“Cold as ice then, yeah. It’s goddamned Antarctic now, and the evidence has been eaten by penguins. You still want me to try and find out the truth at this late date? You need a historian, not a cop!”
“That part of our history is still too close for comfort and there are still things in some of those closed dossiers down in the basement of the Temple of Justice that could come back to bite us,” Morgan told him. “This incident prominent among them. You have to understand, Don, that if Trudy Greiner is innocent, then the potential for an ungodly scandal is very much present. Besides Trudy herself there are eight survivors of the Olympic Flying Column. Seven men and one woman. If one of those eight is a traitor who has lived among us all this time, then it will shake the very foundations of this nation to the core.”
“Who are those survivors, sir?” asked Don.
“Two of them are now senior military officers, and that worries the hell out of me. Admiral David Leach is the Kriegsmarine Chief of Staff. He has been rightly called the father of the Northwest Republic’s navy, today the fourth most powerful in the world after China, the European Union, and Russia. Another of the survivors is a very senior civil servant, Frank Palmieri, who is currently Minister of Transport for the NAR. He might equally well be called the father of our public transportation system, acknowledged even by our bitterest enemies to be the best in the world. Another veteran of the Olympic Flying Column is one of the Republic’s most brilliant scientists, Dr. Joseph Cord. A genius in his own field of applied particle beam technology and quantum physics, and the inventor of the atomic fusion engine who bears a large part of the credit for making our space program possible. Not to mention his invention of the plasma anti-aircraft weapons systems that broke American air power, and which have made the very existence of this country as a free and independent nation possible, as well as the existence of a hundred other small sovereign states throughout the world. Cord is a difficult man to like and work with, like many geniuses…hell, the man is an arrogant ass. I have to meet him on occasion in my official capacity and every time I do I feel like I’ve just finished eight hours of moving furniture. But Joseph Cord put an end to the American Empire when his plasma ray weapons delivered to humanity a way to bring those terrible bombers and missiles down out of the sky, no matter how high up they tried to hide while they dropped their cowardly bombs. ZOG had to come down out of the sky and face their victims man to man on the ground, and they’ve been on the retreat ever since. Yet another survivor of Murdock’s command is the concert pianist and composer Dragutin Saltovic, a virtuoso of international renown and a national hero in his native Serbia. He’s so damned good that his is the only classical music except Wagner I could ever listen to; the man saved me from a lifetime of George Jones. The remaining three survivors have spent the past thirty-odd years since the revolution in private life. Former Volunteer Lars Frierson is a high school teacher in The Dalles, Oregon. Former Volunteers Edward and Brittany McCanless are Old Believers who run a book and sundries shop in Centralia. One thing you need to know about the McCanlesses is that for a brief period, before they joined the Party in pre-revolutionary times, they were associated with the William Pierce cult.”
“A lot of people were, sir,” said Redmond. “If the Christian Identity people were our brawn in those days, then the ex-Piercies were a hell of a lot of our brain.”
“I know it,” admitted Morgan. “Some of our greatest heroes and our most brilliant citizens were once associated with the Pierce group. I am not suggesting that this would necessarily be any grounds for suspicion, but you should be aware of the fact. The Piercies always rejected the concept of separatism, and back in those days it wasn’t the complete irrelevance that it is now.”
“You left one out,” Redmond reminded him. “The second senior military officer.”
“Yes, so I did,” admitted Morgan. “The final survivor of the Olympic Flying Column. Special Service Major General William Vitale.”
“Big Bill,” said Redmond angrily. “So that’s why I’m here! That’s why you sent for me personally. You want me to find out if Big Bill Vitale, of all the men on earth, is a traitor! A man you have invited into your own home, a man who is a part of our own family as much as if he was born among us! With all due respect, sir, damn you!”
“I don’t blame you for being upset, Don, but perhaps you understand now why I want this handled in the family, so to speak?”
“You cannot possibly think any such thing!” snapped Don. “No, as a matter of fact I don’t. Do you believe that letter is legitimate?” asked Morgan, pointing to the glassined document lying on his desk.
