“I hate cats.”
“Figures. Look, all I’m saying is, if we’re going to get along, we need to understand we’re coming at this from totally different angles. I’d like you to be more forthcoming, and I’ll back down on the snarky comments. Deal?”
“Snarky? Is that a word?”
I strenuously resisted the urge to offer him a remedial vocabulary lesson. The poor man had been subject to nothing but abbreviations and acrostics for the past eight years. It wasn’t his fault he was functionally illiterate.
“Gentlemen, d’you think we can get back to the task at hand any time soon?” Martin finished his beer and grabbed another one. Grant, I noted, had barely touched his.
“All right,” Grant muttered. “Roof top position at Pennsylvania and 11th Street. Take positions on either side of the street in two man teams. Both teams will—”
“Why two-man teams?”
“I’ll explain later,” said Martin.
Grant massaged his temples. “Both teams will deploy to take down the target, but not until after he takes the oath of office and starts the acceptance speech. It’ll come after the gun salute, clear?”
We nodded.
“You take your shot then you get the hell outta Dodge. Leave the guns behind. There’ll be pandemonium at this point, and the cops will be overwhelmed. We get down to the street level, we blend in with the crowd, and go to the rendezvous point.”
“And where’s that?”
“TBD. It won’t be in Washington. Everyone will be responsible to get across the bridges as quickly as possible, before they shut the city down.”
I nodded. It was starting to come together, to make sense. Over the past few weeks I’d suppressed my moralistic panic, but it surged to the forefront now.
The arguments were solid. The reasons sublime. I’d gained an understanding of just how difficult the Revolution had been the first time. The books and movies didn’t begin to capture it. It was a terrifying rush. Ben Franklin’s comment, “We must all hang together, gentlemen... else, we shall most assuredly hang separately,” was no mindless quip. It was a sobering assessment of the price of revolution. Whether history judged you a traitor or a hero depended solely on whether or not you won. “The good war hallows any cause,” as Martin had quoted Nietzsche. And while I could not subscribe to that brand of nihilistic cynicism, Nietzsche had a point. History books were written by the winners. They were often the only ones left to tell the tale.
“What happens if someone can’t get out in time?”
“You want to mount a rescue? Ride in there and save the day? Is that it? You’ve seen too many movies,” Grant said. “You’re an American. You blend in until you can get out. If anyone asks, you’re just there for the inauguration.”
I looked at my beer. “Okay, but what if—”
“Petey,” said Martin, shaking his head.
“No, it’s all right. They don’t teach this in civie boot camp.” Grant studied me, his eyes searching. “You wanna know what to do if you’re caught, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You do the honorable thing. Do I hafta spell it out for you, or are you smart enough to figure it out on your own? It’s about protecting the mission. Think you can handle that?”
I nodded, not at all sure that I could. At that moment, the back door opened. Jerry walked in, taking off his ball cap.
“You’re late,” said Grant.
“Sorry. Got held up at the shop. Ooh, that’s a poor choice of words, huh? Hey Petey.”
Martin snickered. “Good to see you, Jer.”
Jerry helped himself to a beer. I nodded to Martin. “Can I talk to you a second?”
Martin let out a breath and pushed away from the table, following me to the living room. Behind us, I overheard Grant muttering, “Guy’s worse than a woman. Sit down, Jerry, I’ll bring you up to speed.”
I faced Martin. “You’re bringing Jerry with us?”
“We’ve been over this.”
“Yeah, but that was for the guns, not for the operation.”
Martin put his hand on my shoulder. I grimaced. “Look,” he said, “We need a four-man team. And the fewer that know about this, the better. Jerry’s already in the loop. It just makes sense to use him.”
“He can’t shoot worth spit.”
“He ain’t gotta shoot. All he’s gotta do is stare through binoculars at the target. He’s a spotter, nothing more. That’s why we need two people per gun. One spots, one shoots.”
