The Hill of the Ravens

by H. A. Covington

  “Give me manual,” commanded Cord. “I’ll try and bracket him.” Cord coolly and swiftly moved levers, pushed buttons, and rode a small joystick. There were several brief dual bursts, pinpoints of light on the screen as the NAR rocket torpedos fired and changed course. “I need to get those two torpedos on either side of Ugly Bird and blow them simultaneously,” he muttered by way of explanation. “Like swatting a fly by clapping your two hands together. Now, is Bloomberg dropping the orbit or raising it? Aryans are spiritual beings and our minds naturally rise to the heavens. Jews are materialists and in a crunch they automatically gravitate towards the earth. Bloomberg is going down. In every sense of the term.”

  Redmond and Nel stared at one another. A woman scientist in a lab coat leaned over. “Metaphysical astrogation,” she whispered. “He does that all the time. He sometimes calculates interplanetary range and distance in Biblical cubits. The hell of it is, more often than not he’s right. He’s probably right this time.” Suddenly Cord touched a button and there were two twin blasts on the screen, like the popping of two flash bulbs. A moment after that there was a gigantic blaze of blue-white light that blotted out the huge screen. It was almost five seconds before the earth appeared again, and this time the blackness above the glowing bowl of Terra was empty except for the

  stars. A wild cheer arose from the dozen or so people behind the consoles in the control room, and several of them stepped forward to shake Cord’s hand and pound him on the back in joy. “One of those was a direct hit, sir!” yelled one of the technicians.

  “Congratulations, Doctor Cord!” said Redmond in genuine admiration.

  Cord grinned at him. “I have been up on the shuttles and the space stations over two dozen times,” he told the two BOSS men. “Saul Bloomberg has never left the earth. Now you know why. One day I hope to meet him in space.”

  “We keep getting back to that crucial four hours between three and seven in the morning. Now we have another question to answer,” said Redmond as they were leaving the space center.

  “And that is?” asked Nel.

  “Who, if anyone, was Trudy Greiner meeting to deliver the ambulance van? Why exactly didn’t Trudy Greiner show up at the aid station to help with the wounded like she was supposed to? Was the van not where it was supposed to be? Joseph Cord’s statement backs up Leach’s. Trude was supposed to be at the Burger Boy in Poulsbo at seven in the morning sharp. Why wasn’t she there?”

  “Because she knew what was going to happen?” suggested Nel. “Because she really was the traitor and she was busy collecting her million dollar reward? Sir, nothing we have uncovered thus far in any way indicates to me that the Greiner woman was not the informant, just as history tells us she was.”

  “She was supposed to be there at seven in the morning. She wasn’t there. That means something serious,” asserted Redmond. “Punctuality was a survival skill in those days. You were never late, the only acceptable excuses being death or arrest. The survival of the whole unit and beyond that the fate of our whole people depended on a Volunteer being wherever he or she said they’d be, exactly when they said they’d be. So what delayed her? Was it guilty knowledge? But even if she was the traitor, why draw immediate suspicion to herself? She could have shown up at the aid station and once the disaster became known she could have gotten away on the pretext that she was going to her first E & E point like Leach and Cord did. No, I have a gut feeling that for some reason Trudy Greiner ran into trouble after she left the Hoodsport safe house.”

  “What kind of trouble?” asked Nel.

  “Trouble from whoever was delivering that medivac van to her. There’s someone else involved in this, someone whose name we don’t yet know.”

  * * *

  The Ancient Days bookshop stood gabled and awninged at the corner of Main and Tower Streets in the middle of Centralia’s meticulously restored historic district of mellow red brick and brick-cobbled streets. It was a large, comfortable place, redolent with mellow incense, fine carpet and the delightful smell all true bibliophiles crave, that only comes from generously stocked shelves of books. The walls were lined with row after row of volumes on ancient Celtic and Nordic religions, Wicca, magic and paranormal subjects, Tarot and astrology. The center spaces of the shop contained glass display cases and tables of jewelry, ritual objects used in the practice of the old religious ceremonies, and other nick-nacks. Sticks of fragrant jasmine and sandalwood smoked in discreet joss burners in various corners, and a log fire crackled in a brass Franklin stove against one wall. “We admit, we try for a 1960s ambience,” Brittany McCanless told them. “Yes, granted it was a degenerate period in most ways. But there was a beginning of an occult racial awakening among the Folk. True spiritual enlightenment eventually leads down the path of Nature, and Nature leads directly to the truth of Blood.”

