"Yes!"
"And it has come to pass!"
"No," the crowd protested.
"They have struck the first blow."
"No!"
"A cruel blow," said Konrad Blutsturz. "They have extinguished the pure flame that was Boyce Barlow." A low moan lifted from the audience. Faces contorted in pain, "And his cousins Luke and Bud."
The crowd was stricken. There were shouts for revenge and, amid them, cries for the heads of the agents of this atrocity.
"But fear not," Konrad Blutsturz went on. "We are not lost. I will lift up the banner they have dropped. I will carry on in their place. If you will have me.
"Yes! Yes! Yes!"
Konrad Blutsturz let the howls of adoration continue until the crowd grew hoarse. He liked them better when they were hoarse. Their American twangs and drawls and nasal consonants offended his ears. It was a mongrel sound.
Finally Konrad Blutsturz waved for them to calm down.
The crowd quieted, their heads turned upward, their emotions spent. They believed. They believed in the purity of their skin color. They believed in the righteousness of their cause. And they believed in Konrad Blutsturz. They did not know they believed in a lie. Or that Konrad Biutsturz, who spoke so ringingly despite his many handicaps, believed none of it.
"The blow has been struck. We will not wait long to counterstrike. I have selected men among you to become my lieutenants. They will form you into squads. You will march, you will drill, and you will learn to use the weapons we have stockpiled in secret. Instead of hiding from an impure world, we will march into it. Instead of clinging to our vision of a white America inside Fortress Purity, we will expand Fortress Purity. Fortress Purity will become America!"
"Take back America! Take back America! America for Americans!" the crowd screamed.
"I will name those I have selected as my lieutenants. They will stand as I call out their names.
"Goetz, Gunther.
"Schoener, Karl.
"Stahl, Ernst.
"Gans, Ilsa."
"Does this mean I get to run the White Aryan League Hour?" Ilsa whispered in his ear.
Konrad Blutsturz hushed her.
A man jurnped up from the audience. He spoke in a Texas drawl.
"Hey! How come none of us good ol' boys are gettin' to be lieutenants?"
Konrad Blutsturz fixed his bright black eyes upon the protester. This was the moment be had expected. The crucial moment where his leadership would be tested. "Your name?"
"Jimmy-Joe. Jimmy-Joe Bleeker."
"Are you sure?"
"Huh?"
"Are you sure your name is Bleeker, I asked."
"What else would it be']?" Jimmy-Joe Bleeker sneered, shoving his hands into the pockets of his loose-fitting jearis.
"Are you sure your name isn't , . . Smith?"
"Naw, it ain't Smith."
"You sound like a Smith," suggested Konrad Blutsturz.
"He even looks a little like a Smith," chimed in Ilsa. "Around the eyes. A little."
"I ain't no Smith," said Jimmy-Joe Bleeker. "Smiths are poison."
Konrad Blutsturz snaked out his left hand. It glittered under the light, deformed and shining.
"There are Smiths everywhere. They are serpents in our paradise, lying, scheming, twisting facts. You have criticized the White Aryan League of America. I declare you a secret Smith, and ask the crowd to pronounce your sentence."
The crowd hesitated. All knew Jimmy-Joe Bleeker. He was a regular, one of the first members.
"Death," said Ilsa, turning her thumbs down. To Konrad. she added, "Can I kill him?"
"Death!" said the crowd.
"Aryan lieutenants, take this man out to the center of the compound and have him shot. This vile Smith will be an example to all Smiths of what is caming. Vengeance!"
"Aryan vengeance." screamed the crowd, and dragging the man, they broke open the great auditorium doors.
Ilsa ran after them. "I want to watch." she said.
Left alone on the podium, Konrad Blutsturz finished his glass of water greedily. Public speaking always wore his throat raw. He did not understand how Hitler had done it. The water accidentally went down the wrong way and he started choking. When the raw coughing fit subsided, he thought he could again taste the smoke of that night in Japan, almost forty years ago.
When the crack of rifle fire echoed back into the vast hall, he vowed again that Harold Smith would pay for his deeds on that long-ago night.
Konrad Blutsturz lay dreaming.
He dreamed he lay in bed with the hands on the clock across from him reading three minutes to midnight, but that wasn't what brought the panicky sweat to his chest. Caught between the clock hands was a severed gangrenous greenish-blue male organ. It looked familiar. And when he felt the smoothness between his legs, he knew the organ was his own. Konrad Blutsturz fumbled desperately for the clock, but it was out of reach. He tried to climb out of bed, but found he had no legs.
And then, like slicing scissors, the minute hand clicked to two minutes to midnight.
Konrad Blutsturz snapped awake from his nap. A dream, it had been a dream. But looking down at himself, he knew it was not a dream.
Reaching for his wheelchair, he maneuvered himself into a sitting position, and with simian agility, fumbled on the bluntness of his lost legs into the wheelchair, where he buckled himself in.