As I officiously led the delegation toward the door, I ordered Carol back to work in my best Simon Legree manner. "Yes, Mr. Bloom," she said meekly.
Out on the sidewalk I overcame my revulsion while I chummily put an arm around the shoulders of the Black spokesman and directed his attention to a store directly across the street. "Ve don't have so many customers here," I explained. "But my good friend Solly Feinstein has many people going in and out. And he has a big vindow. He vill be happy for your poster to be there. You can put it right under where it says 'Sol's Pawn Shop,' and everybody vill see it. And be sure to leave him a donation box- two donation boxes; he has a big store."
They all seemed pleased by my friendly suggestion and started across the street. But the White, a sorry-looking specimen with pimples and an imitation Afro, hesitated, turned, and said to me: "Maybe we ought to get that girl's name. Some of the things she said to us sounded definitely racist."
"Don't vaste your time on her," I responded brusquely, dismissing his suspicion with a wave. "She is just a dumb shiksa, She talks that way to everybody. I get rid of her soon."
When I re-entered the shop Bill, who had overheard the episode from the basement stairs, and Carol were convulsed with: laughter. "It's not really that funny," I admonished them with an effort at sternness. "I had to do something right away, and if my pucker and my phony accent hadn't fooled that crew of sub-humans we'd be in real trouble now."
Then I lectured Carol: "We can't afford the luxury of telling these creatures what we think of them. We have a job to do first, and then we will settle with that bunch once and for all. So, let's swallow our pride and play along as long as we have to. Those who don't have our responsibilities can get themselves investigated for racism if they want-and more power to them. "
But I could not repress a grin when I saw the poster go into place in the pawn shop window across the street, blotting out most of Sol's display of used cameras and binoculars. He must really have had to bite his tongue! And now all the people who see that particular poster will make the correct mental association between the Council's thought-control program and the people behind it.
The last thing to go wrong was Katherine coming down with the flu last night. She was scheduled to take a load of money to Dallas this morning, but she was too sick to go, and it looks like she'll be in bed for another two or three days. Which means that I'll be stuck not only with a trip to Atlanta tomorrow, but I'll also have to make the Dallas delivery. That'll be a whole day wasted on planes and at airports, and I need the time badly for getting ready for the Evanston operation.
We want to hit the new nuclear power complex at Evanston during the next six weeks, while they're still guiding tourists through it. After the first of June, when it will be closed to the public permanently, knocking it out will become much more difficult.
The Evanston Power Project is an enormous thing: four huge nuclear reactors surrounded by the biggest turbines and generators in the world. And the whole thing sits on concrete pilings a mile out in Lake Michigan, which supplies the cooling water for the reactors' heat exchangers. The Project generates 18,000 megawatts of electrical power-almost 20 billion watts! Incredible!
The power is fed into the power grid which supplies the entire Great Lakes region. Before the Evanston Project went into operation two months ago, the whole Midwest was suffering from a severe power shortage-much worse than we have here, which is bad enough. In some areas factories were restricted to operating only two days a week, and there were so many unexpected blackouts in addition that the region was on the verge of a real economic crisis.
If we can take out the new power plant, things will be even worse than they were before. In order to keep the lights on in Chicago and Milwaukee, the authorities will have to steal power from as far away as Detroit and Minneapolis, where there is none to spare. All of that part of the country will be hit hard. And it took 10 years to design and build the Evanston Project, so they won't be able to remedy the situation very soon.
But the government has thought about the consequences of losing the Evanston Project too, and the security there is pretty formidable. One can't get near the place except by boat or airplane. And there are searchlights, patrol boats, and strings of buoys with nets of cable between them all around it, which makes the approach by water almost out of the question.
The shore for miles in either direction is fenced off, and there are a number of military radar and anti-aircraft installations behind the fence, making any attempt to crash an airplane loaded with explosives into the plant very unlikely to succeed.
It seems to me that about the only way we could mount an attack on the place by conventional means would be to sneak some heavy mortars within range, somewhere near the shore where there is a possibility for concealment. But, to my knowledge, we don't have that kind of weaponry available at the moment. Anyway, the really vital parts of the power station are in such massive buildings that I doubt a mortar attack could inflict more than superficial damage.
So, Revolutionary Command asked me to tour the place and come up with some unconventional ideas-which I have done, but there are still several tough problems to be solved.
My visit there last Monday gave me a pretty good idea of the strengths and weaknesses of the security arrangements. Some of the weaknesses are really quite astounding. Most astounding of all is the government's decision to let tourists into the place, even temporarily. The reason for that decision, I am sure, is the big fuss the anti-nuclear crazies have been making about the plant. The government feels obligated to show the public all the safety features which have been built into it.
When I signed up for the tour, I deliberately loaded myself down with all sorts of paraphernalia, just to see what I could get into the plant. I carried an attach_ case, a camera, and an umbrella, and I filled my pockets with coins, keys, and mechanical pencils.
