The Hill of the Ravens Page 34

  “I think they wanted the bounty,” corrected Redmond gently. “The United States government now pays sixty thousand dollars a head for any white person apprehended trying to enter the Republic. Dead or alive.”

  “Maybe. Anyway, I had an old .357 Magnum from my grandaddy that was a sheriff, and he also had some ammunition stashed he told us about when he was on his deathbed. The cartridges were old but they were factory, not reloads, and so they still worked. I shot a couple of the muds and they ran off. We humped Kevin across

  the creek, bleeding like a fountain. The SS picked us up on the white side and the medics did all they could, but he was dead. I calculate Kevin actually died on Homeland soil, so he got what he wanted. I’m glad. He was a good man, Yankee or not. Anyway, I didn’t have no skills or nothing, in North Carolina they don’t let white boys into college no more, leastwise not if they like girls. Whites gotta have a so-called character reference from the right people in order to get beyond high school, only they’re really the wrong people. So I joined the army here in the Republic. Soon as I did my three years in the gray, I put in for the black. I calculate I owe the Corps.”

  “I see,” said Redmond. “That was an honorable decision on your part, comrade.”

  “Comrade?” asked Lieutenant Cullis, brightening. “You a

  Nazi, sir?”

  “I am.”

  “I guess I am too. I had to read White Power and study the Twenty-Five Points of the NSDAP and the Cotswolds Declaration and the Ten Principles and the NSWPP Program and answer questions on ‘em in order to get into the SS. It all made sense to me.”

  “I am a National Socialist, and I am also a detective. That carries with it a certain natural skepticism. Uh, son, you made SS lieutenant in three years, you are placed in charge of the detail guarding the father of our country, and you expect me to believe this Jethro Beaudine act?” inquired Don curiously.

  “I calculate I’m qualified for my job. Did I mention the time when I was sixteen and Sister J. was thirteen and some niggers laid hands on her, sir?” said Cullis quietly. “They never touched a white girl again. Or any girl.”

  “You know, there was a time when white men would have done nothing about that,” commented Redmond.

  “Then they weren’t men, they were yaller dogs. Did I mention what happened to the Somali cops and the FBI men who came after me for hatecrime? I still don’t think they’ve found ‘em all where I left

  ‘em to rot up on Sourwood Mountain or Candletop. I lived in the woods for a few years before we decided to risk Coming Home, Jenny and Kevin and others bringing me food and powder.”

  “Powder?” asked Nel.

  “Because of the Schumer Act hit war kinda hard to get hold of proper weapons and ammo, so I snuck into a machine shop in Wilkesboro and I made myself a black powder rifle,” explained Cullis. “Hit war a flintlock, old Kentucky Daniel Boone type. We had a lotta flints up on Candletop, and you can melt down fishing sinkers and cast old-timey lead balls outta them thangs. You can pan the sodium nitrate out of fertilizer and mix it with sulphur and charcoal and you got yourself black powder. Kept me full of venison and squirrel and rabbit, and I popped me some muds with it as well. Still got that ole home-made piece of mine back in my locker at the SS barracks. Anyway, all that time, we heard stories about this place, this country far to the Northwest, a country where there weren’t nothing but people who looked like us. Sometimes we didn’t even believe that such a place really existed, that it was just something the Jews made up to justify what they were doing to us, but we knew that we had to come here and see. And always we heard of this one name, a name now spoken only in whispers in his own land of birth, the name of that old man sitting down there by the lake cussing the ducks. Do you have any idea what I will do to anyone who ever attempts to harm him?”

  “There’s no need for me to wonder. The SS does not choose men like you lightly, son. I know that. Those pips on your shoulder tell me that you passed some of the most extensive psychological analysis and testing in the world. If you weren’t the best man for this detail, you wouldn’t be here. Glad you made it past the gap, troop,” said Redmond. “Sister J. found herself anybody yet?”

  “Yes, sir, a German, immigrant to the Homeland like us, a commo engineer, real fine feller named Johann. They’re expecting their first baby in about two months. The scan says it’s a boy, and Yo and Jenny agreed he’s going to be named Kevin. Horst Kevin Barkmann.”

