by P A Duncan
“I’m transmitting to a Directorate listening post. You’ll have to go through channels.”
“You fucking bitch.”
“You understand, more than some realize, the concept of having leverage. I don’t want the authorization pulled in the middle of the interview. When I’m done, I’ll send you the recording with the credentials.”
“Fine. Now, get the fuck out of here.”
“Since you don’t know the hidden way in, I don’t think I should expose you to such dangerous information.”
“I’ll close my eyes as you leave.”
She closed the distance between them. “Not good enough. This is for your little rape fantasy.”
Two quick, hard jabs to the face, and the beer he’d consumed made him go down like a glass-jawed boxer.
Mai closed the door to Fitzgerald’s inner office, and his secretary looked up.
“Did he buy the secret entrance thing?” she asked.
“Completely,” Mai replied, shaking her hand to ease the pain.
“Unbelievable. Can I quit this job now?”
Mai smiled at the woman, another operative-in-training, and said, “What do you think?”
The woman sighed. “If I leave too soon after your visit, he’ll make the connection.”
“Stay another pay period. After that, he’ll be notified you were transferred to a field office.”
“Yeah, I can put up with being called honey for two more weeks, but don’t be shocked if I kill him when he complains I don’t do his coffee right.”
“That would be considered justifiable. Why was he late today?”
“Personal matters at home was all he said.”
“Well, I shouldn’t linger. Best he not find us talking, and he could wake up soon.”
The woman grinned. “Not with the amount of beer I smelled on him.”
“Save taking chances for something important. I’ll make sure your training officer gets a good report,” Mai said and left.
39
Talking Dirty
New Orleans, Louisiana
Hollis Fitzgerald had come through, and Mai felt a certain satisfaction at besting him at his own game of blackmail. And here she was, in New Orleans with impeccable FBI credentials for Special Agent Katherine Burke of the Behavioral Science Unit.
The local FBI office had dispatched a car and driver to meet her after her jet deposited her at the General Aviation terminal at New Orleans International Airport. The driver—who’d introduced himself as Special Agent Clarence Cooper—stowed her bags in the trunk, and Mai settled herself in the front passenger seat.
Using her best American accent, she asked, “Are we going to Pollock this afternoon?”
“No, ma’am,” Cooper said. “We’re set up for tomorrow morning.”
“I wanted to get this done. Is there a problem?”
“Arranging the interviews hasn’t been easy. Some of the prisoners don’t want to discuss The Order or their part in it ever again. They want to do their time and forget it ever happened.”
Mai wondered if Fitzgerald had interfered after all.
“Others,” Cooper continued, “don’t trust the FBI under any circumstance. In fact, only one inmate has agreed to talk to you without lawyers present.”
“Which one?”
“Brian Corbin Paul.”
She brought his history to mind as she watched the road signs slip past the car windows. Mai had never been to New Orleans, but, as with any place she went, she studied maps with care.
“We’re not headed downtown,” she said, her right hand edging toward where the Beretta was holstered.
“I’m taking you to where we put up visiting agents. Best Western Plus. I assumed—”
“I have a reservation at the Ritz-Carlton.”
“Wow. They have a government rate?”
Cooper was quite the busybody, wasn’t he? “All arrangements were made by my office in D.C.,” she said.
Cooper left the freeway at the next exit, reversed course, and headed downtown.
When he insisted upon carrying her bags, Mai was glad she hadn’t opted for the penthouse suite.
“Is there anything else I can do for you, Agent Burke?”
She urged him into the hallway. “What time tomorrow do we leave?” Mai asked.
“Be at the New Orleans Downtown Heliport at 0600.”
“Heliport?”
Cooper grinned. “We go to Pollock by air. Unless you really want to make that four-hour drive.”
Four hours in a car with Cooper or a quick hop in a chopper? “Heliport. 0600. I’ll be there.”
The phone at home rang three times before Natalia answered it, annoyance in her tone.
“Hi, Nat. It’s Mums,” Mai said.
“Oh, hi. Where are you?”
Well, that shows how much she listens, Mai thought. Mai had explained over dinner the night before she had to go to Louisiana for a meeting. It hadn’t sunk in. Obviously.
“In New Orleans, as we discussed. Where’s Popi?”
“In the office.”
“Let me leave you a number where you can reach me.”
“Okay, let me get a pen and paper. Okay, go ahead.”
Mai recited the hotel phone and room numbers.
“Got it. How long will you be gone?”
Mai sighed; they’d discussed that, too. “A few days. Again, as we discussed.”
“But I’m leaving to go see Dad in a couple of days. Will you be back before then?”
“Not likely. You and Olga are changing planes in San Francisco, right.”
“I guess.”
Mai gritted her teeth. Did she listen to nothing except her friends and her music?
“If I’m not back, I’ll hop over to San Francisco for your layover. How’s that?”
“Fine. I guess. Do you want to talk to Popi?”
“Yes, please, unless there’s something you need to talk about.”
“No. I mean, like… I get nervous before I go see Dad.”
“I know. It’ll be fine. It always is.”
Natalia sighed, one disproportionate for a twelve-year-old’s angst. Or maybe not. “Hang on; I’ll get Popi.”
