Cambria Will Not Yield

Sonnet 31

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,
Which I by lacking have supposed dead;
And there reigns love and all love’s loving parts,
And all those friends which I thought buried.
How many a holy and obsequious tear
Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye,
As interest of the dead, which now appear
But things remov’d, that hidden in thee lie!
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
Who all their parts of me to thee did give;
That due of many now is thine alone:
Their images I lov’d I view in thee,
And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.

–William Shakespeare

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“Pause,” says a low voice. “Nothing? Think!”

“On Christmas Day, we will shut out from our fireside, Nothing.”

“Not the shadow of a vast City where the withered leaves are lying deep?” the voice replies. “Not the shadow that darkens the whole globe? Not the shadow of the City of the Dead?”

Not even that. Of all days in the year, we will turn our faces towards that City upon Christmas Day, and from its silent hosts bring those we loved, among us. City of the Dead, in the blessed name wherein we are gathered together at this time, and in the Presence that is here among us according to the promise, we will receive, and not dismiss, thy people who are dear to us!

–Charles Dickens

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This remembrance has been written based on the letters of Arthur Walker and James Miller. It is a Christmas story and an Easter story, as all genuine European stories are.

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Act I. Scene 1. The Kenyan Hinterlands.

[The setting is the small home of Mr. and Mrs. Drayton. Mr. Drayton is an Anglican missionary.]

[Rev. Arthur Walker knocks on the door.]

Rev. Samuel Drayton: Come in.

Walker: I’m sorry to bother you, Reverend, but I was hoping for a little guidance from someone…

Drayton: A little older?

Walker: I was going to say someone wiser than I am.

Drayton: It’s nice to be thought of in that way. I’ll try to live up to your confidence. What can I help you with?

Walker: Well, Reverend, I’ve been here in Kenya for 14 months, and I just don’t feel that I’m connecting with the natives.

Drayton: I don’t quite follow you. Could you be more specific?

Walker: No, I can’t. It’s just that I don’t feel that anything of a Christian nature is going on between me and the natives. I preach, I administer the sacraments, and I share the work load with the men, but there is something missing. I just don’t feel my presence among them brings any of them closer to Christ.

Drayton: Perhaps – and I don’t mean this as a criticism – you are too focused on yourself, on what you feel. It’s not up to us, you know; we are just vessels of God’s grace.

Walker: I don’t mean this response to seem flippant, Reverend, but I don’t feel like a vessel of God’s grace to these natives. God might be transmitting, but it’s not getting through.

Drayton: May I ask you why you became a minister and why you chose to be a missionary?

Walker: When I entered the military in 1943 I was 18. The last thing I was thinking of was the ministry, but after a year of serving in North Africa, in some of the worst battles, I was sent home all shot up. My intent was to recover in the London-based hospital that I was sent to and then return to the war. For six months I wasn’t well enough to leave the hospital, but once I was well enough to start hobbling around London I took advantage of the opportunity and saw a good deal of the city that I had only seen twice in my life before the war started. You see, my Dad was a barkeep in Bristol, that’s where I was born and raised. Well, one day I wandered into St. John’s when the Reverend Christopher Grey was preaching. He wasn’t fire and brimstone like I was used to – my parents were independents – he was something more than fire and brimstone. It’s hard to describe the effect he had on me. It was like I was a little child at a parade, and he was lifting me up so I could see what the parade was all about. Only with the Reverend Grey it wasn’t a parade that he was lifting me up to see, it was Christ.

Drayton: Reverent Grey was an eloquent preacher and writer.

Walker: You said “was” – is he dead?

Drayton: No, as far as I know, he is still alive. He even visited Kenya a few years ago, but he was forbidden to perform any services in the Anglican Church. He is no longer, even though he was not defrocked, a member in good standing of the Anglican Church.

Walker: Yes, I know about that. I wish I had contacted him in those years after the war. But I had my undergraduate degree to study for and then divinity school and…

Drayton: It’s just as well you didn’t contact him.

Walker: Why do you say that?

Drayton: Because I knew the man. He was not a close friend – he was older than me and I’ve been here in Kenya for 27 years – but I did meet him on several occasions, and I’ve known friends of his…

Walker: And?

Drayton: He’s not quite right in the head. Oh, I know about his personality – he is quite a spellbinder, quite intense – but I still insist that he is not quite right in the head. He probably should have been a soldier or a pugilist or something, certainly not a clergyman.

Walker: But Reverent, he…

Drayton: Yes, I know he lifted you up to see Christ. But we often, when we are young in the faith, are easily impressed by personalities rather than substance. Look at the Reverend Grey’s life. He has been involved in fisticuffs – there was an incident when he threw an elderly man into a fountain – and there was a suspicion that when he was here in Kenya he was involved in a massacre of some of the natives.

Walker: In fairness, that was never proved, and even if the rumor is true, I also heard that the “natives” were Mau Maus.

Drayton: The Mau Maus are still Kenyans, and they are still human beings created in the image of God. Surely you don’t deny that?

Walker: I don’t know what I feel about the natives. They are a mystery to me, the mystery of evil.

Drayton: That is nonsense. You are too absolute in your thinking. Good and evil are old, hide-bound concepts.

Walker: I don’t quite follow you, Reverend. Isn’t Christ, the Son of God, good, and isn’t Satan, the archangel, evil?

Drayton: I think that is where you and Grey make your mistake. Our concept of God changes over time, and we must adjust our vision.

Walker: That’s a rather depressing thought, Reverend. Do you mean to say that Christ is not the Son of God?

Drayton: Oh no, I think Christ is the son of God, but not in the old way. He is the son of God as we are all called to be sons of God; it’s just that Christ fully recognized his son-ship.

Walker: I see. Is that what you’ve been preaching to the natives for the past 26 years?

Drayton: Yes, I’ve told them that they are all sons of God.

Walker: That’s blasphemy, Reverend.

Drayton: You surprise me, Reverend Walker. I thought your theology was more sophisticated. I’m sorry to hear that your faith is frozen in the dark ages.

Walker: I don’t think I belong here in Africa.

Drayton: You mean you don’t think you belong here with me.

Walker: Both. Faith is a precious thing, Reverend. If I believed as you do I couldn’t go on living.

Drayton: Aren’t you being a bit overly dramatic? I don’t ask that you give up your faith. I just want to elevate your faith, so that you can see beyond an anthropomorphic God to a universal God who embraces all of mankind, people of all colors.

Walker: Why can’t all races embrace Christ, the Christ that St. Paul encountered on the road to Damascus?

Drayton: That Christ is too ethnically European; we need a Christ who is all things to all people.

Walker: Tell me, what is Christ to the Mau Maus?

Drayton: You seem obsessed with Mau Maus. They are merely helping their black brothers to throw off the white man’s oppression. Kenya is in the process of becoming an all-black state. When the Mau Maus see that Kenya is restored, they will settle down.

Walker: Do you believe that?

Drayton: Of course I do. I’ve lived with these people for the last 26 years. I believe in their innate goodness.

Walker: I believe the exact opposite. I believe that their black skins conceal black hearts. The better ones could be guided to something besides Mau Mau if you got them out from under the thumbs of the witch doctors, but you can’t get them away from the witch doctors. They attend Christian services during the day, and the witch doctors’ unholy rites at night. And that’s the best of them. The vast majority show open contempt for Christianity. They only tolerate our presence here, because of the food and medical supplies we can provide them with.

Drayton: All of this you’ve discovered in only fourteen months?

Walker: Yes.

Drayton: That’s quite remarkable, but let me suggest another possibility. I would suggest that you came here with preconceived, European ideas about what a good Christian should be. And when these pure, simple people didn’t measure up to your European notions of Christianity, you became bitter and resentful and painted them, in your own mind, as savages. But that is not right, Reverend Walker; that is not Christian.

Walker: It’s true, I do judge these natives by my European standards. But it is my European Christian faith. I don’t expect black natives to have my European standards of hygiene or table manners, but I don’t believe that the European Christ is just a European projection of God. I believe He is the one true God, so why shouldn’t I be disappointed, even appalled and disgusted, when I see that the natives here have nothing but contempt for the living God, who is, I believe, synonymous with the European Christ?

Drayton: I’m very disappointed that you feel this way. Frankly I see no future for you as a missionary, nor do I think you are fit to serve as a minister in the Anglican Church, or any other church for that matter.

Walker: I’ve already come to that conclusion myself.

[Ruth Drayton enters the room.]

Mrs. Drayton: I couldn’t help overhearing what you just said, Reverend Walker. Surely things can’t be that glum; we need you here. Don’t we, Samuel?

Drayton [slightly embarrassed]: I’m afraid Reverend Walker is too disenchanted with me and with Kenya to stay here, Ruth.

Mrs. Drayton: Are things really that bad? [looking at Arthur]

Walker: I’m afraid they are, Mrs. Drayton, but I shall always be grateful to you for your kindness.

[exits]

Mrs. Drayton: I don’t pry into your work, dear…

Drayton: Nothing you do is prying, Ruth. We have shared my work here all these years.

Mrs. Drayton: Then I’m entitled to know why he is leaving.

Drayton: He doesn’t believe in the vision, Ruth. He doesn’t believe that God is love, he believes in an older, antiquated, parochial God. Why, he even questioned the humanity of the blacks under our care.

Mrs. Drayton: I once believed in that old God, and I think you might have, too, at least when you were a child. Is it so terrible to believe in such a God?

Drayton: What we forgive in a child, we cannot forgive in an adult. No true man of the cloth can serve a universal God of love and serve the old Christian God that was a creation of the sick fantasies of white Europeans.

Mrs. Drayton: I suppose you’re right, dear, but I must admit that old God was a comfort to me.

Drayton: But surely love is greater than hate. The God above all anthropomorphic concepts of God is pure love.

Mrs. Drayton: But who and what is that God?

Drayton: Surely you don’t expect an answer to that question. We can’t ever know God in his or her entirety. We can only love. And I love my people here in Kenya, my black brothers. I won’t have a minister serving under me who doesn’t share that love.

Mrs. Drayton: I suppose he had to go, but I’ll miss him.

Drayton: We’ll make out without him, we have our people.

Mrs. Drayton: For how long do you think we’ll have them, Samuel? I think we’re losing them all to the Mau Maus. So many missions have closed down, the ministers and priests massacred, and the people have gone back to the witch doctors.

Drayton: I don’t think that will happen here, Ruth. I can’t speak for the other missions, but here we have worked with the people. We’ve become one with them. They won’t harm us. Mau Mau only is effective when there has been no love between the whites and the black. We have loved them, Ruth; we have no reason to fear.

Mrs. Drayton: I wish I had your faith, Samuel. I am a little afraid.

Drayton: Don’t be; we’ll live to see one blessed, united, black Africa, united in the love that white Europeans never knew.

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Act I. Scene 2. A bar in Nairobi.

[It’s late. Arthur Walker is one of two patrons left at the bar; there is one young couple left at one of the tables.]

Walker: One more beer, please.

Bartender [placing the beer in front of him]: There you go; that’s one of the things I’ll miss.

Walker: I don’t follow you.

Bartender: I’ll miss setting these beers down in front of some customer and watching the foam settle down in the glass.

Walker: You won’t be working here anymore?

Bartender: I guess you’ve never been in here before?

Walker: No, I haven’t. In fact I’ve never been in Nairobi before. I’ve been kind of out in the bush for the last 14 months.

