Gerald N. Lund 4-In-1 Fiction eBook Bundle

by Gerald N. Lund

  Bryce was on his feet, barely conscious that Neal was pulling hard at his coat. The lead soldier, who was dragging the weeping girl toward the door, stopped, shooting a warning glance in Bryce’s direction. The second guard whirled, weapon snapping upward.

  Bryce sat down slowly, averting his eyes. He heard the heavy footsteps approaching, felt Neal tense in the seat next to him. Bryce kept his head down, cursing his stupidity.

  The black boots stopped directly in his line of sight.

  “You got a problem, friend?”

  “No, sir,” Bryce murmured.

  He sensed the movement, tried to duck, but the clubbed fist caught him directly alongside the head. Lights exploded and he reeled back.

  “I’m talking to you, Mister! Look at me when I talk to you.”

  Bryce forced his head up slowly. The barrel of the submachine gun was two inches from his nose.

  “You think she’s pretty? Maybe you’d like to join her!”

  “No, sir.”

  The hand flashed out, knocked his hat flying. Meathook fingers grabbed Bryce by the hair and yanked his head back hard. “What did you say?” he screamed.

  “I said, no, sir.”

  He gave a vicious yank, nearly pulling Bryce’s scalp off, then he let go and laughed raucously. “That’s what I thought you said.”

  Then backing down the aisle slowly, weapon high, he let his eyes challenge everyone else on the bus. No one moved. No one looked at him. The first guard, who had watched the whole thing with faint amusement, waited until his partner pushed by him and stepped off the bus. Then he shoved the girl toward the door. “Get this bus outta here!” he snarled at the driver, and with one last glare at the passengers, he stepped off the bus with the sobbing woman.

  Even as the bus carrying the itinerant workers rolled through the last of the barricades and headed south into the Atlantic States Alliance, a small white car pulled up in front of the Dew Drop Inn in Bollingbroke. Before the driver had shut off the engine, the man who had been nervously peeking out the front window of the motel office was outside and opening the door on the passenger’s side.

  He stepped back, snapping to attention as the short, distinguished-looking man got out of the car, stretched, and looked around curiously.

  “Sir! Captain James Rodale, ISD commander for the Hartford district.”

  The other finished his survey, then finally turned back. His face was pleasant enough, the eyes dark and compelling. The dark hair, thick and wiry, was starting to gray around the temples; the suit was expensive and hand tailored. Rodale quivered slightly in excitement. Here, standing within a foot of him, was the minister of internal affairs for all of CONAS. That surely made him one of the five most powerful men in the entire Confederation of North American States.

  “How was your flight up, sir?”

  The minister nodded, looked up at the motel sign, then started for the office. “Any sign of the owner yet?”

  “No, sir. She’s disappeared along with her son. No one has seen them since Friday morning. The question is, did this Sherwood kill them, too?”

  The minister stopped, looking at him. Rodale nodded grimly. “We’re pretty sure Captain Talbot is dead, sir. Possibly Sergeant Walker too. Come inside and look at what we’ve got.”

  When the Hartford office had received the call Friday morning from a Sergeant Walker in Bollingbroke asking to speak directly to Rodale, a call which was cut off before Rodale got to the phone, the head of ISD in Hartford had done two things. First he had listened to the tape of the phone call again and again. Then he had brought a full investigative team and a completely equipped portable crime lab with him to Bollingbroke. Now it paid off. He rolled out the evidence one piece at a time for the minister—the bullet dug from beneath a newly plastered patch on the wall; the blood samples from the freshly scrubbed wall and carpet—samples that matched Captain Talbot’s blood type; Sergeant Walker’s fingerprints from the hall phone; fibers from the hall carpet where the bodies of both men had been dragged that matched the colors of the suits they had been wearing when they left.

  By the time he finished, the minister was impressed. “You’ve done good work, Rodale. I commend you.”

  Rodale managed to keep his face sober, even though praise from such a source made his head reel.

