The Hill of the Ravens

by H. A. Covington

  “How compromised is the Old Believers’ Association?” asked Morgan keenly.

  “The OBA is fine. They have repudiated the conspirators, loud and clear and unambiguously. This wasn’t an OBA thing. It was just these six people who went batty,” Redmond assured him. “Todd Andrews and the other three, and the married couple, the Parkers. I have some questions in my mind about the true nature of the Parkers’ involvement.”

  “ONR agent provocateurs?” asked Morgan.

  “There is no concrete evidence that the U. S. Office of Northwest Recovery was involved, but we know it’s one of their long term strategic goals to set off a full scale religious war in the Republic. Hell, they have enough help from the idiots on both sides here who for no reason related to sanity seem to want the same thing. The ONR also has a habit of inserting male-female teams, married or otherwise, since that maintains long-term loyalty by reducing the natural urge of both sexes to go looking for nookie elsewhere and maybe getting personally involved with the enemy. Our War Prevention Department does the same thing with the agents we sent into the States and Aztlan. BOSS confiscated the Parkers’ homecoms and portacoms and the technical analysts in our lab found several traces of what appear to be encrypted elements of computer code, which the Parkers deleted before they were arrested.”

  “From outside the Republic?” asked the president keenly. “Can’t tell. Whatever these fragments were, they were top of the line encrypted and we haven’t been able to decode them yet. We’re working on it. As to the Parkers themselves, they’re completely clean as far as we can determine. We hacked a number of databases both in Aztlan and the United States, and what we came up with appeared to match their stated backgrounds as far as birth dates, social security numbers, employment, etc. If they were set up with false identities then it was done by pros, but I’ve always admitted the ONR does good work. The Parkers took the gap six years ago, the usual dramatic running of the border, so forth and so on. Perhaps a bit too dramatic.”

  “Did they enter from the U. S. or Aztlan?”

  “Aztlan,” replied Redmond. “They said on their Homecoming applications that they were from Santa Clara, California.”

  “If they were coming from California, why didn’t they use the open border crossing at Mountain Gate?” asked Morgan.

  “Parker claimed that because of his technical skills he would not have been able to get an exit visa, which for all I know may be the truth. Despite all the limpezia de sangre crap, the Mexican government is realistic enough to know they need skilled white labor to keep even the semblance of society functioning down there. The Parkers also had about forty thousand dollars in savings they wanted to bring with them which the Mexicans would never have allowed them to take out of Nuevo Mondo Hispanica. Plus the fact that even so much as asking to enter the Republic for a visit can bring heavy retaliation down there, as you know. It all looked straight up and credible. We get thousands of cases like that every year, as the last white people in the Southwest and Texas try to make a break for it. Glenn Parker was employed as an electronics circuit mapper in one of the space communication facilities. Parker is a class B-2 citizen due to his technical qualifications. The wife was a C-cat. No kids, which kind of adds to my suspicion a bit. A man with a B job and a wife with a Charlie homemaker’s check that would have gotten significantly better with each child? No financial reason for them to have no family. If they couldn’t have children for medical reasons, why didn’t they adopt? The Lebensborn Heritage Recovery teams are snatching hundreds of white babies every year now from the States and Canada, running them across the border like the old rumrunners and drug cartels used to smuggle in hooch and dope. The creches are full, and our own people are so into having kids that Lebensborn actually has trouble finding adoptive parents now. Not like it was sixty years ago under the American régime, when a healthy white infant could fetch a hundred grand on the adoption market and the government was in the business of kidnapping Aryan children for sale to PC yuppies and faggots. We have an embarrassment of riches, you might say.”

  “Yeah, I know,” agreed Morgan. “That’s why Parliament passed the law granting a one-grade citizenship bump and increasing the homemaker’s benefits for anyone adopting a Lebensborn kid now. By the way…?”