Bartender: Farming?

Walker: Something like that.

Bartender: I didn’t mean to pry.

Walker: You’re not prying, it’s just not a very interesting story.

Bartender: You’re different from most customers.

Walker: How so?

Bartender: Most of my customers think whatever concerns them is real interesting to everybody else. But I don’t mind that. The more they blab, the bigger their bar tab. [he grins]

Walker: So you’re one of those archetypal bartenders, a kind of father-confessor and best friend all rolled into one.

Bartender: I wouldn’t go that far, but I listen to my customers. They’re buying my liquor, so why shouldn’t I let them talk?

Walker: No reason in the world why you shouldn’t, and God bless you for it. You’re an unsung hero. But tell me, why, if you like the work here, are you quitting?

Bartender: I’m quitting because I own this bar and I just sold it to some idiot who thinks he can still keep it going after the niggers come in.

Walker: You mean the transition from white government to black government?

Bartender: It won’t be anything like a government. It will be a massacre. You can’t let niggers have free rein – they’ll kill the whites and each other. It’s already happening on the white farms and out in the country. The Mau Maus are killing and looting, but once what the Macleods call ‘Independence’ and what every white man that isn’t in the government knows is just plain slaughter starts up, there won’t be any white businesses, because the whites that used to run them will be dead.

Walker: Where will you go?

Bartender: I made out all right here the last fifteen years. I got enough saved to go halves with a cousin in London. We’re going to open up a pub there.

Walker: Do you have a family?

Bartender: Yes, I have a wife and three children. I don’t fancy seeing them cut open by Macleod’s niggers. One week from today and we’ll be in London.

Walker: That sounds like a wise course. Your family should be your first concern.

Bartender: That’s more personal details than I’ve ever told any customer in the last fifteen years. I got an idea you’re some kind of preacher or something, maybe a missionary come in from the bush country. Am I right?

Walker: You’re right, but I’m no longer a missionary or a preacher.

Bartender: Things went sour?

Walker: I guess they did. But I didn’t sour on my faith, I just went sour on my ability to transmit that faith to the negroes.

Bartender: They’re not like white men, you can’t get anywhere with them unless you treat them different.

Walker: I should have stopped in here before I went to my assignment. You could have saved me a lot of trouble.

Bartender [laughing]: I don’t think you would have listened to me then.

Walker: No, I don’t suppose I would have; some things a man has to find out for himself. But tell me, when you say you can’t treat them as you would treat a white man, what do you mean?

Bartender: It’s not something that I can just spell out. But it’s there. I guess it comes down to this: I’ve owned this pub here for fifteen years. It’s not a fancy, posh pub, but it’s not a low dive either. I get some well-off whites and some low-class whites, and I get some scum-of-the-earth whites. But the low-life, criminal-type whites are still not as bad as the niggers. The niggers don’t seem to have… I can’t think of a word for it, but it’s like when a man’s done something that’s good, we say, “That’s mighty white of you.” They just don’t have it; they can’t be mighty white.

Walker: They have not charity?

Bartender: I guess that’s it.

Walker: In my work…

[At this moment, three blacks walk into the pub and take seats next to the young white couple. When the white man and woman get up to leave, one of the negroes stands in their way.]

Bartender: Excuse me, I have something to take care of.

First negro [to the white man and woman]: Why did you get up to leave?

White man: It was time to go.

First negro: Come sit with us. We’ll buy you and your girlfriend a drink.

White man: She isn’t my girlfriend, she’s my wife. I appreciate your offer, but we really must go.

Second negro [getting up from the table]: I don’t think you understand – we’ll be offended if you don’t drink with us.

Third negro [getting up and grabbing the white woman]: Why don’t you go and leave your wife behind.

White man: Take your hands off her or I’ll…

Bartender [wielding a meat cleaver]: That will be enough. You three get out – independence hasn’t arrived yet. Come back in three weeks. Till then this is my place, and I don’t serve blacks. Now get out.

[Walker comes up behind the bartender with his right hand in his pocket. The blacks take note of that and the meat cleaver.]

First negro: We’ll be back in a couple of weeks.

Bartender: You do that. And then we’ll all have a few beers together and talk about the good days to come.

[The three negroes exit.]

Bartender [to the white couple]: Did you drive here yourselves or take a cab?

White man: We took our car.

Bartender: Let me walk you to your car.

White man: I understand. I appreciate your consideration. If I was armed, it would be a different story, but I’m not, so I’d appreciate your company.

Walker: I’ll go along.

Bartender: Here, take this. [hands Walker a revolver] That will be better than your pipe.

Walker: How did you know it was only a pipe?

Bartender: I saw you slip it into your pocket. But it worked fine, they didn’t know whether you were going to shoot them or not. Well, let’s go.

[The bartender and Walker return to the bar after the escort.]

Bartender: That’s the type of nonsense I’ll be through with, in a few days.

Walker: Won’t you still have to serve negroes in England?

Bartender: Yes, but there won’t be so many of ‘em. And by the time there are too many, I hope to be out of the business altogether.

Walker: If you can’t stand to be near negroes, and they hate white people, why are Macleod and his ilk trying to make you live together?

Bartender: That’s the question alright. It’s insane, but Macleod is going to do it.

Walker: And it isn’t really such a mystery when I think of it. It’s people like me, the clergy men and the trained politicians, who think they’re smarter than everybody else, who want to mix the races.

Bartender: You’re right, Rev, and their smartness is going to cost plenty. It already has. But you’re not like them. Don’t go back there. I don’t know why they haven’t got ‘round to your mission’ yet, but they will.

Walker: That’s good advice, but I’ve got to go back one more time.

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“I stayed through the next two weeks and saw Joe Hopkins, the bartender, and his family off to London. At the airport, he slipped a .38 special revolver into my hand and said, ‘You’ll need this more than me, Rev. Take care of yourself – all hell is going to break loose here.’

“Did all hell break loose? Yes, it did. But not in the first 48 hours of the new era of black rule. At first there was silence in the streets. The blacks couldn’t quite believe that the white man was really going to turn the government over to them. It had to be some trick, because if they were in the white man’s place, they would not hand their power over to the white man. But when it became apparent that the whites were serious about their suicidal decision to hand Kenya over to the blacks, the hellish nightmare began. The white business owners who had actually believed that there would be business as usual under the new black regime were quickly divested of their illusions. The lucky ones just had their businesses burned down while escaping with their lives. But most white business owners were not that lucky. They saw their wives and children humiliated, raped, and murdered before their eyes while they in turn were humiliated, raped, and murdered. Thousands upon thousands of white men, women, and children remain unaccounted for up to this day after the horrible black independence “celebration.” Surely the white men with black hearts who worked so long and hard to bring “independence” to Kenya deserve a special place in hell.

“There was one man, a retired English officer who stood head and shoulders above the rest of us. While the official army stood by and often aided the looters and rapists in their satanic actions, one Major Lawson, armed only with a swagger stick, saved over 250 whites from torture and death. He was badly beaten, but he emerged safe and sound after his incredible rescue missions into the jaws of hell. My one rescue effort paled in comparison to Major Lawson’s efforts, but I was glad to have saved one family from the black hell. It happened like this – I was making my way out of town, because I saw that there would be no relief coming and whites were going to be massacred. A man could either stay and behave like Major Lawson, or he could leave. Lacking Major Lawson’s courage, I decided to leave, if I could.

“I commandeered an abandoned car – you can substitute ‘stole’ for ‘commandeered’ if you like – and tried to get out of the city. On the outskirts of town, right before the highway turns into a narrow lane to the bush country, I saw a half dozen blacks in a circle around what appeared to be a white family – father, mother, and three young children. The man had a long, heavy stick and was trying to fend off the six Mau Maus (all blacks are Mau Maus, even if they aren’t official members of the cult). It was obvious the father was doomed to die along with his family, who were cowering in fear behind the father. It helped that I had seen action in the army, albeit I had not seen anything so horrific in the war. At any rate I pulled up the car, got out, and opened fire on the Mau Maus. I dropped five with six bullets while the sixth one tried to lop off my head with a machete. He missed with his first try and before he got a second try the father cleaved his skull in two with his stick. I reloaded my revolver and got the whole family into the car. With no particular plan I headed for the bush country.

“I knew that where I was headed to with my charges was only marginally safer than the place I was leaving. Mau Mau activity in the smaller towns and the jungle outposts had been going on for the past ten years. The cities had still been under some control until the switch from white to black rule was finalized in 1960. So now the jungle was safer, because the concentrations of blacks were less out there than in the city. But still, I knew we were in great danger. I had managed to kill five of those six Mau Maus because I took them by surprise, but out in the jungle they could take me by surprise. And that is what happened. We had to leave the car once the jungle got too thick around us. It was then that I walked into a Mau Mau trap, and in a split second I was hanging by my ankles 10 feet off the ground. When they cut me down, I didn’t manage to completely protect my head, so I lost consciousness when I hit the ground. The last thing I heard was the screams of the mother and her children.

“When I regained consciousness I did not see what I had expected to see: the tortured and mutilated bodies of my white friends. Instead I saw Ezekiel standing over me. Obviously I didn’t know Ezekiel as you and Edward Owens know him, but I had heard of him. You couldn’t live in Kenya in the 1950s and into the 1960s without hearing about Ezekiel, the Christian avenger, the devil, or the lunatic, depending on who you were talking to. In my case, and the case of the white family with me, he was an avenging angel of mercy. There were 14 dead Mau Maus strewn along that jungle trail, and they had all been killed by Ezekiel. He offered to take me and my temporary white family, by way of battlefield adoption, to a small private airport and see that we were flown to safety. The Crandalls accepted his offer, but I declined. When he pressed me for the reason why I declined, I told him it was because of the Draytons. I felt it was morally incumbent on me to see if the Mau Maus had decided to finally finish them now that independence, or what could more accurately be called the era of white genocide, was official.

“Ezekiel understood my dilemma, so he made a counter proposal. He suggested I go with him to see the Crandalls safely off and then we would both go see if the Draytons were still alive. I agreed, so after we watched them take off, we started toward the Draytons’ mission. Ezekiel was not exactly what I would describe as a scintillating conversationalist, but after about five miles into our walk, I think I hit on his type of topic.”

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Act II. Scene 1.

Walker: There is something I don’t understand about this massacre of the whites.

Ezekiel: And what’s that?

Walker: Why were the whites so passive? Why didn’t they fight back? I’m not particularly heroic, but I did manage to fight off that first attack on the Crandalls.

Ezekiel: It’s been like this for the last 10 years. The whites are never prepared to fight back, because the white governments deluge them with propaganda about the good and noble black savage. The whites that didn’t believe that satanic garbage left Kenya before the day of blood.

Walker: That’s basically what Mr. Crandall said. He told me that he believed in the new black and white era of cooperation right up until the reign of black terror began.

Ezekiel: And who saved him from his own folly?

Walker: I did.

Ezekiel: And why were you able to save him and his family?

Walker: Because a white man named Joe Hopkins who did not believe in the noble black savage gave me a .38 special and told me to be ready.

Ezekiel: And you were ready, because what you saw when you worked with the black savages in that jungle mission showed you what the black really is.

Walker: That’s true. But the Draytons have worked with the blacks for over twenty years, and they never saw what I saw in just 14 months.

Ezekiel: There are none so blind as those who will not see. I was like the Draytons once, and I lost my family because of it.

