A Mighty Fortress

by H. A. Covington

  “I can’t believe our luck!” he said excitedly. “The door alarm has a manual switch and whoever was out there last forgot to turn it on! And whoever’s running security board upstairs must not have noticed, or else they just don’t give a damn! God, are these Feds incompetent or what?”

  “Well, we’ve been here ten weeks, and while there’s been a lot of yelling in the conference session and a lot of drunk reporters, it’s actually been pretty sedate. We haven’t killed anybody before tonight, so they probably just got slack. You know, I’ve noticed that ever since white people started standing up for themselves and fighting back, little things like that happen,” commented Nightshade. “Other Volunteers have mentioned it as well. Our luck as a people seems to have changed. Any time we need that fall of the dice, that toss of a coin, all other things being equal it seems to go our way. Fortune really does favor the brave, I guess. Right, enough midnight metaphysics. Let’s get Susie Q. recycled. What are those?”

  “Supersize garbage bags I grabbed from a shelf in from the kitchen,” said Cody. “That way if she’s found, hopefully they’ll think she was done in the kitchen and divert their attention away from this room.” They wrapped Susan’s body in the garbage bags by sliding one over her feet and another over her head, then repeating the process for a double-bagging. Before they did so, Nightshade asked,

  “Do you think we should take that recorder thing? Doc might be able to figure out how it works, what she was doing and who she was working for.”

  “Negative,” said Cody. “They find one item of hers on any of us, we have problems.” They lashed the garbage bags around her body with her own belt and then slid the whole body into a king-sized mattress cover big enough to act like a sack and give them something to grasp as carrying handles. “Okay, now comes the hard part. Sure there’s no way we can risk using that dumbwaiter?” They picked up Susan’s corpse and carried her over to the shaft. “This is going to be a bitch,” said Cody, staring up into the darkness. “One of us is going to have to stand up there and pull and one of us stay down here and lift and push.”

  Nightshade sighed. “We could probably manhandle her up the rungs with you pushing and me pulling, but I’m starting to get worried about time. Look, I’ll go up and get out into the kitchen, then I’ll push the car down as far as I can and you haul the dumbwaiter lift down, put her in it, turn this dial to K and hit the blue button. Our luck has held so far. Let’s just hope nobody hears or else they think it’s kitchen crew if they do.”

  “Does the damned thing even work?” asked Cody.

  “We’re going to find out,” she said. “If it does, I’ll pull her out and you make sure it’s turned off and then come up by the rungs.” The procedure she described was clumsy, but it worked. The dumbwaiter whirred and groaned but it had been greased recently, and it hauled Susan’s body up to the kitchen without making all that much noise. By the time Cody got up onto the rungs and pushed the car up with his arm, Emily had the mattress cover off and on the floor, and they lifted the black plastic-wrapped package and its gruesome contents into one of the heavy gray plastic garbage tips. They pushed the tip to the door, checked to see that the alarm was indeed off, opened it and chocked both doors open with little rubber wedges that appeared to be there for that very purpose. Outside, a gibbous autumn moon shone down, low in the sky. “Perfect weather for skulduggery. Come out with me and be prepared to do another cuddle if we see a camera or a guard,” Emily said. “We’ll tell them we’re determined to do it in every room in the hotel, including on the conference room table.” Cody stepped outside and looked around.

  “Damn, it’s gotten colder,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind getting my hands under your bra right now.” The trash compactor loomed before them at the edge of the dock, which in turn was at the bottom of a ramp somewhat recessed into the building. Cody didn’t see anyone. He propped open the trash compactor’s top cover with a broom handle leaning up against it, evidently for that very purpose. “Hey, this is a recycling receptacle,” he said. “I don’t know if we’re supposed to put organic material in here.”

