A Mighty Fortress Read online

  “So we decided to allow Jews at the conference table?” asked Barrow. “I heard there was some debate about that in the Army Council.”

  “True,” said Stepanov. His English was excellent and only slightly accented. “The Army Council was against it, basically on the moral grounds that we need to be shooting Jews, not talking to them. The Political Bureau felt having someone like Weintraub at the talks might actually speed things up. There is no point in conducting a conference with the Jewish issue hanging over everything like a fog. Best to bring it right down onto the table. The enemy has stated that they want Weintraub there, and we have decided not to oppose it. It would only cause further delays.”

  “I doubt they would have allowed this to be a goyim only affair,” said Brennan. “You know the hebes. They can’t abide the idea that the Gentiles are talking about ‘em behind their backs.”

  “The opposition wasn’t just ideological,” Morehouse told them. “Some of the Council members felt that if we could achieve an Aryan-only conference to discuss an Aryan-only future for at least one segment of our race, it would be a historic achievement, a turning point. I could see their reasoning, but was it really practical? Even as attenuated as the Jewish world power is compared to, say, fifty years ago, it’s still very much a reality, and it’s inherently intertwined with the real-world capitalist power structure. The Jews and the corporate bigwigs in the smoke-filled boardrooms who actually run this godawful cluster-fuck of a society are going to have to sign off on any deal we make anyway, so it’s not as if there’s any way we could keep them out of the process. It’s time the funny little man came out from behind the curtain, and we all get a good look at Oz the Great and Powerful. In a way this will in fact be something of a historic occasion in more ways than one, the first diplomatic and political assembly brought together to resolve a specific issue wherein the Jews are acknowledged as a power in their own right, and to which they have sent their own representative.”

  “I’m surprised any Jew would even agree to sit at the same table with us, after they’ve spent the past hundred years demonizing and de-humanizing anyone and everything even mildly to the right of center,” said Barrow.

  “Until the neo-conservatives came along, and they decided that a bogus right-wing ideology better served their needs,” pointed out Stepanov. “We naturally tend to think of Jews in our own terms, as left-wing and liberal, or as neo-conservative rightists. But in fact they have no world view at all other than their own survival and domination, which is the basis of their entire religion. There is an old rabbinical saying that the first question to be asked about everything is: ‘Is it good for the Jews?’”

  “They never had any reason to sit down with us before,” said Morgan. “We weren’t shooting ‘em. Thar’s something about a gun pointed at a guy’s head that kinder gets his attention.”

  “Oh, Mr. Weintraub will definitely be a spoiler,” said Anderson. “He’s the neo-con’s neo-con. His public comments and speeches make old Jug-Ears himself look sane and moderate by comparison. The red, white, and blue must wave over every Middle Eastern oil field in the name of democracy and civilization. We must be ready at the drop of a hat to slaughter a million Muslims or a million white people in Idaho if it’s necessary to save one Jewish life in Tel Aviv, and he’s made clear in the relatively short time he’s been in office that he doesn’t mind getting his hands bloody. We know that as deputy director of DHS he was personally involved in that horror they inflicted on Cathy Frost.”

  “Then he belongs on Third Section’s to do list, not at a goddamned conference table!” snapped Morgan angrily.

  “If the talks break bad, I’ll let you kill him, John. Who else?” asked Barrow.

  Anderson looked at his notes. “The American military will be represented by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, Air Force Major General Charles Brubaker, aka Bomber Brubaker. His military strategic and tactical sense consists of dropping as much explosives as possible on as many people as possible to make sure you get the right ones. Brubaker has impeccable neo-con credentials, of course. He personally ordered the carpet-bombing raids on Mecca and Medina, thus outraging every Muslim in the world and leading to the Thousand Generations of Jihad fatwa from the assembled Muslim imams of the world. He also authorized and defended the gang-rape of Muslim women in American interrogation facilities to soften up male relatives believed to have information. They wanted to send Willis Peasley as well, the director of FATPO, who is a retired Army general, but we did put our foot down with regards to niggers. This conference is strictly seg. Human beings only.”

