The Last Rebel: Survivor (14 page)

He smiled inwardly. Wouldn’t the guy be surprised to return and see Rosen on top of his girlfriend going at it the forest floor? He thought not. Rosen had a good sense about people. This was a dude you didn’t want to mess with.

LaDoux returned within a few minutes carrying a sack with him.

“I don’t want to risk making a fire,” Jim said, “so how about some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?”

“Excellent.”

“How many sandwiches could you eat?” Bev asked, taking the sack from Jim.

“I could eat the sack,” Rosen said, “but two should do it.”

Bev made the sandwiches and gave them to him, along with some chocolate cookies, and a bottle of water. Rosen tried not to eat the sandwiches like a wild animal. Plus, he didn’t want to choke to death.

“Where are you headed?” Rosen asked as they sat down on some big logs near the tent.

“We don’t know,” Jim said, “just north. Trying to avoid any further contact with Rejects.”

“Going north is a good idea,” Rosen said. “There are fewer of them up that way, I think.”

In fact, Rosen knew exactly where concentrations of Rejects were, but he was not about to reveal what he knew.

“So
Rolling Stone
is still publishing?” Bev asked.

“On a limited basis. But our publisher feels it’s important to get the truth out there about the Rejects. His idea is that the truth is the only basis for America to be able to come back.”

“I agree with that,” Bev said.

“So do I,” Jim said. Then: “I’d like to hear some more about the Rejects, but you look really beat. Why don’t we wait until the sun comes up?”

Rosen did not nod or say okay.

“What’s the matter?” Jim asked.

“I just don’t want these whacks showing up.”

“Well, if they don’t know you’re a reporter,” Jim said, “there’s no reason for them to come after you, is there? I mean you could have just disappeared for no apparent reason, right?”

“Yes.”

“Of course if they did,” Bev said, “then I could see it.”

“I can’t think of any way how they could,” he said. “I just sensed it.” And he thought
Unless they found my ID, which is highly likely
.

Rosen knew he was lying, but he had perfected this skill as a reporter. He was quite accomplished. Good reporters were. And they would lie—convincingly—to their mothers if it meant getting a good story.

Jim listened, and though Rosen made his statement forcefully there was an undertow of indecision beneath the surface. But he let it go.

“Why don’t you sleep in the cab of the HumVee?” Jim said. “That should be fine and it’s plenty big for you. As long as you don’t mind the company of Reb.”

“Who’s Reb?”

“My dog.”

“No, not a problem. As long as he’s friendly.”

“Very,” Jim said. “Good night.”

“Okay, Good night,” Morty said. “And thanks for the sandwiches. They tasted like filet mignon.”

Later, in the tent, Jim and Bev lay down side by side. Bev said: “I get the feeling that’s there’s more here than meets the eye.”

“You mean he’s not who he said he is?”

“No. Just like he’s leaving out something.”

“I got the same feeling,” Jim said. “Well, maybe we can find out tomorrow.”

Jim gave Bev a long kiss, and it wasn’t long before both of them had fallen back to sleep.

In the HumVee, Rosen thought about what he should do. Maybe he should wait an hour or so, then take off. There was nothing to prevent him from going.

Wouldn’t it be nice to take off in the HumVee?

Yeah, but that wouldn’t be kosher. Rosen had done some questionable things in his life, but that was crossing the line. Just like humping a prisoner would have been.

He was still pondering what he would do when exhaustion overtook him and he fell into a deep sleep.

TEN

Jim, Bev, and Rosen awakened at dawn. Bev volunteered to make breakfast, and after they had finished it—waffles that were no longer frozen and a couple of cups of strong coffee—they sat around for a while on some logs and then Jim looked at Rosen and asked: “So what did you find about the Rejects?”

“First of all, they have about twenty compounds spread over the Northwest—Utah, Wyoming, Nevada, Colorado. They’re mostly in northern Utah and Wyoming and Colorado. But there are also cells of them in major cities, and they have all intentions of covering America.”

“What is their goal?” Bev asked.

“To turn America into a secular country.”

“Godless?” Jim asked.

“That’s the idea,” Rosen said. “And anyone caught practicing religion will be summarily executed.”

“Sounds like the way the English treated the Irish in the 1800s,” Jim said.

“What do you mean?” Bev asked.

“Well, stories came down to me from my grandparents—I’m Irish on my mother’s side—of how if you were caught, by the British, in the mid 1800s going to Mass or attending school you would be executed.”

“Why?” Rosen asked.

“I think the English felt that going to church would somehow bind the people together into a dangerous group, and certainly an educated person was more dangerous to the English than one who wasn’t so educated. Ideas can move mountains, right?”

“Hey,” Rosen said, “I like that. Ideas can move mountains.”

“I can see that,” Bev said. “Absolutely.”

“Who’s their leader?” Jim asked. “Must be a fanatic.”

“And then some. Fruitcake, wacko, and nutcase all rolled into one. But a brilliant nutcase. His name is Alex Szabo. He’s in the same league with Saddam Hussein, Hitler, Stalin, people of those ilk. He’s what they call, as the doctor who did a report on him for the
Stone
said, a ‘psychopath, a personality disorder, especially one manifested in aggressively antisocial behavior.’”

“You said a doctor did a report?” Bev asked.

“Yeah,” Rosen said, “my editor—and I—wanted to get a sense of who the players were before we played the game. Intel like that can save your life.”

“What else did you find out?”

“You want to read the report? I have it with me.”

“How did you get away with that?” Jim asked.

