The Hill of the Ravens Page 36

  “Well, why not just wait until Trudy Greiner walks across the border on 10/22 and see what the hell she has to say about it all?” asked the Old Man curiously.

  “I get the impression, sir, that the present State President is especially anxious for that not to occur, at least not without some idea of what skeletons might be found by anyone who starts poking through the Ravenhill closet.” Redmond rose to go. “Mr. President Emeritus, you have been extremely helpful, more so than anyone we’ve talked to yet. There is one final question I would like to ask you, sir, and I very much hope that you will choose to answer me, and answer me truthfully.”

  “And that is?” prompted the Old Man, leaning back and sending long, aromatic swirls of cigar smoke into the air.

  “Exactly who was it who contacted you and warned you that I would be coming, and what I would be asking you about?” asked Redmond levelly. “And when did this occur?”

  “You know, at my age senility comes and goes,” said the ancient creature, blowing a smoke ring. “I can geezer it up real quick. In fact, I feel a real funkey fogey fugue coming on.”

  “Maybe that’s why you forgot that I never at any point in our conversation informed you that Trudy Greiner was coming back on October 22nd,” said Don.

  “Maybe so. Son, believe it or not, I do retain some sense of responsibility to this Republic I helped to create. I could give you a name and one of two things would happen. Either I’d wake up one night to find Charlie Randall standing over my bed with a pillow in his hands, or else it would explode into a full scale scandal, the top ripped off a major league can of worms and them worms crawling all over the Northwest and pooping worm-shit all over this country that is the only hope of our race to survive. I’ll pass on that, but I’ll tell you what I told…that individual that I spoke with. I told him that every word I told you would be the truth, and it has been.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Redmond.

  “Uh, Meneer Stäatsprasident, I have a question as well,” spoke up Nel suddenly. “What on earth do you have against these ducks?”

  The Old Man grinned at him through a haze of cigar smoke, and all of a sudden they caught a glimpse of the almost Satanic

  malevolence that alone had sustained him through a century comprised mostly of living hell. “They’re big, soft white things who just waddle around and do nothing. When they open their mouths nothing but blat comes out. I always had a problem with big, lazy white things who waddle around and do nothing and just blat when they open their mouths,” he said. “You see, for fifty years, those were our leaders in the so-called Movement. I couldn’t crush them then like they deserved, so I crush them now. Or try to. Ain’t no better at it now than I was then.” He looked out at them. “Every one of them has a name. The name of a piece of pale-skinned shit who should have died in mortal agony long ago, if there was any justice at all. But there never is any justice except what a man takes for himself. Like I said, every one of them has a name. That one over there by the shore, with the dark greasy feathers, that is Matt Koehl. That bloated thing out there with the hooked beak is Benny Klassen. He seems to have a habit of molesting the other drakes, and that’s how he got his name. The one with the bald head is Tom Metzger. The sleek-looking drake out there is David Duke. Watch him, he’ll steal the bread right out of your hand while you’re not looking and gamble it away on the riverboat casinos. The sneaky-looking bastard with the black spot on his bill is Pierce. The lazy fuck floating out there at a drunken angle is Eugene Terre Blanche, which should be of interest to you, Sergeant. Terre Blanche used to fall off his horse during parades he was so drunk. The prissy little one there who looks like a faggot is Martin Webster, and the big fat pompous ass to the right there is John Tyndall. And the others, all the others…I know their names. Before I die, I am going to kill every one of them.”

  “I’m sorry to see that you really are insane, sir,” said

  Redmond sadly, shaking his head.

  “Always was, son, always was,” chuckled the Old Man, leaning back on the bench and sending a cloud of ringed cigar smoke rising into the cool autumn air. “Nutty as a fruitcake all my life. Sane men didn’t revolt against ZOG. And sane men damned sure didn’t win!”

  * * *

  That afternoon, they both sat in Redmond’s office in the Temple of Justice. Henny Nel was turning over various pages in the old Ravenhill file. The day had gone cloudy and the famous Northwest rain was dripping from the windows. “It was President Morgan who told him why we were coming,” said Nel.

