Dawn of Betrayal

by Max Grant

  “In a sense, yes. At least for a while. I’m convinced that this is going to play all the way out. The domestic enemy is too dedicated. They organize well and they will obtain backing from our foreign enemies. I mean where else in the history of the world have you heard of a country having hundreds of thousands of its citizens actively working on behalf of a hostile foreign power, a terror state no less, betraying their fellow countrymen at every turn. It may have started innocently enough in the 1930s, but it has consolidated now into a monolithic fifth column and it’s only going to get worse. Our losses may build for a matter of several decades before the Reds take over. Then they will commit their destruction in as short a time as possible.

  “Still, I believe the concept of America is so great and the love of freedom so compelling that truly magnificent events will occur in our future history. If not the next generation, our grandchildren or their grandchildren, will restore the Republic someday. Our best hope is that the traitors among us play out their hand before the indoctrination is complete and memories of freedom are extinguished. Fortunately for us, they are impaired and impatient, and they will likely overplay their hand. So I expect that America’s finest hours still lay ahead. America will again pose the greatest world threat to those who would enslave innocents. In any case we have to believe that.”

  “What do you think are the chances they will succeed in actually taking this country behind the Iron Curtain?” Veronica asked.

  “My guess is none. I believe they will be wholly unsuccessful, and violently so,” Yuki chuckled. “Remember these individuals are deeply flawed, steeped in delusion and incompetence. Americans are not serfs and peasants, and we don’t have a history of servility like the Europeans. We don’t ride the rails in cattle cars. The domestic enemy will soon enough find themselves outmatched and outclassed.

  “Once the repression becomes too severe to deny, Americans will slowly awake to the reality of lost freedom and prosperity delivered by the cult leader and his acolytes. When they awake it will be like the reaction to Pearl Harbor all over again. Admiral Yamamoto knew how that was going to end from Day One because he recognized there was a rifle behind every blade of grass in America. Any Commie punks think they’re going to succeed in taking over this country are only going to learn the same thing the hard way.

  ”I agree,” I said. “If Americans actually believed this crap, we’d still be curtsying to the King of England. We’re not a nation of cowards. Not by a long chance. We celebrated 150 years of freedom in 1926. Americans will tolerate a lot of garbage in the name of free speech, but if they compromise our government or seize some power, try civilian disarmament or some other power grab, they’ll find themselves swinging from lampposts. Exterminating commies will become a national sport. They know it. They’ll settle for remaining trouble makers.”

  “Seems to me Americans, of all people, will figure out that Communism doesn't work because people like to own things,” Mack interjected.

  “Yes,” Yuki continued. “And they’ll also come to know it as just another form of slavery in which the slave is provided work, housing, food, education, medical care and retirement—but at the price of freedom. They’ll figure it out when they miss what they used to have or, in the case of the young, when their folks tell them what they could have had when the country was free.

  “The newly informed will turn on the government in a major way. As to the chosen leader, they will learn how such an unqualified individual made his rise to power and eventually understand both how and why all details of his early life and associations were so carefully and thoroughly concealed. They will figure out that while the leader may have at first appeared simply green from inexperience, he was in fact Red inside and out from the start.”

  “Like a hothouse tomato,” I chuckled.

  “The internal enemy will use ridicule to isolate good Americans, but their words will be simple projection revealing their own deceit and corruption. The leader and his clique may be ridiculous fools, but the Americans that oppose him most definitely will not be. Their weakness and dishonesty will out them, and they cannot survive the ridicule of exposure.

  “These inglorious traitors may well ensure that America someday has a government that can make the trains run on time. But when the tyranny is firmly established and beyond denial decent citizens will rise up and take out these ‘scoundrels, varmints and polecats.’ After all half or more of the men in this country have taken oaths to defend our Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic. Maybe we will live long enough to see Thomas Jefferson proud of his countrymen again. Certainly our children or grandchildren will see the ‘Refounding,’ or human freedom and dignity will be lost to another Dark Age.”

