He liked the attention. All those years of charade. Executive assistant. Waiting to be center stage.

I said. "In the blood, huh? That mean you're a second-generation storm trooper? Got roots in the Fatherland, D.F.?"

I expected him to brush that off, but he gave a slow measured headshake. "I'm all-American. More American than you or that soft, sorry piece of shit over there could ever conceive."

"All-American," I said. "Ah. Was your father in the Bund itself, or one of the splinter groups?"

The amber eyes opened a bit. "You know about the Bund?"

"Just what I've read."

"In the establishment press?"

I nodded.

"Then you don't know shit. The Bund was the most effective citizens' lobby this country's ever known. The only patriots with the foresight to warn against getting involved in the kike-war. So instead of heeding the warning and rewarding them for their foresight, Rosenvelt hunted them down like criminal scum. So he'd be free to send our boys over to Europe to die for the kikes and the commie-maggots and the pope-fuckers and faggot-scum like you."

Latch said, "Major blunder. Sociologically as well as politically. World War Kike was the first step toward mass mongrelization. Opened the sluices for all the Asian and Semitic sewage Europe had no use for."

I ignored him, concentrated on Ahlward. "Like I said, D.F., all I know about the Bund is what I've read. Which no doubt is biased. But you can see the establishment's point-a war going on, the public being told day after day who the enemy is. Swastikas and sieg heils in Madison Square Garden wouldn't go over great."

Ahlward gave a petulant, impatient look and slapped the desk hard. "That's because the establishment was too stupid to know who the real enemy was. Mass stupidity fed by the Zionist-occupier media. Mass weakness due to drugs and toxins developed in secret labs by the Zionist-infiltrated Rosenvelt army. The Zionist-occupier doles out drugs and toxins like candy-that's why they all become doctors, to poison the goyim. That's what kosher food's really about-the little U they put on cans. You know what goyim means in serpent-tongue? Sheep. We're fucking sheep to them. To be shorn and slaughtered. You know what the U stands for? Some Yid-word that means poison. They use toxins and tranquilizers that their bodies can tolerate because they're constructed of toxic cells. But we can't and it gradually weakens us. Physiological hypnosis-it's been scientifically proven. Been that way for centuries in every society the Zionist-occupier infiltrates. Gradual mass passivity, decadence, then inevitable destruction. Every liberation movement has to overcome it by wielding the cleansing spear."

It reminded me of stuff I'd heard during internship. On the back wards of state hospitals. He reeled it off in the flat tones of a high school thespian.

I said, "Cleansing spear," and looked at the banner behind him.

Latch said, "The spear of Woden. The ultimate cleansing machine."

Once again I ignored him and asked Ahlward: "What about Crisp and Blanchard and the rest of them? They second-generation Bundists too?"

His eyes narrowed. "Something like that."

"No skinheads for you, huh, D.F.?"

Latch laughed and said, "Punks. Rank-amateur clowns. We prize discipline."

I said, "So, am I right about the mountain-man bit, D.F.?"

Ahlward sat back in the swivel chair and put his hands behind his head.

"Okay," I said. "So you're living off the land and hiding from the government. Just like some of your former enemies on the left. Your movement's in trouble. So is the left. Cointelpro, Nixon, J. Edgar. Divide and conquer and it's working. It gets you thinking. By squaring off against the left, you're giving the establishment exactly what it wants. Some people on the left realize it too. And you all come to realize that when you stop to think about it, the radical right and the radical left have lots in common. You both believe society has to be torn down in order to to-tally restructure it. That democracy is weak and inefficient, controlled by the international bankers and running-dog press-by the talking class. A new populism is called for-empowering the working man. And the main issue that used to separate you-race-is no longer that big of a stumbling block. Because there are white leftists enraged at the uppity blacks who'd tried to kick them out of their own movement. White leftists getting in touch with their own racism."

"A beacon of wisdom," said Latch, "shining through the shit pile."

I said, "I don't know who thought of it first, D.F., but somehow you communicated and a new concept was conceived. Wannsee Two. Pressing inward from the outermost edges in order to squeeze the center and crush it to death. Which is how you got together with old Gordie here."

A quick look at Latch, then back to Ahlward. "Though to tell the truth, D.F., I really can't see the appeal. You're clearly a man of action. He's nothing more than a hot-air purveyor living off his wife's money."

Latch swore and waited for Ahlward to defend him. When the redheaded man didn't speak, I went on.