  “Of course it was Morgan! What in God’s name is he playing at?” responded Redmond in weary despair. “Why this song and dance routine? Why did he bring me into this? Why the hell doesn’t he just tell me? My God, I’m family!”

  “Is there anyone else we could interview before the twenty-second comes?” asked Nel.

  “No one I can think of. Anyone who might help either fled the country after the revolution, or they’re dead or just unavailable. You know, I wish to hell we really were the totalitarian state that our enemies accuse us of being. A nationwide identification and location service would certainly be of help, but since we’ve abolished driver’s licenses, unless someone has actually come to the attention of BOSS, we really have no way of knowing where anyone in this country is other than picking up the telephone directory. Odd that a so-called fascist state should have that kind of individual liberty, eh? I’ve tried to find Van Der Merwe with no luck.”

  “Who?” asked Nel, looking up with interest.

  “J. P. Van Der Merwe. The Bank of America branch president who authorized and issued the million dollar check, and who would hopefully remember something about that million dollar transaction on the morning of August the first. But he’s not in any of the Republic’s phone books, he doesn’t have a criminal record, and beyond that we’re stumped unless we can pick up his trail some other way. He may be dead, he may be a loyalist who fled the Republic after the revolution and he’s now living in the States or somewhere else, he may be sitting right down there on the mall feeding the pigeons beneath the Rockwell monument and we wouldn’t know.” Sergeant Nel riffled through the file and found the bank record photostats, then he held them up to the light, studying them. “The devil of it is, whatever John C. is afraid I will turn up, he’s wrong. I still have no idea on earth who the traitor is,” complained Redmond in weary despair.

  Nel looked up from the papers. “Oh, that’s no shupa, ek se. I

  know who it is.”

  “Eh? What the hell do you mean by that?” said Redmond irritably.

  “I mean just what I said. I know who the traitor is, because I know now there never was any million dollar payoff. This whole bank transaction is a fraud, and I know who created it.” Then Hennie Nel told Don Redmond the name of the traitor who had betrayed the Olympic Flying Column, and explained how he knew.

  “Damn, I am a fool!” muttered Redmond bitterly.

  “Dit maak niks, I just happened to have a little bit of background you didn’t,” said Nel with a shrug. “How could you? The question is, sir, how in the name of God are we going to prove it? I am as positive as I can be that he’s our man, but after almost four decades where do we look for any hard evidence? I doubt any even exists. I don’t see any choice that we have other than to wait for Trudy Greiner to show up and hope she can provide us with something concrete. If she can’t, she may still end up carrying the can for Ravenhill.”

  “The thing that puzzles me is motive,” sighed Redmond. “Why, in the name of all that is holy? What possible reason could he have to do such a thing?”

  “We could ask him,” suggested Nel.

  “You don’t make an accusation like this with no proof or evidence, Sergeant. Nor do I know where to even begin to look for any. Unless…it’s a long shot, but hell, looks as if we’ve nothing better to do until the twenty-second. Let’s go.”

  X.

  “We need to get inside,” said Don Redmond. He and Nel were standing in
the dark, in a pouring Northwest rain that rattled the tin awning roof over the porch on which they stood. A sagging swing drooped on one edge of the porch and a sodden pile of firewood logs loomed gray and lumpy on the other. It had taken some time for them to find the place. Their raincoats and the brims of their fedoras were dripping.

  “We don’t have a warrant,” pointed out Nel. “In view of his state connection it might be prudent to get one, just to preserve the niceties. In case we find something, or more especially in case we don’t.”

  “I’m willing to go Section 30 on this and cross my fingers it will stand up,” said Redmond. “If the issue comes up at all.”

  “Ah, the Breathing Act,” chuckled Nel.

