The Hill of the Ravens Page 28

  “Oh, Christ!” moaned Don. “Ma’am, I…”

  “Don’t be stupid!” she ordered briskly. “It was half a century ago and if I hadn’t learned to accept it and to live with it, I wouldn’t be here. After another twenty-four hours or so I was able to crawl out of the building to the highway. A motorist saw me in his headlights

  just before he ran over me. He stopped and called for help. A team of paramedics from Tenino responded. There was also a Thurston County sheriff’s deputy with them, a young man of twenty-two, just out of his training course in Olympia, and this was his first night duty. That young man’s name was Ed McCanless. I’d tell you all the rest, but I don’t have time. Colonel, whatever else you must ask us over this Trudy Greiner business, can we leave the so-called background out when my husband returns?”

  “You got it,” said Redmond. “Absolutely,” agreed Nel.

  Ed McCanless returned and sat down again. “Young woman. Sold a Crowley Thoth Tarot deck and a pack of black votive candles,” he said to Brittany.

  “She’s casting a curse, or trying to,” said Brittany. “Do you know her?”

  “She’s a friend of Danielle Haywood’s,” said Ed. “Don’t know her name.”

  “The little black-haired girl?” asked Brittany. “Yup.”

  “I’ll get in touch with Danielle and see what I can do to put a stop to whatever she’s planning,” said Brittany. She looked at the men. “Poor kid is probably upset because a man dumped her and now she’s going to try and get even with him or with the girl she was dumped for, or both. That’s no reason to start cutting loose with negative psychic energy. I try to be responsible, Colonel. I’d appreciate it if you would mention that fact to Sarah.”

  “I will, ma’am,” Don assured her. He knew that his wife was an extremely high-ranking priestess in the Wiccan community. Sarah seldom volunteered information on that part of her life, and he never asked. Theirs was an ancient division of labor in Aryan marriages since the beginning of time. Don was the man and he dealt with the material world, while Sarah was the woman who dealt with the home, the spiritual and metaphysical aspects of life. “I would like to ask you some things about the meeting which took place in the safe house in Hoodsport the night before the Ravenhill incident.”

  “When they were setting up the attack on the Special Criminal Court in Port Orchard, yes. I remember. I was security officer for that meeting,” said Ed. “I followed SOP to the letter. I had some of the

  latest anti-bugging detection gear our geeky science kids had come up with, and I swept the whole house for any hidden microphones or fiber optics. There was nothing. Then when our people arrived I swept them for bugs and made sure everyone’s cell phone was turned off when they entered the house.”

  “Including Trudy Greiner’s phone?” asked Redmond.

  “Yes, although in her case it wasn’t necessary since hers was on the fritz anyway. She had some Chinese off-brand phone and the communication satellite it was routed through had crashed into the ocean that morning. The chinks were never as on top of their space program as we are. Colonel, as lame as this sounds in view of what happened that morning, I want you to know that I did my job! I will swear on my deathbed that no one in that house during that sitdown was wired or made any kind of contact with anyone they shouldn’t have been in contact with!”

  “Trudy Greiner arrived at the safe house at what time?” asked

  Redmond.

  “Ah, a little before one o’clock in the morning, I believe,”

  recalled McCanless. “She was coming from Bremerton.” “And she left when?”

  “Sometime around three o’clock. She was supposed to be helping Joe Cord and Dave Leach at the emergency aid station which was somewhere to the north.”

  “Poulsbo,” Brittany reminded him.

  “Yes, of course you’re correct, my love,” acknowledged McCanless with a nod. “My understanding is that she didn’t show up.”

  “And she left in her own car, a white Nissan?” asked Nel.

  “Yes, so I recall,” said McCanless. “Why? Where did she go?” “We don’t know. That vehicle was never found, either by us

  or so far as we can tell by the local authorities or the Feds either. Mr. McCanless, I know this was a very long time ago, but please try and remember. We know that someone called Major Woodrow Coleman of the FATPOs at almost precisely two o’clock that morning,” said Redmond. “Did Trudy Greiner leave the room where the meeting was being held around that time, even for a few moments? Or anyone else, for that matter?”

  McCanless shook his head. “Colonel, I know it seems odd for me to insist that after all these years I can be positive, but I was security officer in charge of monitoring the meeting and I was also a former policeman, trained to be on the lookout for anything unusual. I meant what I said. I am willing to take my oath even today that no one in that house made any kind of call without my knowledge, nor was anyone out of my line of sight long enough to do so.”

  “Something else has come up,” said Redmond. “Mrs. McCanless, were either of you aware of the fact that while Melanie Young was an openly committed Christian, according to our information Tom Murdock was a follower of the Aesir?”

  “It was fairly common knowledge, yes, among those of us who took an interest in the spiritual aspect of the struggle,” said Brittany. “Most didn’t. Most of the Volunteers were simply ordinary white people who had finally had enough of America’s shit. They only knew that they would rather die than live one more day under ZOG and they didn’t care what God or gods any other white man or woman worshipped.”