  “As long as it’s not plastic or steel,” she said. “Our JAP is neither. I think she’ll smush up into jelly real good.” Between them they hauled out the tip and dumped the body in. The trash compactor was half full of cardboard and paper waste, much of it gooey and soggy with food and food byproducts. It was a large steel container, and Cody jumped down inside it. “Give me the flashlight,” he said. He cleared out a space as far up in the container as he could, dragged his former sister’s body forward, and buried her in cartons and paper wrapping and glop, so that the black plastic bags could not be seen. Then Nightshade leaned down, held out her hand and helped pull him out.

  “Do you think we dare push our luck and start it up and compact that all that crap?” she asked.

  “We can’t,” said Cody. “There’s an ignition key somewhere inside the office that goes in that switch, and we don’t have time to find it, plus the noise would certainly attract one of the MP security patrols. Lucky we’re down in this trough between the buildings. This should work, if our luck holds. The morning crew will dump all kinds of breakfast refuse in here, it will still be dark, and somebody will run a crush before the truck comes to haul this one away. But we need to get the hell out of here.” They snuck back inside, pulling the tip after them, and closed the door. Nightshade picked the mattress cover off the floor and dropped it down the shaft, then they were inside and back down into the basement. Within several more minutes they were back up in the South Wing janitorial closet, and after a quick peep into the corridor down the hall and back into Barrow’s executive suite. Cody smelled like garbage. Barrow and Jane Chenault were sitting on the sofa side by side, watching CNN. He looked up at them.

  “Everything all right?” he asked.

  “Fine, sir,” said Cody, although he was by no means sure it was fine or even if Barrow knew exactly what had happened. There was still a lot that could go wrong.

  “I heard a rumor that the Americans are going to stage some kind of incident tomorrow, sir,” said Nightshade. “They’re going to pretend to be very upset over something. More so than usual.”

  “Yeah, well, they get upset over a lot of things. Nothing we can do about it,” replied Barrow with a shrug, cupping his hand to his ear. He had never fully believed that as good as Doc Doom was with electronic gadgetry, he had managed to clear the entire floor of listening devices. He had a yellow legal pad in his hand and wrote, How bad will it get?

  Nightshade said, “God, that Paulus Ingrams is the ugliest coon on TV!” She wrote With luck they won’t find her.

  Barrow stared at the screen. “We’ve let them drag this out too long. They’re talking and talking and saying nothing, and I’m tired of it. We’ve been stuck in this hotel so long we’re starting to eat one another like mice in a cage. I’m going to talk to Lodge tomorrow and tell him that. We need to wind this up, one way or the other.”

  XI.

  “A National Socialist is someone who wants to save his race.

  A conservative is someone who wants to save his money.”

  – Commander George Lincoln Rockwell

  Barrow and Oliver Lodge met alone in Lodge’s suite at eight o’clock next morning. Lodge had a room service breakfast for two laid out. Barrow noticed that even this early, the international executive was wearing a suit and tie. “Help yourself,” Lodge said. “I’ve always like breakfast meetings. I have found that men tend to think more clearly and sharply in the early hours. Oh, one thing before we tuck in. This is a damned nuisance and an imposition, but the head of our FBI security detail has asked me to ask you if you have any idea where Senator Galinsky’s intern Ms. Horowitz might have gotten to? She seems to have gone missing, and supposedly you two had some words back on day one here.”

  “We got a bit bored last night so we decided to sacrifice a Jew to our pagan gods by burning her in a wicker cage under the stars, while we danced around
the bonfire in horned helmets,” said Barrow.

  “That’s in rather poor taste, don’t you think?” said Lodge disapprovingly.

  “How the devil should I know where Mr. Stanhope’s recreational vehicle is?” replied Barrow irritatingly. “I’m not screwing her. If we couldn’t restrain ourselves from making away with Jews for a while, we wouldn’t be here.”

  “I understand one of your young men has had a, er, prior acquaintance with Ms. Horowitz?” probed Lodge delicately.

  “Yes, she was part of the family your government sold him to like a pet hamster under the It Takes A Village program,” said Barrow. “Cody doesn’t want any more to do with her or any of them, and anyway he was in our part of the hotel last night, with me and the other members of the delegation.”

