Overload (15 page)

Davis roughly ahead. They went through the outer office to the corridor

outside, London pausing only long enough to slam both doors behind them.

Nim began an angry protest. "What the hell .

He didn't finish. From the inner office came the boom of an cxplosion. The

corridor walls shook. A framed picture nearby fell to the floor, its glass

shattering.

A second later another thud, like the earlier one Nim had beard but this

time louder and clearly an explosion, came from somewhere beneath their

feet. It was unmistakably within the building. Down the corridor, figures

were running out of other doors.

"Oh Christ!" Harry London said. His voice was despairing.

Nim exclaimed urgently, "Dammit! What is it?"

Now they could hear excited shouting, telephones ringing stridently, the

sound of approaching sirens in the street below.

"Letter bombs," London said. "They're not big, but enough to kill anybody

close. That last one was the fourth. Fraser Fenton's dead, others injured.

Everyone in the building's being warned, and if you feel like praying, ask

that there aren't any more."

11

With a short stub of pencil, Georgos Winslow Archambault (Yale, class Of

'72) wrote in his journal:

Yesterday, a successful foray against the fascist-capitalistic forces

of oppression!

An enemy leader-Fenton, president of Golden State Piss &

Lickspittle-is dead. Good riddance!

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In the honored name of Friends of Freedom, the headquarters bastion of

the ruthless exploiters of the people's energy resources was successfully

attacked. Out of ten F-of-F weapons directed at target, five scored

direct hits. Not bad!

The true score of hits may be even greater since the es-

tablishment-muzzled press has, as usual, minimized this important

people's victory.

Georgos repositioned the pencil stub. Even though it was uncomfortable, he

invariably wrote with a stub, having once read that Mohandas K. Gandhi did

so, holding that to discard a partially used pencil would be to denigrate

the humble labor which created it.

Gandhi was one of Georges Archambault's heroes, as were Lenin, Marx,

Engels, Mao Tse-tung, Renato Curcio, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Cesar

Chavez and assorted others. (The anomaly that Mohandas Gandhi was an

apostle of non-violence seemed not to bother him.)

Georgos went on writing.

Furthermore, the capitalist-bootlicking press today sanctimoniously

deplored the death and injury of what it labeled "innocent victims." How

naivelv ridiculous!

In any war, so-called "innocents" are inevitably killed and maimed, and

the larger the war, the larger the number of "innocent" casualties. When

belligerents are the misnamed 11 great powers"-as in World Wars I and 11

and the despicable Viet Nam aggression by Amerika-such "innocents" are

slaughtered in their thousands, like cattle, and who objects? No one!

Certainly not the dollar-worshiping press-Fiihrers and their

know-nothing, toadying writers.

A just, social war, like that now being waged by Friends of Freedom, is

no different-except that casualties are fewer.

Even at Yale, in written papers, Georgos had had the reputation among his

professors of belaboring a point, spreading adjectives like buckshot. But

then English bad not been his major-it was physicsand later be parlayed

that degree into a doctorate in chemistry. Later still, the chemistry

knowledge proved useful when he studied explosives -among other things-in

Cuba. And all along the way his interests narrowed, as did his personal

views on life and politics.

The journal entry continued:

Even the enemy press-whicb obediently exaggerates such matters rather

than minimizes tbem-admits there were onlv two deaths and three major

injuries. One of the dead was the senior management criminal, Fenton, the

other a _pig security guard-no loss! The rest were minor lackeys-typists,

clerks, &c.

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-who should be grateful for their martyrdom in a noble cause. So much for the

propaganda nonsense about "innocent victims"!

Georgos paused, his thin, ascetic face mirroring an intcnsity of thought.

As always, he took considerable pains over his journal, belicving that

one day it Nvould be an important historical document, ranking alongside

such works as Das Kapital and Quotations froin Chairman Mao Tse-tung,

He began a new train of thought.

The demands of Friends of Freedom will be announced in a war communiqu6

today. They are:

-Free supply of electricity and gas for one year to the unemployed,

those on welfare, and old people. At the end of a year the matter will

be reviewed again by Friends of Freedoin.

-An immediate 25 percent reduction in charges for electric power and

gas supplied to small homes and apartments.

-Abandonment of plans to build more nuclear power plants. Existing

nuclear plants to be closed immediately.

Failure to accept and obey these demands will result in a stepped-up

program of attacks.