  “And they went for that?” asked Barrow.

  “The official story is now that Peasley himself refused to come because he won’t negotiate with racist terrorists, and he is supposed to be on the verge of resigning. Interesting, if true,” commented Morehouse. “It may indicate fissures in the government over the negotiations and what direction they should take, but it also may be a convenient fiction to get around the stumbling block of our refusal to negotiate with monkoids at Longview. There are no other known blacks or major Hispanic players in their proposed delegation, and that’s also an interesting development. When it comes to the crunch and serious American interests are involved, de cullud folk seem to have been relegated to the back of the bus again. Stanhope and Vice President Fairfax will be taking a lot of flak from the NAACP and Black Congressional Caucus for not having any nappy heads at the table. They’re apparently willing to take that heat rather than delay the proceedings, which I find fascinating.”

  “In essence, what they’re doing here is throwing a hundred years of so-called equality out the window and tacitly admitting it was hogwash all along! I’m still astounded they are willing to do that. What the hell are they up to?” muttered Anderson, his brow furrowed.

  “Who else?” asked Barrow.

  “You boys will be additionally honored with the presence of Senator Jeanette Galinsky from California, another Jew,” said Anderson. “Also the presumed official feminist delegate.”

  “Uh, are we going to be talking about feminism?” asked Barrow, his eyebrows raised. “Why, for God’s sake? What the hell does that have to do with ending the war?”

  “God knows,” said Anderson with a shrug. “My guess is that Galinsky is there as a sop to the PC and pervert left. Maybe she’s going to try to delay and confuse things by demanding that we don’t force women in the Northwest Republic to wear veils.”

  “I seen Senator Galinsky on TV,” said Carter Wingfield, a South Carolinian who looked like a middle-aged, evil Elvis. “She oughta be made to put on a veil before she comes to the table. God damn, somebody whomped that woman with the ugly stick!”

  “It is more likely that she will be there as the personal representative of Hillary Clinton,” said Stepanov. “She and Mrs. Clinton are very close, politically and personally.”

  “I think she holds the Wicked Witch’s watching brief on the proceedings, and will be reporting to her personally,” agreed Morehouse.

  “Carpet munchers,” said McGrew laconically.

  “They are reputed to have had a lesbian relationship in the past, yes,” said Morehouse fastidiously. “They seem to be more political allies now than anything else. It will be interesting to see just what contribution Senator Galinsky does make. She will speak with her mistress’s voice, so we need to listen. Remember, Hillary still runs the country, or runs the presidency anyway, through her daughter.”

  “Hillary herself isn’t coming?” asked Barrow.

  “Not that we know of, no,” said Anderson. “Of course, her health is bad, and she’s getting a little long in the tooth. Living proof that only the good die young, I suppose. But her absence from the conference is another one of those portents that leaves itself open to a variety of interpretations. They may not be as united as it seems when it comes to this peace conference.”

  “One thing,” said McGrew. “Threesec has some people on Capitol Hill, of course, an
d we’ve gotten some intercepts, e-mails and memos between Hillary Clinton, the Galinsky woman, and Howard Weintraub, as well as some others in what appears to be a tight little lefty-Jew clique within the government. Those three especially have been getting quite chummy over the past few months. In these memos and e-mails they’re speaking Yiddish, and they’ve been overheard speaking Yiddish in conversations in the Capitol cafeteria, in the corridors, etcetera. Apparently the Wicked Witch of the West is quite fluent. They’re using it as a kind of code between themselves. They’ve even made a running joke about it with the other members of Congress, their staff and government bureaucrats. They call themselves the Shtick-Talkers, which is a takeoff on the Wind-Talkers, those Navajo Indian radio operators the Marines used in the South Pacific during World War Two. They claim none of us evil Nazi-type dudes would ever be able to listen in on them. What I can foresee happening is that during the conference all kinds of enemy jaw-jacking is going to be going on behind our backs in a language which isn’t exactly an Aryan forté. Right now Threesec has access to Volunteers or assets who speak over sixty languages, including Asian and African languages if necessary, since we have veterans who were in Indonesia or the Philippines or Somalia. But no actual Yiddish speakers, for obvious reasons. We do however have a number of Germans, including Comrade Schuster here who can at least make a stab at deciphering it. We need to stick a couple of our real Jerry Rebs in with you guys, General Barrow.”

