The Hill of the Ravens Page 3

  At ten o’clock on an early October morning, somewhat more than forty years after the beginning of the Northwest War of Independence, Don Redmond of the Bureau of State Security took a call in his office. “Colonel Redmond?” said a brisk young male voice. “Last time I checked,” said Don. “Unless the Americans have cloned me now, and I’m the clone.”

  “Uh, I beg your…is this Colonel Redmond?” asked the voice, slightly flustered.

  “This is Don Redmond, Captain Barringer. What can I do you for?”

  “The State President would like to see you, sir. Immediately.” “On my way,” said Redmond. He put his pocket com away,

  but before he got up, Don rang his immediate superior, Major General Stephen Capshaw, and told him of the summons.

  “Yes, I know. His Excellency’s office advised me already that they wanted a word with you,” replied Capshaw in his crisp Oxonian tones. The correct form of address was actually “Mr. President,” but like many veterans, Stephen Capshaw was still a part of the old world he grew up in as well as the new one his generation has created. The commanding officer of BOSS still affected the mannerisms of the old British upper class, all the way down to eschewing a uniform for rustic Lancashire tweeds and keeping a pipe rack of Dunhill briars in his office. It was not the first time that Don had carried out special troubleshooting assignments directly for President Morgan, which presented a break in the chain of command and a sticky problem in protocol, complicated by the fact that Redmond was also the State President’s son in-law. It might have proven to be an uncomfortable work relationship; Redmond was the guy in the office who had married the boss’s daughter. But his combat record with the SS during Operation Strikeout and his long history of skillful political police work let him stand on his own two feet. At Redmond’s insistence, the State President and his aides were always scrupulous in observing the proper procedure and keeping his CO informed as to where he was and what he was doing, with a resulting absence of interdepartmental friction.

  Redmond walked down the corridor of the Bureau’s offices in the Temple of Justice and stepped outside into the cool fall air. He did not have far to go. To his left rolled the wide green expanse of the Capital mall. The sward was dotted with statues of Adolf Hitler, George Lincoln Rockwell, Richard Butler and Bob Matthews, all of whom now shared the fate of countless past heroes and statesmen in becoming a perch and outhouse for flocks of pigeons. There was the War Circle ringing the Tivoli fountain, containing memorials like the gutted shell of a burned-out American tank from Operation Strikeout, the number plate from the fin of a North Korean-made missile, and a strange-looking art deco pillar made from captured American helmets. Looking to his right Don saw the State President’s official residence sitting on a small hillock less than three hundred yards away. There was a sudden flare of light in the crisp blue sky. Redmond shaded his eyes and looked far to the south. There he saw the soaring match-like flame of a shuttle rocket taking off from the Centralia spaceport thirty miles away, outbound for one of the NAR’s four space stations. Redmond silently breathed a prayer to the All-Father for the safe passage of the shuttle, for he knew that it carried badly needed supplies and equipment that would eventually reach his eldest son, who stood on the surface of another world inconceivably far away. Then he added a quick postscript to Yahweh as well. Redmond was a National Socialist, but he felt it never hurt to cover all the bases.

  Don Redmond was a medium-sized man of middle age, smooth-shaven with dark brown hair that was going lightly salt-and-pepper. He wore a nondescript, dark pin-striped suit with cuffed trousers, wide lapels and a broad tie and overcoat in the current favored quasi-1930s cut. A broad fedora hat sat on his head at a rakish angle. Fashion in the Northwest Republic was odd. In some respects it was a matter of government policy, which demanded as total a differentiation as could be achieved between Northwesterners and the crawling chaos of the United States. There were strong historical and psychological reasons to believe that clothes did indeed make the man and the woman, and that popular dress carried a significant role in shaping and channeling thought processes. The Ministry of Culture accordingly took a strong interest in sartorial affairs. Having succeeded in turning the clock back to the 1930s, the chic designers of Seattle were now trying for the 1890s. They were reintroducing leg-