I shook my head. “I don’t like it.” He gave my shoulder a squeeze. I pushed his hand off. Martin raised his eyebrows.
“You got a problem? Spit it out.”
He glared at me. I sat on the edge of the couch. “All right. I guess I do have a problem with this.” He folded his arms, waiting. I prayed God would help me make him see reason. “It isn’t going to work,” I said. “None of it is.”
“Care to explain why?”
Jerry and Grant came in the room. I swallowed. This wasn’t going to be easy.
Eight
“Well, for starters,” I said, “this isn’t 1776. We’re not the Revolutionary Fathers. We’re not organized like they were. We’re not trying to fight an enemy that’s a thousand miles away across an ocean. And most importantly, we don’t have the backing of the American people.”
“I think you’re underestimating them.”
“I think you’re overestimating them. Badly. At the most, sixty-percent of Americans are relatively conservative. Of that, maybe ten percent would support someone taking the kind of action we’re talking about. And then, only if they had no other choice.”
“But that’s the plan, Petey—”
“I know.”
“This is a deliberate act to force the government’s hand. It’s the frog in the kettle theory. As long as we gradually surrender our freedoms, no one will raise much of a fuss. You want the frog to jump out of the pot, you’ve got to suddenly crank up the heat. A sudden loss of freedom. Martial law. Then the people will revolt!”
I shook my head, “No, they won’t. Not as long as they think the heat’s necessary, and believe it’s temporary. Look at the response to 9-11. Insanely long lines at the airport. Suspension of our freedoms. The Patriot Act. Did one conservative raise a voice in protest? Hell no. We supported it! We voted for it. We gave the President unprecedented powers. And who was it finally said, ‘Enough!’? It was the liberals. The very ones we want to get rid of.
“Same thing happened in Germany, just after Hindenberg appointed Hitler Chancellor. I’ve been studying up on it. They used a patsy, a Dutch communist named Marinus Van Der Lubbe, to set fire to the Reichstag—their version of the Capitol. Hitler called for and got Hindenberg to declare martial law and suspend liberties until the commies could be routed out. And the German people nodded in agreement and followed him right into hell.”
I caught my breath. “You want to start a revolution, you’re going to have to do a lot more than just assassinate a President and wait for the chips to fall where they may.”
There was silence in the room. Martin slapped his thighs and stood. “All right, Petey. What do you suggest? Do we take the assassination off the table? Do nothing? Continue to cower with our tails between our legs?”
They stared at me. I swallowed. This was it. This was my moment to pull us back from the brink. If I could just hold onto it, I could keep us all from plunging headlong into the abyss.
“You have to lay the groundwork first,” I said. “You can’t do it with just a couple of guys in a room somewhere. Think about the Revolution. Long before Lexington and Concord, long before the Boston Tea Party, there were the Patriots building a network of supporters in all thirteen colonies. They were gentlemen rabble-rousers, building a coalition of willing fighting men from the ground up. Most people at that time were Tories in heart and deed, but the Patriots won them over. Why?”
“This is pointless,” muttered Grant.
“No, wait
a sec. Let him go,” said Martin.
I shook my head and answered my own question. “Because the Patriots were better organized, and they had the cooperation of the press in getting their message out. Samuel Adams said, ‘It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in peoples’ minds.’ That’s what they were doing before taking action. Setting brushfires in people’s minds. You do anything before that’s done, you lose. The American people will not support you.”
“Hell’s bells,” stormed Grant, “how can you be so smart and so stupid at the same time?”
I furrowed my brow.
“You really think we ain’t thought of that?”
“Grant,” said Martin.
“Well, I don’t know. Maybe. But I’ve just been writing on this for a couple of months now. Just weeks really. There hasn’t been enough time. That’s my point.”
“Good Lord, you really are that stupid. You think you’re the only one, don’tcha?”
“Grant!”
“Shut up, Marty. You want him in on this, he needs to know the whole thing.”
I looked from Grant to my brother. “Marty?”
