Freedom's Sons

by H. A. Covington

  “Any idea which one of them it might be?” asked Bob.

  “Most likely one of the personal assistants,” said Tom. “The academics themselves all have publicly traceable antecedents, and none of them seems to have been involved in anything political, apart from the usual burning of occasional pinches of incense on the altar of the gods of liberalism and diversity. There’s some of that with all of them, but you can’t get anywhere in the academic world Out There without a little toadying to the Jews. It’s a survival skill.”

  “But by the same token, has any of them demonstrated any sign of independent thought or genuine intellectual curiosity, never mind integrity?” asked Campbell.

  “There’s the odd hint,” replied Tom, leafing through the old-fashioned paper file folder. The Republic’s security and police services were still leery of computers even thirty years on, and did things the old-fashioned way with paper and pen wherever possible. “Several of them have publicly disputed the theories and work of Jewish colleagues, although never over anything politically or racially sensitive. Professors and scientists who do so tend to end up in prison, or here in the Republic with us, like Dr. Wingard.”

  “Okay, let’s go over our distinguished visitors individually,” said Campbell. “There are five top scientists and academics, each with a personal assistant who ostensibly is either a graduate student or a junior colleague, right?”

  “Correct,” said Tom.

  “They’re all white, of course?”

  “Yes, else they wouldn’t have been invited to come to the Republic in the first place,” said Horakova.

  “But do we know for sure?” persisted Campbell.

  “Yes, sir. One good thing Hunter Wallace’s Surveillance State did accomplish, from our point of view, was the establishment of the FBI’s nationwide DNA database. Although not all European countries have them yet, East Canada does, and both EC and the US take DNA samples from everyone entering the country at Customs. This information then goes to the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the RCMP, and sundry other databases, which the Circus can then hack. All of the members of the delegation check out as white, unless of course they’re deliberately slipping a Jew or a wog of some kind on us through falsifying someone’s DNA records. Spying is an incredibly devious game. You never know whether what you’re looking at is real, or only what the other guy wants you to see.”

  “I remember,” said Bob grimly.

  “Yes, I know. One of the assistants, a woman named Bella Sutcliffe, seems to have had a Levantine great-grandfather.”

  “We’re not running a marriage check for a prospective bride or groom,” said Campbell. “But a Jewish great-grandfather is a little too close in time for my taste, and besides, you know the Constitutional bar to entry into the Republic.”

  “Race and Resettlement has issued waivers for visitors and even immigrants if the contaminated blood is that remote, for all the hollering by the purists in Parliament. And anyway, I didn’t say Jew, I said Levantine,” Tom reminded him. “These genetic tags don’t actually have little Stars of David on them, you know. There are several other Armenoid peoples who leave the same chromosomal patterns and markers as Ashkenazi Jews. Remember, the Khazars were racially Armenioid, hence the typical camel-face associated with the species. Armenoids have always been heavy on that Neanderthal mix Ally was talking about. Some Armenians have as much as twenty-five percent Neanderthal DNA, just like some Jews, except the Armenian may come from a thousand years of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, hate Jews worse than sin, and he may have had a Dashnak grandfather who was a bandit in the hills who’d come into town and gun down Soviet commissars. Sephardic Jews are more often than not genetically identical to Arabs; an individual could have a hundred rabbis in his family tree and there would be no way to tell from his DNA. Genetics is helpful, but not necessarily definitive. And yes, I know the Constitution, but you also know that in security cases we have a certain amount of discretion in getting the job done. If we make a beef about letting this Sutcliffe woman into the country, we’ll risk tipping them off that we’re really interested in this delegation, interested enough to hack into the enemy’s databases to dig around. Besides, the poor woman may not even know she’s got bad blood. Most Americans can’t even name all four of their grandparents, if you don’t count Grandpa and Mee-maw.”

  “Alright, we’ll let it slide for expediency’s sake, but we’ll keep a wee extra bit of eye on Ms. Sutcliffe,” said Bob. “Let’s go down the list.”