  “And when are you two going to quit fooling around on the back stairs when the Old Man isn’t looking and get married?” inquired Redmond. The French girl blushed.

  “Monsieur…!” she protested.

  “I’m a detective, remember?” he reminded her. “So I detect.” “Uh, I ain’t actually ast Céline yet…” mumbled the young

  man, totally nonplussed. “I mean, hell, she’s a nurse, she’s eddjicated,

  and I’m just a peckerwood from down in Carolina. I reckon she knows how I feel about her, though.”

  “I know,” said the French girl, her eyes downcast.

  “You heard the lady. She knows. I suggest you get on the stick, son. We need some time alone with the Old Man, and that will provide you with an excellent opportunity to remedy that little omission.”

  “It might do at that,” agreed Cullis. “Colonel, if you will follow me I will be honored to take you to the President Emeritus of the Northwest American Republic.”

  * * *

  They found the ancient creature sitting on a marble bench looking out over the lake, scowling at the ducks as if they were vile enemies badly in need of chastisement. As they watched, he tossed bread to them, finally luring one of the birds onto land and close enough to him. Then he lashed out with his heavy, silver-topped blackthorn cane with surprising speed. But he was not fast enough. The duck scuttled back into the water, swallowed the bread, and quacked at the Old Man. It sounded for all the world like a jeer.

  In the far-off, largely unremembered time when Aryan racial nationalism in North America had numbered only a few thousand scattered, fragmented and dysfunctional people in a hundred factions who did not yet dream of coalescing into a nation, one of the Movement’s favorite pastimes had been smearing and vilifying the Old Man. Don recalled that one of the more idiotic accusations against the former General Secretary and State President Emeritus was that he had weighed 300 pounds. This had never been anywhere nearly true, but Don remembered some old photos, and he knew that the man before him had once indeed been a portly and Falstaffian character, bearded and often sporting red suspenders and a broad-brimmed hat. Other enemies of the media and Judaic persuasion had called him “an evil Santa Claus.” The massive thick body and the suspenders were gone now, although the beard remained, thin and straggly. The man who was now well entered onto his second century settled back on the bench and leaned on the heavy blackthorn cane with the wrought silver head, patiently waiting for another of the

  ducks to come within striking distance. His hands were white and his knuckles swollen and gnarled, riddled with liver spots. As of old, a broad-brimmed fedora perched rakishly on his head, which beneath the hat was as bald as an egg. His body was shrunken and his shoulders were stooped. The white beard was stained brown with ill-gotten nicotine around veal-colored lips. It flowed from his gaunt face, down over a sunken chest. He wore a tweed jacket, brown corduroy trousers and soft leather brogan-style shoes. His eyes were small and black, sunken in mounds of pallid flesh, and he muttered to himself as Don and Hennie Nel approached. The Father of His Country no longer resembled Falstaff. Now he looked and sounded like an insane garden gnome trying to beat ducks to death. “Barking mad, ek se,” whispered Hennie Nel, shaking his head sadly.

  “Good morning, Mr President Emeritus,” said Don formally. “I am Colonel Donald Redmond from the Bureau of State Security, and this is my partner, Sergeant Hendrik Nel.”

  “Goie mora, sargant,” said the Old Man, continuing to stare out at the lake. “Hoe gaan dit met jou va
n mora?”

  “‘N bieke goed, ‘n bieke slegs,” replied Nel in surprise. “Dankie, Meneer Staatsprasident. Kan ek fra jou van waar het jou geleer die Afrikaans taal om praat?”

  “I was fortunate enough to see South Africa before you hairy-backed rock spiders threw it away. You Afrikaner idiots voted yourself out of existence on March 17th, 1992,” said the Old Man. “I remember the day. I was sitting in an empty corridor in at the Morgan Grenfell merchant investment bank in London. I was a security guard, making sure no one crept in to steal the rich people’s money. Toffee-nosed twits. Gormless gits. Thatcher’s children. That’s where I was the day South Africa died. That is where I was when our Folk’s youngest child disemboweled herself. Now I suppose you want us to invade South Africa and do what your fathers didn’t have the guts to do?”

