Return Engagement td-71

by Warren Murphy

"They have struck the first blow."

  "No!"

  "A cruel blow," said Konrad Blutsturz. "They have extinguished the pure flame that was Boyce Barlow." A low moan lifted from the audience. Faces contorted in pain, "And his cousins Luke and Bud."

  The crowd was stricken. There were shouts for revenge and, amid them, cries for the heads of the agents of this atrocity.

  "But fear not," Konrad Blutsturz went on. "We are not lost. I will lift up the banner they have dropped. I will carry on in their place. If you will have me.

  "Yes! Yes! Yes!"

  Konrad Blutsturz let the howls of adoration continue until the crowd grew hoarse. He liked them better when they were hoarse. Their American twangs and drawls and nasal consonants offended his ears. It was a mongrel sound.

  Finally Konrad Blutsturz waved for them to calm down.

  The crowd quieted, their heads turned upward, their emotions spent. They believed. They believed in the purity of their skin color. They believed in the righteousness of their cause. And they believed in Konrad Blutsturz. They did not know they believed in a lie. Or that Konrad Biutsturz, who spoke so ringingly despite his many handicaps, believed none of it.

  "The blow has been struck. We will not wait long to counterstrike. I have selected men among you to become my lieutenants. They will form you into squads. You will march, you will drill, and you will learn to use the weapons we have stockpiled in secret. Instead of hiding from an impure world, we will march into it. Instead of clinging to our vision of a white America inside Fortress Purity, we will expand Fortress Purity. Fortress Purity will become America!"

  "Take back America! Take back America! America for Americans!" the crowd screamed.

  "I will name those I have selected as my lieutenants. They will stand as I call out their names.

  "Goetz, Gunther.

  "Schoener, Karl.

  "Stahl, Ernst.

  "Gans, Ilsa."

  "Does this mean I get to run the White Aryan League Hour?" Ilsa whispered in his ear.

  Konrad Blutsturz hushed her.

  A man jurnped up from the audience. He spoke in a Texas drawl.

  "Hey! How come none of us good ol' boys are gettin' to be lieutenants?"

  Konrad Blutsturz fixed his bright black eyes upon the protester. This was the moment be had expected. The crucial moment where his leadership would be tested. "Your name?"

  "Jimmy-Joe. Jimmy-Joe Bleeker."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Huh?"

  "Are you sure your name is Bleeker, I asked."

  "What else would it be']?" Jimmy-Joe Bleeker sneered, shoving his hands into the pockets of his loose-fitting jearis.

  "Are you sure your name isn't , . . Smith?"

  "Naw, it ain't Smith."

  "You sound like a Smith," suggested Konrad Blutsturz.

  "He even looks a little like a Smith," chimed in Ilsa. "Around the eyes. A little."

  "I ain't no Smith," said Jimmy-Joe Bleeker. "Smiths are poison."

  Konrad Blutsturz snaked out his left hand. It glittered under the light, deformed and shining.

  "There are Smiths everywhere. They are serpents in our paradise, lying, scheming, twisting facts. You have criticized the White Aryan League of America. I declare you a secret Smith, and ask the crowd to pronounce your sentence."

  The crowd hesitated. All knew Jimmy-Joe Bleeker. He was a regular, one of the first members.

  "Death," said Ilsa, turning her thumbs down. To Konrad. she added, "Can I kill him?"

  "Death!" said the crowd.

  "Aryan lieutenants, take this man out to the center of the compound and have him shot. This vile Smith will be an example to all Smiths of what is caming. Vengeance!"

  "Aryan vengeance." screamed the crowd, and dragging the man, they broke open the great auditorium doors.

  Ilsa ran after them. "I want to watch." she said.

  Left alone on the podium, Konrad Blutsturz finished his glass of water greedily. Public speaking always wore his throat raw. He did not understand how Hitler had done it. The water accidentally went down the wrong way and he started choking. When the raw coughing fit subsided, he thought he could again taste the smoke of that night in Japan, almost forty years ago.

  When the crack of rifle fire echoed back into the vast hall, he vowed again that Harold Smith would pay for his deeds on that long-ago night.

  Konrad Blutsturz lay dreaming.

