Binder - 02 (14 page)

I helped myself to a canvas tote bag with the National Front logo on it and quickly filled it with literature as I moved through the tent. The staffers in this area were older than the kids minding the barbeque, but they were dressed identically. I wondered if the National Front had hired a brand consultant.

I stepped out of the second tent onto a wide grassy lawn that was nominally separated from the grounds of the compound by interlocking plastic crowd control barriers. The lawn was set up to hold perhaps a thousand people and was already half full in the middle of the day. People were sprawled on blankets or folding camp chairs, talking animatedly while a new band set up on stage. The ratio of single white men to families and couples was reversed from the crowd inside the tent and the whole gathering had the air of a Sunday at the park, albeit a brisk one. The wind was whipping up in gusts and I could see a dense layer of clouds moving in from the distance. We might be hundreds of miles inland, but it looked as if the hurricane that was threatening the east coast might be fixing to take a piece of West Virginia with it, too.

The lawn also afforded a splendid view of the reflecting pond, with its three fountains and the National Front Headquarters building rising behind it. Kentucky bluegrass was manicured to the height of the fairway on a golf course. The National Front building still looked like a church to me, but I wasn’t noticing the architecture at this distance. Instead I saw armed guards patrolling with dogs, motion and infrared sensors, a fairly sophisticated radar array on the roof and that distinct lack of windows. The group was going to significant trouble to ensure that whatever was happening in the compound stayed inside. Which made me more confident that I was finally in the right place.

I took a walk around the entire lawn, stepping awkwardly like a sightseer while my eyes moved quickly behind sunglasses. I exhaled as I completed the full circuit. There were more women at the festival than I’d expected, but none of them was the one I was looking for. She might have left briefly or she might not be attending at all, but I let go of the unreasonable hope that I’d spot her. I craved a bratwurst but knew it would be a bad idea if I ended up having to leave the party in a hurry.

“It’s a hell of a show, isn’t it?” a man with curly brown hair and a salt-and-pepper mustache a decade or two older than me asked, nodding toward the bandstand where “One Nation” was doing a sound check. He was leaning against a barricade on the compound side of the great lawn, puffing on a cigarette.

“It’s impressive. I’ve never been here before,” I told the man who introduced himself as Dennis.

“Almost nobody has. This is the first time they’ve held one of these things at headquarters. You had to be Founder’s Circle to have been invited here until now.”

“Founder’s Circle?”

“Newbie?”

“Pretty much. I live in a small town outside Laramie in Wyoming. I’ve been to a couple of meetings in Cheyenne, but that’s about it. This isn’t what I expected at all. I thought there would be a lot of angry teenagers.”

“Nah, that’s the old way.” He took a sip from a can of Budweiser. “Skinheads made us look like radicals. The fact is, most decent folks in this country agree with us, they just can’t say it if people get distracted by swastikas. It’s like Eric Price says—nobody ignores a white man in a suit. Now we’re the man.”

“It’s amazing it took someone this long to figure that out.”

“It’s all marketing. After the sixties you couldn’t belong to the Klan if you didn’t want trouble. They should have just gone underground and changed their name, but it didn’t happen. The old guard held on way too long, then they just withered away. You had the skinheads in the eighties but they looked pretty outdated by the nineties. Price was a genius to turn this into a real people’s movement instead of a freak show. Every week in Dayton I bring my family to the Saturday lunch and we see lots of people we know. The public face is all about communities now, and that’s a very mainstream topic.”

“I have to confess, I don’t understand half the brochures I picked up.” I’m about as interested in politics as I am in basket weaving, but I hoped I sounded like a believer.

Dennis took another swig of Budweiser and brushed the side of his mustache with a calloused fingertip. “That’s the point. We don’t put anything in writing that the media could get hold of and use to paint us bad. But you can count your bottom dollar that every single issue the cause gets behind helps preserve white culture in this country.”

“That makes me feel better. Have you been inside the big building?”

“Yup, sure have. This morning. Are you doing a tour?”