Walker: If we find the Draytons alive, do you think they’ll come out of the jungle with me?

Ezekiel: No.

Walker: I guess what I’m doing is futile then?

Ezekiel: No, nothing done in His name is futile. We’re about two miles from their mission; let’s circle around to the west and enter the compound from that end.

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Act II. Scene 2.

[Ezekiel and Arthur are walking through the ruins of a burned-out missionary compound. They find the tortured and mutilated bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Drayton, two black female house servants, and two young black boys.]

Walker [on his knees before Mrs. Drayton’s mutilated body]: Dear God, why?

Ezekiel [placing his hand on Walker’s shoulder]: Stand up; we must bury them quickly and leave.

Walker: The Mau Maus?

Ezekiel: Yes, they might be back. I always keep moving.

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Act II. Scene 3.

[In Ezekiel’s cave]

Walker: How long have you lived here?

Ezekiel: About 8 years.

Walker: I’ve heard about you. They say you’re completely mad.

Ezekiel [pointing to the skeletons of his family]: Because of that?

Walker: Yes, and because of your hatred of the Mau Mau.

Ezekiel: You’ve been here 14 months; you’ve seen the Mau Maus; what do you think?

Walker: I think you’re saner than the rest of us.

Ezekiel [with just a touch of a smile]: That is a diplomatic answer. You’re welcome to stay here tonight or longer, but I don’t imagine you want to spend all of your life in this cave.

Walker: No, I don’t. But to tell you the truth I don’t know what to do or where to go. I came here as a missionary, but now…

Ezekiel: Do you still believe in the God you came here to serve?

Walker: Yes, but I’m no longer sure how to serve Him.

Ezekiel: Serve your people and fight the devil’s people; that is the way to serve Him.

Walker: I should just stay here in Kenya and kill Mau Maus?

Ezekiel: No, not everyone is called to do what I’m doing. But this black Jacobinism – the Rev. Christopher Grey taught me that term – is a worldwide phenomenon. Pick your spot on the globe and then fight black Jacobinism.

Walker: You know the Rev. Grey?

Ezekiel: I knew of him when he was here for two years, from ’53 – ’55, but I never met him personally. Then, in 1958, a friend of mine, Edward Owen, convinced the Reverend to come and see me. That’s when I met him in the flesh. He is a remarkable man; a man of faith.

Walker: I never knew him personally, but it was his sermons that inspired me to become a minister.

Ezekiel: Well, he wouldn’t be disappointed in you now. He never did place much importance on official churches. Christ and His people are the Reverend Grey’s concerns.

Walker: What do you think he would advise me to do?

Ezekiel: I don’t know. I think you should ask him. Stay with me another week. That will give the bloodletting time to abate a bit; the Mau Maus, like all beasts of the jungle, have to rest after they feast on the blood of their prey.

Walker: That’s a rather grisly thought.

Ezekiel: Yes, it is, but it’s true. You asked God ‘why?’ when you were kneeling before Mrs. Drayton’s corpse. I didn’t have anything of comfort to say to you. I don’t know why. But I know His promise. The dead shall be raised. That’s all we know. Stay with that – the dead shall be raised. Until that time, there is Christ and His people, and there is the Mau Mau. So stay here this week, and then go see the Reverend Grey. I’ll send out a letter in advance, to let him know you’re coming. And take his advice. He hates to be treated as some kind of Christian sage, but he has the hand of God on Him; he’ll be able to direct you.

Walker: I can’t argue with that advice.

Ezekiel: Good; when the time comes then, I’ll make sure you get out of Kenya safely.

_________________________________________

“As it turned out Ezekiel had to wait 6 weeks before the bloodletting eased up. Finally the new black government had to restore some semblance of order, because their government was in danger of falling before it ever got started. But thousands upon thousands of whites were humiliated, tortured, raped, and murdered during that reign of terror, which only subsided during ‘normalcy’; it did not stop.

“I lived the life of a white African counterrevolutionary in those 6 weeks I spent with Ezekiel. It was more than bearable, it was enjoyable, but I knew that I found it enjoyable because I knew that it was not permanent.

“Ezekiel had to be at least twenty-five years older than me, but for the first couple of weeks I simply couldn’t keep up with him. He covered twenty to thirty miles a day, up and down rocky hills, through dense jungle; Ezekiel was always on the move. He collected information from native informants and from his own observations of the Mau Maus. During my stay with Ezekiel there were four encounters with Mau Maus, two in my third week, one in my fourth week, and one in my fifth. All four encounters were preemptive strikes, based on Ezekiel’s scouting missions. He found out about planned Mau Mau attacks, and he got there before them and killed them. I don’t think he needed my help, but I was proud to help. It was sad to think that Ezekiel and I, for a brief time, were the only white men fighting back against the satanic black barbarians sponsored by a Marxist-liberal government in Great Britain.

“It was to that Marxist-liberal country that I planned to return, because it was my country; where else could I go? Ezekiel got me passage on a ship to America, where I was then going to get a flight back to England, but a chance encounter with an American passenger altered my plans.”

___________________________________

Act III. Scene 1. Shipboard.

Walker: I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you. I thought no one else was above board.

Miller: I don’t own the ship. You’re entitled to stand there.

Walker [laughing]: But I know the feeling; you came up here to be alone.

Miller: Well, now I’m not. [getting up from the deck chair and coming to the railing next to Walker] My name is James Miller.

Walker: My name is Arthur Walker.

Miller: Miller and Walker, it sounds as if we’re both criminals on the run. No two men meeting by chance could be called Walker and Miller, it just doesn’t happen.

Walker [laughing]: Well, I am Arthur Walker.

Miller: And I’m James Miller, so where do we go from here?

Walker: Are you an American?

Miller: Kind of.

Walker: I’m not sure I follow you. What kind of an American are you?

Miller: I’m a Southerner.

Walker: Then you are an American.

Miller: Yes, I was just misbehaving. We’ve all made up after that little tiff in the 1860s. [stifling a yawn]

Walker: You mistake me if you think I want to meet a nice reconstructed Southerner. I’d love to meet an unreconstructed Southerner.

Miller: And why is that?

Walker: Because I’ve just spent 16 months in Kenya.

Miller: What a coincidence, I’ve just spent 3 months in the Congo, just a little south and west of Kenya. But why should spending 16 months in Kenya make you want to talk with an unreconstructed Southerner?

Walker: Because if you are unreconstructed then I might actually find someone to talk to about the sons of Ham.

Miller: I take it you’re not overly fond of them?

Walker: No, I’m not.

Miller: Did you lose somebody close?

Walker: No, but I saw their bloodletting close-up. I was an Anglican missionary for 14 months in Kenya. I saw what was left of my superior and his wife.

Miller: I’m sorry.

Walker: I don’t want to fly under false colors. My superior sent in recall papers on me, a little before he was murdered.

Miller: Why?

Walker: Because we quarreled over the blacks. I didn’t think they were capable of being converted, and he thought they already had been converted.

Miller: That’s quite a discrepancy in viewpoints.

Walker: Yes, and since he was my superior, I had to go. He wrote to his superiors in London and recommended that I be… how did he put it? I think he said I should be terminated.

Miller: Killed?

Walker [laughing]: No, he just meant that I shouldn’t be a minister in the Anglican Church any more. He could have just recommended that I be given another post that wasn’t in Africa, but he went the whole nine yards and recommended my dismissal.

Miller: Did that bother you?

Walker: Yes, but not in the way you might think. It didn’t bother me that I could be dismissed. I had already decided to resign. But it did bother me that an Anglican clergyman thought that the acceptance of the liberal line on the sacred negro was the main criteria of a man’s fitness to be a clergyman. Rev. Drayton made it clear to me that he didn’t believe in Christ crucified, Christ risen, so it was particularly disappointing to me to see that his faith in the negro was more important to Canterbury than my faith in Christ.

Miller: How do you know that Canterbury agreed with Drayton?

Walker: Because Canterbury defrocked me before I could resign.

Miller: That is a pretty good sign that you’re not wanted. I think all of the churches should have big signs out front: ‘Men of faith are not welcome here.’

Walker: I wonder if all the churches are as bad as mine. I was raised in an independent, fundamentalist church; maybe I should have stuck with that church?

Miller: I only have intimate knowledge of one church, but it seems to me that they are all, to some degree, tainted with what Dr. Verwoerd calls the negrophile psychosis. They have either replaced Christ with the negro, or else they have made Him a subordinate deity to the negro.

Walker: Funny that I should meet you here and we should end up talking about the white man’s worship of the negroes.

Miller: It’s not that funny at all. We’re both traveling from Africa, which should be called black hell.

Walker: Would I be prying if I asked you why you were traveling in Africa?

Miller: No, because if I didn’t like you I’d feel free to tell you to mind your own business. But since I like pastors who don’t worship negroes, I will tell you. I was a police officer in Savannah, Georgia from age twenty-two until age thirty-four; I was a patrolman for nine years and a detective for three years. In my twelfth year a dark cloud descended over the detective bureau, and I left under it. One of the elder statesmen on the force, the captain of the detectives, my superior, was found guilty of taking bribes. I was not convicted of wrongdoing, but in order to avoid even “the appearance of corruption” I was asked to resign. At first I refused, but when they promised to find something to convict me of if I didn’t resign, I resigned.

Walker: But if you weren’t guilty of…

Miller: Every cop that actually tries to lock up bad guys is guilty of something. You’d never be able to make an arrest if you followed all their rules.

Walker: What happened to your captain; did they send him to prison?

Miller: He was sentenced to 10 years, but he never served a day.

Walker: Probation?

Miller: You’ve got to be kidding. They wanted to show how pure they were. He shot himself before he started his jail sentence.

Walker: I’m sorry to hear that.

Miller: So was I.

Walker: I don’t want to sound unduly judgmental, but was he guilty?

Miller: Not in the way they said he was guilty.

Walker: I don’t quite understand.

Miller: Paul went right from a combat unit in the war to the police force. For him police work was just a continuation of the war, only now it was even more local. He never took bribes to get some drug lord off the hook, and he never turned his back on a crime. But he’d do favors for his friends. It was usually for his friends’ children. He’d see that their names were kept out of the papers, and sometimes he’d make sure they didn’t get charged at all. He didn’t do it for money, he did it out of friendship. But he didn’t turn the money down if Christmas time came around and extra money came to him from his friends. When a new administration moved in with a pledge to get rid of the rough stuff, Paul was old school – black jack and no warning shots. Paul was fed to the wolves. He was corrupt, they said, because he took bribes. It was the saddest day of my life when he was sentenced, and then he shot himself, and things got a lot sadder.

Walker: What did you do when you resigned from the force?

Miller: I became a licensed private detective.

[Walker laughs.]

Miller [smiling]: Why do you laugh?

Walker: I grew up reading detective novels. And it’s funny – maybe you could explain this – in the American detective novels the police are either ineffectual or corrupt, and it is a private detective such as Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade who solves the case. In Britain, it is usually the Scotland Yard detective who solves the crime. Bulldog Drummond and Sherlock Holmes are exceptions, but even in those novels the police might be ineffectual, but they are not corrupt.

Miller: What you say is true, but I’m not sure why that is. I guess Americans like to pride themselves on being anti-authoritarian. It’s all nonsense, but that’s the way Americans like to think of themselves: they like to think they are rugged individualists.

