“We are attracting members! And who cares about the rest?” Goddard snarled. “The First Führer had only contempt for ‘silent workers’… guys who hung back, who didn’t want to join, who were afraid to come forward and take their lumps with the rest. Those’re the ones who pop up later bragging about how much they did for the Party during the ‘time of struggle.’”
“Times change, and either we change too, or we go under. The First Führer would have recognized that.”
“I like linientreue better. Fight me, beat me, stomp me, but at least you’ll never forget my face. Any other way is to copy the Jews… changed names, warm handshakes, country club smiles “
“Yeah, and look where they are.”
Liese leaned over to whisper to Lessing, “Linientreue means ‘true to the line’… keeping to the exact letter of the First Führer’s ideas.”
“Like an old Muslim I knew who hated the taste of fat but always ate it anyway, because the Prophet Muhammad was supposed to have liked it. Blind obedience. Cling to every detail.”
“Goddard follows everything. Big, little, important, minor. Loyal and brave, though.”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t want to think about politics. Liese was very close, her fragrance compelling. He felt the tingle of contact against his arm and along his thigh. She had chosen a skirt and blouse of thin, sky-blue chiffon for the Congress’ morning session, a statement even more dramatic than Jennifer Caw’s pants suit of black Shan-tung silk and turquoise neckerchief. In the narrow confines of the booth, Lessing felt the slither of the fabric between Licse’s body and his own.
He had to resist the temptation. Liese was frightened of contact that she herself did not initiate. She might see him as a threat, a violator, another abuser like her father, like the pimps and gang-rapists in New York, like the unspeakable creatures who had brutalized her in that Cairo brothel.
Liese said something, but Jennifer’s voice was louder. “Look, Bill, we’re following the strategy our forefathers set up nearly a century ago: get rich, organize, buy publicity, build good will, and eventually push society in directions we want it to go. Why don’t you go with the flow? Right now we’re hauling in new members hand over foot.”
Goddard pursed his lips sarcastically. “Members, maybe, but not believers. Everybody’s preaching peace, love, reconstruction, prosperity, and sanity: the good, sweet, syrupy stuff. The Party’s on the same wavelength as the government, the churches, the United Nations…!”
“What’s wrong with peace and love?” Jennifer’s reasonableness was beginning to fray. “What would you do? Break the Anti-Defamation Amendment again? Holler for racial reforms? Get arrested for nothing?”
“Of course not! But home, mother, and germ-free apple pie are not all we want! Let’s lay out our total program! Stand up for our beliefs!”
“Which beliefs?” Wrench interposed slyly. “Remember that there were splits within the Third Reich itself. It wasn’t a monolith, you know. Even the leadership of the SS was divided into at least five cliques, each with its own interpretation of the First Führer’s ideals. It took all his charisma to hold ’em in check. We’re going to have the same thing, and in spades, as we pick up new members.”
“Fine. We’ll listen to differences of opinion. Then we… the Party Committee… will decide which road to take. You try one idea, then another and another, until you get to one that suits.”
“Not so easy,” Wrench scoffed. “With two people you have a love affair, with three you get politics, with four you get factions; after that you fight.”
“Damn it, belonging to the movement is like being born: either you’re in or you’re out! No matter how we differ about the details… even to fighting among ourselves… we still agree on our eventual goals! Come around to our thinking or go find another sandbox to play in. Does a Jewish rabbi preach the divinity of Jesus? Does the Pope go Banger and pound the drums for sex, sin, and syncopation?”
Lessing lumbered up to his feet, forcing Wrench out into the aisle to make way. Jennifer Caw threw him a look of gratitude.
“I should be getting over to the Congress,” he told them. “I’ve got a security force of sixty half-trained kids from Ponape, one company of Louisiana National Guardsmen, and two squads of Marine MP’s on loan from Outram… all to keep six thousand conference-walas from cutting each other’s throats. Every one of ‘em thinks all the rest are either heretics or boobs.” He waved for his bill.
Liese rose to stand beside him. “Walk you?” She took her beige coat down from the rack beside the table. The sunlight transformed her spring dress into a sapphire cascade that rippled down over her thighs and calves.
Lessing pulled his gaze away. “Sure.”
It was a longish walk from their hotel in the French Quarter down Canal Street to Front Street, and over to the Convention and Exhibition Center on the banks of the Mississippi River. It was exhilarating, nevertheless. The day was sunny, not too humid, and just over sixty-five degrees, a blessing after Lucknow and Ponape.
Nostalgia was tempting: oh, to be just an average guy out with his girl on a spring day, with nothing more to worry about than where to take her, how to please her, and when to make his moves! Lessing half closed his eyes and let the old city slip back in time: all normal, tourists in tee-shirts and tank-tops mingling with the dudes and the hustlers, strains of New Orleans jazz drifting along the narrow streets even at nine o’clock in the morning.
Fantasy! That world was gone. Innocence existed now only in fairy tales. Reality was all around them. Seedy, old New Orleans, seedier than ever, was crammed with refugees, soldiers, police, the displaced, the lost, and the confused: the nameless flotsam of a major disaster. The tee-shirts and tank-tops belonged to people who had no homes, whose loved ones were dead or missing, who had no jobs, no food, and no future. The dense traffic wasn’t made up of rubber-necking tourists; these cars were full of shock-numbed refugees and hard-eyed military police. New Orleans reminded Lessing of Aleppo after the Israelis had occupied it: the universal face of tragedy.
A middle-aged couple came toward them, the man well-dressed and dignified but rumpled and dirty, unused to asking for aid. His wife hovered nervously behind him. Their story was everywhere: caught away from home by Starak with no place to go. The military had sealed off the poisoned cities, sent in shoot-on-sight patrols to discourage looters, and herded the “lucky” survivors into sprawling, chaotic camps. Liese spoke to the couple and pointed them around to the other side of the Convention Center, where the Party’s soup kitchens were working around the clock side by side with the Red Cross and a half-dozen Louisiana charities.
Two uniformed teenagers, Lessing’s pupils from Ponape, admitted them into the Center’s security area. The hallway was dingy and stank of ammoniated floor-cleaner. A building that was upwards of ninety years old developed a personality all its own — and an odor to match.
“Mallon. Holm.” Lessing greeted them. “Anything happening?”
The tall one, Wayne Mallon, gave him a military salute that was somewhere between the U.S. Army, the SS, and “Marlow Striker’s Mercs” on TV. “No, sir. Mr. Morgan’s speaking now. Then come Senator Watt of Georgia, Miss Howard of the Center for Communicable Diseases, Dr. Astel from the Tulane School of Medicine, Mr. Grant Simmons of the Congress of Americans for Personal Freedom…”
“Mulder going to speak?” Lessing asked Liese.