He thrust his hands into his pockets and smiled thinly. “There’s a network.”
“What?”
“There is a network. People who think like we do. All over this country. We’re already plugged in.”
I shrank from them. “What network?” I said, not really wanting to hear the answer.
“Militias.”
“Militias? Oh my God, are you talking about the white supremacists out there? The frickin’ Klan?”
“They’re one of them,” said Grant. “Aryan Nation’s another.”
Martin held his hands out placatingly to me. “It’s not like that. They’re not all racists.”
“Christian Identity, Christian Patriots, White Patriot Party, Militia of Montana,” intoned Grant. Martin glared at him.
“What the hell are you hooking us into? No one’s gonna support the white supremacists. Hell, even the white supremacists know that! They’ve been downplaying their ideology to attract more followers.”
“Good thing,” said Grant. “They’ve been very successful.”
“That don’t mean we want to get into bed with them!”
“Why not?” Grant shrugged.
“Whaddya mean, ‘why not?’ Are you a racist?”
“Not in the least. I’d have voted for Alan Keyes, given the chance. All I care about is the man’s policies, and the ideology that backs them. That’s what’s got to be stopped.”
“And you think aligning ourselves with a bunch of Nazis is the way to go?”
“War makes strange bedfellows.”
“Shakespeare. The Tempest... Sort of.” The actual quote was ‘Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows,’ which seemed more relevant, given how I felt. I turned to Martin. “Please tell me you understand the problem here. The Nazis were left-wing. National Socialists—that’s who they are! The whole association between the Nazis and conservatism has been one of the greatest hoaxes ever pulled off by the left wing media. We’re trying to get rid of left-wingers, and you want to get in bed with them?”
“You’re conflating the two,” said Grant.
I stared at him, not the least for using a three-syllable word like “conflating.”
“The only thing that connects neo-Nazis and the Third Reich is the anti-Semitism. Especially here in the States. I won’t speak for the European groups. But that’s it. Just the hate.”
“Just the hate,” I repeated. Like that wasn’t enough.
“Yeah. Just the hate. Not the ideology. Not the socialism. Americans don’t want to control other people. They just don’t want to be controlled. Are they racists? Some of them, hell yeah. But most of them are just xenophobes. They don’t like people coming in and making them change their ways. Change who they are. They’re racists for two reasons.” Grant held up his fingers and ticked them off. “One: because that’s how they were raised. Simple as that. These are the great grandkids of the Confederacy, and the racism is part of it. But the second reason, the most important reason, is this: they are racists because they are resistors. They’re resisting the cultural changes being forced on them by the liberals. They don’t like being told they are ignorant. They don’t like being told they wrong. Especially when the people telling them so are openly advocating homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, and God-knows-what-else. The sins of the left-wing scream so loud that these people can’t even hear the arguments against racism. It just gets lumped in there with the rest of the reasons to toss out the libs.”
I vented a frustrated breath. “So you’re saying the racism is no big deal.”
“Not for our purposes.”
“Well, I think it’s going to be a very big deal for the American people’s purposes, and maybe for the very same reason you just cited.”
“Whaddya mean?”
I sat on the edge of the couch. “Every solid point the militias make will be obfuscated by the fact that they’re hate mongering racists. Everything is clouded by that. It’s the fly in the ointment that makes the whole batch stink. And it isn’t just the racism anymore. We’re losing the current generation on homosexuality precisely because the liberals packaged and sold it to us as a civil rights issue—painting gays with the same brush they used to win on civil rights. They show homosexuals as an oppressed minority and play upon the sympathies of the uninformed. And I’m just as sure they’d love to do the same thing with the Muslims, except that Muslims refuse to cooperate by being victims. They keep blowing stuff up.”
I took a breath. “You put us in bed with these people, you risk losing the whole thing.”
