“That’s affirmative,” said Cardinale. “The president—our president, not the tubby little pervert—has ordered specifically that we are not to place her in any more danger than is absolutely unavoidable. We made this woman a promise for her and her child, and we’re going to keep it. I agree with that order, and not just on moral grounds. It would be too dangerous to hit Wallace, leaving her in place and hoping she could brazen it out when the heat comes on. It will be a near enough thing when we take out these two kikes tonight, and the whole security system freaks out in a St. Vitus’s dance of paranoia. We’ll find some other way to bake the Doughboy. If nothing else, Duke and I both are pretty good shots, and a .50-caliber bullet has a hell of a range. The son of a bitch can’t hide over there in the Oval Office forever. He’ll have to show his face sooner or later, and one day when he does, he’ll have no more face left to show.”
A bit later Bob and Betsy drove across the river into the Green Zone in his car and parked in the Watergate’s underground lot. Betsy took Bob’s hand as if he was a boyfriend or a trick, and led him giggling and jiggling to a certain elevator that was just out of range of the CCTV cameras. They both slipped into a utility closet using a forged passcard that opened the door without registering on the building’s door access log in the Watergate’s security control room, an invention of Birdie’s that had revitalized the American burglary industry and on its own had already made him a millionaire through underworld sales. Although of course, being a millionaire didn’t mean all that much any more, what with the inflation. The utility closet opened into a disused workshop, something that the security designers for the complex seemed to have forgotten. Five minutes later, having followed a circuitous route of great complexity that avoided every single camera, they sat in Dr. Jake Shapira’s consulting room.
Shapira himself came in through the front entrance. At seven o’clock they were joined by Georgia Myers for her weekly session of bitching about how President of the United States or not, she wasn’t paid enough for all the leather loving and ancient Roman role-playing involved in doing her duty to her country. At least, that’s what Shapira reported back to the Secret Service that she was saying. Georgia was wearing a yellow pastel blouse, brown leather skirt and sandals tonight, all of which got ash on them as she sat chain-smoking cigarette after cigarette. Her face was still beautiful, but she was pale and haggard, and her movements were brittle and jerky. Bob was right in his assessment: the pressure was starting to tell on her. We have to get her out of there soon, or they’re going to notice, Bob thought urgently to himself. “Emergency meeting with all three of you guys tonight?” Georgia remarked, arching her eyebrows. “Something must be up, and I can guess what. The nuke thing?”
“We’ve got some good news and some bad news, Georgia,” opened the Zombie Master. “We think your Mata Hari gig over there at Sixteen Hundred may well be almost done. We do need a couple more specific things from you, and yes, they do concern the disturbing possibility of a nuclear strike on the Republic. When this last assignment is done, in our assessment, it will be too dangerous for you to stay over there any longer, and we haven’t forgotten our promise to you. Are you ready to clear out?”
“You mean it?” she asked, looking at Bob. He nodded. She exhaled smoke and seemed to slump in her chair. “Yes, I’m ready. God, am I ready to see Montana again!”
“We’ve got some trespassers there right now that we need to clear out first, but looks like that will just be a matter of time,” said Bob. “We’re winning on every front, or at least holding them.”
“Yes, it’s time, Georgia,” said Shapira. “You’ll be extracted, and you and your daughter will be taken to a safe house far away from D.C. You can ride out the war there, and once it’s safe, you and Allura can finally Go Home. With the thanks of a grateful nation, might I add.”
“Now, these last little things you want me to do?” probed Georgia, immediately spotting the hook in the bait.
