Exile Hunter (59 page)

Linder thought of his
own experience in New York as a nobody, without money, name, or
connections, and tried to put himself in Patricia’s shoes. Had his
last name been Eaton, what doors might have been opened to him, even
during the Crash of 2008... But he did not dwell on it long, for
Patricia changed the subject once again.

“You have no idea how
much it means to me to see a friendly face here in Coalville after
all Caroline and I have been through,” she confessed, reaching out
to touch his hand. “Such cruelty! The things I saw at Kamas are
beyond belief. What has happened to this country?”

For a moment, Linder
feared that Patricia would ask him about his time in the Yukon, and
how he happened to be sent there and how he met Roger in the camp
hospital. When she did not, he felt enormous relief, and then
surprise that somehow she still did not connect him with the
Department of State Security. Having gained her trust, he longed to
reveal even more of himself. But the central obstacle remained: how
could Patricia possibly accept Warren Linder into her life once she
learned that he had deceived her as Joe Tanner?

Because he had no
answer to this, he changed the subject and tried another approach.

“Forget all that,
Patricia,” he counseled. “Forget Kamas: it’s the only way
forward. All I know is how happy I am to spend some time with you and
Caroline in this boring little town while we all get back on our
feet. One day, we’ll want to move on and we won’t wait around for
the government’s permission to do it. Do you follow me?”

“You’re a man
without children,” she replied, looking away. “It’s different
for you.”

“Is slavery different
for men and women?” Linder challenged. “Is stealing different?
Why let the Unionists enslave you and steal your birthright if you
can get out and claim it for yourself and your daughter?”

“We live in a
different world now, Warren. Who’s to say that the old one was so
superior?” she replied, reflecting a defeatism that ran rampant
within the camps.

“What you make of the
world is entirely your choice, Patricia. If you’re afraid of what
the Unionists might do to you if you escape, think of what they will
do to you if you stay. Is that what you want for Caroline? Is that
what she would want if given the choice?”

Patricia Kendall let
out a deep sigh and a look of inexpressible sadness came into her
eyes.

“And you, Warren?”
she asked. “You say you’re happy to be here. Then why would you
be in a hurry to escape? And to where?”

“I lived in some of
the same places you and your father did: London, Basel, Beirut. Any
of them would suit me just fine. I could be happy driving a taxi or
working in a factory as long as I was free to be myself and hold onto
my dreams.”

“And for that you
would risk all that you have here?”

“If I stay, I could
be sent back to the Yukon at any moment,” Linder replied crisply.
“If Kamas is retaken, there will be a crackdown all over Utah. I
don’t dare stay a moment longer once the tanks arrive. Maybe all I
need to do is hole up for a few weeks and come back when the dust
settles. But, as soon as I can manage it, my plan is to head back
east and find a way out of the country, perhaps the same way you got
out, through the Great Lakes. When I do, you and Caroline are welcome
to join me. But I understand how hard that might be while Roger is
still behind the wire at Kamas.”

“I don’t want to
think about it. Let’s talk about something else,” she said,
rising from her chair and carrying the serving platters to the
counter. Linder followed, clearing the dishes and glassware from the
table in silence, while Patricia filled the sink to soak the pots and
pans. As he laid the last dish on the counter, his hand touched hers
by chance. Patricia withdrew nervously, reaching instead for the
start button on the disc player as if to clear the air with some
music.

The disc resumed
playing where it had left off at the end of the meringue to which
Linder and Caroline had danced before dinner. To Linder’s surprise,
Patricia began swaying to the beat, giving him an idea.

The next song, another
Cugat standard, opened with a dramatic brass flourish before a team
of saxophones launched into a compelling mambo beat. Recognizing the
tune as “Jamay” from his ballroom dancing days, Linder stepped
back from the sink and showed Patricia the basic mambo step. Before
long he took her hand and led her through some more complex steps. By
the end of the song, they danced nearly as well as they had in their
youth and continued seamlessly into the next song, a languid rumba.

