"Too risky—they'd talk, for sure. Why do we need a real disturbance? Can we swear there was one? Do we have any reporters we could trust, who'd write up what we tell them?"
Josten thought of the opening days in Poland again, when SS troops had put political prisoners in Polish uniforms, killed them, then claimed they had attacked a radio station. "What if we paid them to fight, and they were all killed in the crossfire between the Klan and the Guard?"
Ruddick whistled. "Now that has possibilities. Let's work on that; it would take some careful planning."
Baker interrupted. "Unless you killed more whites than niggers, it would backfire."
Price held up his hand. "It's getting too elaborate. I think our German friend's first idea was best. Muster as many Klansmen as we can, march them through niggertown, and make them fight."
Ginny spoke for the first time. "They have to have somebody to fight with; you can't have them beating up women and children and not have a backlash."
Josten spoke. "We have some time. Let me propose a two-step plan." They looked at him expectantly, and he went on. "The first thing is to create tension, to cause incidents where whites and blacks have a confrontation. Anything will do—traffic accidents, shoplifting charges, shovings on the sidewalk. We can get Klan members to handle this sort of thing. But have the Negroes win most of the time, let them get a sense of power."
Coleman was anxious to regain approval. "We could make sure there was plenty-of free liquor available; start paying off the nigger drinking holes to make sure that the darky drinkers got enough to cause some trouble."
Josten also wanted to patch up their differences. "Good idea, General!" General with a soft G this time. "And not just the older people, the regular drinkers, let's get liquor and beer to the teenagers. They will be more likely to fight."
"And to rape," Ginny added. Coleman glared at her, wondering if she was conveying hope or fear.
The others were nodding, approving. Josten turned to Ruddick. "We talked in Washington about having some of the Klan members pretend to be nigras and stage a mock battle. I've got some people in the Storm Klan who would be capable of doing it."
Price was shaking his head. "Be very careful with that, Colonel Josten, it would require real security. Specially if any of them got killed and were taken to the coroner's office."
Ruddick chimed in, "Well, the coroner could be persuaded to help. He's a sound thinker. Let's work on it."
Glowing, his twisted face eager with anticipation, Josten said, "We're going to have to force ourselves to wait, and not be premature. We don't want this to happen in a vacuum—we have to get the maximum national attention from it."
Price rose. It was a no-lose situation. If he handled this perfectly, the governor might become the South's presidential candidate. And if things went wrong, the governor would still be reelected. "I agree. But let me—and the governor—decide where and when we have the confrontation." Then, turning and nodding collegially to Ruddick and Josten, "With your consultation, of course. Keep me posted. You have my private number. Why don't you and Colonel Josten and the general come up with a plan of operations? Make it a real wargame. Then, if the niggers organize, we'll be ready."
Josten, nodding, spoke. "Mr. Price, if I may. I think the school district has been preparing a desegregation plan. It might be wise to make it as liberal as possible, just as if we meant to comply with the Brown ruling. It could provide some good publicity, and raise some Negro hopes. That might make them react to our activities."
Price's eyes lit up. This man was a Machiavellian truth. Ruddick smiled, and Josten and Coleman shook hands, acknowledging their uneasy alliance.
*
Chicago, Illinois/April 1, 1957
Weissman passed through the outer rooms of the tailor shop, the racks and tables laden mostly with dusty clothes that would never be retrieved. In the beginning when customers dropped in, they had reluctantly taken their orders and then farmed them out to legitimate shops in the neighborhood. Now funding money was so short that they were actually trying to make some money from tailoring and pressing. It was absurd. No one would believe how impoverished they were, how much work was being done for almost nothing.
He went into the back room where he'd worked for three years with a half a dozen colleagues. Three were active agents, as he had once been, and they were seldom there. "Active" was their euphemism for being an assassin. Two were mere file clerks like himself, endlessly collating and cross-referencing information, using thousands of three-by-five cards. One was the Chief.