“I have no way of knowing whether it is legitimate or not,”
responded Redmond.
“Nor do I. But we can’t ignore it, especially if she really does walk across that border crossing on the twenty-second of October. We can’t just wait here for Trudy Greiner to drop whatever bomb she intends to drop on Independence Day. We must have some idea of what the hell we are up against, and we have to know beforehand so we can figure out how the hell to deal with this!”
“Yes, sir, I can see that. There is something else. Sir, you also realize that if I dig too deeply into Ravenhill and it turns out that our official version of those events, shall we say, becomes inoperative, then it may also involved undermining or revising the whole Melanie Young legend?” demanded Redmond. “The Melanie Young cult is one of the bases of our whole social culture, especially for a whole generation of young women who have grown up wanting to live up to Melanie’s legacy while simultaneously cursing Trudy Greiner as the ultimate in female evil. The Madonna and the devil bitch. Suppose the Madonna isn’t really the Madonna and the bitch turns out to be an innocent woman whom we have all spent a lifetime unjustly defiling? Are you sure we want to start down that path, sir? We don’t know where it might lead. You were right about icons and legends. If one icon turns out to be plaster and not gold, and if one legend turns out to be a lie, others might be just as false. This business may be turn out to be a loose thread and if we pull on it the whole fabric of our society might unravel! If Trudy Greiner comes back with some missing piece of evidence or some way to prove that she really didn’t betray the Column, we got major problems, boss man. Because if she didn’t, then who the hell did?”
“I haven’t slept since I read that letter,” said Morgan quietly. “Don, we have to know! As bad as it might be if she can prove she’s innocent, what if she can’t? If Trudy Greiner can’t prove what she says there, then I am going to have to put a rope around her neck! I’ve killed men and women in the performance of my duty before, Don, and so have you. I’ll do it again and most likely so will you. But never, so far as I know, has it been undeserved. I must be sure! I owe that to the Republic, to history. I owe it to her and to those fifty-two brothers and sisters who died on that hillside. And yes, I owe it to myself!”
III.
At about five o’clock that evening Don Redmond arrived back at his home on a rolling rural road just south of Tumwater. It was a cheery old house set in a copse of Douglas fir, cherry trees and fragrant cedar, sporting blue with white trim on the modern weatherproofed siding Don had installed when the old oak clapboard had finally gotten too moldy to keep on with. He slid his electric ground car silently into the garage along side his wife’s methane truck and Allan’s alcohol-burning motorcycle, which Don kept tuned and clean awaiting for his son to come home and space to ride it again. Not a single petroleum engine existed anywhere in the Republic any more, in any military or civilian vehicle. Every visitor to the Northwest came away with one memory above all, the clear blue of the skies and the fresh sweetness of the air. The structure was a big one for a typically large Northwest family, originally built in the 1920s as a farmhouse. Don and Sarah had bought the place free and clear with one of the Republic’s first Life Grants for newly married couples. In the Republic there had never been the mortgages with their crushing interest of the kind that had drained the financial l
ifeblood from generations of American homeowners; the traditional household with the breadwinning husband and father as the head of the family and the wife and mother as the heart had once more become reality in the Northwest. Over the years Don had added rooms and refurbished the old barn in the back as a play house and rec room in which his kids had spent a large amount of their childhood.
Don got out of the car and closed the garage door. He turned and saw a large dark shape approaching. “Hello, Baskerville,” he said. Baskerville woofed once in greeting. He was one of the larger specimens of the GELF K9s, the genetically engineered attack and security dogs. Don preferred the black Labrador breed over the German shepherd and Doberman models. Super-intelligent for a dog, his internal microchip set to respond to voice commands only from the Redmond family or from John Morgan, Baskerville was a guardian for the family more efficient and deadly than any electronic or alarm system. He could sense any intruder and respond with proactive ferocity. He helped make it possible for them to live a normal life.
