The Devil's Colony

by Bill Schweigart

  “Christ. Just go.” To the men, she bellowed, “One biscuit apiece, and use the fucking tongs, you animals, or your nuts will be on the lunch menu.”

  Once behind the pavilion and out of sight, Lindsay sprinted to the main house. She didn’t know how much time she would have. She ran around to the back of the house, where a small set of stairs led to a door off the kitchen. There were a couple of women in the kitchen, cleaning the countertops, washing the pots and pans, and already doing meal preparation for lunch. Lindsay passed by them, hand pressed to her stomach and her face knotted in mock pain, but they were absorbed in their tasks and no one paid any mind to the new girl.

  Once out into the long hall, she passed the dining room until she came to the hallway with the closed door: Drexler’s office. She cast a glance over her shoulder and saw no one. She hurried down the hall. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but now her stomach knotted for real. She reminded herself that the extraction was tonight and if she was going to make a move, it had to be now. She placed her hand on the doorknob and turned. To her surprise, it opened easily. She plunged inside and closed the door behind her. When she turned to face the room, she was reminded of the time she had fallen through the ice a few months ago in Wisconsin, how the sudden, searing cold stole her breath. Drexler’s sanctum did the same.

  Hanging on the wall by the desk was a shock of red. A Nazi banner, with the black swastika in a white disc in the center. She had seen these before, of course, in history books, in media, but never in person, never up close. The red was so vivid and startling that it made her pulse race even faster than it had been when she snuck in. A part of her had hoped to believe Drexler’s story that he was different, that he was trying to effect change. She should have known better. She pushed past her nerves and the pang of disappointment and ventured into the office.

  To her left, there was a long bookshelf, built into the wall, which ran the length of the room. The shelves were filled with dull-colored hardcover volumes of classics, their titles in faded gold script. There was a splash of color in the center of the built-ins, clearly a space of prominence. She scanned the titles: H. P. Lovecraft. Lindsay shuddered. She didn’t read horror—she joked to Ben that they had enough of it in their lives—but she knew enough about his work. Ancient gods so alien and indifferent to man as to inspire cult worship or utter madness. Creatures with unpronounceable names looming just beyond the stars or scratching below the surface. The decay of civilization, the doom of all things.

  Light reading, thought Lindsay.

  She turned around and saw the opposite wall hung with more Third Reich souvenirs—framed black-and-white photos of Nazi officers, a shadowbox filled with Nazi ribbons and medals, framed certificates and citations—but one artifact caught her eye and drew her across the room. Mounted above the paraphernalia was a sword.

  From across the room, it was stunning, but upon closer inspection, its Nazi characteristics began to reveal themselves. It was a long, fine blade, and even in the dull lighting of the office, the ivy etched along its spine gleamed. The hilt was either gold or brass—Lindsay couldn’t tell—and the grip was wrapped in wire. In the center of the hilt was the Nazi eagle, wings outstretched and carrying the swastika in its talons. Lindsay saw a glint of red and took a closer look. At first she thought it was just a rounded knob, but she noticed that the pommel was actually a lion’s head, with two red jewels for eyes. Wrapped around the hilt and the curved guard was a dull green portepee, the sword knot, with the SS insignia just above it.

  Never had Lindsay been so repulsed by something she wanted to hold so badly.

  While she was studying the red eyes of the lion on the pommel again, the framed photograph below it caught her eye and she backed up a step. It was black-and-white and enlarged, but she could see men in Nazi uniforms in a room with a large dining room table. Despite the uniforms, the men appeared festive, smiling, and there was food and drink on the long table. What caught her eye, however, was a young officer, handsome and tall, smiling broadly with even, white teeth, and flanked by two shorter men. One was Adolf Hitler and the other was Heinrich Himmler. The tall officer was bent slightly, shaking Hitler’s hand, with Himmler standing behind him, chest swelled at the sight of the introduction of the two men. She leaned in closer to the photograph and studied the tall, handsome officer. The build was different, and this was a picture of a young man, but the resemblance was unmistakable. It was Drexler’s father.

