Exile Hunter (50 page)

Seated at a desk behind
a clutter of work orders, production schedules, and batch records was
a gangling, stoop-shouldered man in his early thirties, whose sallow
skin, sunken eyes, and deeply receding hairline made him appear a
decade older at first. The resemblance between father and son was
unmistakable.

“Jay, this is Tom
Horvath,” Larry began. “He just rode in from Montana and I found
him on the South Main strip this morning. He has a mining background
and says he knows his way around machinery. I thought you might put
him to work on a packaging line and see what he can do for us.”

Jay Becker looked
Linder over from head to foot and finished with a penetrating gaze.

“I like a man with
the spark of intelligence in his eyes,” Jay said at last, his face
easing into an unanticipated smile. “Leave him to me, Dad. Lord
knows, we have plenty to do around here. If he’s good, we’ll find
work for him.”

“Fine, then,” Larry
replied with a businesslike nod. “He’s all yours.”

When Larry closed the
door behind him, Jay rose and searched the rack behind the door for a
white lab coat in Linder’s size. Then he pulled out a disposable
hair net from a cardboard box on the bookshelf and handed it to the
new man.

“We all have to wear
these while we’re on the floor. No exceptions. In a few minutes,
I’ll call the shift supervisor and have Jose show you around the
packaging lines. But first, let’s talk a bit. My dad said you came
in from Montana. What line of mining did you do up there?”

“Hard rock, mainly,”
Linder replied. “And some open-pit along the way. Lately a lot of
new projects have popped up in Canada.”

“Whereabouts in
Canada, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Yukon, mainly,”
Linder answered obligingly. “Some in Alberta, too.”

“Tar sands?” Jay
presumed.

“Drilling’s not my
specialty, but I’ve spent some time there.”

“Interesting,” Jay
observed.

“How about you?”
Linder shot back, sensing from Jay’s demeanor that he, too, might
be hiding something. “Have you been up north lately?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t
care much for it,” Jay replied distractedly as he searched under
his papers for something.“ Now, we don’t bother with a lot of
paperwork for day laborers, but if you don’t mind, I need your help
to fill out a brief form for our records.”

Though Jay did his best
to make the inquiry seem a routine formality, Linder picked up
certain telltale signs in his face that indicated it was not.

“Name and place of
birth?” Jay began.

“Thomas D. Horvath,
born Missoula, Montana, May 10, 1980.”

“Any college or
technical school?”

“Bachelor’s in
Mining Engineering from Montana Tech.”

“Any special reason
why somebody with your background is doing day labor?”

Linder offered a
sheepish look and stared at the floor. He was in full undercover
role-playing mode now and sensed that Jay Becker was nobody’s fool.

“Had a bit of a
drinking problem up in Canada, sir,” he confessed. “The long
nights got to me after a while. So I thought I’d come down here and
see if the sunny weather might help. I’m 58 days clean and sober,
and aim to stay that way, one day at a time.”

“But why not apply to
the big state-owned companies where the wages are better?”

“Because I need work
now,” Linder replied. “A man could starve out here waiting for a
government work clearance. And if they find a black mark anywhere…”

“Don’t sweat the
clearance. We’ll arrange all that. But, from now on, I’ll expect
you to show up on time every day and stay until the work is done.
Overtime pay kicks in at eight hours, including lunch and breaks.
Miss a day during your first month and you’re out. Am I clear?”

“You can count on me,
sir,” Linder promised.

“You can knock off
the ‘sir’ stuff and call me Jay. The only Mr. Becker around here
is my father.” And with that, Jay Becker’s face flashed a
friendly welcoming smile.

* * *

At the end of the
day, Linder drew his wages in cash from the company cashier and rode
a jitney bus back to Coalville, his neck and shoulders aching from
feeding plastic bottles, caps, labels, and tablets to an automated
packaging line that dispensed a hundred tablets into each white
plastic bottle, added a cap and safety seal, affixed a label, and
dropped the bottles into 24-count cardboard cases.

