Authors: David Vinjamuri
“Mr. Paul, the FBI has two men in custody who tried to kill me with a sniper rifle this morning. There are another two men in the Lincoln County jail and two more in a hospital in Charleston who tried to attack me last night. In less than an hour, I’ll be leaving this state to deal with more urgent matters back home. But before I do I’ll advise the FBI on whether the girl I’ve come looking for has been kidnapped and whether they should treat this mine as a crime scene. The violence used by my attackers has persuaded federal authorities to take my investigation seriously. So if you think a bunch of college kids and ex-hippies can hurt your profitability, just wait and see what happens when a hundred federal agents shut down every piece of machinery on this site.”
Paul adjusted his cuffs one by one, ensuring I could see the pearl cufflinks through the functional buttons of his hand-tailored suit. When he was done, he leaned forward with a half-smile on his face. “I’m not someone you should be threatening, Mr. Herne.”
Then Paul leaned back and continued, “But there’s no harm in sharing this with you. During August and September, some of the activists infiltrated this site several times at night. The first few times, they targeted smaller trucks and other minor equipment. The last time, early in September, they set a charge that badly damaged the engine of our dragline. We call it Big Jack, and it can lift almost 100 cubic yards at a time. It was out of operation for over a week. That’s what caused the production shortfalls. I called the Reclaim leaders in here and showed them evidence of what they’d done and told them if they didn’t stop, I’d hand it over to the police.”
“You called Roxanne, Josh and Amy into your office?” I asked.
“Yes, I did. And I know that you’re friendly with Ms. Chalmers. Please remember that she could go to jail for ten to fifteen years. That’s what will happen if I turn the evidence over to the authorities. And I will certainly do so if there’s any more disruption to this operation from the FBI or anyone else. You can think about that on your way out,” he said as a guard appeared at the door.
But Roxanne’s potential prison bid wasn’t what I pondered as I left the mine site. Instead, I was wondering why Paul didn’t have the Reclaim leaders locked up when he had the chance.
16
I engaged the clutch lever, downshifted into third gear with a flick of my left foot, let out the clutch and twisted the throttle. I hadn’t perfectly rev-matched my downshift, but the big bike surged forward without a lurch. It always amazes me how power that would be insignificant in a car—in this case, 125 brake horsepower—can make a motorcycle feel like an absolute monster. The bike I was riding is not the one you picture in your mind when you hear the name Harley Davidson. It didn’t have high handlebars or a backward-leaning seat. This bike was the Night Rod Special, a black-on-black design exercise that mostly served to showcase a gorgeous engine.
I have pretty specific tastes in bikes—I own both Japanese and German motorcycles for different reasons. The Night Rod is not in a performance league with the machines I keep in my garage, but it’s a lot prettier. It’s also American-built, which was part of the reason I was riding it. And it was plenty fast. It wallowed a little in the corners, though, which reminded me that I had borrowed it for serious purposes. The mercury was above 50 degrees, a marked improvement from the morning. As the roar of the bike echoed off the low mountains, I thought about my mother. This part of the country reminded me of home, but the mountains seemed closer together, as if someone had needed to get more of them into the state and ended up rushing the job. It was the peak of the foliage season in Appalachia and though the colors weren’t as impressive to my northern eye as those I’d grown up with, they were memorable.
I’d driven the GTO from Paul’s office onto Route 119, straight through Charleston and onto Interstate 79, which was the way back to D.C. I stopped at a truck stop about ten miles east of Charleston to refuel. I walked into the bathroom with my Blackhawk shell, a black baseball cap and sunglasses on. A few minutes later, a man of my size and general complexion wearing the same items left, but it wasn’t me. He pulled the GTO out of the truck stop and onto the highway, back to D.C. The plan was that he wouldn’t stop until he reached Activity headquarters in Rosslyn. I watched my car leave without me from inside the diner of the truck stop. The BMW X5 with blacked out windows that had been trailing me since I’d left the Hobart mine followed the GTO.