Sitting at his rolltop desk, Weissman stuffed a portfolio with the latest reports on Klan activities. The Klan was clearly fostering a more strident anti-Semitic tone in the South, linking Jewish liberals, Communism, and the growing civil rights movement. Weissman had been monitoring it for more than three years now, and it was evident that Helmut Josten's influence was beginning to extend beyond the Arkansas Klan.
It was enough for Weissman, and he began to tidy his desk. He'd hated his position, supinely collecting information, filing it like some Uriah Heep. And he was tired of being Weissman the Marksman to these oddballs, these cripples, still laughing about his failure in Washington.
That would never happen again; for the entire time he'd been in Chicago, he had practiced marksmanship at the indoor range in a local gunshop. It had been expensive, consuming one-third of his meager salary, but it was worth it. He was now expert in many types of pistols and rifles. If they'd had machine guns, he would have found the means to pay to practice with them as well.
The Chief had the only private office, a twelve-by-ten box with a single window looking out on the airshaft.
"Jacob, I have to have another assignment. I'm tired of this, and I want to become active again." Goldberg crossed his long legs and folded his arms about himself, looking like a daddy longlegs curling up for a nap, somehow managing to do it without a wrinkle. He was the neatest man Weissman had ever known—his desk was clean, waxed, there was nothing in his In and Out boxes. Maybe he didn't do anything to get wrinkled.
Goldberg pursed his long thin lips. "I've been expecting this; I've seen how you attend to your Arkansas file. Perhaps it's just as well; our funds are being reduced, and I'm going to have to cut down on the work here. When will you leave?"
"Today. I'm going to drive down, perhaps pick up some information in Texas."
"Erich, be careful. I know the lads have teased you about the affair in Washington. Don't be rash in trying to make up for it."
"Thank you."
"When you succeed—not if, when—you'll be doing our two countries a service. Good luck, and good shooting, Erich."
Weissman nodded and walked away wondering if Goldberg was being sarcastic.
*
Little Rock, Arkansas/April 20, 1957
The two Storm Klanners sat in their 1953 Chevrolet Bel Air sedan. The driver was slender, his long nose and chin conspiring to give him the look of a cartoon rodent, evil and none too bright. He had a nervous twitch that moved his head and nose slightly every few seconds, adding to his malicious Mickey Vlouse appearance. The passenger was even smaller and his face could have been taken from any of a thousand lithographs of young Confederate soldiers going off to battle—round and slack-jawed, suffused with placid incomprehension. Ruddick had selected them carefully—they were small enough to be unthreatening, dumb enough to do what he told them to do, just smart enough to save their own hides.
"I shore hate to bang this car up; I just got it paid for, and I polished it last week."
"The cunnel say he'd take care of it, reckon he will. Look at this 'un coming."
They were peering down South Central, at a tumble-down shack, roof swaybacked and porch parting company with the foundation, where Negroes came to buy beer or straight shots of cheap bourbon. A 1936 International pickup truck was pulling away, three men in the seat, four others in the back, talking and laughing.
"Remember now, shoot out in front of them, let them hit
us, then get out and run."
"I don't like this. What if they run after us?"
"They won't. They do, the cunnel said he's got men standing by around the corner. Here we go."
As the pickup truck turned into Elm, the Chevrolet accelerated in front of it; the truck struck it in the right rear fender. Both vehicles stopped. The doors of the Chevrolet popped open and the two men ran.
The Negroes piled out of the truck. "What happened? Is this ole truck still running? Then let's get out of here!"
The next day the Arkansas Journal ran a short story about a hit-and-run accident in which a truck driven by allegedly intoxicated Negroes had rammed a Chevrolet. The two white men in the car had been able to escape; the truck had not been found. There were no known injuries. It was the second incident of the type in a week.
*
Salinas, California/May 3, 1957
"It's for you, Bandy. Bear's calling from Frederick."
Bandfield, clad in shorts and a T-shirt, picked up the phone. "Your nickel, Riley. What's up?"
"Did you hear the news? Old McCarthy's dead."
"Hallelujah! Something painful, I hope. The bastard deserved it. He caused enough problems."
