Hunter

by Andrew Macdonald

  “But what?” Oscar demanded impatiently.

  “Well, I just don’t know how many of them will actually do anything about their conviction. People are so passive. And they’re so fickle, so easily swayed. I don’t know how long they’ll keep their new conviction, before the other evangelists sway them back again. If only Saul could keep talking to them, week after week! Then I’m sure he could get at least a portion of those he’s convinced to actually do something.”

  “Yeah, dammit, that’s the problem. We really had just this one shot. I’m sure we’ll be able to keep Saul on some of his stations for a while longer, but after tonight the Jews will pull out all the stops in their campaign to silence him. We just can’t match their economic power or their political power, and they’re bound to cut our audience way down. But we’ll fight ‘em every inch of the way.

  XXXV

  Feedback on the impact of Saul’s September 27 broadcast was felt immediately from the Jewish side and within the week from Saul’s viewers. The Jews went literally berserk. The realization that a hated goy had gotten the better of them; that someone they had allowed to use one of their media had turned it against them as a weapon; that what they had been tricked into believing was a tame Christian had sneaked into the sheep pen behind their backs and turned loose millions of other Christians they had spent decades taming, and was now putting no telling what sort of dangerous ideas into their heads — this realization drove many Jews to such a frenzy of rage and hatred that they abandoned all caution and restraint.

  On Monday morning a mob of enraged Jews burst into the studios of WFKZ, the New York City station which carried Saul’s program, and ransacked it, destroying equipment and beating any employees unlucky enough to fall into their hands; one 19-year-old secretary was hospitalized with a skull fracture and internal injuries after being worked over with baseball bats. Monday night a bomb wrecked the transmitter of Saul’s Los Angeles station. And screaming, cursing, spitting Jews demonstrated noisily outside a dozen of Saul’s other stations in major cities across the country, terrifying employees and damaging property.

  Editorial comment in the nation’s newspapers was quite predictable: Saul was branded as a “hater” and a “neo-Nazi,” and there were suggestions that he had exceeded the permissible limits of speech, that such sermons should no more be tolerated than the cry of “fire!” in a crowded theater. Editorial misrepresentations of what Saul had said were rife and blatant; Oscar could see in these the cold calculation that more than 20 times as many newspaper readers had not seen Saul’s program as had seen it, and so most readers would not realize they were being lied to when they were told that Saul’s broadcast had been filled with “Hitlerian ravings” and “anti-Semitic filth.” Those who had seen it might be amazed by what they read in their newspapers, but their awakening to the fact that their newspapers were edited by liars was an acceptable loss in the frantic media campaign to limit the damage caused by Saul’s broadcast.

  And the other evangelists fell over each other in their eagerness to denounce Saul. Caldwell was the most vociferous. He was interviewed on Monday’s NBC Evening News, where he evoked memories of concentration camps and gas chambers and lamented that the poor, blameless Jews were still being persecuted and hounded by anti-Semites like Saul. To be against continued support for Israel was to be against God, Caldwell declared; to blame the Jews for Jesus’ death was to commit blasphemy.

  Interestingly enough, not one of the evangelists accused Saul of fraud; not one questioned the genuineness of his experience as a medium for Jesus. They simply avoided the issue; it was clear to Oscar that the subject of faked miracles was one they preferred not to broach.

  The politicians also lost no time in jumping on the bandwagon, although by the end of the week a few had jumped off again. It was a notorious fact that the Jews had at least 75 members of the U.S. Senate in their pockets: three-quarters of the Senate would sign any petition or vote for or against any bill without question or quibble if the Jews demanded it of them. Another 15 or so senators could usually be gotten into line with a little persuasion. Eighty-three of them put their names to a resolution Monday denouncing Saul and his program. In a news poll taken that afternoon it was discovered that not one of the 83 had seen Saul’s broadcast.

