My Immortal The Vampires of Berlin Read Online Free Page B

sir.” Julia gathered her courage and went back to the school. She didn’t know how she was going to get in, but she wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
Not this time. No way in hell.
    As it turned out, Julia had no problem getting past the security guard. He was already dead.

7

The Paparazzi

    Professor Richter opened the door and triumphantly entered the lecture hall. His expectations of taking the stage in front of the world press and hundreds of admiring fans were immediately dashed into the rocks. There were only twenty students and a bored reporter waiting for him.
    The sole press representative, American freelance reporter Tom Schmitzfy, sat in the front row, his tall spidery legs barely fitting under the desk. Tom wasn’t thrilled to be there, but he needed the work; he had recently been fired for publishing a carjacking victim’s name while the shooter was still on the loose. Tom took the odd jobs as they came so he could stay in Berlin with his girlfriend, but he felt that his real place was covering the embassies and government ministries and circulating among the dignitaries whom he counted among his friends. That’s where he made a difference.
Not covering this bullshit
, he thought.
This is not why I went to night school.
    Meg Miura came in and sat down next to Tom. The striking Japanese reporter in the pink shirt and round glasses immediately doubled the press coverage and brightened the room with her smile. “It’s nice to see you down here in the trenches with us,” she teased.
    Tom liked Meg, but underneath his smile, he was secretly offended that she considered him one of
them
. “This is just a short-term assignment until they find someone else,” he lied. “Then I’ll be back at the embassy. The ambassador is a friend of mine. I’ll get you an invite to—”
    Professor Richter interrupted the self-serving diatribe by rapping his knuckles on the podium. The crowd quieted. “Good evening everyone. Thank you for attending.” Then he took a sip of water and silently surveyed his audience for nearly a minute. The effect was dramatic.
    “As you know, I’ve done a great deal of research and writing about international conspiracy theories,” he continued. “Some of those theories turned out to be correct. And some of them—as my flea-ridden paparazzi critics so often point out—amount to little more than tabloid entertainment.”
    The crowd laughed.
    “But what I am here to talk about today goes far beyond the scope of anything that I have ever studied before. In fact, my new theory is not even a theory—it is an incredible collection of facts that are supported by undisputable evidence. Be forewarned, there are very powerful people in the world who do not want you to have this information.
    That’s a little dramatic,
Tom thought.
    “They don’t want you to know about the shadow government that joined the fight against Nazi Germany; a government that had previously stayed out of European wars for a thousand years.”
    Tom looked at his watch and moaned.
If I wanted a boring and uninspired lecture about World War II, I would go back to high school. We should be talking about the shootout that just sent two Greek patrol boats to the bottom of the Mediterranean. Not this nonsense,
he thought.
    “As the war ended, Adolf Hitler tried to unleash the Tristan weapon upon the Soviet Army. At the time, the Allies thought he had a nuke. But the truth is, the Nazis simply didn’t possess that technology. No, my friends, Tristan was something far more dangerous to the Allied forces than a mere atomic bomb.”
    The crowd murmured.
    “In fact, when Truman and Stalin learned the truth about Operation Tristan, they both immediately set out to produce thousands of nuclear warheads, well beyond what was needed to fight a war of annihilation against one another. Neither leader informed his generals that they were actually preparing to fight a far different type of adversary. A far different type