  He dreamed he lay in bed with the hands on the clock across from him reading three minutes to midnight, but that wasn't what brought the panicky sweat to his chest. Caught between the clock hands was a severed gangrenous greenish-blue male organ. It looked familiar. And when he felt the smoothness between his legs, he knew the organ was his own. Konrad Blutsturz fumbled desperately for the clock, but it was out of reach. He tried to climb out of bed, but found he had no legs.

  And then, like slicing scissors, the minute hand clicked to two minutes to midnight.

  Konrad Blutsturz snapped awake from his nap. A dream, it had been a dream. But looking down at himself, he knew it was not a dream.

  Reaching for his wheelchair, he maneuvered himself into a sitting position, and with simian agility, fumbled on the bluntness of his lost legs into the wheelchair, where he buckled himself in.

  Konrad Blutsturz sent the wheelchair over to the balcony of his bedroom, which overlooked the grounds of Fortress Purity, and considered how easy it had been.

  Below, soldiers of the White Aryan League goosestepped in their brown uniforms. They were soldiers in name only. They were the malcontents of America, the unemployed and unemployable. They were men without hope or direction, who nursed smoldering resentments against life. Boyce Barlow had given them a place to hide from the world, but Boyce Barlow was gone.

  Now, under the guidance of good German stock, they were being welded into killing teams to fight the race war they believed would inevitably come. But Konrad Blutsturz believed in no coming race war. He believed even less in the scarlet-and-white flag that flew from every building in Fortress Purity.

  The Third Reich was long dead. 3t lived on only in the nostalgic memories of very old men, and the sons of those men, whom he had recruited to the White Aryan League of America. It lived, too, in the muddled thinking of the morbid young, like Ilsa, who even now was commanding a squad of men with the crackle and fire of a seasoned boot-camp instructor.

  Good riddance to the Third Reich, thought Konrad Blutsturz. In his youth it had promised him so much, and cost him so dearly.

  Konrad Blutsturz had come to the United States in 1937, a young man of nineteen. He had come with a mandate-organize the German element for the coming war. He had believed in it all then, believed in the myth of German superiority, believed in the great Jewish conspiracy, and he had believed in Hitler.

  It was Hitler himself who had plucked Konrad Blutsturz from a Hitler Youth group and given him his mission. "Go to America. Succeed, and you will be the Regent of America when their government is overthrown," Hitler had told him.

  It had seemed so grandiose, in those days. So possible. Konrad Blutsturz spat over the railing a great greenish glob of expectorate at the memory of his naivete. In America, Konrad Blutsturz formed the Nazi Alliance. He did not build Bund camps or make inflammatary public speeches. He could have duplicated Fritz Kuhn's 1936 Madison Square Garden rally of twenty-two thousand people-if he didn't care about the quality of those people.

  But he did care. Konrad Blutsturz did not want quantity. He wanted quality. German-Americans in the days before World War Two were much more American than they were German, which is to say, they were anti-Nazi, but there were those who believed in the New Germany, and Konrad Blutsturz had sought them out and organized them. They existed as a provisional government in waiting, waiting for the fall of Europe.

  But Europe never fell. And Konrad Blutsturz' contacts with Berlin, over shoutwave radio relayed from the German Legation in Mexico City, grew less and less frequent.

  After Germany
was defeated, Konrad Blutsturz fled to Mexico. And after the Allies discovered certain documents in Berlin, they sent OSS agents on his trail. His Nazi Alliance had been quietly rounded up.

  Alone, unsupported, Konrad Blutsturz fled into South America, and from there he was spirited to Japan, where he had intended to offer his services to the emperor.

  Then came Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was as if the mighty fist of the Allies was following him into hell itself.

  And into that hell came Harold Smith.

  Konrad Blutsturz blotted out the memory. He remembered it in his dreams often enough. It was too painful to relive in his waking hours. It was enough that he had survived the hell of Tokyo. It was enough that he had returned to America at last.

  Konrad Blutsturz had known Hitler himself, personally. It was that brief relationship that seemed to compel those he met. It moved the Germans of Argentina and Paraguay, as if somehow Hitler lived on through this broken wreck of a Nazi dupe. It had moved Ilsa, the American girl who was no more German-really German-than Svlvester Stallone.

