The Language Of Cannibals m-8

by George C. Chesbro

  Garth and Acton lifted the unconscious Trex off the ground and unceremoniously dumped him into the bottom of the canoe Mary and I were holding steady. Acton handed me a paddle and motioned for me to get into the bow, and I did. He got in behind me. Mary climbed into the second canoe, with Garth in the stern, and we shoved off, heading straight out into the river.

  I had no idea where we were going, but since I didn't have to steer, it didn't make any difference; my job was simply to paddle, and that's what I did. Every time I dipped my paddle in the water and pulled, pain shot through my entire body, especially my head, but the hurt was bearable; despite me and my circumstances, my body seemed to be healing itself, and I vowed to give it a healthy dose of Scotch as a reward as soon as I got the opportunity. I scooped up a handful of river water to wash the sticky blood from around my eyes, then looked back over my shoulder. Our mini-armada would be clearly visible from the shore, but there was no sign of anyone there to see us. Garth's steady, powerful strokes were keeping the canoe carrying him and Mary a few feet off our stern and slightly to starboard.

  Then we passed beneath the looming prow of a three-masted sloop into a veritable thicket of sail- and powerboats that were anchored a hundred to a hundred and fifty yards offshore up and down the river. Acton trailed the edge of his paddle off the port gunwale, and the canoe turned that way, the bow pointing upriver. Now we were hidden from view and would stay that way as long as we continued to thread our way through the anchored boats.

  Suddenly I was very, very tired, as if the healing body I had been so pleased with a few moments before had decided that enough was enough and was shutting down for an indefinite period of time. I splashed some more water on my face, and when that didn't help I laid my paddle across the gunwales, leaned on it, and took a series of deep breaths in an attempt to reenergize myself.

  "I can handle it, Frederickson," Jay Acton said from behind me. "We're in the clear now. Take it easy."

  I nodded, leaned even harder on my paddle. "How did you know we were in the mansion?"

  "I didn't; I just knew that Culhane thought you might be, and, if you were, that his boys would kill you, and everyone else in there, so that you wouldn't be able to expose me. I have a tap on his phone."

  "What did he tell Trex and the other two?"

  "Culhane always talked to Trex, and left Trex to talk to the others. Nothing complicated. He just said you were all communists, naturally, and that it was time for the real patriots in this country to take some drastic action. I don't imagine it took much to get Trex moving; he's been aching to kill Community members anyway, ever since Culhane gave the three of them those automatic pistols."

  I half turned in my seat, looked down at the unconscious man sprawled in the bottom of the canoe, sniffed, and wrinkled my nose. "I don't think our boy here would have made out too well in combat. I really wish he hadn't shit in his pants."

  Acton grunted. "You and your brother are something else, Frederickson."

  "Garth and I owe you our lives. Thanks for what you did back there, Acton."

  "You're welcome. But I've told you that I need you alive for my own purposes."

  "To explain to you how you were found out?"

  "That and more."

  "I don't understand. What use can Garth and I be to you?"

  "I suggest you rest now. Save your energy. We'll talk later, when we're all together."

  "Where are we going?"

  "You'll see."

  The fact of the matter was that, for the moment at least, I didn't really care where we were going; I was simply happy that Garth and I were alive, that the pain in my head and the double vision had eased somewhat, and that I could rest. Leaning forward on the paddle, I kept nodding off.

  When I lifted my head and looked around after yet another brief nap, I was surprised to find that we had cut back out of the pack of anchored boats and were almost ashore. Above us, soaring into the sky, was the scarred, gouged, naked stone face of the abandoned rock quarry.

  Suddenly the bow of the canoe scraped against the fine gravel that formed a narrow beach at the base of the mountain. I tried to get out, intending to pull the canoe up on the beach and steady it, but wobbled and sat down hard on the damp gravel. I gripped the gunwales with both hands and tried to pull myself to my feet, but couldn't. Finally I just leaned back on my elbows and supervised as Garth and Acton unloaded the now semiconscious Gregory Trex. With Garth holding his arms and Acton his feet, they sloshed the helpless would-be hunter of communist men, women, and children in the river in an attempt to get some of the stink out of his clothes, then unceremoniously set him down hard on a rock a few yards away from me. His milky green eyes, filled now with shock and terror, kept darting around, as if he were looking for someone to come to his rescue. He kept clutching at his wounded shoulder, but otherwise remained still.

