A Mighty Fortress

by H. A. Covington

  “I think they’re supposed to be gremlins,” said Emily. “Look, I’m glad DD is on our side, but I think he flew away on his own broom a long time ago. Okay, this first disc is a password cracker. This is a school system computer, so we know that the username will be mnewman@kingschools.edu.” Cody typed it in. “That’s standard for all school system employee computers. It’s the password that’s the problem. We start with the vowels. We’ll have to do each letter twice, because the school’s passwords are case sensitive. In the password field, type the letter A, all caps.” Cody did so. A gremlin ran out onto the log-in screen, dropped its tiny pink trousers and mooned him, but nothing else happened. “Okay, no capital As. Now type in a small a.” He did so. There suddenly appeared eleven blanks in the password field. Of these the ninth and the last blank were filled in with the letter small a. “Okay, now a small e,” she directed him. That also brought up two letters, so now they had _e__e___a_a. “Small i,” said Emily. This time the gremlin moon came with a fart.

  “I get it,” said Cody, typing in o and u, which produced two obscene acts by the dancing gremlins. “Now the consonants?”

  “Yup,” she said. “I’ll watch the door.”

  “I’m snog-ready,” Cody assured her. He didn’t get a hit until h. “Wait a minute, I think I know what it is.” He typed in a y, an r, and then completed the password. The school’s website came up. “That’s it. It’s yetzer_hara,” said Cody with a grim nod.

  “Yessir what? What the hell is that, and how did you know what it was?” asked Emily in surprise.

  “The broadening advantages of a yeshiva education,” replied Cody. “Yetzer hara. It’s Hebrew. It means the evil impulse in man that motivates him to sin, which is ironically appropriate in this situation, don’t you think? Our Mr. Newman is a Jew, alright, and that scratching sound you hear coming from the cosmos is the sound of his death warrant being signed. Would a Hebrew password be enough for the lieutenant, do you think?”

  “Now we’re in, let’s finish the job,” she said. “Besides, I want to know what the inside of that Hatecrime website looks like. We might find other information in there that Threesec can use. Go to www.stopthehate.gov.” Cody did so. The website came up, a streaming American flag in the background over a moving banner proclaiming “Update - Millions of Dollars in New Rewards for Domestic Terrorists! Bounties Have Never Been Higher! Serve Your Country And Assure Your Financial Future Today! Confidentiality Guaranteed!” Cody clicked on the Member Services button and a log-in screen came up.

  “Okay, now what?” he asked. “The password cracker again? We don’t have a username, though.”

  “No, this one is a little more complicated,” said Nightshade, removing the first CD and inserting a second into the drive. The little dancing gremlins vanished. “I’m not a hundred per cent on the technology, like I told you before, but what it does is it impersonates an admin log-on, identifies the static IP of this computer, pings the website, discovers its Universal Resource Locator address, and if there have been any previous log-ins from this IP address to that URL it replicates the last log-in. If this computer has never before been used to log into this site, then it will tell us. That still doesn’t mean that Newman…” A username “Macho Man” suddenly appeared on the screen, as well as a password.

  “Houston, we have a rat,” said Cody.

  “What the hell is that password?” asked Emily, mystified. “More Hebrew?”

  “Affirmative. Godel hador. It means a mighty avenger of the Jewish people like the holy Rabbi Loeb of Prague who created the Yossele the Golem, a monster zombie of clay, and used it to kill all the Gentiles the rabbi didn’t like.”

  “Hit enter,” said Emily. He did. A screen flashed up that said Welcome, Macho Man, and Thank You For Defending America’s Freedom. “We’re in.” She studied it. “Hey, he’s got files on individual people. Looks like our teach has been a busy little rodent. Christ, looks like he’s turned in almost fifty people in the past few years! That’s a nice chunk of change. I wonder how many of them were actually guilty of anything beyond telling a nigger joke? Or even guilty of that?”

  “You see your friend in there?” asked Cody gently.

