A Glibertarians Exclusive: Blood and Gold, Part III
04 September 1987 – Soultzeren, France
Later afternoon. Hess and Belos had exchanged their laborer’s coveralls for clothing less conspicuous out here in the Alsatian countryside: Button-down shirts, plain trousers, and large floppy caps to keep the sun off their heads. Both had spent time building up a resistance to sunlight, but it was still irritating, even painful, so they kept their hats pulled down low and their hands in their trouser pockets as they climbed into the hills behind the small town of Soultzeren.
Soultzeren
Alexander van Helsing retained his typically American attire. Without explaining why and how he came to know where they were going, he led them up into the hills, to a ridge overlooking a few big rocky outcrops on the other side of a small valley. They walked along the ridgeline, van Helsing picking his way carefully along in the growing darkness – his limitations in darkness in no way applied to Hess and Belos, but they followed along as they had agreed. In the last, fading bit of daylight, the American raised a hand, signaling them to stop.
“There. That’s the place.”
‘The place’ was a rock overhang on a steep, rocky hillside overlooking Soultzeren. A large boulder blocked the entrance to what appeared to be a small cave. The three conspirators crouched in some low bushes a few hundred yards to the east, reconnoitering the area.
“So this is why you needed us? Brute strength, to move a rock?” Belos frowned at van Helsing. “You could have used a lever.”
“Not exactly.” Van Helsing leaned back on his hands. “I was on the trail of the guy who moved the cache. In fact, if you two had gotten to the cemetery in Strasbourg a month earlier, you’d have found the gold there. But someone beat you to it, and I was able to trail him here.”
“So,” Hess asked, “why did you not confront him?”
“You’ll see.”
Belos and Hess traded a look. They had no fondness for each other, and had not for several centuries now, but the oddness of working with an ordinary man, and a van Helsing at that, was not lost on them. The old Dutch family had been involved with such as they for a long time, even earning them literary recognition in a famous old novel and, much as that novel had gotten badly wrong about such as Hess and Belos, it still maintained a perverse sort of popularity, even among their kind.
“I hear something,” Belos said. Sure enough, Hess listened carefully, turning his head one way and the other; someone was indeed approaching the cavelet, from the north.
“Let’s go, then, and see who we have to deal with.” Hess led the way down the slope, across the small valley, to a clearing a few paces away from the cavelet. It was dark now, but a full moon was rising, providing enough light for even van Helsing to see easily. The moonlight also revealed the figure approaching them from the north: A tall, painfully thin figure, wearing the clothes of a French peasant, with sunken cheeks and hollow eyes. Belos examined the newcomer closely; there was something familiar about him, something from the war…
Then Hess stepped forward. “Reinhard Heydrich, as I live and breathe,” he said, not without irony. He glanced at Belos; one bushy white eyebrow raised. Belos nodded, slightly.
The cadaverous man bowed. “Rudolf. Or whatever your name is today. Please, I go by Heinz Mueller now.”
“Then you may call me Jurgen. Jurgen Hess. My comrades here are Braxton Iocca and Alexander van Helsing.”
“Van Helsing, is it?” ‘Mueller’ examined the young American closely. “Not one of us,” he said. He looked back at Hess. “You pick strange allies. Not only a normal man, but a van Helsing as well.”
“Sure as hell ain’t one of you,” van Helsing snapped. “Don’t mean we can’t work together, though.”
“I confess,” Hess smiled, “I had no idea you were one of us. My compliments on your concealment. You were supposed to have died in Prague in 1942.”
“And you were supposed to have died in Spandau Prison, only a few days ago. We would both seem to have cheated the reaper.”
“What are you doing here?” Belos asked. Van Helsing, taken aback and slightly confused at the calm tenor of the conversation, looked at Belos, then at Heydrich/Mueller, and took a step back. There was a thick tension in the air.
Hess sidled away to look at the boulder blocking the cave.
“I am,” Heydrich/Mueller said, “minding my own business. I suggest you do likewise. There is nothing here that concerns you. Any of you.”
“We were just in that village,” Belos turned and pointed towards Soultzeren, “and were told the strangest story about these hills.”
“What? Who did you speak to?” Heydrich/Mueller took a step forward, looked down the hill…
…and stopped. His eyes opened wide, and he let out a gasp, then fell forward on his face.
Hess stood behind him. His right hand was still extended, bloody, his long fingers tipped in nails that had lengthened into chitin talons. In his hand was Heydrich/Mueller’s still-beating heart. Hess looked at the heart, at Heydrich/Mueller’s rapidly shriveling corpse, then at Belos and van Helsing, who stood wide-eyed.