  “I’m sending up another dozen men. They’ll be under your command.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Scour the whole province if you have to, Rodale. I want our two men found. I want the woman and her son found.” He swung around, and Rodale felt a sudden chill when he saw the fire smoldering in those dark eyes. “Are you sure about the name of this other one?”

  “Yes, sir. When the sergeant called, he gave the name of Bryce Sherwood. That was also the name given to the telephone operator.”

  The minister reached inside his suit coat, brought out a long envelope, and handed it to Rodale. It wasn’t sealed, and the captain opened it. There were three colored photographs inside, all head shots of the same person. Rodale looked at them carefully, one at a time. It was a man in his late twenties, quite good looking, light blond hair combed straight back and with a slight wave, blue eyes, strong jawline, pleasant smile. Finally he looked up.

  “I don’t want these circulated publicly yet,” the minister said shortly. “Only your men are to have copies.”

  “Who is it?”

  The minister looked up from staring at the pictures, his mouth a tight line. “This is Bryce Sherwood.” He ignored Rodale’s startled look. “The question is, is this the same man that was here?”

  Bryce Sherwood and Jessie and Neal Lambert slipped away from the rest of the group as they shambled off the vehicle to line up at reeking public restrooms in a small park.

  For the next three days they moved south through what had once been the states of New York and New Jersey, keeping to the countryside as much as possible, foraging as they went, sleeping in the wooded areas, hopping slow-moving freights under the cover of darkness. Twice they moved into small villages and made contact with the local resistance movement. Each time, Jessie and Neal would go in first, talk quietly, give appropriate code words and verification, and then Bryce would be invited in. There were never any names exchanged. They were never asked from where they had come or where they were going. Once identification was sure, food was supplied along with updates on local ISD activity or military patrols. There would be a quick handshake and fervent good wishes, and they were on their way again.

  As they moved steadily southward, the characteristics of life in the Atlantic States Alliance began to embed themselves deeper and deeper into the mind of Bryce Sherwood. Everywhere he saw three primary qualities of life in this new America—spartan conditions, unremitting labor, and ever-present government control.

  It was not abject poverty like he had seen on a tour he had taken with Senator Hawkes to India and Pakistan, but it was still life at subsistence level. There were few cars, and most of these were old. Houses were small and usually held several families. Food stores carried a few basics and whatever fresh fruit and vegetables might be grown locally, but little else. Bicycles were omnipresent. Walking, even ten or fifteen miles, was commonplace. He smiled grimly at that. The President’s Council on Physical Fitness would be truly proud, for in the ASA, obesity was no longer a national problem.

  It was the grim economic deprivation that drove the unremitting, relentless labor. There were some factories and light industry, but mostly it was muscle power—both animal and human—that fueled the nation. The ASA was the bent back, the shouldered hoe, the sweat-streaked face.

  The images began to burn into his consciousness like firebrands—a six-year-old with an angelic face digging in a trench alongside older brothers and sisters; a teenager, up to his knees in the muck of a dairy corral, loading manure into a cart with a wooden pitchfork; two sisters with long blond hair, barely twenty, heaving huge forkfuls of hay onto a horse-drawn wagon; a whitehaired, gaunt old man staggering
down a rutted road with a wheelbarrow full of potatoes.

  But it was the oppressive, omnipresent government influence that was most depressing. Uniformed soldiers were everywhere, the bureaucracy stultifying. Identity cards were required to transact the simplest business. Getting permission to visit an adjoining village could take hours of standing in lines. Hospital stays required an endless nightmare of forms and permissions.

  To Neal, who had never been out of the New England Confederation, it was an exciting time. He consumed the sights and new experiences with an insatiable hunger. He stood slack-jawed at the high-rise buildings of New York City and the traffic of Philadelphia. Jessie, on the other hand, seemed interested but unimpressed. She lived for one thing, and that was to get Bryce to whatever it was he had to do in the south, then turn west for the United States.