The jitney dropped him
off on North Main in Coalville, where he stopped at the town’s
forlorn state-run pharmacy to buy aspirin, a pen, and some cheap
stationery. His next stop was the sandwich shop next door for a bowl
of chili, a hamburger, and a beer. The local brew was thin and
tasteless but felt heavenly going down. Suddenly Linder had a
flashback of drinking Almaza lager at a sidewalk café in Beirut’s
Hamra district. For a moment he sensed the sunny warmth he had always
associated with that city and wondered if he would ever see Beirut
again. Then just as quickly he put the thought aside.

Upon navigating back to
the bungalow on 50th Street, Linder knocked on the front door and
found Mrs. Unger waiting for him with an expression considerably more
hospitable than the one she had shown him the evening before. The
savory aroma of roasted chicken met him the moment he entered.

“I left you a plate
on the kitchen counter with some chicken and potatoes, and there’s
fresh coffee in the pot,” she offered.

Detecting a slight
hesitancy in the widow’s voice, Linder flashed her a warm smile.

“Good thing, too,
because I’m starved,” he said truthfully, despite just having
eaten. “It’s been a long day and there wasn’t much for lunch.”

“Tonight supper is on
the house,” she explained. “If you’d like breakfast and supper
on weekdays, I charge eight dollars a day, which is cheaper than the
greasy spoon on Main Street and a lot tastier, if I do say so.”

Linder grinned as he
pulled a ten-dollar bill from his pocket and another twenty for rent.

“Count me in for
tomorrow,” he said as he handed her the money.

Mrs. Unger went ahead
and set a place at the kitchen table but left Linder alone to eat.
The meal was the best he had tasted since his arrest and he left not
a morsel on the plate. After months of starvation rations, his body
craved food constantly, and his stomach was slowly enlarging to
accommodate his ravenous appetite.

Upon wishing the
landlady a good night and retiring to his room, Linder dropped his
purchases on the writing table, undressed, and prepared to shower.
When finished, he donned fresh shorts and t-shirt and looked
longingly at the bed. But instead of sleeping, he took a seat at the
table and composed a letter.

“Dear April,” he
wrote. But no matter how hard he tried, he simply could not imagine
his sister’s face and the words would not flow. At last, he tore
the paper into tiny bits and flushed them down the toilet. Then he
turned out the light, climbed into bed, and fell at once into a deep
and dreamless sleep.

* * *

The next day, Linder
rose at dawn, wolfed down his breakfast, and hurried over to Main
Street to catch a jitney to the industrial park. He started the shift
on the same packaging line as the day before, but after lunch, Jay
assigned him to a line that handled smaller lots. As before, Jose
instructed him on how to operate the equipment and then left him
alone to master it.

At the end of the
shift, Jose told him to report to Jay’s office before he left the
building. Through the window, Linder saw Jay signing papers at his
desk. He knocked and entered and, to his surprise, heard Paul Anka’s
“Diana” playing from mini speakers in the bookshelf behind Jay’s
desk.

“Man, that song
really takes me back,” Linder blurted out, remembering the ballroom
dance lessons of his youth. “My dad absolutely loved Paul Anka.”

“Mine, too,” Jay
answered with a candid smile. “Have a seat.”

Linder sat in the
straight-back meal chair opposite Jay’s desk and waited for the
younger man to finish. When Jay raised his head again, the smile was
gone.

“I think it’s time
we level with each other,” Jay began. He waited for a reaction but
Linder offered none, his professional experience having conditioned
him to surprises of this kind.

“Sure,” Linder
replied amiably. “Level away.”

Jay’s forehead
furrowed into a frown as he folded his hands and rested his elbows on
the desk.

“Yesterday you asked
me if I’d spent any time in the north and I said I had but didn’t
care for it. That much is true,” Jay confessed. “But there’s
more to it. I was arrested on suspicion of aiding the insurgency and
sentenced to hard labor at a labor camp in Alaska. I worked on a road
crew up there for nearly two months before Dad found a way to get me
out. Now it’s your turn. What were you doing up there?”

