Murder in Foggy Bottom - Margaret Truman [56]
“Just do what I say, Billy.”
“Okay.”
When Baumann was gone, Jasper said to the young husband, “Billy’s the sort of man we’re recruiting in every state, every day. You go on now and join up with your pretty little wife. Sit down and read the Scriptures together, and some of the other literature in your apartment. The Turner Diaries is one fine book, and tonight’s movie after dinner is Birth of a Nation, one of the greatest motion pictures ever made. Ever see it?”
“No.”
“Mr. D. W. Griffith, who made that fine movie, had it right all the way back in nineteen hundred and fifteen, how the Ku Klux Klan, no matter what others say, were the avenging angels of the white race.”
“I’ll look forward to seeing it, Zachary.”
“And be sure your wife and boy are here to see it, too.”
“Yes, sir, they will be.”
Jasper went to where the women were finishing up the cleaning of breakfast dishes and complimented them on a fine breakfast. He kissed his wife on the cheek, slapped the back of his large hand against her buttocks, and stepped outside onto the porch that ran the length of the main house. The compound was busy with men handling chores, with some of the youngsters pitching in. It was a fine morning, Jasper thought, as he looked up into a pristine blue sky and drew a deep breath. He planned to spend it doing an inventory of the arsenal of weapons housed in the building dedicated to their storage, an enjoyable job. Jasper loved guns, had since he was a small boy growing up in rural Missouri. Later that day, he was scheduled to survey property a few miles away as a possible site for a satellite ranch to house others who’d communicated with him over the Internet in response to material he’d sent them. Two other smaller ranches had been established over the past fourteen years, and Jasper was proud of the expansion he’d managed to bring about.
The sound of a pickup truck caused him to turn. Billy Baumann waved as he slowed down to allow two mixed-breed dogs to cross in front of him, then gunned it and headed his red truck in the direction of the ranch’s main entrance, waving to Jasper on his way. Jasper returned the gesture, stepped down off the porch, and took long strides to the weapons building, where two men dressed in jeans, blue denim shirts, and wide-brimmed hats leaned against it. Jasper pulled a ring of keys from his pocket, undid a large padlock, and swung open the doors. The men disappeared inside, reappearing a minute later. One carried a thirty-thirty-caliber rifle with a telescopic sight. His colleague held a Heckler & Koch Model 94 assault rifle, a nine-millimeter semiautomatic carbine whose sixteen-inch barrel had been sawed off to just under a foot in length. Jasper watched them climb into a tan ten-year-old Mercedes four-door sedan parked at the side of the building, and kick up dust as they left the compound. As Billy Baumann headed down the road leading to the ranch, he passed a gray sedan parked on the shoulder, facing the main gate. Two men in suits occupied the front seats. Billy slowed as he approached, laughed, extended a middle finger, then accelerated past them. The driver of the car laughed and waved. They were FBI agents, one of two teams assigned to twelve-hour shifts to monitor traffic to and from the Jasper ranch since the three commuter airliners were attacked. The agent in the passenger seat held a camera with a long lens and a spiral-bound notebook. He hadn’t bothered photographing the truck because they already had a half-dozen pictures of it, and of Baumann driving it. He noted the day and time in the notebook, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes. The boredom of such surveillance assignments was fatiguing. He opened his eyes and checked his watch; nine hours to go until they could return to their spartan motel room in Blaine and resume the game of chess they’d started the night before.
Five minutes later, the tan Mercedes approached. This vehicle, too, had been photographed on other occasions, but the agent squeezed off another shot to document