Nim shrugged. It could be anything from an earthquake tremor to the effect of some heavy construction going on nearby. At his desk be riffled through the messages and glanced at the envelope which Vicki had referred to, marked "private and confidential." It was a buff manila envelope with a dab of sealing wax on the back. Absently be began to Opel-,
"Vicki, before we do anything else, see if you can get Mrs. Carmichael on the phone."
"At the Sequoia Club?"
"Right."
She put the papers she was carrying in a tray marked "signature" and turned to go. As she did, the outer office door flew open and Harry London raced in. His hair was disordered, his face red from exertion.
London saw Nim.
"No!" he screamed. "No!"
As Nim stood still in bewilderment, London flew across the room and hurled himself across the desk. He seized the manila envelope and put it down.
"Out of here! Fast! All of us!"
London grabbed Nim's arm and pulled, at the same time pushing Victoria Davis roughly ahead. They went through the outer office to the corridor outside, London pausing only long enough to slam both doors behind them.
Nim began an angry protest. "What the hell .
He didn't finish. From the inner office came the boom of an explosion. The corridor walls shook. A framed picture nearby fell to the floor, its glass shattering.
A second later another thud, like the earlier one Nim had beard but this time louder and clearly an explosion, came from somewhere beneath their feet. It was unmistakably within the building. Down the corridor, figures were running out of other doors.
"Oh Christ!" Harry London said. His voice was despairing.
Nim exclaimed urgently, "Dammit! What is it?"
Now they could hear excited shouting, telephones ringing stridently, the sound of approaching sirens in the street below.
"Letter bombs," London said. “They're not big, but enough to kill anybody close. That last one was the fourth. Fraser Fenton's dead, others injured.
Everyone in the building's being warned, and if you feel like praying, ask that there aren't anymore."
11
With a short stub of pencil, Georgos Winslow Archambault (Yale, class of'72) wrote in his journal:
Yesterday, a successful foray against the fascist-capitalistic forces of oppression!
An enemy leader-Fenton, president of Golden State Piss & Lickspittle-is dead. Good riddance!
In the honored name of Friends of Freedom, the headquarters bastion of the ruthless exploiters of the people's energy resources was successfully attacked. Out of ten F-of-F weapons directed at target, five scored direct hits. Not bad!
The true score of hits may be even greater since the establishment-muzzled press has, as usual, minimized this important people's victory.
Georgos repositioned the pencil stub. Even though it was uncomfortable, he invariably wrote with a stub, having once read that Mohandas K. Gandhi did so, holding that to discard a partially used pencil would be to denigrate the humble labor which created it.
Gandhi was one of Georges Archambault's heroes, as were Lenin, Marx, Engels, Mao Tse-tung, Renato Curcio, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Cesar Chavez and assorted others. (the anomaly that Mohandas Gandhi was an apostle of non-violence seemed not to bother him.) Georgos went on writing.
Furthermore, the capitalist-bootlicking press today sanctimoniously deplored the death and injury of what it labeled "innocent victims." How naively ridiculous!
In any war, so-called "innocents" are inevitably killed and maimed, and the larger the war, the larger the number of "innocent" casualties. When belligerents are the misnamed "great powers"-as in World Wars I and II and the despicable Vietnam aggression by America-such "innocents" are slaughtered in their thousands, like cattle, and who objects? No one!
Certainly not the dollar-worshiping press-Fuhrers and their know-nothing, toadying writers.
A just, social war, like that now being waged by Friends of Freedom, is no different-except that casualties are fewer.
Even at Yale, in written papers, Georgos had had the reputation among his professors of be laboring a point, spreading adjectives like buckshot. But then English had not been his major-it was physics and later be parlayed that degree into a doctorate in chemistry. Later still, the chemistry knowledge proved useful when he studied explosives -among other things-in Cuba. And all along the way his interests narrowed, as did his personal views on life and politics.
The journal entry continued:
Even the enemy press-which obediently exaggerates such matters rather than minimizes them-admits there were only two deaths and three major injuries. One of the dead was the senior management criminal, Fenton, the other a pig security guard-no loss! The rest were minor lackeys-typists, clerks, etc. -who should be grateful for their martyrdom in a noble cause. So much for the propaganda nonsense about "innocent victims"!
Georgos paused, his thin, ascetic face mirroring an intensity of thought.
As always, he took considerable pains over his journal, believing that one day it would be an important historical document, ranking alongside such works as Das Kapital and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung,
He began a new train of thought.
The demands of Friends of Freedom will be announced in a war communiqué today. They are:
-Free supply of electricity and gas for one year to the unemployed, those on welfare, and old people. At the end of a year the matter will be reviewed again by Friends of Freedom.
-An immediate 25 percent reduction in charges for electric power and gas supplied to small homes and apartments.
-Abandonment of plans to build more nuclear power plants. Existing nuclear plants to be closed immediately.
Failure to accept and obey these demands will result in a stepped-up program of attacks.
That would do for starters. And the threat of intensified action was a real one. Georgos glanced around the crowded, cluttered basement workroom in which he was writing. The supplies of gunpowder, fuses, blasting caps, pipe casings, glycerine, acids and other chemicals were ample. And he, as well as the three other freedom fighters who accepted his leadership, knew how to use them. He smiled, remembering the ingenious device which had gone into yesterday's letter bombs. A small plastic cylinder contained high explosive tetryl with a tiny detonator. Poised over the detonator was a spring-loaded firing pin and opening the envelope released the firing pin, which hit the detonator. Simple but deadly. The charge of tetryl was enough to blow the letter opener's head off, or a body wide open.
Obviously our demands are awaited because already the press and its docile ally television have begun echoing the Golden State Piss & Lickspittle line that no policies will be changed "as a result of terrorism."
Garbage! Empty-headed stupidity! Of course terrorism will cause changes. It always has, and always will. History abounds with examples.
Georgos considered some of the examples drilled into him during the Cuban revolutionary training, That was a couple of years after getting his doctorate, and in between the two he had been increasingly consumed by hatred for what he saw as the decadent, tyrannical country of his birth. He contemptuously spelled it amerika.
His general disenchantment had not been helped by news that his father, a wealthy New York playboy, had gone through his eighth divorce and remarriage, and that Georgos' mother, an internationally adored Greek movie actress, was again between husbands, having shed her sixth. Georgos loathed both his parents and what they represented, even though he had not seen either since he was nine years old nor, in the intervening twenty years, had be beard from them directly. His costs of living and schooling, including the fees at Yale, were paid impersonally through an Athens law firm.
So terrorism wouldn't change anything, eh?
Terrorism is an instrument of social war. It permits a few enlightened individuals (such as Friends of Freedom) to weaken the iron grip and will of reactionary forces which hold, and abuse, power.
Terrorism began the successful Russian Revolution.
The Irish and Israeli republics owe their existence to terrorism. IRA terrorism in the first World War led to an independent Eire. Irgun terrorism in Palestine forced the British to give up their Mandate so the Jews could establish Israel.
Algeria won independence from France through terrorism.
The PLO, now represented at international conferences and the UN, used terrorism to gain worldwide attention.
Even more world attention has been achieved by terrorism of the Italian Red Brigade.