Bob picked up the ball. “Georgia, our original intention was never to have you actually do anything overt,” he said gently. “Just pass information on to us. But you know now what’s at stake. If those two kikes Angela Herrin and Ronald Schiff are left with unfettered access to the president, given the way the American military is losing the war, they will eventually persuade him to launch America’s nuclear arsenal at the Northwest Republic. There now seems to be no doubt that we can beat these swine in open battle, thanks to our ability to knock out their air power and their satellite surveillance and force them to take us on man-to-man on the ground, but the terrible destruction of even a few atomic warheads going off anywhere in the Republic would overwhelm all our emergency services and preparations and would be more than we could cope with. I honestly don’t know what would happen, except that it would unleash our own version of the Apocalypse Option in retaliation, which means full-blown gas and bio attacks all over the United States. The amount of death and destruction that will follow if Hunter Wallace gives that order is beyond human calculation. The effects of the radiation alone will last for generations and will spread over half the world, not that anyone over there at Sixteen Hundred gives a damn. Large portions of the Republic could well become uninhabitable. No one questions your courage, Georgia, you’ve proven that time and again over the past couple of months…”
“You’re going to kill the president, and you want me to help,” said Georgia baldly.
“No,” said Bob, shaking his head. “We wouldn’t do anything like that with you still over there in the White House. That would be throwing you to the wolves, and we don’t do that to our own. The Secret Service and the whole régime would go berserk and start lashing out in all directions, and you would be the first one dragged under the microscope. Even if they didn’t suspect you outright, they’d probably give you the whole truth-serum-and-torture cocktail just on general principles. No, we want you to do just two things for us, Georgia, difficult tasks to be sure, but then you’re out of there. You stroll out the side portico tomorrow morning just like usual, I pick you up, we go get Allura, and we’re outta here.”
“My mom and her servants won’t just let me walk into the house on K Street and take Allura,” said Georgia, quietly excited by the prospect.
“Betsy and I will be going with you, and we have no intention of asking their permission,” said Bob.
“Do you want me to cut Halberstam’s throat if he’s there?” asked Betsy. Georgia looked at her, startled, realizing that she was dead serious.
“Come to that, I don’t care what you do to Marvin, but Bobby, please don’t hurt my mom,” she said.
“Even after what she did to you, George?” asked Betsy. “I thought you hated her guts?”
“Not enough to want her dead,” said Georgia. “Well, yeah, enough to want her dead, but what can I tell you? She’s my mother. You only get one, you know?”
“Yes, I know,” said Betsy, her face expressionless. Bob almost winced, but instead he went on.
“Okay, I won’t hurt Amber, although we may have to restrain her in order to get your child. Now, down to the nitty-gritty. We’re not going to kill the president, Georgia. We’re going to kill a couple of Jews, Angela Herrin and Ronald Schiff. You know why. They intend to murder millions of our own; they will glory in those deaths, and they will be praised through all of Zion if we allow that to happen. But we’re not. They have raised their hand against the true chosen people of divine cosmic destiny, and for that, they will die. If there really is any moral order in the universe, their souls will be burning in hell this time tomorrow. We’re going to do it tonight, before they can persuade Hunter Wallace to push that damned button and send nuclear warheads flying towards the Homeland and slaughter millions of white people like it was some kind of goddamned Purim festival. But we will need your help.”
“You need my help to take two human lives?” asked Georgia.
“No, we need your help to take two Jewish lives,” Bob told her. “You know these creat
ures, Georgia. Which is better, that two of them should die or that possibly millions of white people die if our Bluelights can’t stop all those ICBMs aimed at Seattle and Portland and Boise and Missoula?”
“Marvin Halberstam is a lech who can’t keep his hands off me, and he keeps my mom drunk and doped up so she won’t find out what he’s doing with grandma’s money,” said Georgia with a shrug, taking a drag on her cigarette. “Angela and Ronald are assholes. They look at me like I’m a whore. I am, but it isn’t up to them to remind me of the fact. If they had ever even bothered to be polite to me, I might hesitate, but those two? Fuck ’em. I’ve known dozens of Jews in the past twelve years, and not one of them was a nice person. They’re nasty and creepy insects, and they need to be stomped on. I know I should be helping you out of love of country and love of race, and because of what these people are doing to Montana right now, but thanks to my mother, I was raised as a petty and self-centered American, and so I’ll help you kill them for petty and self-centered American reasons. Congratulations, Mom. You got the red-white-and-blue daughter you always wanted. Yaaaaaay!”
