily such
that we can trust them. Bob McLaird thinks we’ve got a major
problem of leaks, he’s not sure who we dare trust right now.”

“So what do we do when we get there, Chief?” Sam Cray asked.
“If he gets there-what? Five days ahead of us?”

“We might be able to cut it down to four,” Conners said.

“Four days, if we’re lucky,” Cray said. “And we don’t even
know what ship he’s on. He could disappear pretty deep in
four days in Rio de Janeiro. I wouldn’t want to lay a bet on our
chances of finding him if he can use four days to hide.”

“If he was hiding, yeah,” Adams said. “But if he is heading for that
area we identified in the deep jungle, that’s another matter. If we
could somehow get ahead of him after we get there...”

“That’s probably our best bet,” Conners agreed. “I can’t imagine
that this bastard is just heading for Rio to hide. If all he wanted to
do was hide, he’s got a whole damned world to do it in. Heck, we
only suspect he’s going to Rio in the first place, if he’s trying to
hide he might as likely be on his way to London or Shanghai, or
he might be back in the good old USA for all we know.”

“I’m not crazy about our odds even if it’s true,” Cray said. “I’m
a betting man, but I wouldn’t bet on our chances of getting ahead
of him. Given how much we think he’s planned out, he’s probably
got people, transportation, all the stuff he needs waiting for him
when he gets there. Do we?”

“We’re working on it,” Conners said, “or rather Bob McLaird is.
He has to move very quietly, both because this whole thing is so
secret and because we don’t know how deeply penetrated the War
Department and the State Department are. But he promised me
that we’ll have some resources available when we get there.

“McLaird says we’ll have some money available, and a few people
that come as close to being trustworthy as we can manage under
these circumstances. Transportation suitable for a river journey is
supposed to be ready for us as well.”

“I take it that river travel is the only option?” Travis asked.

“That or air travel,” Conners said with a nod, “and the latter is not
a practical option in this case, the region is too far inland and too
far from civilization for flying to be useful. In fact, I want you all
to consider what Howard is about to tell us. Howie, if you would?”

Howard Lake stood up and walked over a free-standing board on
which a map of Brazil currently hung, along with several other
maps beneath the first.

“I hope you’ll excuse me if I tell you things you already know,”
Lake said to his fellow senior Aces. “But to put it simply, we’re
going to the back of beyond. The Amazon Jungle covers a region
of just about 2 million square miles, and it sprawls across several
national borders, though the majority of it is in Brazilian land. I
want to point out that 2 million square miles is about two thirds
the size of the USA. Think about that for a moment. That jungle
would cover all of America from the east coast over into the Great
Plains. That whole region is drained by the Amazon River.”

Lake flipped the first map over, revealing a second map of South
America, with the path of the Amazon River marked out in dark
blue and many tributary rivers in lighter blue.

“The Amazon River is gigantic,” Lake went on. “It makes the
Mississippi look like a creek. It has second and third order
tributaries that would be considered immense rivers in their own
right anywhere else. But keep in mind that to this day, this
entire river system has not been thoroughly explored and
mapped. There are lots of small low-level tributaries that don’t
appear on most maps, and a lot of land in the middle of that
jungle that may be known to the Indians down there, but that
we know just about nothing about.”

“That’s one reason air travel isn’t terribly useful for us now,”
Conners put in. “Even if we could overfly our target area,
all we’d see is the top of the jungle. We could fly right over
the enemy and whatever it is he’s looking for and be none
the wiser for it.”

“The area we’re heading for, if we understood what we think
was a map on those slabs right,” Lake continued, “is remote,
there just are no roads and railways anywhere near it. The only
way to get there is on foot, through hundreds of miles of jungle
covered territory, or by river.”

“I assume that’s true of our quarry as wel-”

The words of Charles Adams were interrupted in that moment by a sudden, very
unexpected surge of motion, as the ship, previously riding smoothly in the calm
waters, rocked, and the sound of a muffled explosion echoed through the vessel!

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The explosion that had interrupted the planning session of the Aces leadership had
been produced by an explosive charge, planted in one of the engineering holds. It
had not been excessively large, and had not penetrated the hull of the vessel, which
meant that the Molly Gordon (as their vessel was named) was safely afloat
and in no immediate danger. Still, one of their engines had been totally ruined.

