Air Force Eagles (32 page)

This day, as he rose to go, Marshall reached out and grabbed his arm. "I demand to see my fellow pilots. I will protest to the UN if you don't end this solitary confinement. I demand to be treated exactly like white pilots are treated."

Kim stood up, perplexed and obviously transfixed with horror that Marshall had touched him. Mumbling, he used his favorite expression, "No, this is not relevant."

On impulse, Marshall picked up his tin cup of tea, cold now, and poured it down the front of Kim's pants. "I demand to be placed with my fellow officers!"

His face blank with incomprehension, Kim turned and ran from the room. Marshall never saw him again.

*

Washington, D.C./October 25, 1952

There were few satisfactory places in Washington to bring a European to eat, but at Harvey's, the beef and the seafood were always good.

Harvey's had another advantage—your privacy was respected. No matter which of the regulars were there—Congressman Dade, J. Edgar Hoover, whoever—none would do more than flicker an eyebrow in recognition.

He'd asked for a table where they could talk without fear of being overheard. Josten had a shrimp cocktail and a T-bone steak; Ruddick ordered the same. They drank scotch before, beer with, and cognac after.

Milo was pleased with the man. He was doing well at the McNaughton plant and still covertly maintained his contacts in Germany with other art collectors. To his surprise, Ruddick had found that the large portfolio of paintings by Hitler was proving to be the most valuable Josten had sent to him, serving a double purpose. To the collectors, they had an immense intrinsic value. There was apparently no price they would not pay. More important, the paintings were a very powerful tool when used as a gift, or a reward, with certain of the most powerful figures he was dealing with on Klan matters. They were almost as potent a political symbol as was the Blood Flag—a treasure for the future.

With coffee and the Dutch Master cigars, Milo guardedly began to talk business as Josten cradled the cognac glass in his hands.

"With Troy dead, things are a little uncertain at McNaughton. You'll have to stay there for a few months, but then I'll have some other tasks for you."

Josten sniffed the cognac, nodding, his eyebrows raised. "What do you have in mind?"

"I need your help in revitalizing the Klan. It's become a redneck debating society run by beer-drinking bullies. It needs to be stripped of the old rituals and given a new purpose. I want to rename it, get rid of the stupid costumes, and narrow the focus of interest."

"I'm not sure—it has to have a catchy acronym. Right now, I'm thinking about the National Order of White Workers—NOWW. And I'd like to use your party's old slogan, 'Awake.' "

Josten considered this a moment. "And what am I supposed to do?"

Milo leaned forward enthusiastically. "You have great organizational ability; we can use that. But I really want you to inspire the Klan, to tell them what was done in your country. You have no idea how they would look up to a Luftwaffe colonel, a real Nazi."

Josten's scarred face twisted into a grin. "A real Nazi. Oddly enough I was never a Nazi, never belonged to the Party. I thought that Hitler was crazy. I loved Germany, of course, and did all I could to win the war."

Ruddick looked at him, appalled, and Josten went on. "After the war, confined for months to a hospital bed, I realized how wrong I was. Everything Hitler had predicted came true, from Russian rapes to Negro music blasting on the radio, the country in ruins. I should not have betrayed him."

Mind racing, anxious to show his sympathy, Ruddick said, "It's just like Hitler himself, after the first war. He was gassed, you know, and hospitalized, just like you were."

Josten nodded slightly, amazed by Ruddick's insight. He was absolutely correct—his belief in Hitler had begun to grow in the hospital, too late for it to benefit Germany.

"Neither. The Communists have fostered a growing liberal tide in this country. That's why the military services were forcibly integrated, against the advice of all the generals and admirals. It was a desperate attempt by Truman to gain votes."

"Ah, but it worked, for him, and for the Negroes. How does Eisenhower stand on the issue? He is a general's general."

Ruddick snorted in frustration. "I don't know, but I doubt if even he could do anything to reverse integration in the military. But it won't be long before the Jews will be advocating other craziness—integrated schools, open elections. The blacks outnumber us in the South—they will simply swamp us. That's what the Jews want."

"What do you want your organization to do?"

"Create a backlash. I want my people to do so much violence to the Negroes that they will rebel. I want the Negroes to come out of their houses, out of their subservience, and demand their rights. But I don't want them to do it peaceably. I want them killing whites."

"Presumably the other whites will then rebel themselves?"

"They always have, they will again. We need Negro-led race riots, whites dead in the streets, white houses burned, white churches blown up. Then this liberal nonsense will subside."

"Why not have your own people do it and blame it on the Blacks?"

"Do you think someone stupid enough to wear a white sheet and a megaphone on his head could be that subtle? No, I'll have to harness their natural instincts."

Josten carefully tapped his cigar against the ashtray, as Ruddick went on. "The sad thing is that, stupid as they are, their natural instincts are correct. If they still had the power, and the tacit support of the government, they would soon sort out the Negroes and the Jews. But the Klan has become a laughing stock, a magnet for the screwballs."

"Screwballs?"

"Means eccentric, weird, crazy. But I must work with what I have, trying to change them over time, giving them better direction, better goals."

Josten shook his head. It seemed bizarre, but so had the Nazi party to many people in 1923.

"Do you work alone?"

"No. Many people, most of them far more affluent than I, think the same way I do. I have contacts with very wealthy people in twelve states who are sympathetic to my aims and who are members of the Klan."