Wearing work coveralls and a different cap, I got into a panel van with two men I recognized. We drove a few miles before exiting the highway and pulling up to a semi in the parking lot of a defunct warehouse. They escorted me to the back of the trailer, where a team of specialists started to work on me. As the makeup artist applied temporary tattoos designed to look permanent, I winced. I never believe those things will come off. My hair was cut and dyed to a light brown, contact lenses gave me blue eyes and small prosthetics subtly changed the contours of my nose.
While the work was underway I received briefings from an Activity armorer and one of the electronic surveillance specialists who form the core of the Activity.
Then agent Nichols walked in. She whistled.
“So this is what it’s like to have a secret budget.”
“Careful or you’re next,” I warned her.
“They did a good job with you. You look...different.” She picked a bit of fluff off of the shoulder of the black motorcycle jacket.
“Thanks for helping me out up there on the ridge,” I said as she pulled a chair to face me. The senior responding FBI agent had handcuffed me and was about to arrest me alongside the shooters when Nichols intervened. Three cruisers from the Lincoln County Sheriff’s office arrived at the same time as the FBI, and the senior agent had his hands full debating who should take the suspects into custody. One of the Sheriff’s people was Deputy Collins, who was apoplectic to see me in handcuffs. In the end, Collins and Nichols made an impression on the older agent: he removed the handcuffs and let me go with a stern warning. I wondered if Nichols would pay a price for not backing her senior man.
“You’d think the hardest part would be not getting killed, wouldn’t you? Sheldon was more upset that you started a fire than he was that you’d shot someone.”
“He might be right about that. So what brings you to my tractor-trailer?”
“I’m here to brief you on the National Front. I’ve been following them since I came to the Charleston office. We’ve never gotten someone inside the compound, but I can fill you in on some background that might help.”
“Thanks.”
“The most important thing to understand is that these guys are not skinheads or Klansmen. You’re going to a music festival in the National Front compound, but it won’t feel like a hate-fest.”
“They’re not supremacists?”
“They are. They have the same racist beliefs, but they’ve evolved on the outside. They’ve got the tattoos, but not where you can see them. They don’t shave their heads; they wear their hair short and neat. They couch their racism in coded language an outsider wouldn’t recognize. Even the music is different. You might mistake it for Top 40 pop—and that’s intentional. Only the lyrics are different.”
“These groups have been around for decades, haven’t they? When did they change?”
“The National Front is the only supremacist group like this. It’s unique—and that’s part of the reason we’re watching them so closely. Dr. James Madison Pace, the guy who founded the National Front, died almost a decade ago. He had no family, and he left the compound and his personal fortune to the organization. Without the money to fight over, the National Front would probably have fallen apart. Ulrick Gleich was the designated successor, but he was nearly Pace’s age when he took over. There were five lieutenants—apostles they called them—who fought behind the scenes for control. In the end, Eric Price, a man who ran a spinoff group of the National Front called the Popular Alliance, won.”
“The National Front had a tribute band?”
“Not exactly. The PA never operated like the rest of the organization. Price was a soldier decorated in Operation Desert Storm. When he got out of the service, he went to work in pharmaceutical sales and marketing. He met Dr. Pace in the mid-nineties and pitched him on setting up a clandestine version of the National Front—the Popular Alliance. The PA was intended to influence public policy to favor the goals of the National Front.”
“I can’t imagine them getting very broad support.”
“It was an underground organization. Price formed it like a resistance movement, in cells so that the entire membership wouldn’t be visible to anyone but him.
“Within five years, the PA eclipsed the National Front in funding and influence. First Price found a few wealthy patrons who supported his goals. Then he hired lobbyists and started backing political candidates for offices in very small races at the state and municipal level. The PA became the go-to guys for local money for both Democrats and Republicans.”
“How did that work? I can’t imagine there were many politicians willing to align themselves with white supremacists.”
“Price kept a very low profile. If anybody suspected his real motives, they weren’t talking. He also used his influence carefully. He focused on smaller elections, everything from school boards and planning commissions to state representatives.”
“And the politicians taking this money never said ‘Wow, this Eric Price guy wants me to segregate the lunch counter, that could be a problem’?”
