The Hill of the Ravens

by H. A. Covington

  “I never thought of it that way. It was just something that had to be done. I was usually scared when we went into action, but not that morning,” said Palmieri. “That morning it wouldn’t have mattered if there had been four hundred of them. Or four thousand.”

  Don decided to throw a grenade. “Did you know Tom

  Murdock was an Odinist?”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Palmieri. “We all knew.”

  “How did the others feel about that?” asked Redmond. “Joseph Cord, for example?”

  “Most of us didn’t give a flying fornication. Joe…well, everybody called him Holy Joe, and sometimes he got kind of hard to take. He almost got his ass whupped over the campfire on more than one occasion, but Murdock ran a tight ship. Cord is an asshole, but he has this lifelong ability to make himself absolutely indispensable to the Aryan cause. After a while, out there in the hills, we all got used to one another’s eccentricities. War has a way of doing that to men.”

  “How about Melanie Young, who is known to have been a devout Christian fundamentalist?” pressed Redmond.

  “Oh, she damned sure didn’t mind,” chuckled Palmieri. “I don’t think she would have minded if Tom Murdock had been a Persian fire-worshipper. He loved her and she loved him. We knew that every time we saw them together.”

  “Minister, there is something else I need to ask you about,” said Redmond. “We have heard several stories to the effect that Commandant Murdock and Volunteer Greiner were personally

  involved, so to speak, before Murdock began his well known and historic affair with Melanie Young. Can you shed any light on that?”

  “Yeah, it was pretty common knowledge within the Column,” agreed Palmieri. “Murdock broke it off with Trudy within a week after Mel arrived from Montana. Hell, we were all lining up the minute Mel walked into camp, but Tom jumped right to the head of the line.”

  “Rank hath its privileges?” asked Nel.

  “Mmmm, maybe some of that. We all damned near worshipped him and it just seemed right he should have her. There was never a shred of jealousy of any kind. It’s kind of hard for me to explain, but that’s just how it was. We considered ourselves lucky to have her with us. Melanie had been doing underground work in Helena and Billings. Basically spying. At the beginning of the war she was employed by the Montana State Police as a confidential clerical worker. She was a very fundamentalist Christian, as you said, and she was able to get in really deep and close by spinning them the tale about how Jesus loves the little children, red and yellow black and white, they are precious in His sight, all that inclusive version crap. I suppose I shouldn’t mock, since my own Mom really felt that way. But by convincing them that she was a Judæo-Christian instead of a real Christian, Mel was able to deliver just about every piece of information Montana had on any of our people or operations to the NVA. She was the one who kept Jack Smith of the Regulators living as long as he did, from what I hear. Then she transferred to the FATPO as a psychological profiler of all us horrible racists. She knew psychology, all right. She was that good at pulling the wool over their eyes.”

  “I remember,” agreed Redmond with a nod.

  “And I have seen every movie ever made about her,” said Nel. Redmond nodded. “Yeah, everybody knows her story. After a

  long run Melanie felt she was finally suspected, and she E & E’d one jump ahead of them. When she left she copied every FATPO file she could find for us, dumped a computer virus of her own invention into the Feds’ network that wiped out their servers, and left a handbag with eight pounds of ticking C-4 plastic explosive under her desk.”

  “She was a hell of a woman!” sighed Palmieri in sad recollection.

  “So she has gone down into history, Minister,” said Redmond. “Did Trudy Greiner resent being replaced in Tom Murdock’s bedroll by that hell of a woman?”

  “Trudy was human. I guess she must have,” said Palmieri, ruminating. “She never showed it, at least nowhere in my presence. So far as I am aware she never took up with anyone else for the rest of the time she was with the Olympic Flying Column, although I know she had some of the guys standing in line and taking numbers for the next vacancy, so to speak. Of course, times being what they were, we were always pretty frank and open about that kind of thing. Life was too short to stand on ceremony.”

  “And who were these guys who were standing in the Trudy line to take up where Commandant Murdock left off?” asked Redmond.

  “Me, for one,” laughed Palmieri. “I got shot down quick. One friendly yet definite pass on my part met with an equally friendly yet definite refusal.”