Riley's voice grew serious. "That's not why I'm calling, though."
"I figured not. You need some help?"
"I will. We're going on that little trip I mentioned to you before, and I wonder if you'd give Lyra a call once in a while, maybe have her up for a bit."
Two weeks before, Riley had told Bandfield that the 103rd was leaving in July on a ninety-day temporary tour of duty in England. It would be one of the last of the rotations, as they were called, in which whole SAC bomb wings deployed for three months to overseas bases. SAC was gearing up for a new concept—a one-third ground alert status, with just a few airplanes overseas.
"Sure, Bear, Patty'll be delighted, and the kids will be, too. Maybe the two of them can get Saundra to come up." He meant it; Patty loved having Lyra there, especially with the children.
"Doubt it; we can't even get her on the phone anymore, doesn't return our calls. Always off, either working or doing her missionary work."
"I guess it's a calling. Say, Riley, how old's your boy now?"
"Thirteen."
"Hell, we'll give him a few flying lessons while he's here, get him ready for his license at sixteen, just like we did for George."
"Great, he'll love it. But I'm calling early so Patty can make the invitation seem spontaneous; I don't want Lyra to know I was worried about her. She's still nervous about Helmut coming back, you know how that is."
"Gotcha, no problem."
"Selling any airplanes?"
"Nah, but we've got a demo tomorrow. I hope we'll do better later in the year, after there've been a few fires."
Riley sounded enthusiastic. "Sure, when they see how bad they need them, they'll pull out their checkbooks."
"We got our fingers crossed. We'll take good care of Lyra. Have a good trip; you got our number if you need anything."
"Good luck, and thanks."
*
Merced, California/May 4, 1957
It was a perfect day in the San Joaquin Valley; the dusting of early morning fog had burned off and the hawks were soaring effortlessly, their wingtips moving as daintily as a surgeon's fingers as they extracted every ounce of lift for the air. Marshall, streaked with yellow powder from head to foot, stood beside an open fifty-five-gallon drum carefully pouring a stream of yellow aluminized powder into it while he stirred.
Bandfield stood by, dubious. "I knew you were a gentleman of color, John, but this is ridiculous. You look like you've just painted the road to Oz."
"I tell you, Bandy, the problem with these demonstrations is that the customer doesn't realize how much effect six-hundred gallons of water can have. You drop it, it disappears in two minutes, and there is no visual impact. This'll let everybody know."
Bandfield nodded. "You picked a tough case to convince. Old Ransome Fleming's been running his crop duster operation for years, and he pretty much knows it all about everything."
"Let's call it agricultural aviation—the guys are trying to get away from the crop duster image. That's one of the reasons Ransome's thinking about going into fire fighting." He was grunting as he stirred. "Yeah, Fleming's got to see it to believe it. That's why I'm mixing this sea marker dye."
"Where'd you get it?"
"This stuffs war surplus, but you can buy it at any industrial chemical distributor—it's mostly aluminum powder and dye, with some kind of binder. If it were a real fire, I'd use borate instead, you get some residual retardation. But this is just a demonstration, and I want to make a big splash." He put the paddle down, ladled another bucket of the powder into the barrel, and resumed paddling. "Something we did in Korea, Riley and me, gave me that idea." He told Bandfield about the broad-jumping contest and dumping the adjutant in the Nile.
Bandfield laughed. "Pretty good. I could have used something like that a couple of times in SAC. How're you going to work it?"
"You'll see. It'll be a standard drop, out at Fleming's farm. He's got a big sandy field lying fallow, uses it to train his new pilots how to dust. I told him we'd be over to make a drop about eleven."
"We'd better get cracking."
Marshall had already filled the belly tank with three hundred gallons of water. He pumped the contents of two fifty-five-gallon drums of his sea-dye concentrate into the plane, then topped it off with water.
"Any way to be sure it's mixed?"
"No, I'd like to have an agitator in there, to keep it in suspension, but I figured I'd just do some shallow maneuvers on the way over. Hope you don't get airsick easy."