"He's the proverbial empty barrel making lots and lots of noise. A lap dog-the ultimate example of the talking class. Do you really think he'll be able to cut it when the time comes?"

Latch jumped to his feet. The impact jostled Milo; his body rolled to the edge of the sofa, then rolled back. His mouth gaped. As I searched the battered face for signs of consciousness, I felt another wasp-sting on my cheek. A new layer of pain veneering a three-year-old jaw injury. Memories of wires and putty . . . My head shot back. Another layer.

Latch was standing over me, spittle collecting in the corners of his mouth: a lap dog gone rabid. He raised his arm to hit me again.

And starring as the punching bag in tonight's school pageant is little Alex Delaware . . .

He struck out, and the rattling in my head reverberated like acid rock pumped through a cheap amplifier.

After the knife, petty annoyance.

I looked up at him and said, "Temper, temper, Gordie."

He ground his teeth and drew back his fist. Just before impact, I feinted to one side. His hand grazed me. He was caught off balance and stumbled.

Ahlward looked disgusted. He said, "Sit down, Gordon."

Latch righted himself, stood there panting, his hands bunched. High color in the freckled cheeks. The welfare glasses askew.

My head hurt, but not that badly. My arms were numb. Gazelle-anesthesia, or loss of circulation?

I said, "Why don't you sit down and toot your harmonica, Gordie?"

He balled his hand, started to retract it. Ahlward's voice froze it mid-motion like a blast of liquid nitrogen.

"Later, Gordon."

Latch looked back and forth between the two of us. Spat in my face and returned to the couch. But no more casual leg-cross. He sat on the edge, hands on knees, huffing with rage.

A gob of his saliva had landed on my cheek. I lowered my head, wiped it as well as I could on my shoulder.

I said, "How impolitic, Councilman."

Latch said, "He's mine, Bud. When the time comes."

I said, "I'm touched, Councilman."

Ahlward turned to me and said, "That all you have to say, turd?"

"Oh, no. There's plenty more. Back to Wannsee Two. The meeting no one believes ever took place. But it did. Somewhere rural and secluded-away from the untermensch-infested cities where the police and the Feds had control. Maybe somewhere like southern Idaho? The ranch that Miranda inherited from her father? How many people were involved?"

Ahlward's eyelids drooped. He touched his gun.

I said, "A redux of the Hitler-Stalin buddy bit. You even came up with a new insignia that said it all: red for the left, the spear for the right, a circle signifying the union."

I turned to Latch: "If the folks on Telegraph Avenue only knew."

He said, "You're an idiot. It started up in Berkeley. Back in the days when I was still brainwashed and toxified. I did hypnotic things without knowing why I was doing them. Taking African history, Native American studies, all sorts of contrived, useless bullshit the Jew-profs shoved down my throat. But even then I was starting to see through it. It wasn't working for me. I went searching for my own source material. Learned facts no one had the guts to come out and say in class. Like the fact that there wasn't a single written language in Africa before the white man came. No real music except for stupid chants a retardate could master. No fine cuisine, no literature, no fine arts. We're talking an ape culture-malaria, promiscuity, dung-eating, Mau Mau cannibals. They're nothing but a bunch of dung-eating baboons, brought to America by the Zionist-occupier in order to pick Zionist cotton. Trained by the Zionists to wear human clothes and mouth human words and masquerade as human peers. I'd dealt with them; I knew how impossible it was to get through to them using logic. All of a sudden it made sense. You can't use logic with an ape."

"Apes with rhythm? Like DeJon?"

He laughed. "That was fun. The irony. He and his fucking gorillas. Monkeys riding in limousines. Thinking they're even a half-step above the dung heap. He actually thanked me for giving him the opportunity to serve."

"You have a taste for irony, don't you, Gordie?" I said. "Making speeches at the Holocaust Center after the building was defaced. Serving on their Board. Knowing all the time that it was D.F.'s storm troopers who did the defacing."

He laughed harder. "They're so gullible, all of them-the inferior classes. Poor self-esteem on a bio-ethnic level. It's coded genetically-on a cellular level they know they're inferior. Which is why, when the white man asserts himself properly, there's no competition. No resistance. They march straight into the ovens, shimmy right up to the lynching tree. All you have to do is pretend to like them."

Ahlward nodded in assent but I thought I spotted a hint of annoyance. Deprived, once again, of the limelight.

