Binder - 02

by David Vinjamuri

  “You’d think the hardest part would be not getting killed, wouldn’t you? Sheldon was more upset that you started a fire than he was that you’d shot someone.”

  “He might be right about that. So what brings you to my tractor-trailer?”

  “I’m here to brief you on the National Front. I’ve been following them since I came to the Charleston office. We’ve never gotten someone inside the compound, but I can fill you in on some background that might help.”

  “Thanks.”

  “The most important thing to understand is that these guys are not skinheads or Klansmen. You’re going to a music festival in the National Front compound, but it won’t feel like a hate-fest.”

  “They’re not supremacists?”

  “They are. They have the same racist beliefs, but they’ve evolved on the outside. They’ve got the tattoos, but not where you can see them. They don’t shave their heads; they wear their hair short and neat. They couch their racism in coded language an outsider wouldn’t recognize. Even the music is different. You might mistake it for Top 40 pop—and that’s intentional. Only the lyrics are different.”

  “These groups have been around for decades, haven’t they? When did they change?”

  “The National Front is the only supremacist group like this. It’s unique—and that’s part of the reason we’re watching them so closely. Dr. James Madison Pace, the guy who founded the National Front, died almost a decade ago. He had no family, and he left the compound and his personal fortune to the organization. Without the money to fight over, the National Front would probably have fallen apart. Ulrick Gleich was the designated successor, but he was nearly Pace’s age when he took over. There were five lieutenants—apostles they called them—who fought behind the scenes for control. In the end, Eric Price, a man who ran a spinoff group of the National Front called the Popular Alliance, won.”

  “The National Front had a tribute band?”

  “Not exactly. The PA never operated like the rest of the organization. Price was a soldier decorated in Operation Desert Storm. When he got out of the service, he went to work in pharmaceutical sales and marketing. He met Dr. Pace in the mid-nineties and pitched him on setting up a clandestine version of the National Front—the Popular Alliance. The PA was intended to influence public policy to favor the goals of the National Front.”

  “I can’t imagine them getting very broad support.”

  “It was an underground organization. Price formed it like a resistance movement, in cells so that the entire membership wouldn’t be visible to anyone but him.

  “Within five years, the PA eclipsed the National Front in funding and influence. First Price found a few wealthy patrons who supported his goals. Then he hired lobbyists and started backing political candidates for offices in very small races at the state and municipal level. The PA became the go-to guys for local money for both Democrats and Republicans.”

  “How did that work? I can’t imagine there were many politicians willing to align themselves with white supremacists.”

  “Price kept a very low profile. If anybody suspected his real motives, they weren’t talking. He also used his influence carefully. He focused on smaller elections, everything from school boards and planning commissions to state representatives.”

  “And the politicians taking this money never said ‘Wow, this Eric Price guy wants me to segregate the lunch counter, that could be a problem’?”

  “He was smarter than that. The issues he backed were incredibly specific and very technical. In New Mexico, Price identified an upscale housing development that was becoming popular with mixed-race couples. So he got a water conservation bill passed through the Democratic legislature that made it impossible for the development to expand. In another state he got Republicans to back a repeal of some state highway taxes that ended up defunding a school busing program.”

  “Did little stuff like that have any kind of effect?”

  “More than anyone thought it would. The first six states they got into had measurable increases in racial violence and saw declines in intermarriage. None of the states was known to be racially intolerant and they were equally split between Democratic and Republican-controlled legislatures.”

  “So how have I never heard of Eric Price before?” I asked.

  “Because he kept his own name, and the names of the few men he recruited to the PA, hidden. The PA formed fifty-three political action committees over the past eight years. These committees are the source of the funds. They act anonymously.”

  “So why would Price want to run the National Front? It sounds like he had all the power and influence he could want with the PA.”

  “He’d always wanted the PA to be the vanguard of a broader revolution. He needed a true grassroots organization to go along with it. Not just a few wealthy donors filtering money through PACs to a bunch of local legislators with no idea what cause they were actually supporting. He wanted to lead a national group of like-minded believers. When he got control of the National Front, he started changing it immediately. He severed ties with the skinhead movement and changed the recruiting target. They started recruiting middle and upper-middle-class suburbanites. No more swastikas or shaved heads, because he said they made enemies of natural allies. That’s why you’ve got the twin lightning bolts here,” she said, tugging aside my collar to reveal the new tattoo just below my collarbone.

  “That’s the symbol of the Nazi S.S. but it’s not as recognizable to most people as a swastika. And it disappears under work clothes. It’s the equivalent of a twelve-year-old girl getting a heart tattoo on her butt. It carries the thrill of defiance without the risk of discovery.”

  “Can you tell me anything about the rally I’m crashing?”