The United States Office of Northwest Recovery had tried to murder Don Redmond on three occasions in the past ten years. Don killed two of the Federal assassins in the field. Sarah had killed a third when the American got into the house in Don’s absence, shooting him between the eyes as he attempted to lift the sleeping toddler John from his crib, possibly to use as a hostage or human shield as he waited for Don to come home. It was after this incident that Baskerville had been given to the Redmond family as a puppy. Acting on the personal orders of John Corbett Morgan, the Republic’s War Prevention Bureau had retaliated and successfully returned the favor in two cases, killing the ONR case officers who had put out the contract on Don. The third was an ONR Assistant Director named Dov Horowitz, the man who had sent the gunman into Don’s home. Horowitz lived in Washington D.C. He always traveled in armored vehicles, and he never spent the night in the same place twice. The WPB periodically assured Don that Mr. Horowitz was still very prominently featured on their Hit Parade, and that he had hopes of good news in the fullness of time. Don wasn’t worried. The mills of the hunters sometimes ground slowly, but they ground exceeding fine. The motto over the entrance to the WPB’s fortified and top-security compound in Lacey read in German: Alles wird abgerechnet. “All accounts will be settled.”
The enemy ONR seemed to have gotten the message, and things had been quiet for some years now. Morgan himself made it a public point of honor never to seek personal vengeance for attacks against himself, but trying to murder a member of his family was very high on the “not recommended” list. Other than the one apparently extemporaneous incident, the Americans had never attempted to harm any of Don’s family, possibly because they understood that the consequences of such an attack would ignite a blood feud with the numerous Morgans and Redmonds, the negative consequences of which would far outweigh any possible benefits to the United States. But that incident had put Don at the top of the list to receive the latest generation GELF puppy, and Baskerville was now part of the family. “Any problems?” asked Redmond. Baskerville woofed twice for no.
Don went inside the house. In the large and friendly kitchen he met his wife Sarah, a tall and graceful woman with dark brown hair that was just beginning to go gray. She was wearing an ankle-length dress, this one of brown wool, embroidered with Celtic designs having to do with her role as a Wiccan priestess. She was fixing supper for the clan; Don could smell and hear a pork roast sizzling in the old-fashioned electric oven he had built for her. Sarah refused to consider a cooking robot or even a microwave, which she said interfered with the harmonious vibrations of the home. “Hi, Snoopy,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. He had started calling her that to tease her when he was a twelve year-old paperboy and Sarah was an eleven year-old in jeans, with braces on her teeth and two pigtails on either side of her head that Don pretended reminded him of the long floppy ears of a cartoon character. They had spent long hours together on the back porch of the house in Bellevue while her father and his men had planned and implemented countless guerrilla attacks and acts of sabotage inside.
Don’s elder daughter Cynthia Ellen Redmond was helping her mother in the kitchen. “Hi, Dad,” she said. The eldest Redmond daughter very greatly resembled Sarah in her younger years, the same slim strong build and handsome features, but without the young Sarah’s passion and wildness. Cindy was still wearing her green Labor Service coveralls. She had spent the day supervising a crew of younger people who were doing their mandatory year of manual work after graduating from high school. Today they had been raking leaves and doing landscaping in Priest Point Park. Next week they might be collecting the city’s garbage or repairing an elderly couple’s home. A few weeks before Cindy and her crew had been in Yakima picking apples, and in the spring they would be out in the woods doing forestry work, planting seedlings and stocking fisheries.
The Labor Service was the Republic’s response to the age-old excuse of capitalism as to why massive Third World immigration was needed. “Who does the dirty work?” moaned the old capitalists of the United States. “White and even black Americans won’t get their hands dirty or work up a sweat. We must have all these brown coolies, or who will do the heavy sweaty stooping stuff?” In the Republic, everybody’s children did. That meant everybody. Absolute equality of national service was the bedrock on which the system rested. Labor Service deferments for young people were even harder to get than military deferments for young men. Everybody’s kids worked with their hands for a year. Even if they were blind and in a wheelchair, a job was found for them counting widgets by touch or something of the kind. A field foreman’s stripes gleamed on the left sleeve of Cindy’s overall, indicating that she had voluntarily extended her time in the NLS beyond the legal one year requirement. She was now twenty years old, a quiet and competent young woman. By graduating from high school and passing her History and Moral Philosophy course she had already earned her C citizenship certificate and the single vote that came with it. Like many girls, Cindy had opted to go for her second level of citizenship through national service rather than through college or through marriage right out of high school. On completion their year of Labor Service, boys went right into the military for another two years, and they left the army with a two-vote B category citizenship.
