The Hill of the Ravens

by H. A. Covington

  Frierson, are you willing to swear that you were in the same room with Trudy Greiner at two in the morning? You understand the implications, sir?”

  “Yes, I do,” replied Frierson, appalled. “I…I never knew that you had an actual time on the call that the informant made to ZOG. Trudy’s phone wasn’t even working, and even if it had been she didn’t have it in her possession. Ed McCanless had them stashed away somewhere, damned if I can recall where. She couldn’t have made that call.”

  “An interesting question, Colonel,” said Nel. “Why did no one in any of the previous investigations ever notice the fact that Volunteer Greiner had something of an alibi for the two A. M. time period?”

  “As I recall from going over all those old files, the CO of the investigation did in fact notice that discrepancy but discounted it,” returned Redmond. “He figured that Trudy might have had another cell phone hidden on her person. Or she might have been wearing a wire, a wire connected to someone who was listening and who made the call to Coleman. That is at least a feasible possibility, of course. Mr. Frierson, this is important. She didn’t leave the room at any time? To go to the can, to get a cup of coffee or a beer, anything? I know it’s been more than thirty years, but try, try to remember! The fact is that thus far you’re the only person we’ve talked to thus far who was with Trudy Greiner during that brief window of time. We’ll be talking with Dr. Cord, of course, but we want to get everything we can from you first.”

  “I’m damned if I can remember every single minute, second by second,” said Frierson with a helpless shrug and wave of his hand. “I’m sorry. It’s possible she might have done something to communicate with the outside, but I am damned if I can see how. If she was wired or bugged in any way, it must have been something so sophisticated that it contained no metal and didn’t utilize any electric or electronic impulses at all, or our body scan would have picked it up. If there had been any suspicion at all we would have strip-searched the suspected person, by force if necessary, and that includes everyone up to Murdock himself. Gathered together like that we were vulnerable, we knew it, and we took no chances.”

  “Very well. Moving on, sir, can you tell us what happened that morning? I understand that you and Bill Vitale were in the green pickup truck that served as the Column’s scout vehicle during the movement towards Port Orchard. I know Bill personally and he once described to me what happened, but I’d like to hear your version of it.”

  “We were on that county road just north of Shelton, and we were somewhat ahead of the column because we were coming up to the point where we were to cross over Highway 101,” recounted Frierson. “If there were any obvious enemy movements or anything else suspicious, Bill and I wanted to give the rest of them as much lead warning as we could. We rode right through the ambush position and we saw nothing. The FATPOs weren’t total slouches, and given time they knew how to use camouflage and dig scrapes. All of a sudden we heard the firing from behind us and pulled over. Bill and I both understood what was happening, instantly. We got out of the truck, took our rifles and headed back on foot to reconnoiter, but it was obvious from the magnitude of the fire that something major was going down. More by accident than anything else we ran into a couple of FATPOs; I think they were actually fleeing the scene. We shot and killed them both. We had no field glasses or anything but it simply became obvious that there was nothing we could do. There were so many round strikes on the hillside just out of our view that they were raising a cloud of dust. With great difficulty I persuaded Bill to go back to the truck and E & E the area in accordance with General Order Number Eight.”

  “You drove right through the Ravenhill ambush site and you saw nothing?”

  “Neither I nor Volunteer William Vitale saw anything at all,” said Frierson tersely. “In short, Colonel, we both failed to do our jobs. I would have given up my life willingly then and I would do so now if it would change that, but that is not possible. What happened, happened. We failed and so the responsibility for what happened to the Column lies largely with us, or more specifically with me, since I was the senior Volunteer.”

  “Mr. Frierson, we have spoken with Arthur McBride, a former FATPO officer who took part in the ambush at Ravenhill on the enemy side, but who defected to the NVA soon after. He tells us that

  the negroid FATPO commander Coleman was aware that a green Dodge pickup truck would be used as a scout vehicle, and that he ordered his men lying in the ambush not to fire at you and let you pass. Were you aware of that?”

