"Now what?"
"Same as before. We'll walk this ledge to the corner. By the time we
get to Lexington, he'll have looked over that face of the building and
be gone. Then we'll rappel.
"With your arm like this?"
"With my arm like this."
"The vision you had about being shot in the back-"
"What about it?"
She touched his left arm. "Was this it?"
"No.
Bollinger turned away from the window that opened onto Lexington Avenue.
He hurried out of the Opway Electronics suite and down the hall toward
the office from which he had shot at Harris a few minutes ago.
"Chaos, Dwight.
"Chaos-I"
"There are too damned many of- these subhumans lor the supermen to take
control of things in ordinary times. Only in the midst of Armageddon
will men like us ascend "You mean ... after a nuclear war?"
"That's one way it could happen. Only men like us wouldbave the courage
and imagination to lead civilization out of the ruins. But wouldn't it
be ridiculous to wait until they've destroyed everything we should
inherit?"
"Ridiculous.
"So it's occurred to me that we could generate the chaos we need, bring
about Armageddon in a less destructive form.
"How?"
"Well... does the name Albert DeSalvo mean anything to you?"
"No.
"He was the Boston Strangler.
"Oh, yeah. He murdered a lot of women.
"We should study DeSalvo's case. He wasn't one of us, of course.
He was an inlezior and a psychotic to boot. But I taink we should use
him as a model. Singlehandedly, he created so much fear that he almost
threw the city of Boston into a state of panic. Fear would be our basic
tool. Fear can be stoked into panic. A handful of panic-stricken
people can transmit their hysteria to the entire population of a city or
country.
"
"But DeSalvo didn't come close to creating the kind of fear the degree
of-chaos that would lead to the collapse of society.
"Because that wasn't his goal.
Even if it had been-"
"Dwight, suppose an Albert DeSalvo ...
better yet, suppose a Jack the Ripper were loose in Manhattan. Suppose
he murdered not just ten women, not twenty, but a hundred two hundred.
In a particularly brutile fashion. With clear evidence of aberrant sex
in every case. So there was no doubt that they all died by the same
hand And what if he did all of this in a few months?" ,There would be
fear. But-"
"it would be the biggest news story in the city, in the state, and
probably in the country. Then suppose that after we murdered the first
hundred women, we -began to spend half of our time killing men. Each
time, we'd cut off the man's sex organ and leave behind a message
attributing the murder to a fictitious militant feminist group.
"What?"
"We'd make the public think the men were being murdered in retaliation
for the murders of the hundred women."
"Except women don't typically commit crimes like that."
"Doesn't matter. We're not trying to create a typica] situation."
"I'm not sure I understand what sort of situation we are trying to
create."
"Don't you see! There are damned ugly tensions between men and women
in this country.
Hideous tensions- Year by year, as the women's liberation movement has
grown, those tensions have become almost unbearable, because they're
repressed, hidden. We'll make them boil to the surface.
"It's not bad. You're exaggerating. "I'm not. Believe me. I know. And
don't you see what else? There are hundreds of potential psychotic
killers out there. All they need is to be given some direction, a
little push. They'll hear about and read about the killings so much
that they'll get ideas of their own. Once we've cut up a hundred women
and twenty or so men, pretending to be psychotic ourselves, we'll have a
dozen imitators doing our work for us.
"Maybe.
"Definitely. All mass murderers have had their imitators. But none of
them has ever committed crimes grand enough to inspire legions of
mimics, We will And then when we've turned out a squad of sex killers,
we'll shift the direction of our own activities.
"Shift to what?"
"We'llmurder whitepeopleatrandom anduseafictitious black revolutionary
group to claim credit. After a dozen killings of that sort-"
"We could knock off some blacks and leave everyone under the impression
they were killed in retaliation."
"You've got it. Fan the flames.
"I'm beginning to see your point. In a city this size, there are
countless factions. Blacks, whites, Puerto Ricans, Orientdls, men,
women, liberals, conservatives, radicals and reactionaries, Catholics
and Jews, rich and poor, young and old... We could try to turn each
against its opposite and all of them against one another Once factional
violence begins, whether it's religious or political or economic, it
usually escalates endlessly.
"Exactly. If we planned carefu]1y enough, we could do it. In six
months, you'd have at least two thousand dead. Maybe live times that
number.
"And you'd have martial law That would put an end to it before there was
chaos on the scale you've talked about.
,We might have martial law. But we'd still have chaos. In Northern
Ireland they've had soldiers on street corners for Tears, but the
killing goes on. Oh, there'd be chaos, Dwight. And it would spread to
other cities as-"
"No. I can't swallow that.
'All over the countzy, people would be reading and beadng about New
York. They'd-"
"It wouldn't spread that easily, Billy.
"All sight. All light. But there would be chaos here, it least.
The voters would be ready to elect a toughtalking mayor with new ideas.
"Certly."
"We could elect one of us, one of the new race. The mayoralty of New
York is a good political base for a -imart man who wants the
presidency."
"The voters might elect a political strongman.
But not evezy political strongman is going to be one of our people."
"If we planned the chaos, we could also plan to run one of our men in
the wake of it. He would know what was coming; he'd have an inside
track.
"One of our men? Hell, we don't know any but you and me.
"I'd make an excellent mayor.
"You?"
"I have a good base or campaign.
f a "Christ, come to think of it, you do.
"I could win.
"You'd,have a fair chance, anyway "It would be a step up the ladder of
power for our kind, our race."
"lesus, the killing we'd have to do!"
"Haven't you ever killed?"
"A Pi . mp. Two drug pushers who pulledguns on me. A whore that
nobody knows about.
"Did killing disturb you?"
"No. They were scum."
"We'd be killing scum. Our inferiors.
Animals.
"Could we get away with it?"
"We both know cops. What would cops look for? .Known mental patients.
Known criminals. Known radicals. People with some sort of motive. We
have a motive, but they'd never figure it in a million years."
"If we worked out every detail, planned carefully hell, we might do it."
"Do you know what Leopold wrote to Loeb before they murdered Bobby
Franks? 'The superman is not liable for anything he may do, except for
the one crime that it is possible for him to commit-to make a mistake.
we did something like this-" ,You're committed to it?"
"Aren't you, Dwight?"
,We'd start with women?"
"Yes."
"Kill them.
"Yes.
"Billy ... ?"
"Yes?"
"Rape them first?"
"Oh, yes- " ,it could even be filn.
Bollinger leaned out of the window, looked both ways along the ledge.
Harris was not on the face of the building that overlooked the side