  Then the reaction from the audience began coming in. The Fundamentalists who had seen Saul’s performance were solidly behind him. Their letters started arriving in Washington Wednesday. By Friday the mail was in bags stacked to the ceilings in the offices of many Bible Belt legislators. Eight senators who had signed the Jewish statement against Saul on Monday publicly withdrew their denunciations on Friday, explaining that since Monday they had viewed a tape of the broadcast and found it not so objectionable as they had been led to believe it was.

  It was clear that the Jews still held the balance of power, in terms of control of the politicians, by a considerable margin. But it also was clear that among the people Saul enjoyed enough support to put up a real fight. The recognition of this latter fact served as a goad to keep the Jews’ alarm at a fever pitch. In the week following Saul’s broadcast the publications of various Jewish organizations were full of dire predictions of the danger which would arise if the change of attitude toward Israel which Saul had effected among his television audience were allowed to spread to other segments of the population. A prolonged fight over the issue of support for Israel would certainly lead to many additional goyim aligning themselves with Saul and was, therefore, to be avoided at all costs. Saul must be silenced immediately, and the issue he had raised must be put to rest at the same time — quietly.

  The Jewish Week warned that the growing public unrest from the worsening economy could easily be transformed into a massive resurgence of anti-Jewish feeling and action. All it would take to trigger such a transformation would be a general recognition by the Gentile masses that while they were struggling to make ends meet, the Jew-controlled politicians in Washington were taxing them to provide a massive subsidy for the Jews in Israel. With the total economic and military aid to the Jewish nation running at nearly five billion dollars, that worked out to a rate of about $5,000 per year per Israeli family of four — more than enough to make a big difference for the average American family.

  After this, the change in the treatment of the issue by the mass news media was as profound as it was rapid. Saul’s name virtually disappeared from the newspapers. The furious battle raging in the courts over his right to remain on the air was covered by only the briefest mention in the inside pages, and even there the only explanation given was that the broadcasters objected to the “racism” in his sermons. There was no hint of Jewish involvement in the litigation.

  The other side of the same coin was a flood of new tear-jerking stories about the “Holocaust” and reruns of old stories, a trick the media masters always pulled when they thought the Gentile public needed to be reminded about how much the poor Jews had suffered and what a debt the world owed to them.

  Saul’s program was carried by nearly two-thirds of his regular stations the Sunday after his bombshell sermon, and by a little over half of them the next Sunday. Bill Carpenter had enlisted reinforcements and was putting up a stiff fight in the courts, but it was clear that the best outcome which could be hoped for was a delay of a total blackout for a few more weeks. The Jews simply had them outgunned. The judicial system in America long ago had degenerated to the point where the letter and the spirit of the law were no longer the governing factors; money and politics carried a lot more weight than justice in the courtroom these days. The faction with more political clout or a bigger press claque had a substantial advantage over the faction which merely had more right on its side. The lawyers for all factions were utterly without scruple, and the judges themselves were much more lawyer-politicians than judicators; the rulings they handed down from the bench were at root based on personal career decisions instead of legal judgments.

  While the fight lasted, however, Oscar and Saul
were taking the best advantage of it they could. Saul told his viewers briefly about the situation in the Middle East: about the way the Jews, who had had virtually no presence in Palestine since Roman times, had schemed to turn the global conflict of the First World War to their advantage by using their political influence to pull the United States into the war on Britain’s side in return for a pledge (the Balfour Declaration) from the British government to establish a Jewish “homeland” in Palestine after the war; about the treachery, chicanery, and mass murder the Jews had used to leapfrog the bridgehead gained from the Balfour Declaration into a ruling position in Palestine after the Second World War (which they had had no small role in instigating); and about the campaign of genocide they had waged against the native Palestinians ever since.

