The Hill of the Ravens

by H. A. Covington

  “Oh, come on, now, Dad! Did that really happen?” laughed

  Evie.

  “Oh, yes,” said Redmond with a reminiscent smile. “Yes, it

  really happened. Some nutty professor type on our side invented it.

  I’d suspect Dr. Joseph Cord, if he didn’t have a reputation for being completely humorless. The Thumpers would grab some liberal jackass or some red-white-and-blue John Wayne wannabe, take him down to the Civil Guard barracks and give him a forced scrub bath with this chemical substance that took a long time to get out of his skin, something that made him smell like the most powerful catnip imaginable. For weeks after that, everywhere he went, the poor SOB would be followed by dozens of mrowling, half-drunk cats who would be all over him, purring and rolling and jumping on him and trying to eat him. It’s kind of hard to make a bold anti-fascist stand against evil racism and incite people against the Party in the name of Mom, God, and apple pie when you’re covered with lunatic cats, and afterwards people can never quite get all those kitties out of their mind. You know Jay Simpson, the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament? Every now and then if he starts getting too loudmouthed at Question Time, the Party MPs start meowing at him. It breaks up the whole crowd and totally blunts anything Simpson is trying to say. I really wish they’d bring that one back to deal with subversives. Who needs the hangman’s noose or the whip or the cerebral decorticator when you can neutralize a traitor with a following of furballs?”

  “You really don’t want to talk about it, do you, Dad?” asked

  Eva softly. “Look, I guess I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “No, I don’t want to talk about it, but I have to. It’s a legitimate question, honey,” said her father soberly. “Okay, I’ll drag myself kicking and screaming back to the point. A lot of disloyal people couldn’t be dealt with through beatings or cats, because they really were potentially dangerous to the revolution, or more often because there was also a matter of moral justice involved. For three generations America did terrible things to our people, and that was very bad. But certain people, certain white people, actually benefitted from those things, benefitted in money and power and position in the community, and that was far worse. The tyrant’s crimes were done with the active assistance of many of our own blood, out of willful ignorance or greed or perversion of thought. There are times when the willful, deliberate refusal to understand constitutes a crime and must be punished. There was a cosmic, karmic debt to be paid. Depravity and crapulence must have consequences, or else the world ends. Those who had harmed the Party in any way, those who had openly

  sided with the United States and given aid and comfort to the tyrant, and those who had defiled their bodies and contaminated their souls through carnal lust with non-whites or with…well, in other ways…they were killed, Eva.”

  He looked at her. “Yes, honey, they were killed, and their remains were disposed of in such a manner that no trace of their very existence would ever be found. They were returned to the earth, in every sense of the word. Where possible, all documentary evidence that such people had ever existed was destroyed. Their birth certificates, their public records, even private things like photographs and other traces, were removed from existence. They had helped oppress and murder and defile their own, and for that we made them take their medicine. Every last bitter drop. We killed them for the sake of all those who had gone before and suffered, for the sake of all those like you who were to come. We killed them because it was the right thing to do. Those people were a cancer in our body, Eva, and we burned them out with fire and sword. Our race was diseased, and we had to sweat blood in order to get well again. This country is a small encampment in a world of darkness, Evie. We have a few small campfires that give us a little circle of light, where we can find warmth and shelter, but beyond that little pool of light there are monsters who wait in the darkness to devour us all. One of them came into this house many years ago and tried to hurt Johnny, as you remember. Your brave and noble mother took care of the son of a bitch. Those wicked and stupid people let the monsters in and fed them. To this day there are men like Charlie Randall who stand between us and the monsters. May God bless and guide them in their duty, and may God bless and forgive those of us who did what we had to do to get those few little fires lit and give our terribly endangered race this perilous little island of safety. As small and as uncertain as it is, it is more than we had when I was born. That’s all I can tell you, honey.” He spread his hands.

  “You stand between us and the horror as well, Dad,” said Eva. “You’re BOSS.”

  “I try, hon.” “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Well, like I said, you had a right…”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t mean for answering my questions. I mean thanks for being who you are and what you are. For standing between me and Cindy El and John and the horror beyond the campfire.”