  But to Bryce, it was like being fed a diet of one revolting food after another. He had seen worse things. He had even been in countries where the oppression was more severe. But this was America. This was the countryside he knew; these were the cities he had visited, the people he had mingled with. Before, he had never given any of it much thought. Now every new sight hammered at him like a constant stream of filth and garbage.

  They entered Washington, D.C., on the evening of the fourth day. Correction, Bryce thought to himself. Not Washington, D.C. Just Washington. There was no District of Columbia. The states of New York, Maryland, and Virginia were now just provinces or districts within a province. Some of the familiar names had disappeared altogether.

  As they moved slowly into the city itself, Bryce was sickened. The city laid out under George Washington’s direction was still there, with its great mall cutting down the center, its wide, radial boulevards and spacious vistas. But that was the only recognizable thing. A squat, ugly government building stood at the west end of the reflecting pool, replacing the stately marble columns of the Lincoln Memorial. MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, read the sign as they passed. The Tidal Basin was almost completely hidden behind high-rise apartment buildings stuck into the grass like giant stakes around a muddy pond. There was no Jefferson Memorial, no Washington Monument. And across the Ellipse, where the White House should have been, was a sprawling gray palace bathed in spotlights.

  Bryce slouched down deeper in the seat and closed his eyes, unable to look anymore.

  Chapter 18

  They were sitting in a small apartment in central Washington. In espionage parlance, this was what was known as a safe house, a place where people could hole up, find a place to stay overnight while on the run, or hold a meeting with people whom they weren’t sure about and whom they did not want to know where they really did their business—which was the reason the four of them sat in the safe house now. It was sweltering and stuffy, even though it was past ten o’clock, which left them all in short temper.

  “Look,” Jessie finally said, with some asperity. “For the last five years, our group has been serving as a conduit to help you send people from the ASA north. We’ve taken great risks.”

  The man they knew only as Lewis shook his head stubbornly. “I know that, and that is the only reason you are here right now. But that doesn’t change the fact that this man is an unknown.”

  No one turned to look at Bryce, who sat on a hard-backed chair in one corner.

  “You yourself admit he has been with you only for less than a week.”

  “We have been through much together,” Neal snapped.

  “In less than a week?” Lewis sneered. “Do you think the ISD is so foolish they wouldn’t have their agents appear authentic?”

  Bryce laughed out loud at that. “Right. An ISD agent. That would about round out the picture.”

  Jessie stood up abruptly. She looked at Bryce, then to her son, then finally back to Lewis. “I want to show you something.” She walked to where they had set their luggage in one corner.

  Neal leaped to his feet. “Mom, are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.” She knelt, took a small pocketknife from her purse, and began to slit the stitching on her suitcase. When the opening was big enough, she reached inside and withdrew the thin sheaf of typewritten pages. Then she stood and tossed them on the table in front of Lewis.

  Curious, he leaned over, then his eyes widened. He looked up at her, shocked.

  “Go on,” she said, “look at it.”

  For the next several minutes the room was completely silent. Twice more he looked up at the others in the room, his face registering disbelief. Finally, he pushed the papers aside, turned slowly, and looked up at Jessie, who had stood over him the whole time. “Where did you get this?” he said in a low voice.

  Jessie turned and pointed at Bryce. “He brought it to us.”

  Bryce stopped across the street and half a block down from the headquarters building of the Virginia Provincial Educational District and took a deep breath. He took the envelope out, opened the letter, and read it again for the twentieth time. It introduced him as Mr. John H. Carrol from the Ministry of Education. As he read it, Lewis’s words echoed in his head again. “These papers are of excellent quality, but you must remember, they are what we call shallow cover. There is no John H. Carrol in the Ministry of Education. If anybody decides to check on you, you’re blown!”