  “Yes. Let’s not forget the oath takers,” Mack suggested. “Our countrymen in law enforcement and the military will never forget the oaths they made to the Constitution. Like us, they wish for the American Revolution to continue. They will be aware a long time before the average dummy just what is up and they, more than anyone, will know when it’s time to feed the hogs.”

  “That’s very true,” Yuki continued. “Also consider that the America of the future will include many foreigners who lived through this before and fled tyranny in Communist Europe and other hellholes. They’ll start to wonder what the difference is between where they came from and what the US is becoming.

  “Like the canary in the coal mine they will be first to raise the alarm when the time to fight is near. They will understand well that their soft-bred countrymen have no experience with the defeat of oppression, the fear of arbitrary arrest and death. In the fight against this menace they will counsel that no quarter, no mercy, be given, because they know from experience that none can be expected from the tyrants.

  “After all, things ended badly for Hitler and Mussolini, but Germany and Italy are both on the mend.”

  “In any case, liberty has been at the top of our agenda for a good long while now. I just can’t see a return to the Dark Ages, or the USA becoming a satellite of the USSR, what with so many folks remembering the good life they had before. More likely this putz will devolve into little more than a cult leader for the die-hard brainwashed among his original supporters. The rest of the flock will grow up or get wise and desert him, and the core of traitor moles will be left exposed. Generally, cockroaches scatter when a light is shined on them. If not, wasn’t it Thomas Jefferson who suggested that ‘from time to time the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants.’”

  “Just as long as it’s bags of their blood and only drops of ours,” I concluded. “Sic semper tyrannis, as we say in Virginia.”

  “It’s patently apparent from the past few wars that America is the only country capable of protecting freedom, and the world has had a taste of freedom for too long now to allow it to be extinguished forever. It may come to pass that our traitors must be hunted down and eliminated like the vermin they are. In that case retribution will be total and the threat will be banished for a long time to come, although we’re not likely to live to see it in our time.”

  “So,” I continued. “It sounds like the best way to counter this threat will be from outside of the corrupted institutions. Maybe operate kind of like the Underground Railroad of 80 years ago. People can find trusted sources of information, raise and teach their children right, organize with other Americans in their churches and communities…”

  “One can hope. And we can continue the work we are all doing to take them down cell by cell,” Yuki interrupted. “Veronica in law enforcement, Moe and Sally in the arts, Ray and I in more private pursuits…”

  “And Norton in unconventional tactics and weapons,” Mack chuckled.

  “Hell yeah!” Norton whooped.

  “Keep at it, Norton.” I encouraged. “There’s always room in the history books for one more patriot.”

  “There’ll be many more than one,” Moe piped up, looking thoughtful. “Maybe ol’ Admiral Yamamoto said i
t best.”

  “Yeah?” Norton snorted. “How’s that?”

  Before I could answer Yuki smiled and spoke softly “Behind every blade of grass.”

  Mack laughed, “Ain’t it the truth!”

  * * *

  For a moment everyone settled back, lost in their own private thoughts and warmed with a well-earned sense of satisfaction. It had been a good start.

  Moe glanced at the wall clock and said, “I believe the news in coming on about now.”

  Sally arose, strode across the room and snapped on the radio set. After a momentarily crackle of static, the voice of a newscaster boomed across the room:

  …six o’clock, Friday, this 25th day of June 1948. At the top of the news the situation in Berlin appears to be deteriorating rapidly.

  As reported yesterday, the Soviets have cut off all land and water access to Berlin from the non-Soviet zones, including all supply by rail and barge. We can now report that the Soviets as of this day are blocking food supplies to the civilian population in the non-Soviet sectors of Berlin. Moreover, electricity has been cut off as the generating plants are located in the Soviet zone and are under Soviet control.

