Exile Hunter

by Preston Fleming

  Blanket government surveillance of the Internet made it impossible for him to track Patricia online without being discovered by his superiors. Yet to request her DSS file or an official name trace on her also risked raising suspicion of a prior relationship. Fortunately, Linder had no difficulty gaining access to her father’s DSS file, since Philip Eaton remained an active target of the Emigré Division and resided within Linder’s operational territory in Europe and the Arab Middle East.

  According to documents in the father’s file, Patricia and her daughter had fled to Canada with retreating rebel forces after the Battle of Cleveland and from there by sea to England, where she and Caroline lived briefly with her father until he bolted to Basel. While Linder knew that Roger Kendall had been active in London’s circle of anti-Unionist exiles and was an acquaintance of Philip Eaton, he had not known of a direct connection between Roger and Patricia until today. To Linder’s dismay, nearly all the while he had been in London, Patricia had been there, too, yet Kendall had beaten him to her.

  Linder brooded on his loss as he looked across the Thames toward the glittering skyscrapers of London’s financial district, where Roger Kendall would return to a successful career in banking after his honeymoon. For all Linder’s disappointment, he could understand why Patricia might have wanted to marry Roger after two years as a young widow. She was an exile with a young daughter in a horrendously expensive city with no means of support other than handouts from her father and no social support network.

  Viewing her situation objectively, Linder could hardly deny that Roger was a good match for her, since the latter was an attractive man not so much older than she, of the same social background, possessing some money of his own, and occupying an excellent position with a leading global bank. Having been widowed himself when the Saigon flu claimed his wife and young son during the Events, Roger had something in common with his new wife that might even be expected to nourish their relationship.

  But, in Linder’s eyes, for Patricia to leave her father’s roof to live under Roger’s seemed rather like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. This was because Philip Eaton appeared to be retiring from the anti-Unionist movement just as Kendall was becoming more active in it. Now, both Philip and his new son-in-law would rank high on the DSS’s list of exile targets to be compromised, captured, or killed.

  Linder heard a knock on the door and turned just in time to see the Deputy Base Chief enter his office. There was no time to fold the newspaper and, in an instant, Neil Denniston was peering over his shoulder at the photograph. For an instant, Linder weighed the idea of drawing Denniston’s attention to the photograph and proposing a closer operational focus on Kendall. This would likely win him a point or two with his bosses, but it would also pose a serious threat to Patricia’s new family.

  Despite his momentary pique at having been bested by Kendall, he could not bring himself to target the man in this way. Experience and intuition told him that Kendall’s remarriage to Patricia and his new role as stepfather would likely put a major damper on his political activities without the DSS lifting a finger. And if the Department did move against Kendall, how could Linder ever reenter Patricia’s life after having destroyed whatever happiness she might have found with her new husband?

  “Ah, if it isn’t our friend, Roger Kendall,” Denniston smirked upon recognizing the banker’s image. “What’s he been up to? Any new angles on him?”

  “His interest in exile politics appears to be waning at the moment,” Linder answered blandly. “His bank has just promoted him, and now he’s remarried and become a stepfather. I’d say he has his hands full.”

  “Let me take a closer look,” Denniston suggested. “Wow, his wife is quite a dish. But she doesn’t look very British. Might she be a fellow Yank, perchance?” he asked, brightening.

  As Linder said nothing, Denniston snatched up the newspaper and read the article silently.

  “She might, indeed,” he said, brightening in response to his own question. “And not just any Yank, but Philip Eaton’s widowed daughter.”

  “Makes sense, I suppose,” Linder offered indifferently.

  Denniston continued to stare at the photo.

  “You know who they remind me of?” he asked, as if inspired by a sudden insight.

  Linder remained silent.

  “Gatsby and Daisy,” Denniston continued. “Look at them, a couple of wayward souls, each mistakenly looking to the other for salvation.”

  He handed the newspaper back to Linder for another look. Yes, Linder thought, the sadness was there in both faces. Perhaps even a hint of desperation.