  Mary came up, knelt down beside me, and put her arm around me as Garth and Jay Acton waded both canoes back out to chest-deep water, then used sharp-edged rocks to punch holes in their bottoms. As the canoes slowly sank out of sight, I slowly sank my head onto Mary Tree's left breast and promptly fell asleep again.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A little sleep did wonders. I awoke to the tantalizing aroma of coffee with a merely dull headache and only slightly blurred vision. My right eye was beginning to open. With the help of a little bouncing around on a hardwood floor while being shot at, followed by a scenic canoe ride, my condition just kept improving. Talk about physical therapy. My sprained wrist, sore knee, and bruised arm seemed healed. I was a medical marvel.

  I touched my head, found it covered with a fresh bandage, as was the gash over my right eye. I threw back the lightweight wool blanket covering me, sat up, and looked around. I'd been laid to rest on an inflated air mattress in a corner of a large cave. A naked light bulb hung on its cord from a steel cleat driven into a crevice in the rock ceiling; the cord snaked down a wall and then around a corner into another, smaller cave where I thought I heard the hum of a gasoline-driven electric generator. Another wire, which appeared to be an aerial, snaked along the ceiling and out of the entrance; it was connected to a large shortwave radio console set up on a plain wooden table directly under the light bulb. Also on the table were a cardboard carton and the new cellular telephone that had been in it. Toward the front of the cave, to one side of the entrance, was a large foot locker, with its lid open. There was also a camp stove, and a pot of coffee was being kept warm over a flaming Sterno can. There was an ample supply of bottled water, pots and pans, kerosene space heaters for colder weather, and even a chemical toilet toward the rear. It looked like the perfect spy's pied-a-terre, with virtually all the comforts of home.

  And more. When I rose, walked to the front of the cave, and looked in the foot locker, I found an assortment of weapons inside, including a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Also ammunition, electronic eavesdropping equipment that appeared to be state-of-the-art, code pads, a well-stocked medical kit, Styrofoam cups, and a half carton of Campbell's chicken soup.

  I took one of the Styrofoam cups, filled it to the brim with steaming black coffee, sipped at it as I made my way out of the cave in search of my spymaster host and his other guests. I found Gregory Trex, his wrists and ankles tied with nylon rope, in a wide rock channel just outside the cave where he had been put to air out. His shirt around his bullet-damaged shoulder had been torn away, and the wound bandaged. He appeared to be in a state of shock; his eyes were dull and unfocused as he looked in my direction, and he didn't speak. His breathing was rapid and shallow; his mouth was half open, and dried saliva flecked his lips and chin. He still stank.

  Prolonged exposure to the rapidly deteriorating young man was almost, if not quite, enough to make me feel like a bully for what I'd done to him. It was the kind of thinking, I mused, that could lead to my application for membership in the Community of Conciliation. I gave him a wide berth as I headed toward the mouth of the channel.

  I recalled my conversatio
n with Elysius Culhane on Friday evening at the art exhibition. Now I realized that he'd had a lot more on his mind than the desire to pump me for potentially damaging information on President Kevin Shannon; he'd been concerned that my visit to Cairn might somehow be connected to his death squad. As things were turning out, his concern had not been totally unfounded.

  At the end of the channel I emerged onto a relatively narrow rock ledge high above the Hudson, close to the top of the mountain. Below, off to the south, I could see the plateau and picnic area where Dan Mosely took me for our chat two days before. To my immediate left was the beginning of a rough, brush-covered trail that appeared to go nowhere, but that I suspected led to other parts of the quarry, and perhaps to the top of the mountain as well.