Walker: You don’t buy that?

Miller: No, I don’t. Americans are the biggest sheep in the world. Everybody, now that they lost the war, likes to get on the Germans for kowtowing to Hitler, but didn’t we kowtow to that commie bastard Roosevelt? And aren’t we kowtowing now to the commies and their shock troops, the negroes?

Walker: I don’t think it would be appropriate for an Englishman to comment on America’s decadence; we haven’t exactly shone as beacons of Christian civilization in the postwar era.

Miller: No, I don’t suppose you have. It seems like all the white nations are going through a reconstruction period.

Walker: And who’s doing the reconstructing?

Miller: White liberals or communists – whatever you call them, it amounts to the same thing.

Walker: And the negroes are the shock troops?

Miller: Yes, that’s right.

Walker: After what I’ve seen in Kenya, I can’t quarrel with your assessment. But what was a private detective from Savannah, Georgia doing in Kenya?

Miller: I was working for a client. I’ve been a private detective for the past twelve years – if you’re counting, that makes me 46 – and this last case is only the second time I’ve had to leave the States to do what I was hired to do. But in the other case I didn’t have to travel across the ocean, I only had to go to Mexico. But this time it was to stinkin’, bloody Africa that I went.

Walker: Were you successful?

Miller: I found out what my client wanted me to find out, but it won’t be pleasant news that I’ll be bringing home.

Walker: How bad is it?

Miller: The worst kind. Maybe I should give you a little more background.

Walker: I’d like to hear it; it seems, out here on deck, that we’re the only two men left in the world.

Miller: I was sent by the Fitzpatrick family to find their twenty-two year old daughter. The Fitzpatricks were, and still are, I suppose, what you would call fervent Catholics. Their lives revolved around their parish church. Jeanne and Sean had only one child, named Colleen. They hired me to find her, because I was a member of their parish when I was growing up. I haven’t been inside a church in over twenty years, and I made that clear to them. But still, they had known me “back then,” and they didn’t know any other private investigators, so they called on me.

Colleen was the victim of her parents’ Catholicism. She was brought up to love and cherish negroes as God’s pure and simple children of nature. Her parish priest and the good sisters at the Catholic school she attended all taught her about the evils of segregation and the evil part her own people, the Southern whites, had played in denying black people their rights as citizens. So good, devout Colleen, upon her graduation from a “good Catholic college,” went to the Congo to “help” blacks. She was one of those “unfortunate victims” of African independence. She was working in northern Katanga at a time of the massacre. It didn’t matter that she was there to help the ‘pure and simple’ natives, the pure and simple natives tortured, raped, and murdered her.

I suspected right from the beginning that she was one of the thousands of victims of the Katanga massacre, but it took me some time to get documented proof that the mutilated body I thought was Colleen’s body was in fact her body. I’ve got that proof with me now, and I’d give all my worldly possessions if I could give her parents back their daughter. But that is up to your Boss, isn’t it?

Walker: Yes, it is. A new friend of mine, a man called Ezekiel, told me there is only His promise that the dead shall be raised, which sustains any of us.

Miller: But it takes a hell of a lot of faith to actually believe that.

Walker: You don’t?

Miller: I won’t say that. I’d like to believe it. And I guess, like Horatio, I do in part believe it. It’s funny, I most believe in Him when I look right in the face of Mau Maus. They are so evil, so obviously the servants of Satan, that I immediately project Satan’s opposite – Jesus Christ. It’s when I come within hearing distance of a Western clergymen, telling me about the goodness of our black brethren that I become a non-believer.

Walker: I’ve had that same experience. In my last talk with my superior he told me of his faith in the sacred negro and his lack of faith in Christ crucified, Christ risen. It took all my spiritual resolve to fight free of his horrific vision of God. If not for a chance meeting with Ezekiel, I might still be hovering in that in-between land, the land between faith and unbelief.

Miller: You mentioned that horrific vision of God. Isn’t that the key? How can people who profess to be Christian worship the people who commit horrific atrocities as a matter of course, as you or I might brush our teeth or plant a garden?

Walker: “Welcome the savage God,” is what our clergymen tell us. I won’t. If I die in the attempt, I intend to fight this negroization of the West with all my heart, mind, and soul – Are you laughing at me? I wouldn’t blame you if you are; I do sound a lot like King Lear in the storm, thundering impotently about my revenges.

Miller: I’m not laughing at you – at least you’re thundering against the right things. And who’s to say that your thundering will be ineffectual? But in between your thundering against the savage gods, what will you do for a living?

Walker: Quite frankly, I don’t know. I’m just grateful to get out of Africa with my life and with my faith intact. I have no thought of what I’ll do for a living now that I’m no longer an Anglican minister.

Miller: The first couple of years after I was forced to resign from the force were hard on me financially, but once I built up a reputation in the business I started doing all right. In fact, now I employ a number of operatives. I could use another.

Walker: That’s awfully kind of you, but I know nothing about private investigating.

Miller: You’ve read the Raymond Chandler books, haven’t you?

Walker: Yes.

Miller: And you’ve read the Bulldog Drummond books of McNeile?

Walker: Yes.

Miller: Well, there you have it, you’ll be a combination of Phillip Marlowe and Bulldog Drummond. I could use such a man.

Walker (laughing): If you’re serious, I accept your offer. But I could use a few weeks in London first. I need to see another outcast Anglican minister.

Miller: The Reverend Grey?

Walker: Yes, how did you know?

Miller: I’ve read a great deal of his books. A man like you, after what you’ve experienced, wouldn’t be looking for advice from anybody but that man. Sure, I can wait a few weeks. But then you come over the ocean, like Prince Charlie, and try your hand at Drummond and Marlowe.

________________

Act III. Scene 2. London

[Two weeks later. Rev. Grey’s living room – Francesco Bontini, Inspector John Chambers, Christopher Grey, and Arthur Walker are present.]

Chambers: That will be quite a change, from Anglican minister to an American private investigator.

Walker: I really think I’m simply a charity case of James Miller.

Rev. Grey: It’s not just that. Mr. Miller needs men who are excellent judges of character, and you are just that.

Walker: That is kind of you to say, but I misread the Draytons and I misread my vocation; I thought I had one, and didn’t.

Rev. Grey: Don’t go down that road. If you were wrong to pursue the collar, what does that say about me?

Walker: I didn’t intend any slight…

Rev. Grey: I know you didn’t. And you needn’t apologize; I’m not at all sensitive about the subject. I served God in the capacity I thought He wanted me to serve Him. Whether I was right or wrong, He’ll be the final judge.

Bontini: The Rev. Grey started before we did, Arthur. [looking over at Grey with a smile] He is an Ancient Mariner; he did not have to tell lies about God when he started out. When they wanted him to, he got out of that type of service. We both, you in the Anglican, and I in the Roman Catholic church, ran into the contradiction between God’s truth and our church’s ‘truth’ earlier in our careers.

Walker: And now we have no career in the church.

Bontini: I wouldn’t say that. The church consists of those who believe in Christ, not of those who belong to an organization that may or may not serve Christ.

Chambers: I go along with Father Bontini; church organizations don’t amount to a thing.

Bontini: You see Arthur, there’s confirmation from one of the last knights of Christendom; that should reassure you. He hasn’t been inside a church for over forty years and yet…

Chambers: Don’t give me a halo, Father. I came late to this Christian knight business.

Rev. Grey: But you did come and that is the point Francesco is making. You are one of the last knights of Europe.

Chambers: I believe we’ve gotten off track; I thought we were giving Arthur a going away party.

Rev. Grey: Yes, we are, but I thought we’d take a moment to praise…

Chambers: No need.

Bontini: The Rev. Grey always tells me I’m indispensable, but if you ever need some help in dealing with the negro worshippers within the Catholic church, Arthur, I can take the time to come over. I’ve had some experience in that regard.

Walker: Thank you. I don’t know what type of work I’ll be doing, but I’ll take you up on your offer if something like that comes up.

Rev. Grey: Inspector Chambers has seen a lot of the white slave rings, right here in England. It seems to be a world-wide thing, this extreme hatred of the white race.

Chambers: When I first heard the Rev. Grey use the term “negro worship” I thought he was exaggerating to make a point. But when I ran into Kimaru, I realized that the Rev. Grey was not exaggerating — the men who govern the nations of Europe literally worship the negroes. The negroes themselves have no idea why the whites are handing their women, their children, and their nations over to them, all they know is that the whites are weak, so they pounce on them, like jungle cats pounce on their prey.

____________________________

“As you no doubt remember, Rev. Grey, the party went on for quite some time, and I drank more ale than I was used to. It meant the world to me to have friends of the heart. I went to America, not feeling that all was right with the world, but feeling that all was right in my world so long as I was right with the same God that Christopher Grey, Francesco Bontini, James Miller, and John Chambers worshipped.”

___________________________________

Act IV. Scene 1.

[Miller is in the den of the home of Sean Fitzpatrick, father of Colleen Fitzpatrick, the girl who was murdered in the Katanga massacre. There is a knock on the outside door of the den.]

Fitzpatrick: Come in.

Miller: Arthur, this is Mr. Sean Fitzpatrick. I’ve told you a bit about his family.

Walker: Yes, you have. My deepest sympathies, Mr. Fitzpatrick.

Fitzpatrick: That is most kind of you, I thank you. It’s not necessary to call me ‘mister;’ Sean will do.

Miller: I know this must seem very mysterious to you, Arthur. Asking you to meet here, instead of at the office. But I have a very good reason for this clandestine meeting. I haven’t let you near the office since you came over, because I didn’t want you to be seen with me or anyone connected with my business.

Fitzpatrick: If you don’t mind, James, I’d like to go lie down. You don’t need me for anything at present, do you?

Miller: No. I just wanted you to meet the man we’ll be working with.

Fitzpatrick: He seems to be a good man. It was nice meeting you, Mr. Walker.

Walker: Likewise.

[Fitzpatrick exits the room, and Walker gives Miller a look that asks, ‘What is going on here?’]

Miller: I can see you’re a little confused, Arthur, but there has been method to my madness.

Walker: No need to apologize. If you want to pay me to sit in my apartment reading books on your local history, that is up to you.

Miller: Did you read those sections on the Southern Bureau Against Racial Injustice, SBARI?

Walker: Yes.

Miller: What did you make of the organization?

Walker: It seems like your typical Marxist front organization. A few devout communist Jews at the head of the organization and the usual array of liberal clergymen and liberal academics lined up with the communists. All of them fighting racial injustice, as they put it, but in reality using negro shock troops to destroy what is left of white civilization.

Miller: You’ve summed it up quite well.

Walker: Thank you for the compliment on my reading ability, but what does this have to do with your private investigating agency?

Miller: We’ve been hired to destroy that agency.

Walker: Am I allowed to ask who hired us to destroy that agency?

Miller: I don’t generally give out the name of our employers. But in this case, I’m going to make an exception, because I think it will help you work on the case. In fact, I don’t think you could proceed without some more information.

Our employer is Sean Fitzpatrick, the man you just met. He is not in very good shape physically right now; he has been found, more than once, sleeping out by his daughter’s grave, but he is sound up here [pointing to his head] and sound in there [pointing to his heart]. In fact, he is a lot saner spiritually than he has been in his entire life.

Walker: I imagine he has some compelling reason, connected to his daughter’s death, that makes him want to see the SBARI destroyed.

