Exile Hunter

by Preston Fleming

  Linder was struck by the casual informality of the court, the constant murmur of side conversations, paper shuffling and hands laid on neighbors’ shoulders in a familiar way. The phrase “banality of evil” came to mind, bringing info focus how tyranny was not the product of tyrants alone, but also of ordinary people who accepted the premises of state power and obeyed unjust orders with the attitude that their behavior was perfectly normal.

  The chief judge opened the proceeding with a similarly casual air.

  “Well,” he said with a half-stifled yawn, “I guess we might as well get started.” He spoke slowly with a Carolina drawl, and his swept-back silvery mane, drooping jowls, and black-framed bifocals perched on a perpetually knitted brow gave him an air of weighty authority.

  The chief judge asked Linder his name, date and place of birth, occupation, rank, years of government service and other information listed on the inside flap of the file jacket. Then he read the indictment. Nothing in the bill of particulars surprised Linder, as it merely restated the various accusations his interrogators had hurled at him throughout weeks of nightly interrogations. The charges bristled with names of contacts and co-conspirators situated within the U.S. and abroad, starting with alleged plots hatched even before Linder had joined the Department. Nearly all Linder’s DSS informants and recruited agents were cited under their codenames either as victims of his treachery or as co-conspirators.

  Foremost among the charges leveled against him were treasonous acts of aiding and comforting insurgents and subversive organizations operating both in the U.S. and abroad. All manner of related charges were then layered on, including seditious conspiracy, sabotage, advocating overthrow of the government, espionage, and international terrorism. All were artfully fabricated to appear plausible in the light of Linder’s years of undercover work for the CIA and the DSS.

  The chief judge then turned the floor over to the lead prosecutor, a tall, slender, fair-haired young man with a patrician profile and cerebral aspect.

  “Are you personally acquainted with the late Philip Eaton, who has been convicted in absentia of treason and other offenses against national security?” the prosecutor questioned.

  Linder recoiled. Though he had suspected it, interrogators had never let on that Eaton was dead. He remembered the shouts and screams piped into his embassy cell and wondered if the old man had lived long enough to complete his interrogation.

  “I wasn’t aware that he had died,” Linder answered.

  “Answer yes or no to the question.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know his son-in-law, Roger Kendall, who has been similarly convicted?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you know their associate, Phipps Chase, now a fugitive from justice, last known to be in Europe?”

  “Yes,” he answered, stifling a laugh at the garbled name.

  “And did you give aid and comfort to these known enemies of the Unionist State of America and conspire with them to overthrow the popularly elected government through armed attacks on its officials and installations?”

  “Hell no.”

  The prosecutor smiled and turned to face the three judges.

  “The prisoner denies the conclusion, but he cannot deny the facts on which it is based. In these proceedings, Your Honor, we will present those facts, one by one, and then demonstrate the pattern they form. When we have finished, it will be abundantly clear that the accused has committed treasonous acts and should be found guilty as charged by this court.”

  The chief judge nodded and the prosecutor went on to read from a contact report that Linder had written years before, describing a clandestine meeting between him, as an undercover officer, and a member of the Rocky Mountain Militia, which was then mounting guerrilla attacks against government troops in Colorado.

  “’…and we agreed that the team’s next target for assassination should be the District Director of FEMA for Colorado and Utah. I offered to support them with forty untraceable Belgian FAL assault rifles, which I delivered to them the next morning.’ Did you deliver the rifles as promised?” the prosecutor demanded.

  “Yes, but our technicians had removed their firing pins. It was a sting operation. I was acting as a DSS undercover officer.“ Linder pointed out.

  “Let the record show that the prisoner answered “Yes.” Strike the additional comments. I submit the prisoner’s Colorado contact report as Exhibit A.”

  The prosecutor read from another contact report in which Linder had described a meeting in Berlin with an exiled rebel leader who sought Linder’s help in returning to the U.S. to join the insurgency.

  “'He told me his greatest concern about traveling to the U.S. for the operation was the difficulty of obtaining a U.S. visa that would withstand scrutiny at the border. I took his passport and returned it two days later with a valid U.S. tourist visa that I said I had obtained by bribing a vice consul sympathetic to the rebel cause.’” The prosecutor paused for emphasis. “I ask the accused: did you deliver the aforesaid visa?”

  “Yes,” Linder replied, “but we arrested the suspect the moment he got off the plane. It was a set-up. Can't you see that?”

  “Strike the prisoner’s additional comments and enter an answer of ‘Yes’ to the question.”

  Linder looked back in mute appeal at his defense attorney, who shook his head, advising the defendant to remain silent.

  For the next three hours, the prosecutor read excerpt after excerpt from official documents in which Linder described his dealings with known or suspected insurgents as part of a broader scheme to lure them into captivity or ambush. In each case, Linder’s actions were taken out of context and made to appear as if he had acted on his own to help the enemy. His attempts to clarify or explain were dismissed out of hand and struck from the record. His defense attorney, seated at a table slightly behind him and to his left, scribbled notes from time to time on a legal pad but raised no objections. Though Linder never expected impartiality from such a tribunal, its overwhelming one-sidedness and the lack of opportunity for rebuttal did not even meet the standards of a show trial.

