Star Chamber Brotherhood

by Preston Fleming

  Werner was content to daydream for a few moments longer while Sam Tucker finished what he was reading and returned the book to the shelf. To Werner, Sam resembled both his uncle and his father in being a large, powerfully built man who had fallen off the fitness wagon. Though a varsity sprinter and hurdler as an undergraduate at Ohio State, Sam now carried an extra twenty or thirty pounds of fat on his six-foot, three-inch frame that made him resemble a well-fed bear. He wore wrinkled khakis and a denim shirt under a fleece vest, which he admitted was a virtual uniform among his fellow post-doctorate fellows. In the scientific academe, he claimed, conformity was a core virtue until one safely attained celebrity status.

  Over lunch in the museum cafe, the two men talked about their lives, local events, the prospects for this year's Red Sox squad, and the occasional good-looking woman who passed by, as bachelors of all ages tend to do when their girlfriends are out of earshot.

  After lunch, they walked down Land Avenue to the Charles River Reservation and continued along the river toward the Longfellow Bridge. After a while, they stopped to watch a barge pass with materials for the new levees being built further upriver. The water level was higher than Werner had ever seen it.

  When they were alone, Werner asked whether Sam had been able to turn up any new leads on the Internet concerning his daughter's whereabouts.

  "Not since we talked last time," the younger man replied. "First of all, it's not easy to get time on the Internet at my office. And when I do, I have to be really careful to have a good reason for anything I do that's not job-related just in case somebody asks about it later. You see, all our Internet access is electronically logged to make sure people don't give away MIT's secrets or that kind of thing."

  "Or get access to information ordinary people aren't supposed to know about," Werner added.

  "That, too, I suppose," Tucker replied. "Though you'd be surprised at how much is already out there once you look around. All the foreign newspapers and magazines and scientific journals, for instance. Man, there's an awful lot happening in India and Brazil and the U.K. that we never even hear about in our press. It's like we've morphed into the old Soviet Union while Brazil and India and places like that have turned into the new U.S. That ain't pretty if you're a scientist and the other guys are leaving you in the dust every time you think you have a great new research idea."

  "So what do you think, Sam?" Werner persisted. "Is there anyplace you haven't looked yet where you think there might be a chance of picking something up on Marie?"

  "Well, your timing is excellent. I just learned some new hacks that promise to open up entirely new vistas for my illicit career on the Internet.

  "Apparently, a lot of our computer science guys have been doing some phenomenal hacking for years, right under the noses of the Thought Police. I guess I'm always the last to know because they all think I'm such a square. But a couple of my students have taken pity on me and are showing me the ropes. It's truly awesome what they can get away with."

  A moment later a team of runners from the Harvard track team passed by, prompting the two men to move along. A few minutes later Werner asked Sam how his engineering work was coming along. At the time Werner had set up the lunch date, Sam had been discouraged about his prospects for promotion within the Electrical Engineering Department, and particularly about his inability to gain an assignment in the MIT institute doing plasma physics research.

  "I don't even know why they bother keeping me around sometimes," Tucker complained. "Apart from teaching undergraduates and junior grad students, they don't give me any assignments at all. And the powers that be have made it clear that I'm definitely not on the fast track for a promotion. I mean, when I signed on to stay here for post-grad work, my thesis advisor virtually promised me a slot in the Plasma Science Center. Now nobody over there will even talk to me."

  "Why do you suppose that's happening?" Werner inquired, puzzled at Sam's change of fortune.

  Sam Tucker rolled his eyes.

  "You know what happened, Frank. Dad got arrested. Somehow, though, it didn't seem to be a problem until they did the background check for my security clearance to work on classified projects. But since Dad somehow popped up in the background investigation, the Institute doesn't quite know what to do with me any more. On the one hand, I was one of their own Ph.D.'s and viewed as perhaps having some talent in the field. And, of course, it didn't hurt my cause that they're able to count me as a member of a ‘protected class’ for diversity purposes.

  "On the other hand, I never joined the Party, I still belong to a church, and I went to Andover on a scholarship. Which doesn't seem so bad, except that after the Moneymen Purge, if you went to Exeter, Andover, Groton, or Choate, you might as well have been a child molester.

  "So when the Administration learned that Dad had been sent to a corrective labor camp, I think they decided that I wasn't the guy they thought I was. Unlike them, I hadn't come up through the Party, I owed my success to hard work rather than to the State, and I had learned my values from my Dad, the dissident.

  "Anyway, this winter I realized nothing was going to change for me unless I left MIT. So I put out some feelers. And last week I got a call from West Virginia University. No, it's not in the same league as MIT, but they do have a pretty good plasma physics program and they're willing to let me work on it. So I'd still be a post-doctoral fellow with teaching duties, but I'd be valued and I'd be able to work on what interests me. As for Morgantown, I don't have a clue what to expect. But I think I'm going to tell them yes."

  Werner gave Sam a hearty slap on the back and congratulated him but at the same time felt his own heart sink at the unexpected news. He would miss his young friend in more ways than one.

  "How do you feel about the move, Sam? Is this what your heart is telling you to do?" he asked.