Miller: Yes, he does. As I told you on the boat, Fitzpatrick was a ‘support your local clergy’ Catholic. Whatever his local priest, in conjunction with his local bishop, said was law to Fitzpatrick. Well, it was his local priest and his local bishop that served on the board of SBARI. They worked in unison with the Jewish Marxists and several Protestant clergymen to promote what they called civil rights. It all sounded so noble, but the negroes were not converted to Christ, they simply had free rein to be themselves. And being themselves meant they could kill whites with impunity. The SBARI pays for the defense of every black that murders a white.

And the SBARI’s benevolent work also extended to Africa. They supported the Mau Mau reign of terror and encouraged young Catholics, such as Colleen Fitzpatrick to go there to “help” the struggling Africans to get out from under the white man’s yoke. Colleen took it all the way. She went to Africa to “help” the good, noble black savages, and she paid the ultimate price. Fitzpatrick knows he can’t kill every last liberal and every black barbarian on the face of the earth, but he wants to do something. He won’t be pacified with the “mustn’t be violent” rhetoric; he wants to hit the SBARI hard, and he wants to sponsor vigilante hits on black barbarians who kill whites and then get off because SBARI lawyers get them off.

Walker: It’s a tall order.

Miller: Sean doesn’t expect miracles – he knows that this is just the start of a white counterrevolution – but he wants it to begin right here in Savannah, Georgia.

Walker: Does he still consider himself a Catholic, or has he gone atheist?

Miller: He considers himself a Christian, but he swears he’ll never set foot in a church again so long as he lives. “I made a whited sepulcher of my parish church, and it cost my daughter her life,” was the way he put it.

Walker: Most of us have done something similar along the way. It’s easy to mistake the furniture of the church for the real church.

Miller: Well, let’s get down to your part in this drama – I’ve kept you away from the main office, because I want you to join the SBARI.

Walker: But won’t they check my background?

Miller: I’m counting on it.

Walker: But they’ll find out that I was dismissed for “conduct detrimental to good racial relations.”

Miller: They’ll find out you were dismissed for “conduct detrimental to race relations,” but I doubt that they’ll figure out that you were dismissed for the wrong attitude. They’ll assume, because you were younger than the missionary you worked with, that you were the liberal one who wouldn’t listen to your superior’s racist view of negroes. That is my guess. If you give them a big dose of sincere liberal garbage when they interview you, that will clinch it.

Walker: I’ll give it a try. But if it works, if I do get a job there, what is my next step?

Miller: Just keep in touch. Let us know what’s going on with some of the big shots. Then we’ll see what we can do to damage their organization. That’s what we’re being paid for.

Walker: How much time have we got? I don’t think Fitzpatrick wants to keep paying indefinitely.

Miller: Sean is rich. There is no money limit. You just be careful, don’t get impatient and overplay your hand, and I’m sure you’ll come up with something.

______________________

Six weeks later – Walker’s report to Miller:

“I didn’t send you anything until now, because I didn’t think I had anything worth reporting. That’s why you just received those short “nothing to report” notes. But now I have something that might be of interest. First, let me run down some of the major players and the foot soldiers in this organization. The man who interviewed me when I first came here, Aaron Siegel, seems to be the second in command. He is in his mid-fifties, quite thin, you might even say emaciated. He lives for the cause, eschewing alcohol, smoking, and women. What about men? No, he appears to be asexual. He is a true believer, a Marxist Jew who hopes to destroy the West through the negro. Trotsky would be proud of him.

“The high mucky muck, also a Marxist Jew, Jacob Belenky, is a different story. He is in his mid-forties, very jovial and very cultural. As such he is far more dangerous, in my opinion, than his unadulterated, emaciated second-in-command. He is totally committed to revolution through the negroes, but he is much more adept at hiding his revolutionary nature behind a very jovial and witty façade. I receive most of my orders from Siegel, but I have talked with Belenky on several occasions.

“Bishop Callahan cannot always attend the meetings, but he is very committed to the cause. Unlike Siegel and Belenky, who are completely secularized, Callahan still professes to believe in the Catholic faith, but he believes in it the way Rev. Drayton believed in the Anglican faith. He has blended Christ with the negro, which makes Christ something quite different from Christ the Lord.

“Then there is Father O’Reilly, Sean Fitzpatrick’s parish priest. He strikes me as the most zealous of the lot. He’s in his mid-thirties, completely without scruples or morals (he is a promiscuous homosexual), and he has no regard for anything that does not further the interests of the negro. For Siegel and Belenky, the negroes are a means to an end, for Callahan and O’Reilly (particularly O’Reilly), the worship of negroes is the desired end.

“The reason I’ve fit in here so well is because there are so many ex-clergymen and currently practicing clergymen who are members of the SBARI. It’s kind of an exclusive club. I’ve met and spent some time with a Methodist minister by the name of Julie Pierce, and with an ex-clergyman by the name of Thomas Truscott, formerly of the Presbyterian Church. They all have one thing in common; they are committed, heart and soul, to the negro. Whenever a negro murders, they take up his case, either claiming he is completely innocent, or, if his guilt is indisputable, claiming that he should be freed, because of the ‘legacy of slavery’ that made him do whatever crime he committed. Again, I get the impression with Siegel and Belenky that they use the “we must understand their rage” excuse as a calculated tactic, whereas the assorted Catholic and Protestant clergy and laymen truly believe that all black-on-white crime is justifiable under the blanket of the ‘legacy of slavery.’

“I haven’t spoken much with the clerical staff or the foot soldiers who put out the pamphlets and fill up the ranks of the protests and marches that the SBARI stage, because I thought it would look conspicuous for me to be hobnobbing with the hired help. Despite their professed love of the people, these people are very snobbish. The upper echelon keep to themselves. I’m kind of a low-ranking upper echelon, but I’m still upper echelon enough that I thought it best to stay in character by not getting too chummy with the foot soldiers.

“But now let me come to the heart of the issue. You remember you said that you and Fitzpatrick were particularly interested to learn if the SBARI confined itself to pamphleteering, the defense of black criminals after their crimes, and the libeling of all white opponents of SBARI? You wanted to find out if beside that they actually helped organize the murder of whites. Well, two nights ago I got some information that seems to suggest that the SBARI does actively engage in the murder of whites. You see I had dinner with Julie Pierce, and after four or five drinks she said more than she should have. She doesn’t know a lot of details – she isn’t that high up in the organization – but from one slip of speech, which I’m sure she didn’t remember in the morning, I became almost certain about the SBARI’s involvement in actual murders. When I’m absolutely sure of this, which will probably be in a few days, I’ll let you know via a letter, at the usual place.”

Second letter 3 days later:

“I need to meet with you; I’ve got the confirmation.”

________________

Act IV. Scene 2.

[In Fitzpatrick’s basement, Fitzpatrick, Miller, and Walker are present.]

Walker: I had to do a little second-story work to get the evidence I needed, but I got it.

Miller: Whose office did you have to rifle?

Walker: Father O’Reilly’s. It was Julie Pierce who inadvertently tipped me off. I read the documents I needed to read, and then I put them back and got out in the same way I came in.

Fitzpatrick: Shouldn’t you have kept the documents to try and convict Father O’Reilly?

Walker: Believe me, sir, they wouldn’t have stood up in court. They were written in code, a code I’ve come to recognize since I’ve been working there, but not something we could take to court. But this much is certain. O’Reilly and Callahan actually believe that Christ was only a prophet preparing the way for a black Christ that may be, or may not be, already present on the earth. But whether he has arrived or has yet to arrive, Callahan and O’Reilly think that all good Catholics must prepare the world for the coming of the Black Messiah by the extermination of the devil race. All whites who renounce their race and participate in the white blood bath will be spared. Siegel and Belenky don’t share Callahan’s and O’Reilly’s faith, but they use it. Besides defending black murderers they also permit O’Reilly and Callahan to suborn blacks to commit more murders of whites. They guarantee them “safe” killings, and they also give them ready cash. The murder of those two nuns outside the Cathedral a few weeks ago was not a random murder. Callahan and O’Reilly set it up. That mass murder of the 12 school children 3 months ago was not a random killing; it was set up by Callahan and O’Reilly.

Miller: Does this extend to other cities as well?

Walker: Definitely. Almost every city has a clergyman or two who accept the basic tenets of Callahan and O’Reilly’s black faith. And the ones that don’t believe as O’Reilly and Callahan believe still help their cause under the banner of civil rights. O’Reilly and Callahan don’t even want a lot of converts, they just want the clergy to look the other way when blacks murder and excuse the murders under the guise of “you must understand their rage,” or “the legacy of slavery.”

Miller: So O’Reilly and Callahan are operating an organization within an organization?

Walker: Yes. Siegel and Belenky allow them to go about their business using the SBARI headquarters because their business, the slaughter of whites, suits the needs of Siegel and Belenky as well. They feel the slaughter of whites will bring them closer to a Marxist state, and Callahan and O’Reilly think the slaughter of whites will bring about the arrival of the black Messiah.

Fitzpatrick: This is all fantastical…

Walker: I assure you, Mr. Fitzpatrick, that what I say is…

Fitzpatrick: I’m not questioning you, Mr. Walker; I have no doubt of the truth of what you’ve said. In a watered down way this is what the Catholic church, especially here in the south, has been preaching for many years. It’s fantastical, but unfortunately it’s true.

Miller: I believe it was Blake who said if mankind would not have the religion of Christ, they would have the religion of Satan. This would tend to confirm his words.

Fitzpatrick: Does this organization of Callahan and O’Reilly have branches abroad?

Walker: Yes, it does. And I should emphasize that Callahan and O’Reilly are only in charge of the Savannah chapter; they don’t run the whole show. Nor is it just a Catholic thing. There are clergymen, and women, from all denominations who are members. The American branch of the negro worshippers try to coordinate their big events with their European and African counterparts.

Fitzpatrick: What do you mean by ‘big events’?

Walker: The big mass slaughters, which are their equivalents of the old Catholic mass.

Fitzpatrick: Was the Katanga massacre, in which my daughter was murdered, one of those big events?

Walker: Yes, I’m sorry to say that it was. At the same date of the Katanga massacre there were fourteen whites killed in Lost Angeles and another dozen killed in Savannah. Those murders were directly connected to the Katanga massacre. I don’t know how many other murders of whites on that date were planned and how many were just the usual spontaneous murders that blacks commit as a matter of routine.

Miller: Do you know when the next big even is planned?

Walker: No, I don’t. I’m not that high up in the SBARI, nor am I a confidante of O’Reilly or Callahan. But I suspect another small scale murder is being planned. If I can get more information then maybe we can stop it.

Miller: We’ll try if you can manage to find out where and when. But be careful, be very careful; those men think no more of murdering a white man than they think of swatting a fly.

Walker: You’re wrong; they wouldn’t swat a fly, but they can and will kill a white man.

Miller: You’re right.

_________________

Act IV. Scene 3. London, Grey’s living room.

[Rev. Grey and Bontini are present.]

Rev. Grey: The letter goes on for another four pages, which I’ll come to later, but what do you think so far?

Bontini: It’s not surprising. It has always seemed to me that the modern black uprisings had much more white support than was apparent on the surface.

Rev. Grey: Yes, the Marxist-Jacobin influence has been with us for some time, but this incredible anti-white, anti-Christian push of organized Christianity is primarily a 20th century phenomenon. But you’ve been closer to it than I have, what do you think?

