Exile Hunter (6 page)

Linder weighed his
options, remembering Denniston’s admonition to go as far as he
could without overdoing it. Though he did not feel right about going
to Eaton’s apartment, he risked Bednarski’s second-guessing if he
did not. In this business, there was no overdoing it until you
failed.

* * *

Philip Eaton’s flat
occupied the northwest corner on the fourth floor of a stately red
granite apartment block in the crowded Achrafiyé section of
predominantly Christian East Beirut. Kendall and Linder boarded an
ornate antique birdcage elevator and ascended through a central
stairwell to the fourth-floor landing, where Kendall unlocked a heavy
steel door of the kind widely used for decades to deter break-ins in
the war-torn city. The door opened onto an unusually spacious marble
foyer with Persian rugs and walls full of polished brass trays
showing inlaid Arabic calligraphy in silver and copper. Beyond the
foyer was a vast sunken parlor furnished in teak and leather with a
scattering of Egyptian carved wooden screens and leather poufs,
suggesting a distinctly masculine style.

Kendall led Linder past
the parlor through folding French doors to the veranda, which boasted
a panoramic view of the blue Mediterranean. There, Kendall pointed
out the old Foreign Ministry building, the rebuilt port and the
restored commercial district beyond. Potted gardenias, jasmine, and
dwarf frangipani trees lent an intoxicating sweetness to the air, and
Linder noticed that music was playing from concealed speakers. He
knew the recording: a tango directed by the Cuban bandleader Xavier
Cugat, one of his father’s favorites. The next song was a meringue
that called to mind the rumbas, congas, sambas, and cha-chas that he
had learned to dance as a teenager.

A few moments later,
the steel door clanged again and Kendall led Linder back to the
parlor to find his father-in-law, who suddenly emerged from the rear
of the flat. Philip Eaton was a smaller man than Linder recalled from
his youth or imagined from the photographs in his file. He stood no
more than five feet eight inches tall and, with his silver hair and
mustache, appeared older than his sixty-eight years. His most
striking features were his sparkling gray eyes, conveying empathy and
irony, and his capacious forehead, suggesting a powerful and
broad-ranging intellect.

“Excuse me, Philip,”
Kendall began, apparently oblivious to the security breach he was
committing by bringing Linder to the apartment. “We called from the
restaurant several times but your line was busy. Do you have a moment
or should we reschedule for tomorrow?”

A look of
disappointment flashed across Philip Eaton’s face before he
answered with a warm welcoming smile. “Since you’ve come all this
way, I see no need to reschedule. Please come with me.”

Linder sensed at once
that the Philip Eaton of today was quite unlike any other rebel exile
he had met. Here was a man of great wealth and accomplishment who
lived relatively modestly and, despite having suffered major losses,
remained serenely upbeat. As a rebel, Philip Eaton stood on the
opposite side of a gaping political chasm from him, yet Linder could
not help but like the man.

Roger Kendall
introduced his father-in-law quickly and offered Linder a chair
facing the sofa, where he and Eaton were lined up to sit. Philip
Eaton’s eyes lingered on his visitor until all three were seated.

“Chase Phipps spoke
very highly of you and your organization, Joe,” Eaton opened.
“Chase is very old friend of mine and I value his opinion. Lately
he’s been distressed over the Unionists tightening their grip over
the economy, but he said you’ve inspired him with new hope.”

“Yes, Mr. Chase knows
Utah well and has promised to help us any way he can,” Linder
replied.

“Actually, Chase is
his first name,” Roger Kendall interrupted. “But never mind.
Chase is a Yale man and all those Yale men have reversible names.
Chase Phipps, Phipps Chase. See, it works either way.”

Linder laughed
uneasily. It was another near miss, even if Kendall seemed to shrug
it off. Philip Eaton’s lips formed a smile that his eyes did not
share.

“So tell me why we
have reason to be hopeful these days,” Eaton continued, leaning
back in the sofa and crossing his legs while he awaited Linder’s
answer.

