Exile Hunter (26 page)

The Deputy Commandant
was seated behind a battered oak desk. Bracken looked up from a
ledger he was reviewing to address his visitor abruptly and without
warmth.

“You know why you’re
here, Linder. I won’t waste your time with niceties when we both
have work to do,” Bracken told him. “This is my final offer. Work
with us undercover and in six months we’ll make you a trusty.
You’ll have a bunk in one of the best cabins along with double
rations. Refuse and you’ll join the disciplinary unit. There you’ll
be a bag of bones within a week.”

Linder lowered his eyes
and focused his mind on the answer he had settled upon days before
when Bracken had offered him a similar choice.

“Assign me wherever
you like. I won’t be an informant.” Though he could barely
articulate the words with his frozen lips, their intent was clear.

To Linder’s surprise,
Bracken did not explode at him. Instead, the Wolfman frowned, shook
his bearded head in disgust, and rose from his desk to retreat into
the darkness at the rear of the lodge. Moments later, Linder noticed
another figure dressed in guard’s coveralls emerge from the shadows
to take Bracken’s seat at the desk.

Linder was aghast when
the new man suddenly raised his head. “Look at me,” the stranger
commanded in a voice he knew.

To Linder’s utter
surprise, the man before him was Bob Bednarski. At once Linder’s
mind became lucid, his vision clear, and a fresh vigor infused his
limbs. He gazed at the man across the desk. This was not the arrogant
bully he had known from Cleveland and Beirut. Now Bednarski’s
expression was tentative, anxious, even fearful, beneath his bluff
façade. He also appeared twenty or thirty pounds lighter than the
man who had visited his cell in the Beirut embassy; the loose flesh
on his formerly rotund face sagged into papery jowls.

Bednarski picked up the
polished stone paperweight that served as base for an ornamental desk
flag in the style of the Unionist “New Stars and Stripes,” the
banner that the rebels called the Flag of Lies because it no longer
stood for a free republic. For a moment, Linder thought Bednarski
might throw the paperweight at him, flag and all.

But instead of
belligerence, Linder detected distress, even desperation, in
Bednarski’s eyes, and this set his mind racing to turn the man’s
weakness to his advantage. Slowly the ex-Base Chief released the
paperweight and drew the heavy oak chair out from behind the desk
toward a matching chair at Linder’s side. As Bednarski invited the
prisoner to sit, Bracken stood several paces away, behind Linder and
out of his field of vision. On seeing Linder’s wary expression,
Bednarski gave a rasping laugh that resembled a dull knife scraping
rusty iron.

“The Department has
studied your contacts with Philip Eaton and his daughter all the way
back to the Creation,” Bednarski declared. “We know everything
worth knowing about you and the Eatons. We can prove that you were in
league with the old man even before he looted the Cleveland banks. We
also have a list of your visits to Patricia in London. There’s no
point in denying it, Linder. You’ve been lying to the Department
about Patricia Eaton from day one.”

“That’s garbage and
you know it, Bob,” Linder replied, the words distorted by his
numbed lips. “I refuted that theory a hundred times. Read the
interrogation reports.” Linder shook his head in disbelief that
Bednarski had come all the way to Camp N-320 to dredge up tired old
charges that he ought to have known were baseless after Linder
refuted them the first time they were raised.

“Is that so? Then why
does Patricia’s husband agree with our version of events? Even
Kendall had to accept the truth once we showed him the evidence.”

“Then Kendall’s a
fool,” Linder answered without so much as a blink. “After the
wringer you’ve put the poor bastard through, he’d probably say
his wife screwed the entire British Parliament if it would get him
extra rations.” Linder struggled to imagine what additional
evidence the DSS might have fabricated against him and what they had
to gain by tormenting Roger Kendall with it.

“No, you’ve got
Kendall all wrong,” Bednarski insisted. “Actually, he was pretty
torn up when he found out what you and his wife were up to. But why
not ask him yourself? He’s right here in this camp.” At this, the
former Base Chief paused to measure Linder’s reaction and caught a
startled look that Linder could not conceal. “But don’t wait
long. I’m told Kendall is in rotten condition after his stay in the
disciplinary unit. The same one you’ll be going to if you don’t
change your tune pretty fast.”