  “Did anyone in the Column take an undue interest or offense at the, ah, metaphysical incongruities involved in the Murdock-Melanie situation? Did Joseph Cord do so, for example?”

  “Back to Joe Cord again, eh?” said McCanless with a wry smile. “He must have really pissed you off.”

  “Mmm, well…yeah, kind of,” admitted Redmond with sigh. “Don’t sweat it. He pisses everybody off. I see where you are

  leading, Colonel,” said McCanless. “All I can tell you is that you’re wrong. Joe Cord’s eccentricities in the religious department were just that, eccentricities. They would never involve treason. As much as I dislike the man, I will swear that’s the truth.”

  “And no one else seemed to object?” pressed Redmond.

  “No one else cared, Colonel. Just as no one ought to care today. We were rather too busy most of the time to worry about such things at all,” said McCanless. “In case you have forgotten, there was a rather large army of political gangsters trying to kill us all.”

  Redmond changed tack. “Mrs. McCanless, one of the things that we are trying to explore as extensively as it’s possible to do after all these years is the exact nature of the personal relationship between Tom Murdock, Trudy Greiner, and Melanie Young. From what we

  have been able to gather it sounds rather like a typical love triangle, but of course under those conditions nothing was typical.”

  “Looking for a motive for Trudy to betray the Column?”

  asked Brittany.

  “Let’s just say I am trying to understand the whole situation. Scope the big picture, so to speak. You were with Murdock longer than most and you’re also a woman. Can you give me any informed insight on that aspect of things?”

  “You mean was there the occasional bit of girl talk between me and Trude and Melanie?” asked Brittany with a rueful smile.

  “Exactly, ma’am,” said Redmond imperturbably.

  “Well, yes. There was some. First off, Melanie Young loved Tom Murdock with a love that was utterly incandescent, and he returned that love. I have never seen anything like it, before or since. That part of our national legend is one hundred per cent true. As for Trudy? She was a brave and noble woman and she ended up being an also-ran, which humiliation I never believed she deserved. I will tell you quite frankly that when Tom Murdock left her for Melanie Young, Trudy was utterly devastated. And do you know what
she did?”

  “What, ma’am?” asked Redmond.

  “She ate it, Colonel,” said Brittany. “She took it right on the chin and she drove on. We had a world to win and personal considerations were secondary. Because her role in life was not of the heart, it was of the blood, and she knew that and accepted it. Trudy Greiner was a political soldier of the Aryan race, Colonel Redmond, at least up until the time she betrayed us all, if indeed she did so. It is part of a soldier’s duty to endure pain. Pain of all kinds. Insofar as I could tell, Trudy endured the pain of Tom Murdock and Melanie Young as she would have endured any bullet or shrapnel wound.”

  “There is one other thing that I need to ask you about,” said Redmond. “I apologize yet again for raking up these particular dry old bones, but one never knows just what may prove to be relevant. It is my understanding that before you joined the Party, both of you were briefly members of the Pierce cult.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” admitted Ed. “If you found that in our files then you also know that back at the turn of the century, Pierce was all there was. The Northwest Migration was only just beginning to

  appear on the radar screen by the middle of the first decade. We were associated with the cult for less than a year, and we both immediately resigned when it finally came out after his death that William Pierce had been a long-term Federal government informant, as did virtually everyone else involved who had any sense of decency or integrity. The day after our resignations Brit and myself called the Old Man, explained who we were, and offered our services. He accepted. We have been completely devoted to the Party ever since. We have had no contact with the remnants of the Piercies since then except very occasionally, and then we urged them to drop all that crap, quit fooling around, and Come Home.”

  “You know what the weirdest thing about all that is, to me?” put in Brittany. “The fact is that to this very day, there are still some poor, wretched white people living in what’s left of the United States who refuse to Come Home, who denounce the Republic because it isn’t all of America. We’re not ideologically pure, you see.”

  “Well, we’re not,” laughed Nel.

  “No, Sergeant, we’re not,” agreed Brittany with a smile. “That’s what so bemuses me. The fact is that Pierce succeeded in his odd way. There are still a few tragic old people who think he’s the Messiah, some kind of prophet who will somehow rise from the grave and restore all of America to our people at one magical swoop. They think that The Turner Diaries is just around the corner. They don’t understand that it’s already happened, right here in the Northwest, and they would rather live surrounded by the living mud than Come Home and give up their beloved illusions. It’s so sad…”

  “Yes, ma’am, I am aware of that phenomenon,” said Redmond. “I am also aware that in most cases it isn’t quite as esoteric as you think with those people. I know because President Morgan gets hate mail from the Piercies to this day, and it passes across my desk in case any of them might be nutty enough to try something, against him or against the Old Man. It’s really the Old Man they hate. Every religion has to have its devil, its principle of ultimate evil, and the Old Man is the Pierce cult’s devil. Has been for a very long time, even before the Old Man himself Came Home. He did the ultimate evil in their eyes. He proved that he was right, and their great guru William Pierce was wrong, and they will never forgive him for it. These people would quite literally rather exist in the living hell of multi-

  racial America than Come Home and thereby admit that the Old Man was right. It is completely irrational, but then our race has always been capable of great irrationality. Now, I have a purely personal question, just to satisfy my own curiosity. You are practitioners of the Old Religion,” said Redmond “What do you feel when you hear our National Anthem?”