“I kept ninety-nine percent of the stuff I needed in a plastic container outside the base camp.”

“No, how did you obtain the report?”

“One night I was able to get into Szabo’s private office and into his personal crap. The report was there.”

“I’d definitely like to see it,” Jim said.

“Me too,” Bev said.

Rosen went away, and a short while later returned with a bunch of papers, which he unfolded and handed to Jim.

“The name of the doctor has been removed. He never wanted Szabo to know that he wrote a report like this. I remember him telling me with a smile that was not such a smile that he didn’t want to be one of the people on which Szabo manifested his aggressively antisocial behavior.”

“But obviously he found out.”

“He surely did,” Rosen said.

Jim read, Bev looking over his shoulder.

To: Jon Wagner

Publisher

The Rolling Stone magazine

Subject: the personality of Alex Szabo

Dear Mr. Wagner:

I have examined all of the available court, prison, and other papers connected with Alex Szabo, as well as having conducted a few interviews with him while I was staff psychiatrist at Marion Maximum-Security Prison in Marion, Indiana, and this is my conclusions about the man.

Mr. Szabo, who is now head of a paramilitary group that is getting larger and larger in the United States, is an extraordinarily hostile and dangerous person, and when dealing with him there is always the danger that he will abruptly explode in violence. Indeed, while he was in prison he lifted weights constantly, apparently building himself up to a strength that would allow him to better manifest his violence on those who would conceivably cross his path.

As in the vast majority of cases like this, Mr. Szabo’s personality was formed when he was a little boy. When he was one year old, his father deserted his mother, leaving her in appalling fiscal straits, and apparently she was unable to make ends meet and rather quickly married Raymond Harel, a man who worked in the steel mills of Gary, Indiana, and who quickly got into the habit of being cruel to young Alex in a variety of ways. While there was no evidence of sexual abuse, there was extreme mental and physical abuse; I think the mental abuse was even more potent on the young boy’s personality than the physical aspect, which usually consisted of Alex being beaten with a strap or broom handle.

To give you one example of the mental anguish, there was a brutal incident involving a chicken. Instead of a dog, Alex had a pet chicken that he loved, and one day when he came to dinner his father announced that they were having his pet chicken for dinner, that he had killed it and his mother was cooking it, and his father demanded that he eat it as well, something he did, crying through the entire experience. His father’s rationale was that Alex must be strong to survive, able to withstand anything.

After ten years, his mother was no longer able to tolerate her husband’s cruelty to Alex, and she left him. She remarried shortly thereafter, but it was too late, emotionally speaking, for Alex. He had a lot of trouble in school. He had a reputation as a class bully, and would take great pleasure in beating other children to the point of unconsciousness. Once, for example, a fight he had with another boy, thirteen, resulted in the boy having to get sixty-two stitches in his face.

He may have murdered someone as well. Apparently one of the boys who fought got his older brother after Alex and the boy threatened to “beat Alex up.” Two days later the brother was found beaten to death, apparently with some blunt instrument like a baseball bat or piece of metal and so badly that they had to use his teeth to identify him.

In high school, the pattern of violence continued, until he was discharged from school, but it was here, a school psychologist said, that he developed a desire to be a king, a ruler of some sort, and it was the psychologists’ interpretation, with which I concur, that these delusions of grandeur were brought about by a deep-seated feeling of insecurity and worthless-ness, the latter the message that his stepfather constantly reinforced as Alex was growing up.

He also developed a pattern of sociopathic behavior—meaning he does not appreciate the consequences of his actions on others, nor does he care. He also uses lying, deviousness, and cleverness to serve his own ends in a way that is quite remarkable. Those who know him well say that the time to fear him the most is when he’s smiling, because when he’s smiling he always has some other agenda to follow.

He got married fifteen years ago, but he discovered that his wife was cheating on him, and that there was a strong possibility that his two children—a little boy and girl—were not his.

To teach her a lesson that she would never forget, he bound her very securely and also bound the children—and understand that one was three and the other four—and while his wife watched threw first one and then the other into a wood chipper while they were still very much alive. He then fed her, very slowly, into the same chipper and threw the shredded and chopped-up remains into a river.

He received life without the possibility of parole, but one day he and three other inmates pulled a daring escape, killing four guards in the process.

Gradually, he formed the Rejects, composed strictly of people who did not believe in God.

It is a wonder that he can get anyone to work for him, because his violence is closely connected to his quickness to be insulted, or to his belief that someone is being disloyal to him. He holds regular conferences, and these are terrifying ordeals for the people who attend them. His brother-in-law, for example, who was his minister of health, once told him that he thought he should take a break, a week or so off, because he looked peaked. Szabo then invited his brother-in-law into the hall and shot him dead. He actually returned to the conference blowing the smoke away from the end of his pistol. Szabo’s interpretation was that his brother-in-law was plotting something against him, but there was nothing concrete to support this.

To sum up, I would say anyone dealing with him must be extremely conscious of his paranoia and how he gets offended so easily, how prone he is to violence, and the delusions of grandeur that he has about himself. It has been said that those in the know compliment him all the time in hopes of not only currying his favor—he gives out money and property awards all the time—but to stay alive.

Very Truly Yours,

The name of the doctor had been blacked out.

“Wow,” Bev said.

Jim smiled.

“You have a lot of chutzpah getting this,” he said, pronouncing the C as hard.

“The C is silent,” Rosen said. “It’s pronounced
hutzpah
, like you’re trying to clear your throat.”