  “Sarah and I are already A-1s, so we don’t need a promotion, but we’ve already applied,” Redmond told him. “We should have some more little feet pattering around in a couple of months. Sarah’s incredible! Five of our own, two of them not yet grown, and already she’s ready for the second wave. Says she can’t wait around for grandchildren. Eva’s so crazy to have some babies to play with she’s actually set aside some time from her acting lessons for child-rearing classes at the high-school, and John is making a crib out in our garage with my tools.”

  “And speaking of grandchildren, what’s the story on Cindy El?” asked Morgan.

  “The Mark Conway situation is looking good for when he gets out of the army,” replied Don. “I think we’ll get a formal proposal soon. When Allan gets home Sarah and I are going to propose for Sinéad O’Neill, General Michael O’Neill’s oldest daughter. At Allan’s request, of course. I don’t believe in marriage-shopping my kids off without consulting them first. Allan and Sinéad met when she was in junior high school and he got roped in to do some lectures on astronaut training. He’s twelve years older than she is, which our social engineering people tell us is about the right compatibility range, and that strikes me as about right as well. I know, there’s only a year between Sarah and me, but those were different times. They’ve already worked it out between them. Sinéad is waiting for him. General O’Neill knows and he has given us to understand he won’t entertain any other proposals, presuming Allan gets home within a reasonable time. The girl should be in the first year toward her biochemistry degree and on her way to B-1 citizenship by then, and she has already applied for Party membership. Between the two of them, given Allan’s Class A citizenship and her education, they will both be eligible for early Life Grants, so that’s their house taken care of.”

  “I’ve met Sinéad at some military dos, when she was there with her Dad. I was impressed. I heard she and Allan were courting and I’m glad it worked out. Right, as much as I hate to do so, back to the Andrews case,” said Morgan with a sigh.

  “To all outward appearances the Parkers are just a couple of kooky pagans with a bug up their ass about Christianity, all the usual blather about Jesus being a dead Jew on a stick, and they seem to have an ability to talk weaker-minded people into doing things they shouldn’t.”

  “Agent provocs usually have that ability,” remarked Morgan dryly. “God knows we learned that the hard way about a thousand times back in the old days. Any chance at all any space programs might have been compromised by Glenn Parker? I’ve got a grandboy sitting up there on that red hunk of rock we call Mars, and I will be exceedingly wroth if this bastard has done anything that might keep him from coming home.”

  “You and me both, sir. Believe me, I looked into that possibility, very closely. I don’t think so. Parker’s security clearance wasn’t that high, and the technology he worked with is nothing new to the Americans or the Chinese. We’re looking into that as well, of course. Even though we don’t have any actual proof of espionage, sabotage, or unlawful contact with the common enemy, I’ve already put in my recommendation for a security court, at least for the Parkers. No publicity, jury drawn from Alpha citizens only.”

  “Mmmm, afraid I have to overrule you there, Don,” said Morgan with a frown. “Sorry. I wish there didn’t have to be a trial. We sure as hell could do without this kind of public washing of the Republic’s dirty laundry. But this is one we have to bring out in the open. It’s not just because secret tribunals are a ZOG thing. We use them too, because sometimes we have to. We’re still at war, despite over a generation of trying to reach some kind of permanent agreement with these people. But if the Christians think we’re covering something like this up they’ll nai
l my hide to a barn door next election. Nor can we exclude Bravos and Charlies from the jury, as would be the case with a security court. Most Christian Identity citizens are of those degrees and it ain’t politically expedient to keep it to Alphas only. Alphas are mostly National Socialists and thus considered to be pagans by Christian fundamentalists. I’m already getting pelted during question time by the CI faction in Parliament, not to mention the Opposition, who are gearing up for a real field day with it. Plus the Pentecostal crew is likely to use this as an excuse to renew their demand that their new immigrants to the Republic come in as Bravos, without doing military service.”

  “Thus doubling their voting strength at a single stroke. How could they possibly use this case to make a totally unrelated political demand?” asked Don.