  “You’re welcome, honey,” said Redmond with a smile.

  His daughter rose, kissed him and went upstairs to bed. Don puffed on his cigar for a while. “You heard?” he asked over his shoulder to a large armchair in the corner.

  “I heard,” said Tori Stoppaglia.

  “I was waiting for you to jump in,” said Don.

  “No need,” replied Tori. “You did a great job, Don.”

  He was silent for a while. “I really don’t remember all that much, you know. How bad was it?” he asked her.

  “Worse than anything you can possibly imagine,” replied Tori. “Worse than anything that had gone before. Our hearts turned to stone in those days. It was the only way we could do what had to be done. Don, thank you for not making me tell her. I couldn’t bear it, although every day my mind and my heart tell me that we could do no other than what we did. I couldn’t lie to her, and then for the rest of her life she would think of…that time…whenever she thought of me. Thanks for sparing me that, Don. It’s best for Evie as well. She has no need whatsoever to carry that burden. It is not hers. It is mine and John Corbett’s, and the others’ as well. That’s one of the reasons I skipped the reunion tonight. My own time is coming soon, Don, and the weight of it is making me afraid. I didn’t want to remember.”

  “God knows your heart,” said Don. “He knows what happened, better than you do. God also knows what would have happened had any of you flinched or fled from your duty. You need not fear Him.”

  “We did what we did so that she and all of her generation wouldn’t have to.”

  “If our fathers, or our grandfathers had done their racial duty then you would not have been forced to do it. If you hadn’t done it at long last, then nothing would be left of a three thousand year-old civilization. Someday the sun will rise and we won’t need the campfire any more. Because of what you did in the darkness, Eva and her children will be able to live in the light. Thanks, Tori.”

  “You’re welcome,” said the old woman.

  V.

  In the thin gray autumn dawn of the next morning, Don silently arose, dressed, slid his electric ground car quietly out of the garage, and went in to work early, leaving his sleeping wife to enjoy a late breakfast courtesy of her daughters. Don grabbed a breakfast tray at the basement canteen and spent the next several hours at his desk going over the old BOSS files he pulled out of the archives on the hunt for Trudy Greiner. Some were in old-fashioned manila file folders, some on ancient computer 3.5 diskettes, and others had been transcribed to modern plasma tubes. These records were handy because they contained what surprisingly little documentation had been recovered from the Federal intelligence services regarding the Ravenhill Ranch ambush. Sarah had told Don that in a past life he was once a medieval monk in charge of a scriptorium, and certainly he had an innate love of anything to do with books and paper documents. Computers and coms and readographs seemed crass to him. These files also included contemporary news media reports of the ambush, including glassined newspaper clippings and video clips of the news reportage from such old-time media groups as CNN and Fox News. Don
watched the CNN aerial footage of the Ravenhill

  ambush on his screen for a couple of minutes and then abruptly switched it off and moved on. The office was filling up with his brother officers coming in to work, and he did not want them to see him weep. There was a sworn statement from the vice president of the Bank of America branch in Westlake, one J. P. Van Der Merwe, regarding the cutting and issuing of certified cashier’s check number

  #8446728876 to one Gertrude Greiner. Redmond made a note to see if Van Der Merwe could be located even at this late date. The million dollars promised to be the fly in any ointment. Most importantly, the BOSS files contained updated bios and addresses on the survivors of the Ravenhill disaster.

  At 1000 hours Don met with General Stephen Capshaw, his David Niven-ish superior. On Capshaw’s left cheek was a long scar that complemented his aristocratic appearance; it might have been a saber scar from some collegiate duel in a nineteenth-century German university. In fact it had been inflicted on Capshaw at age twenty with a razor blade embedded in a toothbrush, by a Jamaican inmate in Britain’s infamous Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight, where Capshaw had been doing a stretch under the equally infamous Race Relations Act for British National Party activity. “John Corbett wants me to do something for him,” Redmond told him.