  of-mutton sleeves and long lace-up boots for women as well as bowler hats, sweeping moustaches, sideburns and high winged collars with cravats instead of ties for men. This might seem an incongruous national dress for the only country on earth with effective interplanetary travel, but there it was. The current rage for moustache and Picadilly weepers were a little much for Redmond, who had been clean-shaven all his life, so he stuck with his zoot suit and managed to do so without looking like a cop. He walked across the lawn and stopped outside, mingling with a small group of European tourists to watch the changing of the guard ceremony in front of the House of Parliament. Today it was the Special Service Scots Guards Regiment. Bagpipes wailing, the SS troops were resplendent in their black dress jackets with silver piping and crimson swastika armbands, a spectacle of swirling kilts in the Royal Stuart tartan and feathered blue Glengarry bonnets, Cairngorm brooches pinning their shoulder plaids.

  The single Special Service guard in dress black at the gate house had a com on, and the news reader was talking about a school of dolphins that had been seen jumping in the south end of the Puget Sound. It appeared as if the Northwest Defense Force’s naval and air patrols had succeeded in putting a stop to Korean and Japanese poaching in the north Pacific, and the friendly sea creatures seemed definitely to be on the way back from threatened extinction. “Morning, Colonel,” said the officer. A large Doberman pinscher dog sat his haunches outside the guardhouse, panting and staring at Redmond.

  “Good morning, Hank,” said Don. “You or the box?”

  “The box, sir,” said the soldier. “You might fool me. The box you can’t.”

  “I don’t think I could fool you, Hank,” chuckled Redmond. “Sir, since you’re in BOSS you know about the surgically altered double for Big Bill Vitale that the ONR tried to slip into the Republic two months ago,” said the guard.

  “Actually, I was the one who caught him,” replied Redmond reminiscently.

  “Yes, sir. The box, please.”

  “You got it,” said Redmond. He put his left thumb onto the security disk. There was a faint tickle as the subatomic light beams analyzed his DNA and matched it with the security clearance database. The little light on the box blinked green. “Authenticate,”

  ordered a firm and authoritative male mechanical voice. “Redmond, Donald, 726878, BOSS,” said Redmond.

  “Good morning, Colonel,” returned the robot politely. “Catch any bad guys lately?”

  “A few,” replied Redmond. “We don’t have many bad guys in the Republic nowadays. We like it that way.”

  “We don’t have many bad guys because of gentlemen like yourself, Colonel,” replied the machine. “Authenticated. Have a good day, sir.”

  “You too, box,” replied Redmond. Like so many citizens of the Republic he had found himself falling into the habit of talking to robots, even though he knew they were not actually intelligent and had been programmed with random conversational responses based on the identity and voice-inflected mood of the person they interacted with. “Guess you won’t have to unleash Rover,” chuckled Redmond.

  “It would be embarrassing if he were to tear the arm off Miss Sarah’s main man,” agreed the SS guard with a smile. The Doberman was a GELF, a genetically engineered attack dog, controlled by a microchip inserted beneath his fur at the base of his neck that tapped into the animal’s spinal column and communicated directly with his brain. The microchip had been programmed so that the dog would react in a given way to any one of eighty-four external situations, anything from Don pulling a gun on the guard, to someone trying to scale the fence, to an unauthorized person attempting to feed him. The correct commands from a handler with an aut
horized voice pattern could also transmit the necessary neural signals as commands that went right to Rover’s brain cortex, such as “kill!” The dog’s steroid-enhanced muscles were strong enough to smash through a locked door. He could survive for many minutes with a bullet in his heart or his brain, and his surgically implanted polymer teeth were capable of ripping a man in body armor into several pieces. Rover could also sniff out any known explosive compound at a distance of three hundred yards. A handful of these animals were a far more effective and deterrent protection against an assassination attempt against the Republic’s leader than any number of armed guards or electronic devices that might be susceptible to interdiction or sabotage. The mechanical arm blocking the walkway lifted and Redmond entered the grounds. Two gray squirrels were chasing one another on the trim green lawn beneath the towering Douglas firs, wrestling over an acorn. The dog ignored them.