  “Which you accepted?” asked Nel.

  “Oh, yeah. You better believe it, junior. In the first place, a gentleman can always take no for an answer. In the second place, at the best of times that kind of personal activity was purely recreational and very much on the side for all of us. We had more urgent items on the agenda, like securing the existence of our people and a future for White children. Our eyes were on the prize. We were fighting a war and we needed every hand. You didn’t want to lose your head over some chick or get her pissed off at you when the next dark night out on Ambush Alley your life might depend on her. Finally, pressing unwanted attentions on a female Volunteer was never recommended. They were quite capable of shooting very important parts off a man,” finished Palmieri with a grin.

  “Did anyone else have any better success with her?” asked Redmond. “I’m not just fishing for old gossip, Minister. This may well be relevant.”

  “Mmm, that was a damned long time ago, but…” Palmieri hesitated for a bit. “I don’t think so. I think Bill Vitale gave her a shot, with the same result as me, and I seem to remember maybe Dave Leach as well. I’ll tell you who some of us had our money on in the

  Trudy Stakes, though…our current State President, the Right

  Honorable John Corbett Morgan.”

  “Oh?” asked Redmond, keeping his voice casual. “Why did you think John Corbett was in the running? Did you ever see them together?”

  “Mmmm, well, nothing quite so definite. Sometimes members of the Column would meet Trudy on various supply and recon assignments, at safe houses and on fire roads, in motel rooms, warehouses, wherever we had to go to do whatever we had to do. Depended on how hot we were, whether or not we were cool enough to move in among the population without our faces being on every post office wall. Sometimes this involved spending several days with Trude while we were doing whatever it was we were there to do. After a while some of us noticed that she would get regular visits from that weird character Morgan used as his gofer even back then.”

  “You mean Corey Nash?” asked Redmond, surprised.

  “Yeah,” agreed Palmieri. “That was him. Nash was nutty as a fruitcake, I always thought, but Morgan trusted him and we all knew that he spoke with his master’s voice, so to speak. Anyway, word got out that Trudy and Nash would disappear for a couple of hours at a time, and somehow I just can’t see Trudy Greiner having an affair with Nash, of all people. Hell, I can’t see Nash having an affair, period. To this day I run into him sometimes at Longview House on official occasions or when I have to meet with the President, and I still think he’s non compos. God knows why Morgan keeps him around. Anyway, we assumed that during these little absences Volunteer Greiner was meeting Morgan, either for business or pleasure.” Redmond stood up, turning over this new information in his mind.

  “I have a question, Meneer Minister. Did you ever track down the American who laughed at our dead heroes on the telly?” asked Nel with a scowl.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Palmieri, stone-faced. “Made a point of it. Little Rambos, we used to call ‘em. We had his license number and so we got his home address from a contact at the DMV. A week later, laughing boy got a little visit along about sundown. Me, Drago, Bill Vitale, and Bloody Dave Leach. We told Dave what happened and

  made sure to bring him along. He would never have forgiven us if we hadn’t.”

  “Not
the McCanlesses or Volunteers Cord or Frierson?” asked

  Redmond.

  “No,” said Palmieri, shaking his head. “Frierson had already been ordered south to Number Five Brigade in Eugene, Cord was an egghead and a weirded-out religious nut who was never suitable for wet work, and the McCanlesses…well, they were too good for it. By that I mean they were really, really good folks who fought for the noblest of motives and out of the purest of ideals, and we could see that in them. Not that they were soft. Far from it. When we hit that courthouse in Port Orchard I’ll never forget the two of them, her with an AK and him with a Ruger Mini-14, cutting the bastards down like a combine cuts down corn while Drago and me smashed that truck through the lobby and set the timer. But for something like this, we decided we didn’t want it on their conscience. So we borrowed their Oldsmobile but kind of forgot to ask them along, if you get my drift. We found laughing boy at home,” the Transportation Minister went on with grim satisfaction. “We conked him in his garage with a lead pipe while he was polishing his goddamned gas-guzzling SUV. We threw him and his red, white and blue American flag baseball cap into the trunk of the Olds and then we drove him to the diner. There we lined the cooks and waitresses and customers up against one wall at gunpoint. Then we dragged in laughing boy and tied him to a chair. He wasn’t laughing at us then, I can tell you. He was blubbering and begging for mercy. I guess watching all those John Wayne movies and Rambo flicks didn’t do him any good at all in the courage department. But then, very few of those red, white and blue buffoons were ever anywhere near John Waynes or Rambos when it came down to it.