  “I was,” said Frierson. “I believe that all came out at the formal court of inquiry after the revolution. The same one that sentenced Gertrude Greiner to death in absentia.”

  “Who knew the exact vehicle that you and Vitale would be driving?”

  “I’m not sure. I probably mentioned that the vehicle was a pickup truck at some point when I was in the conference, but I honestly can’t recall if I mentioned the make or the color. I don’t think so. I would have had no reason to do so.”

  Redmond sighed. “Mr. Frierson, as you are a National Socialist I know that you take a balanced view of the religious issues which I regret to say have plagued our country since its inception. But are you aware of the fact that Tom Murdock was apparently a follower of the Norse gods while Melanie Young, according to all historical record, was a devout Christian fundamentalist, what used to be know back in those days as a Jesus freak?”

  “Yes. I once went so far as to ask Mel about it, just out of pure curiosity. She said that God’s gifts sometimes come in unlikely packages. The simple fact was that from the moment they set eyes on each other they were completely head over heels in love, which was both a beautiful and a terrible thing for us to watch, considering where we were and what was happening all around us.”

  “Was Trudy Greiner jealous?” asked Redmond.

  “She was hurt,” said Frierson with deliberation. “I could tell that. And yes, the thought has crossed my mind down through the years that she might have been so badly hurt that she lost all sense of proportion and lashed out, but in such a terrible and evil way? I just can’t buy that. I never did, despite the findings of the tribunal. She was as solid for the revolution in her own quiet way as Melanie was in her passionate and turbulent way. I believed at the time that she accepted the situation philosophically and with dignity. The story of that million dollars has always been what totally baffles me about that whole sorry mess. Dammit, I just can’t see her…it just doesn’t feel right!”

  “Trudy Greiner left the safe house at Hoodsport at three,” said Redmond moodily as the aircar winged its way back to Olympia and hour or so later. “At seven o’clock she’s AWOL from her post at the aid station in Poulsbo. What happened with her in those four hours? That has to be the key.”

  “I just remembered something,” said Nel “You never did tell me just who was the original commanding officer of the tribunal that investigated Ravenhill?”

  “Commandant John Corbett Morgan,” said Redmond tonelessly. “He didn’t tell me that, either. I had to learn it from the files.”

  Nel said nothing for the rest of the flight. There seemed to be nothing to say.

  * * *

  The next morning Nel and Redmond drove down to Centralia,

  300 feet above the old Interstate Five. “Is Cord as weirded-out as everyone says he is?” asked the Afrikaner sergeant.

  “He can be…difficult and abrupt,” Redmond said carefully. “You might say that he’s kind of the last of the GUBUs.”

  “The what?”

  “GUBU. Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre and Unprecedented. It’s a slang term the Old Man picked up somewhere on his travels. He started using it in his writings about the twentieth century racial resistance movement, and it stuck. Cord is of a certain anachronistic type the movement mostly weeded out in the early part of this century, or who were more accurately weeded out by ZOG when they did stupid things and were arrested. Eccentrics, misfits, sad sacks, dysfunctionals or barely fun
ctionals who came to the cause looking for an intellectual night’s lodging, or simply a night’s lodging of any kind. Cord is what might be politely called a rugged individualist, and not so politely called an asshole. He is arrogant and conceited, he has an extremely abrasive personality and he has great difficulty getting along with people. The other side of that coin is that he is what’s called a polymath, a genius in multiple fields, and he has always placed those talents at the service of the Party and the Republic. I think Palmieri hit it right on the head. Throughout his

  entire life Cord has manifested an incredible ability to make himself absolutely indispensable to the revolution, to the point where the rest of us have learned to grit our teeth and put up with him. This should be interesting.”