  The State President’s official residence, formally known as Longview House after the treaty that had brought the Republic into being, was actually the former Washington state governor’s mansion. The house stood in the shadow of the old domed state capitol building that now housed the Republic’s Parliament. Longview House was the oldest structure still standing on the Capital mall. Originally built in 1908, the two-story Georgian Revival mansion of mellow red brick was erected in a hurry and never intended to last, but it was now over a century and a half old. After the signing of the Longview Accords the retreating Federals had attempted to burn the building, but had been prevented from doing so and the fire doused by one of the janitors while the janitor’s fourteen year-old grandson had held half a dozen FBI agents and U. S. Marshals at bay at gunpoint. A small but graceful marble monument topped by statues of both grandfather and grandson now graced the high ceilinged vestibule. At the present the presidential home was furnished with many of the fine collection of American, British and French antiques from the late 18th and early 19th centuries which had graced the dining rooms, offices, and bedrooms of successive Washington chief executives since 1909 when the first governor moved in. The NDF had found these items hidden in a warehouse charged with explosives, wired and ready to blow. A young Volunteer had earned himself an Iron Cross by disarming them. The Volunteer was now in his late fifties. He had no statue, but he did have a bar in Post Falls, Idaho where his framed Iron Cross hung on the wall and anyone who wore the War of Independence ribbon was assured of a free drink and a meal.

  Don stepped into the warm carpeted vestibule. The SS guards in full dress black uniform who stood on either side of the hallway with slung Schmeisser Mark XII submachine guns eyed him but said nothing. Another GELF dog lay on the carpet, a German shepherd who regarded Redmond with a lazy eye as possibly lunch, possibly not. The sergeant at the reception desk was a new man he had never seen before. He checked Redmond’s ID and thumbprint again, and told him, “The State President is waiting for you in the library, sir. For the record, may I examine your sidearm, please?” Redmond handed over his automatic pistol, a charged energy clip and an extra magazine of slender, deadly copper-jacketed bullets without cartridges. The man punched the serial number into his desktop computer and ran it. “Yep, that’s you.”

  “New security procedure?” asked Redmond.

  “The ONR might duplicate your features, Colonel,” replied the SS sergeant with a smile. “They might even arm their assassin with one of these new Gary Wilkerson Mark IV kine handguns. But they might forget to duplicate the serial number. A little extra random check General Hammond thought up.”

  “Good for him,” said Redmond approvingly.

  “These GWs as good a piece as they say?” asked the sergeant curiously as he handed the pistol back.

  “Yup. I flip up the holographic sight on this infant, I can drive a nail at four hundred yards. BOSS likes to stay ahead of the curve, but I thought you guys in the Special Service Protective Branch would have been issued with GWs by now?” queried Redmond.

  “We got a familiarization day on the range with the GW Mark III, but General Hammond, he’s a real traditionalist. Still loves that smell of cordite.”

  “Hey, sarge, don’t knock it. Villainous saltpetre won this country for us twice, once against the Indians and once against ZOG.” “Bet you could have used a few of these Wilkersons back in the old days, eh, Colonel?” asked the SS man. The sergeant had spotted the green, white and blue War of Independence ribbon on Redmond’s wide pinstriped lapel.

  “Wouldn’t know, sarge. They never actually let me go strapped, which was a valid precaution. I probably would have shot myself playing with a piece. I was just a gopher, really. Never fired a shot in anger, so to speak, until the Missoula incursion. I was a senior in Sandpoint and not commissioned yet when Clinton III decided she wanted to play grab-ass with the Northmen. They threw us cadets and everybody else into the salient. All they could give us were some Valmet AK knock-offs we’d smuggled in from Finland, and three loaded magazines apiece. That and one of Doctor Cord’s first plasma projectors mounted on the back of an old Toyota pickup truck, but it was enough to bring down four of the American bombers and a couple of Cruise missiles. Without their air cover, the Americans never could fight their way out of a wet paper bag. We threw the bastards all the way back to Minnesota.”

