Shelly looked at him, puzzled. “The Nazis? Uh, they were the bad guys in World War II?”
“By the end of the war, you bet. But before the war started, Germany was known for having some of the brightest minds in medicine. Their research was so advanced they really believed that they could build a master race. The Nazis were the ones who first really looked at cancer. All types of cancer. They’re the ones who figured out that smoking was killing people. In fact, when Hitler found out about it, he ordered smoking banned by the German people. Then the military. Could you imagine telling a whole army they couldn’t smoke back in those days?”
Shelly shrugged her shoulders. “So, what’s this have to do with you, Doc?”
He made his way back to his desk and sat. Shelly looked at him as he let out a big sigh.
“When I was in the Navy,” he began, “I met a German doctor- chemist who happened to be working on a top secret bio-project for the Allies. Turns out he was fascinated with clowns. And when he found out I dabbled in the clown world, we became fast friends. I showed him how to do makeup, balloon animals, tricks, clown stuff. One night we were at a pub off base, and after a few beers, he started telling me his family was involved with the Nazis. He detested them. He cared about science. So he went to work, gathering up all the information and the medical documentation the Nazis had put together that he could get his hands on. One of the things they were really good at was documentation. They were killing people, but they were experimenting on them first. The tests were ghastly. They were trying to build the perfect race, so they were trying to stop cancer as part of that process. They had all these books and codes. They were killing so many people in the process. One of the conscripted doctors was his uncle. The man was forced to work with the Nazis. I don’t know he did for them but it didn’t last. Apparently he was uncooperative and they sent him to one of the camps and died there.”
He stopped for a moment and raised his water glass to his lips.
Shelly sat silently, eyes wide and waiting with bated breath.
“So he tells me they had found a book full of these mathematical equations and codes all pertaining to cancer research, and he, along with a dozen or so medical experts, was trying to decode it. When