Exile Hunter

by Preston Fleming

  Linder sometimes wondered what would become of his relationship with Denniston if the latter failed to conquer his sense of inferiority. At a time when American political life had been turned on its head, with old elites toppled and former outcasts risen to power, he had watched the country’s Unionist leaders transmute their feelings of envy and victimhood in an unquenchable thirst for dominion. If Denniston were to follow the same road after joining the DSS, might not an old college chum become a convenient target for his misplaced rage?

  But before Linder could take the thought any further, he stopped to help Nora into her seat and pour what was left of the champagne into the women’s flutes. No sooner had he motioned to José for another bottle than Sheila grasped his hand.

  “Come with me,” the blonde said, rising to her feet. “The next dance is mine.”

  Linder gave Sheila a polite smile before turning to asking Nora if she minded sitting out the next tune.

  “I could use a breather,” Nora replied with an easy laugh while reaching for her glass. “Knock yourselves out.

  But as he walked Sheila onto the dance floor for a rumba, Linder glanced back at Denniston and was alarmed to see a depth of malice in the man’s eyes that he had never noticed before. Though he had not yet decided whether to join Denniston at the DSS, he did know this much: if he did, he would keep him at arm’s length from now on.

  S7

  Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Jean Jacques Rousseau

  MID-DECEMBER, UNIDENTIFIED AIR FORCE BASE IN MARYLAND OR NORTHERN VIRGINA

  Warren Linder awoke suddenly and felt the cold bite of handcuffs and leg irons at his wrists and ankles.

  In his dream, he had been reading a newspaper while seated in a leather easy chair inside a walnut-paneled study, which was handsomely furnished with oriental rugs, brass ornamental trays, inlaid Egyptian woodwork, and other Arab artifacts. To his left, French doors opened onto a balcony, where palms and dwarf lemon and frangipani trees baked in giant terracotta pots under a late afternoon sun. A sultry breeze riffled the pages of the newspaper, causing him to raise his eyes and notice a white-haired man of about seventy in a beige linen suit seated opposite him with an open book on his lap.

  Though the old man’s face was cast in shadow, Linder recognized him instantly as the late Philip Eaton, now tanned, well rested, and in the peak of health. But having felt the reproach of so many former targets in his nightmares, Linder panicked at the sight of Eaton and froze from fear that the man’s fingers would be at his throat in a flash. He awoke in a sweat and, for a moment, could not remember where he was.

  When he did remember, it was as if he had awakened from one nightmare into another. An hour or so earlier, he had boarded an aging Boeing 757 airliner reconfigured for prisoner transport. By his estimate, the aircraft held more than 250 prisoners packed tightly in rows of web frame seats to which each man was shackled at the waist, with wrists and ankles bound to the waist chain.

  Sometime before dawn, his guards at the Virginia interrogation prison had summoned him from his cell and thrown him into a blacked-out school bus with some thirty other prisoners. They drove for about ninety minutes to a military airfield, perhaps Andrews Air Force Base or the Patuxent Naval Air Station, where a queue of identical buses waited to disgorge their passengers onto the tarmac.

  Announcements aboard the bus were terse. There would be no toilet breaks in flight. No food or water would be served. Prisoners who disobeyed orders or acted out would be tazered, restrained, and sedated and would remain in their seats no matter what.

  On boarding the airplane, Linder felt overwhelmed by the sudden transition from solitude to close confinement with 250 other prisoners. The reek of foul breath and sweat, the jabs of elbows, the outpouring of curses and complaints in the most creative and colorful language, momentarily overwhelmed him. Mercifully, the ambient light was low and the windows were blacked out, making it difficult to see the faces of all but his nearest companions. Like him, they looked pale and drawn, with shaven heads and orange coveralls hanging loosely across their scrawny shoulders. Nonetheless, these were not the faces of common criminals. Years ago one would have called them political prisoners, but now the official term for them was national security cases.

