Star Chamber Brotherhood

by Preston Fleming

  "Yes, indeed," the man replied with a self-satisfied smile. "But this time could you make it the way Jimmy did when he ran the bar years ago? I don’t know if he added a secret proprietary ingredient of some kind, but I remember that Jimmy's Old Fashioned tasted quite unlike any other."

  "Ah, that was before my time here, Sir, but I think I know what you're after," Werner suggested. "Give me a moment to find the ingredients and I'll see if I can duplicate it for you."

  Werner reached beneath the bar where he kept the collection of pre-Events liquors for his special customers and pulled out a fifth of rye whiskey and two small bottles of bitters. He prepared the Old Fashioned with the special ingredients and placed it on the bar before the customer.

  "Try this one. And if you like it, I suppose it might be all right to reveal Jimmy's secret to you after all these years."

  The visitor took a sip and his eyes lit up.

  "By all means, do."

  "Jimmy's trick was to use a full-flavored rye whiskey and then add a dash each of barrel-aged bitters and Angostura. It's all about the flavor notes."

  "You, Sir, are a wizard," the stranger remarked after his first sip. "This drink alone has made my return visit worthwhile."

  "Welcome back to the Somerset," Werner answered. "And would I be correct in guessing that you are a former Club member?"

  "Not a member, only a frequent visitor," the stranger replied, taking another sip. "When I was at MIT, a few of my consulting clients were members. We would meet here from time to time."

  "What brings you back? And, if I may ask, how long has it been?"

  "Oh, more than ten years, I suppose," the man mused. "I took a leave of absence from teaching during the Events and traveled to London, expecting to return in a few months. But with all the turmoil on this side of the pond, I decided to stay and start up a consulting practice in the City."

  "And how long do you plan to be in Boston this time? Or might this become permanent?"

  The professor gave a nervous laugh and took a long pull from the Old Fashioned.

  "Actually, I had expected to fly back tonight, but the deal I'm working on requires Treasury approval. And now that's been delayed till next week."

  Suddenly the professor's eyes caught sight of something over Werner's shoulder in the direction of the dining room. He finished his drink, pulled some bills from his wallet, and laid them distractedly on the bar. The tip was profligate but Werner felt no qualms about accepting it from a man who didn't bother to count his money.

  Werner turned his head in time to see a familiar face peering at him from the dining room. No wonder the professor is in such a hurry, he thought. And it's probably why he came here tonight in the first place. So much for the fabled allure of Jimmy's Old Fashioneds.

  "Ever so pleased to meet you," the professor offered as he rose to leave.

  "Call me Frank," Werner replied.

  "And I'm Harvey," the man answered as he started for the door.

  ****

  It took Werner about five minutes to remember how he had recognized Harvey Konig. They had been introduced at a cocktail party in Brookline given by friends of Werner's wife. At that time Konig was a nationally prominent professor of economics at MIT who was an informal advisor to the Unionist Party's presidential candidate. Though Konig was not himself a Party member, he had been a highly successful fundraiser for progressive candidates in the Democratic Party and was rumored to be in line for a cabinet position if the Unionists won.

  As Werner recalled, however, things hadn't turned out as Konig had expected. His candidate won the presidential election handily. Even more than that, a few years later Konig's champion seized dictatorial powers in what became known as the Unionist coup d'etat and declared himself President-for-Life. But, despite Konig's support, no presidential appointment ever came the professor's way.

  Not long after the Unionist president's first election victory, an opposition newspaper compared the humiliated Konig and his fellow Progressives to the Mensheviks in pre-revolutionary Russia. It was a cruel analogy, because the Mensheviks are remembered chiefly for having helped bring Lenin's Bolsheviks to power, only to be brutally purged after they had served their purpose as Lenin's useful idiots.

  While speculating about Konig's current relations with the Unionist regime, Werner once again spotted the person who had lured Konig away from the bar and into the dining room. It was Werner's friend and occasional business partner, Hank Oshiro. And the broad grin on Oshiro's face told Werner that Hank might have just found a new customer for his illegal drugs business.