This slowed the Molly Gordon less than one might have supposed, though.
The Molly Gordon was far from what it appeared to be, though it looked
like a battered freighter, it in fact carried multiple independent engines, with the
additional feature of separately operable power trains to the screws. The bomb
had been sufficient to disable one of the six separate engines, but the other five
needed only slightly repair in order for the Molly Gordon to continue at a
slightly slower pace. Their good fortune even extended to the fact that nobody
was killed, though two members of the crew were severely injured.

That left the question of who had placed the device, and why there seemed to be
only one such. Conners and the captain of the Molly Gordon certainly did
make a search, both the crew and the Aces themselves scoured the vessel from
bow to stern, but found no sign of any other explosives or other sabotage.

In point of fact, the saboteur had not realized that the Molly Gordon was as
redundantly supplied as it was, and had thought the single bomb would be enough
to at least force the Molly Gordon to return to port. The saboteur had not
been an experienced sailor or engineer, and he had had only a brief opportunity to
do his work before the Molly Gordon had set sail. His sabotage proved to be
far less effective than he had hoped, but not for lack of sincere intention.

As we already know from our omniscient point of view, the fears on the part of
Robert McLaird and Nathaniel Conners about the penetration of their organization
were all too well founded. In fact, not only was the American government subject
to penetration by the spies and agents of the other national governments, but also
by various more exotic and secret groups and individuals. Not all of these people
were necessarily, actively hostile to the United States as such, but all had loyalties
other than those of their official position and duties.

Some of those agents worked for the Unity, in various ways. Some of the people
in question were merely sources of information, feeding data to their employers in
exchange for money, or favors, or in response to various forms of coercion. Some
of them were more active, ready to carry out instructions from their employers to
help or hinder activities beyond their own proper roles. The Unity was not the only
such employer in the game, of course. Others included such groups as the Rhaemyi
and such potent individuals as Zadatharion and Aradel.

Though there were such people all through the government and military in various
places, some parts of the American official structures were less penetrated than
others. Those portions of the War Department and the Army out of which the Seven
Aces operated were far less penetrated than most, in part because they so very very
secret, in part because they were not very large in terms of numbers (and as such
more difficult to find and penetrate), and in part because Robert McLaird was on
the watch for such. and he was a very, very good judge of people and intentions.

Still, nobody is perfect, and there were a few low and medium level people in place
that worked for the Unity, though none knew exactly for what they worked.


Jurgensen, on his way toward Brazil, had sent coded messages that instructed those
of his assets that he could reach to implement certain contingency orders. Jurgensen
knew that someone in the American government had disrupted his intricate
operations, and he now issued orders (through chains of telepathic and radio proxy)
with loose descriptions of the sort of group he knew he had to have been in play.
The orders were to look for anything that matched what he knew of them, and do
what they could to find out more, and send the information.

One of the agents receiving this information had recognized something in it that
was similar to a group he did know something (not much, but something) about,
and in that he was right, the group was of course the Seven Aces. Unfortunately
for him, though he had some information that Jurgensen would have been eager to
possess, he had no timely way to send it. He had no idea of who his ultimate
employers were, or where they were, his connection to them was through a chain
of dead drops and cut outs. Also, he was operating in a highly secure activity in
which his absence from his place would be noticed if he went to use his contacts.

Under those circumstances, based on his various contingency orders and his own
thinking about the situation, the agent had decided to attempt to do what he could
to slow down the Aces, to give himself time to make his report. The bomb had
been his improvised effort toward that goal. For good or ill, however, the bomber
had not been an expert in either maritime engineering or demolitions. The bomb
was effective as far as it went, but it did not go nearly as far as its builder had desired.

On top of that, the presence of the bomb had revealed the presence of the saboteur.

MORE LATER.

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

One of the agents receiving this information had recognized something in it that was similar to a group he did know something (not much, but something) about, and in that he was right, the group was of course the Seven Aces. Unfortunately for him, though he had some information that Jurgensen would have been eager to possess, he had no timely way to send it. He had no idea of who his ultimate employers were, or where they were, his connection to them was through a chain of dead drops and cut outs. Also, he was operating in a highly secure activity in which his absence from his place would be noticed if he went to use his contacts.

Under those circumstances, based on his various contingency orders and his own thinking about the situation, the agent had decided to attempt to do what he could to slow down the Aces . . .

Very good.

An excellent illustration of the conflict between high security and high organizational effectiveness.