  And it had moved Boyce Barlow and his White Aryan League of America, who were desperate for the American dream and were willing to accept a nightmare in its place--just as long as they could call that nightmare their own.

  It had been so easy.

  When a day had passed and Boyce Barlow was not heard from, Herr Fuhrer Konrad Blutsturz assumed he and his cousins had gotten lost on the way to Baltimore.

  When two days passed, he assumed that they had been captured, and ordered his specially equipped van gassed up for a quick escape. If the Barlows were in FBI hands, they would spill their guts for a warm beer.

  When a third day came and went without an FBI raid on Fortress Purity, Konrad Blutsturz knew they were dead and had not talked.

  And all they had lived for was now his.

  Chapter 19

  Ferris D'Orr's mother was crushed when he was christened at St. Andrew's Church in Dundalk, Maryland. She had wept on that first day when he went to Sunday school years later. At his First Communion, she was bitter, and at his Confirmation at the age of fourteen, she was inconsolable.

  During the drive home, Mrs. Sophie D'Orr went on and on.

  "Your father was a good man, God rest his soul," Mrs. D'Qrr said. "Don't get me wrong, he was good to me. The best."

  "I know, Ma," Ferris said. He sat in the back seat, slipping lower and lower into the cushions with every word. He was too ashamed to sit up front with his mother.

  "We loved each other." Mrs. D'Orr went on. "We couldn't help it. It was one of those things, a Catholic and a Jew. It happens. It happened to us."

  Ferris D'Orr sank even lower in his seat. He hated it when his mother raised her voice. The louder she got, the more her accent showed. The other kids always made fun of him over that. She sounded like a cartoon German. It embarrassed him. He wished he had a lemon Coke right then. Lemon Cokes always made him feel better.

  "So we married. That wasn't the hard part. But your father, and the priest who married us, got together. This priest said we could marry if we promised to raise the product of our union-that was the phrase that priest used, can you believe it-the product of our union in the faith. They called it that, too, the faith. Like there's no other."

  "Ma, I like being a Catholic."

  "What do you know? You don't know any other way. You're fourteen now and you don't know your maftir. You've never been to shul. I should have had you bar-mitzvahed. It's too late now."

  "Ma, I don't want to be a Jew."

  "You are a Jew. "

  "I'm Catholic, Ma. I've just been confirmed."

  "You can be bar-mitzvahed at any age. It is done. Ask your cousins. They will tell you how it is."

  "Kikes," mumbled Ferris l under his breath, using a word he had picked up in Sunday school to describe his cousins on his mother's side. Other kids called him that sometimes. When they didn't call him Ferris Wheel. "What?"

  "I'm thirsty."

  "I'll buy you a lemon Coke. Will you promise to think about it if I buy you a lemon Coke?"

  "No."

  Later that night, his mother had taken him aside and patiently explained to Ferris what it meant to be a Jew. "Whether you want to accept it or not, Ferris my lamb, you are a Jew. Because being a Jew is not just being bar-mitzvahed and going to temple. It is not like some of your friends who go to church every Sunday and raise hell on the other six days of the week. Being Jewish is in the blood. It is a special responsibility to keep God's covenant. It is a heritage. You are Jewish by heritage, Catholic or not. Do you understand?"

  "No," Ferris had told her. He didn't understand at all.

  His mother tried to explain about the holocaust.

  He had explained back how his friends sometimes taunted him because his mother was a Jew, and how some of them said that it was the Jews who killed Jesus.

  His mother said that they were talking about the same idea. Good Jews had died in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany because of lies like those. For no other reason, six million good people had died. She showed him picture books of the ovens and the gas chambers.

  Ferris had said that had all happened in the past, and he did not live in the past. "The Nazis are dead." he told her. "They don't exist anymore."

  "It will not be the Nazis next time. It might not even be the Jews next time. This is why we must remember."

  "You remember," Ferris said. "I wouldn't be a kike for a million dollars."

  And his mother had slapped him, later apologizing for it with tears in her eyes.

  "I only wanted you to understand. Someday you will understand, my Ferris."

  All Ferris understood was that his mother wouldn't stop going on about what a mistake it was to let him be raised a Catholic, and that he never, never wanted to be Jewish.