“It’s better to do the right thing for the wrong reasons than to do the wrong thing for any reason,” said the Zombie Master philosophically.
“What exactly do you want me to do?” asked Georgia.
Bob quickly ran the situation down for her and showed her the two global positioning chips. “They are all silicon, plastic and graphite, with no metal parts or filaments or anything like that, so they won’t trip a metal detector as you go in,” he explained. “You see one has a little blue strip on it, and one red. That’s so we can differentiate the signals. They’re already activated. All you need to do is place them somewhere on Angela Herrin and Ronald Schiff, and then use your phone to let us know which color you placed on which target, so our guys will know who they’re following. The best way would be in something they wear or carry, in her purse, in his jacket pocket, in his hat if he wears one, something that we know will stay with them. Failing that, plant it in one of their briefcases if you can get near it, something like that. Then when they leave the White House, we will be able to follow them, run them down, and take them out.”
Georgia shook her head. “Bobby, that’s going to be real hard to do without it standing out like a sore thumb that I’m up to something, that I’m somewhere I’ve got no business being and fumbling around with people’s stuff. I’ll try. I really will. I get how important this is, but you have to understand, the White House is a very stratified place, and I’m on the very lowest level despite the fact that I see more of Hunter than his cabinet or his staff does. It’s ironic that I could probably plant one of these on the president himself with no trouble, but not an upper staff member.”
“Could you arrange to bump into Angela Herrin in the lady’s room?” suggested the Zombie Master.
“Maybe, but the problem is all the goddamned cameras in every corridor,” Georgia told them. “I’d have to more or less follow her around the halls waiting for her to step into the john, and the Secret Service monitoring the cameras from the basement would notice. I’m supposed to go right up to the residence when I get back tonight. I can maybe find some excuse to go back down to the West Wing, say I forgot my lipstick or something, but it would be pretty thin.”
“The people watching her over there aren’t just gunmen, you know,” said the doctor. “Those agents are trained in psychology as well, how to establish patterns of behavior in the subjects they observe and spot breaks in those patterns, any action that looks out of the norm.”
“I’ll tell you what might be do-able,” said Georgia. “I might be able to get it onto that big Jew legbreaker who sticks to Angela like glue, Motti. And maybe into the pocket of one of Schiff’s Secret Service detail.”
Bob sighed. “Georgia, do what you can. Remember, one way or the other, this is your last night over there. When you leave tomorrow, you leave for good. That means that as long as you don’t do anything that will bring them down on you right that very second, you won’t have to do any explaining later on. That’s all the advice I can give you.” He looked at Betsy and Shapira. “Can you give us a minute, comrades?” he asked.
“Sure,” said Betsy. Both of them stood up and left the room.
“This has been hard as hell for you, Peanut,” said Bob, taking Georgia’s hand. “I know that. But what you’ve done has been the right thing. It’s been important.”
“What happens if I can’t do it?” she asked. “Suppose I can’t plant those tracking bugs?”
“Then you can’t do it, and our guys have to more or less pull off a kamikaze charge somewhere on the street out there and hope they can get the job done. If they miss and either of those two hebes survives, they will know what it’s about. One or both of them will be dragging you and Wallace out of bed in the wee hours of this morning terrified out of their wits from a near miss, and screaming every argument and every threat they can to make him call for that damned briefcase with the nuclear codes in it and give the order to push the big red button. Just to save their own wretched lives, they will murder millions. That’s the kind of people we’re dealing with.”