  Even with their Bureau of State Security credentials it took them almost half an hour to get through the extensive SS security into the main block of the Northwest Space Center. The facility itself was the size of a small town, neatly laid out, row after row of buildings and hangars and warehouses. The streets were labeled by specialty: Cybernetics Street, Telemetry Avenue, Propulsion Square, Plasma Place, Mars Boulevard, Luna Lane, Aerodynamics Avenue, etc. To the east stretched the great tarmac expanse of the spaceport itself, dotted with great gantries rearing skyward, scooters and trucks and service vehicles swarming back and forth like beetles. Two shuttlecraft on the launching pads were fueling from massive rolling tankers the size of Don’s house. The entire base was ringed with banks of plasma-ray anti-aircraft weapons, equipped with the latest computerized firing systems and the most highly trained battery crews in the Republic. Any attempt to hit the spaceport from the air or from space itself would draw a devastating counterfire.

  They found Dr. Joseph Cord in his office, leaning back in his rolling chair behind his desk and contemplating a computer display plate that filled one wall of the room. The famous scientist was scowling intently at a weird congeries of geometric forms that seemed to be doing some kind of mating dance. Occasionally he diddled with a remote mouse and the dance seemed to change directions. Redmond had no idea what the gyrating rhomboids and tetrahedrons meant. Cord was a tall and stoop-shouldered man in his seventies wearing a dusty white lab coat. A shock of unruly white hair fell down into his eyes as he peered into the computer screen. His heavy-featured face was smooth-shaven but his sunken cheeks and chin were white-stubbled. Laser surgery to correct defects of vision was now a standard procedure in the Northwest Republic, in most cases being performed in childhood as soon as the problem was diagnosed, but nonetheless Cord still affected a large pair of thick, horn-rimmed spectacles. In a country where corrective lenses were now completely unknown, this was definitely on the high side of eccentric. Eyeglasses were more antique than the fad for waxed moustaches. As they

  walked in, Cord looked up and stared at the two policemen through his bottle-lensed glasses. He had an odd facial tic and behind the lenses his pale green eyes seemed to roll like those of a child’s doll, although possibly that was an optical illusion. “Dr. Cord, I am Colonel Donald Redmond and this is Sergeant Hendrik Nel, from the Bureau of State Security.”

  “Yes, I know who you are,” said Cord abruptly, his voice a low, hollow booming sound. “My secretary gave me your message, which I had neither the time nor the inclination to answer. I have nothing to do with security matters. Not my department. What do you want?”

  Don.

  “The truth about what happened at Ravenhill Ranch,” replied

  Cord took off his glasses. Without them his baleful glare was

  even more unnerving. “And what on earth makes you think I can tell you that?” he boomed. “Speak up, young man! You look like you need a dose of ipecac!”

  It had been a long time since anyone had called Don ‘young man.’ “Well, now that you put it to me that way, I realize you probably can’t tell me after all,” admitted Redmond with a casual shrug. “I doubt if you know much of anything I can’t get somewhere else.”

  “Do not patronize me and do not attempt to use reverse psychology on me, young man. You aren’t very good at it and I am in any case immune to mind games, since my mind is infinitely superior to anyone who might attempt to play them. I am as close to omniscient as any human being in history has ever become,” rumbled Cord. He wasn’t even indignant. He was simply stating a fact that was entirely obvious to him. “I have spent my entire life filling my mind with anything and everything worth knowing, and as a result I can tell you pretty much what you want to know about anything at all, if I am so disposed and if you have the intellect to understand my response.”

  “That is an impressive talent to possess, sir,” said Redmond dryly. “Omniscience can be a handy facility for a policeman. I may be consulting you more often in the future. But in the matter of Ravenhill Ranch, I believe you have a part of the truth, even though you may not know it. I want to discover your piece of the puzzle so that I can eventually fit them all together.”

  “How very scientific of you!” sneered Cord. “That was very long ago and I haven’t thought of that episode for many years. Why now?”

  “Because Trudy Greiner is Coming Home. She says she is innocent,” said Redmond.

  “No woman is innocent,” grunted Cord. “Since the time of Eve, women have been vessels of iniquity. Original Sin, gentlemen, Original Sin. The curse of God is upon all womankind, clearly stated in the Scriptures. One of the reasons I never married one, in spite of our government’s fecund social policy.”

  “Is that why not? Probably best for all concerned,” agreed Don politely.

