Three Metal Pellets

3. Revival of the SANM PG & the Judges, too

3

Revival of the SANM PG, and the Judges, too

Exhausted after her long day of research on the Hollingsworths at the university library, Priscilla returned to her home-office and headed straight to her bedroom to rest. But her doorbell ringing indicated that sleep would be put off a while longer. As she walked closer to her front door, she immediately recognized through the window panes two figures standing on her porch. FBI Agent Marvin Rothschild was tall, dark, and handsome with a full head of black hair. Standing closely beside him was a middle-aged man of medium build with a receding hairline, CIA Agent James Froley.

“Nah, now what?” Priscilla said as she opened her door and allowed the men to enter.

“Evening, Ms. Austin,” Agent Froley said, shaking her hand with a firm grip.

“PJ, Girlfriend,” Agent Rothschild said as he planted a kiss on her cheek.

After greeting her unexpected guests, Priscilla told them that she had just come home herself and that she needed to freshen up.

“Make yourselves comfortable. I’ll be with you shortly.”

But before she excused herself, Agent Rothschild asked if he could show Agent Froley around her home-office. He had been to Priscilla’s West Third Street apartment before, but Agent Froley had not. Priscilla graciously consented to the agent’s request. Besides, she really did not wish to be bothered with either of them.

In June of 1986, FBI Agent Rothschild had been assigned to investigate two mysterious shootings that had occurred at the altar at First AME Zion Church in Columbus on the day of Priscilla’s ill-fated wedding where the groom—the Reverend Jonathan Morgan, the pastor of the church—had mistakenly been shot and killed. The assassin, a member of the SANM PG, had incapacitated, not killed, his intended target, Ohio state Senator Daniel P. Callahan. The assassin had been assigned to eliminate the senator because he had sponsored the South African Divestiture (SAD) Bill. Meanwhile, Priscilla had been abducted from the church, and her time in Africa had begun. While the CIA had dealt with her a*******n and with capturing the SANM PG, FBI Agent Rothschild had been assigned to investigate the two shootings at the church. So, on the day in question, he and Columbus Police Detective David Stoudemeir had investigated the crime scene at the church; then the two officials had accompanied her friend Julia to Priscilla’s home-office in the quaint Victorian Village community near the university campus to locate the videotape of the Ohio Senate’s debate on the SAD Bill. Then, Agent Rothschild had gotten acquainted with Priscilla’s mother Liza, her nephew Germane, and Julia because he had been assigned to their protective detail.

But CIA Agent Froley only knew of Priscilla through her time in Africa through his work with the Collective Force (CF)—the “unauthorized” special operatives’ unit of the CIA that had brought about Priscilla’s successful rescue. But he did not know that three of his agents—Tommy Wozniah, Bartholomew Jordan and Angelo Delgato—had once tried to recruit Priscilla during her tenure as legislative aide to Senator Callahan. Nor did he know about Priscilla’s relationship with one of his other agents, Carlton Elliott Bernhardt. But he would be enlightened otherwise over the coming weeks and months.

As it turned out, however, Agent Froley’s superior officer knew about all of this and more. As for Priscilla, she only knew of the CF through her time with them in Africa, but nothing concrete, not even the name “the CF unit.”

Agent Froley’s superior officer knew how the SANM PG and the Judges had operated and how one day, soon, they would resume their efforts to capture and kill Priscilla. Equally important was his awareness that recruiting Priscilla into their ranks would strengthen the CIA’s ability to locate more of the SANM PG and the Judges and eventually to put them down. Therefore, upon Priscilla’s return to the States from her time in Africa, the superior officer, an unnamed deputy director, had instructed Agent Froley to recruit her into their ranks. Her cover had been designated as an ordinary citizen who happened to be a public relations consultant.

“Well, that’s not a difficult role to play,” Priscilla had said upon accepting the offer to join the CIA.