When that was over,
Linder found his disc case and replaced the Cugat CD with a disc of
early rock-and-roll hits. The first was Paul Anka’s dreamy foxtrot,
“Put Your Head On My Shoulder,” and it was all that two people so
long starved of earthly pleasures needed to ignite long-dormant
passions. Their feet slowed to a standstill early in the first verse
as their correct dance posture turned into a heated embrace and their
lips met. By the second verse, Patricia turned out the lights and led
Linder into her bedroom. There they undressed each other slowly in
the semi-darkness and cast aside all concerns other than the
momentary physical bond between them.

They fell on the bed
together and their hands went to work exploring each other’s
bodies, each intent on heightening the desire of the other. But when
at last Linder lay back and Patricia sat astride him, his
concentration suddenly broke. And with that, all arousal collapsed
under the weight of his remorse for having been the one to lead
Patricia into captivity and his shame at betraying her imprisoned
husband.

Patricia blinked in
surprise at Linder’s sudden inertness but said nothing as she
rolled off her partner and curled up beside him with an arm stretched
across his chest and a leg laid across his thighs.

“I’m sorry,” he
said at last. “Too much too soon, I suppose. Maybe we should
schedule a rematch.”

“Hush,” she said
softly with a note in her voice that sounded to Linder almost like
relief.

They remained in bed,
clinging to each other, agitated and sleepless but hardly saying a
word, until Linder fell asleep. He awoke an hour or two later to find
Patricia missing from bed. Hearing music from the other end of the
house, he padded into the living room and saw her seated at the
kitchen table with her back to him. She was writing what he guessed
to be a letter or perhaps a journal. But not wanting to intrude on
her privacy and needing to rise early for work, he returned to bed
and set his watch to wake him just after dawn.

In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon
men, in slumberings upon the bed. Then he openeth the ears of men,
and sealeth their instruction.
Job 33:17 (King James Version)

THURSDAY, LATE JUNE, COALVILLE

Warren Linder stood
at the counter in Mrs. Unger’s kitchen and took the first sip of
coffee from the mug he had just filled. It was cold and tasted so
bitter that he spat it into the sink and poured out what remained in
the mug. How could the coffee be cold and bitter when the pot was
freshly brewed?

He looked out the
kitchen window and saw a canopy of high-level clouds in shades of red
and orange inching toward the east where the sun lay crouched behind
the mountains. Morning clouds like these foretold a storm, he
thought, and stepped out the door into the kitchen garden. To his
surprise, the air was chilly and thunder rumbled in the western
hills. Then all at once he felt the pelting of hail and freezing rain
from a freak mountain storm. As he watched the ice crystals
accumulate on the red brick walkway, he could not shake the sense
that something was terribly wrong. It was late June, when high
pressure and clear skies reigned and the remnants of last winter’s
piled snows were long gone.

Without warning, Linder
felt a panicked urge to flee for his life, an urge unlike anything he
had felt since his arrival in Beirut the year before, when a similar
dread had impelled him to seek the next boat to Cyprus. Another clap
of thunder, closer this time, startled him and drew his gaze toward
the street, where a black sedan pulled slowly to the curb.

He retreated into the
kitchen and locked the door behind him, suddenly chilled to the bone.
A moment later, he footsteps on the front walk, followed by a heavy
knock at the front door.

His hand hesitated as
he reached for the door and pulled it open. What he saw made his
heart drop. In front of him stood a smiling Neil Denniston, dressed
in navy dress slacks and a white polo shirt.

“Won’t you invite
me in?” Denniston asked. “I’ve come a long way to see you.”

Linder froze, unable to
speak.

“That was a pretty
neat trick to make it all this way from MacTung, Linder,” Denniston
remarked with an ingratiating smile. “But you came a long way for
nothing. The road ends here. All that’s left is to tell us where
Eaton and Yost hid the money and how you helped them do it. We know
you worked with them from the start, so you might as well come
clean.”

