The Abominable Snowman

Michael Colhaze 

February 28, 2010

Editor's note: Being terminally gullible or perhaps having witnessed too many events where indeed truth is stranger than fiction, I wondered what about this story was true and what not. It is a satire — based on a recent Mossad operation that went awry. And though it is a satire, and hilariously exaggerated, many of the underlying facts are not invented. Sadly enough.  

Pounded cheese gets soft, not hard.

                           J. W. von Goethe 

Recently something horrible happened. It wouldn’t have been horrible if it had happened in Hawaii, for example. Or Khartoum, at that. But as it happened, it happened in Germany. Which made it doubly horrible, nay tenfold so. Because it happened not just in Germany, but in Munich, capital of Bavaria, the latter a staunchly conservative land, at least by German standards. Munich itself is, alas, bright red if not purplish, an unhealthy taint acquired through the alliance of mostly non-Bavarian Socialists, Greens, Turks and Gays who managed to overwhelm the city council and push the indigenous sauerkraut Bavarians flat against a wall.  

Munich is also the infamous Hauptstadt der Bewegung. Which translates, superficially, into Capital of the Movement. Capital insofar as it was Hitler’s first powerbase and thus a springboard for conquering, though not the whole world, but at least Germany proper. And consequently, and in fact against his stated intentions, a large chunk of Europe.  

Today Munich presents itself as a glorious example of political correctness par excellence. Its elected mayor is a smooth salon Marxist with a penchant for Beluga caviar tempered by splashes of Veuve Cliquot. A man who condones book burnings and Stalinist show trials. Like the one on hand right now under his very nose, with its main protagonist a poor, dying, innocent Mr. Demjanuk. A trial that is, as even the dumbest Bavarian lederhosen hillbilly knows, only one more stratagem of the powers-that-are to squeeze another billion Euros out of an ever repentant Germany.   

Now this is what happened.  

A silent night. Though not holy, as we have reason to know. Early February, maybe. Or perhaps late January. Snowflakes en masse and increasing. A thick white carpet covering the wide square in front of Munich’s Gothic town hall. The fountain, topped by a statue of our Lady, is carefully covered with kapok to prevent Her from getting cold feet. And the surveillance cameras are much hampered because of the drifting snow. Which turned out to be an essential detail in the villain’s strategy to cover his tracks. 

Germany’s present Secret Police calls itself rather hilariously Guardians of the Constitution. Hilarious because the Freedom of Expression, cornerstone of every democratic constitution, has long since been annulled and reversed by the politically correct forces. Which means in fact that the Guardians have turned their charter upside down by slamming into the cooler all who insist on their constitutional rights and dare to question the official ideology. As to the outrage, the Guardians were running repeatedly a flimsy footage in their voluptuous headquarters, but to no avail. Because all you can see is a diminutive fellow wearing a baklava mask who appeared out of nowhere, gathered a heap of snow with spindly arms, and fashioned it into a snowman of about three feet high. Next he pulled, clearly visible and thus perfect proof of his criminal intent, the following items from his various pockets: two chestnuts for the eyes, a fat carrot for the nose, a crooked twig for the mouth, a bit of brown rag for the characteristic quiff, a blackened piece of cardboard for the Charlie-Chaplin-moustache, plus a black shawl. With the former he fashioned the snowman’s face and, perhaps due to a last remnant of humane emotion, slung the latter around its neck.

The Abominable Snowman

That done, he looked approvingly at his dirty work, went down on all fours, scuttled into the night and was not seen again.  

For a while, that is.  

Morning broke, the snow lessened somewhat, people began to cross the square and went their different ways. Among them a group of Japanese tourists who flashed their cameras at an object in the square’s very centre while laughing their heads off. Which caused the attention of other by-passers, among them one of the many local informers for BILD, Germany’s infamous and most widely distributed tabloid. Now ‘Bild’ simply means ‘picture’, which gives you a fair idea of its readership. The said informer needed only one look at the offending object to know that he had landed a mega scoop. He phoned his local editor, struck a mega deal, and soon afterwards all hell broke loose.           