  When Ferris went off to Boston to college, he never looked back. He worked through the summer just so he didn't have to return to his mother's home and the relatives who were strangers to him.

  When he graduated from MIT in three years instead of four, he didn't tell his mother, because he was ashamed to have her show up at the ceremony. And when he went looking for his first job, he made sure it was as far away from his hometown as possible.

  Now Ferris D'Orr was an important scientist. His face was on the cover of Time magazine. He was being called a genius. In a recent speech the President of the United States had called him "the keystone of America's defense future."

  But his mother wouldn't stop calling him.

  "Don't answer that phone," Ferris D'Orr yelled. "This is a safe house. There's only one person in the world who would call me at a safe house."

  "Who?" asked Remo Williams, who, out of boredom, was watching Ferris melt little blocks of metal into little puddles of metal. When the little puddles hardened, Ferris would melt them again. Over and over. Remo thought it was like watching paint dry, but Ferris didn't seem bored by the repetition. He actually became more excited.

  "Never mind," said Ferris, remelting an inch-square block for the thirty-first time. By actual count. "Just don't answer it."

  "It might be important," Remo said. "They keep ringing. "

  "Not they, her. Only one person would keep ringing like that. Anyone else would figure out I'm not here. Not her. She'll keep ringing until I give up and answer."

  Finally Remo picked up the phone because he didn't want to hear any complaints from Chiun. Not that Chiun had been complaining these last few days. In fact, he hadn't complained once, not once.

  "Hello? Yes, he is," Remo said.

  Remo turned to Ferris D'Orr. "It's for you. It's your mother."

  "What did I tell you?" Ferris moaned. "Tell her I'm not here."

  "She can hear you yelling," Remo said.

  "She won't leave me alone," Ferris said. "She got the FBI on the phone and browbeat them into giving her this number. The combined efforts of the KGB and the Internal Revenue Service couldn't squeeze that information out of the FBI, b
ut my mother did."

  "He's very wrought up right now," Remo said into the phone. "No, he hasn't been kidnapped. No, ma'am, I wouldn't fib to you. Yes, ma'am, I'm one of his guards. I'm sure he'll be all right. Yes, ma'am, I will."

  Remo hung up.

  "What did she say?" Ferris asked.

  "She said you should write her."

  "I did, long ago. I wrote her off."

  "That's not nice," said Remo, watching Ferris adjust his nebulizer. "What are you doing?"

  "It's too complicated for a layman to understand."

  "Try me," said Remo.

  "I'm slagging this titanium block over and over again to see if fatigue sets in."

  "I never get tired," said Remo.

  "I meant the metal."

  "Oh," said Remo.

  At that moment the Master of Sinanju walked in. "What transpires?" he asked.

  "Ferris is avoiding his mother," Remo said.

  "For shame," said Chiun. "You call her this very moment."

  "Nothing doing."

  "Yon shouldn't have said that," Remo warned.

  "What is the number?" Chiun asked.

  "I forget. It's been so long."

  The Master of Sinanju carried the phone over to Ferris D'Orr. He picked it up delicately and placed the receiver in the metallurgist's left hand. He inserted Ferris' right index finger into the rotary dial.

  "I will, help," said Chiun. "As you begin to work this instrument, I am sure the number will come to you." It came to Ferris D'Orr suddenly, between the first friction burn from dialing 1 and the moment the Master of Sinanju inserted his finger in the 0-for-Operator hole.

  "Hello, Ma?" Ferris said, sucking on his dialing finger. He did not sound happy. Chiun stepped back, beaming. He loved reunions. They reminded him of his beautiful American dramas.

  Ferris D'Orr did not talk very long on the phone, but he did listen. Finally he said, "Bye, Ma," and hung up.

  "Wasn't that nice?" asked Chiun.

  "Yes, very," Remo agreed.

  "I want you both to know two things," Ferris said, glowering at them. "One, I am not a momma's boy. Two, I am not-repeat not-Jewish."

  "Who said you were?" Remo asked. "My mother. But she's crazy."

  Remo and Chinn looked at one another. They shrugged. "Now, if you'll excuse me," Ferris said. "I have work to do."