  “Yes,” she said bitterly. “There he is. Ricky Jenkins. I knew him since the fifth grade. He came up to me on the playground and gave me his apple from his lunch. All very cute and adorable in an After School Channel kind of way.”

  “What happened? Is he in Walla Walla, or Auburn?” asked Cody.

  “He never made it past his first night in King County jail,” said Emily bleakly. “The multicultural shower scene.”

  “I’m sorry, comrade.”

  “Thanks. Well, on the upside, Newman doesn’t seem to have interested himself in either of us. I don’t see our names. I guess he isn’t as good at spotting evil Nazi racists as he thinks he is. Don’t take time to read it all now, just bring up some files and run a print on them,” urged. Emily. “We got what we came for, now we need to get the hell out of Dodge. Then print out his money page, so we can prove he’s been paid for his informing. There won’t be any problems with getting the CO’s go-ahead, especially since now we know his username and password and we can access his account from any properly shielded computer and let him take a good long look at his leisure. Hey, there’s a familiar name.” She pointed to a file and Cody’s heart almost froze in horror. The file said Kelly Shipman.

  “I’m going to kill him,” Cody choked out as he opened the file and hit print. “Whether or not Bells gives the okay, I’m going to kill him.”

  * * *

  The two of them made it back into the auditorium and up onto the catwalk without anyone noticing their absence, and Cody handled the lights and special effects for the dress rehearsals of the three one-act plays, including Emily’s Dance of the Duckbill with soliloquy, for which she once again donned her ridiculous costume. Cody even earned a passing congratulatory comment on his skills from Mitch Newman at the wrap-up. As soon as he could, Cody gave Farmer Brown a call on one of his cell phones. “Hey, Dad,” he said. “I think me and that funny house plant you know about need a visit to Uncle Bob. We got something to show him.”

  “Yeah, well, both of you need come straight home after school,” said Farmer Brown. “Uncle Bob and some of his friends have another chore for you.”

  “Another rock and roll lullabye?” asked Cody eagerly.

  “No,” said Brown. “You’re both about to begin you’re modeling career.”

  “Huh?”

  “When you get here.”

  “Okay,” said Cody. He told Emily, “Come on. We’re about to begin our modeling careers.”

  “Our what?” she asked.

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t know,” said Cody. The two of them left the auditorium and headed for the parking lot in the press of the other kids. In one of life’s tragic ironies, Cody Brock was so intent on what he was going to say to his commanding officer to convince Bells to let them take care of the Mitch Newman situation, that he missed the very thing he so feared. He didn’t notice it when Mitch called out as the kids were leaving, “Kelly, once you get changed, could you stop by my office for a few minutes? There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  “Sure, Mitch,” Kelly called back. Mmm, she thought to herself, here it comes, I bet.

  Kelly wasn’t stupid. She knew that this summer school was the last chance Newman would have to take a crack at her, and she had resigned herself to receiving and deflecting at least one serious pass from her teacher before the summer school ended. Why not, after all? Over the past four years most of her other male teachers and several of the female ones as well had tried, although Kelly had duly and unobtrusively taken note of the fact that almost all of the minority and lesbian teachers who had been at Hillside when she entered it in ninth grade were gone by the time she graduated, something that she correctly attributed to their fear of the NVA. Routine sex
ual harassment was nothing new for her. Newman had made it clear he was attracted to her, including his hands-on instruction during South Pacific, but so far it hadn’t reached the stage of anything really annoying. If it came down, she’d just have to handle it. Not the first time, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

  “What did you want to see me about, Mitch?” asked Kelly, sweeping into the room a few minutes later. Today she was wearing a pale cream silk sleeveless blouse, a brown leather skirt and sandals that drove Newman bonkers, since he had a definite fetish for dainty white female feet. Newman was sitting at his desk, his computer on, and he was printing a file off of the Hatecrime Hotline website. In fact, it was the very same file that Cody and Emily had surreptitiously printed a couple of hours before. Kelly’s file.