Bontini: It definitely exists now, that’s for sure. I’ll never forget that Kimaru mass of Pope John. But I think you’re right. The shift from Christ to the negro, except for isolated cases, has been largely a 20th century phenomenon. It’s connected in some way to the advance of science.

Rev. Grey: Precisely, the scientific view of the universe has turned the European toward the nature gods, and who is more natural, in the primitive sense, than the negro?

Bontini: But what about the rest of the letter; did they manage to stop any of the bloodletting?

Rev. Grey: Let’s see [he reads] —

“I was 90% sure I knew of a planned murderous attack at a coffee shop where a lot of white college students gathered together. A little before the shop’s 2:00 AM closing, five handpicked black murderers were going to kill as many whites as were in the shop and then scatter into the night.

“Miller and I were planning to intercept the blacks and kill them before they opened fire on the whites in the coffee shop. But in order to make sure they were the right blacks we were killing, we were going to have to wait until they drew their weapons. Then, we hoped, we’d have a split second to kill them before they started their killing spree.

“Fitzpatrick was there when we planned our strategy, but we never dreamed he’d want to take part in the action. But that is what he did. He refused to take no for an answer. He wanted to be one of the shooters. But Miller finally carried the day with his hard, truthful logic.

“’Look, I’ve had experience with this sort of thing. And Walker here has been trained by the best guerrilla fighter there is, that Ezekiel fellow. What we want to do is stop a murder spree. We don’t want to mess around with equal opportunity shooting. You’re paying for this, I know, but more than that, I know about this plan to murder the whites in the coffee shop, and I’ll stop it whether you pay me or not. Now you can pull me off the case if you want, but either way I’m going to stop this killing, and I’m going to stop it according to the plan I think has the best chance of success. If you get in the way, I’ll knock you unconscious and lock you up somewhere until it’s over.’

“Fitzpatrick smiled and shook both our hands. ‘I knew you were the men for me, but isn’t there something I can do?’

“There was; it was agreed that Fitzpatrick would drive, for want of a better word, the getaway car. As soon as we hit the potential murderers, he was to drive up and take us away from the coffee shop to a backwoods area where we were going to dump the car and the weapons and then proceed back to town in another car that we had hidden there.

“All went well. My information turned out to be pretty accurate. The only difference was that there were only four assailants, not five. The coffee shop activity was winding down, but the proprietor and six whites were in the shop at the time of the planned hit. About five yards from the shop the blacks took out their shotguns from under their coats. Before the leader got his hand on the door, Miller yelled ‘hands up’ and started firing with his pump action shotgun. I opened fire as well.

“It was over in about 15 seconds. We were not hurt, having taken them completely by surprise, and Fitzpatrick got us out of there quickly and efficiently, as if he had done similar getaways hundreds of times. It’s been four weeks since the preventive shooting and neither Miller, Fitzpatrick, nor I have been questioned by the police. The SBARI has organized the usual protest marches against ‘white racism.’ I marched, because I thought that a refusal to march would have destroyed my cover. But I think I’m already suspected, because a number of SBARI sponsored murder raids have gone awry since I started working for them. They are satanic, but not stupid. I’ll keep you informed, but I think my usefulness as an undercover man has come to an end.”

“Three weeks later…

“I was right. Three nights ago I was almost run over by a car, just like in that television show called The Untouchables. And last night two men came to kill me while I was in bed. But they found a dummy in the bed, not Arthur Walker, the dummy, but a stuffed, theatrical dummy. James Miller, my guardian angel, was behind the door. So there are two less stooges for the SBARI in the world. I’ll be returning to England next week. At that time I’d like to tell you the rest of my story.”

________________

Act IV. Scene 4. London, England. One week later.

[Chambers, Bontini, Grey, and Walker are in Grey’s living room.]

Rev. Grey: How is the girl’s father holding up?

Walker: Mr. Fitzpatrick is not doing well. He still spends a lot of nights by the grave site. I dare say he’s better than he’s been, now that he’s been able to hit the SBARI, but the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice… You know what I mean.

Rev. Grey: Yes.

Bontini: And the battle with the SBARI is never over. It’s an ongoing battle. Even if that organization completely disappeared, some other would take its place.

Rev. Grey: That’s true. Once you see to the depths of this evil of negro worship, you yearn for some kind of apocalyptic showdown. But that is not up to us. Before that final battle, we are supposed to fight the thankless little battles, like you gentlemen have been fighting.

Bontini: Don’t include me in that “you gentlemen”; I’ve just been a spectator.

Rev. Grey: No, you haven’t. And I won’t permit you to say me nay on this. You have fought the good fight.

Chambers: The Reverend Grey is right, Father. The real war is not with material weapons.

Bontini: That is kind of you to say, Inspector Chambers, but I’m no longer Father Bontini.

Chambers: You are to me.

Bontini: Thank you again.

Walker: Fitzpatrick has the added problem of his wife. All she cares about is her husband’s mass attendance. He has stopped going to Mass, and he hates Father O’Reilly. That is more than his wife can take. They live in the same house, but they seldom speak any more.

Rev. Grey: That is very sad. Is there any hope of a reconciliation?

Walker: Not at the time I left Savannah. And if a reconciliation comes, it will only be because Mrs. Fitzpatrick has come over to Sean’s side of the fence. He is like steel on the issue of O’Reilly, Bishop Callahan, and the organized Catholic Church.

Bontini: I can understand that. But I hope he hasn’t become embittered against God.

Walker: I can’t say for certain how he feels about God. His grief for his daughter seems without end and without hope; that can’t be a good sign. And he seems to be looking for that great, apocalyptic confrontation with the negro-worshipping liberals.

Rev. Grey: Those two forces – grief and a desire for a final, definitive victory over your enemies, which can never come in this life, can lead a man to despair. But there is one thing that may help Mr. Fitzpatrick.

Walker: What is it?

Rev. Grey: Give him something close to the apocalyptic confrontation he wants. And make sure Mrs. Fitzpatrick is a witness. If she has a soul, it will turn her away from organized Roman Catholicism to a Christ-centered Catholicism.

Bontini: You must have something in mind, Christopher?

Rev. Grey: Nothing definite, but something Arthur said before you gentlemen came in gave me the germ of an idea.

Walker: I did?

Rev. Grey: Yes, you were telling me that the archdiocese of Savannah, in conjunction with all the archdioceses throughout the world, particularly in the European nations and Africa, were going to consecrate their churches to some negro patron saint.

Bontini: That’s true; I’ve heard something about that myself. Paul VI is going to declare over 100,000 new black saints to make sure there are enough to go around. One of the saints will be Kimaru.

Chambers [looking at Grey]: Fancy that; Kimaru a saint. Won’t that be nice?

Rev. Grey: No, it won’t be nice; it’s blasphemous, just as it was blasphemous for Pope John to concelebrate with him when he was alive. But that is just one of the multitudinous things that I have no control over.

Walker: The Anglican church and most of the Protestant denominations are all having some joint ceremonies with the Catholic church.

Chambers: Wouldn’t you like to have your hand on a dynamite lever that could blow all the negrophile celebrations in the various churches to kingdom come at one thrust?

Bontini: Without blowing up the people in the church?

Chambers: I suppose so.

Bontini: Then I’d be for it. But seriously, Christopher, what can we do about any of these negro consecrations; hasn’t the negrophile psychosis gone too far to be stopped by anything we can do?

Rev. Grey: No, we can’t stop it, but we can bear witness to a different God, our Lord Jesus Christ.

________________________________________________

Act V. Scene 1. Four weeks later. Bishop Callahan’s office.

[Bishop Callahan and Father O’Reilly are seated in the office.]

Callahan: I thought that Englishman – what was his name?

O’Reilly: Arthur Walker.

Callahan: Yes, that was it. I thought he was the traitor in our ranks who scuttled some of our punitive raids on the whites.

O’Reilly: He was, but I don’t think he acted alone. He had money behind him. I suspect that private detective was in on it.

Callahan: What private detective?

O’Reilly: His name is James Miller. He’s a former police detective, but for the past twelve years or so he’s run a private detective agency.

Callahan: I fail to see how a man who runs around peeping in key holes at the behest of unhappy married people has anything to do with us and our mission.

O’Reilly: If I’m right in my suspicions, he has everything to do with our mission. I think he was hired by someone to destroy, or, at the very least, damage the SBARI.

Callahan: Who is the person that hired him, presuming what you say is true about Miller?

O’Reilly: It’s true, and I think he’s working for Sean Fitzpatrick.

Callahan [laughing]: That’s nonsense! Fitzpatrick is the biggest donor to Catholic churches in the whole diocese, in the whole state, for that matter.

O’Reilly: Used to be, Bishop. He hasn’t given one red cent to any Catholic charity for the past eight months.

Callahan: Why?

O’Reilly: He had only one daughter, and she was killed in what they call the Katanga massacre. I’m sure it was not a massacre – that was false reporting – but in the heat of battle some blacks, with justice on their side, might have killed some of the white Red Cross workers. Or more probably some whites killed the Red Cross workers and blamed it on the blacks. At any rate, Fitzpatrick’s daughter was killed, and he blames the Catholic church in general and me especially for his daughter’s death.

Callahan: Why does he blame you especially?

O’Reilly: Because I was his parish priest, and I performed all those special negro masses and encouraged his daughter to attend a progressive Catholic university that taught the new progressive social teaching of the church, which stressed racial equality as the most pressing issue of the times.

Callahan: And he faults you for that? It seems to me he should be grateful to you for inspiring his daughter to give up her life in a worthy cause. It’s a pity she died so young, but surely he must know, as a Catholic, that martyrs go straight to heaven. His daughter died in the battle for racial equality; what greater Catholic cause can a young women die for?

O’Reilly: None greater, but Fitzpatrick has become a racist. He is against all things Catholic and he is very hostile to the SBARI.

Callahan: When did you first learn of Fitzpatrick?

O’Reilly: I’ve suspected him for quite some time, but my suspicions did not become virtual certainty until I had a visit from his wife last night. She came to talk to me about her husband, who is no longer attending Mass and has stopped every single church-related activity. She also told me that he often sleeps overnight at his daughter’s grave site. When I asked her, as discreetly as possible, if it was her daughter’s actual remains or just a memorial grave site, she told me it was her daughter’s actual remains. A private detective…

Callahan: James Miller?

O’Reilly: Precisely. He was hired to find out what happened to Colleen Fitzpatrick and bring her home. So he did bring her home, but not alive.

Callahan: I doubt that he even brought back the right body. We have only his word for it.

O’Reilly: No, I did some checking on that. It is the girl’s remains.

Callahan: Is it Mrs. Fitzpatrick that is waiting in the outer office?

O’Reilly: Yes. I told her you would see her.

Callahan: I don’t know what I can say to her that you haven’t said already. Is she the hysterical type?

O’Reilly: Emotional, I’d say, but not hysterical.

Callahan: Oh no.

O’Reilly: I’m sorry, but I thought your title and prestige might calm her down. And maybe you could learn more about what her husband is up to.

Callahan: You take liberties, Father, but go ahead, send her in.

O’Reilly: Should I stay or leave?

Callahan: I suppose you’d better leave us alone if we are going to do this right.

O’Reilly: All right. I’ll send her in.

