“That’s not all,” Ki picked it up. “We could see into his living room. He had a huge picture of Hitler hanging on the wall. It was grotesque.”
Don chuckled. “Just north of town on a county road?”
“Yes,” Stormy replied.
“Describe him.” After Stormy had painted a vocal picture of the man, Don said, “You met Victor Radford. He’s the leader of a neo-Nazi group. A bunch of kooks and flakes. They look silly parading around in their Nazi uniforms, but they’re dangerous. And that’s off the record, Stormy.”
“All right. Any other off-the-wall groups around here I need to know about?”
“Well, yes, sort of. Jim Beal fronts a large group of people, men and women, who call themselves the AFB. The Arkansas Freedom Brigade. They believe in the complete separation of the races, but they are not white supremacists. Jim doesn’t preach hate toward other races; he doesn’t advocate violence toward other races. Actually, except for his strong views about separation, Jim is a nice guy and a reasonable man.”
“Sounds as though you genuinely like the man, Sheriff. And I’m not interviewing you, and none of this will go on the air, I assure you.”
“Yeah, I like the man. He’s never been in trouble with the law. I don’t think Jim Beal has ever so much as received a traffic ticket. And in a lot of ways, he makes sense. He’s a very intelligent man. And on the plus side, he’s never belonged to the Klan, or any group like it. He’s very selective about the people he allows into his organization.”
“I’d like to interview this man, Don.”
“I can arrange that, I think. Jim has said a number of times that the reporters for the Coyote Network are about the only ones he trusts not to do a hatchet job on people who believe as he does.”
“I’d also like to interview this Victor Radford. Is that possible?”
“I don’t know about that. I don’t even like to get around the guy. He’s a flamin’ screwball. But I’ll see what I can do. I can’t make any promises.”
“That’s fair enough. Now then, at your convenience, I would like to interview you and get your views on the Speaker’s visit here.”
Don suddenly looked nervous. “On camera?”
“Sure.”
His wife, Jeanne, grinned and tickled his ribs. “Oh, go on, Don. Do it.”
The sheriffs grin wiped years from his face. “Oh, okay, Stormy. I guess it won’t kill me.”
Barry fixed fresh drinks and cold beer for everyone—except himself, he rarely drank—and sat down in time to catch the last of Don’s remarks.
“... and this man really spooked one of my deputies. And Al is a steady sort of fellow.”
“Did the man do anything to bring this on?” Jeanne asked.
The sheriff shook his head. “No. Al said he was really quite friendly. But something about the man caused the short hairs to stand up on Al’s neck. He was still spooked when he talked to me, hours later.”
“This man live around here?” Barry asked, after taking a sip of iced tea and carefully placing the moisture-covered glass on a coaster.
“No. Well, for a while, I guess. I checked and found that he’s leased some property for a couple of months. Ah, he’s all right, I’m sure. Probably a nice guy just here to do some fishing and relaxing.”
“Does he have a name?” Stormy asked.
“Yes,” Don replied. “Ravenna. John Ravenna.”
* * *
“Those idiots,” Robert Roche muttered, still irritated about the hired thugs’ failure to grab Barry. Then he calmed himself. He had known all along that they would fail. The man who was born Vlad Radu was too smart, too wary, to allow himself to be captured by garden variety thugs.
Perhaps he’d been taking the wrong tack with the man who now called himself Barry Cantrell. Robert hated to think he could ever be wrong, but sometimes one simply had to reassess matters and take one’s losses and change, if change was needed.
And in this case, it was needed.
“Yes,” Robert muttered. “Yes, indeed.”
* * *
President Dick Hutton stared out the window of the Oval Office, watching the rain splatter against the bullet-proof panes. Congress had gone home for a month, and Dick and his family were scheduled to take a two-week vacation. But getting out of Washington’s pressure cooker was not foremost on the president’s mind. No, something was all out of focus; something very unhealthy was growing like a cancer. Dick was a good politician, with a politician’s knack for sniffing out trouble, and he could sense that something was terribly wrong.