  “God, I’d rather face a FATPO SWAT team,” said Schuster in disgust. “Yiddish is based on a very degenerate form of medieval Low German, true, but it’s full of Polish and Russian and Hebrew words as well as its own slang, they have thrown away any kind of proper grammar or syntax so it’s just mush, plus there are a number of Yiddish dialects depending on what godforsaken shtetl in Russia or Poland the individual Jew’s ancestors came from. All of it filtered through a hundred years on the Lower East Side. I understand there’s now even an officially recognized Hollywood dialect. To an educated German-speaker it reads like the writing of an illiterate moron, and it sounds like the babbling of a drunken baby. I’ll be willing to go and take a stab at it, but…”

  “We need you to take over as Political Officer for the German division we will be forming when we make the jump to NDF, Fred,” said Brennan. “We’ve got our first three hundred men ear-marked and we’ll be getting them together in a couple of weeks, probably in the Medford district. We’ve even gotten hold of some old-style Stahlhelm helmets for them.”

  “Frank, we’ve got a Yiddish speaker in Three Brigade,” spoke up Dortmunder.

  “We do?” asked Barrow in surprise. “Who?”

  “Volunteer Brock. You know, that kid I told you about who was raised by Jews in Frisco?”

  “Raised by Jews, Commandant?” asked Brennan suspiciously. “How the hell did that happen?”

  “It Takes A Village,” replied Dortmunder. “Some kike lawyer was high bidder on the kid when he was eight.”

  “Ah, jayz, the poor bastard!” hissed Brennan.

  “We checked him out when he first came in, and he’s legit,” Dortmunder. “He’s from here originally. They sent his father to Walla Walla and made off with his sister to God knows where. When he finally hit the road he tried to slaughter his Yiddishe papa kosher-style with a butcher knife. There’s a hatecrime and attempted murder warrant out on him down in California.”

  “How’d we get him?” inquired Barrow.

  “He was one of Father Andy’s kids.”

  Brennan kissed his right thumb and crossed himself. “I knew Father Andy, may his soul rest in peace. If this lad passed muster with Andrew, then sure he’s true blue.”

  “And he speaks Yiddish?” asked McGrew.

  “He says he does.”

  “We’ll need him in the delegation,” decided McGrew. “We’ll make him an aide de camp or something so he hangs around in the background listening.”

  “Uh, there’s a problem with that,” said Dortmunder. “He’s under right now. I sent him and your lady, the lovely Nightshade, into that Assembly of God church over in Bellevue to latch onto that paratroop Captain Regenthal and see what he’s up to. I understand that’s a priority.”

  “It is,” said McGrew. “We need to watch our backs and make sure we don’t end up getting caught with our pants down by some tub-thumping vigilante force who think they’ve got to kill a Nazi for Christ. Have they come up with anything?”

  Dortmunder shook his head. “Not yet, but they’ve only been in there a week or so. They need time.”

  “Okay, that’s a minor detail,” decided Barrow. “Don’t shut him down yet. We’ll wait and see how this shapes up and if we still think it’s a good idea we can extract him just before we go to Longview.”

  “And I want Nightshade back ASAP,” said McGrew. “I have something else I need to get her onto. Let’s say another month on this church gig, then we’ll have to go at it from another angle.”

  “Noted,” said Barrow. “Any more info on the American negotiators?”