  At last, the chief judge banged his gavel and called an adjournment for lunch. The judges, prosecutors, bailiff, court reporter, and defense attorney left the room. Halfway through the lunch hour a fresh pair of guards replaced the ones who had sat through the morning portion of the hearing. Linder was given neither food nor water. He was, however, permitted to urinate in the prisoner’s lavatory, and thereafter to sit cross-legged on the floor at the rear of the courtroom until the judges returned from lunch. He remained shackled at all times.

  The afternoon’s proceedings turned away from the who, what, and where of Linder’s alleged crimes and centered more on the how and why. At the chief judge’s direction, Linder answered the first few questions in as few words as possible, so as not to antagonize the court. He admitted facts that were indisputable and denied those that were false. Whenever he sought permission to extend his answer, however, the court refused. Even his defense attorney seemed annoyed whenever Linder strayed from the script.

  Upon reflection, it seemed to Linder that the heart of the case against him was rooted in a loose set of circumstances: that he had been raised in a heavily Catholic suburb on Cleveland’s East Side where anti-Unionist militias had later taken root; and that Linder had allegedly harbored a clandestine sympathy for friends and neighbors in the militias even before he became an officer in the Department of State Security. During his years of undercover work in the Department, the prosecutor alleged, these sympathies had matured into a shift in loyalty away from the Unionist State toward the insurgent cause.

  The prosecution’s ensuing review of Linder’s DSS career sought to demonstrate that the defendant had on many occasions covertly aided and abetted enemies of the state like Philip Eaton and Chase Phipps. Linder’s counter-allegations against Bob Bednarski were cut short and dismissed as a self-serving diversion. Proof of Linder’s true intentions, the pros
ecution insisted, could be found in his promise to Eaton, recorded via long-range microphones, to “go to bat” for the rebel financier.

  The afternoon session ended after three more hours, when the female associate judge took the chief judge by the elbow and whispered in his ear. The latter glanced at his watch, then promptly banged his gavel, and declared an adjournment until the following morning. Once the judges and other court officers left the room, the bailiff called Linder’s two guards to attention, while the defense counsel made his way to where the prisoner stood, still shackled to his chair.

  “I'm Paul Griggs,” the public defender introduced himself. “The court appointed me to represent you.”

  “Terrific,” Linder replied. “When do you plan to start?”

  Griggs threw Linder a sharp look.

  “This isn’t courtroom TV, mister,” he said, folding his bifocals and returning them to his pocket. “This is a National Security Tribunal. The rules of procedure here don’t permit the defense to raise objections. My turn to speak comes at the end, right before they pronounce you guilty.”

  “How encouraging,” Linder remarked, suddenly feeling weak at the knees and slumping back into his chair. Though he had realized from the start that his chance of acquittal was slim, he felt like a complete fool for having believed he had any chance at all. “If it’s not a state secret, what do you intend to say in my defense when your turn finally comes?”

  “I plan to throw your case at the mercy of the court.”

  Linder let out a dismissive snort. “Why not try arguing the facts and the law? These charges are complete hogwash and you know it.”

  Griggs shook his head.

  “Too late for that now. They’ve made up their minds. The only thing left is to decide how hard they’re going to hit you. My job is to persuade them to soften the blow.”

  Griggs turned on his heel without waiting for an answer.

  When the courtroom emptied, the guards slipped the hood over Linder’s head and led him out into the prison yard, where he felt a chill wind blowing dead leaves in swirls around his bare feet. The air smelled of rain, wet earth, and rotting leaves and Linder wondered whether he would be buried six feet beneath earth like this by the time winter turned the rain to snow. He took in a deep breath while trying to imprint on his memory the smell and feel and sound of the wind that gusted around him.

  When Linder reached his cell, another meal of bread, water, and a ration bar awaited him. He squatted cross-legged on his bunk and contemplated the day’s events while peeling back the bar’s foil wrapping and taking the first bite. He ate slowly, focusing on the dominant vanilla flavor and then on the various other flavor notes, some bitter or rancid. When the trial ended, he would likely be transferred to another facility, either a federal prison or possibly a corrective labor camp. Depending on where he ended up, the food might be better or worse, but at least it would be a change.

  And now that change was nearly upon him, for it seemed to Linder that the trial was already over but for the sentencing. Considering his years of government service and the fact that his jailers had failed to extract a signed confession, it might still be possible for his sentence to come in at the low end for national security crimes, perhaps only five to ten years. On the other hand, if he were convicted on the most serious charges, the judges could impose the death penalty.

  Knowing that whatever happened to him now was largely beyond his control, Linder slept more soundly that night than he had in weeks. The guards came to his cell earlier than usual the next morning. As Linder crossed the courtyard to the trial annex, he felt droplets of misty rain hit his forehead and savored the scent of fallen leaves and tree bark. When the guard stopped him halfway across the yard and made him wait there without explanation, he slipped his feet out of his flip-flops and seized the chance to wiggle his toes in the moist earth.