  “Hell, you might as well,” chuckled Don. “Half our population dresses from the 1930s and the other half from the 1890s, and a few old eccentrics like Lars Frierson go for the 1970s look. One of our freedoms in the NAR seems to be the freedom to pick whatever era of the past you’re most comfortable in.”

  “And why not? America forced an ugly and unwanted future on the Folk, so why should we now not be able to choose a more beautiful and desirable past in some respects, if that is what we wish?” asked Brittany with a smile. She was a slim and graceful woman with long iron-gray hair done in a single long braid down her back. She had to be well into her sixties at least, but she looked at least twenty years younger. She was wearing a long woolen gown with embroidered full sleeves. Her husband Ed McCanless was

  dressed in a more modern tweed jacket, with a Western string tie. He sported a neatly trimmed white Imperial beard. They both wore the green, white and blue ribbon of the War of Independence, Ed on his lapel and Brittany on her bodice. Beside those were the small red, black and white everyday-wear rondels of the Iron Cross, earned on the day they had driven the mortar truck into the Federal Special Criminal Court in Port Orchard. Don had read the official reports. He had seen the old photographs of them taken by the enemy. He could almost close his eyes and see this elderly couple in those days, he tall and strong like some gallowglass of old Ulster, she a magnificent Valkyrie with long hair flying in the wind of battle. Don could almost see and hear the guns blazing in their hands as they covered Saltovic and Palmieri while they rammed the truck into the courthouse, set the detonator and ran for the battered Oldsmobile. Four of them! thought Don in utter shame and despair. Ten to one! After all their brothers and sisters were slaughtered, the four of them went into that town and fought forty of those yellow cur dogs who served red-white-and-blue Amurrica. Gun to gun, hand to hand. And now I come into their home to question them, to bring into doubt the whole fabric of their lives. Dear God, how dare I? Who the hell am I to so much as bend my head in their direction?

  The four of them sat in a small living room off the main shop floor and Brittany poured them camomile tea from a large, freshly brewed brown clay pot. There was also a plate of highly tasty cookies made of organic brown wheat flour and honey. Nel held his teacup and saucer delicately in his hand, somewhat put off by the outré and mystical surroundings. Clearly your basic fish and chips man, thought Redmond in amusement. “It’s always good to have an old comrade stop by, Colonel,” said Brittany. “Even if it is on official business.”

  “Tell me, does another of your old comrades ever stop by?” asked Redmond. “I refer to Dr. Joseph Cord from the Space Center? Seeing as how he’s in the area, surely he must drop by occasionally to hash over old times? Not to mention this superb camomile?”

  “I’m sure Sarah’s is just as good,” said Brittany.

  “Well, yes,” admitted Redmond. “I’m sure she’d want me to say hello, by the by. Does Doctor Cord ever drop in?” he persisted.

  “Holy Joe? Not likely,” replied Ed dryly. “As far as Joe Cord is concerned, we are Satan’s emissaries on earth. We haven’t spoken

  in years. Every now and th
en we see him on the sidewalk here in

  Centralia. He crosses the street to avoid us.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Redmond, shaking his head. “Religious differences aside, that is not the way to treat former comrades from the Volunteers.”

  “That’s just Joe,” said McCanless with a shrug. “He’s always been a bit of an eccentric.”

  “He’s always been a bit of an asshole,” corrected Brittany with a sweet smile.

  “Let’s be fair to the man, Brit,” sighed Ed. “Joe was a loyal Volunteer, and for an egghead he never lacked courage. Courage among white men was in rather short supply back then, and he should get credit for that. He’s a brilliant scientist and his plasma weapons are the main reason we’re all sitting here and we weren’t bombed into craters by the United States Air Force. But yes, to be absolutely truthful he’s also an insufferable asshole. Anybody who knows him can tell you that. It’s customary to make allowances for genius, I know, but in Joe’s case one has to make a lot of allowances.”

