Herald of Steel

Alexander in his free time had once read the biography of Hanns-Joachim Gottlob Scharff, who was a German interrogator during the Second World War.

He had been called the “Master Interrogator” of the Luftwaffe, and possibly of all Nazi Germany and he was also praised for his contribution in shaping U.S. interrogation techniques after the war.

And the primary way he made even tough captured GIs and commandos speak things beyond their name and serial number, was by portraying himself as their closest ally in this predicament, telling them that while he would like nothing more than to see them safely deposited in a POW camp; his hands were tied unless the prisoner gave him some more details that he requested to help him properly identify the prisoner as a true POW, or he would be forced to send them to a slave labor camps or worse, the gas chambers.

And usually, these details would be confidential information like the name of the soldier’s commander, his unit’s strength, their gear, their logistic capabilities, etc.

The list would be endless.

And even after all the information had been extracted, Scharff would continue to act as a good friend, including sharing jokes, homemade food items, and occasionally alcoholic beverages, to help these men spread his good word, in preparation for the next batch of POWs.

Hanns’s method also influenced many modern interrogation theorists, who reasoned that physical pain, in addition to being barbaric and uncivilized, also tended to last only while the beatings were being done and would ebb away a while after the beating stopped, while a slow, constant pain would eventually build up, gnaw at one’s resistance, and after hours of enduring it, suddenly the dams of resistance would break and all kinds of confessions would come in one giant burst

And while Alexander never really experienced the sensation of getting his bones broken and then being stepped on it, he did once read an article about captured French partisans by Nazis who claimed that even when they beat these prisoners severely, it was very difficult to get anything useful, which prompted him to believe more on Hanns’s philosophy.

And his conviction was further bolstered by the fact that the US army used these techniques and he certainly wanted to emulate the greatest military of his time and even of all time.

Thus he had always planned to write a spy manual book for Camius, using stuff he had read, heard, and seen,

And one of the sections in that book was bound to be about effective interrogation, that is, getting the desired information swiftly and accurately.

And today, Alexander was planning to use the gang leaders to put his movie and theoretical knowledge to the test.

And if even the best military in his previous world, the US army, had moved themselves from most physical tortures, switching to relatively mind techniques such as waterboarding, which left no explicit scars, then Alexander was pretty confident in his chances that his ‘non-violent’ technique would be useful.

But for now, Alexander decided to let actions speak louder than words.

“Okay, Camius. I think that’s it now.” Alexander seemed to have finished the topic about the prisoners for now.

But instead of dismissing him, Alexander told him to stay and then went over to his table to bring out a small parchment from his locked drawer.

“Here, read this,” Alexander then handed them over to Camius, who quickly started to scan them.

The parchment contained ten points and seemed to be a new kind of wine recipe.

It read

1. Pick only well-ripened early grapes and discard any that are mildewed or damaged.

2. Drive forked branches or stakes made of rods tied into bundles into the ground at a distance of about 4 feet apart.

3. Lay reeds across them and spread the grapes out in the sun on top.

4. Cover them at night so that the dew will not moisten them.

5. When they are dried, pick the grapes off the stems and put them in a jar or pitcher.

6. Add some unfermented wine until the grapes are just covered.

7. After six days, when the grapes have absorbed it all and are swollen, put them in a basket, then put them through the press, and collect the resulting liquid.

8. Next, press the mass, adding fresh unfermented wine made with other grapes which have been left in the sun for three days.

9. Stir it well, and put it through the press again.

10. Bottle the liquid of the second press in stoppered jars so it will not turn sour.

11. After 20 or 30 days when the fermentation is over, decant it into fresh vessels.

12. Coat the lids with plaster and cover them with leather to avoid spoilage. .

This was a homebrew recipe for making wine that his grandmother would occasionally use, preferring it because this wine did not have hops in them which the lady did not find the taste favorable.

As a wine connoisseur, she had always advocated for the purity of wine, preferring to use only the main ingredients.

“Doc! This! This! This!” Camius exclaimed with trembling hands at this information before him, stammering and shaking in sheer joy.

Wine recipes were zealously guarded by their owners, to the point that many times there would only ever be one copy of it, under the exclusive privy of the writer, and would be only passed on from successor to successor, with even the other children of the owner unaware of the recipe.

And in some extreme cases, it would not be even written down, but be passed down orally.

And so for Alexander to just hand over such a gold mine made Camius shiver in both joy and fear.

Joy at getting possession of such a lucrative recipe.

Fear at the massive trust that Alexander was placing on him and thus the pressure to live up to that.

“Hahaha, don’t take it too seriously. Think of it as a gift for becoming shordar (baron),” Alexander chuckled in an easy, downplaying the value of his present.

What he said about it being a gift for becoming a lord made no sense as Alexander made him a noble in the first place for being his friend.

The title was the gift.

And thus Alexander’s claim made it sound like he was gifting Camius a gift for getting a gift from him.

And this irony did not escape Camius who gave a wry smile, “Doc, you never give anything for free? So what’s the catch?”

Knowing Alexander, he dreaded what he would demand of him as he understand that with such a huge prize, naturally the challenge must match or even exceed it.

‘Dammit, if I had known he had laid such a trap for me, I wouldn’t have ever read the darn thing in the first place,’ Camius even started to regret that he had learned to read, something that Alexander taught with much effort.

“Haha, you would not be my spymaster if you couldn’t have figured out at least that much,” Alexander chuckled a small, sly smile.

Then his voice quickly returned to a light breezy tone, “But don’t worry, it’s not a trap. It’s a tool.”

“A tool?” Camius failed to make the connection with the word wine, the word tool.

“Yes, a tool for you to use,” Alexander repeated the saying with a nod.

And then delineated, “You will be given a select street of the city to patrol. And that will be a very special street because on that street will be one shop that will sell a special kind of wine. All its staff will be your men and the building above the shop will be your spy headquarters.”

Pausing a bit, he continued, “The official story will be that you are a corrupt official that took advantage of a winemaker’s weakness and made him share his secrets with you. And in this way, you will come to own a share of the shop. And according to that story, the building above the shop will be your and that shopkeeper’s residence.”

Alexander thus gave Camius a very solid alibi as such an arrangement was the norm in the city, a shopkeeper’s shop would usually double as his dwelling.

This was because of several reasons like:

1. Halving the rent he would have otherwise had to pay if he owned two pieces of property.

2. Free security at night as the owner himself could guard the place instead of relying on the city guards who were usually the biggest thieves out there.

3. Less commuting time to work, ability to give a nice place for frequent customers and suppliers to rest and give refreshments.

4. And the existence of free labor like his wife and children to help out in the shop if the need arose.

Camius was jubilant at the powers and conveniences he was being provided.

But instead of saying the same hackneyed platitudes of gratitude that Alexander had heard a million times before, he decided to make some teasing remarks, referring to his back story of a corrupt official.