A Mighty Fortress

by H. A. Covington

  The ceasefire was a joke. Every day there were shooting incidents between Federal forces and the NDF or between the impromptu local militias which had sprung up to take back what was theirs. Some of these amounted to Iraq-style pitched battles with mortars and artillery and tanks. On the Labor Day weekend the NDF moved in on Seattle, a few thousand men commanded by General Robert DiBella of the newly established Army of the Puget Sound. In five days of pitched fighting the rebels drove the Federals into four major pockets around the city from which they were evacuated by helicopter to Fort Lewis. The city which had once convicted the men of the Order was now Aryan, and the Republic established a temporary capital in Olympia, by way of thumbing their noses at the American garrison in Fort Lewis.

  Portland was a different story. It was the only major pocket of American control where the former rulers seemed determined to make a stand of it. The city there was more compact and had always been more tightly controlled by the Federals. By concentrating all of the remaining FATPO forces there as well as Ranger and Marine units, and setting up mini-posts on a block by block basis to virtually lock down the whole town, the intransigent American commander, USMC General Delmar Partman, was able to force the NDF out of the city by the first week in September.

  The rebels withdrew north of the Columbia River, and the newly-designated First Corps of Army of the Columbia commanded by SS General Carter Wingfield began to concentrate in Vancouver, Washington. A Second Corps commanded by Generals Billy Basquine and Phil McDevitt moved up from southern Oregon and northern California, and positioned itself in the environs of Salem. Both corps were small, enthusiastic with sky-high morale, sketchily uniformed, hastily trained and patchily armed. Some units were carrying the Russian Kalashnikov and some captured American M-16s. They were light on armor and heavy weapons. On the evening of September the tenth, the first cool night that heralded the coming autumn, the NVA delegates at Longview gathered on their balconies and looked to the southeast, where they heard low rumbling like thunder and flashes of light low in the sky like some subdued aurora borealis. “Those are 155-millimeters coming from Portland,” said Barrow grimly. “CNN says that Partman has decided he wants to get our people to move back from the north bank of the river. Our own intelligence tells me that Partman has repeatedly demanded permission to blow up the interstate highway bridges that cross the Columbia River, but the White House won’t let him do it. That would cut off Washington from the rest of the west coast, which might help us instead of them, and besides, they still don’t want to admit that this is a full-scale war now.”

  Yet the negotiations at Longview still dragged on, with the daily quibbling over minor incidents on the outside that neither side really had any control over, the constant hair-splitting over things like the metric system and customs and tariffs, the slow release of prisoners that was like pulling teeth. The Americans had finally countered the N.A.R. delegation’s simple six-point program with a lengthy printed draft of their own comprising one hundred and forty separate articles, and enough preambles, codicils, commentaries and fine print to choke a horse.

  On the night of October the twenty-first, the eve of the anniversary of the Coeur d’Alene uprising five years before, Barrow was poring over this document trying to make some sense out of it. It was around midnight, and there was one of the many ongoing bull sessions among the delegates taking place in his suite. The air conditioner was rumbling on low below the window, but this far into autumn it was functioning as a heater and blowing warm air. “I don’t get these people, I really don’t,” said Barrow, throwing down the multi-page American draft proposal. “I honestly can’t tell if they really have a plan, if they’re deliberately playing for time, or whether they’re just totally clueless and stalling because it’s the only thing they can think of to do. What the hell is so hard about ‘You have fourteen days to get the hell out and leave us alone thereafter?’ We speak English to them and they respond with gibberish. You guys have looked this mess over?” he asked, pointing to the document. They all nodded wearily.

  “It took them two months to come up with even this much?” asked Gair plaintively. They had now been in the Lewis and Clark Hotel for two and a half months, and most of them had not been off the hotel grounds during that time. Luxury accommodation or not, it was getting very old. Exciting events were taking place outside the conference that everyone wanted to be part of, and the strain was starting to tell. On several occasions Barrow had been compelled to bring the negotiating sessions to a close prematurely, because he had spotted the warning signs and he was afraid John Corbett Morgan was going to kill someone, most likely Weintraub.