  Linder closed his eyes and listened to the low murmurings and occasional shouts and ravings of his fellow passengers. Once the initial outpouring of complaints receded, few of the prisoners had much else to say. Having likely spent weeks or months in solitary confinement, most appeared to need time to adjust to the change. For the moment, Linder’s own thoughts were too confused to articulate. Ideas intersected like tangled vines, surfacing as long-repressed memories of random times and places. Amid such confusion, conversational ability did not return quickly or all at once, but in slowly and gradually.

  Linder listened to his neighbors call out blunt questions to their nearest neighbors and receive equally blunt answers. They asked if anyone was from their home city, or attended the same college or high school, or served in the same military unit. To Linder’s relief, his immediate neighbors ignored him. He had little interest in them, either, and contented himself with lying back and merging into the anonymous crowd. He felt no need just yet to reach out and find himself a friend.

  “Where are we going?” someone called from the row behind him.

  “North. All the way north,” came a muffled voice further back.

  “What do you mean? The North Pole? Santaland?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” muffled voice replied. “Alaska. Maybe the Yukon.”

  “Don’t they have any labor camps in the Sunbelt?” a voice with a New York accent complained.

  “Not for the likes of us, brother,” a deep-voiced Southerner answered.

  “Alaska, nonstop from D.C.? Can this plane do that?” the New Yorker protested. “I don’t think my bladder can handle it.”

  “The 757 doesn’t have the range,” replied a prisoner to Linder’s left. “We’ll probably stop to refuel in the Dakotas, either at Grand Forks or Ellsworth. From there, they’ll probably take us to Elmendorf Air Force Base, in Anchorage. That’s the main hub for connecting flights to the northern camps.”

  Linder turned to face his neighbor. It was an earnest and intelligent face, with a long nose and cleft chin, sparkling blue eyes and a wide expressive mouth. Unlike most of his fellow passengers, the neighbor was clean-shaven, with only a day’s growth of stubble, and his thinning hair was trimmed to a buzz cut. But his face and neck had the flaccid look of someone who had spent long months in prison and his overalls were as worn and soiled as anyone’s. Linder formed the impression that his seatmate was an intellectual of some sort, but not an agitator or conspirator of the kind who posed an obvious threat to national security.

  “How do you know so much about the camps?” Linder inquired, straining to be heard over the background noise and already feeling hoarse from raising his voice after using it so little in recent months.

  “I worked for a Congressman. He had a seat on the Armed Services Committee, so I got to visit some bases up there.”

  “What are you in for?” Linder asked.

  “Sedition,” the man replied. “A tenner.”

  “I'm envious,” Linder offered with the trace of a smile. “I got life. If you can call it that...”

  “Wow. What did they pin on you to deserve that?”

  “Treason, sedition, sabotage, espionage. They even tossed in some tax evasion,” Linder replied.

  “Well, you must have really rocked the boat. Would I be correct in guessing you were a public servant of some kind? A whistleblower, perhaps?”

  “I was in intelligence,” Linder answered, having decided during his interrogation not to conceal his prior line of work from his fellow prisoners. “Whether we served the public is another question,” Linder added. “But no whistles were involved.”

  “I’m Sam Burt,” the seatmate answered with an engaging smile. “Call me Sam.” He extend
ed his right hand to grasp Linder’s left, which was as far as both could reach, since each prisoner’s hands were shackled to his waist chain.

  “I’m Warren,” Linder replied.

  “Tell me, Warren,” Burt asked with a wry smile, “if you were one of them, what are you doing in here with us?”

  “The Party ran low on enemies and resorted to eating its young. One day you’re marching in lockstep with history, and the next you’re frog marched off to a cell somewhere,” Linder answered with a sardonic smile.

  “And just how long might one expect a life sentence to last in a northern camp?” Burt asked.

  “A few months, a few years,” Linder answered evasively, looking at the floor. “I suppose some might make it to ten,” he added, looking up at Burt. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

  “Well, I’m counting on it being good,” Burt declared with a determined look. “I certainly don't plan on dying up there before I complete my sentence.”