[Mrs. Fitzpatrick enters and Bishop Callahan rises to give her a chair and then returns to behind his desk.]

Callahan: I’m so sorry about the recent death of your daughter, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, but it must be a great consolation to know that she died in a great Catholic cause.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick: Yes, it is, Bishop. But I wish my husband could be consoled. I always thought we had a good marriage. We planned on a lot of children, but I had two miscarriages before Colleen was born, and after that I was unable to have any more children. But Sean so loved his little Colleen, it didn’t seem that important that she would be our only child. Now, there doesn’t seem anything left for him. He doesn’t go to Mass anymore and he often sleeps…

Callahan: Yes, Father O’Reilly mentioned that he often sleeps out at your daughter’s grave. But tell me is your husband angry at God or is he angry at the Roman Catholic Church?

Mrs. Fitzpatrick: Aren’t they one and the same?

Callahan: Yes, they are, but some people separate them in their mind’s eye.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick: I would definitely say that his anger is directed at the Roman Catholic Church. And, I hate to say this – he particularly hates Father O’Reilly and you, Bishop.

Callahan: Don’t worry about offending me, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, I’m never personally offended when someone dislikes me because I wear the Roman collar. What concerns me is the danger to your husband’s soul. What he thinks of the man, Joseph Callahan, doesn’t matter, but when he hates me and Father O’Reilly in our official capacities as God’s anointed, well then, his soul is in danger, if he doesn’t repent, of eternal damnation.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick [breaking down in tears]: I know that, Bishop, but what am I do to?

Callahan: Can you tell me anything more about your husband’s malaise that would help me to help him? For instance, where does he go at nights when he isn’t at his daughter’s grave site, and whom does he meet?

Mrs. Fitzpatrick: I don’t know Bishop, he doesn’t confide in me since I defended you and Father O’Reilly.

Callahan: Defended us? Against what charges?

Mrs. Fitzpatrick: He says you no longer worship Christ; you worship the negro instead of Christ. And he feels that our daughter was so infected with that false negro worshipping religion that she went to Africa and was tortured and murdered.

Callahan: That is worse than nonsense; it is blasphemy.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick: I know it is, Bishop. I didn’t want to tell you what he said, but…

Callahan: No, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, you are right to tell me everything that your husband has said against me. I represent the Church, how he feels about me is how he feels about God, and I must know what is going on in your husband’s soul if I’m going to help him.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick: I don’t know what else I can say.

Callahan: This detective that he hired to bring your daughter back home; does he still see him?

Mrs. Fitzpatrick: I don’t know, Bishop, I have no idea who he sees. He certainly hasn’t brought him to the house after he brought Colleen home. [she starts to cry again]

Callahan: Please, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, don’t carry on so. I’m sure your husband will come around. I’ll have some masses said for his special benefit and for your daughter.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick: Bless you, Bishop. And I apologize for my husband. What else can I do? I still love him.

Callahan: Certainly, that’s as it should be. Now, let me give you my blessing. [she kneels] In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

[Mrs. Fitzpatrick exits and Father O’Reilly comes back in.]

O’Reilly: Well?

Callahan: The woman’s a wreck – I really couldn’t get any definitive information from her. But she did confirm what you said about her husband. He hates us. I think we should take what we know to Siegel and Belenky.

O’Reilly: How about the rest of the council?

Callahan: No, I think we should keep this matter between Siegel and Belenky and ourselves.

_____________

Act V. Scene 2. One week later. Offices of Siegel and Belenky.

Belenky: The mistake you made [addressing Father O’Reilly] was in assuming that Arthur Walker was defrocked for being too liberal. If you knew the state of the Anglican church today, you would not have assumed that was the case. The mistake has been costly.

Callahan: It’s not Father O’Reilly’s fault. He didn’t dream that someone would hate the SBARI enough to put a plant in our organization.

Siegel: Why shouldn’t he believe it? We plant our people in right wing organizations.

O’Reilly: I’m afraid I’m not as cold-blooded as you are, Siegel.

Belenky: This isn’t getting us anywhere. The point is that a mistake has been made. Walker and Miller ruined some of our raids. Now Walker is back in England, but Miller is still a menace, because he has Fitzpatrick’s backing.

Callahan: Are we sure that it is Fitzpatrick who is backing him?

Siegel: Yes.

Callahan: What can be done?

Belenky: There is only one thing that can be done.

O’Reilly: Kill him?

Belenky: Yes.

Callahan: Maybe if we just had Miller killed?

Belenky: Actually, Miller is not as important as Fitzpatrick. Once we eliminate Fitzpatrick, Miller won’t have the financial backing to continue.

Siegel: But Miller will have to be killed?

Belenky: Yes, but his death is not necessary as immediately as Fitzpatrick’s.

Siegel: Fitzpatrick’s wife must be killed as well.

Belenky: Of course.

Callahan: I really don’t see why she must be killed. How does her death promote racial equality?

Belenky: I must remind you, Bishop Callahan, that you joined this organization voluntarily; we did not recruit you.

Callahan: Yes, I joined it to promote racial equality.

Belenky: By any means necessary?

Callahan: Yes, but…

Belenky: There is no ‘but’ here. We have provided you with the additional organizational strength to pursue racial equality.

Callahan: I brought considerable organization strength with me.

Belenky: True, but it was organizational strength divided. The SBARI provides the consistent organizational strength necessary for all successful revolutions. I remind you of what Bakunin said: “All tender and gentle feelings of kinship, love, gratitude, and even honor itself should be choked off in the revolutionary’s breast by the single cold passion of his revolutionary task. He is not a revolutionary if he has pity for anything in the world. He knows only one science – the science of destruction.” I don’t think that either you, Bishop Callahan, or Father O’Reilly, are showing the proper revolutionary attitude when you flinch at killing Mrs. Fitzpatrick. And maybe that is because we have different goals. I want to destroy everything white and Christian; it seems you want to preserve some white things and some Christian things.

Callahan: I have not flinched from violent revolution. I’ve supported necessary violence.

Belenky: It’s not for you to decide what is necessary violence. Nor is it for you to decide how the violence is administered. You see, it is not just enough for white people to be killed; they must also be humiliated and violated, their deaths should be horrific so they instill fear in the survivors and give the black murderers a sense of power so that they will feel empowered and emboldened to kill again and again.

O’Reilly: I understand all this, but Bakunin is not infallible; he cringed and crawled and denounced the Revolution when he was in prison.

Belenky: Of course he did, and he denounced his confession when he got out of prison. Why shouldn’t he grovel for political purposes? I would do the same thing in his place. Are you invoking the honor code?

O’Reilly: No, I’m not. Just tell me why Mrs. Fitzpatrick has to die?

Siegel: Because the revolution can’t proceed unless the ultimate debasement proceeds – that is, the rape of white women by black men. Isn’t that correct? [he looks to Belenky]

Belenky: Yes, that is correct. Now, are we agreed?

Callahan and O’Reilly: Yes.

Belenky: Good, then all that is necessary is that we work out the procedural details of the executions.

________________

Act V. Scene 3. London. Two months later, Christmas Eve.

[Grey, Chambers, the Montgomery family, Edward Owen, Bontini, Arthur Walker, and some forty or more parishioners of Rev. Grey who still attend his private services are present. Dinner and services are over and various Christmas activities are taking place. Arthur Walker says something to Rev. Grey, and the Rev. gathers Bontini, Chambers, Owen, and Walker and ushers them into his study.]

Owen: What’s the mystery, Reverend? I don’t want to miss any part of the English Christmas you promised. Soon, I’ll be back in South Africa, and my friends there will expect me to tell them something interesting about my trip.

Rev. Grey: You’ll be back to the main party shortly, Mr. Edward Impatience. Besides, this is not my interruption. Arthur has something he wants to share with us that he doesn’t want anyone else to hear. Not because he doesn’t trust the rest, but… well, we’re all of the blood here; you know what I mean. It’s a letter he wants to read. And he wants its contents to stay here.

Chambers: Have you read the letter yet, Reverend?

Rev. Grey: No, I haven’t, so I’ll shut up and give the floor to Arthur.

Walker: Gentlemen, I’ve come to know all of you. And I feel bound to you quite beyond the bonds of mere friendship. Shakespeare writes of a band of brothers. So we are, we few… [starts to choke up] Let me start again. I’d like to read parts of this letter to you, from one of our band of brothers whom you have never met, but who is one of us, and I know he and his… what shall I call him? He was James Miller’s client, but he became his friend. So I’ll say, James and his friend, Sean Fitzpatrick. Let me share this story with you; James asked that I share it with you, because he has become a firm believer in the mystical body of Christ. I’ll pick up about halfway through the letter [begins reading] –

___________________

“I was out of town on a case the night they decided to go for Mrs. Fitzpatrick. I didn’t know that the SBARI had figured out who it was that was making the hits on their black minions, but I don’t know that I could have done much to prevent it if I had known. I was on a kind of permanent retainer for Mr. Fitzpatrick, but there was no particular work I was doing for him at that time. I knew that he went armed wherever he went and would have been more than delighted to shoot any blacks who tried to attack him, so I wasn’t that worried about Sean. But I should have figured out that they’d go for Mrs. Fitzpatrick. I guess I was still blinded by a certain residual respect for the Catholic clergy. I knew O’Reilly and Callahan were thick as thieves with Siegel and Belenky, but I didn’t think they’d go that far.

“Looking back on it now, I realize that once some heathen god takes over your soul, you are no longer the same person that you were when you belonged to Christ. Dostoevsky is better at explaining such things than I am, but I’m here, and he is not, so let it suffice to say that the negro gods, not Christ, were at the center of O’Reilly’s and Callahan’s souls.

“O’Reilly went to Jeanne Fitzpatrick’s house for a ‘pastoral’ visit on a night when he knew Sean Fitzpatrick was at his daughter’s grave site. O’Reilly told her in advance that it would be best if the house was empty of servants and anybody else who might reside there, as he had some confidential matter pertaining to her husband to discuss with her.

“Once he was admitted it was an easy matter for Father O’Reilly to make sure the front door was open. After about a half hour, five hooded blacks came and took Jeanne Fitzpatrick and Father O’Reilly, who was still pretending to be on Jeanne Fitzpatrick’s side, to a wooded area outside the city.

“That was where I came into the picture. I was coming back from a two week trip to Atlanta, where I was finishing up with a case. It was my habit whenever I was near Sean Fitzpatrick’s house to go by it, just to see if all was well. I saw the hooded figures shoving a trussed up figure into a van. It was too small to be Sean, so I assumed it was Mrs. Fitzpatrick.

“I followed the van at a safe distance. And I ended up parked out of sight in a wooded area facing the swamps, which is where Jeanne had been taken.

“I had been so intent on making sure I didn’t lose sight of the van Jeanne was in that I hadn’t paid any attention to who or what was following me. As I left my car to get closer to Jeanne in order to attempt to rescue her, I was told to stand perfectly still after I dropped my gun. I considered turning and firing, but I’d be firing blind while my opponents would be spot on, because they presumably had their guns trained on me. I dropped my gun and they laid me flat on my stomach while they searched for a second gun. They didn’t find one, so they cuffed me with my hands behind my back and then told me to stand up.

