But Jones must have known. The organization must have expected the attack. One year ago, Jones must have anticipated that in his stern outrage, Pearson would go ahead, would make one great final effort to smash the burgeoning movement. Kaminski’s betrayal had goaded Pearson on; he wanted to move, do something, make some last attempt to save Fedgov, before the whole thing was decided. But in Jones’ mind it had already been decided.
As he stood listening to the police audiocast, Cussick wondered how Jones could possibly be caught off guard. Arrested and wounded. Unless, of course, he wanted to be arrested. Unless it was his plan to be shot. In that case, Pearson had probably sealed the final disposition of Fedgov.
Possibly, even probably, Pearson, in his furious desire to act, had made Jones’ victory an absolute certainty.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE CROWD roared. In the afternoon of that historic day the crowd blurred in the heat of the sun, and its combined voices thundered approval of the small man standing on the platform, the tiny figure that gestured and spoke and waved its arms. Loudspeakers carried the speech, amplified the original voice until it bellowed over the surge of crowd-noise. Beyond the mass of people were the ruins that had been Frankfurt, Germany.
“My friends,” Jones shouted, “the entrenched plutocracy has tried to silence me. But they have grown soft; like great parasites they sit behind their desks running the world. They have grown fat on us; they have feasted well. But it is going to end. I can see it.”
Shouted approval.
“We must strike out!” Jones raved on. “Beyond the world, beyond the dead systems. It is our destiny. The race cannot be denied its future. Nothing will stop us. We cannot be defeated.”
On and on he went. And somewhere, standing silently among the spectators, untouched by the feverish harangue, waited the police assassin.
He had been a soldier in the war. He was a crack shot, with a suitcase full of medals. In the last stages of the war he became a professional assassin. The chance of his shot missing the target was one in a million.
On the day of the speech, Pratt was driven from the labor camp at Manresa, Spain, to the outskirts of Frankfurt. As the long, low-slung car purred over the twisting roads, he went over in his mind the way he was going to do it. There wasn’t much to think about; his whole body was geared to the job ahead. After awhile he put his head back against the luxurious seat and enjoyed the pull of the powerful turbine.
The car let him off in a deserted area, a patch of ruin and gaping bomb craters that hadn’t been reconstructed. Pratt sat down among the ruins, got out his lunch, and ate. Then he wiped his mouth, picked up his rifle, and trudged toward town. It was one-thirty; he had plenty of time. Along the road moved people and vehicles, a constant swell of individuals moving in to hear Jones. Pratt joined them; he was one of many. As he walked, he carried his rifle openly. It was a war-rifle, the one he had used in the final confused days. His decorations permitted him to carry it; the rifle was a badge of honor.
The speech did not interest him. He was too practical a man to be moved by the excited tumult of words. As Jones shouted and gestured, the lean-jawed soldier prowled around, looking for the point at which the march would originate, the spot where Jones would take command of his gray troopers.
This part of Frankfurt still lay in rubble. A residential section, it was the last to be repaired. The inhabitants were living in temporary barracks erected by the Government. As Jones’ speech came to an end, groups of organization workers collected here and there, obviously in pre-arranged patterns. Pratt, standing with his rifle, watched with interest.
Before him lay what looked like a cement wheel. The wheel was a solid mass of followers, assembled together in a single grim heap. The crossed-retort flag fluttered on all sides. Everybody had armbands or uniforms. Ahead of the wheel of gray lay an open stretch of Landstrasse, the still undamaged highway leading into the town. The highway had existed from the time of the Third Reich; it had been constructed by the Nazi engineering genius, Doktor Todt, and his O. T. Gruppe. It was an excellent highway. In a little while, the gray wheel would unwind and march down it, toward the town.
The police had carefully cleared all traffic from the highway. Police patrols walked up and down the deserted strip, waving people angrily back. A few children and a stray dog scampered excitedly ahead of them.
The noise was already deafening. Milling lumps of spectators were breaking away from the nearby field, making toward the assembly point. Pratt winced as groups surged against him, their eyes glassy, mouths open and half-clogged with stale cheers. Lifting his rifle he climbed up on a heap of rubble, out of the way.
A corps of newspaper reporters with flash cameras were taking pictures of the crowd and the gray mass of organization agents that formed the first ranks. Helmeted police were everywhere, in pairs and threes. They all carried weapons; they looked cruel and uneasy in their brown uniforms. Where the stretch of highway began, four ambulances had been parked, two on each side. Elaborate TV equipment had been set up nearby; the technicians and medical teams stood joking and lounging. The reporters took pictures of them, too. They were taking pictures of everything.
Pratt made his way with caution. He managed to slide through the final fringes of the crowd and out into the open. A moment later he was standing at the main police barricade, erected at the edge of the highway. The uniformed cops gazed at him blankly; he wasn’t known to them. One of them, a giant with a vast moon-like face, detached himself and came striding ominously over, his machine gun raised.
“Get over to the other side!” he yelled at Pratt. “Get off the highway!”
The police were stretching heavy white rope on both sides of the pavement, to keep the march confined. They wanted to be sure it went in the right direction; it was supposed to go where the weapons units waited.
“God damn you!” the big cop yelled. “I told you to get out of here! You want to get killed?”
“Where’s McHaffie?” Pratt said.
“Who are you?”
Pratt located Police Major McHaffie, the officer in charge of the detail. Approaching him, he showed his identification. “All right,” McHaffie muttered, preoccupied. He didn’t know what Pratt’s mission was, only that he was on a Security job. “Get up there on one of the trucks; that’s where you’ll get the best view. The stupid bastards are starting any minute.”
McHaffie had picked a good place for the barricade. Once the marchers had gone past it toward the city, the trucks would cut through the rope and swing around, blocking the highway. Then, as the crowd streamed back, the police teams would sort through them. Caught between two police walls, Jones and his followers would be trapped like cattle. More trucks were waiting: to take the followers off to forced labor camps.
The barricade itself was formidable. He doubted if the mob—and it would be a mob by that time—could break it. Trucks, plus heavy guns, and maybe a line of tanks. He wasn’t too familiar with that part. This would be the initial police attack: Jones dead, the policy-level followers rounded up. And then, all over the world, city by city, the rest would be netted. Over a period of days, perhaps weeks, the roundup would continue. Slowly, efficiently.
Reaching up to the truck, Pratt began to climb. Six or seven hands reached to help him; he sprawled awkwardly, clutching his rifle and struggling, until somebody helped him to his feet. He brushed himself off and found a place near the front. He wasn’t the only one with a war-rifle; several flashed in the afternoon sunlight. As he stood his gun upright, nobody paid attention. They were all watching the marchers.
“This is a good location,” he said to McHaffie, as the police major followed after him.
McHaffie eyed the rifle. “What’s that you have there? An old A-5? I wish you guys had thrown them away.” Obviously, he thought Pratt was a bellicose war veteran, nothing more. “We ought to have yanked the firing pins out.”
“There’re a lot of people down there,” a sergeant observed uneasily.
“You think they’ll get by us?” another asked nervously, a young kid. “They’re crazy—they might do anything.”
“I don’t think so,” McHaffie said vaguely, peering at the mob through his binoculars.
“They want to get killed,” the sergeant said. “That’s what they’re out there for. They can see us—Jones must know we’re going to close in on them. Can’t he see the future? Isn’t that his line?”