  Oshiro took a seat at the bar near where Konig had sat and scanned the shelves of bottles along the bar's back wall. Werner liked Hank and, despite being more than twenty years his senior, shared with Oshiro the special bond of having served at the same corrective labor camp six years earlier. But he had tossed Oshiro out of the club twice before and would do it again if need be. Tonight was, in fact, the younger man's first appearance at the Somerset Club in more than two months.

  "What do you have that's new and special tonight, Frank?" Oshiro pressed, exuding confidence like a manic-depressive at the peak of his bipolar cycle.

  "Are you still a whiskey drinker, my boy?" Werner inquired. "Or have you strayed from the true faith since you were here last?"

  "True to the faith, Father, but always open to new options. What do you recommend on a Friday night to a man who has just sold out his entire inventory of Ambien and Valium in one deal?"

  "I recommend that you never bring that shit into this club again, Hank. You know the rules. You can come to drink but leave the drugs outside. From now on, Yuri and Oleg will pat you down before letting you through the door. Understood?"

  "Okay, okay, it was a mistake," Oshiro confessed. "It won't happen again. Now, where were we?"

  "Bourbon, rye or rum. Those are my recommendations tonight. Would you like yours straight, on the rocks, or in a cocktail?"

  "Well, as I said, Frank, I'm starting out the night in a singularly festive mood. How about one of your endless variations on the Manhattan? Surprise me."

  "You're on."

  Werner took out the bottle of twelve-year-old rye that he had used in Konig's Old Fashioned, poured it over ice into a thin-walled laboratory beaker with his best French vermouth and a couple of dashes each of Angostura and orange bitters, then stirred the mixture and strained it into a stemmed glass with a homemade maraschino cherry.

  Oshiro drained half the drink in one gulp. Werner thought he could actually see the curtain of haze falling across Oshiro's almond-shaped eyes.

  "Hank, you're such a bright guy, so talented," Werner reproved him. "I'll never understand why you waste your time hustling pills. But go ahead and tell me anyway. Maybe I'll get it this time."

  Oshiro gave a good-natured laugh and took another hit from his Manhattan before settling back onto his bar stool.

  "Why? Because I make good money at it and I'm my own boss. I have reliable suppliers and customers who pay. In fact, most of them rank high in the pecking order of this sorry new society of ours. You see, I understand exactly how the system works, Frank, and I don't expect it to change anytime soon. So I'm working inside the system, see? They're corrupt, I'm corrupt. But there's a difference: I'm good corrupt. And with enough good corrupt people like you and me getting the bigwigs drunk and stoned and laid, maybe someday the whole rotten edifice will collapse of its own weight and we can all start over."

  "I guess that's one form of idealism," Werner commented. "Collapse and renewal through oblivion–rather like the phoenix rising from the ashes."

  "Yeah, I like that, Frank. Let me think about it while you mix me another one."

  Werner refilled the beaker and stirred.

  "Not much of a future in collapse, though," he continued. "I'm nearly sixty, so I've already had a life. As it turns out, bootlegging and bartending are a pretty good fit for me as I get older. But you, Hank, haven't even hit thirty-five. So what's the plan
when you reach my age?"

  Werner presented Oshiro's refill and the younger man savored a long slow draught.

  "There's no plan for that at all. I don't see myself getting there."

  All at once Hank Oshiro's cheerful confidence seemed to have deserted him and Werner wondered if there weren't indeed something of the bipolar personality in him. Then Oshiro rose from his stool and peeled three twenties onto the bar from the money clip in his trouser pocket.

  "Okay, then, the night's still young and I have places to go and appointments to keep," he said with forced enthusiasm. But Werner sensed that the younger man saw the disappointment in his face and he was accordingly surprised when Oshiro leaned across the bar to speak.

  "Don't get me wrong, Frank, I appreciate your faith in me. But you know perfectly well how I came to be the way I am. You were there, too."

