Trail of the Twisted Cros by Buck Sanders Read Free Book Online

said. “Carter and Ford security has been fortified under national emergency
     procedures—”
    “The afternoon ‘post’ up in New York to Nixon?”
    “All Nixon’s mail goes through the General Post Office internal security sorting division.”
    “Of course,” Slayton said. He rubbed his chin. “Any chance of something slipping through the cracks there?”
    “Hardly,” Winship said. Then he thought it over. “Well, maybe.”
    Slayton returned to the transmission, studying it once again, as if some clue might spring up at him from the brittle photo
     paper. Nothing.
    “What we have here,” he finally said, “is a substantial possibility of an actual homegrown terrorist sortie.”
    “Our first.”
    “And undoubtedly not our last. The only thing going for us at all here is that this time, at least, our all-American terrorists
     make themselves fairly visible. We don’t have too many folks stepping out in brown shirts. Yet.”
    Slayton kept studying the document transmission as he spoke.
    “What was it Marcuse said about America’s political drift?” he asked.
    “I wouldn’t know,” Winship humphed. “I was never enamored of the fellow. He had the damndest knack of seeming to legitimize
     anarchy.”
    Slayton paid no attention to Winship’s remarks.
    “He said, ‘America is the only country in the world that will go fascist democratically.’ You take Rogers. Here’s a guy who
     represents Adolf Hitler, for god’s sake, and he’s a nice young man anybody in Muncie, Indiana, would be proud to serve Sunday
     dinner to, so long as they weren’t fussy about their politics.
    “Rogers is jailed, and he draws this enormous crowd of people to witness the great event. Television, of course, gives him
     the platform and the power to reach out to Middle America, where the money and the votes are—”
    “And the rotten core of our whole bourgeois system? Come off it, Ben. Get yourself beyond sophomore polemics, boy.”
    “I don’t mean anything but this: we’ve lost a sense of outrage somewhere when we’re confronted by a Johnny Lee Rogers. He’s
     a sly entertainment for us. Part nut-job and part front man for unspoken bitterness lying in quiet, so long as most of us
     are bringing home a paycheck. Imagine, if you will, someone like Johnny Lee Rogers, someone with the media savvy and the looks
     and all, the brains—but without those idiots around him in the swastikas. You think Rogers can draw a crowd now. Imagine the
     crowd under more palatable conditions!”
    Winship tapped his fingers again. “Has this analysis got any bearing on what we’ve got to do about this mine blast threat?”
    “Of course. What you do about the mine blast is shut down the mine for the day. The threat is very specific.” Slayton put
     his finger under the part that read
7 a.m. tomorrow
.
    “They’ll never go along with it.”
    “They’ll have to, if you mean the ownership of the mine. Tell them they’ll be responsible for the release of a convicted Nazi
     murderer—which maybe they won’t care about—and then tell them we’ll tell the press, which maybe they will care about.
    “Meanwhile,” Slayton said, popping a mint into his mouth, “we’re faced here with a possibility that’s pretty clear, from my
     analysis.”
    “Which is?”
    “Elementary, my dear Winship.”
    Slayton savored his ideas for a second. But before he could explain them, an aide to Winship entered the office without a
     knock. He advanced directly to his superior and said:
    “Sorry, sir, but I knew you would have to see this right away.”
    Winship read a bit of tape, the half-inch strip bordered top and bottom in the red that issues from top secret teletypes under
     Treasury Department guard at sensitive command posts in Washington and foreign embassies. He wiped his brow and gave the tape
     to Slayton.
    “Why this is on the ticker, I’ll never know. It’s no secret to the people of Fairmont,” he said.
    Slayton read the