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Page 44.
Chapter 36.
 "It's okay," Jeff assured Max Dusenbery, "We can chat. I'm waiting for Sergeant McCarthy to call me."
Dusenbery said: "Back in 1936 we were a pretty close-knit group at first, a little Hitler cheering section right here in brand-new Raritania City, the city of the future. There was Armaday, who had been in Germany to help design what later became the Volkswagen. There was Louis Beering, who was an ardent Nationalist Socialist. There was Anna Cranston, an attractive young enthusiast, a tragic person really, who wasted her life and her love on Albert's brother. There was Albert, who stayed away from it all, though he would do almost anything his brother said; a classic case of sibling love/rivalry. And there was me. At first I was an ardent socialist too. I'm the guy who dropped out of Harvard and never did get his degree. What soured me on the movement, aside from its anti-Semitism, was something personal.
"I began to fall in love with Anna Cranston, and I would have treated her right. She was a beautiful woman, Maxxon. She could be narrow-minded and vengeful at times, but in the end she always was kind and generous to a fault. I fell for her, and I have always loved her. But she was blind to me. All she could see was Louis Beering. And he was a stuck up, selfish, demoniacal son of a bitch who was just using her like a piece of clay. It infuriated me. And her love struck attitude toward Louis made me want to lash out at him some way.
"The opportunity came when the FBI began to look into our little movement. Old J. Edgar Hoover's local boys were quite thorough. Armaday was already gone, of course, to fight in Spain and die with the Nationalists of Franco. I was disenchanted and when the FBI leaned on me, I told a few secrets. When the Germans carpet-bombed Guernica, that did it for me. I did a little work for the U.S. Government, which included turning in a stray American Nazi here and there."
"Did you ever turn in Louis Beering?" Jeff asked. "Pardon me for interrupting. I just wondered."
"No," Max said with an odd look, "but I wish I had."
Jeff asked: "So you befriended Albert?"
"I wouldn't exactly say that." Max's eyes twinkled. "At first we disliked each other because I disliked his brother over Anna being soft on him."
"How exactly did Louis die?" Jeff asked. "I've never really found anything out about it."
Max said: "Albert and I found him. It was too horrible to let Anna see. He didn't want her to know about the machine or the tunnel..."
"Tunnel?"
"Yes, I thought you knew. The old turnpike tunnel."
Jeff snapped his fingers. "I had a FEELING when I was in there."
"You just didn't check around closely enough. The machine is in there."
"A time machine?"
Max shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe the machine was a placebo. Maybe it's all done with a powerful chronokinetic mind like Anna's..."
"Chrono-kinetic?" Jeff quickly picked the Greek words apart: khronos, time; kinesis, movement. Movement through time. "Yes. A mental facility. I am a clairvoyant. That means sometimes I can see what others can't see; a lost penny, a hidden button, a buried artifact. My powers are relatively minute; just enough to affirm for me that such things are very real. It was what brought Anna and me together as friends initially, before Louis made his move on her. Anna and I were in the library in Manhattan, researching psychic phenomena. I asked her why she was doing it, and at first she was too shy to tell, but after I told her about my ability to locate a lost button, she laughed and shared hers with me."
"And what exactly was hers?"
"She has a very powerful gift. At first she didn't realize, and I certainly didn't, just how powerful. She would have dreams at night, of long ago things. Not past lives, really. She would float someplace; maybe a horrid old battlefield still gory and smoky and full of cries; or a happy day someplace in a summer long ago, when in her own time it was winter; or maybe..."
"What about the future?" Jeff asked impatiently.
"Ah yes, the future," Max said looking away into the past. "She was pretty close-lipped about that. I think she has seen something. Who knows? Something terrible? Something wonderful? In any event, she never liked to talk about the future.
"Then Louis came along. Wanted her to try transporting HIM into time. The FUTURE! That was what our glorious Louis was interested in. The future of the master race. He made no secret of it that he was of Germanic origin.
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