  "I think so," Tucker replied.

  "When might you be leaving?"

  "Not before the end of the semester. I'll probably move down there in June so I'll have time to settle in before the fall semester begins."

  "That's good, Sam," Werner replied, "Because there's something else I want to talk to you about. You see, I need your help on a project that's likely to be over by the end of May, but it may require fifty to a hundred hours of concentrated work before then. There's no pay, no recognition, and it carries some serious risk. So it's something you'll need to consider very carefully. But I think you will consider it, because it involves your father…in a way."

  Sam Tucker stopped walking and examined Werner carefully before looking out over the Charles River Basin and the buildings of Cambridge. Werner thought he saw the young man's eyes glisten in a way that they hadn't until now.

  "Until now, Frank, you've always said that you've heard of my dad, or knew him from a distance, but you've never said that you had actually known him. So, tell me: just how well did you know my father and how were you connected with him?"

  This was the question that Frank Werner had dreaded. There could be no doubt that Sam Tucker idolized his father, having absorbed his love and protection well into young adulthood, only to lose him before he was old enough to know him as a man.

  His uncle Jonah, having known Uriah Tucker as a brother, had hinted to Werner more than once that he had heard of Uriah's fall from grace. But even Jonah had not wanted to believe it.

  Until those final days at Kamas, virtually everyone who knew Uriah Tucker saw him as a giant, a hero, a candidate for sainthood, which is how Werner liked to recall him whenever his memory allowed him to put aside recollections of those fateful days. For Uriah had indeed been a fine man before he was corrupted.

  Werner resolved anew not to say anything to son or brother about Uriah Tucker's end. It would be wrong to ruin a man's reputation in the minds of those who loved him most by revealing to them the acts of a short but terrible season. And in Uriah's defense, the pressures he had been under were immense. But what hope could exist of ever redeeming Uriah's sins if neither son nor brother
knew of them? How could either of them repudiate the very weakness and error in Uriah that had permitted them to live unmolested lives, yet at the same time had enabled Fred Rocco and his lieutenants to compromise Uriah's integrity and turn him by degrees into the monster who betrayed hundreds of his fellow prisoners?

  Werner did not know the answer. So he lied to Sam in the same way that he had done to Jonah.

  "I felt like I knew your father because, when we were in camp together, I was once assigned to work on a project with him. In fact, it was a project much like the one I will be asking you to join. But before the project could be carried out, I was arrested and thrown into solitary and the opportunity didn't come up again."

  Werner continued, glancing to either side from time to time to make sure that no one could overhear.

  "Your father spent most of his life helping and defending ordinary people against the tyrannical power of the Unionist system. He was not a violent man and I don't know if he ever used a gun or a bomb. But he worked with men who did and sometimes his own actions sometimes led to violent results. The point is, your father knew that the success of his cause could probably not be achieved without violence, though he himself would not strike or kill with his own hands–"

  Sam Tucker interrupted.

  "If you're asking whether I'm willing to help you against the Unionists, Frank, I'm already there. Don't forget, I've been with the Railroad since I was in middle school. But if your aim is to overthrow the current regime, you're a bit late. That's what Civil War II was all about and our side lost. Most of those who've ever raised their hands against the Party are dead or in the camps. What could you or I or any team of us do that would make any difference at all?"

  "We could make a very important difference to a particular group of men and, by extension, to men in similar situations across the country," Werner continued. "We could give an important measure of justice to those men and offer hope and encouragement to others that they can do the same for themselves."

  "All right, Frank," Sam interrupted again. "I think I'm with you, but I don't have a lot of time before I'm expected back at the office. So I need you to tell me what the mission is and what you want me to do. Can you just, well, lay it out?"

  "Okay, here it is," Werner answered uneasily, checking that they were still far enough from anyone not to be overheard. "Our mission is to carry out a sentence of death against the warden of the Corrective Labor Camp in Kamas, Utah, for crushing the Kamas rebellion of 2024. I took part in that rebellion and can testify that the warden has the blood of thousands of prisoners on his hands for the way he crushed the rebellion. That blood includes your father's.

  "Your primary role on the Team will be target research: to help us track the target, detect his vulnerabilities and provide whatever information the team may need to penetrate his security, execute him, and withdraw without incident. Unless there's an emergency, you will not be called upon to participate in the execution itself. Others with the appropriate skills will see to that. But the risk to you will be the same as the risk to the rest of us. Anybody who's caught will be charged with overthrow of the government by assassination and hanged. Or worse. So, there you have it," Werner concluded. "Are you with us?"

  Sam Tucker paused deliberately before responding and looked Werner straight in the eye.

  "It may seem odd, Frank, but for several days I've had a strange sense that I might be chosen for some sort of special task," Sam replied with surprising composure. "I've prayed about it and I decided that, if I was called upon, my answer would be yes. So if you'll tell me exactly what you want, I'm ready to start this afternoon."

  ****

  Werner and Tucker finished their conversation and made their way in relative silence back to Land Avenue. They were about to part when Sam Tucker suddenly stopped and seized Warner's elbow.

  "Do you realize what day it is today?" he asked excitedly.

