Legal Advice

Ilsa Hauppman sat leaned over her wheelchair and pondered her chessboard. She mind drifted back the first and final time she had ever been defeated playing the game. It had been in 1940 and her opponent had been Reinhard Heydrich. The man reveled in his titles "The Hangman" and the "Butcher of Prague", and "The Man with the Iron Heart", but she only knew him as beautiful Heydrich. The young Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor had been her mentor, sponsor and lover, though had had been married for nine years. She had spent the weekend with him at his summer house in Fehmarn and the two had decided to match wits after many hours of discussing politics and making love. His unusual intellect was matched only by the ever-watchful instincts of a predatory animal. He was inordinately ambitious. It seemed as if, in a pack of ferocious wolves, he must always prove himself the strongest and assume the leadership. Ilsa wished to be the same. After the longest, most passionately played game ever, her pieces all had fallen to the SS-Obergruppenführer. He was the last man, the last person she ever felt was her intellectual superior. She loved him with all her heart, if a heart such as hers was capable of such things. Hitler had her soul, but Heydrich would always have her heart.

When he was assassinated three short years later Ilsa was in Hungary. The news struck her like a thunder-blow. She immediately suspended her task and headed to Czechoslovakia to be at the dying Nazi's side. An assassin's grenade had ripped part his spleen and lungs, the shrapnel causing septicemia to set in. He had slipped into a coma by the time she arrived, one that he never emerged from. He was only 38. Ilsa's eyes were red from weeping when she received the order from her Führer (overlooking her insubordination in Hungary) to level the town of Lidace, where German intelligence linked the assassins. Ilsa and the squads under her command arrested, deported, imprisoned or killed over 13,000 Czechs before reducing the town to rubble and ash. Even the neighboring village of Ležáky was destroyed such was her fury.

The force-field surrounding her cell here in the bowels of Tartarus shut down with a snap-hiss bringing her mind back to the present. Several of the heavily armed guards fanned out in front of the entrance as Ms. Ester Kleinberg entered her cell. Her lawyer crossed the short distance to her, stopping to point at the chess-set. Her expression was one of irritation. Clearly she did not relish coming to meet with her infamous client, but she couldn't refuse the fee Ilsa was paying her for her services. Money was always her people's weakness. Ilsa leaned over the side of her chair and clicked off the Wagner that was emanating from the new CD player she had received the other day. As she pulled her hand back her fingertips danced along the side of the device, playfully tapping the secret hatch that contained her salvation.

"Playing with yourself Ilsa?"

Hauppman leaned back and exhaled slowly. "Unfortunately there is no one living that is a real challenge for me." she said, trying to roll Heydrich out of her mind for now. She would need to call upon those emotions very soon, but today all she had to deal with was this snotty high-priced Jew.

Kleinberg shrugged. "I hear that the Russians always had the best chess players, like Garry Kasparov. Know any Russians that could beat you?"

Ilsa grit her teeth. This bitch was trying to bait her. "What have you come here for today? Dying your hair blonde will still not make you anything like me. Trying to convince a non-Jewish boyfriend?" she said in a low voice.

Ester instinctively reached a hand up to brush her newly peroxided locks. She frowned and let out a chuckle. "Me? Want to be like you? I would rather be dead than be anything like you Ilsa."

"At least you know your correct place, ja?"

Ester snapped a finger out in front of her face and snarled at her. "Enough of the bullshit Ilsa! I came to tell you that the civil case against Walkiria is going to get tossed out. They have filed a motion to dismiss and given that the judge has made it clear he does not want to open a Pandora's Box of lawsuits thrown at this cities protectors from every scumbag criminal they rough up I think it is going to carry."

"File and serve opposition papers."

Ester took a step back and cross her arms across her chest. "Did you not just hear me? It will become a moot point. We should drop it now. The burden of proof required in a civil suit requires that the plaintiff prove their version of the facts is 'more than likely' to be true. No one is going to believe your version Ilsa. This is a waste of my time and your money."

The German woman glared at her attorney. "It is MY time and MY money and you will do what I say. File and serve the necessary opposition papers."

Ms. Kleinberg leaned across the chess-board, her knuckles white as she gripped the sides of the oak table. "Listen to me Ilsa. As a defense attorney I will do what my client wants, even if they ignore my legal advice, but don't you dare bark at me to 'do what you say'. You are not a guard here Ilsa. You are a prisoner. You're the one with a number on you this time out. I may leave here to comply with your ridiculous wishes, but you...you are not going anywhere."

The criminal known as "Genocide" stared at her attorney for what seemed like an eternity, her face stony and emotionless. In those few long seconds she thought about all the ways she could rip the limbs from her screaming body. She wanted to hold her down and tear that forked Jew tongue of hers out before strangling her with it. Then, like a snake uncoiling, her lips twisted into a familiar smirk. "You could have told me this on the phone. Why did you come here in person?"

"I heard you had a visit from the F.B.I.. An Agent Richfield to be exact. I was wondering why I, or someone on your team, wasn't called in during the interrogation."