“Yes, in about a half hour,” I replied, using the excuse to check the watch on my wrist.

“It’s impressive. They’ve got a fully outfitted conference center, a library, study rooms, a cafeteria, all that.”

“Do people live here? Or do they commute?”

“I dunno. It could be that some live here. There’s plenty of housing for conferences anyway. The old Pace family mansion is somewhere around here, too.”

“This is all a much bigger operation than I realized.” This at least was the truth.

“You don’t know half of it. There’s like a 7,000 foot runway, a helipad, every damn thing. It’s a thousand miles from where this movement was ten years ago. We finally hit the big time.”

“It sure does look like that.”

18

“The National Front was founded in 1968 by Dr. James Madison Pace, a physicist who taught at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Dr. Pace became concerned about the effects of changing cultural patterns in America and founded the National Front to promote traditional American values.” That was a nice way of saying that the end of Jim Crow laws and the breakdown of the Klan had led him to form a successor organization. Our tour guide, Valerie, who was responsible for shepherding two-dozen aspiring supremacists was herself white, blond, Viking-tall and well spoken. She delivered the tour information while walking backwards around the reflecting pool and gesturing with her hands like a flight attendant.

“From its founding, the National Front has worked to preserve the traditional culture of the Anglo-Saxon and Aryan heritage that founded America.” I tried to remember which of our forefathers might have been Aryan, but couldn’t. Jefferson had red hair, so not him. Washington? Definitely not a blond.

“You are standing on the ancestral estate of the Pace family, who settled here in 1769. An ancestor of Dr. Pace fought in the Chickamauga Wars against the Cherokee Indians and in the American Revolutionary war. The family continued to prosper in this place in the timber and mining industries for over two hundred years. In 2003, Dr. Pace passed away without heirs, ending the line of the Pace family in this state. However he left the property to the National Front foundation, which continues to run it today.”

We’d made it around the pond and were approaching the main building. The entrance was on the side of the building—on the narrow end where you’d enter a church. I’d noticed a plainer entrance on the other side before we’d started winding our way around the reflecting pool.

“The National Front Headquarters building you’re looking at today is just three years old. Until 2009, the organization was run from the family house, which is on the other end of this 940-acre property. This building was commissioned by former National Front President Ulrick Gleich and completed by our current leader, Eric Price.”

We were around to the front entrance now and it looked less like a church from that angle. True, there were two enormous wooden doors at the top of a half-dozen Carrera marble steps. But it looked as if another entire structure, an office building made of stone, had been attached to the far side of the church. Carved above the great wooden doors in stone were the words “Church of National Unification.” The tour guide noticed me reading the inscription.

“This may look like a place of religious worship, but it’s not. Dr. Pace founded The Church of National Unification in 1968 to heal the wounds of race warfare in this country, but the church only operated for three years. This engraving serves as a memorial to Dr. Pace’s aspirations, which have been fulfilled in the political philosophy of the National Front.”

Valerie mounted the marble steps in front of the great wooden doors backwards, in heels. The doors swung outward as we approached, not from mechanical imperative, but with the assistance of two guards wearing earpieces. They weren’t armed, but they had the look of men who habitually carried weapons. One of them instinctively tucked his thumb down by his waist, where you’d pull on the strap of a machine pistol slung over your back to take the slack out and keep it from swinging around. We stepped inside a large auditorium that was church-quiet.

“The Grace Auditorium is dedicated to Dr. Pace’s wife, who died in childbirth three decades before him. This modern facility features full multi-media capabilities and serves as the heart of the conference center in this building. The National Front hosts over thirty conferences a year and welcomes visitors from around the world.” Grace Pace? Poor woman.

We entered the auditorium. The ceilings were vaulted to a full six stories, and the floor descended from the entrance about another story or so before it reached the stage. This allowed for stadium-style seating in comfortable-looking swivel chairs. Each row had a long table in front of it, and there were two aisles separating the space into three parts, like a theater. Or a church. We walked out a side entrance to the auditorium and found ourselves in a break area with beverage machines serving everything from fountain soda to single-cup shots of coffee and espresso.