  “Colonel, if you have read my file then you know that seven months after the Olympic Flying Column was destroyed, I was arrested in Spokane by the FBI,” said Brittany. Ed started to say something. “Ed, no!” she said sharply. “You did absolutely the right thing when you turned and walked away back down the street! There were too many of them! If you had pulled down on them then we’d both be dead!”

  Ed started to say something, angry and upset and ashamed. Redmond raised his hand. “Sir, General Order Number Eight was not issued by the NVA for no reason. It was vitally necessary, and it was also an order. You were duty bound to obey it. Since you are both here and together, sir, it is entirely obvious to me that you did in fact do the right thing. Please continue, Mrs. McCanless.”

  “They never bothered to charge me with anything. By that time we’d moved beyond all that legal bullshit. I was white, I had a gun, so I was a Jerry Reb, end of story. ZOG sent me to the women’s camp in Pullman. I will not go into what happened to me. It was in some ways worse than what happened when I was seventeen, but it was long ago, it is over, and it’s not important now.” She glanced over at her husband. “I will tell you that when I was in Pullman Federal Detention Facility, Cathy Frost was kept three cells down and across the corridor from me. The rest of us were warehoused in large bay-like cells with twenty or thirty women in each. Overcrowded, but you could at least stand up and move around a bit, sit against a wall and meditate, and we had a thin pallet each we could stretch out on. Cathy had her own cell, all four by four by four of it. Those monsters used to fold her up like paper when they’d finished with her, to stuff her back inside. Every third or fourth night, for six months, I heard the officers of the law of the United States of America come and take her to the interrogation room, where they desperately tried to force her to confess and name those whom they wanted her to name. And every night she was in there, at her own request, we did the only thing

  we could do for her. All night long, at three or four minute intervals necessary to recover our voices, all ninety women on that block sang. We sang with every ounce of our hearts and souls, our voices sometimes even drowning out the sound of her screams of mortal agony. Over and over again, we sang Cathy’s favorite hymn. That was A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.

  “The Federal guards would come in and hit us with water hoses. They dragged us out of the cells by our hair and shocked us with electric cattle prods. They beat us with their nightsticks, with padlocks in socks, they flogged us with stretched-out wire coat hangers to try and silence us, but we kept singing, and after a time they stopped trying to prevent us. It was as if they understood that we would never be broken, and all of a sudden it was they who were afraid of us. We sang the hymn in English, and because there were women from many different nations among us, after a while we could sing it in the original German. In French. In Norwegian. In Russian. In Italian. In Polish. In Afrikaans. The words of that hymn are burned into my memory in a dozen languages. Cathy Frost was a believing Christian, and regardless of our own religious beliefs we all gave her without stint that which she needed to survive and triumph over what those beasts who wore suits as if they were men did to her. That hymn was a form of magic, Colonel. It was then and it is today. It was written by a great man who was touched with the divine spirit, and it was sanctified by centuries of faith. No, sir, I do not begrudge my Christian fellow citizens of this Republic one single word of our national anthem. Cathy Frost earned it for them. Every word, every note, every syllable. I sang it with pride thirty-odd years ago, Colonel, as a Maiden. I sing it with pride today as a Crone. And I know that neither the God nor the Goddess take offense, for they were always admirers of courage wherever it is found.”

  VIII.

  And now my boy, I’ve told you why on autumn morns I sigh, As I recall my comrades all from dark old days gone by.

  We fought the scum and made them run with rifle and grenade. May heaven keep the men who sleep from the ranks of the Old Brigade!

  Where are the men who stood with me when history was made? They set us free from tyranny! The Boys of the Old Brigade!

  They met with Dragutin Saltovic in his dressing room at the Seattle concert hall. “Do you like
Rachmaninoff, Colonel?” asked the great pianist, his accent barely perceptible after all the years he had spent in the Northwest. He was slim and elegant, his flowing pony-tailed mane and his large sweeping moustache pure white. He sat in an armchair completely at ease, wearing casual slacks and a turtle-necked sweater, puffing on a briar pipe, swirling cognac in a round-bottomed snifter. “I am doing a special performance tonight with the Seattle Philharmonic and Choir, dedicated to Rachmaninoff’s work. We will be starting with the piano concertos and working up to the Requiem.”

  “I’m afraid I won’t be able to make it tonight, sir, but my wife and I have both heard you in concert before, and my daughter Eva has a large number of your CDs in her music collection. She is a great admirer of yours,” Don told him.

  “I will be happy to procure you and your family tickets to any of my performances, once I return from Europe. So, tell me, how may I be of assistance to the Bureau of State Security?” asked Saltovic politely.

  “We’re working on a somewhat unusual case. It involves something that occurred during the War of Independence. If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like to get a little background on your personal involvement with the revolution first. We have our files, of course, but it’s always more instructive to hear these things at first hand.”