Exile Hunter

by Preston Fleming

  She looked up as hoping that Linder would deny it.

  “I expect they will,” Linder replied.

  “But what about the prisoners who didn’t join in?”

  “Once it starts, they’ll all be treated the same,” he predicted, “There will be no place to hide.” Linder gave his response without thinking of how insensitive it must sound, especially when Roger’s death might be seen as in his interest. But he knew the DSS mentality, and he knew there was no other possibility if the prisoners did not surrender without preconditions.

  Patricia shook her head in distress.

  “I just can’t believe that the DSS would let Roger die at Kamas when they seemed so intent on using us to get to my father’s money. I’m sure that’s why they released Caroline and me and I have to believe they’ll find a way to release Roger, too. You see, before we left Lebanon, the people at the embassy made us sign papers turning father’s Lebanese assets over to the federal government. I think the government still needs our help to pursue its claims there.”

  “Did your interrogators actually tell you that?” Linder pressed. “If they needed your help that badly, I wouldn’t think they’d want you to know it.”

  “They didn’t say it in so many words,” Patricia explained. “But my impression was that, once father died, their reason for holding the rest of us was only about the money.”

  As she uttered the words, Patricia looked distracted, as if recalling a distant memory.

  “You know, something just came back to me,” she continued. “At the embassy, the interrogator also seemed very interested in Warren Linder. In fact, he seemed to know quite a lot about you already. Why would that be? You and I hadn’t seen each other in nearly twenty years.”

  “Do you remember anything about him?” Linder asked, evading her question.

  “He was tall and blond and called himself Dennis,” Patricia replied.

  “Did he participate in the entire interrogation or only one or two sessions?”

  “I remember seeing him every day in Beirut but only once in Virginia. He kept on asking when I had seen you last and wasn’t satisfied when I insisted that

  I hadn’t seen you since we were teenagers. I hope they didn’t hurt you because of anything I told them...” Patricia’s dark eyes glistened as she spoke.

  “Not at all,” Linder assured her. “I remember them asking me about you, too, and about your father, but I just repeated back to them what they already knew. The things they asked about were all ancient history and didn’t really make much sense.”

  “Oh, yes, my father,” she interrupted. Then suddenly she fell silent and her face lost all expression. “They grilled me for hours about my father’s support for the insurgency and then about how much money he had hidden away in foreign bank accounts. Except that I knew nothing about that, because my father was always very private about money. All his life, he avoided conspicuous displays of wealth and taught us not to act like we were rich, or people would value us only for our money.”

  “It must have been tough growing up in Cleveland with a last name like Eaton,” Linder observed.

  “That’s why he insisted that I apply to boarding schools in Boston,” she replied. “And why he was so happy when I moved to New York when I finished graduate school. There, the Eaton name meant nothing and I would have to sink or swim on my own.”

  Linder thought of his own experience in New York as a nobody, without money, name, or connections, and tried to put himself in Patricia’s shoes. Had his last name been Eaton, what doors might have been opened to him, even during the Crash of 2008... But he did not dwell on it long, for Patricia changed the subject once again.

  “You have no idea how much it means to me to see a friendly face here in Coalville after all Caroline and I have been through,” she confessed, reaching out to touch his hand. “Such cruelty! The things I saw at Kamas are beyond belief. What has happened to this country?”

  For a moment, Linder feared that Patricia would ask him about his time in the Yukon, and how he happened to be sent there and how he met Roger in the camp hospital. When she did not, he felt enormous relief, and then surprise that somehow she still did not connect him with the Department of State Security. Having gained her trust, he longed to reveal even more of himself. But the central obstacle remained: how could Patricia possibly accept Warren Linder into her life once she learned that he had deceived her as Joe Tanner?

  Because he had no answer to this, he changed the subject and tried another approach.