  Werner drew a blank.

  "Think of the most famous events in Boston's history," Sam prompted.

  "Boston Tea Party?" Werner guessed. "Paul Revere's Ride?"

  "No, but you're getting warm," Tucker replied. "Try again."

  "Lexington and Concord? Shot heard 'round the world?"

  "Bingo! In Boston it's celebrated on Patriots' Day, which comes on the third Monday in April. And that's today," Tucker pointed out. "Did you ever watch the reenactment at the Concord North Bridge?"

  "Several times when my girls were in school," Werner replied. "Do they still do it?"

  "Sadly, not anymore," Sam answered. "They stopped it about five years ago. No more Revolutionary War reenactments. No more statues of Founding Fathers. No more brass plaques or anything."

  "They may think we'll forget," Werner allowed. "But we won't. Not people from around here, anyway. Not till the Unionists are long gone."

  "Amen to that," Sam affirmed and was quickly gone.

  CHAPTER 10

  Wednesday, April 18, 2029,

  Boston

  At half past four Werner bought a jumbo iced tea at the coffee shop opposite the rear of the FEMA Building and carried it to a window stool looking south across Purchase Street just west of the garage exit. From his jacket pocket he removed a paperback novel and pretended to read it while watching for patterns in the traffic leaving the underground garage. Traffic was still light but, as five o'clock approached, the first cars to leave were the electric minicars of the government middle managers and the Ford and Nissan sedans assigned from the special GSA motor pool to senior federal officials. The vintage European and Japanese makes driven by tenants of the commercial floors would not emerge in any numbers for at least another hour.

  It was just after five when Werner noticed a polished maroon Ford Galaxy sedan leave the garage to make the right turn onto Purchase Street. He could not see the driver through the car's tinted glass but was close enough to recognize the GSA license plate number as the one that Rocco had been driving for the past several days.

  Werner reached into his pocket to send a short pattern of clicks on the two-way radio to Hector Alvarez, then jotted the time and place and the direction of the car's movement on a folded sheet of paper tucked inside the rear cover of his paperback. He waited in the coffee shop for a few more minutes to finish his iced tea and read a few more pages of his novel.

  He had read barely more than a page when a thought emerged that had lain dormant for several days. All at once he understood that most of the assumptions he had formed the week before about how to execute the team's mission were turning out to be mistaken. At the core of his operational thinking was his counter-terrorist training while a Career Trainee in the Central Intelligence Agency some thirty years before. His Agency trainers had focused at that time on methods of Arab terrorists from the 1970s, those of the Red Brigades and Baader-Meinhof Gang during the '80s, and those of Russian and Chechen assassins during the '90s.

  Most of those killers had opted for soft targets, that is, victims who were neither trained, armed, nor security-conscious. Moreover, most of the attackers had enjoyed the advantage of ample lead time, staffing, funding, and logistical support; their choice of weapons, including automatic weapons and explosives; false documents and foreign safe havens; and tolerant, open societies rather than police states within which to stalk their targets and make their escape.

  By contrast, the Star Team's target was a senior State Security officer who shuttled between secure parking facilities at both home and office and had never been seen leaving either on foot. Moreover, the Star Team was under a forty-day deadline, included only four members and lacked the time and resources required to map out Rocco's daily movements in so short a time without risking discovery. Its funding and support resources were negligible. Finally, operational security principles dictated that only Werner be aware of the identity of the other team members.

  So far, the Team's only weapons were a civilian semi-automatic hunting rifle and a war-surplus pistol, along with a few dozen rounds of ammuniti
on. And unlike the terrorists against whom he had been trained, Werner and his team were neither eager to die for their cause nor so naïve or ideologically rigid as to believe that they would succeed simply because God was on their side or their cause was just or otherwise aligned with the forces of history. What each team member wanted above all was to complete the mission and simply go on with his life.

  The central challenge, Werner now realized, was that Fred Rocco was not sufficiently vulnerable to the typical terrorist hit-and-run attack. His team needed more time, more surveillance coverage, more firepower, and more mobility. But the longer they watched Rocco, the greater was the risk of discovery. And to seek additional weaponry on the open market also carried unacceptable risks. What they needed was a change of plan. They needed a way to take Fred Rocco down when he was alone and vulnerable, using resources already within their grasp. And they needed it fast.

  ****

  By the time Werner stepped out of the coffee shop onto Purchase Street, most of the big Fords and Nissans assigned to senior federal officials like Rocco had already exited the underground garage. Now a steady stream of electric minicars and aging Government Motors carpool vehicles had begun to follow. Once their bosses were gone, Werner noticed, the building seemed to empty fast. It appeared that post-capitalist office culture still observed the time-honored principle of "face time."

  Werner climbed Congress Street to Franklin and headed back toward the Somerset Club through the center of downtown, taking ample time to check his back trail for possible surveillants. Once at the Club, he ate a quick supper in the kitchen with the wait staff, sorted his mail and proceeded to the bar. He had already arranged for one of the waiters to come in early to open the bar and set up for the evening. Werner thanked him and took his place behind the counter so that the waiter could eat before guests started arriving in the dining room.