But Agent Froley did not see Priscilla’s “potential asset” as did his superior officer. Set in his old ways, he could not get past her race—or her gender, for that matter. But when his superior officer had explained to him how Priscilla’s role with the agency impacted his possible career advancement, Agent Froley began to get the point. “Besides,” his superior officer had told him, “a possible promotion to my slot is in order, if you play your cards right.” Therefore, CIA Agent James Froley welcomed this unexpected opportunity to learn more about the heretofore mysterious PJ Austin.

Back at Priscilla’s home-office, Agent Froley was observing for the first time where Priscilla lived and conducted her PR business.

Agent Rothschild turned to his colleague and began speaking much like a docent in a museum, waving his hands in the air: “This is PJ’s reception area where she greets her clients.”

Still standing near the threshold of the front door, Agent Froley noticed a glass-topped tea table with some magazines set in the middle of the front of a coffee-colored sofa that sat against the back wall, each side of which was outfitted with a floor-model vase of long-stem dried plantings. He saw two floral-patterned Queen Anne chairs, one near the wall on the other side of the room and the other situated adjacent to the tea table. A lighted floor lamp stood beside each chair. He saw how Priscilla’s guests could face one another and how they could see the front door as well as the French doors leading to her office across the way. He also observed splashes of color in the fluffy pillows on the sofa and in the two landscape prints on the wall behind the sofa, and that an Oriental rug framed the space.

“Well, Jim, what do you think, so far?” Agent Rothschild asked his colleague.

“Doesn’t exactly look like a black woman lives here.”

Agent Rothschild relished the opportunity to show his CIA colleague that Priscilla was an ordinary person who happened to be black, just as he, Agent Rothschild, happened to be Jewish. Agent Froley was in for a short learning curve.

Agent Rothschild then opened the French doors that led to Priscilla’s office. Just as he walked into the space, Agent Froley stopped spellbound. There before him was an office that could easily have been that of any chief executive of a major corporation. Two tall windows on two separate walls rendered a stately appearance to the space. To his right, Agent Froley saw a huge mahogany desk in front of a decorative fireplace, a desk which Priscilla seldom used. A small lamp, a dark sleek multiline telephone, a pen and pencil holder with a crystal clock centerpiece, a marble ashtray, and a few other items were situated on her desk, and a dark, leather, high-back swivel chair behind the desk. Agent Froley saw that Priscilla kept an immaculate and impressive workspace. Nothing “black” about any of that, either.

Then Agent Froley gazed upon two magnificently, striped, silk upholstered chairs in front of the mahogany desk. Then he stared at an aquarium of colorful succulents in rocks and sand on the floor beside it, and then at a print of the Tappan Zee Bridge and another one of a rolling creek. Each print was hung from the wall on each side of the chimney behind her desk.

Next, Agent Rothschild walked to the only piece of personal furniture in the office: a Baldwin piano situated in front of the two windows facing the two men. He tapped on some of the keys.

“And to think she has musical talents, too,” he said.

But Agent Froley’s attention was less on the piano than on the black-and-white photos that sat on top of the musical instrument. He examined the attractive images of Priscilla’s siblings. Mostly though, he marveled at the photo of Nelson and Liza dressed in formal attire at a fund-raiser for former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. He knew that Priscilla’s father had been a staunch Republican, but now that fact was confirmed. But then, he wondered, So why’d she work for a Democratic state senator and now for Congressman Hollingsworth?

Instinctively, the heretofore narrow-minded CIA agent turned around to see what else was in the impressive space. He saw an IBM desktop computer, a printer, a scanner, and a fax machine on a workstation next to the windows facing the street. He also saw a small television set with a video recorder on a tall stand in the corner to his right. Out of his peripheral vision, he caught sight of several file cabinets that seemed to rise up to meet the high ceilings of the Victorian structure against the wall nearest the French doors. Having come full circle, he had experienced for the first time the setting in which Priscilla practiced her profession, as well as a little bit about her personal life. While Agent Froley continued examining Priscilla’s home-office, Agent Rothschild inserted a videotape into the video machine that he and Agent Froley had brought with them. Then he turned to Agent Froley, and said, “Not bad for a PR girl, eh?”

