Werner checked in with Steve, whom he had assigned to run the bar during his increasingly frequent absences, and asked whether the new crowd appeared to be competent drinkers.
"Not like our regulars," Steve replied after a moment's thought. "But that's not to say they're tight with their money. They're drinking more than their share of white wine, highballs, and rum-and-cokes. They're no teetotalers, that's for sure."
"How about the music? Is it helping us?"
"Hard to say," Steve mused. "The folksinger who just finished didn't amount to much more than background noise. This next group is amplified, so they may be different. You know, I heard they had to leave their last gig because their songs got a bit too political."
"Funny, Jake didn't say anything about that," Werner remarked.
"Oh, yeah, they caused quite a stir. I didn't see anything in the local news, but word has it their fans followed them here tonight in hope of more fireworks."
"Too hot for Cambridge and they've come here?" Werner questioned. "I don't like that at all. Is Jake upstairs?"
"He took off early. Something about his family. He wanted me to tell you he left you in charge."
At that moment Werner saw someone waving at him from a stool at the far end of the bar. It was Harvey Konig. In his brown tweeds, he blended in well with the other academics in attendance. Konig smiled and held up his drink in greeting. Werner could see immediately that Konig was drunk. Then he noticed the two linebacker types in cheap gray suits standing only a meter or two behind Konig. One of them, a stocky bullet of a man with a crew cut and a bulldog face, followed Konig's glance to Werner and caught his eye, as if in warning. Of all nights to have government agents on premises, Werner muttered under his breath, why did it have to be tonight?
Werner went back to fixing drinks while keeping an eye on the low wooden stage across the room where the band was setting up their drums, synthesizer, and electric guitar. The band's two lead singers, who conferred quietly behind the platform, consisted of a spindly youth in his mid-twenties with burning eyes and a three-day growth of beard and a willowy female undergraduate whose wavy reddish brown hair, dreamy eyes, and knowing smile appeared to Werner sufficient to melt a man's heart before she sang a single note. Werner wondered how so young a couple had managed to attract a following so early in their careers.
The first song was a Leonard Cohen ballad sung by the male lead that, though beautifully rendered, made no special impact on Werner. The next number, also by the male lead, was the rollicking Vietnam-era crowd-pleaser from the Woodstock festival, Country Joe's "Feel Like I'm Fixing to Die Rag." That song woke up the audience and had the older members singing along.
Well come on all of you big strong men,
Uncle Sam needs your help again,
He got himself in a terrible jam,
Way down yonder in Vietnam,
Put down your books and pick up a gun,
We're gonna have a whole lot of fun.
And its 1,2,3. What are we fightin' for?
Don't ask me I don't give a damn,
The next stop is Vietnam,
And its 5,6,7. Open up the pearly gates.
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee, we're all gonna die.
But the crowd came fully alive when the female lead came on stage and joined her partner in "Back on the Chain Gang," the sentimental 1980s favorite by the Pretenders. Werner watched closely and saw that the crowd's response peaked when the lyrics railed against 'circumstances and powers beyond our control.'
Back on the chain gang
The powers that be
That force us to live like we do
Bring me to my knees
When I see what they've done to you
But I'll die as I stand here today
Knowing that deep in my heart
They'll fall to ruin one day
For making us part.
Werner suppressed a smile. Could this generation be the one that would at last question what had happened to America under the Unionist regime? How ironic for the nomenklatura and the New Class to face the same rhetoric that was directed against Johnson and Nixon during the Vietnam War. But before Werner could take this train of thought any further, the band struck up the next tune. Werner recognized it as Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows" and watched the audience howl with delight at its cynicism, delivered in silky tones by the shapely girl with reddish brown hair:
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
By the end of the song, the reason for the group's popularity was becoming clear. They voiced the distrust and doubt that others dared not express. Their youth, their talent, and their casual sense of knowing, free of bitterness or rancor, did not mark them as rebels or dissidents, but as artists offering up their individual vision of American life. And what they saw did not match the official version from the state-run media.
The two young singers seemed to sense that the audience was in their power. The girl brushed the hair back from her eyes and directed the band with a nod to start the next number, another by Leonard Cohen entitled "The Future." This one was powered by a driving beat and its opening lyrics promised an edgy romp of black humor:
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
I've seen the future, brother,
It is murder.
Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
Give me peace
Or give me Hiroshima
Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
And stuff it up the hole
In your culture
But as the verses went on, Werner detected that the lyrics were no longer Cohen's but new ones that the couple had penned to reflect contemporary events. And the new lyrics weren't just edgy; they were raw. As the stanzas grew more stinging, the crowd's response grew more raucous.