  “You got it, Sarge,” replied Redmond. “The lovely Section 30 of the Offenses Against the State Act. The law that gives us the authority to do whatever the hell we think is necessary to preserve the revolution and carry out our duties. I know we’re supposed to show sensitivity and gentlemanly circumspection as to when and how we

  invoke it. Don’t want the citizenry to feel that they’re living in a police state, even if they are, rather. But this is a big case, and big consequences hang on it. I’ll take responsibility. Although just as a historical note, getting a warrant was never any kind of legal protection. It never made any difference to the American police under ZOG. Warrants are meaningless when the judge simply signs whatever outrageous piece of rubbish the police put before him. If your judiciary is corrupt and your judicial system is broken, why bother with the fig leaf of a warrant? That’s what I like about the Republic, this refreshing absence of hypocrisy.”

  “I’d prefer a refreshing absence of rain right now. You know, even in BOSS we do have to prove our case before we take action, if only to our own superiors. I know he’s our man, but I don’t still think we’ll ever prove it. What makes you think we are going to find anything in here relevant to a crime committed more than thirty years ago, sir?” asked Nel in some exasperation. “What would he keep? Why would he keep anything that might implicate him in such a monstrous act of betrayal?”

  “Depends on why he did it,” ruminated Redmond. “What, exactly, are we looking for?”

  “Generally speaking, something that might at least give us a clue to motive. But specifically? I’m damned if I know, Sarge,” replied Redmond. “I can only hope that we’ll know it when we see it.”

  “Well, let’s get out of the bloody rain, at least. Door or window?” asked Nel.

  “Mmm, door, I think. This lock must be at least a century old. Doesn’t even look like it has any electronics in it. Straight brass tumblers. Wonder what kind of alarm system he’s got rigged in there? If any?”

  “Why would he have any alarm system?” asked Nel. “This isn’t America. No one has to worry about burglary any more.” Redmond took out a small folding tool, similar to a pen-knife, with a number of oddly-shaped extensions. He diddled with the lock for about a minute. It clacked and the door swung open. The two men stepped inside.

  “Might as well turn on the lights. No one is going to see us this far out in the woods,” said Redmond. He snapped a light switch

  but nothing happened. “Must run off a separate generator,” he commented. “A house this old is probably not even hooked up with a transformer-converter for the broadcast power grid.” Nel took out a flashlight and turned it on. Redmond took a glow wand from his pocket and thumbed the switch. Immediately the room was illuminated in soft light, almost like a rising dawn. “I always carry one of these as well as a flashlight,” said Redmond. “A flashlight is useful when you don’t want your target to see you, but you want to see him. Always use a flashlight if there is any chance at all you’re going to be shot at, and hold it away from your body. But for a search, a wand is best. It lights up the whole room.” The two BOSS men saw battered, antique twentieth-century plastic furniture, bits and pieces of hunting and fishing detritus, and a lot of dust.

  “Not much of a housekeeper, is he?” sniffed Nel.

  “I don’t think he comes here often,” said Redmond. “I only just by chance remembered this place even exists.” They separated and moved from room to room. The place had a dismal, careless, unlived-in look. Redmond mounted the stairs and rummaged through an unremarkable bedroom with a single, old-fashioned box spring mattress and frame. The sheets and blanket were rumpled and the pillow folded; God alone knew how long ago the bed had last been made. Suddenly he heard Nel call from downstairs; his voice sounded choked and strange.

  “Colonel Redmond! Colonel, you need to come and see this!” Redmond went back downstairs and moved to the rear of the

  house. The doorway in which Nel stood seemed to lead into what might have once been a breakfast nook or small den. Redmond held his glow wand high, lighting the darkness of the interior, and he saw what Nel had seen. At one end of the room was a wooden paneled wall of bare and unpainted pine that had gone dark with age, and on that wall was tacked two rows of photographs, each one of them blown up into small poster size. There weren’t many of them, only about a dozen, because the woman who featured in them had made it a point to be photographed as little as possible. Two of the photographs were long-ago police mug shots. They showed a young and beautiful girl with long blond hair. Below the wall was a bureau or dresser of some kind, draped in a white cloth, and on it stood several rows of burned-out candles, the votive kind in small glass

  receptacles. A single chair stood in front of the primitive altar, where the sole worshipper of a strange and unhealthy religion sometimes sat in contemplation and adoration. “Bring your light in as well,” said Redmond, stepping into the room. In the soft yet penetrating illumination of the phosphorescent wand and the flashlight, the slapdash montage might have looked cheap and pathetic, but somehow it did not. Both men felt a cold and creeping chill in their blood. They intuitively understood that they were looking at something strong, poisonous and terrible, the outward manifestation of a love that had transcended the bounds of time and sanity. A love that had developed a life of its own and fed on itself, time and again ripping out its own entrails and rising from the putrescence of its own grave to live unnaturally over and over. There was no bloodstained altar whereon sacrifice had been made. That had been done long ago on a hillside many miles away. “It’s a shrine,” muttered Nel. “A shrine to her…wait a minute…that’s not Melanie Young!”