“I never liked him,” Hess said. “He was a filthy, uncultured animal.” He tossed the heart into the bushes. “I see, young Alex, why you didn’t want to deal with him on your own. He would have been too much for you. Perhaps even for your grandfather, were he alive today.” Hess bent and pulled a handful of long grass, wiped his bloody hand clean with it. “Let’s get into the cave and retrieve the gold, shall we?”
***
09 September 1987 – Marseille
“Well, well,” the oily little Frenchman breathed. “You were speaking true, then. This is a lot of gold.”
Hess prudently didn’t mention the other two caches he knew of: not in front of the others.
“I can exchange it for South African krugerrands, or Swiss gold francs. Five percent of the proceeds in either case is to be mine, for facilitating the transaction. It will take a few days; I’ll have to weigh all this, get some spot prices, stir up some of my contacts to source the currency. Or I could perhaps just have this melted, get rid of all those annoying swastikas. Recast it into straight bullion. It could be that I could even see it properly marked, three nines fine.”
“Swiss coin would be best,” Belos said. “How long will this take? A few days, you say?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps five days, perhaps a week. Who can say? But I will guarantee you are satisfied. I have not become the most trusted currency exchanger in the French Riviera for nothing, you know.”
Hess spoke up. “We stay here, watch you weigh the gold. Then we take the gold with us; we come back in one week to make the exchange.”
“My sources, they will expect to see the raw gold they are exchanging.”
“They may bring the coin to the exchange. We will not leave this gold with you.”
“It might be that this will work. It might be that my sources trust me this much. I will contact them. If these terms are acceptable, I will telephone you. You can be reached by telephone, oui?”
“We can. We are staying at the InterContinental Marseille. Call Room 514,” Hess said. It turned out Belos’ resources already extended far enough for a good hotel, and for once Hess couldn’t fault his generosity.
Weighing the gold took some time. When that was done, the Frenchman – he had given his name as Pierre Bouchard, which Hess found improbable – clapped his hands together.
“Very well. I have my figures and can determine how many Swiss coins we will need. I will call you when I have them and arrange the trade. It will be so. Come, then, let us share a glass to our mutual enterprise.”
The four men shared a glass of heavy red wine; then the three conspirators walked out into the Marseille night.
Van Helsing spoke up. “He’s gonna try to fuck us, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Hess agreed. “He is most certainly going to try to, as you say, fuck us.”
I thought Van Helsing was a goner.
We’ll see what happens when Pierre Bouchard tries to fuck them.
Great story, Animal.
Presumably, they’ll sparkle. That’s the current trend when you try to fuck a vampire, right?
Great chapter. The heart-removal was nice!
Also, I really enjoyed your interview this morning. Great job!
An interview with a vampire?
Link?
https://www.facebook.com/NewsTalkSTL
Not sure if there is a way to go back.
Oonce oonce… Oonce oonce…
I was expecting a werewolf to show up and the cave under the moonlight.
LOL, same here.
Ha. Makes three of us
Throw in some romance and he has a new True Blood.
Profit!
STEVE SMITH FEELINGS HURT NOW. NO NEED SILLY PUPPYMAN TO HANDLE GOLD. AND STEVE HANDLE GOLD LIKE FRENCHIE PLANS TO, MEAN…..
Trusting Bouchard is a bad idea. It’s a good thing they don’t.
You’d think someone as long in the trade as he presumably is would have a better sense of “customers way too dangerous to fuck with”.
Thanks Animal, though I am confused about Heydrich/Mueller. How did he randomly show at the spot at the same time? Secrets don’t seem to be well kept.
If more than 1 person knows something it can’t be regarded as well kept.
OT, but about that hubless bike everyone was gushing about in the AM lynx; the gyroscopic effect is no greater than a Harley chopper with a 21″ front wheel, in that of course it is part of what keeps you up, but has little effect on turning. And that is because you don’t “turn” a motorcycle, you lean the bike into the desired change in direction while counter steering. In otherwords, you lean into the turn with both the bike and the rider changing the center of mass, and you do this by pushing away from the turn with the bars to initiate the lean. So, at speed you only need to turn the bars slightly, as a drastic turn would cause a crash, in any case. Bicycles work the same way.
My comment was based on there being 48 seconds of the bike in motion — all of it in a striaght line.
Chess World Cup final startes tomorrow:
Carlsen vs Pragg
Third place match:
Caruana vs Abasov
Carlsen beat Abasov 1.5-0.5.
Caruana and Pragg went to tiebreakers today and Pragg won on 2nd tiebreaker. Carlsen, Pragg, and winner of 3rd place match get invites to next years candidates tournament. Carlsen has already said he wont accept, so 4th place will get his spot.
The World Cup is the only major event Carlsen has not won in his career.
OT
Well, I got through to the department of public works on my first phone call to inform somebody about the sign in front of my house. Apparently every city department shares the same public phone number and you have to go through the IVR menu to reach the right one.