“The greatest
surprise to most Americans outside the country is just how thinly
Unionist forces are spread when you go west of Denver,” Linder
replied, launching into one of his prepared sound bites. “Since the
Manchurian War, the garrisons are down to half the troops they had at
the end of Civil War II. And with so many West Coast cities
evacuated, what’s left of the population west of the Rockies are
rural folk and small-town people who never supported the Unionist
Party. Nowadays, except for military types, government employees, and
carpetbaggers, people inside the restricted zones are implacably
hostile to the regime.”

“Though outwardly
subdued, I presume…” Roger Kendall inserted.

“Well, sure, but the
Viet Cong seemed subdued, too, until the Tet Offensive,” Linder
rejoined. “Or the Iraqis before their insurgency. Today, in Utah,
Idaho, and northern Arizona, the backcountry belongs to us.”

Linder found himself
sitting forward at the edge of his seat, his voice a shade too loud
and its pitch a half-octave too high.

“You’re saying that
the Army is confined to their bases?” Kendall challenged.

“Not quite yet,”
Linder replied, “but they stay off the main highways at night and
rarely venture into the backcountry except by chopper. They're
terrified of running afoul of our snipers and IEDs. I really don’t
think the Army or the DSS have any idea how many of our people we’ve
brought into the mountains for training over the past year. By the
time they do, it’ll be too late. Not that we’re looking for a
fight. But if they try to retake the countryside, Utah will be their
Afghanistan.”

“What about Unionist
air power?” Kendall pressed. “Can’t they spot you from the air
and call in air strikes or drones?”

“Since the Chinese
knocked out our military satellites, there hasn’t been nearly
enough overhead imagery capacity to go around. The same goes for
reconnaissance aircraft and drones,” Linder explained. “Sure, the
enemy sends out an occasional helicopter gunship or light attack
aircraft to give chase, but they have to find us first.”

Though what he said was
accurate as far is it went, he omitted the key fact that the last
ragtag band of Mormon guerrillas hiding in the Wasatch Mountains had
been annihilated nearly a year earlier.

“What about your own
plans for the future? Do you really think you’ll be able to kick
the Unionist Army out of Utah?” Kendall questioned.

Philip Eaton leaned
forward and spoke before Linder could reply. Though his expression
was sympathetic, Linder suspected a trap and listened carefully.

“Knowing very little
about your organization, I would suppose that your goal might be to
force a stalemate on the government the way the Mormons did in the
1870s,” Eaton mused. “Perhaps you intend to become to the
President-for-Life what Porter Rockwell was to James Buchanan?”

Linder cocked his head
and folded his arms to buy time to respond. The historical reference
was unfamiliar to him and he feared that he might have already failed
an important test by not having a ready answer. But a wrong answer
could be fatal; he dared not guess at it.

“Yeah, in a way,”
he deadpanned.

At first Eaton’s
smile looked benevolent, but before long, Linder detected a tinge of
irony.

At that moment, a
dark-haired girl of about thirteen or fourteen dressed in a blue and
gray school uniform, arrived from the kitchen carrying a silver tray
with a porcelain coffee set. Linder immediately identified her as
Kendall’s stepdaughter, Caroline. She set the tray on a low table
and began distributing cups of dark Arabic coffee and tumblers of
mineral water among the men without raising her eyes. It took all of
Linder’s self-control to tear his eyes away from the girl, for she
bore an unnerving resemblance to her mother, whom Linder had known at
approximately the same age.

Denniston had assured
him that Kendall’s family would not visit the apartment, and so
Linder was caught off guard. Kendall, too, seemed surprised to see
Caroline. As soon as she emptied the tray, he signaled for her to
leave it behind and return to the kitchen. Linder looked away from
the girl as she retreated and noticed Eaton watching him with
interest as he left the coffee untouched.

“Would you like
something other than coffee, Mr. Tanner?” Eaton offered.

Linder felt tiny beads
of perspiration forming under his eyes and on his forehead and
smelled the pungent odor of his own sweat. He returned Eaton’s gaze
and wondered if his host had noticed his surprised reaction at seeing
Caroline.

“No thank you,”
Linder replied.