  “Dave Leach took charge. He explained to the people in the diner who we were, why we were there, and why laughing boy was there. How he had giggled and cackled and cheered and talked John Wayne shit while Northwest Volunteers had died for their race and their nation. All the while Drago was in the kitchen deep-frying the asshole’s American flag hat in amongst the fish sticks and the chicken nuggets. He brought it over on the end of a broomstick, dripping with scalding hot oil, and Dave ordered the son of a bitch tied in the chair

  to eat it. The son of a bitch started bawling and pleading instead, so Dave took the other end of the broom, I propped the bastard’s mouth open with a spoon, and Dave jammed the sizzling hat down his throat, all the way into his stomach. That guy made some really incredible noises, indescribable. The people watching all this were petrified. I could tell by the smell that at least one of them shit in his or her pants. Dave walked back into the kitchen and came out with a pot of bubbling grease from the deep fryer. ‘Don’t worry, I got a new hat for you,’ he tells the guy, and he upends the hot oil all over him and jams the pot down on his head. Leach lets laughing boy shimmy and shake and sing for another minute or so, then he pulls out his nine and puts a slug in his red, white and blue heart. Then he turns to our little audience and says to them, ‘Folks, the moral to this story is…you never know who’s listening! Remember that, the next time any of you are tempted to open your filthy red, white and blue mouths and talk loud about men and women whose shoes you aren’t fit to shine. And if any one of you says anything to ZOG’s dogs about us, you will see us again, and we’ll be glad to treat you to dinner, just like we did this asshole.’ Then we left.”

  So did the two BOSS men.

  “Well, that’s a twist. You think the Greiner woman was having an affair with the State President?” asked Nel curiously as they got back into their car outside the Ministry building.

  “I have to admit it’s a hell of a lot more likely than her having an affair with Corey Nash,” admitted Don sourly. “If Palmieri’s memory is correct about Trudy going off somewhere with Nash for hours at a time, she had to be meeting Morgan, or at least doing something NVA-related for him.”

  “Or personally related?” queried Nel.

  “He told me not,” said Redmond. Nel looked away, too diplomatic to suggest that the President of the Republic might be lying, which Don appreciated.

  “You don’t think that by any chance Nash could be the traitor?” asked Nel after a while.

  Redmond shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “We don’t even know if Nash was around when the Port Orchard operation was underway. And what in God’s name would be his motive? He didn’t get any million dollars, and as strange a person as he is, I can tell you

  that his loyalty to the revolution is the only thing he’s ever had in his life. You don’t know Nash. I do, for many years, and not only has he not ever so much as looked at a woman to my knowledge, but he wouldn’t even take a piss without John Corbett’s knowledge and permission. He’s kind of like the old family retainers they used to have back in Victorian England. Totally dedicated to John C. Always was. Believe me, whatever Nash was doing with Trudy Greiner, he was doing it at the behest of Corby Morgan.”

  “So?” asked Nel. “That was his duty.”

  “So why didn’t Morgan tell me about it?” demanded Don angrily.

  “You said Morgan did admit that he knew the Greiner woman, and that Nash sometimes acted as liaison,” protested Nel.

  “Yeah, yeah, he did…in a very vague and offhand way. Almost as if he knew I’d dig it up and he knew he had to at least mention it or it would really look funny. But I don’t like the way this is beginning to shape up. Let’s move on. Next up on our list is former Volunteer Lars Frierson.” In a few minutes Redmond had dropped down into an air lane four hundred feet above old Interstate Five and put the aircar on autopilot. “I’ll go back to manual for the interchange at Portland. I actually prefer a ground car for going up the Columbia River. Less traffic on the ground nowadays, but we need to save time.”