  “They’ll find a way, believe me,” chuckled Morgan. “Which I can’t grant them, because then the OBA probably would try to stage a coup. They are painfully conscious that Christians are a majority in this country, and if I automatically hand a militant Christian sect the two votes apiece that come with B citizenship, they’d have a legitimate grievance. The Republic is walking a religious tightrope of the kind that no white society has experienced since seventeenth century Europe, Don, and balance has to be maintained. You earn your citizenship and you earn your votes through service to the state and service to society, not as a bribe for political peace. We ever start handing out citizenship and votes as patronage, it will be the beginning of a potentially fatal corruption in our system. Hit war just that happened in the United States and I cain’t let it happen here. This Andrews case has to be handled by the numbers, with everything on the table. There mustn’t be the slightest hint of a cover-up. Otherwise the CIs and the Pentecostals will be all over my ass like ugly on an ape, in Parliament and out, all in the name of Yahweh and the great jumping Jesus, of course.”

  “The problem with having a Parliament based on the old Rhodesian model is that forty percent of it is allocated for the Opposition,” Don reminded him dryly. “Now, if we had a unitary National Socialist state…”

  “Damn, don’t you start!” snapped Morgan in exasperation. “I get enough of that from the NS benches! At least the Nazis don’t have this damned religion bug up their ass! Sometimes I think they’re the most balanced and rational of the lot.”

  “I have often wondered how the Führer would have viewed a situation where National Socialism is considered to be a force for moderation?” chuckled Don in delight.

  “I think he’s looking down on us from Valhalla and laughing his Austrian ass off. What the hell was ever wrong with good old-fashioned hoot-and-holler religion?” grumbled the State President. “You work your butt off all week, you get drunk and raise a little hell on Saturday night, then the wife drags you to church on Sunday morning with a hangover and you sing and jump for Jesus, then you go have a big lunch and go fishing in the afternoon. That’s how life is supposed to be, goddamit! What the hell was wrong with that? Who needs all this rapture shit anyway? Ain’t a damned thing in the Bible about it. Iffen that good Old Time Religion was good enough for Stonewall Jackson it ought to be good enough for us!” Redmond smiled inwardly. He knew that John Corbett Morgan was one of the most acute, ruthless and eclectic statesmen of his age or any other, with a mind like a steel trap, a man who was entirely capable of holding his own in any scientific, economic or political discussion with any other world leader. And yet his occasional lapses into Kentucky hillbilly were not affectations. They were the true soul of the man himself. For the Northwest Republic, or any other nation on earth, to be led by a bona fide man of the people was an event rare in history. To be well led by such a man was a gift of God. Or the gods. “I ever tell you how we ended up with A Mighty Fortress Is Our God as our national anthem?”

  He had, but it was one the stories from the Time of Struggle that Don never tired of hearing. Morgan plunged into it without asking further. “After weeks of incredibly tense negotiations at Longview, when we damned near had to go for our guns and shoot our way out a dozen times, we finally browbeat and arm-twisted those bastards into giving us our own country. Then at the last goddamned minute, when we were all set to walk out and tell the world that the white race would live, that it had all been worth something…guess what? The damned tub-thumping…I’m sorry, certain of our brave and loyal comrades of the Biblical persuasion threatened to break the whole deal, walk out and start all the fighting and bombing and burning again, over the earth-shaking issue of what the hell song we would play when we ran up the first official Tricolor! They wanted Onward Christian Soldiers, then the Nazis demanded the Horst Wessel Lied, and the Odinists wanted Wagner. Thank God for that angel in human form, Cathy Frost! While we all argued and made fools of ourselves in front of the President of the United States, the commissioners from the U. N., the International Red Cross delegation and all the enemy generals who wanted to keep on fighting and killing us, she managed to convince us to play A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. It was Christian enough for the tub-thumpers, and German enough for the Nazis, and she just plain shamed the Odinists into shutting the hell up when she pulled up her blouse and showed…what was done to her. The holy rollers liked it since it was written by Martin Luther so they could score one off the Whore of Babylon in Rome. The fate of our race hanging in the balance and there they all were, blathering about Whores of Babylon! Cathy said it had some kind of personal meaning for her. Well, now it has meaning for everyone. Thank God one of our people had the Mormon Tabernacle Choir version on CD for the speaker system and we went ahead and did it before everybody changed their mind, or we probably would have ended up with another five years of war!”