  Seeing his hand clasped by Adolf Hitler broke any reverie the sword had held on her and she remembered her purpose. How much time had she wasted transfixed by the sword’s details? The men in the photograph? She didn’t know. She felt lost for a moment and peered around the room. There was still the desk to investigate, but she felt her time was up. She told herself she would get another opportunity and took a step toward the door, but she heard footsteps on the other side of it. She prayed it was her imagination, her rising panic, until she saw the doorknob turn.

  Chapter 19

  It wasn’t until Ben was led into the dim space that he got scared. Unbidden, a scene from Goodfellas—where Tommy thinks he’s becoming a made man but instead walks into a whacking—flew into his mind.

  Before he was summoned, he had been watching Lindsay dole out biscuits from his spot in the line for breakfast. He tried to keep his face even, wondering what was the appropriate level of watchfulness in a camp filled with neo-Nazis, Klansmen, skinheads, sovereign citizens, anarchists, lost souls, and quite possibly a recent murderer. He tried not to stare. Finally, he saw her leave her station and walk quickly back to the main house. He reached the head of the line and smiled at the dour woman who ladled a heaping spoonful of scrambled eggs onto his paper plate, and another who dropped a couple of sausages.

  “Morning,” he said. “Thank you.”

  This, at least, received a look from one of the women.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Have a nice day,” said Ben.

  She looked at him like he had just beamed down from another planet. He grabbed his own biscuit.

  He nursed a paper cup filled with coffee, leaning against a post in the pavilion, waiting for Lindsay to return, when he heard a voice behind him.

  “A word.”

  It was Anson. He looked like he had just stepped out of a portrait, his pants pressed and held in place by suspenders, his shirt creased, a saber still inexplicably at his side. It wasn’t any stranger than anything he had seen, just the most contrived.

  Ben took a deep breath and let it out. “What can I do for you, brother?”

  “I’ve been sent to fetch you for a friendly chat.”

  “Lead on.”

  Ben followed Anson through camp, the saber rattling at the man’s side as he walked. Every jangle set Ben’s nerves on edge and he clenched his jaw, recalling the man’s jokes from their meal together. Everyone had some sort of “deal” here, their reason for dropping off the grid in favor of Välkommen, and Ben knew Anson’s deal was that he was an “Imperial Officer” of the Ku Klux Klan and an old-school secessionist, only too happy to shave a couple of hundred years off the calendar, but the only deal Ben wanted to figure out was Drexler’s.

  Anson led him to one of the garages. It was then that he thought of Goodfellas, followed immediately by the notion that he would have had an easier time infiltrating the Mafia—he had seen more of their movies. It seemed the more he tried to keep his face and body calm, the more his thoughts raced. The door closed behind him and his heart slammed in his chest. He took a deep breath to calm himself and the pungent tang of smoke filled his lungs. He began coughing immediately. In the confined space, the weed hit him like a wall. Most of the men inside stared at him with stony expressions. A few regarded him with amusement.

  He was grateful for the coughing fit. It bought him a few moments to get his bearings without speaking. A half-dozen men, mostly with shorn heads and differing configurations of facial hair, surrounded him. Once he registered th
em, he noticed the garage was filled with workbenches and tools on the wall. Sitting on a stool was Felix, whose blue eyes were startling even in the half-light. Hendrix leaned against a car, hoses and cables issuing from its open hood like vines, an unintended bit of symmetry to the man’s jarring tattoo.

  “So,” said Felix, taking a long, slow hit. “I hear you’ve had a morning.”

  Ben looked from man to man. He had worked hard to ingratiate himself during their meal. This morning, he allowed himself some steel.

  “Some fucking welcome.”

  Hendrix exploded into laughter, far more than the line warranted. Ben glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. Jumpy, manic. Tweaked. He had no idea what the man was on. Other than the edge, thought Ben. Society, sanity, all of it.

  “What, you didn’t like your breakfast?” said Felix.

  Hendrix laughed harder and Anson joined in. Even Ben smirked, and he and Felix stared at each other.

  Finally, Felix’s smiled faded along with his patience. “So tell me what the fuck you saw!”

