Exile Hunter

by Preston Fleming

  “Send Buster into the hole,” Lodi Six ordered, and one of the dog handlers descended the stairs with a black German Shepherd Dog and issued the command to search. The dog moved past the gold, approached another stack of crates, and sat facing it.

  “Buster’s alerted to something. We have a Condition Orange,” the dog handler reported when he saw Buster sit. “Order the perimeter cleared, pronto.”

  The two troops closest to Yost trained their rifles on him.

  “Oh, don’t worry about that,” Yost told Lodi Six with a knowing smile. “The dog must have picked up the scent of explosives from some empty mortar shell crates the team used to pack up the gold. I can show them to you, if you want.”

  But before Lodi Six could decide whether to take up the offer, he was distracted by a tall figure wearing a black DSS windbreaker entering the barn. The troops appeared to recognize him, since each of them, except Lodi Six, stepped aside when the man approached the trap door to peer below.

  “We have a Condition Orange down there, sir,” Lodi Six repeated to the official. “Best not to get any closer till the EOD squad shows up.”

  “Neil Denniston here. DSS,” the officer announced, as if everyone already knew who he was. “I’ll take over now. First, I’ll need a quick look at what’s in the hole. Tell me where it’s safe to stand so I can snap a few photos.”

  “Snap all you want, sir,” Lodi Six replied with obvious reluctance. “Just stay on the stairway, don’t touch anything, and don’t use a flash. I’ll shine my headlamp wherever you need it.”

  A few moments later, Denniston emerged from the staircase.

  “This is Denniston,” he announced into his handheld radio. “The goods are secured. Repeat. The goods are secured. Stand by for EOD clearance.”

  Then he turned to Yost, whose face was still obscured by darkness.

  “Outstanding work, Linder,” Denniston said in a tone laden with sarcasm. “You know, when we lost Eaton, I doubted we’d ever lay eyes again on what he stole from the banks. But I’ve got to hand it to Bednarski. It was his idea to send you up to the Yukon to hobnob with all those Cleveland militia types. If any of them knew where the loot was hidden, he figured you’d be the one to find out. Too bad Bob’s no longer among the living. He would have enjoyed this.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Yost replied. But before he could say more, Denniston’s radio sputtered to life with a report that two women matching the descriptions of April Linder and Caroline Kendall had been sighted at a motel in Strongsville.

  “Move in and arrest them,” Denniston replied over the handheld. Turning to Yost, he added, “Sorry, but the U.S. government does not make deals with insurgents.”

  As if to taunt him further, Denniston stepped closer to Yost and shone a flashlight in his face. But the moment he did, he let out a sharp gasp.

  “You’re not Linder!” he accused. “Where the hell is he? What have you done with him?”

  “He’s out of your reach,” Yost said.

  “Then who the hell are you?”

  “The one who removed all this from the banks in the first place so you Unionists wouldn’t get your filthy hands on it,” Yost replied. “Excuse me for not being who you expected. But since you so obviously never intended to keep your promise to let our side go free, the deal is off. Game over, you lose. See you in hell.”

  Yost watched Denniston’s face closely for a sign that he understood he was about to die. When he saw it, Yost pressed a tiny button on a keychain transmitter taped to his forearm. Instantly, two hundred kilograms of high explosives and assorted military ordnance exploded in the cellar beneath them, vaporizing the few bars of gold and art objects they had left behind for show, along with the barn itself, the adjacent farmhouse, and everything else within a hundred meters of where they stood.

  * * *

  The moving van was just west of Elyria when Jay Becker’s illegal police radio scanner came to life with chatter about a massive explosion at a farm a few miles northwest of Chippewa Lake in Medina County.

  Linder made eye contact with Jay as he listened to police, fire, and emergency medical response units describe the explosion and the resulting casualties.

  “Did he tell you why he stayed?” he asked Jay.

  “Charlie was tired,” Jay replied. “He wanted you and Caroline to get away clean. And he wanted to end the search for the Eaton treasure once and for all.”

  “So the stuff we left behind…?”

  “Whatever didn’t fit in the truck we put back in the hole. If they think the way we expect they will, the DSS will conclude we destroyed the entire cache to keep it out of their hands.”