  “I want what every South African and Rhodesian who ever

  came here wants,” said Nel. “I want to go back to my own true

  huisland.”

  “Your people are now almost gone, Hennie,” Redmond reminded him gently. “There are more Afrikaners here in the Homeland than there are remaining in South Africa.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Jan Van Riebeeck started with less than a hundred men. We can do it again if we ever get the chance. Give us the guns, Meneer Staatspräsident. Give us the weapons, the transport, the supplies, and some money, and we’ll do it ourselves!” said Nel.

  “I wanted to do just that, jong,” croaked the Old Man. “Many years ago when it might have been possible. That is one of the reasons I am now Emeritus. I suppose I should be glad they sent me here instead of having me whacked, pretending ZOG did it and making me a goddamned martyr. Pat Brennan and his so-called Pragmatic Tendency said I was endangering the existence of the Northwest Republic. Got to live in the real world and all that crap. Threw my own words back at me. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit! The existence of the Republic is not important. The existence of the Aryan race is. My views on the matter did not carry. They never did, not really. The result is that I am no longer State President, and I no longer in a position to do any damage to anything except these damned ducks. Can’t do that either anymore. That chawbacon up at the house and his French chippie took my guns away. Any relation to Matt Redmond?” asked the Old Man of Don.

  “I have the honor to be his nephew, sir,” said Don.

  “Any man who bears that name is always welcome in my company, Colonel. Matt and me go back a while, you know.”

  “Yes sir, I know.”

  “Chapel Hill High School, class of 1971, the both of us. Back in ‘70, after Kent State, we spent a great springtime afternoon pelting hippies and commies with rocks and full milk cartons from the lunchrooms on the high school campus.”

  “What is a hippie?” asked Hennie Nel curiously.

  The Old Man ignored him. “God Almighty, do you believe I was once sixteen years old? I don’t believe it myself, most days. Matt went his way and I went mine. Matt used to say about me that there but for the grace of God went he. I said the same thing about him. Matt’s dead now, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, sir. Many years ago.” “Heather too?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mmmm, I kind of thought so, but my memory plays tricks sometimes. Heather was a fine woman. He lucked out there.”

  “So I often heard him say, sir. Tori’s still alive though. And

  Big Bill Vitale. He’s a general in the SS now.”

  “Oh, yeah, Bill Clinton’s by-blow. The one Matt and Heather sent to Sicily so the Mafia could hide him from ZOG. Good for him. They ever tell you that story?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Don. “Actually, you may recall that yourself told us that story. It is now recognized throughout the Republic as one of our most heroic sagas. Your novel about those events was seminal.”

  “My novel was, and is, a facile piece of crap,” replied the Old Man. “It was written in the heat of immediacy before the true implications of those events during the age of the first Clinton were evident. It is a museum piece, and not a very interesting one. It is a cameo snapshot of an epoch of what we now know was very minor madness, although we were really hot and bothered by it at the time. That novel is hopelessly dated. It is completely insufficient to do justice to the times and to the characters, and it deserves to be cast onto the dungheap of history. Events had already passed it by three months after its publication. That is the problem when one writes of contemporary events, and why I always preferred historicals. The situation that existed in the year 1999, when I wrote that book, is now completely irrelevant to anything in the real world. There was a time when we thought the Clintons were the be-all and end-all of liberal evil, and in truth they were bad enough. We forgot the terrible evil that could be done by the pale and soulless white men in the business suits. We forgot that from democracy steps forth the cruelest of tyrants. Little did we know the cataclysm that would follow. The truly bad craziness started afterward, when Bush Two staged his coup in

  2000 and all of a sudden the Constitution was dead and we had a president who was not elected, but appointed by the Supreme Court. A president who was a tool of the most black-hearted and inhuman forces in history, and a moron to boot. Bill Clinton was a wretch and a murderer, a drug-addicted asshole and a traitor who sold military secrets to the Chinese, but he never tried to conquer the world like his bird-brained successor did. Matt and Heather and Tori were genuinely heroic figures beyond any ability of my ridiculously inadequate keyboard fingers to portray. So let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. What is it? You want to put a suit on me and trot me out like a department

  store dummy at some damned ceremonial bullshit function or other? Fine by me, I could use a day out. But I want you to gimme a box of stogies, good ones, and a gallon jug of Jack Daniels or cognac, one of the two. If you want a speech I’ll do that too and I promise I won’t cuss, but for speeches I charge two boxes of cigars and two gallons of hooch. How you get it past the SS and into my grubby little paws is something for you to figure out.”