But he didn’t have a clue as to what it was.
Yet.
Dick glanced at the clock. He had thirty free minutes before his next appointment. He picked up the phone and punched a button. “Max? Come in here, will you?”
Max Montgomery had been with Dick Hutton since he was first elected to the senate. The first thing Dick did after becoming president was to name Max his chief of staff. It was one of Dick’s better moves.
The door opened and Dick pointed to a chair. “Sit down, Max. Something’s been bugging me ...”
“Bad choice of words, Dick,” Max said with a smile. “Let’s hope not.”
Dick grinned. “Right.” He sat down in the chair next to Max. “Max, what’s going on?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Something smells bad, Max. And it ain’t cabbage cookin’ in the kitchen. So what are you holding back from me?”
Max didn’t hesitate. He knew his friend and boss could pick up on a lie as easily as any streetwise cop. “Totally unsubstantiated rumors, Mr. President. Concerning Speaker of the House Madison.”
“What rumors, Max?”
The chief of staff sighed heavily. “That a contract has been placed on his life.”
“Good God!” The president’s reply was filled with genuine concern. While Dick Hutton and Cliff Madison were on opposite sides of nearly every issue, the two men had been friends for years. Indeed, they were the same age and had actually played football against each other in high school. Both were from Tennessee. Dick’s family had moved to Ohio in his junior year, and he had called the Buckeye State home ever since. Dick Hutton was the ninth man from the state of Ohio to be elected to the presidency.
Congressman Cliff Madison still called the Volunteer State home.
“Both the FBI and the Secret Service are trying to track down the source of the rumor—”
The phone rang, interrupting Max. The secretary’s voice pushed through the speaker. “For you, Mr. Montgomery.”
Max listened, his face paled. “Oh, dear God!” he said, then hung up. He turned to face the president. “Sir, Senator Holden’s body has just been found. He apparently shot himself in the head. The cleaning lady found the body on the bedroom floor.”
Dick Hutton slumped back in his chair, a stunned expression on his face. He was speechless.
“Mr. President,” Max began, “I’ll get right on this. I—”
“Cancel all my appointments for the rest of the day, Max. I don’t have anything urgent on the agenda.”
“Yes, sir.”
Max left the Oval Office, and Dick rose and walked to his desk, sitting down. His mind was racing, his thoughts dark. He did not believe for one second that Senator Holden had committed suicide.
He buzzed his secretary. “I don’t want to be disturbed, Ruth.”
“Yes, sir.”
All presidents, if they expected to last in Washington, had their personal cadre of spies. Such was the nature of modern-day politics. Dick knew all about the secret meetings held by the ultraliberal left of his party. He knew who met with whom, where they met and how often. While he did not know for sure what they discussed behind those closed doors, he had a very good idea.
Senator Holden had been a moderate, a voice of reason among the liberal left. Gene Dawson was a big-money man here in Washington, a philanthropist who loved even the most hopeless of liberal causes. He had inherite
d a fortune from his father and mother and, as far as Dick knew, had never worked a day in his life. Gene also disliked Republicans. No, dislike was too mild a word. Loathe was a better choice of words. Senator Paul Patrick hated anything and anybody of the right-wing persuasion. Senator Sam Stevens was another ultraleft liberal. Just like Dawson, Sam had inherited a huge fortune from his parents. But Madalaine Bowman was quite another story. Possessing the disposition of a pit viper, Madalaine was the most dangerous of those who attended the private meetings in that room behind the restaurant. Dick had always felt Madalaine was capable of anything . . . even murder. The others who attended, even though they wielded great power, were tagalongs, sheep. They would follow the Judas Goat blindly and without question.
Dick scribbled on the legal pad. It was all beginning to add up, at least in his mind. And what it was adding up to both disgusted and frightened the president. It was unthinkable.
Dick knew Madalaine hated him. He could read it in her eyes each time they met, and Gene Dawson and Paul Patrick shared her feelings. Dick was a moderate liberal, just as Holden had been.