  “And did Charlie say anything else I should know about?”

  “Well, he didn’t say it in so many words,” Jay added, “but I got the impression that Charlie saw you taking up where Philip Eaton left off. Not just as Caroline’s guardian, but as guardian of the resistance.”

  Caroline gave April a searching look and April took the girl’s hand in hers.

  “Hell, I’m just an ordinary guy,” Linder demurred. “Eaton was a giant.”

  “Then grow into it,” Jay urged with uncharacteristic fervor. “Eaton and Yost are gone. You’re all we’ve got.”

  On hearing Jay Becker’s words, Linder thought back to his meeting with Philip Eaton in Beirut and his first contact with Yost in the Yukon. Suddenly he understood what the two men had aimed to achieve. From the beginning, Yost had been as much the architect of the Battle of Cleveland as Eaton. And later, while Philip Eaton supported the insurgency from exile, Yost had led it from within. Finally, when Yost, already a captive, learned of Eaton’s death in captivity, he devoted his remaining life to recovering the cached bank loot and entrusting it to someone who would carry on the fight.

  As Jay drove on toward their rendezvous point, Linder pondered the unlikely sequence of events that had brought him back to Cleveland. His expression while thinking must have been solemn indeed, for after a few moments, Linder felt a tug on his sleeve and looked down into Caroline’s sweetly smiling face.

  “It’s okay,” she assured him. “You don’t have to do it all alone, silly. We’ll help you.”

  Linder returned Caroline’s smile with tears welling in his eyes and slipped his arm around her slender shoulders.

  “I know, sweetie,” he replied. “I’ll be counting on you, too.”

  A half hour later, the truck arrived in the lakeside resort town of Vermilion. Jay turned off at a private boatyard, where dozens of yachts and cruisers, shrink-wrapped for the winter, were lined up side by side on trailers and jack stands. He followed the driveway to its end in a gravel parking lot on the east bank of the Vermilion River. There, just beyond the glare of streetlamps, only a few boat slips were occupied, and all but one was dark.

  As they filed past the boats toward the dock, a spotlight from the occupied boat blinked twice. Jay flashed his high beams twice and pulled up beside the dock.

  “All out,” he said. “Time to unload.”

  S23

  Every hero becomes a bore at last. Ralph Waldo Emerson

  BEIRUT, MID-OCTOBER, ONE YEAR LATER

  Caroline Kendall entered her apartment building in the Achrafiyé district of Christian East Beirut bearing a box of Lebanese pastries from a neighborhood patisserie. The building, a stately red granite relic from French colonial days, resembled the building where she had visited her grandfather two years before. She loved the breathtaking view of the Mediterranean from the apartment’s veranda and never tired of window-shopping on her daily walk to school.

  When the elevator door opened, she greeted an elderly neighbor couple in her best schoolgirl French and waited patiently for them to exit before riding the lift to the fourth floor. There, she entered a spacious marble foyer with Persian rugs on the floor and walls covered with polished brass trays with Arabic calligraphy inlaid in silver and copper. Beyond the foyer, she entered a vast parlor furnished in teak and leather in a distinctly m
asculine style.

  Passing through the parlor and out onto the veranda, Caroline noticed her guardian, Warren Linder, seated with his business partner, Jay Becker, and a male visitor she had never seen before. Standing behind Linder, serving coffee to the men, was Linder’s sister, April, who had devoted herself over the past year to becoming Caroline’s second mother.

  Caroline delivered the pastries quietly to April, who arranged them on a silver tray while the visitor presented his ideas for publishing a memoir Linder had recently written under the title, My Book of Revelations.

  “I can see positioning it as a sort of modern Gulag Archipelago,” the visitor proposed. “Like Solzhenitsyn, you take a path of nonviolent protest against the labor camp system. And, like his One Day in the Life, you show us the life of the individual camp inmate as no one has before. Your book is going to be highly newsworthy, Mr. Linder, no doubt about it.”

  Caroline caught of glimpse of Linder listening intently to the visitor with an expression she often saw when he disagreed with her but did not want to offend her by saying it outright.