But Agent Froley was lost in his thoughts. He was finally realizing that Priscilla was no ordinary woman, black or otherwise, certainly not of the stereotypical images that he had formed of her in his mind. There was nothing ostensibly feminine in her home-office, either. Agent Froley also determined, and rightly so, that Priscilla was a feminist. Then he put his thoughts into words: “A tad masculine, don’t you think?”

By this time, Priscilla had returned from freshening up and stood on the threshold of the French doors.

“Yeah, Jim, ’cause most of my clients are men, middle-aged white corporate types such as yourself.”

“Oh, I didn’t hear you come in,” Agent Froley said. “Nice place you have here.”

While Priscilla still wore an expression of annoyance, Agent Rothschild had a smirk on his face. He had wanted Agent Froley to see for himself that Priscilla did not fit the mold of the stereotype that he held of black people. The events of the ensuing days, weeks, and months would eradicate any lingering misconceptions that Agent Froley and anybody else might have of her. Now, however, Priscilla wanted to know why they had come to her home-office, albeit unexpectedly, in the first place.

“Yeah, well, next time, make an appointment, and I’ll give you the full tour. But right now, I need you to tell me what’s on your mind. And make it snappy because I’m bushed.”

Agent Froley got straight to the point of their visit. “Yeah, well, we know that you’ve been at the university library all day and that you’re considering joining the Hollingsworth Exploratory Presidential Elections Campaign team. But there’s something more important we need to run past you.”

But Agent Rothschild tugged at Agent Froley’s jacket sleeve. Since he knew how candid his colleague could be, he wanted to approach Priscilla more soberly. The FBI agent had also been aware of Priscilla’s impending meeting with the Hollingsworth Exploratory Presidential Elections Campaign team and had, in fact, been pleased. So, too, had been the folks at Langley, but Priscilla was still new to the intelligence business, so she still behaved as if she were on her own. Right after her time in Africa, Agent Rothschild and his colleagues at the bureau had anticipated that she would attract all sorts of clients, so they maintained close ties with her.

“My, my, you go, girl,” he had said when he heard she had acquired a presidential hopeful for a client. Then, with her customary smirk, Priscilla had returned his smile because she had suddenly remembered her new role as a federal intelligence agent. Then she and Agent Rothschild had laughed at her sudden remembrance of his awareness.

Then, “Ah crap!”

“Yeah, well,” Agent Rothschild added, “but, ‘crap’ is what we either clean up or steer clear of. And as for you, young lady, there’ve been some new developments.” There, he had finally set the stage for Priscilla to listen to what it was that he and Agent Froley had to tell her.

“All right, fellows, so where are we going with all this?”

“Ms. Austin,” Agent Froley said, “We have reason to believe that certain fragments of the SANM PG and the Judges have found new homes in America and that your face is highest on their most-wanted-to-kill list.”

Priscilla’s eyes widened. She sat down in her high-back swivel chair behind her desk. She turned her head from one man to the other.

“Nah, you’re just trying to rouse me. Come on, Jim, Marvin … a pawn like me.”

“Yes, Girlfriend,” Agent Rothschild said as he continued standing at her video recorder, “‘a pawn like you’ that eluded them.”

Not much on small talk, again, Agent Froley got right to the point: “That’s why we’re here. Our job is to protect you. So we need to know if you will let us change your identity, even your face.”

“Oh, no you don’t. I’m not letting you carve up my face. And I’m certainly not going to run and hide. Nothing doing,” she said with clarity and conviction. “That’s just not going to happen.” Then her attitude shifted from annoyance to curiosity.

“Let’s show her the videotapes,” Agent Froley said. “So before you go off to Birmingham, Ms. Austin, you might want to know what you’re up against while working with the Hollingsworth campaign.”