  He put most of his emphasis on what the Jews were doing in the United States, though. History and foreign affairs were a bit too abstract for much of his audience. Taxes, political and judicial corruption, moral and social decay, the bias of the controlled news and entertainment media, the present economic stagnation — things of which his viewers had firsthand experience, if not real understanding — were related directly in Saul’s sermons to the power wielded in the United States by the tribe which had killed Christ. He kept his message simple and compelling, and his viewers took it to heart. The number of these actually grew, despite his program being dropped from many stations, as millions of non-Fundamentalists tuned in out of curiosity in the wake of the initial blast of media denunciations of Saul and then excitedly called on their friends to tune in as well when they had gotten a taste of his message. When the Nielsen ratings were released in mid-October they showed that the number of Saul’s viewers had climbed from just under nine million the previous month to nearly 12 million, despite the loss of 45 per cent of his stations.

  The frenzy of the Jews knew no limits. Although the mass media remained silent on the issue, their own community and organizational publications were hysterical.

  Unemployment in October climbed above 17 per cent. The FBI declined to reveal the latest national figures for crime, but local figures, where published, had skyrocketed. Muggings, burglaries, and armed robberies had become such ever-present threats in the cities that Whites virtually deserted the streets at night, leaving them to the minority gangs and the police. Those whose employment forced them to go out during the hours of darkness tried to travel in groups, keeping their car doors locked and dreading a breakdown while worrying constantly about the security of the unguarded homes they had left. Shops and stores which formerly had remained open at night closed up tight at dusk and pulled down steel shutters over their display windows. People who were in the business of installing steel shutters, alarms, deadbolts, window bars, and other security devices had never before been in such demand.

  Civil disorder too had become almost a daily fact of life, despite the government’s draconian measures to keep it in check. The frequent marches and demonstrations to protest economic conditions very often ended in clashes with police or in other violence. Groups of unemployed squatters seized vacant buildings, and their ejection by police was seldom accomplished peacefully.

  Mini-race riots also were an increasing phenomenon. Many Whites who in the past simply would have packed up and retreated further into suburbia when they came face to face with the grim reality of life with the colored brother no longer had the means to effect a retreat; they were forced to stand their ground and fight. In the last month there had been nothing else on quite the scale of the September rioting and burning in Chicago, but there had been a number of smaller racial confrontations.

  Finally, genuine political terrorism seemed to be coming back into vogue. Bombings of banks and government buildings on a scale not seen since the early 1970s had developed in recent weeks, with a bewildering array of 1960s-style organizations claiming credit and issuing manifestos and ultimatums.

  No doubt the situation would be much more chaotic without the efforts of the Agency for Public Security, but Oscar found it amusing to contemplate the hectic pace of activity which was now Ryan’s lot. He wondered whether Ryan really believed that the lid could be kept on things until the economy improved — if it improved.

  XXXVI

  Oscar had just turned on the late news when Ryan called. “Got an easy one for you this time, Yeager. Got a pencil and paper handy?”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “Need for you to knock off a TV preacher for me.”

  Oscar felt his bowels churning and their contents turning to liquid; he knew before Ryan spoke again just which TV preacher his caller wanted killed. He listened in numbed silence as Ryan continued.

  “His name is Saul Rogers. He lives at 1202 South Glendale Street in Alexandria. He has no bodyguards or other security, and he’s easy to spot — a really striking looking guy. I’ve left an info packet on him, including a photograph, at the regular drop site. You should pick it up tonight. The job should be done right away, before he has a chance to tape another sermon. And you don’t have to worry about making it look like an accident. There are so many people who want this guy dead that the police will be busy for the next five years checking out suspects.”

  Oscar found his voice and stammered out his question: “I… I don’t understand. Why do you want me to kill a preacher? What does that have to do with national security?”

  “Plenty. In the first place he’s making a big commotion; got the true believers really riled up, thinking he’s Jesus’ spokesman. A lot of ‘em are writing letters to their Congressmen saying they aren’t going to pay any more taxes. If somebody gets them organized, we could have a tax rebellion on our hands.”