  “Sorry, I don’t see it,” he answered nonetheless. “If you ask me, they both look too fat and happy to cut a tragic figure.”

  “Maybe so, but that photo is still one heck of an ops lead,” Denniston enthused, pointing a finger at the groom. “If we could use Kendall to get another shot at rolling up Old Man Eaton, that could be worth a promotion for each of us. I want you to stay on top of this, Warren. Let me know when you figure out a way to exploit it.”

  * * *

  LATE MAY, UTAH SECURITY ZONE

  It was late afternoon on the first Saturday after Patricia and Caroline Kendall moved into Mrs. Unger’s Coalville bungalow when Linder mounted the front porch and knocked at the door. He knew that his former landlady had planned to spend the weekend with her daughter in Wyoming and was confident of finding the new tenants alone.

  Caroline greeted him with enthusiasm and called inside for her mother.

  “Mom, Mr. Horvath is here. Are you decent?”

  Patricia Kendall emerged onto the porch a few minutes later, freshly dressed, her damp hair gathered behind her head with an elastic hair tie. Patricia invited Linder to sit with her on the wooden porch swing while Caroline fetched iced tea.

  As soon as they settled back and set the swing moving beneath them, Patricia looked at him with a bemused smile.

  “You know, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she began. “Something about you seems very familiar to me. Have we met before?”

  Before he could reply, Caroline arrived bearing a tray with a pitcher of iced tea and three plastic tumblers, and waited expectantly. Though Linder realized that this was his big opening with Patricia, he hesitated for fear of having to defend himself in the unlikely event she connected his face with that of Joe Tanner in Beirut. But then he had a lucky break.

  “Sweetheart, why don’t you take your glass back to the kitchen and put away the groceries before we prepare dinner?” Patricia requested of her daughter. “You know there’s not much time if we want to leave here by six for the movies.”

  Caroline rolled her eyes but did as she was told.

  When she was out of sight, Linder spoke again.

  “I’m afraid I wasn’t completely open with you last Friday. Yes, we did meet, many years ago in Cleveland,” he confessed. “Do you remember seventh grade ballroom dance classes at Hawken School?”

  A glimmer of recognition showed in Patricia’s eyes as she struggled to recall.

  “My real name isn’t Horvath,” he continued with lowered voice. “If I share it with you, do you promise not to tell anyone, not even with your daughter or Mrs. Unger?”

  “You’re not a criminal, are you?” Patricia asked uncertainly.

  “No more than you are,” he answered. “But I’ve been in the camps, too. And I want to be honest with you.”

  “Okay, I promise not to tell,” she answered, studying him closely.

  “Does Warren Linder ring a bell?”

  Upon hearing the name, Patricia remained oddly unresponsive and her eyes showed no sign of recognition. Linder wondered if her memory of him had faded naturally, or been cast by trauma into some dusty corner of her brain with other memories of her pre-arrest life. Or might her mind have become so clouded by alcohol that the old connections had been erased?

  On further reflection, Patricia’s apparent failure to recognize his na
me seemed even stranger to him. For, based on his own experience of interrogation, it seemed inconceivable that her DSS interrogators would not have grilled her quite hard about any links she may have had to Warren Linder. And because the DSS would likely have questioned her about both Linder and Tanner, there was a chance she might have connected the two names despite his disguise in Beirut and the years that had passed since she had known him a schoolboy.

  Then, all at once, Patricia’s face brightened and a youthful sparkle entered her eyes that hinted at long-past happiness.

  “Oh, that Warren!” she burst out with a girlish giggle. “The Warren from Lyndhurst, the one who could dance the tango! What a marvelous surprise!”

  “Yes, that would be me,” he acknowledged with a grin. “Of course, I could do the tango. My father was the dance instructor. In fact, that’s the only reason they let me join the class.”