  “Kelly,” said Newman gravely, “Are you aware that some of the remarks you have made in class and around school have not only crossed the line into unacceptable and overt racism, but in some cases might be construed as being sympathetic to hatecrime and domestic terrorism?”

  “Huh?” asked Kelly, caught off guard and for a moment not comprehending. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying you’re a filthy little Nazi bitch,” said Newman calmly.

  “What?” cried Kelly, suddenly feeling the walls falling in on her. Newman handed her the file from the Hatecrime Hotline. She saw that he had noted down twelve separate incidents, with dates and meticulous documentation. These included inappropriate humor, social exclusion of minorities (there hadn’t been room enough for Cindy Nakamura at the cool girls’ table one day in the cafeteria) and several alleged statements on her part sympathetic to the goals and activities of the Northwest Volunteer Army. Some of the charges were more or less correct, albeit taken completely out of context. Others of them Mitch had simply made up out of whole cloth. She was so stunned she didn’t realize until it was too late that Mitch had slipped behind her and locked the office door. She looked up at him. “This is all lies, and you know it!” she shouted. “No one will believe you!”

  “How many sluts down through the ages have uttered those words, I wonder?” said Newman, his eyes beginning to roll and twitch. “In today’s world I think you will be amazed what Federal law enforcement will believe. The fact is, Kelly, that I have in the past made myself sufficiently useful to our government in fighting racism and domestic terrorism that I can pretty much do whatever the hell I want.”

  “So I made a few casual comments about things on TV. So what?” cried the girl in increasing desperation. “This is supposed to be a free country, isn’t it?”

  “You can tell it to the judge,” sneered Newman. “Quite literally, before she sends you to Nevada to get your brain cleansed of all your Nazi filth. No contract at the studio for you if that happens, little girl. You’ll end up fifty years old and working in the checkout line at Safeway. If you’re lucky. Or maybe not. It doesn’t have to happen, Kelly. That file can stay locked in my hard drive. You know what I want, and I don’t want much, just a little light summer’s dalliance. You give it up, now and any other time I want it between now and the end of the course, that file disappears, and you go on to stardom. You stick your little nose in the air and look down at me, and I move that mouse up an inch, I hit send, and that sound you will hear will be the lovely and talented Kelly Shipman being flushed down the toilet of life.”

  “You let me out of here now!” she shouted at him. “If you don’t I’ll scream, and while I’m screaming I’ll rip your balls off with my bare hands, you ugly, dirty little kike!”

  Mitch Newman went berserk. His face suddenly transformed into that of a snarling werewolf, and he hurled himself on her. Kelly was young, she was strong, she was an athlete, and she was brave. She should have had a chance. She didn’t. Newman’s rage was incandescent and his hairy small musky body was as strong and as crushing as that of an ape. He got her down on the floor, sitting on top of her, and grabbed a pair of scissors off the desk. “Save your face, Kelly!” he cackled. “Save your face, little Nazi bitch Nazi bitch yellow-haired Nazi bitch! Save your pretty blue eyes! Save your face and give it up to Yehudi, little Nazi shiksa bitch!” The obvious insanity in his raving gibberish terrified the girl more than any mere physical assault could have done. Given some time to prepare herself, given any kind of a break, she might have pulled herself together and made a quick plan, but the sheer suddenness and horrific violence of it completely shattered her.

  “All right!” she sobbed hysterically. “All right! Just please don’t hurt my face! Please don’t hurt my eyes!”

  From then on, there was only horror.