Linder bolted upright
in bed. In the rosy glow that seeped in through the lace-curtained
windows, he looked around and found himself not in Mrs. Unger’s
bungalow, but lying beside Patricia Kendall in her rented cottage.
When he had gone to sleep the night before, he had been more hopeful
than he had in years. Yet, now he sensed that his world might soon
collapse and did not know why. All he knew was that such dreams had
come true too often to be ignored.

Linder rose gently from
the bed so as not to wake Patricia, and stepped toward the half-open
bedroom window, where a balmy breeze rippled the lace curtains.
Though there was no storm brewing outside and no Denniston at the
door, he was far from feeling at ease. He dressed hurriedly and left
a note on the dressing table that he would phone Patricia after work.
By the time he left the house it was a few minutes after six A.M. and
the sky directly overhead was clear, though the sun still hung behind
the eastern mountains, where an orange-red canopy of high-level
clouds lined the sky. All was silent except for distant rumbling in
the west.

Upon arriving at the
vitamin plant, Linder found a message summoning him to Larry Becker’s
office before the start of the shift. He found Larry and Jay behind
closed doors.

“They retook the camp
this morning,” Larry announced as he entered. “The bastards
brought in armor by rail sooner than anyone expected. By first
morning light they’d rolled in and leveled the place, shooting
everything that moved.”

“Do we know how many
prisoners survived?” Linder asked. “What’s happening there
now?”

“Reports are coming
in that shock troops have finished off the wounded and are lining up
survivors in the yard,” Jay reported. “It’s too early to count
casualties, but one of our workers lives in the hills east of Kamas.
He has a telescope and spotted bulldozers digging mass graves. And a
dozen cattle trucks are lined up outside the perimeter, probably to
deliver survivors to the Heber rail yard for transfer to other
camps.”

“Which means that you
two need to skedaddle,” Larry concluded. “I’ve made some calls
to friends in the NUR, and we have people lined up to take you to
North Dakota. For the rest of today we all need to act as if
everything is normal. Tonight Jay will receive detailed instructions
for the move. Tomorrow the plan is for Jay to slip out right after he
issues the morning work orders, with Linder right behind.”

“Got it,” Jay
replied and Linder nodded his assent.

* * *

After work that day,
Linder returned to Mrs. Unger’s bungalow and found Caroline Kendall
in the kitchen with the landlady, cleaning vegetables for dinner.

“Man, I come home
half an hour late and somebody has already taken my job,” Linder
complained to Caroline with a smile. “I don’t suppose you’d
like to take on the dish washing duty, too?”

“Actually, we’re
not quite sure yet about Caroline’s dinner plans,” Mrs. Unger
replied. “She’s waiting for her mother to come for her.
Apparently Patricia didn’t appear after school, so we’ve left a
message for her to pick up Caroline here.”

“While you’re
making dinner, why don’t I go over to her place and check? Do we
have enough food for four in case she’s free to join us?”

“Certainly,” Mrs.
Unger answered with a questioning glance.

“Okay, then, I’ll
go see if she’s home. Caroline, do you mind if I borrow your key to
take a peek inside the house in case your mom doesn’t answer?” he
asked.

The girl handed over
the key but Linder could see that she was worried.

At the Kendalls’
rental house, Linder knocked on the front door several times without
a response. After a short wait, he used the key to let himself in,
then locked the door behind him and conducted a quick search without
turning on the lights or touching anything with his hands. The house
looked much the same as it had when he left it earlier that morning,
except for a book on the counter. This he picked up for closer
examination, recognizing it as a guide to nutrition and health that
he had lent to Patricia before she had moved to her new quarters.
Tucked inside the book was a sealed letter addressed to Roger Kendall
at the Kamas camp. Could this be what she had been writing in the
kitchen while he was asleep? He inspected the envelope and was about
to hold it up to the sunlit west window, when he heard steps at the
door.

A moment later,
Patricia unlocked the door and dropped a brown paper bag on the
counter with a clinking of glass bottles. When she raised her eyes,
she was startled to see Linder standing in the shadows by the stove.