  “You want a trial on Andrews, you got a trial,” conceded Redmond with a shrug. “You’re the boss of BOSS, sir. Hell, maybe once the Parkers get their brains lasered squeaky clean and go through reconstruction they’ll become devout holy rollers and spend their Sundays handling snakes and jumping for Jesus. Now what’s this other assignment you have for me?”

  “It’s a ghost story,” said the president with a straight face.

  “I beg your pardon, sir?” asked Redmond politely. “I thought you usually told us those at Halloween over the roasting hot dogs and marshmallows?”

  “Actually, those are just old Manley Wade Wellman stories I ad lib,” Morgan confessed. “But this is a real one. A ghost from our past has come back to haunt us.”

  “Does this ghost have a name?” asked Redmond. “She does,” replied Morgan. “Trudy Greiner.”

  “What?” roared Don, stunned, leaping to his feet in amazement, his cigar ash falling onto the carpet unnoticed.

  “I said Trudy Greiner.” Morgan opened his desk drawer and handed Redmond a piece of paper encased in clear glassine plastic that he took from a folder. “This is a letter that my office received yesterday, supposedly from the Los Angeles metroplex, although there’s no way to tell where it actually originated.”

  “There’s no mail service between the Republic and Aztlan,” pointed out Redmond, holding the encased letter up to the light. “From what I gather, there’s precious little mail service in Aztlan. God, this is crap paper! The eco-freaks down there must have recycled it six or eight times. It’s about to fall apart! Well, at least she’s still speaking English and not Spanglish. Proper Mexican Spanish, now that I can speak and read and write from my language training at Sandpoint, but I still haven’t quite mastered that shit half-language the Americans speak now, for all the stuff I have to read in it that comes across my desk. It’s even worse than Puerto Rican.”

  “I know there’s no mail service from Aztlan,” responded Morgan. “This letter was carried by one of the private courier companies who specialize in smuggling mail into and out of the NAR. The Mexicans generally overlook it. They treat it as a kind of necessary evil and they have sense enough to know they can’t completely suppress all contact. As to the paper, she was probably lucky even to get that if she’s really living in L. A., with all the consta
nt shortage of the basics down there.” Redmond read the paper out loud.

  To the Honorable John Corbett Morgan State President, Northwest American Republic Longview House Olympia, Washington Mr. President:

  You may be surprised to hear from me after all this time the Republic has spent trying to hunt me down and kill me. I am writing to tell you that you can stop looking.

  I’m tired of living among strangers. I’m tired of running and hiding all my life for a crime I did not commit. I am going to put an end to it. It is my intention to exercise the right that belongs to every other Aryan man and woman the world over. I am Coming Home. I have gotten an exit visa from the Aztlan government, never mind how. On October 22nd of this year, the anniversary of the Coeur d’Alene uprising, I will walk into the Republic at the old Interstate Five border crossing at Mountain Gate, California. If you want to shoot me down on sight or hang me from the first tree on the white side of the border, then go ahead. I don’t care any more. You’ll be murdering an innocent woman, but I would rather die in the country I gave my youth and my heart to bring into being than live in this mud-colored horror down here for one more day.

  If you don’t kill me outright, then I demand a public trial or court martial on the charges against me. I did not betray the Olympic Flying Column. I would have given up my own life for Tom Murdock, for Melanie Young, and for any one of my beloved comrades without a moment’s hesitation. Even though forty years of hell have passed, I still mourn them all every day. I can no longer live with this lie, this terrible accusation. It is wrong. I don’t deserve this. I can’t stand it any more. I swear to you by my immortal soul that I am innocent. As a soldier of the Northwest Volunteer Army (I was never officially discharged) I demand the right to live and to die by the laws of my beloved country, and to clear my name should God in His infinite mercy grant me that deliverance. If not, then let His will be done.