Give me back Islamic Law
Beards and burkas for Ma and Pa
And stone me if I don't
Bow down to Allah
Go slit my throat, lop off my head
Just make it quick, so I'll be dead
I'd rather die than face their
Propaganda
Give me back the Russian War
I'll freeze to death in bloody snow
To keep the Yellow Peril
From our borders
I'll fight on those Far Eastern shores
Drink Russian vodka, screw Russian whores
Take on the Chinese Army
For our Leader
Alarm bells clanged in Frank Werner's head so loud that they hurt. This was beyond political. By Unionist standards it was seditious. And it was happening in his club, with DSS agents right in the audience. Werner glanced toward the end of the bar where Harvey Konig guzzled a fresh drink and found the former professor gazing at the singers with mouth agape. Behind him, the government linebackers were bulldozing through the crowd toward the stage. Before the duo could launch their next verse, the DSS men had flashed their badges at the sound engineers and forced them to kill the amplifiers. All at once the music stopped. For a moment the room was silent.
Then the agent with the crew cut and bulldog face mounted the stage and addressed the crowd.
"Okay, folks, listen up. The show is over due to technical difficulties," he announced in a thick South Boston accent. "But stay where you are, the next round of drinks is on the house."
Then, as a ridiculous afterthought, he added, "Now, let's put our hands together for the band!"
The applause was tepid and confused, as if the audience regretted having lost cont
rol and revealed too much about themselves. And indeed they had, for the second government agent was already on his two-way radio, doubtless calling in the police or the Unionist militia. Werner had seen this before. The government agents would secure the doors and the police would scan the identification of every person in the club before they could leave. For anyone with a prior record of political dissent, it could be the first step on the road leading to the camps.
"Bulldog" left the stage and headed toward the front door while his partner covered the emergency exit. Werner looked for Harvey Konig, but he had apparently recognized the chance to escape and was gone. Bulldog stopped at the bar on his way toward the door and waved Werner closer.
"Keep pouring, barman," Bulldog ordered. "It may be a while before these folks can leave. But when they do, don't go away. You and I are going to have a little chat."
"Good. I'll have your tab ready," Werner replied with a genial grin. "Because that round of drinks you ordered for everyone is going on the credit card you gave me, Big Shot. You can call it a government stimulus."
"This could get interesting," the agent replied menacingly on his way to the door.
Werner gathered his wits. Showing up on the DSS's radar screen for his acquaintance with Harvey Konig was bad enough. Having hosted an anti-Unionist protest songfest could put him directly under their spotlight. On the other hand, he now possessed an ironclad alibi for the evening. He could count on Bulldog and his partner for that. And by morning he expected to know whether he would need it.
CHAPTER 14
Flashback: Late June, 2024
Kamas, Utah
The midsummer sun was high in the sky and shone hard on the Kamas Valley, driving the temperatures into the mid-nineties. More than five thousand prisoners of the Kamas corrective labor camp, survivors of an armored assault just after dawn, sat Indian-style on the Division Four parade ground waiting to be assigned for transport to other camps throughout the western United States and Canada. Most had not seen food or drink since the night before. Many had kept vigil through the night awaiting the attack and had fought to repel the heavily armed attackers. Though the seriously wounded had already been evacuated to a field hospital outside the camp perimeter, some on the parade ground refused treatment and still bore untreated wounds.
Frank Werner shifted from sitting cross-legged to kneeling to revive the circulation in his legs. His wrists were already raw from the self-locking plastic restraint loop that tied his hands behind his back. But these discomforts were trivial compared with the splitting headache he felt and the pain that radiated from his ribs, back, and shoulders. Though he had not fought the attackers, they had beaten him with clubs and rifle butts when government troops overran his forward observer position atop the inner perimeter wall. Later that morning he had been forced at gunpoint to stand for nearly two hours while the other prisoners were brought to the parade ground from other parts of the camp.
A fine reddish-brown dust stirred up during the tank attack covered Werner from head to toe. With the continuous rumbling of trucks and armored personnel carriers in and out of the camp, the dust continued to blow through the gaps in the perimeter walls and across the camp's open spaces. From time to time he coughed up brown goo from the depths of his lungs but by now he could barely generate enough saliva to spit.
Werner looked from side to side and saw that the other prisoners were arranged in blocks of twenty on a side, each man positioned three paces from those to his front, back and sides. Lanes ten paces wide separated each block from the next. He could see that the entire formation was four blocks wide and guessed that the parade ground held at least a dozen blocks of twenty men, though he could not be certain since he was unable to count the rows behind him. Having been among the first prisoners captured, Werner sat near the middle of the first rank of blocks.
For the most part, the prisoners sat in silence or spoke in low tones to their comrades to either side. From time to time, one or another burst out in anger or despair but their captors generally ignored the cries so long as the prisoners did not stir from their places. Guards patrolled slowly up and down the aisles and rows, descending like furies upon anyone who moved out of formation or rose above a seated position. Prisoners who lost consciousness and could not be revived were dragged by the ankles to a gap in the north wall and loaded into the back of a pickup or onto a flatbed truck for transport under guard to the nearest field hospital.