The kicker in this hypothesis was Vice President Adam Thomas, a very good friend of Madalaine Bowman, and a man Dick Hutton could just barely tolerate. For the sake of the party, in public, they were buddy-buddy, but in private, they loathed one another with equal fervor.
Dick’s spies had informed him that Madalaine had called for some sort of emergency meeting just a few nights past. Of course, VP Thomas could never attend those gatherings, but he would be kept abreast of anything that was discussed. Dick’s spies had told him that when Senator Holden left the meeting, he appeared to be badly shaken.
Dick was now certain that the “rumor” about a contract on Congressman Madison’s life was no rumor. And he felt sure he knew why Senator Holden had been killed.
Dick pulled out a drawer of his desk and paused for a moment before using his private line to place a call. Meeting secretly with Speaker Madison would be chancy, but his Secret Service people could work it out. They’d have to work it out. And they wouldn’t have much time in which to do it. The call concluded, Dick summoned the head of the White House Secret Service detail. Moments later, the man was standing in front of the president’s desk.
“Let’s do it, Walt,” the president of the United States said.
Eight
“John Ravenna is not here to relax and fish,” Barry told Stormy and Ki, after the sheriff and his wife had left. “Ravenna has been a hired assassin for nearly a thousand years. And he despises me.”
“When did you last see him?” Ki asked.
“1944. In France. I was with the OSS, working with the French Resistance.”
Stormy and Ki knew all about the man who was christened Vlad Dumitru Radu. They were the first mortals Barry had leveled with in more than half a century.
“You think Robert Roche hired him?” Stormy asked.
“I don’t know. But I suspect not. That would not be Ravenna’s first choice of assignment. He’s a hunter, a torturer, a killer. He lives to kill. He talks of us fighting, but for obvious reasons, it would be a useless physical confrontation. No, John is here for someone other than me.”
“Pete and Repeat?” Ki asked, looking at the huge hybrids, sprawled in sleep on the floor of the living room.
Barry shook his head. “No. John knows I would track him until the end of time if he harmed something I loved. I would never let him rest; I would expose him wherever he went. So that means he isn’t after either of you.” Barry went into the kitchen, poured a mug of coffee, sugared it, and returned to the living room. “So that leaves only one other possibility as John’s target.”
“Who?” Both women asked.
Barry told them.
* * *
It was possible for the president of the United States to slip out of the White House undetected by the press. It wasn’t easy, but it was possible. Over the years, sitting presidents had used doubles, disguises, secret passageways, tunnels running under the White House, and other techniques of evading the press and the public. Usually they didn’t work. This night, the president was successful.
The president’s wife was back at their home in Ohio, where they had planned to spend a few days of their upcoming two-week vacation. Both their children were in college. Dick had canceled all White House functions. So on this night, Dick Hutton slipped out the back way, got into a nondescript Secret Service vehicle, and left the grounds undetected, even though actions such as these made the Secret Service awfully nervous.
At the same time, Speaker of the House Cliff Madison was being picked up by another unmarked government vehicle. The president and the Speaker met in the underground parking area of a government office building. Present at the meeting were selected agents of the Secret Service, U.S. Marshals, and the FBI.
Dick Hutton pointed a finger at the FBI. “Just listen, don’t talk. Not yet. I want your best people working on the death of Senator Holden. It was not a suicide. I strongly suspect it was a contract killing.” The president told the gathering who he suspected was behind the killing, and that shook the men and women right down to the soles of their shoes. Dick looked at Cliff Madison. “I believe there is an assassin already in place in Arkansas waiting to kill you, Cliff. I believe an accident has been planned for you while boating.” He looked at the gathering of federal law enforcement personnel. “Get undercover people into that area ASAP. The very best you have, no fuck-ups. This country cannot take another Waco, or Ruby Ridge, or, God help us all, another fiasco such as the one in Idaho last spring. I want no large display of force. You’ve got five days to set this up.” He looked at Cliff. “Unless you want to cancel, and I hope you do.”