“There are twelve conference rooms on this level, and another six on the second level of the building, along with our administrative offices,” Valerie noted, gesturing toward a bank of elevators. “The cafeteria, which sits just beyond this refreshment area, can serve up to a thousand guests. The glass doors to your right lead out into the reflection courtyard, where we will visit the founder’s library as well as the Museum of the Study of Race.” I followed Valerie’s manicured nails as she pointed to a colossal clash of architectural styles. The neat lawns and stone buildings looked like nothing so much as a quad on a Northeastern campus, while an enormous round fountain with elaborate carvings dead center in the quad looked like a Rococo take on a Spanish courtyard. The library and the museum each stood at one corner of the square but there were two other buildings opposite the conference center. One of them, a four-story structure with about a dozen small balconies, was the building Nichols told me was probably residential.

“If anyone would like coffee or a bathroom break, we’ll stop for about five minutes here. I’m sure some of you would prefer to use these restrooms to the portable potties outside.” Valerie smiled and got a sympathetic burst of laughter from the dozen members of the tour group. Half of them moved immediately toward the espresso machines while the rest headed for the restroom. I noted that straying into the office area was not an option, as there were able-bodied men in tight black turtlenecks posted at the entrance to the interior corridor and in front of the elevators.

I’d taken a step to approach Valerie to ask a question when a young man with slicked-back black hair and intense blue eyes in a pinstriped blue suit stepped out of the elevator and strode directly over to me, interposing himself between me and the tour guide. The two black-turtlenecked guards who had shared the elevator with him kept pace a few steps behind him, just far enough to look like bodyguards rather than a military escort. As the man approached me, two more men fell in behind me. I was suddenly boxed in.

“Mr. Larney?” he asked, inclining his head toward me.

“Yes?”

“My name is Jay Ventura. Mr. Price would like to have a word with you privately. Would you please follow us?” He gestured toward the elevator bank.

* * *

“Mr. Herne, your reputation precedes you. Or would you prefer ‘Orion’? Please have a seat.” I froze as Eric Price gestured to a leather sofa that sat in front of an enormous plate-glass window in the corner of the office. He took an Eames chair opposite me. Ventura and the guards withdrew from the office. I didn’t doubt they were within earshot, though.

“You’re well informed, Mr. Price.” Unnervingly so. Price had the look of a professional politician, or a game show host. He was mid-to-late forties, tall and handsome, with a strong jaw, prominent cheekbones and wide-set blue eyes only a shade or two darker than a wolf’s.

“I’ve always admired the Activity. Better than CAG or DevGru if you ask me. And much more versatile.”

“There are a lot of good soldiers in the Army.”

“Nonsense. Men like you are worth a hundred regular infantry, twenty Rangers or ten Green Berets.”

“I didn’t know there was a fantasy league, sir.”

His laugh was clipped, precise. “There should be, I think. I can tell you that you’d be drafted early. I heard the stories even before you came to our attention here.”

“I’ve heard some of them, too. I’d love to meet the guy who inspired them, but it wasn’t me.” I shifted uncomfortably on the leather sofa. Late in my career with the Activity, a bunch of folktales that nominally featured me made their way around the special ops community. They were absurd, exaggerated and intensely embarrassing, like Chuck Norris jokes without the punch line.

Price waved his hands as if he were erasing my words on a blackboard. “Nonsense. I’m told you had some trouble with locals and that you lived up to expectations.”

“I don’t like being set up.”

“I don’t blame you. But I can’t say that I’m surprised. You’re in West Virginia. This is a primitive state. These people are barely in the twentieth century, let alone the twenty-first.”

“I’ve liked almost everyone I’ve met here who’s actually from the state. The men who tried to lean on me were amateurs, and they were hired. What concerns me more is the explosive device I found in my motel room last night, and the trained sniper who took a shot at me today.”