“I’m still a bit
confused about your group’s objectives, Mr. Tanner,” Eaton
continued, leaning forward in the same manner as when he asked about
Rockwell and President Buchanan. “Is your primary goal to resettle
your fellow Mormons on their ancestral lands? Or is it to gain some
measure of autonomy for Utah? Or do you aim to oust the Unionist
dictatorship entirely?”

“I would have to say
all of the above,” Linder answered, recovering his balance. “Our
immediate goal is to gather our fellow Latter-day Saints wherever
they might be and bring them back to Utah. But, after having our
religion outlawed and over a million of our people forcibly relocated
to northern labor camps, we aim for autonomy on our territory until
Unionism is completely eradicated.”

“I see,” Eaton
replied in a flat voice. “And how do you believe Roger and I might
help you?” Linder sensed that Eaton’s interest might be flagging.
By now, the old man had heard pitches from nearly every rebel faction
alive. He had to make the MRM stand out as special, but how?

“Financially, for the
most part,” Linder answered while he racked his brain for a better
answer. “But we need help of all kinds, of course.”

“And you would use
the funds for…?” Eaton asked without looking up from his coffee.

“Relocation support
to smuggle our people back into the Utah Security Zone,
communications equipment, identity documents, training,” Linder
replied. “Whatever it takes to help our returnees make a new
start.”

Philip Eaton paused to
finish his coffee, then crossed his legs once more and settled back
into the sofa. Though Eaton looked relaxed, a sixth sense told Linder
that a curve ball was on its way.

“If you don’t mind,
please tell me more about what your people have experienced under the
Unionists. I understand that the regime cracked down hard on Utah
when your governor refused to commandeer LDS church emergency
supplies to benefit the California refugees who came to stay. I’d
like to hear your take on what happened then.”

Linder took a deep
breath and resettled himself in his chair. It was a curve ball, a
juicy one, and he was ready to clobber it.

“Never in history,”
Linder began, fixing his eyes on Eaton’s, “has any community
offered a more generous response to victims of a natural disaster
than the relief that Utahns and the LDS Church gave to the exodus of
California refugees flowing through our state. When federal relief
supplies ran out, Utahns and the LDS church kept on giving, often at
the expense of local people who had suffered from devastating
earthquakes along the Wasatch Front.”

“So what brought on
the refugee crisis?” Eaton probed. When Roger Kendall tried to
answer, Eaton silenced him with a headshake. Clearly, Eaton had
something particular in mind and wanted to hear it directly from his
Mormon visitor.

“It seems to me that
the problems started when FEMA reneged on its promises to bring in
more federal relief supplies to facilitate the eastward movement of
refugees into Wyoming and Colorado,” Linder answered. “FEMA bled
Utah dry and when we had no more to give, the President-for-Life sent
in the Army to seize whatever they could find and hand it over to the
refugees. When the state government voted to resist, federal agents
arrested the governor, his cabinet, key members of the legislature,
the LDS church leadership and anyone who dared to resist or protest.”

“And then?” Eaton
demanded.

“There began the
largest forced migration of peoples in American history, ten times
larger than the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Over a million Latter-day Saints were rounded up and sent north to
hastily built labor camps in Alaska and the Yukon. Thousands died
along the way and many more in the first year of captivity. The
state-controlled press has gone absolutely silent on it.”

“You said that the
Utah detainees were sent to labor camps,” Eaton went on, now
sitting at the edge of his seat. “Has your organization been able
to maintain communications with your people being held in those
camps?”

“Certainly,” Linder
responded. “It’s one of the most important functions we have
until our people are set free. But it’s been extremely difficult.
Security at those northern camps is tighter than Area 51.”

“How about
non-Mormons?” Kendall asked eagerly. “Are you also in contact
with other outlawed religious groups in the northern camps, like the
Quakers, Christian Scientists, Seventh Day Adventists and the like?”

“Of course,” Linder
obliged. “You know the saying, ‘First, they came for the Jews.’
We learned that one right away.” He was on a roll at last, building
up the credibility he would need to draw the two men into his web.

“How about the MIA’s
from the Manchurian War?” Kendall wanted to know. “Have you run
across any of them in the camps, or any Russian or Chinese POWs?”