  “For Christ’s sake, you don’t shoot people for that! If he’s done something illegal — incited a disorder or something — you’ve got the authority to have him arrested. You can hold him without bail for six months under your new powers. That’ll put an end to any trouble he’s causing.”

  “I could arrest him, Yeager, but I don’t want to. I could easily enough charge him under the President’s recent executive order, but 1 don’t want to play the role of an enemy of Jesus. The man has a lot of popular support out there, and I don’t want all of that support turned against me. Besides there are other reasons why we need to get rid of him.”

  “What reasons?” Oscar demanded.

  “If you must know, every top Jewish leader in the country is screaming for his blood. They’ve put a lot of pressure on the President to silence him. We’re depending on these guys to keep things cool, not to encourage disorder or start criticizing the government in the media they control.”

  “Jews? What the hell? Have you switched sides, Ryan?”

  There was a hard edge to Ryan’s voice when he replied: “Listen, Yeager, I haven’t got time to explain everything to you. Just take my word for it. We need the cooperation of the top Jews, whose interests at the moment happen to coincide with the government’s and with mine.”

  “Well, I guess you’re going to think I’m pretty dense and pretty stubborn,” Oscar came back, “but you had me convinced earlier that your whole game was to outflank the Jews and keep them from taking over everything. Now it sounds like you’re taking orders from them. I don’t especially object to killing people, preachers or others, but I do like to have a rationale for what I’m doing. I like to feel that it’s for a worthy cause, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’m getting irritated with you, Yeager. I’m not taking orders from the Jews. I’m trying to maintain order in this damned country under very trying conditions. The top Jews are smart enough to understand that if we let this economic slump result in general disorder, there’s liable to be a lot of blame dumped on them, with a big rise in anti-Semitism, maybe even violence directed against Jews.

  In a sense we’ve got ‘em by the balls now; we can make ‘em behave themselves for once and keep the other Jews in line for us.”

  “For themselves, don’t you mean? You understand as well as I d
o, Ryan, that the Jews have to go through a period of consolidation every now and then. They ordinarily thrive on disorder; they create disorder in every way they can to break a society down so they can digest it. Ever since the Second World War they’ve been breaking down our society, obliterating its sense of identity, turning its mores upside down, pumping it full of spiritual poison. Now it’s time for them to consolidate. The new laws taking away civil liberties are designed to lock in the changes they’ve made, to keep Whites from undoing them. They need a fellow like you to keep fellows like me in line for a generation, until the last resistance has died down and the public thinks the new setup is the way things are supposed to be.”

  Ryan’s voice was icy now and barely under control: “I’m not going to argue with you, Yeager. I’ve told you what I want done, and now you’d better do it.” Then, as he had done before, Ryan relented slightly and resumed: “I suppose I should be proud of you for having come so far in your understanding of the Jews, after I got you started. But don’t make the mistake of thinking you know everything. I told you a long time ago I was going to bring order to this country, and that’s what I’m doing. It’s not Jewish order I’m after. Its my order. They aren’t the only people pulling the strings. I’ve got a good chance to get the upper hand if I can hold things together. In any case there’s no point in crying over spilled milk. Sure, the Jews ruined this country. But the fact we have to face now is that it’s ruined. It doesn’t matter much who did it. The Whites you think are being prevented by the new laws from setting things right again would have no more chance of doing that than all the king’s men had with Humpty Dumpty. All they could do is bring on total chaos, and nothing good comes from chaos. At least I’m holding together what’s left and giving the American people a chance to suffer in an orderly way and maybe gain a little backbone from the experience. And, believe me, if anybody’s going to slip a sack over the Jews’ heads in the future, it’ll be me. Just think, boy: When you pop this con-man Rogers, it’ll be the Jews who’ll get the blame. He’s been attacking them on his program, and everybody’ll assume they killed him to shut him up. Millions of evangelicals who think he’s something special will hate the Jews for killing their guru.”