Chapter X

November 16, 1991. The response of the System to last week's mortar attack is taking shape. For one thing it's more difficult to move around in public now. Police and troops have greatly stepped up their spot checks, and they're stopping everyone, pedestrians as well as vehicles. There are announcements on the radio about once an hour warning people that they are subject to summary arrest if they are unable to establish their identity when stopped.

The Organization has already been able to furnish some of us with forged driver's licenses and other false identification, but it will be some time before everyone in the Washington area has been taken care of. Yesterday Carol had a close call. She had gone to a supermarket to buy the week's groceries for our unit, and a police patrol arrived while she was in the checkout line. They stationed men at each exit and required everyone leaving the store to show them satisfactory identification.

Just as Carol was ready to leave, there was a commotion at one exit. The police had been questioning a man who apparently was carrying no identification, and he became belligerent. When the cops tried to put handcuffs on him he slugged one of them and tried to run.

They tackled him before he had gone more than a few feet, but the cops stationed at the other exits all ran over to help. Carol was able to slip out a temporarily unguarded exit with her groceries.

All this identity-checking has diverted the police from their regular duties, and the Blacks and other criminal elements are really taking advantage of it. Some Army personnel are also participating in the identity-checking and other police operations, but their main duty is still guarding government buildings and media facilities.

The most interesting development is that the Human Relations Councils have also been given emergency police powers, and they are "deputizing" large numbers of Blacks from the welfare rolls, the way they did for the Gun Raids. In the District and in Alexandria some of these deputized Blacks are already swaggering around and stopping Whites on the streets.

There are rumors that they are demanding bribes from those they stop, threatening them with arrest if they don't pay. And they have been hauling some White women into their "field headquarters" for "questioning." There they are stripped, gangraped, and beaten-all in the name of the law!

The news media aren't breathing a word about these outrages, of course, but the word is still getting around. People are angry and frightened, but they don't know what to do. Without arms, there is little they can do. They are completely at the mercy of the System.

It's hard to figure why the System is deliberately stirring things up by deputizing Blacks again, after the enormous amount of resentment that caused two years ago. We've talked it over among ourselves in the unit, and our opinions are divided. Everyone but me seems to think that the events of last Monday panicked the System and caused them to overreact again.

Maybe, but I don't think so. They've had two months now to become used to the idea of a guerrilla war between them and us. And it's been nearly five weeks since we really bloodied their noses for the first time by blowing up the FBI building.

They know that our underground strength nationwide couldn't be more than 2,000-and they must also know that they are wearing us down. I think they are unleashing the Blacks on the Whites strictly as a preventive measure. By terrifying the White population they will make it more difficult for us to recruit, thus speeding our demise.

Bill argues, to the contrary, that the White reaction to the renewed activities of the Human Relations Councils and their gangs of "deputies" will make recruiting easier for us. To a certain extent that was true in 1989, but White Americans have become so acclimatized to the growing openness of the System's tyranny in the last two years that I believe the latest move will serve more to intimidate than to arouse them. We'll see.

Meanwhile, there's a mountain of work waiting for me. Washington Field Command has requested that I furnish them with 30 new transmitters and 100 new receivers before the end of the year. I don't know how I can do it, but I'd better get started.

November 27. Until today, I've been working my tail off, day and night, trying to get the communications equipment built that WFC wants. Three days ago-Tuesday-I rounded up the last of the components needed and set up an assembly line here in the shop, pressing Carol and Katherine into service. By having them perform some of the simpler operations in the assembly process, I may be able to meet my deadline after all.

Yesterday, however, I received a summons from WFC which kept me away from the shop from early this morning until 10 o'clock tonight. One of the purposes of the summons was a "loyalty check. "

I didn't know that before I reached the address I had been given, however. It was the little gift shop in which Harry Powell's trial took place.

A guard ushered me into a small office off the basement storeroom. Two men were waiting for me there. One was the Major Williams from Revolutionary Command whom I met earlier. The other was a Dr. Clark-one of our legals-and, as I soon learned, a clinical psychologist.

Williams explained to me that the Organization has developed a testing process for new underground recruits. Its function is to determine the recruit's true motivations and attitudes and to screen out those sent to us as infiltrators by the secret police, as well as those deemed unfit for other reasons.