Josten went to the heart of the matter. "How powerful is your group? Could you force a confrontation now?"

"No, absolutely not. I've just begun the process. Give me five years. I need you to help me. But I've done all the talking. Tell me about yourself, about life in the Luftwaffe. You weren't in the SS, I know, but tell me what you know about it."

Josten stirred uneasily. It was not something he liked to talk about. Could Ruddick be recording the conversation?

"It's late. Let's leave the Luftwaffe for another time. I have too many painful memories of our failures with our jet fighter. And while I wasn't in the SS, I can tell you that it has been badly misrepresented. It was primarily an elite fighting organization, idealistic, dedicated to our leaders. The SS got all the nastiest jobs, all the worst fighting in Russia and in France. But people remember only the concentration camps."

He was silent and Ruddick said, almost wistfully, "I believe you had experience at Nordhausen, did you not? Tell me about it."

Josten stared at him; the man was a true believer, no mistake, but this was something he didn't want to talk about. He stood up, saying, "Excuse me for a moment. Where is the toilet?"

A few minutes later, Josten stood looking in the mirror as he washed his hands, thinking about Ruddick's proposal to join him. It was not a bad offer. With the flying wing dead at McNaughton, there was really no reason for him to be there, and, with his disabilities, it wouldn't be easy to find employment elsewhere. Why shouldn't he use this corrupt fool Ruddick, as a tool? He could work for him, building up his Klan while he recovered his strength. Then, perhaps, he'd be ready to see Lyra and Ulrich.

His eyes misted as he thought of them. She had been so cruel to take Ulrich away from him. He had not gone to see her because he was not yet fit—not yet potent. It would be unendurable to approach her again and not be able to make love to her. Perhaps in another few months . . .

Outside, the weather had turned cold, a front had switched off like a lamp the past two days of Indian summer. Erich Weissman sat in a Chevrolet sedan, its engine running, the heater and the wipers working. He'd stolen the car weeks ago from a new shopping center, where the owner had obligingly left the key in the ignition. The theft made him feel guilty as an assassination never did. Weissman had kept it garaged until tonight. He had the window cracked, the gun in his lap, and was grateful to have found a parking spot within good shooting range.

Weissman was still debating with himself the ethics of killing an American, even though he knew Ruddick was one of the most influential opponents of arms sales to Israel. He had nothing against Ruddick; his real target should have been the man he was dining with. If the intelligence was correct, Josten was the sort he hated most, an officer who pretended to despise the Nazis, while doing everything he could to help them win the war. He didn't know if Josten had ever beaten a slave laborer or sent a Jew to a concentration camp. But he did know that he had masterminded the installation at Nordhausen where slaves built jet engines for the Luftwaffe. Weissman knew that he would never have seen him there—the neatly uniformed Luftwaffe personnel rarely came down into the depths of the tunnel. But Josten was even more guilty than the guards who actually cracked skulls and broke bones. They were just brutes, unthinking animals. It was people like Josten who made their work possible.

Yet of the two, Israel had designated Ruddick as the primary target, the real enemy. Well, if the state of Israel had existed in the twenties, perhaps Hitler and Himmler would have been deemed enemies and been executed. Many millions of lives would have been saved. As the Germans always said, orders were orders.

He started each time the restaurant door swung open, bringing the gun up to window level. There had been only false alarms so far.

A light rain began to fall, shimmering against the windows of the jewelry store to the right. He tensed as he saw Ruddick emerge, holding the door for the slower man behind him. Ruddick continued to hold the door open while a couple, laughing, heads down, ran down the street in the rain.

The two men turned right and Weissman fired twice. Both dropped as the bullets ripped into the jewelry store window, an Atmos clock blowing up among the avalanche of glass cascading into the street. Weissman gunned the car out of its space, then roared down 17th Street, cursing himself. He should have concentrated on Ruddick; he knew he had missed them both.

Josten asked, "Are you all right?"

"Yes, I'm surprised my reflexes are still so good. I don't know what that was about, but I've made a lot of enemies over the years."

*

Wichita, Kansas/October 26, 1952

The news commentator had just finished the fifteenth repetition of Eisenhower giving his "I will go to Korea" speech, and Ulrich switched the channel to "The Cisco Kid."

"How much television are you going to let him watch?"

"As much as he wants. He's a smart boy."

They'd been married one month, bought a new station wagon, moved two thousand miles, rented a furnished apartment, got Ulrich into school, and not yet had their first argument.

Bayard Riley stretched out on the couch, one arm around Lyra, one around Ulrich. "It's great you're so adaptable."

She looked at him with surprise. "Let me tell you something. Traveling across the United States in a Chevolet is much better than riding to Berlin in an ox-cart. How many times did we get strafed on Route 66? Not once." She kissed him. "You don't know how nice it is to open a refrigerator and choose what to eat. You don't know how nice it is just to have a refrigerator!"

As if on cue, Ulrich ran in to the refrigerator and pulled a Milky Way out of the freezer compartment. As he came back he rubbed his stomach appreciatively. A good kid, Ulrich had protested a little about leaving school in California, but by his third school day in Wichita, he was perfectly happy.

Lyra asked, "But how adaptable are you?"

Bear looked at her with surprise. "What do you mean? I'm the most adaptable guy in the world."

"So? Will you adapt to flying a bomber instead of a fighter? Will you adapt to have a crew reporting to you? Will you adapt to having a baby?"