  “You were such a dear boy in those days,” she went on with a wistful look. “For me, seventh grade was a horrible, horrible time. When my mother died, absolutely everything fell apart. You were the only person my age I felt I could really talk to. I looked forward to dance class each week because I could forget about everything else while we learned all those complicated new dance steps. And when the music stopped, I knew you would accept me just the way I was, without any thought about the Eaton name or our family’s money or social whatever. Oh, yes,” she said with a faraway look. “I remember that Warren very, very well.”

  Their eyes met for the briefest moment before the door opened and Caroline returned to the porch with an empty tumbler.

  “Groceries are put away,” Caroline reported as she poured herself more iced tea. “What next?” she asked with a bored expression.

  For a moment, Linder felt annoyed at the intrusion, but then for an instant he saw in Caroline the Patricia of his youth, and he could not help but smile at the thought that, despite all Caroline must have been through in the past year, the foremost thing on her young mind was a movie on a Saturday night. He rose and returned his half-filled tumbler to the tray.

  “Looks like you two have a schedule to meet,” he remarked graciously. “I’ll come back another time.”

  Linder watched with fascination as a dull-eyed expression returned to Patricia’s face. In the next moment he felt as if she were keeping him at arm’s length once again.

  “That would be nice of you,” she answered without suggesting a time or place.

  “Do it soon!” Caroline added with a coy grin before retreating into the house

  * * *

  A few days later, Linder phoned his former landlady to inquire how her new tenants were doing and managed to extract an invitation from Mrs. Unger to dinner on Saturday night. He arrived a few minutes early and found Patricia and Caroline embroiled in a shouting match in the kitchen. Though he could not ascertain what had caused the dispute, Caroline had thrust her face within inches of her mother’s and Patricia appeared on the brink of losing self-control. The combined wattage of their screeching brought physical pain to Linder’s ears. Recalling how he had disrupted some colossal rows between his mother and sister when April was a teen, he put on a giant grin and stepped between them, handing Patricia the bouquet of flowers he had bought from a street vendor. Thrown off balance, she and Caroline both shifted their attention to the flowers and lowered their voices.

  Linder said hello to both before beating a quick retreat to the living room, where he found Sharon Unger reading a novel on the sofa. She shot him a reproachful look, as if to say, “You never told me what that pair would be like!” But Mrs. Unger considered herself a Christian woman and he knew she would not permit herself to say anything uncharitable about her tenants. Then Linder recalled the smell of alcohol on Patricia on the morning when he had brought her to the bungalow and wondered if Mrs. Unger had discovered more than she let on.

  Dinner went by quickly, and the food, which Patricia and Caroline had insisted on preparing, was not very appetizing. Mother and daughter were barely civil to one another, with Mrs. Unger having little to add to the discussion. Linder managed to keep conversation going only by rehashing second-hand tales of Montana from Will Browning, since his impersonation of Tom Horvath required that he represent himself as a Montanan.

  After dinner, Mrs. Unger took Caroline aside at Linder’s instigation to help wash dishes and prepare coffee, so that he and Patricia might have some time alone in the living room. But before sitting with him, Patricia excused herself for a few moments. Thus, Linder found himself wondering whether her freshening up included stealing a nip from a secret liquor stash. The glassy look in her eye upon returning seemed to confirm his worst fears.

  Still, he resolved to press on with his project of revealing to her why he had come to Coalville and how he intended to help her and Caroline, if only she would let him. He began by delivering some news that was certain to gain her attention.

  “Have you heard what happened at Kamas?” he asked in a quiet voice the moment she took her seat.

  Patricia gave him a puzzled look.

  “At the camp,” he added.

  “No, and I don’t think I care to,” she replied flatly.

  “Well, you should. The prisoners have revolted and taken over the facility. They’ve kicked out all the guards and are demanding reforms. It’s the first camp-wide revolt the CLA has ever faced.”

  “I don’t care,” she insisted. “I hope I never hear that name again. Except, maybe, to learn that Roger has been released. And, lately, I’m not sure he’s even there any more.”

  “Roger, at Kamas?” Linder asked, taken aback. “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “At his sentencing last October, before we came west.”