  “One other member anyway,” said Lodge, smiling and shaking his head as he held up a copy of the front page of the USA Today which showed Cody and Nightshade in a photograph taken through what appeared to be a night vision lens, locked in a passionate embrace the night before out by the vending machines. The caption read Northwest Nookie. “I do apologize for that,” said Lodge. “The behavior of some of these press people is abominable. I remember when this was a reputable paper.”

  “You created a rubbishy public so the media gives them rubbishy entertainment. Look, I don’t mean to sound so crotchety, Mr. Lodge. Thank you for seeing me. I know this is a violation of the conference protocols. We’re not supposed to be meeting with one another without other members of our delegations present, which always indicated to me that you must not trust each other. My people don’t object to my meeting you in private, but apparently yours do. That tells me something. Maybe that indicates I should have done this a long time ago. Am I correct in my surmise that you are the man who holds the real power in this dog and pony show, and that if you and I can come to some kind of understanding we can pack up our briefcases and go home?”

  Lodge shrugged. “Well, I like to think my word carries some weight with my colleagues,” he said. “Weintraub and Galinsky are here because they pretty much have to be. If we tried to sit down and have a pow-wow with you boys without someone from the Tribe in attendance, the stink would be beyond bearing. But you shouldn’t discount Walter Stanhope’s clout as well. He’s a player. You might say I speak for the world of business and he speaks for the world of government and politics. Brubaker is here as a sop to the military, who never like to admit they’re beaten in any era.”

  “So you admit you’re beaten?” asked Barrow keenly.

  “I said the military don’t like implying they’re beaten,” said Lodge. “I will go so far as to say that right now it would be really convenient for us if we could cease pouring money down this Northwest rathole and get on with putting out some other fires, like the one which is approaching in the Middle East and in our overseas possessions. You guys are the mouse that roared, and this whole sideshow is bad for business.”

  “By business I presume you mean the couple of thousand men in suits who actually run the whole planet through international finance capital?” said Barrow.

  “Yup. That’s who I mean,” said Lodge. “The great big bad world conspiracy itself. Insofar as there is one, I guess we’re it. Not even a couple of thousand of us. A very wise old Jewish gentleman, Walther Rathenau of Germany, once made the comment that three hundred men, all acquainted with each other, control the destiny of the world. That was in 1923. Today I’d put it at about five hundred. I know most of ‘em, and the rest will take my calls.”

  “I recall that for all his alleged wisdom, Rathenau was run down on the streets in his limousine and shot down by some young German officers, in retaliation for his pulling the plug on German ammunition production at the height of the 1918 spring offensive,” said Barrow. “When Hitler referred to the Jewish stab in the back, Rathenau’s was the hand on the dagger. An interesting parallel, Mr. Lodge, and an instructive lesson. All the power and all the money in the world can’t stop a bullet, when it is fired by a heart that is proof against all your temptation and all your money and all your threats.

  “That’s why so-called terrorism drives you people around the twist. Terrorism is the weapon of the weak against the strong, and it is a highly effective one, possibly the only one that can get through to you any more, the only weapon that can pierce your wall of power and privilege. You can’t bribe a bullet, you can’t corrupt it, you can’t vote it away, you can’t brainwash it into thinking it’s a snowflake, you can’t have a corrupt judge in a black robe bang his gavel and make it go away, you can’t sue it, you can’t jail it, you can’t hire some dumb-ass local deputy to beat or murder it, and once it’s fired it’s going right into the target. You and your kind have to keep all the hearts and minds of humanity in darkness and bondage, because it only takes one free man to pull a trigger and bring all your schemes and your constructions to nothing. That’s why we’re here. Because white mens’ hearts and our souls have escaped, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put Humpty together again.”

