Joe Cinnadella and Hawthorne Abendsen

Joe Cinnadella and Hawthorne Abendsen are bound together as assassin and intended victim in a covert operation that forms the novel's final, violent convergence. Cinnadella, a Swiss national working for the SD, is sent to the Rocky Mountain States to kill Abendsen, the author of the banned alternate-history novel The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. Their relationship never involves direct contact; it is defined entirely by the assassin's mission, the target's unwitting vulnerability, and the intervention of a third party, Juliana Frink, who destroys the plot before it can be executed. The connection between the two men is thus mediated, impersonal, and ultimately fatal only to the would-be killer, yet it exposes the precarious position of Abendsen, a man whose book has made him a target of the Reich's security apparatus.

The Assassin's Mission and the Target

Cinnadella's assignment is to kill Abendsen, a task he pursues with calculated deception. He poses as an Italian truck driver named Joe, complete with a fabricated war record, an Iron Cross Second Class medal from the Cairo campaign, and a tattoo reading "Cairo" on his arm. His cover is elaborate: he claims to have fought under Major Ricardo Pardi, to have had two brothers strangled by British commandos, and to have worked for Organization Todt as an engineer. In reality, he is a Swiss SD operative, a fact Juliana Frink uncovers only gradually. His mission requires him to infiltrate Abendsen's life, and he uses Juliana as his unwitting accomplice, driving her toward Cheyenne under the pretense of a vacation. The target himself, Hawthorne Abendsen, lives in a single-story stucco house in Cheyenne, not the fortified "High Castle" described on his book jacket. The cover story of a fortress with charged barbed wire and weapons is a deliberate fiction, as Abendsen admits: "We did try that, as you know. As you read on the cover of the book... about all the weapons and charged wire. And we had it written so it would seem we're still taking great precautions." This discrepancy between the publicized defensive posture and the actual open house makes Abendsen vulnerable, a fact Cinnadella's mission exploits.

The Unraveling of the Plot

Cinnadella's plan begins to collapse in Denver, where he and Juliana stop to shop for new clothes before proceeding to Cheyenne. His behavior becomes increasingly erratic and controlling: he dyes his hair blond, insists on driving her car, and pressures her to wear a revealing blue Italian dress to the meeting with Abendsen. When Juliana resists, he threatens her, saying, "Put on the dress or I'll kill you." This threat, combined with his suspicious behavior, leads her to confront him directly. She asks, "You must be an SD man... You're supposed to come up here to kill Abendsen; isn't that so?" Cinnadella does not deny it; instead, he reveals fragments of his true identity, admitting he fought with the Brandenburgers, a Wehrmacht commando unit, and that the fountain pen she found in his suitcase is a two-watt transmitter and receiver for radio contact. He explains that Abendsen is "attracted to a certain type of dark, libidinous girl," and that Juliana's role is to keep the author engaged while he makes his move. The revelation transforms Juliana from a companion into a tool, and her fear turns to resolve.

The Killing and Its Aftermath

In the hotel room, Juliana, driven by terror and a desperate instinct for survival, slashes Cinnadella's throat with a razor blade from the hotel's courtesy pack. The act is impulsive and nearly accidental—she had taken the blade intending to harm herself, but in a moment of panic, she turns it on him. As he sits on the floor, clasping his neck, he tells her, "You cut my aorta. Artery in my neck," and she corrects him: "The aorta's in your chest; you mean the carotid." She leaves him there, bleeding, and flees the hotel with her belongings and most of his Reichsbank notes. The next day, a newspaper headline reports the death: "VACATION ENDS IN FATAL SLASHING," describing the victim as "Mr. Joe Cinnadella of Canon City" and the suspect as his wife, a misidentification that leaves Juliana free. The killing is not merely self-defense; it is the destruction of the plot against Abendsen, and Juliana understands this immediately. She drives through the night to Cheyenne, consulting the I Ching along the way, which tells her to "report with a seal to the prince"—the seal being her new copy of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, and the prince being Abendsen.

The Warning and the Revelation

Juliana arrives at the Abendsen house in Cheyenne, a modest home hosting a small party, and delivers her warning. She tells Hawthorne Abendsen directly, "They're going to show up here eventually. You should go some place they can't find you, instead of holding open house here like this, letting anyone walk in, the way I did. The next one who rides up here—there won't be anyone like me to put a stop to him." When he asks what became of the man she rode with, she answers simply, "I cut his throat." Abendsen believes her without hesitation, thanking her with a shy, gentle smile. The encounter, however, becomes more than a warning. Juliana presses Abendsen on the nature of his book, demanding to know how he wrote it. She reveals that she has consulted the I Ching and received the hexagram Inner Truth, which she interprets as proof that his book is true—that Germany and Japan actually lost the war. Abendsen, who wrote the novel by consulting the oracle for thousands of choices, is confronted with the possibility that his fiction is reality. He resists, saying, "I'm not sure of anything," but Juliana insists, "Believe." The revelation disrupts the party and unsettles the author, who later describes Juliana as "a dathnon. A little chthonic spirit... that roams tirelessly over the face of the earth." The relationship between Cinnadella and Abendsen thus ends not with the assassin's bullet but with the target's shaken certainty, as the would-be victim learns that the world he imagined may be the real one.

The Significance of the Failed Assassination

The failed assassination attempt on Hawthorne Abendsen carries profound significance for the novel's themes. It demonstrates the reach of the Reich's security apparatus, which extends even into the nominally independent Rocky Mountain States, and the vulnerability of those who defy it through art. Cinnadella's mission is not merely to kill a man but to silence a book, and his failure suggests the limits of state power against the truth. More importantly, the relationship between the assassin and his target becomes the vehicle for the novel's central revelation: that The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, dismissed as fiction, may actually describe a real alternate world. Juliana's intervention, born of her relationship with Cinnadella, forces Abendsen to confront this possibility, and the reader is left to wonder whether the oracle's answer—Inner Truth—confirms the book's veracity. The assassin's plot, designed to end a life, instead precipitates a crisis of belief, transforming the target from a novelist into a prophet. Cinnadella's death, and Abendsen's survival, thus become the hinge on which the novel's meaning turns, as the boundary between fiction and reality collapses in the final pages.