I shifted my attention back to him. "Wannsee Two went better than you'd imagined. You drew up a plan. But there were obstacles. People who stood in the way-who'd fight you to the death if they found out. People with charisma and drive and no compunctions about working outside of the system themselves. Norm and Melba Green, Skitch Dupree, the Rodriguezes, Grossman, Lockerby, and Bruckner. Time for some more damage control, and here Gordie came in handy again. Your inside track to the first cadre. Privy to their plan-New Walden. Black and white farming side by side, inviting the Indians back. Everything you despised. Gordie and Randy lured them up to Bear Lodge with tales of clean air and pure water and free rent. Randy's inheritance." I looked around the room. "Guess she likes warehouses. Didn't know they were such a good investment."

A flicker of impatience crossed Ahlward's eyes.

I said, "The Walden folks traveled up to Bear Lodge with stars in their eyes. And you were waiting for them. Dayton Auhagen, macho hippie. Communer with nature. The kind of stranger who could skulk around without arousing their suspicions. You watched them. Surveilled them. Getting a fix on their habits, their routine. Same way you'd track any prey. Getting into that warehouse when they were gone and hiding explosive charges among all that combustible produce."

Ahlward was smiling. Remembering.

I said, "Only some of the group was settled in Bear Lodge. The others were farther north, negotiating for lumber. But that other group was strictly second cadre. Without their leaders they were likely to cut and run. And if they did prove threatening sometime in the future, you could always pick them off at your pleasure-small game. So you fixed a date before the second cadre was scheduled to arrive, got into the warehouse again, poisoned their dinner meat. Returned to the forest, waited until they were all inside, incapacitated, pressed a button, and boom. The FBI dovetailed beautifully into your plans by jumping on the bomb-factory explanation and feeding it to the press. No doubt you helped them along with an anonymous tip."

Smug smile on the blunt face. Nostalgia had never looked so ugly.

I said, "That was a good touch. No one mourned a bunch of urban terrorists blowing themselves up with their own nitro. Only one minor glitch: one of the second cadre people-Terry Crevolin-arrived early. A vegetarian, to boot. He didn't eat the meat, was spared, and escaped the blast. But once again, no big threat. He had personal problems-drugs, a weak will-likely to sap his political energies. And his hatred and distrust of the establishment led him to believe the explosion was government-sponsored. To this day he doesn't believe in Wannsee Two. So it was a nifty plan, D.F. As far as it went. But my question for you is, why bother? Why go to all that trouble for the first cadre when there were other radical leaders just as charismatic?"

Latch said, "They were scum. Fucking snobs."

Spoiled-brat rage.

Not-invited-to-the-party rage.

I knew then that the idea of the blast had originated with him. That for him it had been personal, not political.

All those lives lost-the horror-because they'd been smarter than he was. Shut him out.

His idea.

More of an idea man than I'd thought. Their relationship was complex. Made the one between Dobbs and Massengil look wholesome . . .

Ahlward was sitting up straighter. I decided to keep the insight to myself.

"After Bear Lodge," I said, "time to move forward. Pick a front man, sanitize him, and get him into public office-no matter how humble an office. You're a patient man, D.F., know your history. All those years it took the first Fuhrer to progress from a jail cell to the Reichstag." I sat forward. "The only thing is the first Fuhrer was his own front man. He didn't need a dummy on his lap."

Latch said, "Fuck you, you piece of shit."

I thought I saw Ahlward smile. "Times have changed," he said. "This is the media age. Image is everything."

I said, "Thought the Zionists controlled the media."

"They do," said Ahlward.

"More irony, huh?"

He yawned.

I said, "Okay, granted, got to consider images. But is he the best you can do, image-wise?"

Furious mutters from the sofa. A hint of movement that Ahlward stilled with a sharp look.

As if to compensate, he said, "He's doing just fine." Mechanically. His gaze floated around the room. Not much of an attention span. I wondered how many classes he'd flunked in school.

I said, "Gordie and Miranda retreat to the ranch for a few years, confess their Vietnam sins, reemerge as environmental activists. Meanwhile the ranch is also used for meetings. Other conferences. Recruiting the sons and daughters of your dad's old buddies. Just like the summer camps the Bund used to run. You also get a little publishing business going-all those boxes outside. Printed Material. Probably hate stuff shipped at discount rate courtesy of Uncle Sam, right?"

Another smug smile.

"Aren't you worried someone's going to trace it back to one of Miranda's dummy corporations?"

He shook his head, still smug. "We write it here, print it somewhere else, then bring it back here, then truck it to other places. No way to trace. Layers of cover."

I said, "And the other boxes: Machinery. What is that? Hardware for the revolution?"

Latch said, "Guns and butter."