Agent Rothschild began playing the video. Priscilla looked at the images that appeared on the screen. Then Agent Froley told her that—much as the Nazis had done following World War II, some South African terrorists among the SANM PG and the Judges had eluded them by relocating to other parts of the world—some even to the United States and South America, where they assumed new identities. Priscilla knew of one such ex-Nazi, John Demjanyuk, aka Ivan the Terrible. He had been convicted of serving as a prison guard during the h*******t, but before his conviction, Demjanyuk had relocated to Cleveland, Ohio, and lived there many years until he was arrested and turned over to the Israeli government for trial. Then there was the Japanese saboteur Tokyo Rose, who had been convicted of collaborating with the Japanese with her radio broadcasts during the Second World War. Priscilla knew of a saboteur who had posed as Tokyo Rose and who had, like Demjanyuk, immigrated to America and settled near Cleveland.

But then, Priscilla’s naïveté came through like lightning: “But World War II is over. And besides, I don’t give a flip about the Nazis. And they certainly aren’t interested in me.”

“But it’s their ability to relocate and to reinvent themselves that matters,” Agent Froley said. “But now that you mention it … Marvin, show her the footage of the PG and the Judges.”

This time, as Priscilla watched the images on the screen, she actually squirmed in her seat. She saw former PG Commander Alistair Longworth as he directed a group of his men performing the “necklace” ritual on several black men in South Africa. And she almost vomited as she watched the black men hoisting other black men into the holes of rubber tires, Longworth’s men dousing them with kerosene and then striking matches, setting the men and the tires ablaze. Then she saw close-ups of the mutilated thumbs and toes of former headmaster-priest-double agent Jacob Mbuwayesango at the Anglican cathedral boarding school in Harare for “unwanted” mixed-race girls. That was the first time that Priscilla had actually seen what had happened to the headmaster-priest-double agent, someone whom she had once grown fond of. Then she saw PG Commander Damien Escoffery using a machete to mutilate several black men by cutting off their heads, their arms and hands, and other body parts. The next-to-the-last two scenes that the federal agents showed Priscilla were of thirty-nine slain soldiers on the grounds of the Anglican cathedral in Harare that the Judges had shot and killed during their raid of the cathedral.

“And if that isn’t convincing,” Agent Froley added, “take a look at what those bloody teenage assassins did to one another when they sensed the battle had been lost to them.”

Priscilla saw images of forty-six, young, mixed-race female teenagers with single bullet wounds to their heads, lying dead across the floors throughout the Anglican cathedral’s boarding school building, where she had once posed as a housekeeper.

“No! That can’t be real,” she exclaimed.

But the scene that caused Priscilla the greatest discomfort was of the former Duke of Leeds lying dead on the deck of his yacht with a stake in his forehead. She remembered her time inside the Rustenburg Platinum Mine near Pretoria, when she had hammered a stake into the head of Damien Escoffery. So she just sat still and tried to wish it all away.

But Agent Rothschild was trying to make a point. So he stood in front of the video and spoke. “Word is, ‘the Judges kill their most-wanted targets by hammering a stake into their foreheads.’”

Priscilla flinched.

“It is because of you, Miss Prissy,” Agent Rothschild continued, “that their leader-in-training, Camilla Cameron, was killed. And so, you, PJ Austin, are the primary target of the newly revived Order of the Judges, which, incidentally, is now led by a vicious mastermind in Leeds, England.”

Priscilla flinched again.

“So, ‘plainly put,’ as you are prone to say, this time, both the SANM PG and the Judges are after you.” Agent Rothschild thought that he had brought the point home to Priscilla, but she did not even look at him. She just sat stoic at her desk. She was lost in her thoughts about what she had done to the man called Damien inside the Rustenburg Platinum Mine.

Yet, once again, the intelligence officials insisted on providing Priscilla with a new identity, but she rejected their offer, again, in spite of all that she had just gleaned from their conversation and the two videos. In fact, she said, “I’m not going to be one of those people victimized by atrocities like those highlighted in the news in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe.”

Then Agent Froley told her that she would most certainly live her life not knowing whether individuals lurking in her shadows were the good guys or the bad guys. Still, Priscilla had no desire to go into hiding. Essentially, Priscilla remained deep in denial.