  “Forget all that, Patricia,” he counseled. “Forget Kamas: it’s the only way forward. All I know is how happy I am to spend some time with you and Caroline in this boring little town while we all get back on our feet. One day, we’ll want to move on and we won’t wait around for the government’s permission to do it. Do you follow me?”

  “You’re a man without children,” she replied, looking away. “It’s different for you.”

  “Is slavery different for men and women?” Linder challenged. “Is stealing different? Why let the Unionists enslave you and steal your birthright if you can get out and claim it for yourself and your daughter?”

  “We live in a different world now, Warren. Who’s to say that the old one was so superior?” she replied, reflecting a defeatism that ran rampant within the camps.

  “What you make of the world is entirely your choice, Patricia. If you’re afraid of what the Unionists might do to you if you escape, think of what they will do to you if you stay. Is that what you want for Caroline? Is that what she would want if given the choice?”

  Patricia Kendall let out a deep sigh and a look of inexpressible sadness came into her eyes.

  “And you, Warren?” she asked. “You say you’re happy to be here. Then why would you be in a hurry to escape? And to where?”

  “I lived in some of the same places you and your father did: London, Basel, Beirut. Any of them would suit me just fine. I could be happy driving a taxi or working in a factory as long as I was free to be myself and hold onto my dreams.”

  “And for that you would risk all that you have here?”

  “If I stay, I could be sent back to the Yukon at any moment,” Linder replied crisply. “If Kamas is retaken, there will be a crackdown all over Utah. I don’t dare stay a moment longer once the tanks arrive. Maybe all I need to do is hole up for a few weeks and come back when the dust settles. But, as soon as I can manage it, my plan is to head back east and find a way out of the country, perhaps the same way you got out, through the Great Lakes. When I do, you and Caroline are welcome to join me. But I understand how hard that might be while Roger is still behind the wire at Kamas.”

  “I don’t want to think about it. Let’s talk about something else,” she said, rising from her chair and carrying the serving platters to the counter. Linder followed, clearing the dishes and glassware from the table in silence, while Patricia filled the sink to soak the pots and pans. As he laid the last dish on the counter, his hand touched hers by chance. Patricia withdrew nervously, reaching instead for the start button on the disc player as if to clear the air with some music.

  The disc resumed playing where it had left off at the end of the meringue to which Linder and Caroline had danced before dinner. To Linder’s surprise, Patricia began swaying to the beat, giving him an idea.

  The next song, another Cugat standard, opened with a dramatic brass flourish before a team of saxophones launched into a compelling mambo beat. Recognizing the tune as “Jamay” from his ballroom dancing days, Linder stepped back from the sink and showed Patricia the basic mambo step. Before long he took her hand and led her through some more complex steps. By the end of the song, they danced nearly as well as they had in their youth and continued seamlessly into the next song, a languid rumba.

  When that was over, Linder found his disc case and replaced the Cugat CD with a disc of early rock-and-roll hits. The first was Paul Anka’s dreamy foxtrot, “Put Your Head On My Shoulder,” and it was all
that two people so long starved of earthly pleasures needed to ignite long-dormant passions. Their feet slowed to a standstill early in the first verse as their correct dance posture turned into a heated embrace and their lips met. By the second verse, Patricia turned out the lights and led Linder into her bedroom. There they undressed each other slowly in the semi-darkness and cast aside all concerns other than the momentary physical bond between them.

  They fell on the bed together and their hands went to work exploring each other’s bodies, each intent on heightening the desire of the other. But when at last Linder lay back and Patricia sat astride him, his concentration suddenly broke. And with that, all arousal collapsed under the weight of his remorse for having been the one to lead Patricia into captivity and his shame at betraying her imprisoned husband.

  Patricia blinked in surprise at Linder’s sudden inertness but said nothing as she rolled off her partner and curled up beside him with an arm stretched across his chest and a leg laid across his thighs.

  “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “Too much too soon, I suppose. Maybe we should schedule a rematch.”