  That had sobered Bryce. If Bryce was blown, then Lewis and Jessie and Neal and who knew how many others were also at risk. Once Lewis had read the sacred document—for that was how Bryce was starting to think of it—he had instantly and completely accepted the three refugees from New England. When they had told him of their plans to escape to the West, he agreed to provide critical support. When Bryce told him of his need to find a certain person around the area of Arlington, Virginia, who might be a teacher, he had gone to work immediately, and by late afternoon of the next day, Lewis had produced the letter Bryce now held in his hands.

  There were two women at their desks in the Office of Teacher Placement. A man was partially visible in a smaller office. Bryce stepped up to the counter and cleared his throat. Both women looked up, then the older of the two stood and came to him.

  “Yes, may we help you?”

  Bryce nearly smiled, then remembered Lewis’s reminder. Government officials hold power. Petty power, it may be true, but power nevertheless. Never ask. Demand. So he kept his face impassive as he took out the letter and slid it across to her. “I’m John Carrol, from the Ministry of Education.”

  The woman straightened, and Bryce noted that the other woman was staring at him. The first read the letter as Bryce held his breath. All she had to do was call and check and—

  She looked up at him with new respect. “Let me get Mr. Buckner.”

  But the man in the office had already heard and was coming toward Bryce, smiling obsequiously.

  “Yes, Mr. Carrol, how may we help you?”

  “I want to see a current list of all the teachers in your district.”

  Buckner, a small, nervous man in wire-rimmed glasses, nodded quickly, at the same time reading the letter that was on the counter.

  “Yes, sir.” He turned and snapped his fingers. The first woman instantly went to a file and brought back a folder.

  “Is there something specifically I could help you with?” Buckner said, as he slid it across to Bryce.

  “The list will be fine.” He looked the man squarely in the eye as he opened it.

  Buckner backed away quickly. “If there’s anything else, just call.”

  Bryce didn’t like this role. He softened a little. “Thank you, you’re very helpful.”

  The list was alphabetized, and with a leap of excitement he saw what he was looking for third name down. “Leslie Adams: Teacher, history and government studies, Hillsburg Secondary School. Home address: 667 Walquist Avenue, Hillsburg, Virginia, ASA.” No phone was listed.

  Remembering where he was and who he was supposed to be, he fought down the urge to shout in triumph. Buckner was watching him closely. So Bryce thumbed idly through several pages, as though
searching, found a name in the L’s that lived in Hillsburg, and took out a paper. He wrote that one down, then two more from the S’s. Finally, he turned back to the first page as though he were finished and quickly memorized Leslie’s address. He closed the folder, put the paper back in his pocket.

  “Thank you, Mr. Buckner. You’ve been most helpful. Could you tell me which bus number goes to Hillsburg?”

  “Bus seven.”

  Bryce suddenly realized the foolishness of what he had just done. He looked at his slip of paper. “Let’s see, actually it’s Marysvale I need.”

  “That would be bus thirteen.”

  “Thank you.”

  Only when he was two full blocks away from the school did he suddenly leap upward and punch his fist in the air. “All right!” he whispered exultantly.

  Hillsburg was a small town—almost a village—adjacent to Arlington. Finding the Hillsburg Secondary School was easy. He went to the principal’s office first—or headmaster, as they called him—and produced his credentials. The result was the same. Instant respect and anxious compliance. No, there was no one in particular Bryce wanted to see. He would just walk around and talk with some of the teachers if that was all right, look at the school, see how things were going. He had to be firm with that, or the man would have trailed him like a puppy, wringing his hands nervously.

  He actually talked to only one teacher before he saw her walking down the hall toward him. He stopped, unable to keep from staring. It was Leslie! The same graceful walk, the same dark hair, though it was cut a bit more severely than he remembered. And her clothes, though all right, were clearly not the same as before.

  She smiled faintly at him as she passed, obviously a little embarrassed by the frankness of his stare. There was no flicker of recognition.

  “Uh…say,” Bryce blurted. “Excuse me.”

  She stopped and turned back slowly.

  Flustered now, all he could think of was to fall back on his cover. “My name is…uh…John H. Carrol. I’m from the Ministry of Education.”