“Believe me, Bobby, after three months in that place I know what kind of people we’re dealing with,” said Georgia. “I grew up in this town, more or less, and I’ve always known that the people who rule the United States were corrupt and narcissistic and completely amoral. I mean, hey, how can you live anywhere in America and not know that, if you’re paying any kind of attention? But I’ve never seen it close up like this before, Bobby. There’s a kind of—Jesus, I don’t know how to describe it—there’s a kind of poison in the air over there at the White House. It’s what it must be like when you’re at the bottom of the sea in a sunken submarine or a diving bell, and the air starts to run out and go bad. It’s like everybody in that place is quietly suffocating in an overpowering smell of shit, years of it, generations of it, stacked up layer after layer, decade after decade, generation after generation. I don’t know if I believe in ghosts and hauntings or that kind of thing, but I’ve seen on these ghost hunter shows about how negative energy can build up in places like the White House, all the pain and greed and anger and hatred kind of sinking into the walls and getting absorbed by the floorboards and the carpets, until the very wood and stone become evil. That’s the feeling I get over there. Sorry, I know you’re probably wondering if I’ve lost it…”
“No, I don’t think that,” said Bob, still holding her hand. “I understand exactly what you’re saying. I’m just sorry as hell I had to come back into your life like this and send you into that place, Peanut. But tomorrow it will be over, or at least your part in it will be done, if you can just be strong and smart and get this done for us tonight.”
* * *
While the meeting in Shapira’s office was going on, Major Vince Cardinale quietly infiltrated two armed teams of WPB assassins into the District of Columbia, bringing them in separately over all five bridges.
The dispositions were similar to what had been done on the night of the Close Encounter outside the South African embassy. The first hit team consisted of Duke (Captain Frederick Fitzpatrick), Tricia (Lieutenant Alice Waters), and Little John (Lieutenant John Cramer). The second team included June Bug (Captain Alvin Rossbach), Frankie G. (Captain Frank Girardello), Rudy the Clown (Lieutenant Rudolph Heinlein) and Lieutenant Reg Williamson, who had at one time as part of his criminal cover been nicknamed Fur-face Reggie, but objected to the point where Cardinale thought best to drop it. Cardinale himself, Betsy (Elizabeth Parris) and Chicago Richie (Lieutenant Robert Campbell Jr., NCG) provided a third team for emergency backup and scouting.
It was still light out, and they all met in the guise of an after-work picnic party gathered around a green wooden table at the National Mall, in the shadow of the Washington Monument. Richie and Betsy arrived to find the picnic table spread with politically correct quiche, potato salad, and cheese tofu sandwiches on heavy-graine
d bread that tasted like cardboard. “You should have let me at least bring some fried chicken, boss,” said Duke reproachfully. “Vegetarian picnics really suck.”
“Fried chicken is also illegal, and we don’t want some asshole cop strolling by who’s bored and decides he has nothing better to do than enforce the law,” said Cardinale. His phone beeped and he checked a quick text message in code on his screen. “Okay, that was Birdie. He says he’s reprogrammed those two cameras to our right and left to alter their panning arcs just enough so we won’t show on the monitor. Hopefully none of those niggers at DHS will notice the change, and if they do, they’ll most likely just send a crew out to check the cameras first. Anyway, we shouldn’t be here that long. Now listen up.” They all bent around the picnic table and fumbled with bits and pieces of quiche and soft drinks to make it look to any observers as if they were eating. “Duke, Tricia, and Johnny are Red Team,” said Cardinale. “You will intercept and take out the Herrin bitch. She should be leaving in a black Mercedes SuperSec limo, government special issue for big cheeses. Those rides have full armor plating and bulletproof glass, zero to a hundred and twenty in ten seconds flat, anti-caltrop radial tires and mine-proofed under-chassis, the works, so try not to chase it, because you’ll be in for a long hard chase and that Israeli might be good enough at his job to lose you. If Angie baby runs true to form, she will have only Kravitsky as her chauffeur and bodyguard, but do not assume that means an easy target. The Mossad were and are some of the most vicious trained killers in the world. We have to assume this big yid can shoot and hit what he aims at, and that he knows his kung fu, so don’t cut him any slack, Duke. Take him out quick and at a distance if you get the chance.”
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