  It is well known that since April the American Army Air Corps has been re-supplying their military garrisons by air. Our sources in the State Department suggest this airlift will soon be expanded to supply food and fuel to the civilian population of the Western Sector.

  More details are expected at eleven.

  In other news, President Truman today signed the Displaced Persons Act, authorizing the resettlement of more than 200,000 European refugees in the United States.

  And in sports, Joe Louis has defeated Jersey Joe Walcott to retain the heavyweight championship…

  So. The cat was finally out of the bag. The coiled snake had struck out and at last revealed its treacherous purposes to an unseeing world.

  So much the better. The right folks had always been paying attention. Another percentage would sit up and take notice. The majority would never understand the meaning of the event and pass it from memory once the headlines changed.

  I sat back and grinned with no small satisfaction at the fate of our own little motley crew of traitors. But what of the rest? Everyone knew they were out there, yet they were being given the blind eye. Except for a few honest Feds and local boys straining at the leash to go after them, no one in authority cared. The gung-ho boys were being held back and muzzled by the wise ones, the bought politicians and their flacks who didn’t want to know and wanted less to see.

  But I had caught a bare glimpse, like a fleeting shadow, of the network of Marxist termites that had penetrated our land and burrowed deep into its venerable institutions. I had learned of just a small part of the deceit they were perpetrating to infect our nation, divide and corrupt it, and ultimately serve it up to their global tyranny.

  And I knew what I had to do. I was going to keep on tracking, crack another opening, get on the trail of a few more, and bring them down. Moe was right. Yuki understood. It was simply something that had to be done.

  # # #

  COMING SOON IN 2013

  If you enjoyed DAWN OF BETRAYAL then don’t miss Max Grant’s exciting continuation of the Raymond James series…

  DECADE OF BETRAYAL

  It’s 1948, and this time it’s personal.

  Ray and Yuki find themselves in pursuit of SMERSH assassins on a trail that reveals one of World War II’s best-kept secrets. Lend-Lease was much more than what we were led to believe, and in fact continues into the post-war years. Vivid proof shocks the world as the USSR explodes its first atomic weapon.

  Teaming with a young sergeant of the Army Signal Corps, the pair benefits from leaked transcripts of an ultra-secret operation to decipher coded Soviet message traffic. Armed with foreknowledge made available to few others, Ray and Yuki unmask the clandestine activities of a whole new cabal of deep-cover moles, garden-variety traitors, and their fellow travelers.

  Meantime, crafty Joe Stalin’s plot to derail Communist Chinese relations with the West culminates in war on the Korean peninsula. As our nation’s forces brave human wave assaults from the Red horde, Yuki foresees a horrific outcome that is deeply troublesome to contemplate. Could our nation’s finest hold the line and win the peace, only to be stabbed in the back some years later as a conspiracy of communist sympathizers in Congress assist the Soviet-backed regime to an unearned victory?

  And now a special preview from this thrilling new story…

  * * *

  DECADE OF BETRAYAL

  July 1948

  The pounding in my head refused to let up. I rolled over and buried myself in the covers, but it didn’t help. I’d only just fallen asleep and I preferred to stay that way, but the demons in my skull had other ideas.

  Presently I lifted my head and cast a baleful eye at the bedside stand. The radium dial on my timepiece glowed a quarter past one. It was Thursday. No, it was Friday now. And the pounding wasn’t any longer in my head. It was booming through the bedroom door, echoing from the walls. The racket was evidently emanating from the next room and was getting louder and more insistent by the second.

  Finally I got it. This was the first time I’d experienced someone trying to cave in my front door in the middle of the night.

  Muttering curses I hauled myself out of the bed, grabbed my robe off the back of the door, and shrugged it on as I strode unsteadily toward the entry. Still not entirely conscious I forgot caution and yanked on the door handle.

  My first thought flew to this uncharacteristic carelessness and I nearly slammed the door shut again. But what I saw out there shocked me rigid. I couldn’t have been more surprised by a talking giraffe and the rest of his circus.