  “So I gathered, Colonel. Can you tell me about this one?”

  inquired Capshaw politely.

  “I don’t see why not, sir,” said Don. “John C. didn’t say not to, and one way or the other, in a few weeks everyone is going to know about it. The Northwest American Republic is in for a bit of high drama, it seems. Trudy Greiner is coming back. Says she’s innocent.”

  “Trudy Greiner?” said Capshaw, frowning and puffing on his Dunhill pipe. “Ah, yes, the Olympic Flying Column incident. Nasty business, that.”

  “Nastier than that, we don’t get ‘em.” Don went over his latest assignment from the State President point by point.

  “Yes, I see,” said Capshaw with a frown when Redmond had finished. “Bit of a balls-up, eh what? A skeleton from the Republic’s early days about to come dancing out of the closet. Rum show all around. I don’t envy you this one, Redmond. Dancing skeletons can be a damned nuisance. They call their own tune and sometimes they

  refuse to stay buried. This one could blow up in our faces, if you’ll pardon my mixed metaphors.”

  “Do skeletons explode?” asked Don.

  “Sometimes they can, yes,” replied Capshaw grimly, pipe smoke curling over his head. “If the Greiner woman is truly innocent, then it may force some re-writing of this country’s history in a way we can ill afford. Plus there is the problem of just who the bloody hell did grass on Murdock and his crew if she didn’t, and what they may have been up to in the intervening time. Doesn’t paint the Bureau of State Security in a very flattering light, does it? Lying down on the job for more than thirty years? Very bad cess indeed. See here, Redmond, do you think this is sufficiently sensitive to merit a delay in breaking in your new partner? In view of the social, political and military eminence of some of the people you will have to speak with, you might want a more senior man, rather than a detective sergeant. I can pull Captain Brady or Major Engelhardt off their present assignments,” offered Capshaw.

  Don shook his head. “Sir, Brady is tracking a very dangerous mole who has betrayed some of our sanction-busting overseas suppliers to the Americans. Several key men in those companies within the United States have disappeared, presumed arrested and/or executed by the Office of Northwest Recovery. We need to plug that leak fast before others get the idea we can’t protect our friends and certain very necessary sources of supply dry up. Engelhardt is on loan to the War Prevention Bureau and he’s hunting in New York. No idea who he’s hunting and I don’t need to know, but they wouldn’t have sent him if he wasn’t needed, and so he’s unavailable. I don’t see why I shouldn’t take a sergeant. I’ve worked with Hennie Nel on several prior task forces and we mesh well, as I recall. He follows orders and seems to grasp the essentials of a case quickly. He has a very good record with the Civil Guard, not just as a street cop, but he also spent a couple of years as a detective with the CID working regular criminal cases before he applied for BOSS. Despite the possible implications I don’t think I’m going to run into any seriously sticky situations after all these years. If I do, he’s the Washington state bare-knuckles champion and he’s got two line-of-duty kills of his credit. Frankly, I am not certain I am going to be able to find anything at all. We may

  just have to sit back and listen to what Trudy has to say when she shows up. If she shows up. Don’t worry, Nel will do me fine.”

  “Rather a moody chap, wouldn’t you say?” suggested

  Capshaw. “Of course, most of these Jaapies are.”

  “In view of the fact that their nation is on the verge of extinction and there are now more Afrikaners here in the Homeland than there are remaining in South Africa, I can understand why he’s moody on occasion. The Aryan race is about to lose her youngest child beyond recovery. It’s a horrific tragedy which I frankly don’t think the Republic is doing enough to prevent.”

  “Quite, quite,” said Capshaw. “My understanding is that we’re allegedly just waiting for the right time to intervene in South Africa and restore white rule there. We have been waiting for several decades and now there’s virtually nothing left to restore. Pragmatic Tendency and all that rot. Right, Nel it is. Off you go, then.”