  “It’s just a goddamned stall,” said Morgan. “They ain’t got nothing in their hand and they just want to keep on bluffing and bluffing and hope something will turn up that helps them out.”

  “No,” said McCausland meditatively. “I don’t get that feel. These are subtle people, comrades, subtle as the serpent. They do nothing without reason. There’s something in there in that sea of sand. Something they want. But what?”

  “I think I may know, sir.” The door opened and Nightshade entered the room. Cody noticed she was wearing a gray sweat suit and sweat band on her head and her battered old running shoes instead of her uniform. She pointed to the walls and cupped her hand to her ear.

  “Doc Doom did a sweep today, and he swears its clean since Jack caught that one peacekeeper they’d bribed coming in here,” said Barrow. “He’s got some kind of device attached to the electric motor in the HVAC unit that he says throws off some kind of subsonic tone that will mess up any convectional mikes, which is why we’re running the heater. Say what you need to say, just discreetly, if you get my drift.”

  “Check out Articles 83 through 85, sir,” she said. “I’m not sure what, but there’s something buried in there they’re hoping we don’t notice.”

  “Okay, so exactly what are sections 83 through 85?” asked Barrow. “Let’s take a look.” He pored over the document on the table before him until he found the relevant sections, then he read them. After he read them he started cursing in a low and dispassionate monotone. “Oh, yeah. Suddenly I see why our Mr. Lodge is so keen on this new proposal of theirs. I think the dog has finally shown his teeth and gone for the bone, comrades. Sections 83, 84, and 85 deal with what most people would consider to be dry economic issues. Section 83 creates a so-called free trade condominium between the Republic and the United States, which denies the Republic the right to impose any export or import tariff on goods moving between the two countries, whereas the United States may impose tariffs and customs on non-U. S. goods coming in and Republic exports going out. In essence, as far as actual trade goes, we would still be part of the United States, and the Americans get a blank check on all our natural resources, including the right to ship them out of the country regardless of whether we need ‘em or not, and probably use our own materials against us in some way.”

  “It was the South objecting to that very arrangement with regard to cotton exports and European manufactured imports that actually caused the Civil War, never mind all that bullshit about slavery,” pointed out Stepanov. “It would appear that the buccaneer capitalists of Boston have learned nothing in the past two hundred years.”

  “Section 84 has to do with corporate law,” continued a bemused Barrow, “We’re supposed to recognize American corporations as legal entities, safeguard their property, and give them the same tax breaks and the same rights they have in the U.S., in other words virtual immunity from the law or regulation by the Aryan state.”

  “So we’re supposed to be just like some South American banana republic?” asked Gair, scandalized. “Hell, I imagine one of those corporations will be even be United Fruit, looking to take our apples and blueberries!”

  “Article 85 is the real kicker,” Barrow told them “It deals with so-called currency union. Stripped of all its verbiage, if we sign this thing the Republic gives up the right to issue our own money, we specifi
cally renounce the gold standard and any kind of trade credit system not utilized by the United States, and we agree to use the U. S. dollar as our currency, i.e. those private Federal Reserve notes issued by the Jews. Essentially what these articles do is reduce us to an economic colony of the United States, no better off and most likely a good deal worse off that we were before. We are even obligated to pay back all outstanding Federal loans and treasury bills and bond issues, so forth and so on. The kikes have walked off with the money years ago, and we have to pay off their paper? We start our existence as a nation carrying trillions dollars in usury debt to the international bankers? No, no, no, no. Not happening, hebes!”

  “A sovereign Aryan nation is supposed to allow the Federal Reserve to create and control our money supply?” asked Gair incredulously. “My God, the Federal Reserve is the first thing a neophyte right-wing crank of old used to learn about when he officially entered the lunatic fringe. What breathtaking arrogance!”