  “I slept for shit last night so I got up early. You know, stretch my legs. I did a lap around the clearing. When I got to the stage, I took a leak. That’s when I saw him. I had barely registered him before Breaux was breathing down my neck.”

  “Little bitch,” spat Hendrix with a puff of smoke.

  Felix shot him a glance and Hendrix settled down.

  Another schism, thought Ben.

  “Anything else?”

  “Breaux cut him down. Didn’t want to spook the camp.”

  Felix nodded.

  Ben looked at Hendrix, then back at Drexler’s son. He decided to take a step closer to the ledge and bounce a little.

  “We don’t like Breaux?”

  “Fuck no,” hissed Hendrix. Unsurprisingly, he was easy to spin up.

  “He works for my father. And my father wants everyone to get along,” said Felix, twirling his finger to take in the whole camp. “Breaux and I have different views on what’s good for the order.”

  “Acts like a warden,” said Anson.

  Ben made a sour face. “I came here to avoid shit like that.”

  “Don’t worry about Breaux,” said Felix. “Let him help my father with whatever Kumbaya shit he has going on. Fine by me. But they ain’t really running the show.”

  “Shit’s not always how it seems,” added Anson.

  Ben looked from man to man, then nodded. “Good to know.”

  “And anything else worth knowing,” continued Felix, “you bring it here first. Understand?”

  “I copy.”

  “Cool. Hendrix, give the man a show of good faith.”

  Hendrix sprang to the nearest workbench and rifled through a little lockbox on top of it. As he did so, Ben caught a glimpse of a map with red circles drawn on it. Hendrix turned around with a large joint in his hand, smiling like a loon. Ben, distracted by the map, had not prepared for that and said no before he could think twice about it.

  Hendrix’s face went from looking like a child who just caught his first fish to murderous.

  Chapter 20

  Galahad had been on the move for days, anxious and furious with himself in equal measure.

  The op was supposed to be cake surveillance with a simple exfiltration on the third night, but instead he had spent the last three days playing cat-and-mouse with an unseen adversary. The game cameras had kept him away from Välkommen during the day, which kept his sights off Ben and Lindsay. Since his arrival, he had to keep moving and only ventured in at night, and only long enough to catch a glimpse of them and put eyes on their tent. That first night, after spotting the rosebushes, he saw men in black emerge from an outbuilding and walk up the rows of tents, flashlights sweeping. He didn’t know if they would patrol the woods, but there was no sense in waiting to find out. The first night, he had been fortunate to be near the archway, with two guards, the last place someone would think to begin a sweep. He melted back into the woods and retraced his steps quickly toward the far end of the field, by the stage. Then there was only one thing to do, leave the ribbon and begin the slow, arduous process of crossing the camera field again. He would catch a few hours of sleep and try again the next day. He would have to trust Ben and Lindsay.

  Deep into the woods, well beyond Välkommen territory, he bedded down for a few hours of uneasy sleep. His adversary wasn’t just good, he was CAG; the degree of difficulty just spiked. It may be a camp of rednecks, but security was run by a Delta, and by the look of the men in black, he had some organization under him. There would no more showing off, thought Galahad. No more fucking around, no more showboating, no more mistakes. There was zero margin of error now. This may as well have been the sandbox, with some pine trees.

  He woke early, grabbed a handful of pebbles and pine needles, and scattered them where he had slept. He squatted down beside the spot, pulled out his phone, and snapped an orienting picture. He was a mile away from camp, and his position was completely out of sight. If so much as a pebble was overturned or a pine needle cockeyed, he would know the spot would be burned.

  He repeated this process every day. He’d crawl in at sundown, excruciatingly slowly, and once past the field of game cameras, he would be free to move around within the ribbon, right up to the treeline. From there he could spy the members of Välkommen around multiple campfires dotting the compound. At times he was close enough to hear conversations. On the second night, he finally spotted them. Holding hands, taking a lap around the field, sometimes even laughing. The tension in his neck eased a little and he realized that he hadn’t been taking full, deep breaths since he arrived on scene. Ben and Lindsay looked well and they were doing what he had instructed them to do: be a couple. To prying eyes, they looked like two lovers taking a stroll to get a little privacy, but in reality, they were probably debriefing each other. The plan seemed to be working. He considered moving quickly around the ribbon to intercept them, to whisper to them as they strolled past, but it would be too risky and it might startle them.