Don’s youngest daughter Eva was doing her homework on the dining room table, a History and Moral Philosophy assignment on the life of Commander Rockwell. Eva was fifteen and starting to kick at the traces a bit. She wanted to achieve her own citizenship through the coveted “cultural asset” status, as an actress. If she passed the H & MP course and also the talent evaluation by the Ministry of Culture, she would get a C-1 certificate as opposed to her sister’s present C-2.
Eva was entering high school on the Arts and Humanities track and she was doing well. She really did seem to have the true dramatic fire, and she had already appeared in two adolescent bit part roles on local television, which made both her parents proud enough to explode. Opportunities for actors were more numerous than one might think in the Republic, given that one of the primary national missions was preserving Western art and drama in the purest form. There were not only the Ministries of Culture and Broadcasting and the Northwest Film Board, but a number of prestigious private theater and movie companies. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men in Seattle and Portland’s Globe Theater Group were deemed to be among the most eminent and skillful Shakespearean and Restoration repertory companies in existence, attracting talent from all over the rapidly diminishing English-speaking-world. Eva intended to try and get her own Labor Service assignment as a stagehand and set builder for the NBA or one of the private companies. Nor were other canons of the European tradition neglected. Eva’s drama class was producing Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac in the original French for Thanksgiving Theater Day, with Eva playing the female lead as Roxane. Only in the Northwest Republic could the classical works of Western drama now be performed from their original texts, without later interpolations of
multiculturalism and political correctness. In the spring they were planning for a field trip to make a video movie of Wuthering Heights, to be filmed in eastern Oregon as a viable substitute for the Yorkshire moors. Eva was determined to snag the role of Cathy, although she had told her father that if the family adopted a Lebensborn child before then she would stay home and help her mother with the infant.
Public schooling in the Northwest was superior to anything in any American university, and many European ones. The Culture and Education Ministries were convinced by the catastrophic American precedent of the last century that the devil made work for idle hands, and that it was in the interest both of society and of the child to keep him out of trouble by making sure that from kindergarten onward, until the boys went into the army and the girls went to college or marriage, school was a full-time job. The Party took an iron-hard line against various degenerate entertainments and pastimes of the kind that had wasted whole generations of white youth before the revolution. Instead of skateboards, Northwest kids got Shakespeare. They had computer games in abundance, but instead of mindless destruction of bizarre alien life forms all such games required the exercise of young minds to outwit the programming through swift analysis, thought, and reaction. Instead of the holographic virtual reality games and pornography that rotted the minds of American children of all races, Northwest boys and girls got virtual time travel that let them see and hear and smell everything from the hiss of the clothyard shafts at Agincourt to a day in the life of a pioneer family heading west in a Conestoga wagon, circa 1850. High school graduates were required among other attainments to speak, read and write fluently in four languages: English, Latin, and two others not their native tongue. The Latin requirement was not only for the increased knowledge it gave the child of modern languages descended from the tongue of ancient Rome, but also because the declensions and syntax imposed an orderly mental discipline on the child’s mind. Latin has no equivalent of “Like, whatever, dude.” Most Northwest high school students chose Spanish for one of their languages, for the very practical reason that it was the primary tongue of their national enemy and it would prove of use. Eva had impressed the hell out of her parents by choosing French and Italian. When she had made her choices known, Don had asked his daughter why. “French in honor of the one nation who dared to oppose the American empire back in the old days,” the girl had replied. “Italian because I always hear Aunt Tori and Big Bill speaking it, and it’s beautiful. I want to talk with Tori in Italian.”
The Hill of the Ravens Page 8