Mai heard the receiver hit the kitchen counter, and in a few moments, Alexei’s voice came on the line.
“Do I get to talk dirty to you?” he asked.
God, the man was incorrigible. “Wait.”
Natalia came back on. “Got it, Popi?”
“Got it,” Alexei said.
“Okay, Mums, talk to you soon.”
“I’ll try to call tonight before bedtime.”
They each waited until they heard Natalia hang up the phone.
“Nat took down the phone number,” Mai said.
“Ah, the Caller ID pinned you down. I thought you’d be at Pollock by now.”
“So did I. The prisoners are not cooperating.”
“Imagine that. Tell me what you’re wearing.”
More than incorrigible. He had a one-track mind. “Alexei, I called to check in, not for sex talk.”
“What are you wearing?”
“Jeans and a jumper.”
“Which one?”
“The green one.”
“The one that buttons up the front?”
“Yes.”
“Unbutton it while we talk.”
“I will not. I’ll be back in a couple of days. Save it for then.” Distract him, she thought. “Oh, you can do something for me.”
“It’s much less exciting when I undress,” he said.
“Depends on your point of view. See if you can find a copy of that book Analysis is hung up on.”
“The Turner Diaries?”
“Yes.”
“Do you need it for the interviews?”
“No. Analyst Drake thumb-nailed it enough for me, but I think it’s time I went ahead and read it.”
“That’s the National Alliance guy, Pierce, right?”
“Yes.”
<
br /> “I’ll poke around on their website. Perhaps buy it from there. Are you unbuttoning that sweater?”
“I told you no. Do your part well, and I’ll reward you handsomely when I get home.”
“Now who’s talking dirty?”
40
Legions of the Already Dead
United States Penitentiary
Pollock, Louisiana
All we wanted was a part of America that was ours, for white people. Simple as that,” said Brian Corbin Paul.
He sat on the forward edge of his chair, manacled hands resting on the metal table. Black and gray prison tattoos with a white supremacist theme tracked up both arms and disappeared beneath the short sleeves of the prison jumpsuit. His black hair and Van Dyke were close-trimmed, the hair clean. His face had the shine of a fresh shave.
“Why?” Mai asked him.
“Fourteen.”
Mai frowned, but the details of Elizabeth Drake’s briefing had sunk in after all. “The fourteen words,” Mai replied.
“‘We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.’ We needed that haven because we made this country, and it’s not ours anymore. We wanted someplace that was.”
“This country belongs to all its citizens.”
Paul shook his head. “The Constitution is clear on that.”
“Explain it to me.”
“Only landed white men have rights.” He smiled at her. “Begging your pardon, ma’am.” The smile switched off. “Because of the Jews and the mud peoples, the feminists, this country no longer belongs to Yahweh’s chosen people, the white race.”
“Where did all this start, Mr. Paul?”
“When the Jews killed our Lord Yahshua, the only son of Yahweh. You would know him as Jesus, ma’am.”
“I’m sorry for not being specific. I meant when did this start for you?”
He stroked his goatee and stared at her, the quiet whirring of her tape recorder the only sound in the room. “Are you married, Agent Burke?” he asked.
“I’ll ask the questions.”
“I give no more answers until you answer that.”
In interrogation protocol, you never gave any personal information, but she wasn’t interrogating Paul. She was picking his brain.
“Why do you need to know? Answer that, and I’ll answer you.”
He smiled again, showing teeth the prison dentist had no doubt worked on. “I wasn’t about to propose,” he said.
She returned the smile.
“You’re a beautiful Caucasian woman who should be bearing sons to fight for your race,” he said.
She struggled not to laugh. “I’m married, and I had a son. He died.”
“Born in a hospital?”
“Of course.”
“What hospital?”
“A military one.”
Paul nodded and pointed a finger at her. “A government hospital is bad enough, a military hospital the worst. You see, the medical profession is controlled by Jews. Your son didn’t die. A Jewish doctor killed him as a human sacrifice to their devil god, and so he wouldn’t grow up to assert his rightful claim to his white superiority.”
As nutty as Paul sounded, Mai had heard similar sentiments from Protestants—and Catholics—in Northern Ireland, had heard the Serbian warlord Arkan speak similarly of Bosnian Muslims and Croatians.
“I’ll take that into consideration,” Mai said. “Let’s get back to how you became involved with The Order.”
“The FBI called us The Order. We never referred to ourselves that way. We were, we are, Bruders Schweigen, Silent Brotherhood. ZOG didn’t know how to deal with our power. Calling us by a fictional name demeaned our sacred cause.”
From her research, Mai knew what ZOG stood for, but she wanted to hear it from him.
“ZOG?” she asked.
“Zionist Occupational Government. It’s a term we patriots use to describe a government we know is controlled by Zionists. Do not call us The Order. Do that, and I leave.”
Fucking bastard, she thought, but she said, “Of course. How did you become involved with Bruders Schweigen?”
“As a white man, I was born to it. It was an accumulation of government wrongs, but mostly I started reading the right books, listening to the right preachers. I learned the truth the Jews don’t want us to hear. When the scales dropped from my eyes, and I knew that truth, as a white man, as an Identity Christian, I had to do whatever was necessary to protect white people.”