  No, he thought, trust them. Trust the plan.

  He backed off, satisfied that they were safe for the moment, and set about crossing the camera field again. To him, the game cameras were simple to defeat with a little patience. To those chosen few who were lucky or skilled enough to spot them, it was a significant deterrent. For him, it was a nuisance. Not that one could tell from his silence and the economy of his movements, but he felt a little of his swagger return. By the time he made it back to the spot where he had been bedded down, he was ready for sleep.

  Then he saw the rose and his insides went cold.

  He didn’t even have to pull out his phone to compare his orienting picture to the scene. A freshly cut rose lay where he had slept the night before. It may as well have been a billboard, a shout through a megaphone.

  Peek-a-boo.

  In one fluid motion, he pulled his MR556 and rotated at the waist, looking around him, up into the canopy of trees, searching for his adversary, or a newly placed camera. Satisfied he was alone and unwatched, he pulled his phone and compared the picture to the scene. There wasn’t a single overturned pebble or crooked pine needle. No other trace, not even a footprint. It was as if the rose had been dropped by a passing wraith. By someone just like him.

  He was burned.

  Think, Galahad, think. Davis had chosen the spot because it was perfect: out of range, out of sight, and offering good cover with escape routes. He had groomed the surrounding area, subtly laying rocks and branches, and taken oriented pics. It was an optimal place to sleep or prone out and watch. Did the adversary know he was there, or did he guess he was there because it was the spot he himself would have chosen?

  Regardless, logic dictated that he withdraw. Fade farther into the woods, away from camp. This is what a normal person would do. But just as the adversary was clearly not your average security, the adversary was aware that Davis wasn’t average either. He could have drawn in the dirt, left a note, mounted a
nother camera, set a trap…but no, he’d left a rose. A very specific calling card, a dog whistle intended just for him. And now it was all Davis could hear.

  The rose was meant to put him off his game, to drive him toward a location or an outcome more advantageous to the adversary. To get him to expose himself. Davis couldn’t be certain quite how much he knew. It was grandmaster chess. Poker with the highest possible stakes. Davis’s mind raced ahead with the permutations. Which move to make? What hand was the man in Välkommen playing?

  He could penetrate the ribbon again, but it would be broad daylight, the camp would be fully awake and active, and there would be more patrols, possibly even by the adversary himself. Most likely, the adversary knew he was dealing with a professional and knew the rose would drive him not away from camp, but toward it, into the ribbon. An audacious, unexpected move—precisely what the adversary would expect.

  Then it struck him. What if he split the difference and spent the day proned out in the field of game cameras? That would be more audacious than perhaps even the adversary could imagine.

  He immediately left the rose and backtracked. When he reached the outer perimeter of the cameras, he began the slow crawl back in. It was daytime now, so he had to move with glacial slowness, each motion minuscule and deliberate. He willed himself to be not just invisible, but denser, like he was burrowing into the ground with every tiny forward movement. When he was well inside the plain view of the cameras, he stopped. It was counterintuitive, but in such a vulnerable position, he felt the most secure. Patrols sticking to the ribbon would not venture past the cameras for fear of tripping them. Patrols that ventured beyond the ribbon, deeper into the woods, would not bother with the demarcation zone. Or so he had hoped.

  Regardless, tonight was the night of the rendezvous. He would lead Ben and Lindsay out. His adrenaline long since faded, he began to feel drowsy. He permitted himself to sleep. If someone did manage to stumble upon him, they would literally have to stumble upon him, and it would not end well for them. His last thought before drifting off, half-buried in the dirt, half-covered by the bush, under the watchful eye of several cameras, was of his knife, the Randall Custom, the word GALAHAD laser-etched into the blade. Exhausted, he fell asleep with his hand wrapped around the hilt, gripping it like a life preserver.