  Don made a call on his pocket com and when he returned to his own office he found his new partner Sergeant Hendrik Nel waiting for him. Nel was a square-built, burly Afrikaner with a blond buzz cut who looked completely at home in the sharp creases of the broadcloth zoot suit he wore, although he didn’t seem to have a hat. His face was battered from the several thousand blows he had received during bare-knuckles boxing bouts, his nose bent and both ears well cauliflowered, but in the Republic such a physiognomy was considered to be one of the most honorable and manly of any, the badge of the NAR’s second national sport, the first being riflery. Redmond had familiarized himself with Nel’s personnel file and was aware that the sergeant was legally supporting four illegitimate children in addition to his four legitimate ones, which his prize purses in addition to the Republic’s child allowances enabled him to do. Northwest women notoriously found a true Aryan warrior irresistible. “Morning, sarge,” Redmond greeted him.

  “Good morning, Colonel,” replied Nel in his stilted accent, almost Cockney-like to anyone not familiar with the dialect of Africa’s white tribe.

  “Sergeant, looks like our first job in harness together’s going to be a pretty odd one,” said Redmond without preamble. “You will be assisting me on a special assignment which has been given to me personally by the State President, John Corbett Morgan. You’ve heard

  of cold cases? This one is right out of the deep freeze. It goes back to the time of the revolution here in the Northwest, during the War of Independence. You may have heard of Tom Murdock and the Olympic Flying Column?”

  “Ja,” replied Nel. “They were a white commando unit who were massacred by Fatties at a plek called Ravenhill Ranch.” Nel furrowed his brow. “Before my time, ek se, but I saw something about it on the telly once. They were sold out to the ZOG for money by some damned woman. What about them?”

  “The damned woman is coming back,” said Redmond sourly. “We got a letter from Trudy Greiner saying she’s walking through the Mountain Gate border crossing on October 22nd. She says she’s innocent and she is demanding that we prove otherwise in public before we string her up. Great Independence Day present, eh?”

  “Cies! So what does the State President want us to do about it?” asked Nel. “Track her down in Aztlan and kill her? Lekker, I’m your ‘own, but I seem to recall the WPB has been trying to do just that for more than thirty years. How are we supposed to succeed in less than three weeks?”

  “No, we are going to go over that whole episode in our history as if it were a fresh cri
minal case. Look at the evidence, talk to the witnesses, your whole basic copper drill. Trudy Greiner is demanding that the Republic put her on trial and prove she committed racial treason. Our job is to find out whether or not we can prove it.” Quickly and concisely Redmond ran down the details and the nature of their assignment. “Eight Volunteers from the Olympic Flying Column survived the ambush at Ravenhill Ranch, because they weren’t there when it went down. We’d better hope that one of those veterans has some new angle we can work on, some new bit of information. Otherwise we may get caught with our pants down if it turns out that Trudy Greiner has been sitting on some kind of bombshell for the past thirty-odd years.”

  “So do we know where all eight of the survivors are now?”

  asked Nel practically.

  “Yes. In some cases they have made quite a splash since the war. Big Bill Vitale is probably the most well known of them. He is on duty down on the Idaho border, and it may take us some time to track him down. We’ll see him last, but the others shouldn’t be to

  hard to find. Admiral David Leach we will be able to see at the Bremerton Navy Yard, where he is in charge of a major construction project. I’ll call him on the way up there and see if we can get an appointment. Frank Palmieri is very much a technocrat,” continued Redmond. “No mean politician, either. He has managed to survive as Minister of Transportation under no less than four governments. The Old Man appointed him originally and he has managed to cling to the job in spite of the fact that almost all of the OM’s appointees were kicked out during the purges of the last decade when Pragmatic Tendency took over the Party. They were considered too NS, most of them, mustn’t be sectarian, too many open Nazis in government make the bourgeoisie and the prim little Christians nervous, all that crap. But Palmieri has managed to make himself virtually indispensable. We can kill two birds with one stone down in Centralia, since Dr. Joseph Cord lives on base at the Space Center and the McCanlesses run a bookstore downtown. Lars Frierson is now a high school teacher in The Dalles, Oregon. Dragutin Saltovic may be a little harder to track down, but he is in Seattle now. I seem to have heard that he is leaving for a concert tour in Europe next month.”