  “Nor do I,” Linder replied. Though he liked what he saw in Burt, he had little interest in continuing the conversation. Instead, he felt a growing urge to sleep, perhaps brought on by the low lighting and the white noise of the jet engines. “Look, there’s a time for everything,” he added. “Let’s get some rest and talk again later, okay? The flight’s going to be a long one.”

  And without waiting for a response, Linder leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

  * * *

  The Boeing landed two or three hours later, presumably for refueling. While the doors opened and some of the crew deplaned, all prisoners remained shackled to their seats. The stench of vomit, urine, and feces was overpowering and the open doors did little to dispel it. After about forty minutes, the doors reclosed and the aircraft took off again for a flight that Linder guessed lasted about five hours. As soon as they were airborne, Linder and Burt resumed their discussion, sharing their stories and revealing their hopes and fears with the desperate frankness of men newly emerged from solitary confinement. Each found something to like in the other, and though they would likely be separated on arrival, they agreed to do their best to seek each other out during the days ahead.

  Night had fallen by the time the prisoners queued up to descend the boarding stairs onto a snow-covered tarmac under an array of dazzlingly bright halogen floodlights. To the right of the Boeing was a twelve-foot chain-link fence topped by razor wire, while to the left, separating the prisoners from the airfield, were at least thirty soldiers with submachine guns and nearly as many dog handlers.

  Once their eyes adjusted to the bright lights, the two men gave the airfield a careful look around and Burt told Linder that they had probably landed at Elmendorf Air Force Base, outside Anchorage, Alaska, the primary hub for nearly everything that the U.S. government flew in or out of Alaska since the Manchurian War had broken out four years earlier. Though the floodlights made it difficult to see beyond the apron where the 757 was parked, Burt pointed out two more 757s, a couple of 737s, and an unmarked 747 further down the runway.

  “If there were a way out of here, now would be the time.” Burt mused as they queued for the yellow school buses that would take them on the next leg of their journey.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Linder replied, cocking a thumb at the soldiers and the dogs. “Those dogs would tear us to pieces if the guards didn’t shoot us first.”

  They both cast a glance at a deep-chested Alsatian panting at its keeper’s side not twenty feet away.

  “But once we’re in camp that’ll be it for the rest of our lives. Are you willing to face that?” Burt protested.

  “Escape is dangerous anytime and anywhere,” Linder acknowledged. “With security like this and no head start, an attempt right now would be suicide. I’m not willing to cash it in just yet.”

  “Are you married?” Burt asked suddenly.

  Linder shook his head.

  "Any close family?"

  “A sister,” Linder replied.

  “So if you got out, where would you go?”

  “I’m not sure,” Linder answered. “I’d go to my sister, except that’s the first place they’d look. Not so good for her…”

  “I know what you mean,” Burt replied softly. “I figure that, if I made it to Philadelphia to see my wife and kids, they’d probably nab me on the spot. But, if I ever do escape, that’s exactly where I’m going. To me, family is everything. It'd be worth it.”

  Linder opened his mouth but thought better of it. He didn’t want to add to the man’s mental burden by pointing out the suffering the DSS would inflict upon his family if he were ever known to have escaped.

  The queue moved forward rapidly as more buses arrived. Once aboard, the prisoners were taken to a one-story brick terminal building in a secluded corner of the base. Burt pointed out several indications that the small terminal did not belong to the Air Force, but rather to the Corrective Labor Administration, an arm of the Department of State Security.

  To Linder’s eye, the CLA airfield appeared to be used much more heavily than the rest of the air base. He counted nearly a dozen assorted aircraft lined up for loading or unloading, including six C-130 military transports and assorted small propjets, mostly Embraer, Fokker, and Dash-8, each configured to hold about fifty passengers. Burt explained that the CLA organized nightly departures to airfields all over Alaska and the Yukon, for both prisoner transport and resupply.