Linder felt the heat of
anger rise within, giving him renewed strength.

“Why do you people go
on wasting your time with old rubbish?” he challenged Bednarski.
“Even if it weren’t a total fabrication, what would it matter?”

“What matters, my
friend, is that Philip Eaton held onto what he looted from those
Cleveland banks till the day he died. And we think Roger and Patricia
know where it is. Up to now, they’ve both claimed that no more loot
exists. But we think they’re lying, because our finance people have
calculated that Eaton couldn’t have spent more than a fraction of
what went missing that day in Cleveland. The rest of it must still be
cached away somewhere, and we think Patricia or Roger or one of
Eaton’s old militia contacts can lead us to it. Which is where you
come in.”

Linder crossed his
arms, sat back in the chair, and gazed at Bednarski as if he had
landed from Mars. But the ex-chief went on, unfazed.

“Headquarters thinks
we have one more shot at getting to the bottom of this. And you’re
going to help us do it.”

Bednarski watched
Linder for a reaction but found none.

“You see,” he
continued, “the Department has assembled here in this camp all the
captured members of the Cleveland militias having any connection at
all to the downtown bank job. The idea was to let them to talk freely
among themselves. Where knowledge may have been compartmented, our
aim was to bring the all the pieces together in one place.

“We also let the
prisoners know that, if any of them provides information that leads
us to the loot, his life will get a lot easier. Your assignment,
Linder, is to make friends among the Clevelanders and find out where
the money went. If you agree, Holzer and I will identify target
prisoners to you and help you to locate them inside the camp. If you
don’t, we’ll keep squeezing you until we get what we want or
there’s nothing left to squeeze.”

“And if I were to
succeed in finding what you want, what’s in it for me?” Linder
asked.

“We’ll have you
transferred to a light-duty camp in the Lower Forty-Eight, perhaps
somewhere warm like Utah or Arizona,” Bednarski offered. “But
don’t expect to be set free or get your old life back. You’re
still a traitor, Linder, and your life sentence stands.”

Linder looked away in
disgust, and in that moment, he noticed a sheepskin coat and hat
hanging from a hook on the wall behind Bracken’s desk. These were
of the grade issued to ranking camp officials like Bracken. By
contrast, the threadbare coveralls and jacket that Bednarski wore
were standard issue for guards and low-level support staff. All at
once it struck Linder how far Bednarski’s fortunes had fallen.
Despite the man’s show of bravado, his situation was nearly as
desperate as Linder’s.

“So what will it be?”
Bednarski demanded with beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

“Count me out,”
Linder answered.

“It’s a pity,”
Bednarski responded. “You might have saved yourself, Linder.
Instead, you’ll work until you keel over like one of your damned
old trees.”

Bednarski looked over
Linder’s shoulder and shot Bracken a concerned look. The Deputy
said nothing, merely pressing a buzzer for the guards to come and
take Linder away.

“And what does Neil
have to say about all this?” Linder ventured while waiting for the
guards to arrive. “Does he know we’re having this conversation?”

Bednarski’s cheeks
flushed and Linder knew he had struck a nerve.

“What kind of stupid
question is that?” Bednarski shot back. “All of this, every last
twist and turn, has been Denniston’s brainchild. He’s been
tracking the Eatons ever since the three of us stood outside the
Cleveland Federal Reserve with our thumbs up our asses while the old
man and his crew got away with the money. Denniston is the one who
put us both here, for God’s sake! He couldn’t care less about you
or me. All he cares about is getting his hands on Eaton’s cash.”

“I don’t know what
you’re talking about,” Linder retorted. “The Neil I know would
never do that.” Though he felt in his heart that Bednarski was
right about Denniston, it was now his turn to bluff.

Bednarski gaped at
Linder in apparent disbelief before uttering a hoarse belly laugh.