Within minutes three red BILD Porsches zoomed into the square and a BILD chopper hovered right above the scene of the crime. Simultaneously a special unit of the Federal Order Police arrived on screeching tyres. It barked orders, closed off the sensitive area with barbed wire and kept the rubbernecks at a safe distance. About this time the mayor, high up in his Gothic office, became aware of the commotion. Struggling with a massive hangover, acquired the night before while being obliged, as part of his unofficial duty, to monitor the latest of Munich’s licensed and rather sumptuous brothels, he popped another seltzer and sent his Kurdish secretary to find out what was happening on his personal turf. When the secretary returned, the mayor’s face became as white as the snow that still drifted past his office’s Gothic windows. But he recovered quickly and convened a highly sensitive meeting which set in motion a strategy designed not only to contain the damage, but to turn it into political profit. 

"This outrage," he declared with a faintly Machiavellian smile, "will break the GNP’s neck once and for all!" 

He was of course referring to the German National Party, last bastion of Germanic particularity, and long since a thorn in the multicultural Socialists’ tender side. Attempts had been made to ban the fascist gang once and for all, but the Christian Democrats were balking, perhaps for fear of losing a potential coalition partner once the economy got out of hand. The mayor meanwhile began to button down his strategy, which consisted in rousing out his personal public prosecutor, his personal judge and his personal security organization. The latter, a local subdivision of the Guardians called Fussspurensicherungsbundeshauptamt, or Forensic Agency for the Analysis of Criminal Clues, in short FACC, was deemed of particular importance, since the many federal agencies entrusted with Germany’s safety aren’t what you may call a homogenous club, but rather a bunch of competing villains who love to irritate each other when they aren’t busy infiltrating the GNP.  

Armed with the mayor’s special authorisation, the FACCers, as they are commonly called, took over and told the Federal Order Police, or FOPs, as they are commonly called, to piss off on the double, their barbed wire included. Which, understandably, caused some resentment. The FACCers’ first official act was to impound the object as evidence for upcoming indictments. One unit drove it to headquarters which boosts a large freezing vault where they keep their undefined or bothersome corpses, also dangerous chemicals, plus an assortment of Italian ice cream for birthday parties.  

Now this is where the first calamity occurred. The Chief of Petrol and Movements, who had to check the unit’s log, found the 5000 miles racked up in two hours somewhat hard to swallow, which unleashed a heated argument until the unit agreed finally to a mere 998 miles plus expenses. A puny result that took too long to work out in any case. Because while the row lasted, the evidence had melted.   

The second unit meanwhile scoured the scene of the crime for clues. There weren’t any, of course, but this didn’t really matter. Because a suspect had been, with the mayor’s candid encouragement, pinpointed long since. He was old Herrmann, a one-armed World War II veteran who managed the public urinal, a lovely little Art Noveau structure just around the corner from the town hall. It has emblazoned Pecuniam non olet in German, English ("money doesn't stink") and Japanese above the entrance, which is a rather elegant way to remind those seeking relief that nothing is gratuitous in this world, not even a pee. Now old Herrmann had caused the mayor’s ire for repeatedly being seen, on the Guardians’ surveillance cameras, reading the Bible and, even worse, the German National Gazette, a blatantly Fascist peccadillo if there ever was one. 

The FACCers went to the urinal, took old Herrmann by the ear, led him to the centre of the square, told him to wander around somewhat, then led him back to the urinal. That done they photographed his footprints, clearly visible in the snow, with Gigapixel High Velocity cameras made for Canon in China. Next they photographed the underside of Herrmann’s worn World War II boots, compared them digitally with the footprints, declared him prime suspect, and slammed him into the cooler.     