After a moment, Grant said, “You know what? This isn’t my problem. I’ve got me an op to plan, and I don’t need to spend my time worrying about the propaganda.” He turned to go, but then whirled and stuck a meaty finger in my face. “Look, you wanted to know how we were gonna get people on our side. I tell you we’ve already got a good number of people on our side, and you start picking them apart ‘cause they ain’t perfect. Well, hell’s bells, that is not my problem, Cherry. You’re the information guy. You’re the writer. You handle the propaganda. Set some frickin’ brush fires already.”
He turned and stalked back into the kitchen. Jerry followed a moment later, leaving me alone with my brother.
“What the hell is wrong?” Martin said. “Are you with us or not?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about the militias?”
“Why should I?”
“You’re my frickin’ brother, that’s why! I’m writing this damn manifesto of yours and you won’t even tell me what’s really going on!”
“I’ve told you everything you need to know.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes, really.”
We stared at each other, like two bucks taking their measure before clashing horns. Finally, he said, “You want to know why I didn’t say anything.”
“At least.”
“How about for your own good? Just hear me out,” he added when I opened my mouth. “I didn’t tell you about the militias because I didn’t want you making the case for them—either for or against.”
I frowned.
“If you come out in favor of the militias, you poison the message, and everybody thinks we’re just another hate group. Another McVeigh. If you come out against them, then it looks like we’re trying to distance ourselves from the association, like we’ve got something to hide. It’d be like blood in the water to those media sharks. They’ll start investigating, and they will find out.”
I looked away. He made sense, though I didn’t want to admit it. “So you didn’t say anything to me, because once they start to investigate, they’ll start with me—because of my blog, and for helping you on the manifesto.”
“That’s right.”
“And if I don’t know anything about the militias...”
“Then you can’t confess anything one way or the other.”
“And the message stays pure. Plausible deniability. That’s why you didn’t want Grant to say anything.”
“That’s right. Grant’s good when it comes to planning an op, but he’s got no head for the political stuff.”
“I heard that,” came Grant’s voice from the other room.
“It’s a frickin’ compliment!” Martin called.
“I know,” Grant hollered back.
“Why didn’t you stop him?” I asked.
Martin shook his head. “Once the cat got out of the bag, there’s no way you’d let it go. You’d make a good journalist, Petey. You’ve got the same nose for blood.”
He was right. It would have been better had I not known. In so many ways.
I searched his face for a solution. “What are we going to do now?”
Nine
I wanted out. I don’t know why I didn’t tell Martin right then and there. Maybe I was scared of what Grant would do. I had no doubts he’d suggest something radical to be sure I didn’t talk to anyone—something I’d find unpleasant.
On the other hand, I knew it wasn’t possible. Not without Martin. If I left him now, I’d lose him forever. I was sure of that.
In the days that followed, a nagging suspicion grew in my mind—one I couldn’t bring up even to Martin. It started when the cable channel played the movie Rounders that night, and we watched it in the living room with the lights off, letting the pallid glow of the television set toss shadows around the walls. When Matt Damon’s character Mike McDermott, heading for a poker table, said, “Here’s the thing. If you can’t spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker,” I sat up and listened.
I don’t think I remember anything else from the movie after that.
I began thinking about the last time a president was assassinated—particularly the Oliver Stone take in J.F.K., that Lee Harvey Oswald was the patsy. ‘Course, in real life, Oswald pulled the trigger. I still remember Charles Gibson doing a report on the whole J.F.K thing and proving that one gunman took the shot. But that was little comfort, now. I thought again about Marinus Van Der Lubbe, and the way the Nazis used him.
I glanced around the room. Grant watched the movie through eyes that were narrow slits; his face void of expression. I genuinely couldn’t tell if he was engrossed, bored, or comatose. Martin sat across from him on the couch, looking mildly interested in the film, but honestly more entertained by his beer. Jerry had grabbed a handful of chips and disappeared onto the back porch for a smoke. I could see the firefly glow of his cigarette through the lace curtains.
The Spirit of Resistance Page 5