  “Did Dr. Cord feel the same way about you during the War of Independence?” asked Redmond carefully. “Not just you personally, I mean did he seem to have issued with comrades who followed the old gods, or who were atheists or agnostics?”

  “He was pretty much the same back then as he is now, yes,” replied Brittany McCanless. “That’s very sad, in a way. One is supposed to use one’s journey through life to grow in a spiritual sense, Colonel. Joe has spent his life accumulating a vast amount of knowledge of the universe without, and not a lot in the way of understanding the universe within. His is a very tragic karma, when one thinks about it.”

  “But again, since this seems to be my day to play Devil’s advocate, we have to give the pompous ass his due,” put in Ed McCanless. “He did his duty well then as now, and as much as we disliked him even then, we knew that when the chips were down he would have been there for us, as we would have been there for him. As it turns out, that situation occurred on more than one occasion. Joe saved both our lives once, for which we will always be grateful, and we saved his life once, which I am sure embarrasses and bothers the hell out of him to this day.”

  “You folks get much trouble from the Holy Ghost crowd these days?” asked Redmond.

  “Mostly just empty threats,” said Brittany. “We ignore them. Once our eldest boy Siegfried caught one of our local Bible-punchers spray-painting ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’ on the side of the store. Sieg was on leave from the SS and he’d just completed a hand-to-hand course, and so he broke a few bones the man of God didn’t need. The preacher man squawked for the Civil Guard, the cop came and saw what he’d been doing, and so the officer slapped him around some more before loading him into an ambulance. For some reason we haven’t had any trouble to speak of since then.”

  “Every now and then one of them comes by waving tracts and tries to save our souls,” said Ed. “We invite them in for tea and spend a pleasant hour or so messing with their minds. But to be fair, when they see our War of Independence ribbons they usually calm down. Hellfire and brimstone aside, even the ones who think we’re Satanic respect that little bit of cloth. I’d also like to say that with the exception of Joe Cord, neither Brit nor I have ever gotten any disrespect from any of our Christian brothers and sisters in arms who went through that war with us. The few problems we get come from new immigrants or from woodchucks.”

  “We’re both woodchucks ourselves, dear,” his wife reminded him gently.

  “Yes, I know, but you know what I mean.”

  “Daryl and his other brother Daryl?” asked Redmond. “Who?” asked Nel curiously.

  “It’s an old Northwest expression from Migration times,” explained Redmond. “It means native-born Northwest country yokel types. I have no idea on earth where it originated. There is another one some of our settlers would use sometimes, DM, which means Drooling Moron. That is a mortal insult and is accepted by our courts as constituting fighting words, as you know, along with whigger. Not to mention being a disgraceful slur against any racial brother or sister against whom it is directed.”

  “It’s not really the country yokels who give trouble so much as it is the descendants of the wealthier families who lived in the Northwest before the Migration started,” added McCanless. “You know there is still an undercurrent of resentment among those who

  were part of the old ruling élite, the bankers and lawyers and such who made money under the United States régime and who still resent being relegated to the status of mere white people.”

  “Yeah, we get some of that in BOSS,” agreed Redmond with a nod. “Every now and then we crack an espionage or subversion case involving people who still hold a grudge from the American time, mostly older ones who only remember all the luxury toys and crap their rich parents gave them as kids. That’s pretty much dying out now. My kids are woodchucks themselves and so are yours. Interestingly, those few cases of disloyalty among pre-revolutionary residents are more than counterbalanced by the thousands of people who fled from the Republic when we took over, and have since come back Home. Or their children who have returned. They have enough horror stories to tell about life in the wonderful United States to shut up the last of the disgruntled Gawd Bless Amurrica types.”

  “So, why did you want to see us, Colonel?” asked Ed anxiously. “I hate to sound paranoid, but it’s not about that asinine plot to murder Pastor Briggs, is it? We barely knew Mr. Andrews, although of course we have heard about his arrest, and those of the others. I promise you that we utterly condemn what he was planning and we would have nothing to do with any violence against other white people, whatever their religious views. Or violence against anybody. All that is over for us.”

  “Remember that rock song from the last century that goes

  ‘Now you’re old and gray, Fernando, it’s many years since I have seen a rifle in your hand?’ said Brittany with a smile. “That’s Ed and me. I don’t even know if we still have any guns around. We gave them all to our kids. I think Siegfried still carries my old Glock nine-mil as a vehicle weapon.”