  “First the British contingent,” said Tom, riffling the papers in the file. “The big dog in the entire group is Frederick Haskins, PhD, from Oxford University in the U.K. Age 58, author of over twenty books on archaeology itself and various aspects of the Stone Age, generally considered to be the go-to guy for all things flinty and clubby. His assistant is Doctor Andrew Renfrew, a Scotsman, age thirty-two, a brilliant up-and-coming type in the archaeological world, whose claim to fame so far is excavating an entire lost Tudor village in Bumbleshire.”

  “That file doesn’t actually say Bumbleshire, does it?” asked Bob. “If so, somebody’s messing with you.”

  “No, that was me being silly. It was actually Staffordshire. Next the Canucks, Arnold Kellerman, PhD, from the University of Toronto. His personal assistant is another Brit, a woman, Doctor Letitia Haines.”

  “Sounds like some Miss Marple type in tweeds and sensible shoes, with a face like a Bassett hound,” remarked Bob.

  “No, actually she’s pretty dishy,” said Tom, handing her Ms. Haines’ passport photo from the file.

  “See what you mean. Next?”

  “Professor René Martineau from the Sorbonne, accompanied by Madame Céline Martineau.” Tom told him. “Husband and wife team, both in their forties, PhDs of course, both recognized as top experts on the cave paintings of France and Spain and the prehistoric Solutrean culture, most of the relics of which have been discovered in France. These two are make-or-break, since they are the official Solutrean nabobs in the group. They are the ones whose thumbs up or down on the Lost Creek Solutrean artifacts will carry the weight.”

  “Next?” asked Bob.

  “Next comes Doctor Alvin Fortis from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. God, I’d love to see that place! You ever get to visit the Smithsonian when you were Out There?”

  “I once spent a very bad night in a small upstairs room in one of their annexes surrounded by really crappy early American art,” replied Bob shortly. “Who’s this character’s PA?”

  “A young man named Ralph Tarricone, graduate student, some kind of intern at the Smithsonian. Since the Smithsonian is a political patronage job, then these two are most likely to be wrong ’uns, although maybe not, precisely because it is so obvious.”

  “Okay, that’s four pair,” said Campbell.

  “Last but not least, Doctor Amanda Wyrick, head of the anthropology department at Harvard University. Her assistant is this Bella Sutcliffe woman, the one I mentioned with the hose-nose chromosomes a ways back. They’ve been together for a few years.”

  “What do you mean, ‘together?’ Crap, we’re not talking about tribadism here, are we, Tom? Because you know if we detect any behavior like that, diplomatic immunity or not, I can’t overlook it.”

  “No, rather the reverse,” replied Horakova. “Both Dr. Wyrick and Ms. Sutcliffe seem to have a reputation around the Harvard campus as real man-eaters. The Wyrick woman seems to make a habit of marrying and then divorcing various male faculty members every couple of years. Men who are usually in a position to assist in her career. She’s currently married to the president of Harvard, so not sure how much higher up that particular ladder she can climb. Ms. Sutcliffe likes to spend her days digging up ancient Mayan temples, and her nights under the mosquito netting with whatever lusty and sweaty male animals are available.”

  “Race-mixer?” asked Bob in distaste.

  “Probably, but there’s no proof, and she won’t be finding any mestizos
here to defile herself with.”

  “I still don’t like it,” grumbled Bob.

  “Hey, you want to ban her from entering the country, you’re the senior officer, Bob,” said Tom.

  “Horse shit. Thanks for being polite, Tommy, but we both know this is a BOSS gig. You say the Political Bureau vetted all the academics who were invited, and they seem to be straight up?”

  “Hey, it could be worse. We invited over a hundred. These ten were the only ones who accepted and who could persuade their respective governments to give them permission to visit the NAR without facing legal action when they got back home.”

  “Why let any of them come at all?” wondered Bob. “And why these ten?”