“So you think that
Neil-Boy is your friend and gives a bloody rat’s ass about what
happens to you? Well, I hate to be the one who ruins your day, pal,
but I can assure you that Neil Denniston is not your friend and
probably never was. He has hated your guts for as long as I have
known him. When the three of us were together in Beirut, I was amazed
that you still trusted that weasel. He brought you to Beirut to
destroy you and I was stupid enough to believe that I would come out
of it with a pile of dough.”

“Neil? Hate me?”
Linder scoffed to draw Bednarski out further. “For what reason?
We’ve been friends since college. He’s the one who brought me
into the Department. I did him a big favor by coming out to Beirut to
meet with Eaton. I’ve always been there for him.”

“And he’s never
forgiven you for it,” Bednarski snapped. “That’s the way he is,
don’t you get it? Neil envies and fears you. No matter how high he
may rise in the Department, he lives in fear that someday you, or
someone like you, will reveal to the world what an incompetent
bungler he is and how he bluffs and cheats to cover up his mistakes.
So there you have it. You can believe me or not.”

“I don’t,” Linder
lied. “And I don’t blame Neil for what’s happened to me,
either. It’s all my own damned fault…”

Though the statement
was only half true, Linder had an intuition that, if he were ever to
come up against Denniston again, his best shot would be to lull his
old college mate into believing that, despite everything, he still
considered Denniston a friend.

“Suit yourself,”
Bednarski concluded with a shrug. “If you change your mind, talk to
Bracken or Holzer. But don’t wait long. Where you’re going, time
has a way of getting away from people.”

Linder stood in silence
until the guards took him to the door, where he addressed Bednarski
for the last time.

“You die first. I’ll
die later,” Linder said in a quiet voice before leaving.

A good man must not obey laws too well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

SEPTEMBER, FIVE YEARS EARLIER DURING CIVIL WAR II, CLEVELAND, OHIO

Warren Linder opened
his eyes and gazed up at the water-stained ceiling of the vacant
office where he had spent the night on a canvas army cot. The last
time he had visited the DSS Base in Cleveland, the entire floor had
been bustling with DSS operations staff. Today the empty desks were
not a good sign, he thought. A lot had happened since he had been
sent to Cleveland to infiltrate the West Side militias, but lately
little of it had been good. Through a half-open window, Linder heard
the thumps of light mortar rounds exploding in the distance and
government troops returning fire from fifty-caliber machine guns
guarding the airport perimeter.

With limbs stiffened
from having slept in an unheated office without a blanket, Linder
rose and approached the window. The late September morning was crisp
and dry, and the skies over Cleveland Hopkins International Airport
were free of clouds as well as aircraft. Tall weeds grew from cracks
in the runways and dead grass covered the median strips along the
main access roads to the airport. At each entrance stood a security
checkpoint manned by National Guard troops and an anti-truck-bomb
barrier constructed from sandbags, precast concrete, and
gravel-filled Hesco barriers.

In the distance, Linder
spotted a wide-bodied civilian cargo aircraft taxiing onto a runway
for takeoff. Though the airport remained nominally open to both
passenger and cargo traffic, few civilian passenger flights operated
now, in part because of Cleveland’s failure to rebound from the
nation’s economic collapse and in part because of the sporadic
mortar and rocket attacks on runways and towers aimed at disrupting
military aviation.

Cleveland Hopkins
Airport was now the Unionist government’s primary military
stronghold in Cleveland, a self-contained air base and security
compound from which the President-for-Life’s military, security,
and law enforcement organs ruled northern Ohio. In this context, the
remaining commercial passenger flights at Hopkins held a special
importance to the Department of State Security, because they offered
a plausible cover for undercover officers like Warren Linder and his
agents to pass through the gantlet of checkpoints surrounding the
airport to reach the DSS’s Cleveland Base, a few buildings away
from the passenger terminal.

Linder turned away from
the window and directed his attention to a coffee maker on a nearby
table, pouring the carafe’s stale dregs into a wastebasket and
searching for supplies to brew a fresh pot. In a file drawer, he
found a can of generic supermarket coffee and a box of filters, but
no sugar. He sniffed the powdered non-dairy creamer; it was rancid.
But when he pressed the power button on the appliance, the red light
blinked on. Now, if he could only find a sink with running water, he
could brew coffee.