  “Well, that may not be completely true,” demurred Ed. “I think I’ve still got that old Ruger Mini-14 I toted during the war up in the attic somewhere. But it’s an antique, probably rusted solid by now. Probably blow up in my face if I tried to fire it, even if I could find some ammunition for it. Anyway, when we did fight, it was to put a stop to just that kind of thing. Hatred between white people. Like this Andrews business. Straight up, Colonel, we had nothing to do with that crap and we wouldn’t have anything to do with anything like that!” McCanless was clearly on the defensive.

  “No, believe me, if your names had come up in relation to that case, you would have seen me here before this, and I wouldn’t be sitting here drinking your tea,” Redmond assured them. “My reason for being here has to do with something in the past. I’m here to talk to you about the last days of the Olympic Flying Column.”

  “Ah,” said Ed glumly.

  “That was a very sad and terrible event in our lives, Colonel,” said Brittany quietly. “May I ask what possible interest state security could have in it today?”

  “I am interviewing all the survivors of the Column,” said

  Redmond.

  “Why?” asked Ed bluntly.

  “Usually a cop keeps as much information back as he can, as leverage, but in this investigation I have made it a policy to be completely open with all of you as to the purpose of my questions,” said Redmond. “The State President has received a communication from Trudy Greiner, a communication that we believe to be authentic. She alleges that she is innocent of the charge of treason and she is Coming Home on October 22nd. She is demanding a public trial on the charges against her.”

  “Trudy is Coming Home?” gasped Brittany. “She says she’s innocent?”

  “And if she is, that means one of us has to be guilty,” grated

  Ed harshly.

  “Bluntly, yes, that’s w
hat it looks like,” said Redmond.

  “That can’t be,” said Brittany quietly. “I’m sorry, sir, but you are wrong. That cannot possibly be. It must not be.”

  “I hope there’s some way out of this particular maze, ma’am,” replied Don. “I am here to learn if that is possible. Sergeant Nel and I are conducting interviews with all of the survivors of the Olympic Flying Column, and we are taking a similar tack with all of you. The first thing I would like to know is some general background, how each of your became involved with the Party and the NVA, and…” There was a little tinkle from the bell over the shop door.

  “I’ll get it,” said Ed, rising. “Excuse me, Colonel.”

  “Of course,” replied Don. Ed McCanless got up and went out onto the shop floor to deal with his customer. His wife Brittany leaned forward.

  “I’m glad Ed is gone, Colonel, because I need to answer your question before he comes back,” she said urgently, putting her hand on Don’s wrist. Don remembered Palmieri’s description of that same hand on his wrist over thirty years before in the Port Orchard diner as being like a vice grip. It was not like that now, but somehow just as strong and urgent. “The whole topic upsets my husband and enrages him even to this day, and he is reaching an age where extreme emotional disturbance can cause him serious problems with his health. You asked how we became involved. I will tell you very quickly, and then when Ed comes back, please don’t refer to it. Please?”

  “I understand,” said Don with a nod.

  “I grew up in Seattle,” Brittany told them. “My parents were yuppies, my mother worked all day at a high-powered white-collar job just like my father, and so for all practical purposes I had no parents. I was what was then known as a latchkey kid. My childhood was completely aimless. I had too much money, too little love, and too much time on my own. From there it was straight into the drugs. Booze at twelve, marijuana at thirteen, ecstasy at fourteen, cocaine at fifteen, crack at sixteen, and heroin at seventeen. Seventeen was my bad year. To this very day, I am astounded by the fact that I ever lived to see my eighteenth birthday. I went to the wrong party one night, I snorted and shot up the wrong drugs, and I ended up in a Cadillac tooling down Interstate Five south towards Portland. There were six people in that Caddy, five niggers and me. They pulled off the interstate at the Highway Twelve exit going towards Aberdeen. At that time there was an abandoned gas station about half a mile down Highway Twelve, and that’s where the blacks took me. They had been there before and so they had a key. We were all there for the next twenty-four hours. I think you can guess what they did to me, which was everything. Then they left me there for dead. I damned near was. I had a number of broken bones and severe internal bleeding and organ damage.”