  Linder arrived in the courtroom with muddy feet, where the judges, prosecutors, and other court officers faced him with the peevish scowls of early morning. Yesterday’s informality was gone. The chief judge seemed impatient to get on with the proceedings and recited the charges in a hurried monotone.

  The lead prosecutor then took over with a recapitulation of the State’s conspiracy theory, linking Linder to Eaton, Kendall, Chase Phipps, and two dozen other alleged co-conspirators dating all the way back to Linder’s middle-school days. Whenever he turned to face the accused, the prosecutor’s upper lip curled into a snarl and his words were laden with sarcasm, innuendo, and name-calling.

  When the attorney invoked the names of Philip Eaton and Roger Kendall for what seemed like the hundredth time, Linder could no longer restrain himself.

  “Why not bring Kendall here? Let me confront him,” he called out. “And Denniston and Bednarski, too, while you’re at it.”

  The prosecutor paused to send Linder a withering stare before resuming his diatribe.

  “You, sir, are a highly accomplished liar,” the prosecutor addressed Linder when summing up his closing argument. “For years untruths have been your stock-in-trade. Now the time has come to strip away the lies and lay bare the naked truth. You stand guilty on all counts and everyone here can see it as plain as day.”

  “On the contrary,” Linder replied. “I have told you the truth from the beginning. I’m innocent. And the prosecution has failed to prove otherwise beyond a reasonable doubt.”

  “Does the defense counsel have anything to add?” the chief judge asked, nodding to Paul Griggs.

  “The prisoner’s testimony speaks for itself, Your Honor,” Griggs replied. “But I respectfully reserve the right to address the court during the sentencing phase.”

  “Very well," the judge replied. "At this point I have a request of my own. After reviewing the exhibits presented by the prosecution, I would like to compare them to a specimen of the prisoner’s signature.”

  Linder cast a suspicious glance at the chief judge.

  “Don't worry, prisoner," the judge answered. "I am not asking you to sign anything substantive. Bailiff, prepare a slip of paper large enough for the prisoner’s signature and nothing more.”

  The bailiff brought Linder a card no larger than a cigarette paper. He wrote his signature diagonally across the card, filling the entire space, and handed it back.

  The chief judge examined the signature before passing it to the bailiff, who handed it to the prosecuting attorneys and defense counsel. Next, the lead prosecutor removed a document from his file and presented it to the chief judge. For several minutes, the three judges examined the document and spoke to each other in hushed tones. Finally, the chief judge asked the bailiff to show the final page of the document to Linder.

  “Do you recognize the signature as your own?” the chief judge demanded.

  “It looks like mine, but I’m sure I never signed this confession, if that’s what you mean.” All at once Linder remembered the injection the troll had given him at his final interrogation. There had been a document and the troll had given him a pen.

  “Are you denying that you signed it?”

  “If I did sign, I was not aware of it and had no intent to sign. I certainly don’t admit to anything that’s in this document,” he answered, raising his finger to point at the confession and coming up short as his handcuffed fist reached the end of its chain. “This is an outrage, Your Honor!”

  The chief judge conferred again with his two colleagues, then with the lead prosecutor and the defense attorney. Afterward, the latter approached Linder and bent low to speak in hushed tones.

  “That confession is your last chance,” Griggs warned, wiping nervous sweat from his brow. “Accept it and you may still get off relatively lightly. Refuse and you’re finished. Lights out.”

  “I’ve changed my mind about you, Griggs,” Linder replied with ill-concealed scorn. “I don’t want you defending me any more. You’re fired.”

  Griggs flustered, then turned away from Linder to address the chief judge.

  “
Your Honor, the defense rests.”

  “One moment, Your Honor,” the lead prosecutor called out. “May we have a finding on the admissibility of the prisoner’s signed confession?”

  “It will be admitted into evidence as Exhibit K,” the chief judge replied.

  The prosecution team beamed and shook each other’s hands while the judges gathered loose papers and stuffed them into orange file jackets. Linder felt disgusted that the American rule of law had sunk so low, but at the same time he recognized how little moral standing he had to complain about fairness. Over the past seven years, he had helped to send scores of his fellow citizens to courts just like this one, where they had received the same quality of justice. He recognized the irony of his situation and felt a sardonic smile twist his lips.

  “All rise,” the chief judge announced, fixing his eyes on Linder. “The court finds the defendant guilty on all counts. Were it not for certain extenuating circumstances, the punishment would have been death by firing squad. But because of the defendant’s prior government service and his voluntary confession, the court sentences the defendant Warren Linder to spend the rest of his life at hard labor in a Corrective Labor Camp north of the sixtieth parallel.”

  So that was it, Linder thought, breathing rapidly now, his blood rising. Life at hard labor, so they could avoid the unpleasant business of executing a former guardian of the state. Siberian exile. Oblivion.

  Linder remained standing until all the court officers filed out of the room. Instead of two guards, there were now four to escort him back to his cell. They didn’t use the hood yet, however, which allowed Linder to see the troll waiting for him on a bench outside the courtroom. The interrogator approached and, for a moment, Linder half expected him to reach out for a handshake.