Arthur Hailey - Overload

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As always, he took considerable pains over his journal, believing that one day it would be an important historical document, ranking alongside such works as Das Kapital and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung,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.

Georgos Winslow Archambault stopped. Writing tired him. Also, be realized, he was drifting out of the revolutionary jargon which (he had also learned in Cuba) was important, both as a psychological weapon and an emotional outlet. But it was sometimes bard to sustain.

He stood up, stretched and yawned. He had a good, lithe body and kept himself fit with a rigid daily exercise schedule. Glancing in a small, cracked wall mirror be fingered his bushy but trim moustache. He had grown it immediately after the attack on the La Mission generating plant when be had posed as a Salvation Army officer. According to news reports the following day, a plant security guard had described him as clean-shaven, so the moustache might at least confuse identification, if it ever came to that. The Salvation Army uniform had, of course, been destroyed long since.

The memory of the La Mission success pleased Georgos, and he chuckled.

One thing he had not done, either before or after La Mission, was grow a beard. That would be like a signature. People expected revolutionaries to be bearded and unkempt; Georgos was careful to be precisely the reverse. Whenever he left the modest east-side house lie had rented he could be mistaken for a stockbroker or banker. Not that that was difficult for him since he was fastidious by nature and dressed well. The money which the Athens lawyer still paid regularly into a Chicago bank account helped with that, though the amount was less than it used to be, and Georgos needed considerably more cash to finance the future plans of Friends of Freedom.

Fortunately be was already getting some outside help; now the amount from that source would have to be increased.

Only one factor contradicted the cultivated bourgeois image was Georgos' hands.

In the early days of his interest in chemicals, and then explosives, he had been careless and worked without protective gloves. As a result his hands were scarred and discolored. He was more careful now but the damage was done. He had considered seeking skin grafts, but the risks seemed high. The best he could do, when away from the house, was keep his hands out of sight as much as possible.

The agreeable odor of lunch-stuffed bell peppers-drifted down to him from above. His woman, Yvette, was an accomplished cook who knew what Georgos liked and tried to please him. She was also in awe of his learning, having had a minimum of schooling herself.