  “And where do you send his mail?”

  “To the CLA’s western mail depot. But I always assumed Roger was across the wall from us in the Kamas men’s division.”

  “This may come as a shock, Patricia, but I saw Roger in January at a camp in the northern Yukon,” Linder declared.

  Patricia gasped. “The Yukon? But how could he…?” she asked with a baffled look.

  “I don’t know how, but there were quite a few of us from Cleveland up there,” Linder answered. “Roger was in the camp hospital when I spoke to him.”

  “How was he…?” she began again, only to swallow her words.

  “In pretty bad shape, I’m afraid. Some kind of heart trouble. I don’t know if he ever recovered, because the next day they moved him to another ward and I never saw him again.”

  Tears welled in Patricia’s eyes.

  “Did he say anything…?”

  “Roger and I each promised to do whatever we could for the other’s family if we ever got out. It was clear that he loved you very much,” Linder said, resisting an urge to take her hand.

  Patricia Kendall bit her lip and dabbed one eye with a handkerchief, then straightened suddenly, and put it away. Linder turned in time to see Caroline enter the room bearing two mugs of coffee on a tray.

  “Can we all go out for a walk when you finish your coffee?” Caroline proposed as she set the mugs on the coffee table. “It’s kind of stuffy in here.”

  Patricia shot her daughter a disapproving glance.

  “Caroline is angling to go out for ice cream,” she observed. “The answer is no. We’ve already had pie for dessert and ice cream would be too much sugar too late in the evening.”

  “On the other hand, ice cream and pie go together awfully well, and the sandwich shop is open for at least another fifteen minutes. Why don’t we all go out?” he proposed. “My treat, and we’ll burn off the sugar on our way back. It’ll do us good to get the blood moving.”

  “Please, mama?” Caroline appealed.

  “You two go ahead,” Patricia responded with a sigh. “I’ve walked enough for one day. But make it a small cone, okay? And don’t stay out long.”

  * * *

  Linder and Caroline reached the sandwich shop on North Main a few minu
tes before closing. As they ordered their cones, a brawny fellow in his forties and a girl close in age to Caroline came up behind them and Linder suddenly recognized the man as the deputy sheriff, Eldon. The girls greeted each other like long-lost friends.

  “Good evening, officer,” Linder addressed Eldon cautiously, uncomfortable at appearing on the deputy sheriff’s radar screen so soon after his scuffle with Patricia’s former landlord.

  “Lovely night, Tom,” the officer replied with unexpected bonhomie. He cast a quick glance at the two girls, who were absorbed in conversation.

  “Sure is,” Linder replied.

  “Kids sure have a way of showing us what’s important in life, don’t they?” Eldon mused.

  “They certainly do.”

  “I just wanted you to know, it was mighty decent of you to step in and help the girl’s mother.” Eldon volunteered after casting a sidelong glance to confirm that neither teen was listening. “I hope they appreciate it.”

  “Thanks,” Linder replied. “I believe they do.”

  “Do you have any kids of your own?” Eldon inquired.

  “Nope. Always too busy to settle down.”

  The deputy nodded.

  “They’re a handful, but I wouldn’t trade ‘em for the world,” he answered.

  Before Linder could respond, the server handed him two ice cream cones, Caroline claimed hers, and the deputy stepped up to the counter to order.

  Caroline and Linder retraced their steps along Main Street, stopping from time to time to window shop and chat about what they would buy if they had all the money in the world. At the corner of Center Street, as they waited for the traffic light to turn green, Caroline changed the subject.

  “Do you believe in ESP?” she asked, gazing up to register his response.

  “Do you mean things like mind-reading and predicting the future?” Linder responded.

  “Yeah, or finding stuff that’s lost,” Caroline added. “I do that for my mom all the time. She’s always losing things. Keys, especially.”

  “Well, I’m not so good at finding lost objects,” Linder answered, “but I’m pretty good at reading people. And I’ve had some dreams of the future that came true. So, I guess that makes me a believer.”