In addition to new recruits, however, a number of veteran members of the Organization are also being tested: namely, those whose duties have given them access to information which would be of special value to the secret police. My detailed knowledge of our communications system alone would put me in that category, and my work has also brought me into contact with an unusually large number of our members in other units.

We originally planned that no member in an underground unit would know the identity being used by-or the unit location of -any member outside his own unit. In practice, though, we have badly compromised that plan. The way things have developed in the last two months, there are now several of us in the Washington area who could betray- either voluntarily or through torture-a large number of other members.

We exercised great care in the recruiting and evaluation of new members after the Gun Raids, of course, but nothing like what I was subjected to this morning. There were injections of some drug-at least two, but I was in a fog after the first one and can't be sure how many more there were-and half-a-dozen electrodes were attachéd to various parts of my body. A bright, pulsing light filled my eyes, and I lost all contact with my surroundings, except through the voices of my interrogators.

The next thing I remember is yawning and stretching as I woke up on a cot in the basement nearly three hours later, although I was told that the interrogation itself lasted less than half an hour. I felt refreshed, with no apparent aftereffects of whatever drug I was given.

The guard came over to me as I stood up. I could hear muffled voices from the closed office; someone else was being interrogated. And I saw another man sleeping on a cot a few feet from mine. I suspect he had recently gone through the same process I had.

I was led into another basement room, a tiny cubicle containing only a chair and a small, metal table-actually, a typewriter stand. On the table was a black, plastic binder, perhaps two inches thick, of the sort in which typewritten reports are bound. The guard told me that I was to read everything in the binder very carefully, and that Major Williams would then talk to me again. He pulled the door closed as he went out.

I had barely sat down when a girl brought me a plate of sandwiches and a mug of hot coffee. I thanked the girl, and, as I was hungry, I began sipping the coffee and munching a sandwich while I casually read the first page of the material in the binder.

When I finished the last page some four hours later I noticed that the sandwiches-including an uneaten portion of the one I had started-were still on the plate. The mug was nearly full of thoroughly cold coffee. It was as if I had just returned to earth- to the room-after a thousand-year voyage through space.

What I had read-it amounted to a book of about 400 typed pages-had lifted me out of this world, out of my day-to-day existence as an underground fighter for the Organization, and it had taken me to the top of a high mountain from which I could see the whole world, with all its nations and tribes and races, spread out before me. And I could see the ages spread out before me too, from the steaming, primordial swamps of a hundred million years ago to the unlimited possibilities which the centuries and the millennia ahead hold for us.

The book placed our present struggle-the Organization and its goals and what is at stake-in a much larger context than I have ever really considered before. That is, I had thought about many of the things in the book before, but I had never put them all together into a single, coherent pattern. I had never seen the whole picture so clearly. (Note to the reader: It is obvious that Turner is referring to the Book. We know from other evidence that it was written approximately ten years before the Record of Martyrs, in which it is mentioned-i.e., probably sometime in 9 BNE, or 1990 according to the old chronology. Turner mentions "typed pages," but it is not clear whether he means reproductions of typewritten pages or the originals themselves. If the latter is the case, then we may have here the only extant reference to the original copy of the Book! Several reproductions of the original typescript in binders fitting Turner's description have survived and are preserved in the Archives, but archeologists still have found no trace of the original.)

For the first time I understand the deepest meaning of what we are doing. I understand now why we cannot fail, no matter what we must do to win and no matter how many of us must perish in doing it. Everything that has been and everything that is yet to be depend on us. We are truly the instruments of God in the fulfillment of His Grand Design. These may seem like strange words to be coming from me, who has never been religious, but they are utterly sincere words.

I was still sitting there, thinking about what I had read, when Major Williams opened the door. He started to ask me to go with him, when he noticed that I hadn't finished my sandwiches. He brought another chair into the tiny room and invited me to finish eating while we talked.

I learned several very interesting things during our brief conversation. One is that, contrary to my earlier belief, the Organization is getting a steady trickle of new recruits. None of us had realized it, because WFC has been putting the new people into brand-new units. That's why the new communications equipment is needed.