On the ferry boat which takes tourists out to the plant there is very little security. They merely made me open my attach_ case for a cursory inspection. But when I got into the guard station at the plant itself, they divested me of my case, camera, and umbrella. Then I had to walk through a metal detector, which picked up all the metal junk in my pockets. I emptied my pockets for the guards, but then they handed the stuff back to me. They didn't look closely at any of it. So, one can at least sneak an incendiary pencil in.
What really interested me, though, was that one old gentleman in my group was carrying a cane with a metal head, and the guards let him keep it during the tour.
In essence, my idea is this: Since there's no way a single tourist can sneak in enough explosive material to wreck the place-nor any way he can position the small amount he could sneak in so it would be really effective, like punching a hole in one of the reactor pressure vessels, we may as well forget about explosives. Instead, we'll try to contaminate the plant with radioactive material, so that it can't be used.
What makes this idea feasible is that we have a source, inside the Organization, for certain radioactive materials. He's a chemistry professor at a university in Florida, and he uses the materials in his research.
We can easily pack enough of a really hot and nasty radionuclide- something with a half-life of a year or so-into a cane or a crutch, together with a small explosive charge for dispersing it, to make the entire Evanston Power Project uninhabitable. The plant won't be damaged physically, but they'll have to shut it down. Decontamination will be such an enormous task that the plant may very well stay closed permanently.
Unfortunately, this will be a suicide mission. Whoever carries the radioactive material into the plant will already have been exposed to a lethal dose of radiation before he gets to the plant gate with it. There's just no practical way to provide for any shielding.
The biggest worry is the radiation detectors which are all over the plant. If one of those gets a whiff of our man before he's ready to do his thing, it could get sticky.
I noticed, however, no detectors in the
entrance station of the plant, where the guards check the incoming tourists. There are several in the huge turbine-and-generator room, where the tourists are taken, and there is one beside the exit gate used by the tourists-presumably to guard against the unlikely event of a visitor somehow pocketing a piece of nuclear fuel and trying to sneak it out. But it seems not to have occurred to them that someone might try to sneak radioactive material into the plant.
I remember pretty well where all the detectors are, and I'll have to consult with our man in Florida on the likelihood of one of them picking up something at a given distance from the material he will supply us. If an alarm goes off after our carrier is in the plant but before he gets to the generator room, he'll just have to make a run for it. But we'll try to design our gadget so as to give him the best possible chance.
The whole plan is pretty scary, but it has one big advantage: the psychological impact on the public. People are almost superstitious in their fear of nuclear radiation. The anti-nuclear lobby will have a field day with it. It will catch people's imagination to a far greater extent than any ordinary bombing or mortar attack. It will horrify many people-and it will knock more of them off the fence.
I must confess that I'm glad at this point that my probationary period still has 11 months to run and that I won't be asked to volunteer for this particular mission.
Chapter XVII
April 20, 1993. A beautiful day, a day of rest and peace, after a hectic week. Katherine and I drove to the mountains early this morning and spent the day walking in the woods. It was cool and bright and clear. After a picnic lunch we made love in a little meadow under the open sky.
We talked of many things, and we were both happy and carefree. The only shadow which fell on our happiness was Katherine's complaint about the number of out-of-town trips the Organization has sent me on recently, even though I have been out of prison for less than a month. I didn't have the courage to tell her that in the future we will have even less time together.
I only found that out myself yesterday. When I reported to Major Williams last night after returning from Florida, he told me that I'll be traveling a lot in the next few months. I didn't get all the details from him, but he hinted that the Organization is preparing for an all-out, nationwide offensive this summer, and I am to be a sort of roving military engineer.
But today I put that out of my mind and just enjoyed being alive and free and alone with a lovely girl in the midst of Nature's beauty.
As we were driving home this evening, we heard the news on the radio which capped a perfect day: the Organization hit the; Israeli embassy in Washington this afternoon. No better date in the year could have been chosen for such an actions
For months an Israeli murder squad, working out of their embassy, has been picking off our people around the country. Today we settled the score-for the moment.
We struck with heavy mortars while the Israelis were throwing a cocktail party for their obedient servants in the U.S. Senate. A number of Israeli officials had flown in for the occasion, and there must have been more than 300 people in the embassy when our 4.2inch mortars began raining TNT and phosphorus onto their heads through the roof.
The attack only lasted two or three minutes, according to the news report, but more than 40 projectiles struck the embassy, leaving nothing but a burned-out heap of wreckage-and only a handful of survivors! So, we must have had at least two mortars firing. That confirms what I was told last week about our new weapons acquisitions.