Ahlward coughed. Latch shut up.

The redheaded man played with his gun some more.

I said, "You picked L.A. for Gordie's renaissance because Miranda had connections here-show biz, the whole radical chic thing. Love-the-Earth rhetoric went over big with that crowd, so Gordie became Mr. Environment. Scrubbing pelicans while dreaming of cleansing the world. And got elected. So far, so good. The fact that Crevolin had also settled in L.A. was a bit of an annoyance, but all those years of silence meant he didn't suspect a damn thing. What was a shock was learning that someone else had escaped Bear Lodge and resurfaced in L.A. Norman and Melba Green's son. The FBI had declared him dead-assumed him dead, rather than proving it with a body. Because you assured them two little kids had been part of the group. Now here he was, seventeen years later. Returning to live with Norman's mother. His grandmother. A suspicious, unapologetic Old Leftist who had no trouble believing a new Holocaust was just around the corner. No trouble suspecting her son and daughter-in-law had been murdered. Though, like Crevolin, she thought the government had been behind it. She fired up her grandson with Nazi history and conspiracy theories. He started doing his own research. He was a smart kid and took to it."

Latch snorted and said, "Smart baboon."

I said, "Book research wasn't enough for him. He tried to meet his rescuer, couldn't get through to Crevolin, and went to the next-best source. Someone who'd also been a comrade of his parents. Another second cadre guy, but one who'd climbed. A public man."

I turned to Latch. "What a bummer, Gordie. The timing, I mean. Here you are, having bought all that respectability. Sure, you're only a sandwich sign for D.F.'s dreams. But sometimes you allow yourself to pretend it's real and you're the boss and that feels really good, doesn't it? And sure, City Council is relatively penny-ante, but it's a giant step forward for someone who committed sedition on national television. You're moving up. The rhythm is there. Things are finally fitting together, and along comes this mixed-race mongrel black Jewish kid knocking on your headquarters door, using his parents' names as passwords to get through the front office. Names you thought you'd never hear again. Coming face to face with you and asking questions about the bad old days. Wannsee Two. You try to put him off, play the old game you've learned so well and answer his questions without really answering them. But he's persistent. Pushy. Full of the kind of youthful fire that just might be able to incinerate you. That's how it always starts, isn't it? Small fry nipping at the big fish. A night watchman got Nixon. So it's time for a quick stall and an emergency meeting with D.F. D.F. instructs you to handle it in a time-honored manner: Lull the prey into complacency with phony friendship, feed him carefully measured bits of disinformation, then move in for the kill when the time's right.

"So you play compassionate liberal for Ike, spin him a tale about Wannsee Two in which the story remains intact but the characters are altered. Making someone else the chief bad guy. It wasn't exactly casting against type. Massengil had right-wing sensibilities; he'd been tooting his quasi-racist horn for some time. You probably made up some yarn about his having been a government agent. With your resources-your own printing press-it's no problem furnishing Ike with some impressive-looking bogus documents. And the beauty of it was that it served a double purpose. Ocean Heights is part of your district. Getting Massengil out of a job he's had a lock on for almost three decades will allow you to run for his seat. Still penny-ante compared to your ultimate goal, but state assemblymen have been known to go to Washington. How many councilmen have ever gotten out of City Hall? You'd had your sights on him for some time, planted Bramble on his staff-your inside track. So when Ike showed up asking questions, everything clicked. You took him into your confidence, swore him to secrecy, fed him lies-fed his revenge fantasies and tried to work him up to the point of violent retribution. You figured that wouldn't be much of a challenge, because he was black-and blacks are inherently violent, aren't they?"

Latch said, "Sounds like the turd has some capacity to learn."

Ahlward didn't even bother to fake interest.

When you ask questions, my mind wanders.

I said, "First choice was for Ike to assassinate Massengil and get himself killed in the process. Second choice was for one of your junior SS boys to bump off Massengil, frame Ike for it, and kill him too. Same result, slightly less efficient. The only problem was, Ike resisted. Despite that kinky hair and all that melanin in his skin, he just wasn't the violent type."

"Fifty percent kike-blood," said Ahlward. "Pro-grammed for cowardice."

"Or maybe Gordie just screwed up. Pushed too hard and got Ike suspicious. Made him wonder why a city councilman was so eager to get involved in murder. In any event, he refused to go along and turned himself into a serious liability. So you lured him to that alley with the promise of something-probably some new information about his parents. From another source. A black source-what better place to do it than Watts. Must have been fun making the call, putting on the patois."