“He was smarter than that. The issues he backed were incredibly specific and very technical. In New Mexico, Price identified an upscale housing development that was becoming popular with mixed-race couples. So he got a water conservation bill passed through the Democratic legislature that made it impossible for the development to expand. In another state he got Republicans to back a repeal of some state highway taxes that ended up defunding a school busing program.”
“Did little stuff like that have any kind of effect?”
“More than anyone thought it would. The first six states they got into had measurable increases in racial violence and saw declines in intermarriage. None of the states was known to be racially intolerant and they were equally split between Democratic and Republican-controlled legislatures.”
“So how have I never heard of Eric Price before?” I asked.
“Because he kept his own name, and the names of the few men he recruited to the PA, hidden. The PA formed fifty-three political action committees over the past eight years. These committees are the source of the funds. They act anonymously.”
“So why would Price want to run the National Front? It sounds like he had all the power and influence he could want with the PA.”
“He’d always wanted the PA to be the vanguard of a broader revolution. He needed a true grassroots organization to go along with it. Not just a few wealthy donors filtering money through PACs to a bunch of local legislators with no idea what cause they were actually supporting. He wanted to lead a national group of like-minded believers. When he got control of the National Front, he started changing it immediately. He severed ties with the skinhead movement and changed the recruiting target. They started recruiting middle and upper-middle-class suburbanites. No more swastikas or shaved heads, because he said they made enemies of natural allies. That’s why you’ve got the twin lightning bolts here,” she said, tugging aside my collar to reveal the new tattoo just below my collarbone.
“That’s the symbol of the Nazi S.S. but it’s not as recognizable to most people as a swastika. And it disappears under work clothes. It’s the equivalent of a twelve-year-old girl getting a heart tattoo on her butt. It carries the thrill of defiance without the risk of discovery.”
“Can you tell me anything about the rally I’m crashing?”
“Once a year they have a festival for Lawful Records; that’s the four-year-old record label of the National Front. The first year they held it in Wisconsin, then Oregon, and last year in Texas. This is the first year they’re experimenting with West Virginia. They’re holding it on the grounds of the National Front compound. They seem to think this weekend will be a big draw because the compound is not far from Fayetteville, and there are a bunch of whitewater rafting events this weekend on the Gauley and the New River. Tomorrow is Bridge Day and the last dam release for the Gauley.”
“So why are they opening their compound now? And why aren’t you sending someone in yourself?”
Nichols smiled. “Why would you think we aren’t? As for why they’re having the event on the grounds of their compound? Hard to say. It’s taken this long for the National Front to clean up its image and be a big enough draw to get a good size crowd to travel to West Virginia. As for getting inside the compound? It’s a matter of degree. They’ve set up tents in a meadow in front of the compound buildings. I’m sure your own people will show you aerial photos before you go in. We don’t think the rest of the compound will be open to the public. It will certainly be guarded if that’s the case, so be careful. But if this girl you’re looking for is with the National Front, she may be at the concert.”
“I hope so. Heather wrote a note to her mother on Wednesday afternoon, saying she was going to run out of insulin on Monday. She’s a type 1 diabetic.”
“I didn’t know that. Her mother must be worried.”
“Yes, but the note made more sense when I thought she was camping in the wilderness somewhere cut off from civilization. There’s no reason she couldn’t make a run into Fayetteville or Beckley from the National Front compound to get insulin.”
“Do you think she’s in trouble?”
“If she’s on that compound, she’s in danger one way or another. She might have followed a guy there, not understanding what he was really into. His name is Anton Harmon. He’s a Gulf War veteran like Price, but then he went on to join the Special Forces. He’s also a convicted sex offender. He followed Heather from the Reclaim Camp to a commune called CC Farms. Then she left with him, maybe to the National Front compound. I think it’s unlikely she knew what she was getting into. So I can’t imagine how she reacted when she figured things out. If she’s there and she’s unhappy, they might not let her go to the concert,” I said. “But this is best shot I have of finding her.”