  Still sipping my coffee, I moved off to my right on the ledge, and before long came to a rather deep and wide plateau that had been gouged out of the side of the mountain. Garth and Mary stood across the way, and they seemed to be involved in a heavy conversation. Mary was standing very close to my brother, both of her hands resting on one of his heavily muscled forearms. They definitely looked like an item to me. I sipped some more coffee, loudly cleared my throat; the two of them started, turned, and looked at me.

  "The coffee in this establishment is okay," I said, "but I have to tell you that the nursing care sucks."

  "You don't need a nurse, Mongo," Garth said, concern in his voice and face as he and Mary quickly walked across the stone to me, put their hands on my shoulders, "you need a goddamn keeper. We thought you'd sleep around the clock. What the hell are you doing walking around?"

  "Mongo?" Mary said, frowning in obvious disapproval. "You shouldn't be up. You could have gotten dizzy and fallen off the ledge."

  "I'm all right. Where's our KGB friend?"

  Garth stepped back, pointed above my head. I turned around, looked up. Jay Acton, his chestnut-brown hair blowing in the breeze coming down off the mountain, was sitting on a ledge about ten feet above my head, staring out over the river. His Uzi was resting across his knees. It was impossible to tell from his impassive features what he was thinking, but from this angle he bore an even more striking resemblance to his father.

  "I filled him in on what's been going down, Mongo," Garth said quietly.

  "All of it?"

  "What you've told me, and what I know."

  "Then he knows about Harry Peal?"

  "Sure. I told him that's how you got on to him."

  "Did he kill him?"

  "I don't know."

  "What was his reaction when you told him Harry Peal was his father?"

  "You're looking at it," Garth said, gesturing toward the man sitting on the ledge above us. "He just turned around and climbed up there. He's been sitting there for about an hour."

  Acton looked down, saw me. He abruptly rose and, carrying the Uzi in his left: hand, nimbly climbed down through a fissure in the rock connecting the ledge to the plateau on which we stood. He walked up to me, fixed me with the jet-black eyes that were obviously an inheritance from his mother.

  "Pm sorry about your friend, Frederickson," he said to me, his voice low, even.

  "Yeah," I said, and drained off my coffee. I crumpled the Styrofoam cup, dropped it to my feet. "Did you kill him, Acton? And did you kill your father?"

  If the Russian-American was shocked or hurt by my bluntness, he didn't show it. It occurred to me that, whatever he was guilty of, in the hour he had spent alone on the ledge he had somehow made peace with, and perhaps paid homage to, the father he had never known. He stared into my face for a few moments, his features still impassive, then sat down on the stone, setting the Uzi down at his side.

  "My mother is still alive," he said in a voice so low that Garth, Mary, and I had to squat down in order to hear him. "She lives in a special residence for retired KGB personnel on the Black Sea. She told me that my father died in the siege of Stalingrad. I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, but I learned later that I was actually born in Kiev, and that my mother and I were smuggled back into the United States when I was still an infant; false identities, papers, and false histories were meticulously prepared, and a home was even provided for us. From the time I could talk it was instilled in me that, although we lived in the United States, I was very different from other American children; I was special, with a very special mission that would gradually be explained to me as I grew older. From a very early age I learned to be secretive. I was bilingual, of course, because my mother was bilingual, and she taught me both languages; but Russian was spoken only in the home, when we were alone, and in Russia. I learned the American version of history in the schools here, and my mother taught me the Russian version-the truth about the class struggle, as she put it. And, of course, there were the indoctrination sessions when I was taken back to the Soviet Union. My mother worked as a professor of music at a community college near Dayton, and part of our cover, or 'legend,' was that we had received a sizeable inheritance from my dead father. There was always money for travel, and when we traveled we almost always ended up in the Soviet Union for variable periods of time. In Russia my mother would meet and plan strategy with her controller while I would attend intensive indoctrination sessions. I was given a great deal of attention from an early age and received special favors. I was given my first 'medal' at the age of eleven. Arrangements were always made to get us in and out of Russia on special travel documents, so that our visits were never recorded in our U.S. passports.