  She stole a pastry from the tray April was arranging, and gave her a kiss on the cheek before starting back toward the door with a sigh of resignation.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but I’ve got to go out again,” she said to April. “Time for dance class. Is there anything you’d like me bring you on my way back?”

  “No, sweetheart,” April replied, smiling warmly. “But do remember to be kind to the boys. These dances mean a great deal to them and you must be careful not to shatter their illusions.”

  “I’ll do my best, Aunt April,” Caroline promised with a mischievous grin as she left the room.

  But on her way back through the parlor, when she passed the desk where she usually did her homework, a padded book envelope caught her eye. It must have come in the morning mail, she thought, and she picked it up to examine the return address. It was postmarked Coalville, Utah, and bore the address of Sharon Unger’s bungalow.

  She tore open the envelope and found inside a book on nutrition and health that she had once seen her mother reading. She could barely contain her excitement. Ever since leaving Coalville, but especially after that night aboard the freighter on Lake Erie when Warren had told her of her mother’s death, Caroline had longed to own something, no matter how insignificant, that had belonged to her mother.

  But there was more. Tucked between the pages was a sealed letter, unstamped and apparently unsent. It was addressed to Roger Kendall at the CLA’s western mail depot.

  Caroline hesitated, then slit open the envelope.

  “Dear Roger, I hope this letter finds you well, though I have no basis for believing it will find you at all, as my other letters to you have been returned. Since receiving your postcard with news of your transfer to Kamas, I have been unable to find anyone in the government who will confirm your whereabouts.

  “If by some unfortunate circumstance this letter finds you still in the Yukon, I am deeply sorry for the hardships you have suffered there. Should anything happen to you or to me to prevent our meeting again, I want you to know that I forgive you everything there is to forgive. As I hope you will forgive me.

  “But, as I have said before, I refuse to accept favorable treatment from the state in return for forfeiting Caroline’s birthright. So please abandon any thoughts you might harbor to that end. I will not participate in any legal actions the government may launch under my name to usurp our family’s property.

  “It saddens me to say that I have sacrificed more than you will ever know to protect Caroline during the past year at Kamas. If I have accomplished anything in this life, let it be that. Our parole came not a moment too soon, for I doubt I could have held on much longer. And the thought of leaving Caroline alone at a place like Kamas tormented me more than I could bear.

  “Recently, however, I have met a man whom I knew as a young girl and have lately grown to trust. I expect he may soon make me an offer that I am inclined to accept, for it is a rare thing when two people discover that each has held feelings for the other over many years without any hope of satisfying them.

  “Accordingly, if I hear no more from you in the coming days, I intend to file for divorce and ask that you not place any obstacles in my path. I leave you in God’s hands.

  “Sincerely, Patricia”

  Author’s Biographical Note

  I wrote Dynamite Fishermen and Bride of a Bygone War to clear my head after eleven years of government service in places like Beirut, Cairo, Tunis, Jeddah, and Amman. I had already decided to write novels at age fourteen, during my first year as a boarding student at Exeter. My English instructor, a World War II combat veteran, advised those of us who wanted to follow the path of Melville, Conrad and Hemingway to first go out and live some adventures so that we would have stories that people might want to read. My adventures started in the Middle East and continued in Washington, Europe, the Russian Far East, Maui, Utah, New York and Boston. Particularly in the Middle East and Russia, I saw failed states and failed societies but was often surprised at how much their people had in common with Americans. This made me think about whether America might someday suffer its own breed of failure. During the 1930’s, Americans watched Germany, Italy and Russia and asked, “Could it happen here?” Today, one might look around and ask the same. In writing The Kamas Trilogy, my greatest concern has been that the novels gain a readership before the events they describe come to pass.

  A Final Word: When you turn the page, Kindle’s “Before You Go” feature will give you the opportunity to rate this book and share your rating and comments on Facebook and Twitter. If you enjoyed the book, please take a moment to let your friends know about it. Better yet, post a Reader Review on Amazon.com, Goodreads.com or LibraryThing.com. If the book gives others a few evenings of enjoyment, they’ll be grateful that you reached out. And so will I. Anyone who posts a review on Amazon.com to any of my books will be eligible to receive a free advance review copy of my next book.

  With best wishes, Preston Fleming