  Stepanov spoke. “Brubaker, Weintraub, and Stanhope will form a kind of troika, as we used to say back in the old country, but they will of course be accompanied by their own entourage of experts, aides, flunkies, spin doctors, and general nomenklatura flotsam.”

  “Does anyone spot the one interesting aspect of that team?” asked Morehouse. “Every one of those men holds a position in the United States government where the Northwest Volunteer Army has assassinated his immediate predecessor in office.”

  “Maybe that’s one of the reasons why they’ve finally agreed to negotiate,” said Barrow. “Applesmash and Pigkill made the point good and proper. These bastards in the United States power structure are starting to understand that they personally are no longer immune from facing the consequences of their actions. It’s one thing to cut ten thousand white jobs and hire ten thousand Mexicans, or order some defenseless little country bombed into rubble by cowards who hide in the sky, or pass a law that pays for murdering a million babies with tax dollars, when you can let yourself off with a bit of genteel brooding by the fire in the study over a snifter of brandy and a good cigar. It’s another thing to commit acts of tyranny when you understand that tomorrow morning you may step out your front door and a bullet will splatter your brains all over the wall. Why do you think there’s such a shortage of FBI agents these days, so short that they had to bring in special thugs from FATPO? The FBI never minded getting a little blood all over their Gucci shoes, until it was their blood. Then all of a sudden most of their agents seem to have discovered an urgent need for a career change.

  “I think we’ve always underestimated just what personal, physical cowards the people who run the United States are. America gave them this wonderful, luxurious good life in exchange for their moral blindness and their collusion in the insane imperial dreams of the neo-cons. These people enjoy the hell out of that good life, they’ve gotten soft as butter, and they have no intention whatsoever of sacrificing their own lives so that they can’t enjoy all those American goodies any more. The problem with the old Movement always boiled down to the fact that the white man was a coward, too. As bad as things were for us, life was just too sweet. We had our color televisions and our air conditioners and our refrigerators full of beer, and so for generations we refused to do the only thing we knew would actually change things and give our children a better world. Now we have found our courage. Our hearts are whole again, while those of our enemies are hollow and empty. And now we have finally forced them to the table.”

  “Now tell me you ain’t a politician?” said Wingfield with a laugh.

  “Yeah, Frank. You can make an off the cuff speech like that, and you still think you’re not up for these negotiations?” said Morgan with a low chuckle. “I’m looking forward to hearing you speechify at those sons of bitches all day long.”

  “What does our negotiating position look like, going in?” Barrow wanted to know. “Do we have any idea yet what they
’re going to be throwing at me?”

  Anderson nodded. “We do have a few sources, so yes, we’re starting to get a vague outline. We’re running into several problems, primary among them being prisoner release. They’re starting to get hinky on that. As you know, back when they first approached us last month, we kicked off this whole episode by demanding good faith prisoner releases, starting with the Old Man. They turned us down flat on him, which was hardly unexpected, and we have been told from Florence that he understands and he’s willing to wait. He honestly doesn’t care what happens to him so long as we can secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. The Feds have so far released about three hundred Volunteers and other white political prisoners, but they are balking at giving us not just the Old Man back, but a number of other key prisoners and some of the more sensitive individuals like Cathy Frost.”

  “I’m amazed they let Cathy live at all,” said Barrow. “You would think they would have made her disappear long ago.”

  Morehouse nodded. “I’m surprised as well. She does have a case pending before the U.N. and the World Court in the Hague, and it finally looks like the international legal community has screwed up the guts to take on the United States on the issue of torture. At least the torture of good-looking white women as opposed to dark-skinned Muslims, whom the Americans have tortured all they wanted to since the days of Abu Ghraib. Plus our girls at the women’s detention block were able to able to smuggle those horrible pictures out of Pullman and get them to the European media. She’s become something of a celebrity, and I guess they figure it would be a little embarrassing if she vanished or ended up dead in her cell.”