Except Bowen didn’t go recruiting members like the other Klans and even the Klan name was little more than a flag of convenience for him. The White Confederates never numbered more than a dozen individuals, but they wielded power and influence beyond their size and contributed significantly to the ongoing Nazification of the Klan in the 1980s, further blurring the traditional lines between the Klansmen and the neo-Nazis.

Bowen wasn’t a Holocaust denier either: he liked the idea of the Holocaust, the possibility of a force capable of murder on a previously unthought of scale, murder with a sense of order and planning behind it. It was this, more than any moral qualms, that had led Bowen to distance himself from the casual outrages, the sporadic outbursts of violence, that were endemic to the movement. At the annual Stone Mountain rally in Georgia he had even publicly condemned one incident, the beating to death of a middle-aged black man named Bill Perce in North Carolina by a group of drunken klavern rejects, only to hear himself booed off the platform. Since then, Bowen had avoided Stone Mountain. They didn’t understand him and he didn’t need them, although he continued to work behind the scenes, supporting occasional Klan marches in small towns on the Georgia-South Carolina border. Even if, as frequently occurred, only a handful of men took part, the threat of a march still gained newspaper coverage and bleats of outrage from liberal sheep, and contributed to the atmosphere of intimidation and distrust that Bowen needed for his work to continue. The White Confederates was largely a front, a piece of theater akin to the waves of a magician’s wand before a trick is performed. The real trickery was being performed out of sight, and the movement of the wand was not only unconnected with the illusion but largely immaterial to it.

For it was Bowen who was trying to heal the old enmities; Bowen who was building bridges over the divides between the Christian Patriots and the Aryans, the skinheads and the Klans; Bowen who was reaching out to the more vocal, and extreme, members of the Christian right; Bowen who understood the importance of unity, of intercommunication, of extending the funding base; and Bowen who now felt that, by bringing Faulkner under his protection, he could convince those who believed the preacher’s story to redirect their money toward him. The Fellowship had pulled in more than $500,000 dollars in the year before Faulkner’s arrest. It was small beans compared to the kind of cash flow enjoyed by the better-known televangelists but it represented serious income to Bowen and his kind. Bowen had watched the money flowing into Faulkner’s appeal fund: there was already enough to meet 10 percent of a low seven-figure bail and then some, and it was still coming in, but no bondsman would be crazy enough to cover Faulkner’s bail in the event of a review finding in his favor. Bowen had other plans, other irons in the fire. If they played it right, Faulkner could be out and vanished before the end of the month, and if rumors persisted that Bowen had squirreled him away to safety, then so much the better for Bowen. In fact, it wouldn’t much matter after that if the preacher lived or died. It would be enough that he remained unseen, and he could do that just as easily below ground as above it.

But Bowen also felt an admiration for what the old preacher and his Fellowship had achieved. Without resorting to the bank jobs that had undermined the Order, and with manpower never numbering more than four or five persons, he had carried out a campaign of murder and intimidation against soft targets for the best part of three decades and had covered his tracks brilliantly. Even the FBI and the ATF were still having problems connecting the Fellowship to the deaths of abortion doctors, outspoken homosexuals, Jewish leaders, and the other bugbears of the far right whose annihilation Faulkner was believed to have authorized.

It was strange, but Bowen had barely considered the possibility of allying himself to Faulkner’s cause until Kittim had appeared. Kittim was a legend among the extreme right, a folk hero. He had come to Bowen shortly after Faulkner’s arrest, and from there, the idea of involving himself with the case had just come naturally to Bowen. And if he couldn’t remember exactly what Kittim was reputed to have done, or even where he had come from, well, that hardly mattered. That was the way with folk heroes, wasn’t it? They were only partly real, but with Kittim beside him, Bowen felt a new sense of purpose, of near invincibility.

It was so strong that he hardly noticed the fear that he felt in the man’s presence.

Bowen’s admiration, spurred into action by Kittim’s arrival, had apparently appealed to Faulkner’s ego, for through his lawyers the preacher had agreed to nail his colors to Bowen’s mast, had even offered up funds from hidden accounts, untraceable by his persecutors, if Bowen could arrange his disappearance. More than anything else, the old man did not want to die in jail; he would rather be hunted for the remainder of his life than rot behind bars while awaiting trial. Faulkner had asked for just one further favor. Bowen had been kind of annoyed at this, given the fact that he was already offering to hide Faulkner from the law, but when Faulkner told him what he wanted Bowen had relaxed. It was just a small favor, after all, and would give Bowen almost as much pleasure as it would give Faulkner.

Bowen believed that, in Kittim, he had found just the man for the job, but he was wrong.

In truth, the man had found him.

Bowen’s truck pulled into the small clearing before the hut, just across the South Carolina state line in eastern Tennessee. The building was dark wood, four rough-hewn steps leading to a porch, two narrow windows on either side. It looked like a blockhouse, designed with defense in mind.

A man sat on a rocking chair to the right of the door, smoking a cigarette. This was Carlyle. He had short curly hair that had begun to recede when he was in his early twenties but had mysteriously arrested its retreat in his thirties, leaving him with a clown wig of fair hair around his domed skull. He was in good condition, like most of those whom Bowen kept close. He drank little, and Bowen couldn’t remember ever having seen him smoke before. He looked tired and ill. Bowen noticed the smell as he approached: vomit.

“You okay?” asked Bowen.

Carlyle wiped his lips with his fingers and examined the tips for any detritus. “Why? I got shit on me?”

“No, but you smell bad.”

Carlyle took a last drag on the cigarette, then carefully extinguished the butt on the sole of his boot. When he was satisfied that it was cold, he tore it to shreds and let the breeze carry the remains away.

“Where did we get this guy, Roger?” he asked when he was done.

“Who? Kittim?”

“Yeah, Kittim.”

“He’s a legend,” said Bowen. It had the sound of a mantra about it.

Carlyle ran a hand over his bare pate. “I know that. I mean, I think I know.” His features collapsed into uncertainty, then rebuilt themselves into an expression of disgust. “Anyway, wherever he came from, he’s a freak.”

“We need him.”

“We got by okay without him until now.”

“This is different. Did you get anything out of the guy?”

Carlyle shook his head.

“He doesn’t know anything. He’s just muscle.”

“You sure?”

“Believe me, if he knew anything he’d have told us by now. But that sick fuck keeps at him.”

Bowen wasn’t a great believer in Jewish conspiracies. Sure, there were wealthy Jews with power and influence, but they were pretty scattered when you looked at the big picture. Still, if Faulkner was to be believed, some old Jews in New York had tried to have him killed, and had dispatched a man to do it. That man was now dead, but Faulkner wanted to know who had sent him so that, when the time came, he could revenge himself upon them, and Bowen was of the opinion that it couldn’t hurt to know what they were up against. That was why they had taken the kid, pulled him from the streets of Greenville after he drew attention to himself by asking the wrong questions in the wrong places. After that, he had driven him up here, gagged and bound in the trunk of a car, and handed over to Kittim.