  “Er, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so, you look a bit young…”

  Redmond laughed good-naturedly. “I was young. You’re new on this detail, so you haven’t seen me around, but you’ll get used to me going in and out. Sometimes business, sometimes family. I married the boss’s daughter. I usually get a steak and a few beers for this story, you know. I was twelve years old and I had a route as a paperboy in Bellevue. I didn’t know it, but one of the homes where I delivered the Seattle Times on my bike was a safe house used by the NVA and senior members of the Party who were on the run. I started carrying messages and doing errands for the people there. Hell, I couldn’t even tell you when I figured out who they were and what was going on, but I never let on. Then one day I was in the house and there was a new visitor. I recognized this big hillbilly-talking fellow with a beard from the television news. I walked up to him and I said ‘I know who you are. You’re Corby Morgan.’ I looked at the rest of the grownups and said, ‘I may be just a kid but I’m as white as you are. I want to be a Jerry Reb too! Now you’ve either got to kill me or swear me in.’ They swore me in. I became the second youngest member in the history of the Northwest Volunteer Army, the youngest being Commandant Morgan’s daughter Sarah, aged eleven. To tell you the truth, she was what interested me most about that house.”

  “You were with Corby Morgan back in the old days?” exclaimed the SS man, highly impressed. “Port Townsend Flying Column?”

  “No, not the Flying Columns. They were for the hard men, which I wasn’t. I was mostly just an errand boy for Number Two Seattle Brigade under Jock Graham. Even that was only for about the last year or so of the war. After I joined I learned that my uncle and his wife were Jerry Rebs as well. They found out what I was doing, and they hit the roof. Matt and Heather brought me Home as a child after my parents were murdered by Mexicans in North Carolina. I was six years old then. Turned out they were Party people from way before 10/22, but for me to be involved, hey, that was something different! Uncle Matt and John Corbett damned near got into it up close and personal when Matt found out he’d sworn me in. They’d always bent over backwards for us kids not to be involved.”

  “Holy shit!” gasped the SS man. “I mean sorry, sir, I apologize for my language, but the name just hit me. Your uncle was Matt Redmond?”

  “Yeah. My father was Steve Redmond, his younger brother. And before you ask, he was lawyer, I’m sorry to say. Our family skeleton.”

  The sergeant turned white. “Oh, Jesus, sir, I didn’t mean no…”

  “I can hardly take offense, sarge, since I volunteered the information. I’ve learned down through the years that’s the best way to deal with it. No need for whispers, just get it out in the open. I’ve come
to accept it. In the old days there were hundreds of thousands of lawyers, and all those swine had to be related to somebody. The truth cannot offend, it simply is.”

  “Hey, Colonel, thanks for the story. I guess I owe you a steak and a beer or two,” said the sergeant with relief.

  “Maybe I’ll take you up on it some day,” said Redmond with a chuckle. “Anyway, mustn’t keep the main man what counts waiting.”

  “No, sir, by no means. Go right in. The President is waiting for you in the library.”

  Don knew the mansion well since he and his family spent their holidays there, but the library was always Don Redmond’s favorite room in the entire house. Any library was, for that matter. One of the things that made Don such a good investigator was a naturally inherited, insatiable curiosity and desire to gain knowledge, especially knowledge of the frailty and wickedness of human nature. The books on the mahogany shelves were assembled from private collections around the world; the works of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Count Gobineau, Dietrich Eckart, Alfred Rosenberg, Savitri Devi, Francis Parker Yockey, Nesta Webster, William Gayley Simpson, and George Lincoln Rockwell. Centuries of accumulated racial wisdom seemed to pervade the room. Many of these books had spent long years in secret hiding places to preserve them from confiscation and destruction by the Zionist authorities in a dozen countries. More than one NVA Volunteer had gotten their revolutionary start with the simple but dangerous assignment of concealing and transporting forbidden books and literature, one step ahead of teams of U. S. Marshalls who had hunted them with Federal court orders for the books’ destruction in the hungry incinerators of ZOG. The pictures on the walls were watercolors and engravings of Palouse Falls and the Dalles area of the Columbia River gorge, part of the original furnishings of the large and high-ceilinged room. They as well had been preserved from the Federal flames by the valiant janitor and his boy.