The blond man snapped his finger at the bartender, who’d moved away when he’d suspected a conflagration. The bartender brought the bottle of vodka over and filled Yuri’s glass to the brim.

“My name’s Curt Rogers,” the blond man said. He eased himself onto the stool next to Yuri. “And this here is Steve Henderson.” Curt gestured to a red-headed fellow who took the seat on the other side of Yuri. Although Steve was much more heavily muscled than Curt, he resembled Curt particularly in regard to his dress. His T-shirt had the exact same insignia.

The first meeting had led to several subsequent ones, since the three men found that they shared similar opinions on issues beside anti-Semitism. There was a particularly strong meeting of the minds concerning their respective views about the current U.S. government.

“The whole goddamn mess is illegal, oppressive, and unconstitutional,” Curt had whispered when the issue first came up. “And there’s only one solution. The U.S. government has to be overthrown by force of arms. There’s no other way. And it’s got to be soon, because the Zionists are getting stronger every day.”

“Really?” Yuri had asked. He’d been shocked to hear that there were Americans who disliked the government. And according to Curt, who was an authority on all aspects of the U.S. government as well as U.S. history, the malcontents weren’t just a tiny minority. The patriots, as Curt called them, were sprinkled all over the country. They were all heavily armed and waiting for the sign for them to rise up in revolt.

“Mark my word,” Curt had whispered on another occasion.

“I’ve got it on unimpeachable authority that the government’s training Gurkha troops in Montana with thousands upon thousands of black helicopters. Unless something’s done to this renegade government they’re going to swoop out of their base in the near future and take away every gun from every goddamn patriot in the country. Then we’ll be defenseless against the worldwide Zionists.”

Back then Yuri had not known what “unimpeachable” meant but he didn’t bother to ask since he’d gotten the drift of Curt’s message. The U.S. government was far more perverse and more dangerous than he’d imagined. It also became clear that both he and Curt wanted to do something about it, and indeed they could help each other since each could do something the other couldn’t. Yuri had the technological experience and the know-how necessary to build a bioweapon of mass destruction, while Curt had the people who could get the necessary equipment and materials. Curt had started a skinhead militia he called the People’s Aryan Army, and he claimed his shock troops would obey any order he gave them.

“An agricultural pest control sprayer? No problem!” Curt had said in response to one of Yuri’s early inquiries. “We can steal one from out on Long Island when the need arises. They use them in the potato fields. Most of the time they’re just sitting out there waiting for the taking.”