“When?”
“Tonight I’m going to talk to Donovan after we’re done. I want his assistant to oversee this. Lou Hidalgo is his name. You know he lost a son in what happened? A fireman.”
“Yeah, I read that in the Post. Is he going to be up to it?”
“Lou is tough. But he will just be oversight. There are a couple agents already on the investigation working the Allen aspect of things. I’m sure Lou will use them as lead.”
“I know from experience you have good people out there,” Bud said. “This Allen fellow had some pretty nasty affiliations, didn’t he?”
“Aryan Brotherhood. But they operate pretty much behind bars, and he’s been out and on the run for quite a while. Like I said, I’ll know more later.”
“Fair enough,” Bud said, knowing some things had to wait. But some things couldn’t. “Gordy, to be safe I’m going to have to let some people in on this.”
“I understand. Just be particular.”
“You know it,” Bud assured the director, then hung up. A sandwich was on his desk, calling his name, but Bud had some calling that needed to come first. The first number he dialed was that of the president’s chief of staff. After a brief conversation requesting a meeting he dialed the other. It was answered by the supervising agent of the Secret Service presidential detail.
Cat and Dog. The title of the book John Barrish held while sitting in the overstuffed chair might have led one to believe that the subject was rudimentary reading skills for children. But it was not.
There is the cat, an obvious hunter, difficult to domesticate and train, cunning, yet susceptible to the distraction of simple stimuli such as a string dangled before it. Then there is the dog, a thinker, able to follow commands to a much higher degree than the cat. It learns. It is loyal. It obeys commands of logic presented to it. It is discerning.
The cat and the dog inhabit the planet together. They are each prolific breeders. Yet they have never mixed, never attempted to meld their distinct selves into one bastardized offspring. Why? Why?
“Because they know better,” John said aloud, answering the question posed by the book’s author, Dr. Felix Trent, a social and racial theorist from the early part of the century whose writings and teachings had helped a very angry and a very confused young John Barrish find the proper way to channel his energetic convictions on the subject of race.
Because they know better. The cat functions as a more primitive creature, successful in the environment it chooses. The dog functions at a higher level in its own environment. Logic tells the two not to mix. No biological reasoning need be added.
For the African and the Aryan the question is the same, as it is for all other races defined by their bloodline and simpler cultures. The African is a hunter, a gatherer, a master of an uncivilized environment whereby its natural physical strengths and lack of inhibiting moral codes allow it to thrive. The Aryan is of a higher order, an organizer, a builder, an exploiter of tools and technology. There can be no dispute to this, nor can there be a dispute that any mixing of these races, whether by habitation in proximity to one another or by, in a more serious and tragic sense, relations that produce mixed offspring, will end in disaster. The animals know better. So should we.
It was just the foreword to one of Trent’s many books, but it was powerful, John thought. So simple. Separation. Was it so hard a concept to understand? It was not for him. The Africans — why people persisted in antagonizing them by calling them niggers and the like was beyond him — could have Africa. The Aryans of pure blood could have America, the country built by white people, and parts of Europe, though he believed that so much mixing had occurred there that that continent was best abandoned, surrendered to the Gypsies and their cohorts. America would be for the white man.
John closed the book with a satisfying slap that coincided with the opening of the front door. His eldest boy was back. Finally! he thought, hoping some questions would now be answered. “What happened?”
“I don’t know, Pop,” Toby Barrish said, shrugging apologetically.
“The TV said there was an accident,” Barrish said, the force in his words exceeded by the menace in his posture. His feet shuffled on the living room carpet like a bull’s before the charge.
“Calm down, Pop,” Toby said. “I checked the stuff. It’s safe.”
“But what the hell happened out there?!” Barrish demanded, his small neck bulging and his teeth gritted as short breaths whistled through them.
“I don’t know. Freddy was supposed to take care of things after I picked up the stuff. When I left him he was going to go back in and do it.”
Barrish rubbed a hand over his head and turned away from his son. Through the doorway to the kitchen he saw his wife looking at him, her face covered with that same, weak expression of what she thought was concern. He rejected that, from her or from anyone. John Barrish did not need sympathy. He did not need pity. Both offerings were from and for the meek, and he could be characterized as nothing if not the total opposite of that.
“Pop, there’s no way they can trace any of what happened to us,” Toby assured him. “I was careful with Freddy. Real careful.”
Barrish faced his son again. “I knew you would be. This just shouldn’t have happened.”
“I know.”
It had to be Freddy the federal pig was talking about on TV when he mentioned a dead fugitive. Freddy was that, to be certain. But then the pig from the Internal Robbery Service had it coming, John believed. It hadn’t been done cleanly, but some resistance actions were bound to be messy. Freddy simply came from a group that subscribed to the belief that the dirtier the action was, the better.
“I’m glad he’s out of the picture,” Barrish said. “You did good keeping him at arm’s length, Toby.”
“I knew he didn’t fit into our group, Pop, but he served a purpose. Means to an end,” Toby added as an afterthought.
“That’s right,” Barrish agreed. “When is the meeting?”
“Monday,” Toby answered. “Stan and I are going to meet them at the zoo.”
Barrish’s eyes looked down in thought briefly. “Keep an eye on Stanley. He’s still young.”
“He just needs a little toughening, that’s all,” Toby said. “This’ll help.”
Barrish nodded acceptance of his eldest’s belief. “And you watch the Africans. You hear me?” He tapped his temple with a single finger. “They may be feeble up here, but they have centuries of genes on their side in the muscle department.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Make sure Stanley understands that, too,” Barrish admonished his son.
“I will.”
The heat of the moment was subsiding now. Barrish let several breaths loose to unwind further. “I want to see it.”
The words took Toby by surprise. “That’s not a good idea, Pop. You should be as far away from the stuff as possible.”
“I want to see it,” he repeated, his wish obviously not up for further discussion. “Tonight.”
“Okay, Pop. Tonight.”
THREE
Relations
Darren Griggs wondered how one man could hate so much. He had puzzled over the same question more than a year before, when the name of John Barrish sparked images of a pitiful man who was so fearful of those whose skin was of a darker hue than his that he would champion their removal from “white” America. Now, as the head of a family torn apart by the actions of that same man he had pitied, Darren Griggs knew that he could hate even more.
Yet his hate was more profound. It came from a place inside that used to be filled with a contrasting emotion. Now there was a blazing inferno there. His rage was burning, aching for vengeance, consuming its host as it searched for a target of opportunity. It had tempted him to strike out at his own family, but he resisted, burying it deeper. His wife, already destroyed by the vicious murder of her little girl, was little more than a shell of the woman she had been. His son, who had doted on his little sister like any big brother would, was now more of an adversary in their family structure than a member. He thrived on conflict, savoring it, even in the smallest amounts. Arguments with his defenseless mother. Defiance of his father. And, even though Moises was of age, this devastated his father, who had always been the closest of friends with his son. Now the rift could hardly be wider.