“Like what?”
“I stopped paying taxes to the Jew government, but that wasn’t enough. Besides, you don’t pay your taxes you end up in jail.” He smiled again, with a certain charm Mai knew would sway lesser women. “As I’ve discovered here, if you’re in jail, you can’t take the war to the Jew, to the niggers in the streets they run. The only way to make people listen is to shed blood. Terror is sometimes necessary in a revolution.”
“Lenin said it was an absolute necessity. Vladimir Ilych, not John.”
“I know who you mean.”
“He was a Marxist and possibly a Jew.” Paul didn’t respond to that, and Mai continued. “Tell me why Bruders Schweigen was your calling.”
“Like I said, the right books and sermons, but Robert Matthews inspired me. I would have laid my life down for him.”
And yet you’re here, alive, and he’s long dead, she thought. “What books?”
“The Turner Diaries.”
That kept popping up. Good thing she’d sent Alexei on a hunt for it.
“When I got here,” Paul continued, “they took my copy and won’t let me have another. Here, the Bill of Rights goes out the window. The guards do whatever they want to me, and it’s their word against mine, right? If I complain about not having enough paper to write letters, I get disciplinary action. If I ask why, the answer is because we can. You see, ZOG has convinced people I’m the one to fear.”
“I’m not here to debate prison conditions with you, Mr. Paul.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just, well… I don’t get a chance to talk to people from the outside very often. Everyone is an agent of ZOG.”
“And I’m not?”
“You carry the ID and the badge, but I’ve looked into your soul. This isn’t your government either.”
They stared at each other in silence long enough to make the guard clear his throat. Mai shot him a glare for interrupting. The likelihood Paul knew her real identity was small, but the fact he could read her… Well, her American accent had slipped away on occasion. Still, even in a situation where she was in control, she could never, ever let her guard down.
Paul leaned over the table and lowered his voice. “You are someone I can trust,” he said.
“Trust with what?”
His narrowed eyes assessed, and he leaned back in his chair. “We were discussing The Turner Diaries. My other bible. It gave us the outline of what we had to do. Bob was right. Talk was cheap and easy. The time had come for action.”
“Why?”
“No one was hearing the truth.”
“Your truth.”
“The truth!” The thump of his index finger on the table rang loud in the small room. “The Diaries, the story that book told was what we needed to do. Overthrow the tyrannical, Jew-led government and re-establish a whites-only nation. It showed us the Utopia to strive for. It showed us the way, and it confirmed we had to go beyond talk to achieve our Utopia.”
“But it’s fiction.”
“Do you smoke?”
Someone had trained Brian Paul well. He was trying to take on the role of interrogator.
“No, I don’t. How could you be inspired by something made up?”
“I haven’t had a cigarette in some time.”
“They’re bad for you.”
“Prison isn’t too good for you, either, but I’m here.”
Paul narrowed his eyes at her and smiled. “Did you get to hold your son?”
Miserable, fucking son of a bitch.
Mai put the recorder on pause. The guard took a step closer, but she held up a hand to stop him.
“Mr. Paul,” she said, “I’m the one asking the questions. Ask me another personal question, and I’ll take the remote for your stun belt from the guard and indulge in some creative stimulation. Now, you can shut up, and I’ll leave. Or we can talk some more and you get to tell your story. Your choice.”
She released the pause button.
Paul’s eyes flicked to the guard, who showed no reaction to Mai’s threat. Paul gave Mai the barest of nods.
“You, ma’am, are a fascinating woman,” he said. “I think you understand the meaning, the passion of a true cause. I think you…”
He let his smile return before he became all business again.
“Of course we knew The Diaries was fiction, but if the author had written it as a how-to book to overthrow the government, he’d be rotting in a Jew jail, too. He wrote it as a novel, but to someone who knows how to interpret his words… Bob Matthews was good at reading between The Diaries’ lines. From The Diaries, he extrapolated the targets for our missions.”
“Such as?”
“Alan Berg, Norton Ball. Norton Ball, especially. Fucking Jew lawyer, suing for the niggers, for the Jews.”
“Ball isn’t Jewish.”
“You can be born a Jew, you can become a Jew, and you can act like a Jew. Either way, you’re still a Jew, and elimination is the only recourse. We swore a blood oath to that.”
“Tell me about that. Describe it.”
“Like I said before, this was my duty as a white man, but it became reality when I swore that oath.” His eyes glittered with a passion akin to arousal, and he continued, “One night at Bob’s place, we all stood in a circle. One man’s wife had a new baby daughter, a beautiful little white girl who deserves to be unpolluted. We placed her in the center of our circle and swore our oath over her. We were going to fight for Aryan babies like her.”
He closed his eyes as if recalling, and intoned, “‘No fear of death, no fear of foe, sacred duty to deliver our people from the Jew.’”
He opened his eyes and stared hard at Mai. “Bob Matthews wasn’t the one to declare war. It had already been declared against us. We had to defend our race, our way of life. We swore we wouldn’t lay down our weapons until we’d driven our enemy into the sea.”