While Priscilla listened to Agent Froley and Agent Rothschild speaking of the dangers she would be facing in her work with the Hollingsworth Exploratory Presidential Elections Campaign team, the new leader of the Judges, thousands of miles away, was already—as Agent Froley had warned—issuing a “kill” order on her. Approximately seven young female assassins of mixed race assembled at the Leeds estate of their new leader. They held in their hands black-and-white and color photographs of Priscilla. Some of the prints were from her ill-fated wedding; some were from her press conference in West Germany following her time in Africa; others were from Priscilla’s well-publicized PR portfolio. Without much prodding, therefore, the newly revived Order of the Judges held in their hands copies of the face of their latest target, PJ Austin.

At her mansion in Leeds, the Duchess of Leeds—the new leader of the revived Order of the Judges—openly spoke of her delight that Priscilla had come back out into the open.

“Ah, so she’s finally stepped onto the big stage! Makes our job all the easier,” the duchess said with much glee to the eager gathering of young recruits at her estate.

Home to several British aristocrats, Leeds was also home to South African-born Katarina (de Klerk) Soles who, some thirty years earlier, had entered into a prearranged marriage with the Duke of Leeds. Shortly thereafter, the duke had died of “mysterious circumstances” while the couple had vacationed in the Greek Isles. Then, within months of his death, the duchess had begun openly displaying affection for her live-in companion, Isabella, her true love all along. In the ensuing years, the couple enjoyed the benefits of the duchess’s social station, with the exception of the occasional snub by British aristocracy that had been intolerant of their s****l orientation.

Duchess Katarina (de Klerk) Soles had somehow survived the first purge of the Judges and had become the eldest among the group’s survivors. After the conviction of Lady Beryl, the wife of the former British Foreign Minister, the duchess had taken over control of the South African terrorist female order.

“And with this latest move of hers,” the duchess said of Priscilla’s plans to join the Hollingsworth Exploratory Presidential Elections Campaign team, “she’s led us to yet another of our targets. It’ll be like, how do the Americans put it? ‘Like shooting ducks in a fishbowl, barrel, whatever.’” As the duchess spoke to the eager gathering, Isabella played hostess with all the charm and flair of the most celebrated of the British aristocracy.

Then, “Very good, Madame Duchess, but how shall we put them in the ‘fishbowl?’” asked Tamaren (Bradley) Jones, a protégé of the duchess.

“For now, just keep pitting the congressman’s staff against his scorned Gilda Hawthorne—ha, scorned in love and work! That seems to be working very smoothly.”

“No problem, and so that is what I will do,” Tamaren said.

After Priscilla’s time in Africa, Tamaren had joined the Lazaron Media Group, where she had since worked her way up the ranks, acquiring the confidence of her supervisor, Stacey McMasters. It did not hurt Tamaren’s prospects at Lazaron that the Judges had arranged for Lazaron to get a couple of big contracts from South African-based corporations, contracts for which Tamaren had been assigned as account executive. So women the likes of Tamaren need not carry a gun to be a terrorist after all.

PG Eerik von de Smidthe was aloft as the airliner approached Birmingham. He sat right behind Priscilla and Julia and watched them carefully. He held in his hand a black-and-white photo of Priscilla from her PR agency profile and a color photo of her from her ill-fated wedding to Jonathan Morgan. He thought about the face of the woman sitting in front of him, and mumbled, “Ah yes. That’s the little wench, all right.” Then he heard the captain announcing the airliner was about to land. He could taste victory, his chance to eliminate his target, someone who had rankled the SANM PG from the time of her work as legislative aide to Ohio state Senator Daniel P. Callahan—the sponsor of the SAD Bill—to her eluding them during her time in Africa to her triumphal press conference in West Germany. PG von de Smidthe just knew he would be the one to bring a much-needed victory to the newly revived SANM PG. And so he waited patiently for the right time to take out his target.