  Suddenly, Linder felt his face break out in a cold sweat and his back muscles seize up. He began to shiver.

  “Worried?” Burt asked, noticing the change in him.

  “What does it matter?” Linder answered, avoiding Burt’s gaze.

  “It matters that you decide to control it,” Burt replied.

  “Nobody can control the past. What’s done is done.”

  “Forget the past,” Burt urged. “The present is all there is. You can do whatever you want with it.”

  But Linder turned away without a response, his head lowered and his arms wrapped around his shoulders to conserve heat. Whatever misery lay ahead, he knew he had earned it. What he could not decide was whether it was better to stay alive and atone for what he had done or die early to avoid the suffering.

  When more buses arrived, the prisoners formed a new queue and boarded one of the parked C-130s, this one configured to carry over a hundred passengers, and thus to accommodate just under half the prisoners arriving on the 757. Once again, Linder was seated next to Burt, but by now his urge for self-expression had waned and he found himself more interested in listening to the conversations of other prisoners around him.

  Accordingly, during the next two and a half hours in flight, Linder remained silent while Burt spent much of the time in intense discussion with the young passenger on his left, who pelted him with endless questions about the forced labor camp system, Alaska’s military bases, and the fate of American troops who were evacuated to Alaska after their defeat in the Manchurian War, all of which were familiar topics to Burt by virtue of his work for a Congressman on the Armed Services Committee.

  Four years earlier, tens of thousands of America’s best combat troops had escaped by air and sea from the Russian Far East port of Vanino to Sakhalin Island and Japan, in a Dunkirk-style evacuation, when Chinese forces broke through the Allied defensive lines and seized Russia’s Primorskiy and Khabarovsk Provinces. Photos and videos of evacuated U.S. soldiers in their forest-green camouflage uniforms crowding Anchorage’s docks and airports had appeared in newspapers and television broadcasts across America, yet within a few weeks had vanished from the news, never to appear again in the state-controlled media.

  “When the troops arrived in Anchorage, it was all anyone could talk about,” the young man recalled. “The evacuation seemed like a miracle. Everybody was eager for the survivors to make it back to the Lower Forty-Eight, so we could hear what really happened over there. Then nothing,” the younger man protested. “No media, no phone calls, no cards or letters. As if a curtain drop
ped.”

  “Did you have a family member over there?” Burt asked.

  “My cousin,” the young man answered.

  “Did he make it back?”

  “Absolutely. He called my Aunt from the harbor in Ketchikan. Then he disappeared.”

  “You know, I haven’t spoken to anyone about this in a long time,” Burt continued uneasily. “But I guess there’s no longer any reason not to, given where we’re going. You see, four years ago I worked on Capitol Hill and we were getting frantic calls every day from constituents about relatives deployed over there. We were in constant contact with the Pentagon.

  “The day after the evacuation hit the news, the brass announced that the returning troops would be needed to help defend Alaska against a possible Chinese counterattack. For a couple of weeks, the word was that some of the evacuees would be redeployed to shore up weak points in our northern defenses. We were given a toll-free number for military families to call, but hardly anybody got through. Finally, about a month after the evacuation, some brigadier called to tell the Congressman that all information about the status of our POWs and the military evacuees was now classified. Total blackout.”

  “So what do you suppose happened?” the younger man pressed.

  “I don’t know,” Burt replied. “But I have a hunch that we may meet some of them before long.”

  * * *

  The C-130 turboprop landed with a groaning thud and rolled to the end of the runway before opening its rear cargo ramp under an overcast sky. When the guards finally unshackled him, Linder rose from his seat and stumbled down the cargo ramp onto the crackling snow. A shrieking, whipping wind made him gulp involuntarily, then gasp for air. As soon as he left the lee of the aircraft, the cold quickly penetrated the porous cotton fabric of his coveralls, especially the area still moist with urine, and he ran to join the nearest mass of shivering men huddled together for warmth.