HAIRCUT
by
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‘They will kill us all,’ said Max emphatically. ‘Rubbish!’ shouted Schiller, ‘Why would they do that? They need us to administer our districts.’ ‘Yes, I agree, why would the guards turn on us? We are their superiors,’ said Brunner pompously. ‘You don’t seem to have noticed that all the staff in this castle has been infected with the obedience gene. They will do anything that madman tells them to do. He knows we can incriminate him and expose him to the world’s ridicule. Oh yes! He’s going to kill us alright.’ For emphasis he pointed to the corpse on the floor and Mayer’s body, still slumped on the table. ‘How do you suppose they are going to administer their districts?’ The group fell silent. ‘He’s right,’ shouted a voice from the rear. ‘Let’s get out of here!’ As one man they made for the exit, except for Max who quickly slid under the heavy round table. He had heard the footsteps running up the stairs and guessed what was about to happen. The group scattered in panic as the two black shirted guards appeared, followed by Heydrich who shouted the order to open fire. Max watched the carnage from his vantage point under the table. The noise was deafening, Gauleiters screaming, bullets slamming into metal panels, hard bone and soft flesh. Then suddenly there was silence except for the drip drip of blood oozing from someone sprawled on the table above and forming a scarlet pool on the floor in front of Max. Smoke hung in the air, as if afraid to move. Heydrich gave a long, hysterical, humourless laugh, shouted something about reporting and left in the direction of the torture chamber. The two guards circled the table counting as they went; ‘eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf.’ Max shifted his position silently, his eyes fixed intently on the boots nearest to him. ‘Sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn, elf.’ There was a pause then Max could hear the man counting again, this time under his breath. Swiftly he grabbed the ankles of the guard and heaved with all his strength. The man toppled backwards, smacked his head on a chair behind him and fell in a crumpled heap. His gun dropped from his grasp and clattered to the floor. Max rolled out from under the table and picked up the discarded weapon in one neat movement, turned and aimed at the other startled guard. He pulled the trigger… nothing happened. The look of fear on the man’s face slowly changed to one of recognition and then a broad sardonic leer. The guard raised his gun and pointed it at Max’s head. ‘Zwölf,’ he said deliberately.
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About the Book
Carl von Kurtze is the egotistical head of a pharmaceutical company based in Linz, Austria. A bleak featurless castle high in the Austrian mountains is where his other, more sinister activities are carried out and this is where his employee, William, takes his girlfriend Freya, while they are on holiday. Freya has a unique genome which allows her to read minds; exactly the ability required by von Kurtze to finish his experiments with human cloning and targeted ethnic gene technology. He maintains that when complete this will enable him to selectively change the Jews of Europe into subservient automatons, with no will of their own. Arab organisations dedicated to eliminating the Jewish nation and a team of wealthy National Socialist industrialists have funded von Kurtze’s activities but Freya suspects that there is another motive behind this façade. By threatening William, von Kurtze forces Freya to assist in the production of a clone of Adolph Hitler and she becomes a prisoner at the castle. The experiment is so successful that Hitler takes over the organisation leaving von Kurtze in a desperate situation, threatened by two tyrannical forces, the Arabs on one hand and Hitler on the other. The shocking truth is revealed when Freya witnesses the confession of von Kurtze’s mother, Eva, who has secretly lived with the legacy of an incident which took place at the end of the second World War. Freya accesses von Kurtze’s supercomputer and discovers the full extent of his nightmare plan. She is the only one with the ability to prevent von Kurtze plunging Europe into a new dark age and the Middle East into all out war. Eva provides the information Freya requires to stop von Kurtze, but is this the beginning or the end of the process?
About the Author
Scientific innovation has radically changed human society since the industrial revolution. The pace of change in many disciplines is accelerating and threatens to overwhelm collective moral judgement. The author, has witnessed this creeping malaise and the machinations of business during the 36 years he has been employed working for a high tech company serving the oil industry, in the shadow of Lincoln Cathedral. He is interested in society's ability to maintain a responsible attitude to these changes in a world where ego seems to hold sway and Machiavellian individuals subjugate the weakest to achieve their personal goals. Are we destined to descend into anarchy by following the example of their leadership? Can we make sense of our condition by following the teachings of one of many religions or are they just as corrupt as the rest of society?. As those in authority harness new technology to maintain their self serving control, often for the wrong reasons, without proper understanding and with disastrous consequences, his hero's and heroines struggle to demonstrate the better aspects of humanity as they endeavour to rise above this all consuming greed for money and power.