  “Personally I have always favored reproduction of the species through artificial insemination, based on a strict eugenic program. I am of course willing to donate my own superior genetic material for such an endeavor.”

  “How very scientific of you, sir. Not to mention patriotic.” Redmond and Nel seated themselves on the sofa that stood against one wall of the office.

  “I did not ask you to sit down,” said Cord with a scowl.

  “I didn’t ask your permission,” said Redmond. “We’re BOSS. We sit where we like and we shit where we like. Doctor Cord, since your time is obviously valuable I will get right to the point. It is my understanding that as part of the troop dispositions for the mortar attack on the Special Criminal Court in Port Orchard, you were assigned to set up a temporary aid station in Poulsbo, in anticipation of possible casualties from the action. May I ask if this was a regular division of labor in the Column?”

  “Yes. I worked my way through my junior and senior years at UCLA as a part-time paramedic, or EMT as they were called in those days,” said Cord. “I was never particularly interested in medicine, but it is a branch of biology and biology does have a number of scientific applications, and as an EMT I could also gain access to live specimens for experimentation in such fields a bacteriology, organic chemistry, and so on. The fact was that I was the closest thing to a doctor the Column had. I was at the aid station, a Burger Boy restaurant just outside Poulsbo that was run on a franchise by a Party sympathizer.”

  “A Burger Boy?” asked Redmond. “Wasn’t that a rather public and exposed position?”

  “Urban camouflage,” explained Cord impatiently. “Very basic stuff. Surely you were in the military yourself? Surely they give you some kind of training in your organization? I shouldn’t have to tell you these things. Hide in plain site, Colonel. We discovered through experience that a semi-public position for such facilities was actually better than some obscure little house in the country where unusual traffic in and out might be detectable by aerial and satellite surveillance. The satellites would not see anything out of the ordinary in many cars coming and going outside a fast food restaurant, only typical Americans and their grossly overweight offspring pulling in to tank up on cholesterol, starch and salt. We always set up a medic station before any major action, not only for medical purposes but for redirection if things went badly. If any of our men were wounded and could escape and evade, they tried to
make it to the aid station, and I did what I could to help them. Sometimes I could save their lives, sometimes they ended up buried in shallow graves nearby. On the morning of August 1st, I had set up a crude operating theater in the store room, as sterile as I could get it using disinfectant and disposable sanitary wipes, along with as many units of plasma and whole blood as we had been able to steal from various hospitals and blood banks. I was required to know all our people’s blood types, of course, and I recall I had to re-type every pint of whole blood we obtained because the Third World medical personnel in the American hospitals and the Red Cross were so stunningly incompetent. Sometimes as much as 20 percent of the blood was mistyped. Volunteer David Leach was with me for security. He was a rather violent and uncouth young man, not to mention a blasphemer and a sinner who was headed straight for hell and no doubt still is unless he wakes up in time to accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior. But he was very good with a gun. He was my bodyguard. I was considered to

  be the most important member of the Column and Mr. Leach was my

  escort to make sure I could get my job done. Miss Gertrude Greiner was supposed to join me there. She was a damned fine nurse, and truth to tell she was as good a paramedic as I was. One of the few women on earth I’ve ever had any time for. But she never showed up.”

  “What time was she supposed to report to the aid station?”

  asked Redmond.

  “0700 hours. When she was half an hour late Leach began trying to contact Commandant Murdock on a pager with a special coded warning number, meaning that something might be wrong and to proceed with caution. When she still hadn’t showed by eight o’clock, Leach tried calling on a series of cell phone numbers belonging to Murdock, Melanie Young, and others. He got no answer from any of them. We now know why, of course.” Cord hesitated. The memory of those grim, eerie unanswered calls was apparently powerful enough to penetrate even his self-absorption. “About eight thirty that morning we saw news of the ambush on CNN. I immediately broke everything down and Mr. Leach and I evacuated the area to our respective E & E stations. In my case it was a dirty trailer behind a Jiffy Lube in Tacoma.”