  “This is Lodge, of course,” said Stepanov. “This will be his input. I think you need to see him privately tomorrow, Frank. They’ve jerked us around long enough. Now we know what they want. They think they’ll give us our flag and our own little puppet government while they take everything of value in the Northwest as they have always done. I would be willing to wager that if we agreed to these stipulations of his in some kind of side treaty or addendum, hopefully secret, we would get their signatures on our own six points and be out of here by tomorrow night with the Republic in our pockets.”

  “You’re seriously suggesting that we agree to let these corporate Jews in all but name use our new country as a teat to be milked?” demanded Gair.

  “No, I am suggesting that we make such an agreement to bring this overly long process to an end, get on with the building of a new all-white world, and then when time and place shall serve we tear it up and throw it in their faces,” said Stepanov. “We slap any customs dues we want on anything we want, we kick their kosher corporations out of the Northwest and we print a hundred billion of our own dollars with Adolf Hitler’s picture on every banknote, and back every penny of it in precious metal even if we have to really kidnap Jews and pull out their gold fillings! These pushcart-peddling swindlers have lied to our people how many times down through the past two thousand years? Surely we are morally justified in turning the tables on them just this once?”

  “Which would then give them every valid excuse to say we’d broken our word and tear up the main treaty as well,” pointed out Barrow.

  “Do you seriously think they intend to honor it any longer than is convenient for them, no matter what they promise?” demanded Stepanov. “Do you think that as soon as the pressure is off, the United States won’t be back in here, invading us, trying to take our country back and enslave us again as soon as they think they can win?”

  “Granted,” said Barrow. “I already know that the very first thing we’re going to have to do is to build a military to defend what we’ve won, and that for the next two generations at least every able-bodied man will have to spend a large part of his adult life in the army just to keep these monkeys off our backs. I think we all understand that what we’re negotiating here isn’t a treaty, it’s merely a truce that the Americans are giving us because they have no choice, and that they will hate us forever for forcing them to do so. But I don’t want our country to be born in an act of deceit, my friends. Remember the words of Marcus Aurelius. If it is not true, do not say it. If it is not right, do not do it. Yes, these people will break their word at the first expedient moment. Well, we’re not Jews. We’re better men than they are, and we’re damned well going to act like it! I think you’re right, Lodge is the man to see. So far I’ve kept to the diplomatic protocols and not tried to get any of them off in a corner besides that one meeting with Stanhope the day we arrived. I’m going to go outside the box tomorrow and ask to see Lodge alone.” Nightshade leaned down and whispered in Barrow’s ear for about ten seconds. He nodded and tore a strip of paper off a yellow legal pad and began scribbling on it.

  “I agree,” said McCausland. “The Republic must be founded in righteousness.”

  “Suppose we split the difference, General?” asked Gair. “No phoney treaties or lies, but hey, this is supposed to be a conference of diplomats, so why not be diplomatic? Tell Lodge we understand his concerns and that us poor ignorant rednecks just ain’t got no idea how to run an economy, like we didn’t have the example of the Third Reich in front of us for a blueprint, and we’re going to need the help of him and his Boston Brahmin buddies on the board of directors, but can’t we talk about all that later because we sure are getting tired of this hotel food and we’d all like to go home, right? Blah, blah, blah, you get the idea. See if you can swing Lodge around to our side by promising him a pig in a poke. Okay, maybe that’s not up to Marcus Aurelius standards, but you can’t deal with Jews without at least a little deception”

  “There is the old saying about using a long spoon if you must sup with the devil,” agreed McCausland.