  “Bluntly, yes,” said Barrow. “I won’t lie to you, Barrow. A large part of why we are here speaking to you today, instead of hunting you down like dogs, is that you have demonstrated the capacity to kill, and I don’t mean homeboys or Mexican braceros or Joe Schmoe the cop on the corner. We don’t care about ordinary people. They are an inexhaustible resource. Mere gangsterism we could handle until the cows come home, but you are gangsters who understand what targets to select, and that is something new. You don’t shoot at Oz the Great and Powerful, all smoke and mirrors. You shoot at the little man behind the curtain, and that has gotten our attention. If it makes you feel any better I will concede your point. A large part of the reason for this conference is that some of those five hundred men who really count have been hurt, and you have seriously interfered with the conduct of our business by forcing us to worry about you, to take you into consideration. That has to stop.”

  “The Old Man calls it breaking the credible monopoly of force on the part of the state. By the by, we want you to let him go, but he has sent word that it’s not necessary. He’s willing to stay there in Florence and be murdered if the mood strikes you. He doesn’t care about himself so long as we don’t yield and we bring the Republic into being. I imagine that perturbs you as well. You’ve never dealt with anyone to whom money wasn’t the be all and end all, have you?”

  “Well, it’s a little premature to talk about his status,” said Lodge with a smile, “But I do have a little surprise for you on the prisoner release front. Today, in fact. I’ve noticed you’re getting a little antsy, and I figure it’s time we made a gesture. Call it compensation for these strenuous negotiating sessions. This isn’t official, just something I did on my own bat. Well, Walter Stanhope came up with the idea, actually. He seems to be almost sympathetic with you at times, although I put that down to the fact that he got turfed out of the Senate by a taco bender.”

  “And how will your Jewish colleagues react to this little bit of generous unilateralism on your part, whatever it may be?” inquired Barrow.

  “They have less to say about it than you might think,” said Lodge seriously. “Certainly much less say than they would have had in the past, when Jug-Ears and his neo-cons ruled the roost with an iron hand. Again, that’s largely thanks to you boys and your habit of filling the little man behind the curtain with lead. A lot of those little men behind the curtain that you’ve whacked out were Jewish, and we’ve seen that they are by no means invincible or omnipotent. We’ve also discovered how easy it is to do without them. You’re right. All the protekzia in the world can’t stop a bullet. Jeanette Galinsky is here because she’s Hillary Clinton’s eyes and ears. Weintraub is here because Israel wants him here, but don’t overestimate their influence. Jewish power is still strong in the world, Barrow, but not nearly as strong as it was fifty years ago.”

  “But they’re actually a separate faction within the capitalist world?” probed Barrow.<
br />
  “Mmmm, well, let’s say that as a group, the Jewish world financial community sometimes has interests which are a bit divergent from the rest of us,” said Lodge carefully. “Now Frank, suppose you just go ahead and say what you want to say.” Barrow sighed and helped himself to some scrambled eggs.

  “Articles 83, 84, and 85,” he said. “They’re not on. Not now, not ever. Don’t even bother to bring anything like that up again. We set our own tariffs and we issue our own money and we control our own economic policy. I know you don’t believe this and you’re going to try to get around it, but when I read those passages in that big mass of bullshit you laid on us, I finally understood how little point there is in our staying here. I’ve come to tell you that despite the fine hospitality and excellent cuisine of this establishment, we’re going to be leaving soon, most likely tomorrow, unless of course you try to stop us, in which case we’re going to kill as many of you as we can before we get shot down ourselves. We came here to end the war and bring our new nation into existence. Almost every day since we have been here, we have presented for your signature a simple single-page document of six points, which would bring five years of bloodshed to an end. No terms, no conditions, no indemnities, no recriminations, just a simple agreement that this war is over, we have won, and you leave now. We are serious about that document, but apparently you people either cannot or will not understand that it’s over. You fought a war to keep us in the Union, you have lost, now its time to pick up your marbles and go home. In return all we have gotten is ream after ream of bullshit like that draft proposal you finally gave us. I have looked that over and I am appalled. You seriously don’t think we’re going to stay here in this hotel for another year quibbling on and on about crap like that, do you? There is nothing difficult or complex about what we want. What part about ‘You have two weeks to get out’ do you not understand? As to those articles that reduce our nation to the same servitude we just fought for five years to escape, I suppose you thought that I was so dumb I wouldn’t notice them?”