That would do for starters. And the threat of intensified action was a

real one. Georgos glanced around the crowded, cluttered basement workroom

in which he was writing. The supplies of gunpowder, fuses, blasting caps,

pipe casings, glycerine, acids and other chemicals were ample. And he,

as well as the three other freedom fighters who accepted his leadership,

knew how to use them. He smiled, remembering the ingenious device which

had gone into yesterday's letter bombs. A small plastic cylinder

contained high explosive tetryl with a tiny detonator. Poised over the

detonator was a spring-loaded firing pin and opening the envelope

released the firing pin, which hit the detonator. Simple but deadly. The

charge of tetryl was enough to blow the letter opener's head off, or a

body wide open.

Obviously our demands are awaited because already the press and its

docile ally television have begun echoing the Golden State Piss &

Lickspittle line that no policies will be changed "as a result of

terrorism."

Garbage! Empty-headed stupidity! Of course terrorism Ail] cause

changes. It always has, and always will. History abounds with examples.

Georgos considered some of the examples drilled into him during the Cuban

revolutionary training, That was a couple of years after getting

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his doctorate, and in between the two he had been increasingly consurned

by hatred for what he saw as the decadent, tyrannical countrv of his

birth. He contemptuously spelled it Amerika.

His general disenchantment bad not been helped by news that his fatber,

a wealthy New York playboy, had gone through his eighth divorce and

remarriage, and that Georgos' mother, an internationally adored Greek

movie actress, was again between husbands, having ~bed her sixth. Georgos

loathed both his parents and what they represented, even though he had

not seen either since be was nine years old nor, in the intervening

twenty years, had be beard from them directly. His costs of living and

schooling, including the fees at Yale, were paid impersonally through an

Athens law firm.

So terrorism wouldn't change anything, eb?

Terrorism is an instrument of social war. It permits a few enlightened

individuals (such as Friends of Freedom) to weaken the iron grip and

will of reactionary forces which hold, and abuse, power.

Terrorism began the successful Russian Revolution.

The Irish and Israeli republics oxvc their existence to terrorism. IRA

terrorism in the first World War led to an independent Eire. Irgun

terrorism in Palestine forced the British to give up their Mandate so

the Jews could establish Israel.

Algeria won independence from France through terrorism.

The PLO, now represented at international conferences and the UN, used

terrorism to gain worldwide attention.

Even more world attention has been achieved by terrorism of the Italian

Red Brigade.

Georgos Winslow Archambault stopped. Writing tired him. Also, be

realized, he was drifting out of the revolutionary jargon which (he had

also learned in Cuba) was important, both as a psychological weapon and

an emotional outlet. But it was sometimes bard to sustain.

He stood up, stretched and yawned. He had a good, lithe bodv and kept

himself fit with a rigid daily exercise schedule. Glancing in a small,

cracked wall mirror be fingered his bushy but trim moustache. He had

grown it immediately after the attack on the La Mission generating plant

when be had posed as a Salvation Army officer. According to news reports

the following day, a plant security guard had described him as

clean-shaven, so the moustache might at least confuse identification, if

it ever came to that. The Salvation Army uniform had, of course, been

destroyed long since.

The memory of the La Mission success pleased Georgos, and he chuckled.

One thing he had not done, either before or after La Mission, was grow

a beard. That would be like a signature. People expected revolu-

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tionaries to be bearded and unkempt; Georgos was careful to be precisely the

reverse. Whenever he left the modest east-side house lie had rented he could

be mistaken for a stockbroker or banker. Not that that was difficult for him

since he was fastidious by nature and dressed well. The money which the

Athens lawyer still paid regularly into a Chicago bank account helped with

that, though the amount was less than it used to be, and Georgos needed

considerably more cash to finance the future plans of Friends of Freedom.

Fortunately be was already getting some outside help; now the amount from

that source would have to be increased.

Only one factor contradicted the cultivated bourgeois imageGeorgos' hands.

In the early days of his interest in chemicals, and then explosives, he bad

been careless and worked without protective gloves. As a result his hands

were scarred and discolored. He was more careful now but the damage was

done. He had considered seeking skin grafts, but the risks seemed high. The

best he could do, when away from the house, was keep his hands out of sight

as much as possible.

The agreeable odor of lunch-stuffed bell peppers-drifted down to him from

above. His woman, Yvette, was an accomplished cook who knew what Georgos

liked and tried to please him. She was also in awe of his learning, having

had a minimum of schooling herself.

He shared Yvette with the three other young freedom fighters who lived in

the house-Wayde, a scholar like Georgos and a disciple of Marx and Engels;

Ute, an American Indian who nursed a burning hatred of the institutions

which eclipsed his people's nationhood; and Felix, a product of Detroit's

inner city ghetto, whose philosophy was to burn, kill or othenvise destroy

everything alien to his own bitter experience since birth.

But, for all the sharing with the others, Georgos had a proprietorial

feeling, bordering on affection, for Yvette. At the same time, he despised