So far so good. BILD released a special issue which effected only a tired yawn from the much tested Germans, but caused the usual outcry among the Jewish community. Germany’s Central Council of Jews was particularly incensed and, in conjuncture with its many co-councils worldwide, unleashed a propagandistic ballyhoo that shook the Berlin government to its very foundations. Abe Foxman of the ADL reminded America of the urgent need to be always on the alert and never to forgive or to forget. Daniel Goldhagen saw his thesis of the genetically inborn German inclination for genocide once again demonstrated, and Doctor of Jurisprudence Alan Dershowitz of Harvard offered to waterboard the culprit until he spilled the names of his sponsors. 

Consequently the Federal Chancelloress called Munich herself, with an urgent order to clear up the mess. Recently returned from her bi-monthly pilgrimage to Jerusalem where she had pledged — as usual and never mind the atrocities next door — Germany’s unconditional support for her bosom-friend Bibi and his brave new country, she was particularly sensitive to the general uproar. One wonders sometimes what that woman must feel when she so consistently disowns her humanity, not to mention her common sense. There are suspicions that the Mossad has got her by the balls (if that's possible) with a dossier from Honnecker’s times, but that is just a rumour.  In any case, another billion Euros for the third-degree-cousins of the great-grandchildren of long since deceased Holocaust survivors was readied by Deutsche Bank to smoothen the waves. And of course poor old Herrmann’s show trial and certain conviction had been already prepared with every necessary detail. Which merits a whole essay by itself, but not today.    

While this beautifully smooth scenario advanced full tilt, a change of script happened that upset the whole stratagem. Triggered by another urgent call from Berlin. What it exactly subsumed we will never know, but the gist is this. Due to some more of the aforementioned atrocities — this time not only horrible beyond imagination but also well documented by an independent TV team, the aforementioned Bibi of the brave new country thought it appropriate to launch a massive smoke screen. The still high-flying scandal in Germany presented itself as a perfect background, and during a flurry of messages between the different intelligence agencies an entirely different scenario was set in motion.        

Which read like this. A secret unit of the IDF pulled an illiterate Bedouin from one of the many secret Israeli prisons and had him flown secretly by diplomatic courier to Germany. Where he was set free in the Alpine foothills. Wandering dumbstruck past snow-capped mountains, onion-shaped churches and Bavarians in lederhosen, the Guardians apprehended him on the basis of an insider tip-off. Which also stated that he planned to blow up King Ludwig’s New Schwanstein fairytale castle, the one whose copy graces Disneyland, in case you didn’t know. Now this is of course a crime that would have shocked Germany and the world beyond repair, plus every romantic soul that walks this planet. A perfect coup, therefore, except for one small flaw. The Bedouin’s unnoticed penetration of German soil was blamed on the sloppy diligence of the FOPs, those who were still smarting from their rude dismissal earlier on. They clenched their fists and ground their teeth, and in a superhuman effort went through the whole surveillance footage of the past two months, including Munich’s FJS airport. And what did they come up with? 

A Mossad hit team comprised of forty-nine agents, male, female and adolescent, who had observed the town hall square for weeks on end, even bought a carrot and two chestnuts on the Victualien market against a receipt, and later were caught in flagranti while lifting the doped Bedouin through customs on the power of a British passport. In fact, the whole bunch used British passports, even though some of them looked decidedly un-British. Which left Mr. Brown, Mr. Milliband and Lord Levy, though not Lord Ahmed, rather red-faced but for once not red-handed.   

Now the FOPs maintain excellent relations with the House of Saud, helping occasionally to smoke out potential terrorists who are fed up with blatant US imperialism. This, and the need to keep oil prices from exploding even more, was the reason why the Federal Chancelloress, instead of reprimanding the FOPs, decorated them with Germany’s finest distinction, namely the Iron Cross Second Degree for the operatives. And for the pack leader, the Iron Cross First Degree with Plums and Strawberries in Gold.   

Which gives hope that not everything is lost in dear old Germany.              

Michael Colhaze (email him) is a pen name.