  ****

  Shortly after eleven o'clock, the last party in the dining room settled their bill and Werner announced last call to the remaining bar patrons. When the final drink of the night had been poured, Werner closed the bar and carried the night's proceeds upstairs to the office, where the Somerset Club's owner was doing spreadsheet work on his computer.

  "Checking out the mid-month numbers, Jake?" he asked the older man.

  "Ah, the mid-month numbers are shit again," Jake replied indifferently. "Except your bar. It turns a tidy profit every week, like a bank or a casino. Maybe I should turn the dining room over to you, too."

  Werner laughed.

  "That's way outside my field, Jake," he replied. "But maybe you should to watch your food service manager a little more closely. Either he's not very good at his job or he's not reporting all the revenue."

  "You may be right. Something doesn't add up down there. But the truth is, I'm too old and tired to go down there and straighten it out myself. Somebody like you should run it, Frank. Somebody who shows up every day and asks good questions and cares about the people working for him. Why don't you make me an offer? I might surprise you."

  Jake Hagopian gave a big, wide-open belly laugh. Then he gazed with sparkling gray eyes at Werner and pulled a vacant chair next to his as if inviting Werner to come make a deal on the spot.

  Hagopian was a compact man of medium height, with a thick neck and shoulders and what looked like half of a basketball tucked under his thin black v-neck cashmere sweater. Sometimes Werner wondered how he remained so strong and in robust health despite his punishing schedule. Though he was over seventy, Jake still put in twelve-hour workdays six days a week for his portfolio of businesses.

  Among those businesses, the Somerset Club was far from the largest. Hagopian's primary business was trading in recycled building materials and gray-market construction equipment. Indeed, it was recycled building materials which had, by coincidence, brought Werner and Hagopian together, for Werner knew more than a little about recycling from his days in the brickyards at Kamas. At their very first meeting, Werner offered Hagopian some inside information about where to source certain scarce building materials that had earned a tidy sum for the old man.

  Only later did Werner learn how Hagopian, an engineer by training, had entered the building materials business when his residential construction firm was on the edge of bankruptcy. The old man had credited his Soviet education with the insight that saved his business. Having spent the first twenty years of his life in Soviet Armenia, he had come to America with a sound foundation in mathematics and the physical sciences. Even more important, he had learned how to survive and prosper within a failed economic system. Seeing the analogy between the Soviet economy and the new Unionist economy, Hagopian found new ways to profit from the explosion of state-funded construction projects by supplying gray-market and recycled building materials to major contractors. Though the bidding was ostensibly open and competitive, Hagopian generally won and always turned a profit.

  Recently, however, the expansion of his building materials business had made it difficult for Hagopian to keep up with his working capital needs. To raise capital, he had already sold off two small commodities trading businesses and was evaluating whether to sell the Somerset Club as well. He hoped to sell it to Werner but Werner never took the bait.

  "You steer a hard bargain, Frank. How can we come to an agreement if you won't even name your terms?"

  "We can't, Jake. I couldn't own the Somerset Club if you gave it to me. I'm not even allowed to be in Boston, legally speaking. I can continue to live off the grid if I don't make trouble but I have no legal right to own property here or to register a business because I have no residence permit for Boston. And they will never give me one. Period."

  "For the right sum, any permit can be obtained," Hagopian asserted.

  "Not this one. Not for me," Werner declared. "I was amnestied in Utah and Utah is where they want me to stay. And to be honest, I'd rather be in Utah. The only reason I stay in Boston is to find my daughter so she'll know that I'm alive. Once I do that, I plan to cash in my chips and find a place out west where I can be myself and nobody cares anymore what I've done or where I've been."

  "Well, I still think you underestimate my ability to fix that permit problem of yours, but let's pull that aside for the moment," Jake offered. "If you do go back west, Frank, I'd like you to consider working for me there. With your contacts, we could get first crackle at any of the recycled materials coming out of those western worksites. The profit margin would nearly double what they are now. How about it, Frank? Partners?"