  “Obviously so the ONR or CSIS or MI6 or somebody could slip an agent in,” said Tom. “Quite possibly more than one, unknown to the others. They have to do something about Lost Creek, sir. We’ve defeated them militarily and economically, so all they have left is their deranged ideology. If their whole version of human history turns out to be bunkum as well, the last foundation of liberalism will crumble. They can’t let that happen. They have to maintain some kind of moral high ground over us.”

  “I’d say most likely our spy will be one of the secondary individuals,” ruminated Campbell.

  “One or more of them, but we can’t discount any of them.”

  “How do you want to work this?” asked Bob.

  “We don’t want to follow them around like crude secret policemen, or at least we need to keep physical surveillance to a discreet minimum,” said Horakova. “Like I said, we don’t want our lad or lassie getting spooked. We want them to feel as safe as possible, so they will risk making contact with Scorpius. We go to town on the electronic monitoring. We wire up the whole Lost Creek site with hidden fiber-optic micro-sensors that can pick up both audio and visual. Same with their hotels and anywhere else they stay or hang out, any vehicles they ride in, any restaurants or bars they frequent. We hack their own implanted GPI chips as quick as we can detect their frequencies, so we know where they are all the time, their FLEC cards and credit cards and anything else that has a chip on it. Most of those frequencies we’ve already determined, courtesy of WPB’s techs and hackers. We monitor their personal computers and phones and other devices, of course. We monitor and analyze every contact they have with any NAR resident or citizen in case that person turns out to be the elusive Scorpius. Beyond that, we’ll have to play it by ear.”

  “Right, now on to Scorpius himself,” said Campbell. “Or herself, lest we forget. Has WPB come up with anything new?”

  “Not so far,” said Horakova. “The Circus has the home office in Olympia and the stations in D.C., Ottawa, and London prioritizing it, hacking away like mad into any database they can break into, searching for anything relevant. Our guys are rifling through government dumpsters, they’re pulling black bag sneak-and-peeks into enemy homes and apartments, bugging as many of their people and offices as they can safely do, anything to get a line on Scorpius. All we have found so far is that one file the Olympia WPB guy turned up three weeks ago.”

  “And you say that was on a routine smash-and-grab into a randomly chosen ONR database?” asked Bob.

  “Yeah, the kind of thing WPB cyber-whizzes do for recreation when it’s a slow day at the office,” replied Horakova with a nod. “There’s a long technical description of the procedure in the file here, which I haven’t even bothered to try and understand. Basically, our boy saw a crack in a door, kicked it in, and grabbed what he could before their firewalls and attack dogs hit back and fried his own computer to a crisp. As near as we can figure he was able to snatch the Scorpius file by pure accident. Unless of course the whole damned thing is an elaborate set-up, there is no Scorpius, and the ONR is now laughing and quaffing beers in joyful glee over the way they’ve got us chasing our tails.”

  “We have to assume it’s legitimate,” said Campbell morosely. “This is too important. Also important is the question of do they now know that we know?”

  “Yes,” said Horakova. “The kid’s raid on the cookie jar triggered their cyber-defenses and counterattacked his own machine, like I said. They have to know what he took. The rest of the files he snatched are mostly routine political things relating to Congress and budget negotiations. They check out as legit. The Scorpius file is the only real hot potato. If it’s a set-up, it’s a neat one, but I don’t think so. When the WPB section head decrypted the file and read it, you know what he found.”

  “A complete list of every artifact and item of human remains found at Lost Creek up until four days prior to the cyber-hack,” said Campbell grimly. “A detailed map of the site with global coordinates, done on an unidentified software program, a list of every NAR individual working at Lost Creek or associated with the site, including my son and my daughter-in-law, and an assigned ONR code name for the source. Scorpius.”