  Barrow handed the note to Emily, who walked up to Cody and gave it to him. He looked at what Barrow had written. It said Go with Nightshade and do what she says. She leaned over and whispered, “Go change into civvies, something light and disposable like this if you’ve got it. Then meet me in the smoke hole.” Cody got up, went into his own bedroom, and changed out of his uniform into an old pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a well-worn pair of Doc Martens he’d kept from his street kid days on Pioneer Square. He tore up the note and flushed it, stuck his backup pistol in the clip holster in his back, then walked out of the room through the NVA people who were still discussing Barrow’s projected economic throwdown with Oliver Lodge. All of them had seen Barrow write the note and now saw Cody leave, and all of them studiously ignored it. He went out to what had become an unofficial outdoor smoking area for those who shared rooms with non-smokers, a couple of chairs set against the wall by the vending machines on the outdoor landing.

  Nightshade was there puffing away. He saluted her. “Lieutenant Brock reporting for duty, ma’am. Smoking now? Those things will kill you.”

  “Yeah, well, you get to inhale,” she said, standing up and tossing the cigarette. She pulled him against her and shoved him against the wall. She pushed her face into his and kissed him.

  “Are you nuts?” he whispered. “There’s no place more exposed and more likely we’re under surveillance than here! We’re in full view of that corner room in the East Wing and you know damned well that media wing or not the Feds have an eye and an ear in there!”

  “Yes, idiot child, I know, which is why we’re out here, so they get a good look at us,” she whispered back into his ear, gently biting it. “Come on, grab my butt and act like you’re into the wild thing! I know what I’m doing!” Cody slid one hand under her sweat shirt and cupped her head and bunched her hair in his other.

  “Ooh baby, ooh baby, so forth and so on,” he said while she nuzzled him, his hand on her head making it look even more from a distance like they were making out.

  “Okay, I need your help on something, and I warn you this may be kind of rough for you,” she said in a low voice. “You know I talked to McGrew before we left Centralia and he gave me a job to do? I was doing it, and there’s been a little glitch.”

  “How little?” he said, kissing her closed eyes and tongue-lapping her ear.

  “I’m going to show you. We’re going to give each other a couple of hickeys, then we’re going back inside so Federal surveillance assumes we’re going to hit the sack in one of the rooms. That tabloid shit helps, since everyone thinks we’re Bonnie and Clyde already. Then I’m going to take you somewhere.”

  “All of this assuming Doc is right and the floor is clear of cameras and the Feds don’t see us running around out of the sack,” Cody reminded her. “Moan, gasp, oog and aarg, etcetera.”

  “While you’re under there, you know that bra isn’t glued on,” she said.

  “What
ever camera they’ve got recording us can’t see what I do under your sweat shirt,” he said, crushing her to him.

  “Screw the camera,” she asked. “Hickey time!”

  “Do we really have to get that realistic?” he complained. Apparently they did. After the said lip action she giggled fulsomely, took him by the hand, and dragged him back inside.

  “Okay, whoever was watching, be they Feeb or reporter, will figure that we’re now looking for an empty room,” she said. “Joking aside, they won’t expect to see us out and about for a while, and we can account for a couple of hours or more of absence if we have to. Come on.” She led him down to one end of the corridor and into what looked like an old laundry room, lined with stainless steel rod shelving and various sanitary and housekeeping supplies. She turned on the overhead light and went to the end of the room, where she pulled aside one of the shelving units, which rolled quietly on oiled casters, exposing a plywood door panel about five by five with a padlock on it. Nightshade took out a key, unlocked the padlock and slipped it through the hasp, then took out a thin solid washer and slipped it carefully through the crack in the door about two inches from the top right hand corner. “This is just a tad tricky,” she said, slowly pulling the door open. Then she pulled from her pocket a thick wad of a putty or gum-like substance and clamped it down on the washer. It stuck and held the washer in place. “The Feds aren’t completely dumb. The FBI figured we might want to go exploring in the shafts and vents, and so they put a photoelectric silent alarm on this door. Even the slight change in light that would come from opening the door in the dark would set it off, but Doc tried this washer and Playclay trick and his meter thingie didn’t read, so let’s hope it’s worked again, and they don’t know we’ve opened this door.” Inside the door was what appeared to be a steel dumbwaiter.