  Frank Werner shook his head. It was an atrocious idea but he couldn't fault Jake Hagopian for asking. Their values were wildly different, but he had grown too fond of the old man to be angry with him over his worldview. And he loved the malapropisms that peppered Jake's Russian-accented speech.

  "Thanks, Jake, but I'd rather stick to dealing in liquor and wine. It's an honest trade giving good value at a fair price and I'm pretty good at it. I could never be a party to any business that profited from forced labor or helped support the labor camp system. I don't mean to tell you how to run your business, Jake, but once you've been in one of those camps, things look very, very different."

  "Okay, okay, I read you free and clear," Hagopian replied holding his palms up in mock surrender. "We go on just as before, no changes, right?"

  "Right, Jake. For as long as we possibly can."

  "But you don't mind, do you, if I do some checking into that residence permit thing, right?"

  "I most certainly do mind!" Werner exclaimed, raising his palms to his temples in exasperation. "Didn't you hear a word…"

  Then he saw the mischievous grin creep across Hagopian's face and could not help laughing along with him.

  CHAPTER 6

  Saturday, April 14, 2029

  Waltham, Massachusetts

  Entering the industrial district of old Waltham, Werner turned off Crescent Street and parked the delivery van two blocks east of the Charles River among a block of vacant warehouses. Here, in the early nineteenth century, the first integrated textile mill went into operation, giving birth to the American industrial revolution. Today, except for the string of bars, flophouses, gambling dens, and storefront missions lining lower Moody Street, the district lay largely in ruins. Werner locked the truck, scanned the street in both directions and walked around the corner to a waiting Mercedes station wagon.

  The driver was a man of medium height and build, a few years past fifty, with a fringe of neatly trimmed gray hair reaching his collar. His pinstriped shirt, black cashmere sweater, and sharply creased wool gabardine trousers conveyed an air of casual elegance not often seen in Waltham. In his day, the driver had played varsity soccer at Princeton and still possessed the fast reflexes, high energy and quick wits that had served him well on the soccer field. The man observed Werner's approach in the rearview mirror and waved him forward without turning his head.

  Werner noticed the wave and returned to the van, where he removed a two-wheeled hand truck and loaded it high with five cases of
liquor. He locked the van and wheeled the hand truck around the corner without wasting a moment. As Werner approached, the driver released the tailgate electronically and continued watching through the mirror while Werner loaded the station wagon's cargo area. Upon finishing, Werner opened the front passenger door and took a seat next to his favorite liquor customer, Harry Kendall.

  The two men had met through Kendall's caterer, Franz Meier, who had recommended Werner for his ability to procure case quantities of top-quality, pre-Events wines and spirits for Kendall's active schedule of business entertaining. Kendall, a graduate of both Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School, had been an investment banker before the Events, specializing in corporate turnarounds. As the economy collapsed and clients grew scarce, Kendall devoted himself to studying economic history and emerged a few months later prepared for what he called the inevitable pendulum swing from state-owned enterprise back toward privatization.

  Kendall promptly offered his services to the newly elected governor of Massachusetts as a $1-a-year man with a mandate to draft a privatization plan for the Commonwealth's overabundant stock of state-owned financial institutions, commercial and industrial companies, and real estate holdings. His civic-minded offer was accepted without hesitation, in view of the dazzling prospects for wealth generation that his plan offered to the Governor and his circle of intimate associates.

  "Going any place in particular today?" he asked Werner once the car was underway.

  "No, let's just drive around a bit. When we're done, you can drop me off on Crescent Street and I'll walk back to the van."

  Werner found Kendall's personality both fascinating and alarming. Here was an intelligent, educated, accomplished business leader in post-industrial Boston whose mind was enormously fertile yet totally unguided by any ethical or moral scruples. The man was pure pragmatism mixed with ample measures of ego, animal spirits, self-interest, and curiosity. Yet, apart from an occasional off-putting intensity, Kendall could be as affable and smooth a character as ever graced a Beacon Hill drawing room.