  “Once a year they have a festival for Lawful Records; that’s the four-year-old record label of the National Front. The first year they held it in Wisconsin, then Oregon, and last year in Texas. This is the first year they’re experimenting with West Virginia. They’re holding it on the grounds of the National Front compound. They seem to think this weekend will be a big draw because the compound is not far from Fayetteville, and there are a bunch of whitewater rafting events this weekend on the Gauley and the New River. Tomorrow is Bridge Day and the last dam release for the Gauley.”

  “So why are they opening their compound now? And why aren’t you sending someone in yourself?”

  Nichols smiled. “Why would you think we aren’t? As for why they’re having the event on the grounds of their compound? Hard to say. It’s taken this long for the National Front to clean up its image and be a big enough draw to get a good size crowd to travel to West Virginia. As for getting inside the compound? It’s a matter of degree. They’ve set up tents in a meadow in front of the compound buildings. I’m sure your own people will show you aerial photos before you go in. We don’t think the rest of the compound will be open to the public. It will certainly be guarded if that’s the case, so be careful. But if this girl you’re looking for is with the National Front, she may be at the concert.”

  “I hope so. Heather wrote a note to her mother on Wednesday afternoon, saying she was going to run out of insulin on Monday. She’s a type 1 diabetic.”

  “I didn’t know that. Her mother must be worried.”

  “Yes, but the note made more sense when I thought she was camping in the wilderness somewhere cut off from civilization. There’s no reason she couldn’t make a run into Fayetteville or Beckley from the National Front compound to get insulin.”

  “Do you think she’s in trouble?”

  “If she’s on that compound, she’s in danger one way or another. She might have followed a guy there, not understanding what he was really into. His name is Anton Harmon. He’s a Gulf War veteran like Price, but then he went on to join the Special Forces. He’s also a convicted sex offender. He followed Heather from the Reclaim Camp to a commune called CC Farms. Then she left with him, maybe to the National Front compound. I think it’s unlikely sh
e knew what she was getting into. So I can’t imagine how she reacted when she figured things out. If she’s there and she’s unhappy, they might not let her go to the concert,” I said. “But this is best shot I have of finding her.”

  “Does it strike you as odd that a white supremacist would be dating a Hispanic girl?”

  “Yes, but she looks Caucasian.”

  “Even so, racial purity is a very big issue for these guys.”

  “I agree with you, but I met a woman who had seen Harmon without his shirt on. He had the tattoos. Including a swastika. And he is definitely a National Front member and she definitely left Reclaim with him.”

  “I’ve put together a briefing book that has the language you need to use,” Nichols said, handing me a binder. “I hope your cover is good. This festival is invitation only. It’s a tight-knit community.”

  “I’m going in as a small business owner from Wyoming. He was intercepted on his way here. He served in the infantry in Afghanistan, and we knew some of the same people. I gather that he lives in a small town and there isn’t anyone else coming from his neck of the woods.”

  “Does that sound a little thin to you?”

  “Yeah, probably. But I’ve run out of leads. This is the only way I can think of to find Heather.”

  Nichols pursed her lips, then turned to the Activity people who were still working on my appearance and my gear. “Can we have a moment?”

  Without a word, three men and two women stopped what they were doing and shuffled out of the semi.

  “I want to share something, but if it gets out my career is over. Do you understand?”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t know how this connects to Heather, but I think you should understand something. The reason the FBI jumped on the murder of the protestors has nothing to do with hate crimes. It’s an internal issue for the Bureau. One of the two protestors killed was an undercover FBI agent. His cover name was John McCarthy.”

  “That changes things.”

  “Yes it does. We think there’s a chance that someone staged the attack to remove our agent. The second victim died because he had an undiagnosed heart condition. Nobody else was beaten as badly as McCarthy.”

  “Why would you have someone undercover with Reclaim?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. All I know is that for the entire time I’ve been working on the National Front, I’ve been bumping up against agents working on Reclaim and Transnational Coal. But everything is walled off from me, so I don’t know who or what they’re investigating.”

  “Jason Paul, the head of the Hobart mine, told me some of the protestors were sabotaging his equipment. He got incriminating video on them and confronted one of the Reclaim leaders, Roxanne Chalmers, with it. That’s when the group splintered. Some of them left the state and others, including Heather and Anton, went to the CC Farm commune.”

  “But you think there’s more?”

  “If Paul had video linking the protestors to sabotage, why didn’t he just have them arrested? He didn’t show much restraint over the summer when they shut down his operation, and sabotaging the loader was much more serious and costly. So it makes me think he was using the video as leverage to get something else he wanted.”

  “What would that be?” Nichols asked.

  “I don’t know. But Roxanne acts as if she’s been holding onto her guilt for a lot longer than the three days since the school bus attack. And the mine hasn’t returned to full production even though the equipment has come back online. Paul’s job has to be hanging by a thread. Which suggests that he’s got some bigger plan.”

  “You think he’s blackmailing Roxanne but he still hasn’t gotten the mine back running?”