One fascinating incident in the news story, which the censors somehow failed to cut before it was broadcast, was the murder of a group of tourists by an embassy guard. During the attack an Israeli came running out of the crumbling building with a submachine gun, his clothing in flames. He spotted a group of a dozen tourists, all women and small children, gawking at the scene of destruction from across the street. Shrieking out his hatred in guttural Hebrew, the Jew opened fire on them, killing nine on the spot and critically wounding three others. Of course, he was not charged by the police. Your day is coming, Jews, your day is coming!
I should be getting to bed early tonight in order to be ready for a long day tomorrow, but the excitement of our achievement this afternoon makes it impossible for me to sleep yet. The Organization has demonstrated once again what an incomparable weapon the mortar is for guerrilla warfare. I am much more enthusiastic now about our new plan for Evanston, and I'll be better braced for overcoming any more balkiness on the part of our professor in Florida.
Last Saturday, when I was discussing my plan for getting radioactive material into the Evanston plant with Henry and Ed Sanders, they convinced me that a mortar could do the job better, and that we are now well supplied in that department. So I redesigned the delivery package, changing it from a walking cane to a 4.2-inch mortar projectile.
We will replace the phosphorus in three WP rounds with our radioactive contaminant. After we have zeroed in the target with conventional rounds, we'll fire our three modified projectiles, which will be adjusted to exactly the same weight, of course.
This way of doing it has three advantages over my original plan. First, it is surer; there is much less chance of something going wrong. Second, we will be delivering approximately 10 times as much contaminant, and the bursting charges in the projectiles will disperse it better than anything we could hope for with a loaded walking cane. And third, it need not be a suicide mission. We can keep the "hot" projectiles shielded until the moment they are to be fired, so the mortar crew will not be exposed to a lethal dose of radiation.
My big worry was whether we would be able to get our projectiles inside the power station, instead of just on the roof The building is so heavily constructed that I doubt that they would penetrate, even with delayed-action fuses. Ed Sanders convinced me, though, that once a 4.2-incher is zeroed in and firmly seated it will deliver rounds with sufficient accuracy and a low enough trajectory so that we will have an excellent hit probability on the side of the generator building facing the shore, which is practically one, huge window, 10 stories high and more than 200 yards wide.
Armed with this new plan, I went to talk to Harrison, our Florida chemist. I explained to him that his part of the job is to procure a suitable radioactive material and then, using his special facilities, safely load it into the mortar projectiles I will bring him.
Harrison had a fit. He complained that he had only offered to supply the Organization with small quantities of radionuclides and other hard-to-obtain materials. He did not want to become involved in actually handling any ordnance, and he especially objected to the quantity of material required by our plan. Not many people in the country have access to so much radioactive material, and he is afraid it will be traced to him.
I tried reasoning with him. I explained that if we try to load the projectiles ourselves, without the shielded handling facilities he has, one or more of our people will surely be exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. And I told him that he is free to choose a radionuclide, or a mixture of radionuclides, which will cast the least suspicion on him-so long as it is suitable for our purpose.
But he flatly refused. "It's out of the question," he said. "It would jeopardize my entire career."
"Dr. Harrison," I replied, "I am afraid you do not understand the situation. We are at war. The future of our race depends upon the outcome of this war. As a member of the Organization you are obliged to put your responsibility to our common effort ahead of all personal considerations. You are subject to the Organization's discipline."
Harrison turned white and began stammering, but I continued relentlessly: "If you continue to refuse my request, I am prepared to kill you on the spot." As a matter of fact, I was unarmed, because I had flown down on a commercial airliner, but Harrison didn't know that. He swallowed a couple of times, found his voice, and said he will do what he can.
We went over our figures and our requirements again and settled on an approximate timetable. Before I left I assured Harrison that
if he feels this operation will place him in too much jeopardy to continue as a "legal" we can bring him underground after it is completed.
He is obviously still very nervous and unhappy, but I don't think he will try to betray us. The Organization has established a very high degree of credibility for its threats. Just to be on the safe side, however, we will use another courier when the time comes to drive the modified projectiles down to Florida to be loaded and brought back. No technical knowledge is required for that.
I don't like to act like a "tough guy" and threaten people; that is an unnatural role for me. But I have very little sympathy for people like Harrison, and I am sure that if he had not agreed to cooperate, I would have leaped on him and strangled him with my bare hands.
I guess there are a lot of other people who think they are playing it smart by looking out for themselves and letting us take all the risks and do all the dirty work. They figure they will reap the benefits with us if we win, and they won't lose anything if we lose. That's the way it has been in most other wars and revolutions, but I don't believe it will work out that way this time. Our attitude is that those whose only concern is to enjoy life in these times of trial for our race do not deserve life. Let them die. In the conduct of this war we certainly will not concern ourselves with looking out for their welfare. More and more it will be a case of either being for us, all the way, or against us.
April 25. Off to New York tomorrow for at least a week. Several things cooking up there which require my attention. The business down in Florida should have been taken care of by the time I return, and, if so, it'll be another trip to Chicago for me, this time by car.
The Turner Diaries: A Novel Page 16