  “No, sir, we don’t need you for any public or ceremonial occasion. I would just like to ask you a few questions.”

  “That comes with a price too,” the old loon grunted. “You smoke those same Dominican cigars your uncle Matt did?”

  “When I can get them,” said Don. “I don’t have any on me, I’m afraid. I do have a rolled Havana, though.”

  Covetous greed flared in the Old Man’s black fathomless eyes. “That Wilkes County hillbilly up there at the house won’t let me have any smokes, but me being a living goddamned icon and all that crap they won’t actually take it away from me if you give me one,” he said. “Odin might strike ‘em down with lightning, me being such a godlike critter and all.”

  “Sir, I need some information from you,” said Don. “If I give you this cigar and endanger your health against the advice of your physicians, will you promise to help me by telling me the truth as best you can remember it?”

  “Now why would you speak so disrespectful to the father of your country, young man?” snarled the Old Man.

  “Because I really do need to know some things, and I would rather not waste your time and mine if it turns out you’re really crazy as a coot like they say,” replied Redmond calmly. Nel gasped in horror at such blasphemy. Redmond quickly waved him to silence.

  The Old Man cackled with laughter, slapping his knee. “Hot damn, son, I ain’t been insulted in years!” he gasped in mirth. “Jesus Christ on a raft, that’s music to my ears! I used to feed off their hatred and their insults, their lies and their slanders! Hate, boy, hate kept me young all those years! I’ve had nothing but respect and flattery and mooncalf adoration for years now and I’m so sick of it I could puke! Reckon your uncle told you that about me, didn’t he?”

  “He did in fact once remark to me that you were like a punch-drunk boxer who came to enjoy the pain of being hit,” agreed Don.

  “Yeah, I eat it like candy. Guess it must be important then,” said t
he Old Man. “Okay, give me that stogie and then tell me what the hell it is you want. Whatever it is, I’ll give it to you straight. That’s what I spent my life doing, son. Giving it to the world, straight. I’m obliged for the opportunity to do it again.”

  Redmond pulled out one of Morgan’s cigars, removed it from the tube, cut it and placed it in the Old Man’s mouth, then lit it with a match. Nel was rigid with horror. “Sir!” he hissed. “The nurse said…”

  “This is more important, Sergeant,” said Redmond evenly. “More important than my life?” asked the Old Man keenly as

  he drew in on the cigar.

  “It may be, yes, Mr. President Emeritus,” replied Don.

  “Good for you! Duty overrides all. Thanks. Hot damn, that’s cool and fine on my tongue! And to save you the time probing and guessing, I’m pretty much in my right mind today, at least as much as I ever was. Damn, that’s fine tobacco! Gift of the gods, boy, gift of the gods. Okay, son, spill it.”

  “Sir, I’m here to consult you on a case I’m working on now for the Bureau of State Security,” replied Redmond.

  “It must be something really obscure for you to come looking for me, kid. I been out of touch with pretty much everything political ever since Pat Brennan booted me out here to crumble into dust because he was scared I’d invade South Africa, restore the white government, beat him in the general election, make the NS Tendency the dominant force in Parliament, and establish a National Socialist state. Brennan and that little pissant who stabbed me in the back and took over my job as General Secretary. Civil war, my ass! Brennan’s dead now, you know. Old age, no less! But hell, I asked for it. A hundred years on and I still haven’t learned never to trust anyone in the Movement. Been betrayed so often by my own people I must have some kind of karmic sign taped on my back that says ‘Kick me!’ So what can I do for BOSS, Colonel?”