Ilsa chuckled. "I didn't see the need. I have dealt with the Gestapo before remember? These feds are nothing like them. Spineless and greedy. Agent Richfield was trying to shake me down for information on the Giancarla crime syndicate. Apparently they think I would have dealing with these Italian gentlemen. Personally I would have thought after Mussolini they would have known we were done dealing with those incompetents."

Richfield was an interesting situation. Not completely unwelcome, even if she was uncouth and a greedy, vulgar American cop. She had had many dealings with those sorts in the past and this was simply a larger pay-out. Ilsa had been planning on smuggling in a potent vial of her serum anyway, something she had Helena working towards almost since she was incarcerated. She wasn't certain if she could transform on her own after so long and guessed that a raw dosage would compensate. Kick-start her transformation as it were. She was practically giddy at the thought of how massive and powerful she would become, the beast locked away inside her howling to be let out for more than two months now. So much pent up rage. She fed it thoughts of Heydrich and Olga Yezhov and what she would do when she escaped from here. What kind of rage could she unlock in that corrupt federal agent, she pondered.

Kleinberg adjusted her glasses and paced to the other side of the cell. "You should have contacted me before you answered any questions. The last thing we need is for the feds to have something on you because you couldn't keep that venomous mouth of yours shut. Which is a nice segue into my next topic. This trial is going to get underway very soon. The District Attorney is going to love calling you to the stand. I want you to invoke your 5th Amendment rights."

Ilsa continued to smile her smug grin. "Why would I want to do that? Isn't it my right to face my accuser head-on?"

"It is, but my concern is when you get up on the stand you are going to ruin your own case by bringing up how you are the Aryan master-race bullshit or some other pseudo-scientific racist nonsense and how that one-testicled, failed painter was a god to you. You do see how that could deep six everything we've been trying to do for you and make all the time I've already wasted on you worthless?"

Ilsa Hauppman wet her lips with her tongue. For a moment her eyes flashed with an intensity that made Ester Kleinberg take a step back. They were like an open book: Pure hatred in her eyes. Pure hatred in her heart. Then it was gone and replaced with the same cold blue eyes at looked at the world in an almost like a person studies a goldfish, with detached interest.
"Did you know,"she said finally "that the last time I heard one of your kind disparage the Führer, and it was no-where near what you just said, I had the entire block sent to the gas chamber. All 750 of them."

Ester opened her mouth to speak but only a low sound choked out, the words caught firmly in her throat.

"Another time, I drew a line on the wall of the children's block with a piece of chalk and if they did not meet that line with their heads, I had them gassed as well. They were no use to my experiments. I take my beliefs and my science...my 'bullshit', very seriously Ms. Kleinberg. You would do well to remember that, ja? I've already decided how to kill those who I know to be inferior all around me; it isn't a matter of whether they will live or die anymore, rather how and when I plan to dispose of them. How long they prove useful to me. Do not ever mistake my mindset for psychotic fantasy."

Kleinberg looked at her wheelchair-bound client with her mouth gaping open slightly. When she spoke her voice wavered, sounding weak. It wasn't something she was accustomed to. She was a defense attorney, one of the best in Angel Falls. Hell, one of the best in the nation. She had defended rapists, murderers, terrorists, child molesters and worse...but Ilsa Hauppman was the most frightening human being she had ever encountered. She almost failed to fit that classification anymore. She was a monster that passed as a human.
"I believe Ms. Hauppman, that perhaps you should seek your legal services from someone else. I no longer feel that..."

Ilsa gripped the sides of her now mostly faux-confining chair leaning forward with her head up to look Kleinberg directly in her eyes, her exposed throat long and pale. "I know you wish to continue to be useful to me Ester. Besides, I intend to double your attorney fees. I will take the stand in my own defense and I know you will make sure that the jury finds me nothing more than a crippled, German immigrant caught in a delusional Slav's fantasies that she convinced her lesbian lover were true."

Ester swallowed hard. Double her fees? She could certainly tolerate this hateful old Nazi's shit for a few more weeks for that kind of money. Then she would be rid of her whether she was incredibly cleared of all charges and set free, or more likely if she was sent back to Tartarus to rot. Ester simply nodded slowly and moved towards the exit of the cell. The air here had become too thin and she just wanted to be out of "Genocide's" presence. Her gaze seemed to suck the strength right out of her body, sapping her will. She was tired and besides she had the legal case of her career to prepare for.

The former Sturmbannführer sat back and reached over to her cd player, clicking it back on as the force-field hummed back into existence and filling the chamber once more with her beloved Wagner. Her lawyer and the guards hurried back up the long hallway towards the elevators that led out of this hellhole. Ilsa smiled despite herself. Money was always her people's weakness. It was just like chess. Know thine enemies. All the pieces were almost in place now. One more visit from the enigmatic Mr. Black was perhaps all she needed to begin the game. Her legs still felt numb and weak at times, but the fact she could feel them at all was remarkable. She wiggled her toes slowly in her white, rubber shoes and gasped at the delight.

The opening move was going to be something Angel Falls would never forget.

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Soviet Superwoman, Genocide, Ester Kleinberg, the Giancarla crime family and Helena Koch are all my creations and property. The story was written by me as well.

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