Fleming's field was twelve miles northeast of the airport, one of the hundreds of farms dotting the fertile valley, which raised everything from almonds to turkeys. He had his own airstrip, with a dozen Waco planes converted to spraying parked neatly along the side.
"Fleming Aviation, this is TBM Zero Zero Three Six, over."
Standing outside his little radio shack, microphone in hand, Fleming's voice came in clearly. "Yeah, Bones, hear you five by five, and see you, too. That big orange bird looks like a fucking parrot's pecker."
A bank teller before he went into crop dusting, Fleming tried to be as flamboyant as his five-foot-five height and 185-pound weight would permit.
Marshall, nervous about the way Fleming talked on the air, came back, "Roger, are we cleared to drop?"
"Yeah, you see the double line of yellow flags? Like I briefed you, that's the approach. Then you'll see a single line of green flags, that's the run in. The double set of white lines making the big X is the target. See how close you can get."
"Ah, Roger, we'll make one pass to look it over, then make a live run."
Bones brought the TBM around in a rectangular pattern, still using the two rivets as a sight. "Bingo, that's where I'll drop."
The next pass he slowed down to 150 knots, flying at 150 feet. When the X was between the two rivet heads he pickled off the water.
A burgeoning cloud of yellow mist clung momentarily to the TBM's belly like a huge chrome-yellow tumor; it elongated as it fell, yellow streamers falling away until it hit, mixing with the sand into a massive mustard-colored explosion that blotted out the double X and a dozen acres of Fleming's field.
"Holy shit, what did you drop, Bones, a fucking lemon atom bomb? You just painted my whole fucking field yellow."
"We're on the air, Ransome, better watch your language."
"Don't tell me about my fucking language, just get that goddamn airplane on the ground so I can buy it."
Marshall switched to intercom. "Well, Bandy, we convinced him; that's one down and five to go."
“Great job, John. As long as we can get the yellow marker, we can sell these dudes."
"Yeah, now I got to find something that washes it off; last time I used Lava and Spic 'n' Span for four days before I got it off my hands and face."
*
Pine Bluff, Arkansas/July 15, 1957
Baker was glad to be back; he'd missed Elsie and the dogs, and he'd missed Josten, too. He'd never worked for a boss he'd like or feared as much. He'd been touched by how attentive Josten had been to Elsie, seeing that she got flowers sent to her, had a tree planted in their yard, lots of little things. If he didn't know how crazy the colonel was about his ex-wife, he would have worried that he was courting Elsie.
"Well, Helmut, they live in government housing about a half a mile from the main gate at Frederick. It ain't bad; they've laid the streets out in curves, the houses are all one-story, California-style, you know, stucco and sticks."
"No, I don't know. Did you get some photos?"
"Yeah, lots of them, front and back, all around. They're being developed. Riley has one of the bigger houses, looks like it's three bedrooms, maybe four. Probably less than fifteen hundred square feet, but nice enough."
"What about security? Is the compound guarded?"
"It ain't no compound, I mean it ain't got no fence or gate. It's just like an ordinary little dumb-ass subdivision. An Air Police car makes a pass-through every couple of hours during the day, and about every four hours at night."
"Did anyone see you?"
"Nah, boss, I'm a pro. I rented two cars, drove them at different times. But they wouldn't have noticed anyway; the airplanes fly all the time, and there's crew members coming in at all hours. It's real quiet, but nobody paid any attention to a car driving through. I talked to the guys at the filling station, though, and they said it was quiet because the wing just went overseas."
"Where? How long?"
"They're in England, but they drop down to Spain and North Africa, a few planes at a time. Sounds like a good deal. Your man, Riley, he's gone, won't be back till the first of October."
Josten's eyes glittered as he digested this. Perhaps he was impotent because he loved only Lyra; perhaps she could restore him. If anyone could do it, it would be her. He thought of the wild night that had begun on the floor of her apartment entrance; he'd just come back from the front. It was then that Ulrich, his son, his flesh, had been conceived.
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