  “No,” agreed Redmond. “I agree, one would think this kind of obsession would be over Melanie Young. Hell, our whole nation obsesses over her, starting with every teenaged boy when he hits age twelve. But that’s not Melanie. That’s Trudy Greiner. Probably every photograph ever taken of her in her whole life. He must have gotten into the BOSS files somehow and made copies. I’m sure he could figure a way. Damn, that looks like her junior high school class photo! Wonder how the hell he ever got hold of that? That’s Trudy when she was as young and as beautiful as ever Melanie was, to give her fair due. Thank God! Thank God! Thank God!” moaned Redmond, leaning against the creaking, dusty wall in a sudden release of terrible tension from his mind and his heart.

  “Eh?” asked Nel. “What do you mean, Colonel?”

  “The betrayal of the Column! This whole hideous mess, all those deaths of our people. Thank God, it wasn’t religious! It wasn’t political! It wasn’t even for money!” laughed Redmond in shaky relief. “It was insanity! Just good old-fashioned, looney-tune, they’re-coming-to-take-me-away-ha-ha Movement GUBU! The kind of nuttiness that was the very hallmark of what little community we had back in the Old Man’s day. Good old-fashioned Movement GUBU, Lord love it! Now I’m going to go find the generator for this place and start it up, so we can get some proper light on the scene. Then we

  toss this place good and proper, from top to bottom. He may have left something else behind.”

  * * *

  “You know, I always wanted to do this, since I saw my first Agatha Christie movie,” Don Redmond told them all with a grin. He was standing in the library at t
he presidential residence of Longview House, leaning insouciantly against the wall, his fedora at rakish angle on his head. Before him on the chairs and sofas sat a group of ten people. These were former FATPO defector Arthur McBride, all eight of the surviving Volunteers from the Olympic Flying Column and the State President, John Corbett Morgan, who was scowling angrily at Don in a manner like piling dark thunderheads in the sky, which presaged unfortunate events. “The detective’s dream. I always wanted to do the Hercule Poirot number, gather all the suspects in the library and reveal the killer’s identity through my brilliant deduction.” “It had better be damned brilliant deduction,” muttered

  Morgan irritably. “Jesus Christ on a raft, Don, you know I wouldn’t go along with this kind of dog and pony show from anybody who hadn’t given me some mighty fine grandkids!”

  “Colonel Redmond, I highly resent the term ‘suspect’,” said Dr. Joseph Cord huffily. “I have the most impeccable credentials of anyone here and I am accustomed to receiving invitations to Longview House only to discuss and praise my work. How long is this going to take? All of interplanetary space is my domain, and I have more important things to do than sit here and play childish games.”

  “How long will it take? How long is a piece of string?” asked Redmond. “Don’t worry, folks, I’ve called down to the kitchen and asked for coffee and drinks to be sent up, and also some herbal tea for you, Mrs. McCanless.”

  “And why is that entire sordid incident at Ravenhill Ranch being resuscitated in any case?” complained Cord cranklily. “My understanding has always been that there was never any doubt as to informed on the Olympic Flying Column. It was Gertrude Greiner.”

  “No, Dr. Cord,” said Redmond firmly. “It was not Trudy

  Greiner.”

  “Then it was one of us,” said SS General Bill Vitale grimly, his large frame in camouflage fresh from the front lounging in a leather armchair. “I have to agree with Dr. Cord, Don. Under such circumstances this Mad Hatter’s tea party is just a little bit wearing. If you have something to tell us, then say it!”