Air Force Eagles (56 page)

Josten then turned to Baker, and with genuine solicitude said, "Your question is valid; let me answer it. We
make
them fight. Let me march four hundred Storm Klanners through their streets, with a thousand Klansmen following. It will be like the old days in Germany, before 1933, when the Nazis beat the Communists into the ground. We'll drag them out of their houses and break some heads. They'll fight for their lives, believe me."

Price rubbed his hands together. "Then, Stan, you could send the Guard in, break up the riots; next day, we slap the Guard around the school, and don't let any niggers in at all, no janitors, no cooks, nobody, in the interest of public safety."

Ruddick was nodding. "That might work. It's not what I'd like; I wanted to have some clear provocations."

Josten pressed his case. "Could we have the Guard and the Klan battle? We need some gunfire, some casualties."

"I'm not sure which way the public would swing on that, Colonel Josten; it might work, but it might backfire. Let's think about it. Does the Klan have enough guns?"

Josten nodded. "Mostly Springfield ought-three rifles, surplus stock from our friends in the Guard." He waved a claw at Coleman to acknowledge his cooperation. Then, persistent, he asked, "Could not we hire some Negroes to fight? Pay them to cause a disturbance?" Josten looked around the room.

"Too risky—they'd talk, for sure. Why do we need a real disturbance? Can we swear there was one? Do we have any reporters we could trust, who'd write up what we tell them?"

Josten thought of the opening days in Poland again, when SS troops had put political prisoners in Polish uniforms, killed them, then claimed they had attacked a radio station. "What if we paid them to fight, and they were all killed in the crossfire between the Klan and the Guard?"

Ruddick whistled. "Now that has possibilities. Let's work on that; it would take some careful planning."

Baker interrupted. "Unless you killed more whites than niggers, it would backfire."

Price held up his hand. "It's getting too elaborate. I think our German friend's first idea was best. Muster as many Klansmen as we can, march them through niggertown, and make them fight."

Ginny spoke for the first time. "They have to have somebody to fight with; you can't have them beating up women and children and not have a backlash."

Josten spoke. "We have some time. Let me propose a two-step plan." They looked at him expectantly, and he went on. "The first thing is to create tension, to cause incidents where whites and blacks have a confrontation. Anything will do—traffic accidents, shoplifting charges, shovings on the sidewalk. We can get Klan members to handle this sort of thing. But have the Negroes win most of the time, let them get a sense of power."

Coleman was anxious to regain approval. "We could make sure there was plenty-of free liquor available; start paying off the nigger drinking holes to make sure that the darky drinkers got enough to cause some trouble."

Josten also wanted to patch up their differences. "Good idea, General!" General with a soft G this time. "And not just the older people, the regular drinkers, let's get liquor and beer to the teenagers. They will be more likely to fight."

"And to rape," Ginny added. Coleman glared at her, wondering if she was conveying hope or fear.

The others were nodding, approving. Josten turned to Ruddick. "We talked in Washington about having some of the Klan members pretend to be nigras and stage a mock battle. I've got some people in the Storm Klan who would be capable of doing it."

Price was shaking his head. "Be very careful with that, Colonel Josten, it would require real security. Specially if any of them got killed and were taken to the coroner's office."

Ruddick chimed in, "Well, the coroner could be persuaded to help. He's a sound thinker. Let's work on it."

Glowing, his twisted face eager with anticipation, Josten said, "We're going to have to force ourselves to wait, and not be premature. We don't want this to happen in a vacuum—we have to get the maximum national attention from it."

Price rose. It was a no-lose situation. If he handled this perfectly, the governor might become the South's presidential candidate. And if things went wrong, the governor would still be reelected. "I agree. But let me—and the governor—decide where and when we have the confrontation." Then, turning and nodding collegially to Ruddick and Josten, "With your consultation, of course. Keep me posted. You have my private number. Why don't you and Colonel Josten and the general come up with a plan of operations? Make it a real wargame. Then, if the niggers organize, we'll be ready."

Josten, nodding, spoke. "Mr. Price, if I may. I think the school district has been preparing a desegregation plan. It might be wise to make it as liberal as possible, just as if we meant to comply with the Brown ruling. It could provide some good publicity, and raise some Negro hopes. That might make them react to our activities."

Price's eyes lit up. This man was a Machiavellian truth. Ruddick smiled, and Josten and Coleman shook hands, acknowledging their uneasy alliance.

*

Chicago, Illinois/April 1, 1957

Weissman passed through the outer rooms of the tailor shop, the racks and tables laden mostly with dusty clothes that would never be retrieved. In the beginning when customers dropped in, they had reluctantly taken their orders and then farmed them out to legitimate shops in the neighborhood. Now funding money was so short that they were actually trying to make some money from tailoring and pressing. It was absurd. No one would believe how impoverished they were, how much work was being done for almost nothing.

He went into the back room where he'd worked for three years with a half a dozen colleagues. Three were active agents, as he had once been, and they were seldom there. "Active" was their euphemism for being an assassin. Two were mere file clerks like himself, endlessly collating and cross-referencing information, using thousands of three-by-five cards. One was the Chief.

Sitting at his rolltop desk, Weissman stuffed a portfolio with the latest reports on Klan activities. The Klan was clearly fostering a more strident anti-Semitic tone in the South, linking Jewish liberals, Communism, and the growing civil rights movement. Weissman had been monitoring it for more than three years now, and it was evident that Helmut Josten's influence was beginning to extend beyond the Arkansas Klan.