  "By the time I graduated from high school in this country I had already had virtually complete training as a KGB operative, if not an officer. I was a committed communist, completely dedicated to my mission, which was to infiltrate the American ultraconservative political movement and eventually move up to a position where I would have power and influence over key figures in that movement, without attracting too much attention to myself. That was my sole assignment. I attended Dartmouth in the late fifties, joined the Young Republicans there, and, years later, helped start up the Dartmouth Review with money I'd supposedly made publishing a small, ultraconservative newsletter in New Hampshire. Of course, it was actually Communist party money. I had a lot of what you might describe as editorial input with the Review — suggesting pieces and writing a lot of letters to the editor. Articles I'd suggested were responsible for inciting the attacks on the anti-apartheid shanties on campus, and I had a lot of input into the magazine's cruder attacks on black and Jewish professors. Op-ed articles I wrote for various newspapers and newsletters, including my own, on the supposed communist infiltration of the Democratic party and leftist organizations brought me to the attention of a number of important archconservatives at the national level. I turned down offers of editorial positions at the National Review and Washington Times; again, too public. When PACs got big, I sold my newsletter and took a job with the fund-raisers. Within six months, Elysius Culhane had hired me as a senior staff assistant and speech-writer." Acton paused, laughed drily. "I could have joined the CIA or FBI if I'd wanted to; I was heavily recruited by both agencies while I was at Dartmouth."

  I asked, "Why didn't you?"

  "Because that wasn't my assignment, and I hadn't been trained for that kind of intelligence work. I had excellent cover for what I was doing, but my legend might not have survived close vetting by an intelligence or counterintelligence agency. Besides, the KGB gets all the information it wants about the CIA from other sources. Infiltrating the right-wing political infrastructure in this country was considered of much greater importance."

  Mary, who had been listening to Jay Acton with an increasingly puzzled expression on her face, shook her head. "Why would you want to waste time with a bunch of right-wing loonies and chickenhawks like Elysius Culhane? That seems like very odd company for a communist. I don't understand."

  My brother and I had had more than our share of experiences with said right-wing loonies, chickenhawks, and a battalion of religious zealots to boot. I thought I understood perfectly, and I was sure Garth did too.
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  "It's the perfect cover for a communist agent," Garth said evenly. "The groups would be relatively easy to penetrate, and once you were accepted in your role, no questions would likely ever be asked. The greatest danger would be discovery by an outsider, which is what happened in this case."

  "Correct," Acton said in a flat voice, glancing at me.

  My squatting position was beginning to hurt my knees, so I sat down on the stone and leaned back on my hands. "You don't understand because you're a liberal," I said to Mary, who still looked thoroughly bewildered. "You're a left-winger. Liberal types like you tend to be intellectual, straight-ahead rationalists. Symbols-things like the flag, 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' and pledges of allegiance-are all vaguely embarrassing to you; you don't think symbols should mean that much to truly thoughtful and patriotic citizens. You think political candidates visiting flag factories and spouting jingoistic rhetoric in halls filled with flags and nasty-looking bronze eagles is an insult to your intelligence, and you try your best to ignore such things.

  "What liberals constantly underestimate is the power of those symbols and rhetoric over the minds of average people in this, or any other, country. The right wing never makes that mistake. They understand and are perfectly willing to exploit the fact that masses of citizens, usually a majority, can be relatively easily swayed by the right combination of demagoguery, hot rhetoric, and the manipulation of national symbols. Ultraconservatives tend to be anti-intellectual, which is why public education is never one of their primary concerns; in any nation where the electorate is 'numb, dumb, and happy,' as it were, it's easier for demagogues to get elected and then to stay in office. But their weakness-and the reason why it was so easy for Mr. Acton here to gain their trust-is that they're vulnerable to the same weapons they use: language and the manipulation of symbols. The right wing loves pageantry-look at the massive rallies in Nazi Germany-and they love to believe that their lies and deceptions aren't really lies and deceptions. In short, they tend to actually start believing their own bullshit, and if you feed it to them, in return they'll easily accept you as one of them.