Another thing I found out is that a significant fraction of the new recruits have been secret-police spies. Fortunately, the Organization's leadership foresaw this threat and devised a remedy in time. They realized that, once we went underground, the only way we could safely continue recruiting would be to screen new people in a foolproof way.

Here's the way it works: When our legals have someone who says he wants to join the Organization, he is turned over immediately to Dr. Clark. Dr. Clark's method of interrogation leaves no room for evasion or deceit. As Major Williams explained it, if the candidate flunks the test he never wakes up from his little nap afterward.

That way, the System can never find out why their spies are disappearing. So far, he said, we have caught more than 30 would-be infiltrators, including several women.

I shuddered to think what would have happened if my own interrogation had revealed me to be too unstable or lacking in loyalty to be trusted with what I know. And I felt a momentary flash of resentment that Dr. Clark, who is not even an underground member, should have held the decision of life or death for me in his hands.

The resentment quickly passed, however, when I considered that there is really no stigma to being a legal. The only reason Dr. Clark is not in the underground is that his name was not on the FBI's arrest list in September. Our legals play just as vital a role in our struggle as do those of us underground. They are vital to our propaganda and recruiting effort-our only close contact with the world outside the Organization-and they run even more of a risk of being found out and arrested than we do.

Major Williams must have sensed my thoughts, because he put his hand on my shoulder, smiled, and assured me that my test had gone very well. So well, in fact, that I was to be initiated into a select, inner structure within the Organization. Reading the book I had just finished was the first step in that initiation.

The next step took place about an hour later. Six of us were gathered in a loose semi-circle in the shop upstairs. It was after business hours, and the blinds were tightly drawn. The only light came from two large candles toward the back of the shop.

I was the next to the last to enter the room. At the top of the stairs the same girl who had brought my sandwiches stopped me and handed me a robe of some coarse, grey material with a hood attachéd-something like a monk's robe. After I had put on the robe she showed me where to stand and cautioned me to be silent.

Their features shadowed by their hoods, I could not make out the faces of any of my companions in that strange, little gathering. As the sixth participant reached the doorway at the top of the stairs, however, I turned and was startled to glimpse a tall, burly man in the uniform of a sergeant of the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police slipping into a robe.

Finally, from another door, at the back, Major Williams entered. He also wore one of the grey robes, but his hood was thrown back so that the two candles, one on either side, illuminated his face.

He spoke to us in a quiet voice, explaining that each of us who had been selected for membership in the Order had passed the test of the Word and the test of the Deed. That is, we have all proved ourselves, not only through a correct attitude toward the Cause, but also through our acts in the struggle for the realization of the Cause.

As members of the Order we are to be the bearers of the Faith. Only from our ranks will the future leaders of the Organization come. He told us many other things too, reiterating some of the ideas I had just read.

The Order, he explained, will remain secret, even within the Organization, until the successful completion of the first phase of our task: the destruction of the System. And he showed us the Sign by which we might recognize one another.

And then we swore the Oath-a mighty Oath, a moving Oath that shook me to my bones and raised the hair on the back of my neck.

As we filed out one by one, at intervals of about a minute, the girl at the door took our robes, and Major Williams placed a gold chain with a small pendant around each of our necks. He had already told us about these. Inside each pendant is a tiny, glass capsule. We are to wear them at all times, day and night.

Whenever danger is especially imminent and we might be captured, we are to remove the capsules from the pendants and carry them in our mouths. And if we are captured and can see no hope of immediate escape, we are to break the capsules with our teeth. Death will be painless and almost instantaneous.

Now our lives truly belong only to the Order. Today I was, in a sense, born again. I know now that I will never again be able to look at the world or the people around me or my own life in quite the same way I did before.

When I undressed for bed last night, Katherine immediately spotted my new pendant and asked about it, of course. She also wanted to know what I had been doing all day.

Fortunately, Katherine is the sort of girl with whom one can be completely truthful-a rare jewel, indeed. I explained to her the function of the pendant and told her that it is necessary because of a new task I am undertaking for the Organization-a task whose details I have obliged myself to tell no one, at least for the present. She was obviously curious, but she didn't press me further.