This was the plan’s Achilles’ heel. Still, it was their only option and they decided to take it.
Besides, Deron had a number of goodies he’d concocted for them after consulting the
architectural plans of the building he’d mysteriously conjured up. She had tried to get
them herself and struck out; NSA had what she thought was a total lock on the property
records.
Just before they stopped at the front gates, Soraya said, “Are you sure you want to go
through with this?”
Tyrone nodded, stony-faced. “Let’s get on wid it.” He was pissed that she’d even
thought to ask that question. When he was on the street, if one of his crew dared to
question his courage or resolve that would’ve been the end of him. Tyrone had to keep
reminding himself that this wasn’t the street. He knew all too well that she’d accepted a
huge risk in taking him in off the street-civilizing him, as he sometimes thought of the
process when he felt particularly hemmed in by the rules and regulations of white men he
knew nothing about.
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, wondering if he’d ever have stepped into
the white man’s world were it not for his love of her. Here was a woman of color-a
Muslim, no less-who was working for the Man. Not just the Man, but the Man squared,
cubed into infinity, whatever. If she didn’t mind doing it, why should he? But his
upbringing was about as different from hers as it could get. From what she’d told him her
parents had given her everything she needed; he barely had parents, and they either didn’t
want to give him anything or were incapable of giving it. She had the advantage of a first-
class education; he had Deron who, though he’d taught Tyrone many things, was no
substitute for white man’s education.
What was ironic was that only months ago, he would have sneered at the kind of
education she had. But once he’d met her he began to understand how ignorant he really
was. He was street-smart, sure-more than she was. But he was intimidated around people
who’d graduated high school and college. The more he observed them maneuvering
through their world-how they talked, negotiated, interacted with one another-the more he
understood just how stunted his life had been. Street smarts and nothing else was just
what the doctor ordered for picking your way through the hood, but there was a whole
fucking world beyond the hood. Once he realized that, like Deron, he wanted to explore
the world beyond the borders of his neighborhood, he knew he’d have to remake himself
from the toes up.
All this was on his mind when he saw the imposing stone-and-slate building within the
high iron fence. As he knew from the plans he’d memorized at Deron’s it was perfectly
symmetrical, with four high chimneys, eight gabled rooms. A spiky fistful of antennas,
aerials, and satellite dishes was the only anomalous feature.
“You look very handsome in that suit,” Soraya said.
“It’s fuckin’ uncomfortable,” he said. “I feel stiff.”
“Just like every NSA agent.”
He laughed the way a Roman gladiator might as he entered the Colosseum.
“Which is the point,” she added. “You’ve got the tag Deron gave you?”
He patted a place over his heart. “Safe and sound.”
Soraya nodded. “Okay, here we go.”
He knew there was a chance he’d never come out of that house alive, but he didn’t
care. Why should he? What had his life amounted to up until now? Shit-all. He’d stood
up-just as Deron had-made his choice. That’s all a man asks for in this life.
Soraya presented the credentials LaValle had sent her by messenger this morning.
Nevertheless, both she and Tyrone were scrutinized by a bookend pair of suits with
square jaws and standing orders not to smile. Finally, they passed muster, and were
waved through.
As Tyrone drove down the snaking gravel drive Soraya pointed out the terrible
gauntlet of surveillance systems an intruder would have to pass in order to infiltrate from beyond the property’s borders. This monologue reassured him that they’d already
bypassed these risks by being LaValle’s guests. Now all they had to do was negotiate the
interior of the house. Getting out again was another matter entirely.
He drove up to the portico. Before he could turn off the engine, a valet came to relieve
him of the car, yet another square-jawed military type who’d never look right in his
civilian suit.
General Kendall, punctual as usual, was at the door to meet them. He gave Soraya’s
hand a perfunctory shake, then eyeballed Tyrone as she introduced him.
“Your bodyguard, I presume,” Kendall said in a tone someone would use for a rebuke.
“But he doesn’t look like standard-issue CI material.”
“This isn’t a standard CI rendezvous,” Soraya returned tartly.
Kendall shrugged. Another perfunctory handshake and he turned on his heel, leading
them inside the hulking structure. Through the public rooms, gilt-edged, refined,
expensive beyond modern-day imagining, along hushed corridors lined with martial
paintings, past mullioned windows through which the January sunlight sparked in beams
that stretched across the plush blue carpet. Without seeming to, Tyrone took note of every
detail, as if he were casing the joint for a high-end robbery, which in fact he was. They
passed the door down to the basement levels. It looked precisely as Soraya had drawn it
from memory for him and Deron.
They went on another ten yards to the walnut doors leading to the Library. The
fireplace contained a roaring blaze, a grouping had been set with four chairs in the same
spot where Soraya said she had sat with Kendall and LaValle on her first visit. Willard
met them just inside the door.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Moore,” he said with his customary half bow. “How very nice to
see you again so soon. Would you care for your Ceylon tea?”
“That would be wonderful, thank you.”
Tyrone was about to ask for a Coke, but thought better of it. Instead he ordered another
Ceylon tea, having not the faintest idea what it tasted like.
“Very good,” Willard said, and left them.
“This way,” Kendall said unnecessarily, leading them to the grouping of chairs where
Luther LaValle was already seated, staring out the mullioned windows at the light
gathered to an oval over the western hills.
He must have heard the whisper of their approach, because he rose and turned just as
they came up. The maneuver seemed to Soraya artfully rehearsed, and therefore as
artificial as LaValle’s smile. Dutifully, she introduced Tyrone, and they all sat down
together.
LaValle steepled his fingers. “Before we begin, Director, I feel compelled to point out
that our own archives department has unearthed some fragmentary history on the Black
Legion. Apparently, they did exist during the time of the Third Reich. They were
composed of Muslim prisoners of war who were brought back to Germany from the first
putsches into the Soviet Union. These Muslims, mainly of Turkish descent from the
Caucasus, detested Stalin so much they’d do anything to topple his regime, even
becoming Nazis.”
LaValle shook his head like a history professor recounting evil days to a class of wide-
eyed students. “It’s a particularly unpleasant footnote in a thoroughly repugnant decade.
But as for the Black Legion itself, there’s no evidence whatsoever that it survived the
regime that spawned it. Besides which, its benefactor Himmler was a master of
propaganda, especially when it came to advancing himself in the eyes of Hitler.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the role of the Black Legion on the Eastern Front was