  “Hush,” she said softly with a note in her voice that sounded to Linder almost like relief.

  They remained in bed, clinging to each other, agitated and sleepless but hardly saying a word, until Linder fell asleep. He awoke an hour or two later to find Patricia missing from bed. Hearing music from the other end of the house, he padded into the living room and saw her seated at the kitchen table with her back to him. She was writing what he guessed to be a letter or perhaps a journal. But not wanting to intrude on her privacy and needing to rise early for work, he returned to bed and set his watch to wake him just after dawn.

  S21

  In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed. Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction. Job 33:17 (King James Version)

  THURSDAY, LATE JUNE, COALVILLE

  Warren Linder stood at the counter in Mrs. Unger’s kitchen and took the first sip of coffee from the mug he had just filled. It was cold and tasted so bitter that he spat it into the sink and poured out what remained in the mug. How could the coffee be cold and bitter when the pot was freshly brewed?

  He looked out the kitchen window and saw a canopy of high-level clouds in shades of red and orange inching toward the east where the sun lay crouched behind the mountains. Morning clouds like these foretold a storm, he thought, and stepped out the door into the kitchen garden. To his surprise, the air was chilly and thunder rumbled in the western hills. Then all at once he felt the pelting of hail and freezing rain from a freak mountain storm. As he watched the ice crystals accumulate on the red brick walkway, he could not shake the sense that something was terribly wrong. It was late June, when high pressure and clear skies reigned and the remnants of last winter’s piled snows were long gone.

  Without warning, Linder felt a panicked urge to flee for his life, an urge unlike anything he had felt since his arrival in Beirut the year before, when a similar dread had impelled him to seek the next boat to Cyprus. Another clap of thunder, closer this time, startled him and drew his gaze toward the street, where a black sedan pulled slowly to the curb.

  He retreated into the kitchen and locked the door behind him, suddenly chilled to the bone. A moment later, he footsteps on the front walk, followed by a heavy knock at the front door.

  His hand hesitated as he reached for the door and pulled it open. What he saw made his heart drop. In front of him stood a smiling Neil Denniston, dressed in navy dress slacks and a white polo shirt.

  “Won’t you invite me in?” Denniston asked. “I’ve come a long way to see you.”

  Linder froze, unable to speak.

  “That was a pretty neat trick to make it all this way from MacTung, Linder,” Denniston remarked with an ingratiating smile. “But you came a long way for nothing. The road ends here. All that’s left is to tell us where Eaton and Yost hid the money and how you helped them do it. We know you worked with them from the start, so you might as well come clean.”

  Linder bolted upright in bed. In the rosy glow that seeped in through the lace-curtained windows, he looked around and found himself not in Mrs. Unger’s bungalow, but lying beside Patricia Kendall in her rented cottage. When he had gone to sleep the night before, he had been more hopeful than he had in years. Yet, now he sensed that his world might soon collapse and did not know why. All he knew was that such dreams had come true too often to be ignored.

  Linder rose gently from the bed so as not to wake Patricia, and stepped toward the half-open bedroom window, where a balmy breeze rippled the lace curtains. Though there was no storm brewing outside and no Denniston at the door, he was far from feeling at ease. He dressed hurriedly and left a note on the dressing table that he would phone Patricia after work. By the time he left the house it was a few minutes after six A.M. and the sky directly overhead was clear, though the sun still hung behind the eastern mountains, where an orange-red canopy of high-level clouds lined the sky. All was silent except for distant rumbling in the west.

  Upon arriving at the vitamin plant, Linder found a message summoning him to Larry Becker’s office before the start of the shift. He found Larry and Jay behind closed doors.

  “They retook the camp this morning,” Larry announced as he entered. “The bastards brought in armor by rail sooner than anyone expected. By first morning light they’d rolled in and leveled the place, shooting everything that moved.”

  “Do we know how many prisoners survived?” Linder asked. “What’s happening there now?”