  * * *

  After their usual tortuous journey in the Nissan, doubling up and down the streets and making sure they weren’t being followed, Cody and Nightshade arrived at the safe house which A Company was using that week. This one was a sumptuous Tudor mansion in Medina leased to a fictitious third party by an NVA op in a real estate management company. Cody and Emily immediately asked to see Bobby Bells, and between them made out a clear and forceful case for termination of Mitch Newman. The material they had printed off from Newman’s computer was convincing, especially when they were able to log back into Newman’s Hatecrime Hotline from a laptop, using the information they had gained from Doctor Doom’s hacking programs, and show DiBella personally what they were talking about. “What’s the story on this Kelly Shipman girl?” asked Bells, reading over the file that Cody had printed out. “In here, Newman’s got her allegedly telling him nigger jokes, making pro comments on NVA tickles that she saw in the media, including that one where we had our little contretemps with Nightshade here, and saying that white people need a country of their own. Number one, why hasn’t he turned her in? Number two, why haven’t we approached her?”

  “I don’t think those entries in that file are accurate, sir,” said Cody crisply. “I know Kelly Shipman personally, and she hasn’t made any racial statements in my hearing. So far as I can tell she’s non-political in her thinking and completely focused on her acting career. She thinks the NVA are terrorists, pretty much believes what she sees on TV, etcetera. She calls us spuckies, which should tell you where she’s coming from.”

  “Kelly is Hillside High’s resident movie star,” said Emily. “She acted in some T & A cheerleader movie down in Hollywood last spring and got in the news, and so now she’s queen bee around school, or was until she graduated. Cody’s mashed on her.”

  Cody ignored her. “This man has a history of sexual harassment against white girl students, Bobby, and if rumor is true, a few Asian girls as well. It seems a solid bet that he uses threats of denunciation through the government’s Hatecrime Hotline program to force his targeted victims to submit. Whether he’s a racial Jew or not, and I think the Hebrew passwords are dead giveaways, he’s been turning people in to the Feds. The fact that he’s been informing on the wrong people and apparently doing it for personal gain rather than loyalty to ZOG doesn’t matter. He’s still an informer, and that put him in our sights.

  “It’s pretty well known around school that the Hatecrime Hotline is a witch hunt, and that once you’re accused of racism there’s no defense and no escape without all kind of lawyers, money, denazification, public humiliation and a permanently blighted future. I’m not surprised that the girls give in. These comments of hers may be complete fabrications, or they may be distortions of casual remarks Kelly may have made in an unguarded moment over the past year or so. She graduated from Hillside this year like me, and she’s in our drama class, but in September she’s going to college down in Los Angeles, so this will be Newman’s last chance to have at her. My guess is that sometime soon he’s going to threaten her with that file he’s building, which at the very least can ruin her career and end any chance she ever has of being an actress, and demand that she give him sex in exchange for his silence as to her alleged racial and political indiscretions. Comrade Nightshade’s flippant tone notwithstanding, I do know her, she’s a good person even tho
ugh she’s not racial, and she doesn’t deserve to have something like that happen to her. I’d like to move on this before it does.”

  Bells nodded. “All right. You’ve got my okay. Your Mr. Newman just made the hit parade. Tell you what, I’ll let you guys set it up. Be good experience for both of you. But do not just go out and plug this hebe on your own like cowboys. Even a little pissant job like this guy can go bad wrong, real quick. You keep me in the loop, and before you move I want to go over your whole plan, step by step. If I think you need backup or a driver, I’ll assign someone. But you’re gonna have to hold off for the moment. For one thing, you guys are still supposed to be checking out the goings on at that holy roller tabernacle and bird-dogging that Army captain and that sleazy preacher, finding out what they’re up to. I don’t want you doing anything that might send you on the bounce and screw that up. Brigade and Third Section both want that at the top of your list. But beyond even that, right now there’s other fish to fry. Something’s coming down, and soon. It may impact on our whole scene here. Priority or not, you may have to skip church tonight and call in sick tomorrow if we still need you here.”

  “Nothing going on until choir practice tomorrow. What’s up, Lieutenant?” asked Cody.

  “I ain’t sure myself,” said Bells. “I don’t know if you two heard a news broadcast today, or whether you were too busy down there dancing around like ducks for this rat bastard kike, when you weren’t hacking his computer, but President Clinton’s coming on TV in a little while and she’s going to make some big announcement about the Northwest.”

  “We’ve won!” said Cody immediately.