  “I don’t think you could blackmail Roxanne with a threat of jail. She’s the type who would probably be happy to serve time if she could stop the mine. And after her split with the other Reclaim leaders, it’s hard to imagine blackmailing her for their actions. There would have to be a carrot, too.”

  “Ensuring that the mine fails slowly?”

  “That’s what I was thinking. So the question is what’s in it for Paul? What could he possibly accomplish by ruining his own career?”

  “And whether the National Front is connected. The men who’ve tried to hurt you and that explosive device last night...Anton Harmon could have arranged all of that on his own, right? Maybe he’s just trying to keep the family away from his girlfriend,” Nichols suggested.

  “It could be, but if so it’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull. He couldn’t possibly think he’d scare me off if he knew my background, and if he killed me it would just attract more attention. It also seems like too many unconnected coincidences when you look at it that way. Imagine the odds of a tiny camp of protestors having both an FBI agent and a National Front member undercover at the same time. That can’t be a coincidence. This has to be about something else.”

  Nichols put two fingers over her lips and rested her thumb beneath her chin. “You might be right. The problem is that the kind of scheme you’re describing covers at least three separate task force investigations in our office and Pittsburgh. Which makes it hard to put together the pieces. Until we can connect the dots with evidence, that is. And we haven’t gotten there yet.”

  “You’re sticking your neck out more than a little just to be here, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “No, just the opposite. The order to brief you came down the line from Washington. The head of our office was livid. I’m at the bottom of the food chain, so I get the scut work.” The FBI is driven by seniority, like many federal bureaucracies including the one I work for. An agent with less than two years on the job would be very junior, especially in a small field office.

  “Well I appreciate it. I don’t know if I’m going to help move your investigation forward, but this is the last thing I can think to do before I leave the state.”

  “Then you’re lucky they didn’t cancel the festival.”

  “Why would they cancel it?”

  “Haven’t you been listening to the news for the past three days?”

  I shook my head, uncomprehending.

  “There’s a hurricane headed up the coast. A big one. We’re supposed to get some snow by Monday, which is pretty unusual for October in West Virginia. They think it might hit D.C. or New York. This morning they started talking about it combining with some other weather system and turning into some kind of crazy Frankenstorm.”

  “A hurricane?”

  “That’s right. They’re calling it Sandy. Hurricane Sandy.”

  17

  I slowed the Night Rod to a roll as I approached a wrought iron gate. The barrier continued up the hill on either side of the road as a nine-foot chain link fence topped with barbed wire. There was an observation post visible on top of the ridge just east of me. I came to a stop about ten yards from the guardhouse as a clean-shaven man in a brown uniform with a Sig-Sauer on his hip signaled me to stop and approached me with a clipboard. His partner was inside a guardhouse with reinforced 6-inch-thick plexiglass and a gun port.

  “Are you here for the event, sir?”

  “Yes. My name is Ray Larney,” I replied. This guard was no rent-a-cop. He stood just beyond arms’ reach and gave the bike a careful look with one hand on his weapon before looking down to his clipboard. He would have done fine in an outpost in Afghanistan.

  “Thank you, sir, you’re on the list. If you follow this road up a half mile, you’ll see the white tents. Parking is on the left. Please stay on the main road.”

  He nodded to his partner and the gate slid open on rollers. I eased the bike through and kept it under thirty as I wound through the last stretch of road. The two-lane blacktop plunged into the woods for a stretch and then veered east. I was surprised to see that it cut right through the hill—they’d blasted the road as they might have an interstate. Looking up I realized that I wouldn’t want to go through this pass uninvited. With both ends blocked, it would be a killing box. As
soon as I made it through the hill I found a holler that rolled on unimpeded to the horizon. It might count for a modest spread in Montana, but it was enormous in West Virginia.

  The tents were set up in a large field off to the side of the road about a quarter-mile into the holler. There were two of them; pristine white and billowing like sheets in the breeze. They might have been cheerful on a sunny day but in the blustery autumn weather they looked menacing, more like Klan hoods than wedding whites. Even more jarring was the main building of the compound, which towered above the rest of the landscape. I’d seen a satellite image, but it didn’t do justice to the enormous structure. I’d been mentally prepared for a newer version of the CC Farm compound, which was something like the lovechild of two colonials and a barn. This was something else.

  In front of the building, a reflecting pool the size of five Olympic swimming pools was festooned with three fountains spraying green water into the cool air. Behind the pool and a carefully tended flower garden was a building with a vaulted roof at least four stories high, which looked something like the mega-churches of middle America. The drab taupe masonry of an enormous, plain-sided church was accessorized with a two-story structure wrapped around the main building like an anaconda. The wraparound was an architectural jumble, with a dual-pitched gambrel roof running into turrets at each corner of the building. The entire structure was devoid of windows. I knew from satellite pictures that a whole compound of buildings sat behind this monstrosity, at least one of which we’d pegged as residential.