“No,” the Speaker said. “No way. You know as well as I do that if we’re targets, they’ll get us, one way or the other. It goes with the job. But what do I tell my wife?”
“The truth, Cliff. And won’t that be refreshing?”
Cliff smiled.
Dick turned his attention to the federal enforcement agents. “I have alerted certain people at NSA and CIA. And I accept full responsibility for using the CIA domestically. But if some people have to be taken out, and you know what I mean, the Company does it better than anyone else. All right, get your people in there as fishermen, hikers, tourists, people looking for investment property, retirement homes. I want around-the-clock surveillance on Gene Dawson, Senators Stevens and Patrick, and especially on that venomous bitch Madalaine Bowman. Phones bugged; the whole nine yards. I’ve already spoken with a federal judge who is a close friend of mine. Everything is legal and above-board—more or less—but we’re ready to go. I don’t want young agents in on this. No cowboys or hot dogs. I want highly experienced men and women who won’t panic and jump the gun. Understood?”
Perfectly.
* * *
“That bitch reporter, Stormy Knight, is in the area,” Alex, the boss of this particularly odious bunch of shaved heads, told his equally shiny-domed gang. “Vic Radford just confirmed it. She’s gonna do a number on us.”
“Maybe we better lay low,” a gang member suggested. “We don’t need no more heat on us.”
“We ain’t done nothin’ wrong,” Alex countered. “We got a right to our opinions same as anyone else. Fuck ’er.”
“I’d like that,” another shaved head said with a dirty laugh.
“You wouldn’t when you come down with AIDS or some other fag disease,” Alex said. He frowned at all the members gathered around. “She’s like all reporters: in love with niggers and queers and Jews. Liberals think it’s fashionable to fuck niggers and kiss queers. If our race is gonna survive, we gotta be more careful than ever before. You boys and girls keep that in mind.”
Alex gave his following a slow visual once-over. They were small in number, but they would grow with time. Alex knew that, for he had met with the leaders of other chapters around the country before deciding upon this location for a cell. And in only a few months
five new members had been added. It did not take long to convince a certain type of person that Hitler was a great and wise man. You just had to know what to look for. Alex had been carefully coached in that and was not nearly as dumb as he appeared to be.
Which certainly could not be said for most of his followers.
* * *
Stormy and Ki were prowling around the country, would be gone most of the day. Barry made certain Pete and Repeat had plenty of fresh water, secured his place, and took a drive out to Will’s store on the lake. Barry was more aware than any other living person that when it came to men of John Ravenna’s caliber, there was no point in pussy-footing around: they had to be met head-on. He was also well aware that moments after he stopped at the store and asked directions to Ravenna’s place, Will would be on the phone to Sheriff Salter. Couldn’t be helped. This was something that had to be done.
Barry had a soft drink and chatted with the old man who had established the store and operated it for almost half a century.
“I bet you’ve seen some changes in this country since you first opened your store, right, Mr. Will?” Barry asked.
“Son,” the old man replied, “I could sit here for the rest of the day and tell you stories about this area of the state. And I wouldn’t even scratch the surface. Not just this little part of the country, but the whole nation. We’re headed straight down the toilet, we are. And I don’t see no way it can be stopped. Sit down, boy, sit down.” He pointed to a chair. “Make yourself comfortable. You ain’t in no hurry, are you? Good. I don’t take to many folks, but you got an honest face. Manners, too. That’s rare nowadays.” Will poured himself another cup of coffee and sat down. “I was raised right here in this country. Born in 1918, I was. On the day the big war ended. The war to end all wars, they said. Twenty-four years later my ass was in North Africa in the infantry. Two years later I waded ashore on D-Day. I was the only man in my squad to survive that bloody day. When the Krauts finally surrendered, I was the only man out of the original platoon left alive. I come back here and by God I ain’t left the state since then.”
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