Henri stepped toward the door. He motioned the other men over. “There’s only about two minutes of fuse,” he said.
“We’d better go.” Yves stepped from behind Richter. As he did, he took the gum from his mouth and stuck it under the bar.
Richter didn’t move.
“Herr Richter,” Henri said. “So that you are not tempted to put out the fire, M. Dominique has instructed us to make sure that you leave— or make sure that you do not. Which will it be?” Reflected flames burned in Richter’s eyes as he glared at the men. Then his eyes snapped front and he walked briskly from the club. The men raced out behind him.
Richter didn’t say a word as he walked down the street and hailed a cab. Henri and Yves set off in the other direction, hurrying toward the deep blue of the Elbe.
They didn’t turn when they heard the explosion and the crash of debris and the screams of people who were hurt or frightened or calling for help.
When the cab driver heard the blast, he pulled over.
He looked back, swore, and jumped from the cab to see if he could help.
Felix Richter did not join him. He remained seated, staring ahead. Since he did not know what Dominique looked like, he didn’t see a face. He saw only bright red hate. And there, in the close confines of the cab, he began to scream. He screamed from his abdomen until it was empty, screamed from his soul until it was drained, screamed until his throat and ears both ached. At breath’s end, he filled his lungs and screamed again, pouring out hate and frustration through his voice.
When that breath was gone, he fell silent. Perspiration had formed on his forehead. It spilled into the corners of his eyes. He was breathing heavily, but he was calm and focused now. He stared ahead and saw the crowd which was gathering to watch the fire. Some of the people were staring at him and he glared back, unashamed and unafraid.
Looking at them, he thought, The crowds. They were the Fhrer’s people. They were blood his heart pumped throughout the land. The crowds.
There was no way, absolutely none, that he would join Dominique now. He refused to be the man’s pawn or his trophy. And there was no way that he would allow Dominique to get away with this outrage.
But he cannot be destroyed, Richter thought. The Frenchman must be humbled. Caught off guard.
The crowds. The people. The lifeblood of a nation. They must respond to a strong heart. And the government, the body, must obey their wishes.
And as he glanced into the rearview mirror and watched the flames consume his club, Richter knew what he was going to do.
Leaving the cab, Richter walked two blocks— away, reluctantly, from the thickening mob. He caught another taxi, then headed to his apartment to make a phone call. A call he was sure would alter the course of German history.
and that of the world.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Thursday, 8:34 A.M., New York, New York
The three-story brownstone on Christopher Street in the West Village was built in 1844. The door, the windowsills, and the two-step stoop were the originals.
Though the decades-old coat of brown paint was peeling, the appointments were handsome in their timeworn way.
Because the building was so close to the shifting grounds by the Hudson River, floors had buckled slightly and many of the unpainted bricks had shifted. Their movement created gently waving, symmetrical lines across the building’s facade. The mortar had been refilled where it had cracked and fallen out.
The building stood between a corner flower stand and a candy shop. Since coming to America in the early 1980s, the Dae-jungs, the young Korean couple who owned the flower stand, paid no attention to the men and women who came and went from the century-and-a-half-old building. Neither did Daniel Tetter and Matty Stevens, the middle-aged men who owned Voltaire’s Candied Shop next door. Only a handful of times in the twenty-seven years that they’d been in business had Tetter and Stevens ever seen the offpremises owner from Pittsburgh.
Then three months ago, thirty-two-year-old Special Agent in Charge Douglas diMonda of the New York bureau of the FBI and forty-three-year-old NYPD Division Chief Peter Arden visited the Dae-jungs and Tetter and Stevens at their homes. The shopkeepers were informed that four months earlier, a major case squad had been formed by the FBI and the NYPD, and that they were investigating the occupants of the brownstone. The florists and the candy-makers were told only that the lessee, Earl Gurney, was a white supremacist who was suspected of having masterminded violent antiblack and anti-gay activities in Detroit and Chicago.
What the merchants weren’t told was that the paramilitary group to which Gurney belonged, Pure Nation, had been infiltrated by an FBI agent a year earlier. Writing in code to his “mother” in Grenda Hills, California, “John Wooley” reported on the Pure Nation training facility in the Mohawk Mountains of Arizona and their plans to hire themselves out as the military arm of other white supremacy organizations and militias. The agent knew that some enormous New York operation was being planned, something much larger than the ambushes that left three black men dead in Detroit and five lesbians raped in Chicago. Unfortunately, the agent was not sent to Manhattan with the strike force and did not know what Pure Nation was planning. Only Commander Gurney knew that.
After months of surveillance from the street and from parked cars, of taking fingerprints off bottles and cans in trash bags and running background checks, diMonda and Arden were sure they had a team of Pure Nation’s most dangerous members in their midst. Six of the seven men and one of the two women living in the building had rap sheets, many involving violent crimes. However, the major case squad didn’t know what Gurney might be planning.
Phone taps picked up only conversations about the weather, jobs, and family, and there were no faxes. A search warrant to examine mail and parcels also turned up nothing. The occupants almost certainly assumed that they were being watched and listened to, a tacit indication that something was up.
Then, in the two weeks prior to approaching the Daejungs, Tetter, and Stevens, the stakeout team had seen something which made it imperative for them to begin moving in a force of their own. They noticed that the nine people who lived in the brownstone were bringing in more and more boxes, duffel bags, and suitcases. They would arrive in pairs, with one person always empty-handed, wearing a jacket and keeping both hands in pockets. The stakeout team did not doubt that there were guns in those pockets, as well as in the boxes, duffel bags, and suitcases.
But diMonda and Arden didn’t want to grab just a bag of guns. If there were a weapons cache upstairs, the major case squad wanted it all.
The idea of obtaining a search warrant to examine the premises was rejected. By the time a team reached the third floor— headquarters were usually located on the highest floors— any incriminating documents or computer diskettes would be destroyed. Besides, diMonda and Arden didn’t want to play softball with these creatures. Bureau head Moe Gera agreed, and gave the go-ahead for a strike team to be put in place, quietly and unobtrusively.
The florists and confectioners gladly allowed their shops to be used as staging areas. They were frightened, not only of the assault but of possible repercussions. But they had all marched in the Village protest against skin-head attacks in the summer of 1995, and said they could not live with themselves if others died because of their inactivity.
DiMonda promised that the NYPD would provide protection for them both at home and on the job.
The positioning of the team was done over time.
Korean-American FBI Agent Park was sent to work in the Dae-Jung shop. Tetter and Stevens hired Johns, a black sales clerk who was a detective with the NYPD. Both employees spent a lot of time outside the shops, smoking cigarettes and being seen by the people who entered. After two weeks, they brought in three more assistants each, so there was a total of eight additional agents at the site. All of them worked the day shift, which was when the brownstone was most active. The legitimate employees of both shops were paid to stay home.
Each new employee made sure that they were noticed by the people coming and going at the brownstone. Noticed often, so that they would become invisible.
The cop on the beat was temporarily reassigned, replaced by Detective Arden. Concealing his bodybuilder physique under loose-fitting clothes, diMonda, worked the street as a homeless man who occasionally slept on their stoop and had to be shoved or kicked off. Gurney himself actually complained to Arden to “keep that useless shitstink” away from his home. Arden said that he would do his best.