It was enough for Weissman, and he began to tidy his desk. He'd hated his position, supinely collecting information, filing it like some Uriah Heep. And he was tired of being Weissman the Marksman to these oddballs, these cripples, still laughing about his failure in Washington.

That would never happen again; for the entire time he'd been in Chicago, he had practiced marksmanship at the indoor range in a local gunshop. It had been expensive, consuming one-third of his meager salary, but it was worth it. He was now expert in many types of pistols and rifles. If they'd had machine guns, he would have found the means to pay to practice with them as well.

The Chief had the only private office, a twelve-by-ten box with a single window looking out on the airshaft.

"Jacob, I have to have another assignment. I'm tired of this, and I want to become active again." Goldberg crossed his long legs and folded his arms about himself, looking like a daddy longlegs curling up for a nap, somehow managing to do it without a wrinkle. He was the neatest man Weissman had ever known—his desk was clean, waxed, there was nothing in his In and Out boxes. Maybe he didn't do anything to get wrinkled.

Goldberg pursed his long thin lips. "I've been expecting this; I've seen how you attend to your Arkansas file. Perhaps it's just as well; our funds are being reduced, and I'm going to have to cut down on the work here. When will you leave?"

"Today. I'm going to drive down, perhaps pick up some information in Texas."

"Erich, be careful. I know the lads have teased you about the affair in Washington. Don't be rash in trying to make up for it."

*

Little Rock, Arkansas/April 20, 1957

The two Storm Klanners sat in their 1953 Chevrolet Bel Air sedan. The driver was slender, his long nose and chin conspiring to give him the look of a cartoon rodent, evil and none too bright. He had a nervous twitch that moved his head and nose slightly every few seconds, adding to his malicious Mickey Vlouse appearance. The passenger was even smaller and his face could have been taken from any of a thousand lithographs of young Confederate soldiers going off to battle—round and slack-jawed, suffused with placid incomprehension. Ruddick had selected them carefully—they were small enough to be unthreatening, dumb enough to do what he told them to do, just smart enough to save their own hides.

"I shore hate to bang this car up; I just got it paid for, and I polished it last week."

"The cunnel say he'd take care of it, reckon he will. Look at this 'un coming."

They were peering down South Central, at a tumble-down shack, roof swaybacked and porch parting company with the foundation, where Negroes came to buy beer or straight shots of cheap bourbon. A 1936 International pickup truck was pulling away, three men in the seat, four others in the back, talking and laughing.

As the pickup truck turned into Elm, the Chevrolet accelerated in front of it; the truck struck it in the right rear fender. Both vehicles stopped. The doors of the Chevrolet popped open and the two men ran.

The Negroes piled out of the truck. "What happened? Is this ole truck still running? Then let's get out of here!"

The next day the Arkansas
Journal
ran a short story about a hit-and-run accident in which a truck driven by allegedly intoxicated Negroes had rammed a Chevrolet. The two white men in the car had been able to escape; the truck had not been found. There were no known injuries. It was the second incident of the type in a week.

*

Salinas, California/May 3, 1957

"It's for you, Bandy. Bear's calling from Frederick."

"I will. We're going on that little trip I mentioned to you before, and I wonder if you'd give Lyra a call once in a while, maybe have her up for a bit."

Two weeks before, Riley had told Bandfield that the 103rd was leaving in July on a ninety-day temporary tour of duty in England. It would be one of the last of the rotations, as they were called, in which whole SAC bomb wings deployed for three months to overseas bases. SAC was gearing up for a new concept—a one-third ground alert status, with just a few airplanes overseas.

"Sure, Bear, Patty'll be delighted, and the kids will be, too. Maybe the two of them can get Saundra to come up." He meant it; Patty loved having Lyra there, especially with the children.

"Doubt it; we can't even get her on the phone anymore, doesn't return our calls. Always off, either working or doing her missionary work."

"I guess it's a calling. Say, Riley, how old's your boy now?"

"Thirteen."

"Hell, we'll give him a few flying lessons while he's here, get him ready for his license at sixteen, just like we did for George."

"Great, he'll love it. But I'm calling early so Patty can make the invitation seem spontaneous; I don't want Lyra to know I was worried about her. She's still nervous about Helmut coming back, you know how that is."

*

Merced, California/May 4, 1957

It was a perfect day in the San Joaquin Valley; the dusting of early morning fog had burned off and the hawks were soaring effortlessly, their wingtips moving as daintily as a surgeon's fingers as they extracted every ounce of lift for the air. Marshall, streaked with yellow powder from head to foot, stood beside an open fifty-five-gallon drum carefully pouring a stream of yellow aluminized powder into it while he stirred.

Bandfield stood by, dubious. "I knew you were a gentleman of color, John, but this is ridiculous. You look like you've just painted the road to Oz."

"I tell you, Bandy, the problem with these demonstrations is that the customer doesn't realize how much effect six-hundred gallons of water can have. You drop it, it disappears in two minutes, and there is no visual impact. This'll let everybody know."

Bandfield nodded. "You picked a tough case to convince. Old Ransome Fleming's been running his crop duster operation for years, and he pretty much knows it all about everything."