Every few minutes Werner heard gunfire, usually a single pistol round or a short burst from a submachine gun. He shuddered at the memory of seeing warders stack the dead and seriously wounded on flatbed trucks earlier in the day. To his horror, he had watched the warders finish off surviving rebels with a deft knife slash across the throat. The gunshots, he suspected, were a form of triage. Mutinous prisoners killed while attempting to escape (though many of these were already motionless) did not require treatment or occupy hospital beds.
After two years in captivity as a political prisoner, Werner understood only too well the government's merciless stance toward the Kamas prisoners. The forty-day Kamas revolt had been the first and only such event in the history of the Corrective Labor Administration. The Administration and its overseers in the Department of State Security despised the prisoners for besting them at a game in which the government held all the cards. They also feared that other prisoners might follow Kamas's example and spark strikes and riots throughout the labor camp system. And, most of all, the officers in charge feared being held accountable for their errors and lapses by the Unionist Party leaders who had relied on them to keep the camp system under control and out of sight.
The solution was as obvious to the prisoners as it doubtless was to their captors. After crushing the rebellion with overwhelming force, the camp administration would move to cover up its failure by closing the camp, hiding all evidence of the rebellion and denying that it had ever happened. Essential to the plan would be to identify all prisoners who had led, participated in, or sided with the revolt and to transfer them immediately to remote northern punishment camps where they could be quietly worked to death and never heard from again.
Though not a leader of the revolt or of the strikes that preceded it, Frank Werner had supported these actions from the outset and had been an early volunteer. Most of the rebel leaders were his friends and anyone who knew Werner would have had no doubt as to which side he was on. Accordingly, he fully expected that, when government security teams arrived on the parade ground to sort out the rebel activists from the bystanders, they would finger him immediately.
Werner spotted the first two security teams as they entered the parade ground through the east gate, then noticed a half dozen more emerge from gaps in the north wall. Each team consisted of a prisoner informant, generally a warder or stool pigeon who had sat out the revolt in government custody, a camp security officer, a civilian clerk, and a squad of troops armed with riot batons and pepper spray. The teams fanned out and began their work at the rear rank of each block, then moved among the ranks, deciding the fate of each prisoner as they went. Whenever they found a rebel they recorded his name and serial number and led him out to a waiting transport while leaving the other prisoners in place.
The process, however fateful, did not hold Werner's interest for long. His mind soon drifted back to his injuries, thirst, and the discomfort in his arms and legs until the security team arrived at the end of his row. He cast a look in their direction and was surprised to see two familiar faces among the team.
The first was Uriah Tucker, a former automotive engineer from Flint, Michigan, turned lay preacher who years ago had achieved celebrity for leading a national campaign against the newly imposed federal church tax. A year later, he was arrested for helping political dissidents escape over the Canadian border and promptly disappeared into the camp system. When Werner arrived in Kamas on the eve of the revolt, Tucker was already revered for his humanitarian efforts within the camp and seen as a natural leader for his inte
lligence, eloquence, and gentle strength of character. Confused murmurs arose among the prisoners as Tucker's giant six-foot, five-inch frame came into view dressed in bright new orange prison overalls. Nearly all remained unaware that Tucker was a traitorous stool pigeon sentenced to death by the Star Committee.
The second familiar face Werner saw was that of the Warden, Fred Rocco, a tall, trim, scholarly-looking man of about fifty-five dressed in desert camouflage fatigues devoid of insignia. Werner recognized him from recent meetings at which Rocco had addressed rebel representatives in the camp dining hall. As on that occasion, Rocco's brilliant blue eyes darted rapidly from side to side like a lizard's.
It seemed quite remarkable to Werner that the Warden would participate in such a hands-on, low-level security activity as identifying rebels on the parade ground. It made sense only if the rumor were true that Major Jack Whiting, the camp's Chief of Security, had died of wounds suffered in the morning attack. For nothing could be more important to Rocco's future and that of his superiors than to round up every last rebel and send them off to oblivion. Rocco stood behind Tucker and the civilian clerk, peering over the clerk's shoulder at the prisoner roster, his hand resting on his holster as if prepared to shoot Tucker should he dare to bolt.
Tucker entered Werner's aisle and peered into the face of each prisoner as the clerk ordered each to shout out his name and serial number. At that moment, Werner heard someone call to him in a loud whisper from the right, the side opposite the security team.
"It's over, Frank," the voice said without emotion. "Let him denounce us. It doesn't matter anymore if it's Uriah or one of the others who does it."
Werner swung around and found the man sitting adjacent to him on the right was none other than Dave Lewis, a close friend who had become a senior rebel leader. Oddly, Werner did not recall Lewis having been next to him when they marched onto the parade ground and could not imagine how Lewis had managed to change places later in full view of the roving guards.
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