  “Reports are coming in that shock troops have finished off the wounded and are lining up survivors in the yard,” Jay reported. “It’s too early to count casualties, but one of our workers lives in the hills east of Kamas. He has a telescope and spotted bulldozers digging mass graves. And a dozen cattle trucks are lined up outside the perimeter, probably to deliver survivors to the Heber rail yard for transfer to other camps.”

  “Which means that you two need to skedaddle,” Larry concluded. “I’ve made some calls to friends in the NUR, and we have people lined up to take you to North Dakota. For the rest of today we all need to act as if everything is normal. Tonight Jay will receive detailed instructions for the move. Tomorrow the plan is for Jay to slip out right after he issues the morning work orders, with Linder right behind.”

  “Got it,” Jay replied and Linder nodded his assent.

  * * *

  After work that day, Linder returned to Mrs. Unger’s bungalow and found Caroline Kendall in the kitchen with the landlady, cleaning vegetables for dinner.

  “Man, I come home half an hour late and somebody has already taken my job,” Linder complained to Caroline with a smile. “I don’t suppose you’d like to take on the dish washing duty, too?”

  “Actually, we’re not quite sure yet about Caroline’s dinner plans,” Mrs. Unger replied. “She’s waiting for her mother to come for her. Apparently Patricia didn’t appear after school, so we’ve left a message for her to pick up Caroline here.”

  “While you’re making dinner, why don’t I go over to her place and check? Do we have enough food for four in case she’s free to join us?”

  “Certainly,” Mrs. Unger answered with a questioning glance.

  “Okay, then, I’ll go see if she’s home. Caroline, do you mind if I borrow your key to take a peek inside the house in case your mom doesn’t answer?” he asked.

  The girl handed over the key but Linder could see that she was worried.

  At the Kendalls’ rental house, Linder knocked on the front door several times without a response. After a short wait, he used the key to let himself in, then locked the door behind him and conducted a quick search without turning on the lights or touching anything with his hands. The house looked much the same as it had when he left it earlier that morning, except for a book on the counter. This he picked up for closer examination, recognizing it as a guide to nu
trition and health that he had lent to Patricia before she had moved to her new quarters. Tucked inside the book was a sealed letter addressed to Roger Kendall at the Kamas camp. Could this be what she had been writing in the kitchen while he was asleep? He inspected the envelope and was about to hold it up to the sunlit west window, when he heard steps at the door.

  A moment later, Patricia unlocked the door and dropped a brown paper bag on the counter with a clinking of glass bottles. When she raised her eyes, she was startled to see Linder standing in the shadows by the stove.

  “What on earth are you doing here?” she demanded in a surly tone. Linder could see at once from her unfocused, watery eyes and her unsteady movements that she had been drinking more than a little.

  “Looking for the mother who didn’t show up for her daughter at school this afternoon.”

  “Oh, my God, not again!” Patricia groaned, suddenly realizing her error. “Where is she now?”

  “At Sharon Unger’s. What would you like me to do? Shall I bring Caroline here?”

  Patricia gave Linder a hard look.

  “Yes, please do.”

  “Before dinner?” Linder asked coolly. “Or would it be all right if Sharon feeds her first?” He noticed the hard edge to his voice and regretted it. But to invite Patricia back to the bungalow for dinner in her present condition was clearly out of the question.

  “Whatever. Suit yourselves,” Patricia snapped.

  “In that case, I think Sharon would prefer to have Caroline spend the night with her. If it’s okay with you, she can bring her back here tomorrow after school.”

  Linder thought of the pain Patricia must have suffered upon learning about the slaughter at Kamas and the likely loss of her husband. And he imagined her self-reproach at losing yet another battle in her struggle against drink. Now, for the second time, Roger was missing in action, leaving her alone but not yet free. What she needed most at this moment, he thought, was empathy and support, not his judgment. And who was he to judge her, having played a part in her downfall?