  It was Ruthena Ginzberg, in the flesh and looking thoroughly spooked, but still as gorgeous as I remembered her. It had been a long time, but she was moving fast now.

  She slapped the door aside and slammed into my body, throwing her arms around my neck. I had just enough presence of mind to grab her around the waist and lift her off her feet as I stepped back to gain purchase against the unexpected onslaught.

  She was wound tighter than a muscle-bound python, vibrating intensely between shuddering sobs, her arms tightening around me as if a greater strength were even possible. Various of my bones felt like they’d had enough of the old neighborhood and were trying to relocate.

  Reeling with perplexity I tried to remember the last time we had seen each other or spoken. I had met Ruthena the previous year after stumbling onto the agency’s first big case. That’s Raymond James—Private Investigations, my one-man shop taking on all sorts of Hollywood madness and mayhem out of the Highland Building on Vine.

  More accurately I had approached Ruthena with the intent of penetrating her scene, the netherworld of the international Communist conspiracy. We had carried on a more-or-less torrid affair for a reasonably brief period. We’d parted after each had gotten some of what we each had wanted, in addition to a whole lot of what we had both wanted. We hadn’t since had any occasion to communicate.

  * * *

  For several minutes we stood locked together just inside the threshold. Finally her grip subsided and she gained a modicum of control over her spasming lungs and thudding heart. I hadn’t experienced anything like this since combat. I gripped her upper arms and slowly eased her away. Wordlessly she slid by me and into the shadowed room.

  Now my heart was pounding and the excessive adrenaline was in full circulation. Warily, I poked my head out the door for a quick look and hopefully some explanation. But no clues were apparent in the moon-washed courtyard of the Kensington Arms where I occupied one of the street-side low-rise dwellings.

  The lights had come on in the cottage across the walkway facing mine. A dim shadow loomed where the curtains in the large window were slightly parted.

  I cast a look to the street, but all was silent and perfectly still. The street and walkways were saturated in brilliance, the crystalline a
ggregate in the concrete glinting like jewels in a royal hoard. The lush vegetation surrounding the dwellings reflected a dazzling multitude of luminous grays sharply contrasting with the obsidian shadows.

  I looked to my right and the two rear cottages were dark. The young lady occupying the unit behind mine was of indeterminate means and would not be expected home for another hour or two. The lights snapped off across the way as I eased the door shut behind me.

  Moonlight illuminated the front of the room where I joined Ruthena on the sofa. She pulled in close and gathered both my hands in hers.

  “Ray, I need help!” she gasped. “It was insanely horrible. Just an hour or so ago I woke up with a pistol stuck in my face and this scraggly ghost of a mug behind it. I about died. I couldn’t see anything else. It was terrifying. I couldn’t even move. It felt like my heart was trying to jump out of my chest. I could hardly breathe. He didn’t say a word. Just stared at me over the barrel. The moonlight was in my eyes and I couldn’t see anything else at all. I must have looked a fright.”

  She shuddered and held me tighter, then continued.

  “So all of a sudden he lets out a big sigh and moves away. He backed up to my make-up table and sat. He kept his head down and held the gun between his legs near the floor. I didn’t dare move. Neither of us moved or said a word for the longest time. Finally he looks over at me and says, ‘Miss, I can’t do it.’

  “I couldn’t even answer him I was so scared. He kept looking at me and I calmed down a bit. He appeared kind of small and ordinary, and he seemed really sad.”

  She took a deep breath and paused for a moment.

  “To make a long story short, he told me he was sent to kill me, but he’d changed is mind. He said he doesn’t want to kill anymore and he wants out. And he asked for my help!

  “I thought about calling the police but I was afraid to spook him. I thought it better to get out of there so I told him I knew someone who could help get him to safety.”

  “Did he say anything else?” I asked.

  “Not much. But he says he works for SMERSH.”

  “What the hell is SMERSH?”