“When I stood up I knew I had made a mistake by not trying to shoot it out with my assailants. There were three men facing me. Two were obviously hired gunmen. They didn’t wear the telltale all-back outfits of the gunfighters in the old Western movies, but I could still tell they were imported guns. Both men were white. It was the third man who made me realize I had made a mistake by not attempting to fire. The third man was Siegel; he wore no mask, which told me that he had no intention of letting me live. I cursed my stupidity and tried to look for an opening. There was none. They took me and made me kneel down, hands cuffed behind my back, next to Jeanne Fitzpatrick, who was in the same position as me only she had been stripped naked. Siegel gave us a graphic description of what was going to happen to us. I had enough of the stoic in me so that I didn’t – at least I don’t think I did – show any emotion on my face, but inside I was in torment even before they started the torture.

“Jeanne was done with pleading; she was praying when I was forced to kneel beside her. But Siegel told her to stop with the prayers or he’d make her torture longer and her humiliation even worse. So she stopped.

“I said my one prayer quietly under my breath, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us, and deliver us from these our enemies.’ Then I tried the only gambit, which wasn’t much of a gambit, that I could think of. I appealed to the mercy of the only man in the group whom I thought might have some mercy in him, Father O’Reilly. I had no illusions about Siegel, the five negroes, or the two gunmen. Siegel was a Jew who had hardened his heart against all things human, the negroes had never known what mercy was, and the two gunmen were professional killers whose hearts had hardened in the course of their profession. O’Reilly, I reasoned, must have had some humanity when he decided to become a priest, and maybe I could awaken that humanity.

“‘Father, if we must die, couldn’t you use your influence to make sure it’s just a bullet to our heads. That would be more merciful than what you have planned.’

“‘I’d like to oblige you, Miller, but I can’t. You see, you don’t understand; the rape and torture is part of the ritual. These black men are not criminals; they are religious devotees.’

“‘Do you believe that, Father?’

“‘Yes, I do, I believe in the black Messiah; I believe that Christ was a negro whom the white men killed, and when Christ comes back to earth – and maybe he already has come back – it will be as a negro. And until the time when he makes himself manifest to us, we must sacrifice the whites.’

“‘Then why don’t you take Jeanne Fitzpatrick’s place as a sacrificial victim; are you not white?’

“‘Father looked at me, then to the heavens with a look of ecstasy on his face. ‘I am black by the grace of God. He has made me a black man inside.’

“I didn’t need to hear Siegel’s command, ‘There has been enough talk,’ to know that it was over for me and Jeanne Fitzpatrick. Father O’Reilly had left the God of mercy far behind.

“They took the handcuffs off Jeanne and staked her out on the ground. Then they positioned me to watch the proceedings. It was part of the ritual to make the white male watch the white female defiled before his eyes prior to his own death by torture.

“I wondered if they had already killed Sean Fitzpatrick or if they had failed to capture him, because I knew they would want him present at the rape and torture of his wife.

“Then I saw that Sean was present. Siegel had the trunk of his car opened, and Sean, bound and gagged, was brought to kneel down beside me. Now the ritual could begin. I kept repeating those words of the Psalmist: ‘Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.’ And after each repetition I said His name, ‘Jesus.’

“I couldn’t claim to be a church-going man – I couldn’t even claim to be a full-time believer – but I always reverenced Jesus, and I always felt His reality, His divine presence, the most acutely when the forces of hell were surrounding me. So at the moment when I recited the verse from the Psalms and then said His name, I really did feel that He was next to me. But what are feelings at a time like that? The torture was about to begin. And then I heard a cry, it was like the voice of God or one of His angels. The cry was, ‘Durch die Kreuz, erobern wir!’ and the first thing I saw was Father O’Reilly’s head roll past me. Then the hooded figure, all in black and brandishing a sword, was upon the rest of the devotees. The two hired guns had already had their throats cut before the ritual began, and the five blacks were too surprised to fight effectively. The hooded man – or angel? – dispatched them. Siegel was the last to die. He tried to pick up a gun that had fallen from the dead hand of one of the hired killers, but as he reached for it the hooded figure ran him through.

“I’m not telling the dramatic scene properly; I’m not doing it justice. But what can I say? It was the most horrific of nightmares turned into an incredible fairy tale in which the wicked perished and the good, at least good in the sense that we didn’t deserve the fate that Father O’Reilly had in store for us, triumphed. But why had we triumphed? No doubt we triumphed, because of the mercy of God, but who was His heaven-sent angel of mercy? As he stood there in the midst, he seemed like some great angelic knight of charity from beyond this mortal world. But as it turned out, our deliverer was quite mortal. I don’t know if he told you or not; quite possibly he had told you that he was on a fishing trip to Scotland or something. The heaven-sent angel was the Reverend Christopher Grey. How he got there and why he came, I’ll leave for him to tell.

“I don’t have to tell you, who know him better than I do, that Rev. Grey was a balm to the souls of Sean and Jeanne Fitzpatrick. After we disposed of the bodies and the vehicles in the swamp – the solitary nature of the place where they intended to dispose of us allowed us to dispose of their bodies – the Rev. Grey bade us all kneel with him in prayer. He spoke to Christ so intimately, so thankfully that I really think I saw Him standing there amongst us. It was only for a brief moment – I probably imagined it – but then again I never felt so near to God as I did at that moment when I knelt and gave my silent assent to Reverend Grey’s prayer of thanks.

“This bears repeating – Jeanne Fitzpatrick was spared the ultimate degradation, but her faith in the organization called the Catholic Church had been shattered. She needed Christ to step in and fill the void. He came to her through the Reverend Grey, who was now just as gentle as he had been fierce. He hadn’t managed to have the apocalyptic confrontation in the Roman Catholic Church as he had hoped, but he took the apocalyptic confrontation where he found it. After a lengthy conversation, he left Mrs. Fitzpatrick ready to resume her life with a better faith and a better hope than she had ever had before.

“As we left the Fitzpatricks at their home, the Reverend Grey whispered to me, ‘We won’t be able to get to Callahan, but we can and must kill Belenky before this night is over. Neither Callahan, Pierce or Truscott can maintain the Savannah Branch of the SBARI without Belenky. It will be built up again – Satan has so many tentacles – but still this will slow him down some.’

“Belenky was found dead in his bed the next morning. Foul play was suspected, but there wasn’t a mark on his body. Callahan didn’t try to run the Savannah branch by himself, so it has temporarily folded. And in the meantime Sean Fitzpatrick is trying to get Callahan removed from office for financial misconduct. And so it goes. What did the apostle say? Something about a battle against principalities and powers, wasn’t it? Best of luck on your side of the ocean.”

____________________________________

Chambers [addressing Bontini]: I should have known something was up when you told me that Reverend Grey was taking a two week vacation in the United States. The Reverend Grey has never taken a vacation in his life.

Bontini [smiling]: For Reverend Grey, a mission of mercy is a holiday, so I didn’t lie.

Chambers [addressing Arthur Walker]: Were you in on it?

Walker: No, I really didn’t know what the Reverent had planned, although he had asked me a great many questions about the area where the Fitzpatricks lived, so I should have suspected something.

Owen: I wish I had known about it; I would have liked to help.

Rev. Grey: I couldn’t ask your help, Edward. Your South African passport would have aroused suspicions.

Owen: Did you consider asking Ezekiel for help?

Rev. Grey [laughing]: I think he would have been a bit conspicuous. Besides, he is wedded to Kenya and his family. He won’t leave them, and I honor him for it.

Bontini: Still, it must be a very lonely existence.

Walker: I didn’t get that impression when I was with him.

Owen: Nor did I. He seems close to – how can I describe it? – to, well, to the eternal things. He feels God’s presence and his family’s presence.

Bontini: I think I can understand somewhat when I listen to you two describe him.

Chambers: One more question, if I may, Reverend.

Rev. Grey: Okay, but then we join the party, right?

Chambers: Certainly. Why did you shout, “Durch die Kreuz, erobern wir!” in German before you attacked? Doesn’t an Englishman usually speak English, especially at such a crucial moment?

Grey: Yes, he generally does. But at that moment — memory is a tricky thing — something came back to me from long ago.

On that night during the First World War, when I went after those wounded soldiers to bring them back to our lines, there was one soldier, the last one I brought back, who was not British; he was a wounded German soldier. When I got him back to our trenches, I could see he didn’t have long to live. And I could see that he knew he didn’t have long to live. He looked at me with such a sense of relief, because he was a Catholic, and he thought I was a priest of his church because of my clerical collar. I didn’t correct his misunderstanding, because I was sure then, and am even more sure now, that God doesn’t care about such technicalities. The man poured out his heart to me; he felt himself to be the worst of sinners, the worst that ever lived. I won’t violate his faith in me by repeating any part of his confession. I’ll only say that he was a good man and devout. I simply told him the truth, that Christ loved him and it was by His holy cross that we conquered. He latched onto those words and kept repeating them over and over as he held my hand. By the Cross we conquer, by the Cross we conquer. He died content, and I firmly believe that he had conquered, through Christ our Lord.

So in the heat of battle my memory went back to that German soldier’s words, “Durch die Kreuz, erobern wir.” That is why I spoke in German instead of English.

Bontini [makes the sign of the cross]: In Jesus name, amen.

All: Amen.

Owen: Now to the festivities!

[All exit except Grey and Chambers]

Rev. Grey: I was glad to see you brought your wife tonight. This is the first time I met her socially. The other times it was just a quick hello on my way somewhere. She seems to be a wonderful woman, but then she must be to have captured the heart of a man like you.

Chambers: As always, Reverend, you’re too kind. You seem to have cast me in the romanticized role of the ideal Englishman, a cross between Bulldog Drummond and Beau Geste.

Rev. Grey: And why not? That is how I picture you. You remind me of another policemen; a dear friend, John Talbot.

Chambers: Yes, I know of him. He was the real article; the last Englishman.

Rev. Grey: I loved him, and I still love him. Our loved ones don’t leave us, ever.

Chambers: I’ve never asked you about her [pointing to a portrait of Sarah Grey, Christopher’s wife], because I didn’t want to pry.

Grey: It’s not prying. She was my conduit to Christ. We all have one. I loved her, and found Christ through her. I can’t see her without thinking of Him nor can I see Him without thinking of her. It’s Shakespeare’s 31st sonnet. I only got to spend five Christmases with her in the flesh, but she is with me every Christmas. I was a farm boy with rather superficial notions of becoming a strongman-wrestler type like Frank Gotch or George Hackenschmidt. When I met her she elevated me and showed me something so much greater than my petty ambitions.

There is great evil in the world, my friend; you and I have seen more than our share of it. But there is the grace of God; it shines like the star of Bethlehem through women like my wife and men like John Talbot. I no longer feel any great separation between this world and the next. It’s all bound together by His divine charity. Let’s go celebrate Christmas.

[As they open the door of the study, the guests are singing Christmas carols.]

William Montgomery [handing the Reverend a glass of water]: Wet your whistle, Reverend. [Reverend Grey takes a sip and hands him back the glass] Would you do us the honor? And don’t be shy; you have the gift of song.

[The Reverend Christopher Grey goes to the center of the gathering and sings:]

Away in a manger, no crib for a bed,
The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head.

The stars in the sky looked down where he lay,
The little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay.

The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes,
But little Lord Jesus no crying he makes.

I love Thee, Lord Jesus, look down from the sky
And stay by my cradle ‘til morning is nigh.

Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay
Close by me forever, and love me, I pray.

Bless all the dear children in thy tender care,
And take us to heaven, to live with Thee there. +