  “Why him next?” asked Nel.

  “The survivors were in three places. Two at the aid station, four with the mortar truck, and two in the scout car just ahead of the column. We’ve talked to people who were in the first two categories. Now I want to speak to someone who was in the green pickup.” It also puts off the necessity for me to grill Bill Vitale, he thought sadly. And the necessity for me to question the President of the Northwest American Republic.

  VII.

  In towns and farms, the call to arms was heard by one and all, From every land they came to stand, and answer freedom’s call!

  ‘Twas long ago we faced the foe, the Old Brigade and me!

  And by my side they fought and died, that white men might be free! Where are the men who stood with me when history was made? How longingly I want to see the Boys of the Old Brigade!

  The two BOSS men landed at the local airport, since The Dalles had no municipal air lanes on its power grid, and from there they drove by street into the picturesque hillside town. Gordon Kahl High School stood in imposing red brick on a spacious campus, perched commandingly over the broad expanse of the Columbia River and the Tom Watson dam and hydroelectric plant. A long flight of wide wooden steps led down to the riverside. Where Redmond glanced over he could see some docks, some small boats, some prefabricated buildings and a Kriegsmarine pennant. A number of young men were doing some kind of boat drill down along one wooden quay; Redmond recalled that Gordon Kahl High prided itself

  in their corps of naval cadets. The two cops left their car in the parking lot and wandered into the school looking for Lars Frierson.

  In the hall just outside the principal’s office, Don glanced over the bulletin board and saw a large pink pastel flyer posted from the school’s guidance counselor. “SENIOR GIRLS—Is The Marriage Track Right For You?” it read. “Under the new Family Enhancement Act passed by Parliament in January, you can now earn C-1 citizenship on marriage and a promotion to two-vote B category on the birth of your first child! Representatives from the Ministry of Labor’s Home Employment Department will be at GKHS on November 1st to conduct seminars on the new range of Homemakers’ Benefits and Child Allowances and also on Continuing Education for Homemakers. On November 2nd and 3rd Oregon Introductions, Inc. will be on campus in the band room from 10 AM to 4 PM taking applications. Oregon Introd
uctions, Inc. has over three thousand bachelors on file in Oregon and Washington, gentlemen who want to meet YOU! All age ranges, all religious affiliations, and all citizenship categories, including over FIFTY ALPHA CLASS CITIZENS and Party members! All carefully screened and psychologically profiled…” etc., etc.

  The two security agents found the principal in his office and identified themselves. Mr. Rogers was a small, neat-looking man in his thirties. His hair was parted down the middle, and he was dressed in one of the “new-old-fashioned” suits out of Seattle that looked about circa 1910, with a high wing collar, narrow cravat, and broad lapels, on which he wore the Operation Strikeout campaign ribbon. Redmond noted with amusement that the archaic fashions the government promoted actually seemed to be catching on more among young people here than up in Olympia. Some of the girl students wore long pleated skirts with wide leg-of-mutton sleeves and some of the boys were sporting straw boaters, bow ties and Oxford wingtips. “Fascinating,” he said with a chuckle, peering through the glass office

  at the students passing by outside in the hall. “By God, those warlocks

  in the MoC are actually doing it! They’ve created a time machine! They’re turning back the clock clothing-wise!”

  “Considering that the big fashion statement among kids their age in American classrooms is now full nudity, and they’ve just won

  Supreme Court backing for it, I’d say the Ministry of Culture is doing a slap-up job,” replied Rogers wryly.

  “To be honest, I think the girls at least look a lot prettier in those long dresses with the braids than in bobby sox or that drab

  1930s look,” put in Nel. “I think bobbed hair on women looks crappy.”

  “You’re not here for Ted Spears, are you?” asked Rogers with some alarm. “We only discovered it yesterday. Ted came forward and confessed and I intend to punish him severely, suspension and detention for the rest of the semester, plus expulsion from the football team. Surely nobody called BOSS about a simple practical joke, however tasteless?”