Now, hopefully they’ll fix it and not decide to bill me. Actually, I don’t care if they fix it, I just don’t want them to bill me.
IVR menu triggered me. I have been dealing with hospitals and insurance a lot lately. One of the IVRs I have had to navigate regularly over the last month is arranged in a binary tree. Every choice is 1 or 2. The minimum time to get to an extension is 58 seconds…. that is if you know the sequence and don’t wait for the entire voice prompt.
I kinda admire the commitment to the vision – clearly they got feedback that 5 or 7 choices on one level is too much. So 2 it is! They must have a massive menu, since it takes so many choices to get anywhere. That is a lot of multiples of 2.
I only Listened to choice 4, which was the department I was looking for. Immediately after that, I got to an actual person.
I was shocked.
In general, 4-5 options is about the sweet spot.
Decades ago when I got laid off I decided I was going to collect the unemployment I paid for come hell or high water.
You had to certify every week that you were actively looking for work. You did this by answering like 10 questions plus your claim number by IVR.
I wrote them all down and programmed them into two stored number positions on the phone. I simply connected to the number waited for the voice to start and activated the two numbers consecutively. Worked a treat and saved a good chunk of time.
My experience with unemployment had a different recertification – we had to fill out a form listing the contacts for the week and turn them over to the bureaucrat assigned our case. So I had to get to the DoL office in the next city over, because there wasn’t one in the town I was living in at the time.
I had to do that after three months. I had to provide the records for everything I certified. Fortunately I found work before I need to come for the in person certification.
It was PITA as I had to commute to Manhattan from NJ as the unemployment was from a NYS employer. I did have to do the whole come into NYC and have a bureaucrat explain how to look for work and record it session.
Yeah, they’re utterly useless in terms of helping you find work – since their job is just to record your efforts, and thus they’re not penalized for your lack of success.
Years ago I was calling the US Embassy and was stuck in IVR jail. I shouted into the phone “All I want to do is talk to a fucking human being!” Someone picked up immediately. They must have had some code “If caller sounds like deranged terrorist, then go to front of queue.”
If you can’t reach a human within three button presses, the system has to go.
Ideally, the number is much smaller than that.
Is the US Embassy’s IVR jail worse than a Turkish prison?
Just needs Yakety Sax as background music.
Detaching a trailer on a decline without the vehicle parked
I’m impressed.
It appears that nothing was damaged, so good recovery!
[no children were run over in the making of this video]
Why did he get in the car in the first place? That trailer is so light he could have got it over the ball quite easily by hand.
Good question. Something about trailers – especially boats – trips the retard switch.
That…was spectacular.
Be Batman
Many Lahaina wildfire victims may be children, Hawaii governor says
Fuck him. They know exactly who is missing. This story is easing toward admitting some pretty dark things.
Yup. They’ve been slow walking this.
“It turns out we’ve burned hundreds of chilren in flames, but rest assured, Moloch was pleased.”
That’s why Biden is finally going there, he heard the word “children”.
It is an absolute shit show and our national media is complicit.
From Afghanistan to Maui its been protect Joe at any cost; even if it means a few hundred dead children.
https://thenationalpulse.com/2023/08/21/3-weeks-since-maui-fires-began-biden-claims-hes-been-there-from-day-1/
I just…fuck. That’s so fucking horrible.
Well that’s a kick in the balls.
I know. It’s beyond belief.
Yeah, it’s bad. Hits close to home. A college friend passed in much the same way in a house fire. They found him with a couple of the family’s pets. Can’t remember how many dogs they had, but he got one or two out and went back in for the others.
Ugh…just hope smoke inhalation took him before. God damn…
Is holding a medical degree a prerequisite for or any association with the office of Hawaiian governor? No? Then both he and CBS can shove those fucking post nominals up their fucking asses.
Rip
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Warnock
Long since retired.
But the current Adobe Reader is a perfect example of a program that was complete at least a decade ago, but which must be bloated with copious unneeded features for its annual upgrade and request for payment cycle.
My company ditched Reader due to the extortion fees and frequent updates. The substitute is not as good.
Now there’s an achievement in failure – making a worse product than Acrobat Reader.
I thought everyone pretty much used the current crop of web browsers for PDF reading these days. Can’t write / do forms and crap… but for the kind of thing the basic Reader was used for, it suffices.
Of course — you could be saying that the current crop of web browsers are “not good”… and I’d be hard pressed to argue strongly on that.
Who would view PDFs in a browser?
Um… a lot of people? Why not when the functionality has been baked into them for years now….
Agreed. Gross.
Me when I’m trying to quickly find a document on the web and don’t want to launch yet another fucking application.
Back to the office next month a mere three and a half years after they sent us home. Going back to the same office which has been unused that entire time.
Come on in. The water is fine…
My worry is there were those of us who came in with no complaints three days a week that they want back five days.