Red Raid

[Kannex]

The Kannexan Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst) had infiltrated the Revolutionary People's Party of Kannex (Revolutionäre Volkspartei; RVP) for several years. Indeed, the RVP had begun as an orthodox splinter group of the original Communist Party of Kannex. The schism had been advanced, at every stage, by KSS agents.

The RVP had offices in downtown Manhatt. Busy men and women in dreary business drab mixed in the streets, seeping through crowds. The sidewalks were a sea of black and blonde and brown hair, Han and white faces covered by the same few styles of fedoras. Parked cars hemmed in the shifting crowd on the sidewalk, while food carts and parking meters blocked walking space further. Amid the honking and the bright ads from every billboard and poster, few paid attention to the words "Revolutionäre Volkspartei" etched above the small entrance to the Party offices.

The Party offices were not far from the big banks and stock exchange of the city, odd for a proletariat party.The RVP rented out the modest building, with all its corporate-style meeting rooms and desks and typewriters, from a left-leaning pizzeria owner. Party members dismissed the irony of relying on sympathetic business owners to fund their operations by using the term "enlightened capitalist" to describe their more well-off 'fellow travelers.'

The KSS, on the other hand, had no shortage of funds, and promptly set up shop across the street. Agents rented out an apartment on the second floor with an easy view of the Party office entrance, ensuring that every man and woman who entered or left the Party offices were captured on camera. The KSS identified key members of the Party.

But the Revolutionary People's Party possessed a second, less visible base. This was on the outskirts of Manhatt, in an industrial district north of the city. The warehouse contained offices for every secret big shot in the Party, as well as printing presses to print leaflets and pamphlets and safes to store the Party's money. And there was great chatter about what the Party could become, now that they had received sanction from Marxist-Leninovist parties abroad.

But the Kannexan Security Service were not to tolerate any of that.

 

[Kannex]

6 April 1956
00:00

Dead silence reigned on the streets of the northern Manhatt industrial district, except for the soft flood of music and drunken men from a dozen blocks away. In the factories the machines stood still like fossils of giant creatures that were, and only rats could be found rummaging through most of the warehouses of the district.

The moon was a silver slither in the sky. The stars could hardly be seen, blocked off by the light of the streetlamps. But many of the streets, especially the small alleyways, remained dark and unhaunted. In the midst of the quiet night, two trucks drove closer to one particular warehouse in the district, stopping with several hundred feet of the warehouse on either side. The drivers silenced the moans of the old engines. Then dozens of quick-footed men in fedoras and trench coats jumped out the back of the trucks, some armed with automatic rifles and others with handguns, and flooded the streets.

The shadow men scurried along the corners of the buildings, avoiding the lights. They soon surrounded their target, the warehouse on the corner of Goldstein and 5th.

The leader of the raiders, a burly man with a sub-machine gun, stood near the door the warehouse and raised a white handkerchief in the air. Immediately, the trucks shone glaring spotlights at the warehouse, bright as day. Within the same heartbeat, the men kicked in the doors and brought them crashing down. The fifty KSS agents barged into the warehouse from the two entrances, shouting themselves hoarse in barely-comprehensible German. "POLIZEI! HÄNDE HOCH!"

The hundred reds in the warehouse, caught red-handed, began shouting and shoving and grabbing at random stacks of paper or money or whatever they were handling at the moment. The whole party broke together into panic as the KSS agents stormed in and began beating those who resisted. Fistfights ensured as the reds tried to escape, but the KSS had blocked the entrances. The agents stormed the second floor, where holdups spat gunfire that echoed into the night and split wood into splinters. The KSS agents returned fire, their pistols and assault rifles sharply outnumbering the reds. After broken bones, bruises, and three reds who were shot in the leg or stomach, the KSS managed to shut down the whole place.

Reinforcements, blue-and-white police cars as well as unmarked black vehicles, raced and screeched to a stop before the warehouse. The KSS agents were rounding up the suspects now and hunting down those who had crawled out of the windows. The reds were brought out in handcuffs. Now, the agents had plenty of time to take the place apart. Inside the warehouse, the KSS found pamphlets decrying the capitalist system and advocating for revolution against the imperial government. The Security Service agents also found safes, where the revolution's funding could be found, as well as communications with foreign communist parties abroad. The catch was huge.

Newspapers published the mass arrest early next morning.