  “Yeah,” said Tom with a nod. “The WPB passed it on to General Capshaw over at BOSS. Capshaw went through the roof, he took it to the Security Minister and he went through the roof, and the rest, as they say is history. Here we are. Before you ask, yes, the list is one hundred percent accurate and up-to-date as of the day we think it was delivered to ONR. If our crustacean friend is somewhere on or connected to the site, as he must be in order to have all that info, then he was smart enough to list himself as well.”

  “Scorpions aren’t crustaceans, they’re arthropods,” said Bob absently. “No idea at all how he or she is communicating with the ONR?”

  “It could be any one of a dozen ways,” replied Tom grimly. “The NAR is self-contained, but not completely isolated from the outside world. That’s impossible. E-mail and internet connection from a personal computer inside the Republic to one outside the country isn’t illegal, you just have to do it at your own risk, and you can’t network with anyone else’s computer, so whatever garbage you pick up Out There stays on your own machine and doesn’t spread. People make phone calls all the time from here to all over the world; we just remind people fairly often that the enemy is listening to them gabbing with old Aunt Fanny in Poughkeepsie, and let it go at that. The U.S. Postal Service won’t handle mail with NAR stamps, but you can even send good old-fashioned letters and packages back and forth by private courier services.”

  “Yeah, who charge an arm and a leg,” groused Bob. “Okay, assuming it’s not a gull, his handlers now know that we know about Scorpius. Surely they’ll warn him or her, and advise against making any contact with anyone in the Eminent Persons Delegation?”

  “Remember, they still have a mission to accomplish, to discredit Lost Creek at all costs as a Nazi hoax,” warned Tom. “They may be willing to sacrifice him for that purpose, or he may be willing to sacrifice himself, if he’s ideologically as opposed to financially motivated.”

  “Mmmm. Who, exactly, is they in this case, do we think?” wondered Campbell aloud. “ONR itself? What I’m getting at is that I know different spook agencies have different styles and modus operandi, or would that be modi operandum, plural? I forget my high school Latin. But if we can figure who exactly is running this mission, we can better detect who is the asset.”

  “The French don’t seem to give a damn about us all that much. We get routine condemnation as nasty garcons from their politicians in public but they leave it at that. Over four hundred French firms trade with the Republic on the sly through front corporations in Russia or Ireland. Could be MI6 or CSIS,” continued Horakova. “Although I’d tend to discount the Brits. Despite its fearsome rep and all the James Bond caca from a hundred years ago, MI6 is mostly humintel, straight-up spies. The British use SAS or mercenaries when they want anything proactive done. Sabotaging an archaeological dig to save a bunch of eggheads’ reputations might be considered beneath their dignity. CSIS, definitely. The Ottawa regime is still riddled with Jews, despite the inroads the Circus hunters make on them every year. They hate us to the point of insanity, even more so than most American politicians and bu
reaucrats. We need to pay special attention to the Canadian team when they arrive. But ONR isn’t going to pass up something like this. If I had to guess, I’d say we may be looking at not one but two enemy agent provocateurs arriving in seven days, possibly—no, probably—working independently of one another.”

  “Beautiful!” said Bob with a grim sigh. “So how do we protect our people and our country and our history from whatever they’re planning? Including Ally and Bobby and maybe Jason Stockdale as well?”

  “The first thing we do is we see Jason, tomorrow, and we bring him completely up to speed, and not only as a courtesy because he’s Chancellor,” urged Tom. “Remember, we’re talking a former NVA man here, one of the handful of people who won our freedom through shadow-fighting a lot like this. He can serve as the third man of our little Lost Creek troika. He has the necessary skill set.”

  “I agree,” said Bob.

  “Then we do everything we can to get ready, watch who needs to be watched, and see how it plays out,” Tom went on. “Sometimes, after you’ve done all you can do, it’s up to the enemy to make the next move, and you hope like hell you can catch him in the act and stop him. So far, we’ve always been able to stop them at the last minute.”

  “Yeah,” sighed Bob, remembering. “So we have.”

  XXIV

  THE LIVING RECORD

  (32 years, seven months and one day after Longview)

  When wasteful war shall statues overturn,