“Mining, like I
said,” Linder replied. “With some logging thrown in.”

“Okay,” Jay
observed. “In what capacity?”

“Contract employee,”
Linder lied.

“And your real name
is Thomas Horvath?”

“That’s right,”
Linder continued. “Why do you ask? Is there a problem with my
papers?”

“No, the documents
are good, as far as I can tell,” Jay responded. “It’s just that
you are not Horvath. I knew the Tom Horvath those papers belonged to.
He was one of the TDY engineers assigned to our camp and he was a
worthless, drunken mean-spirited piece of shit. Now, I don’t give a
rat’s ass what happened to that Horvath and I truly don’t mind
your taking his name. I just want to know who I’m dealing with and
whether it makes any sense to keep you on the payroll.”

“Does your dad know
about the other Horvath?” Linder ventured.

“Of course he does,”
Jay replied. “He figured right away you served time in the camps.
But, then, Dad has developed a soft spot for national security
prisoners. Now, one more time: are you going to level with me or
not?”

Linder hesitated. He
had lied his way out of so many tight spots in his career that
breaking cover was something he would not normally even consider
until every other option was closed. But he saw no other choice. To
have found Larry and Jay had been an extraordinary stroke of luck.
Without their support and their special relationship with the
sheriff, he would remain at high risk of having his fingerprints or
DNA compared with those of Thomas Horvath. He would have to open up a
bit.

“I really appreciate
the chance you’ve given me,” Linder began as he racked his brain
to decide how much to reveal. “Believe me, I don’t want to blow
it. So, yes, I was in the camps for a while. I have Horvath’s
papers because a buddy of mine found them on his frozen corpse after
Horvath passed out drunk one night up in the Yukon.”

“Your sentence?”

“Economic sabotage. I
worked on a mine that didn’t pan out and they blamed our entire
team. When I got released, the terms of my probation required me to
stay in the Yukon. But I decided I liked the climate better back in
the Lower Forty-Eight.”

“But why Utah? Are
you a Mormon or something?”

Linder smiled and shook
his head.

“No, I’m here
because a buddy told me his wife was doing time in a women’s camp
nearby. Before he died, he asked me to help her if I ever made it
out. So, being a superstitious kind of guy, and not having anywhere
else in mind, I figured I’d come down here and see what I could do
for her before making other plans.”

“Do you know the
camp’s name?” Jay pressed.

“Kamas. Ever heard of
it?”

Jay frowned. “Kamas
is where they sent me for out-processing after Dad got the charges
against me dropped. The men’s division is a strict-regime camp that
does a lot of recycling and construction work, but there’s also a
smaller women’s division that’s not quite as rough.”

“You say your father
got your charges dropped?” Linder asked in disbelief. “How the
hell did he pull that off?”

“We got lucky. For
starters, Dad knows all the politicians and Party officials in North
Dakota. Someone in the prosecutor’s office tipped him off that, due
to a long court backlog, the DSS sent me to Alaska before my
conviction was officially entered. Based on that, Dad paid somebody
off to get the conviction reversed on a technicality and the sentence
lifted. It was expensive, but it worked.”

“So now you’re free
and clear?” Linder asked in disbelief.

“Well, not entirely,”
Jay explained. “The DSS revoked my North Dakota residence permit
and reissued it in Utah, so I won’t be around in North Dakota to
make waves. That means the Utah Security Zone is the only place I’m
officially allowed to live and work. It’s internal exile for life,
but it beats Alaska. And having Dad around sure helps.”

“Same thing with me
and Montana,” Linder agreed, referring to Horvath’s Montana
residence permit. “But since Montana’s a restricted zone, too, my
Montana ID ought to be valid in both places. Provided that Tom
Horvath is not declared dead or they compare our biometrics.” He
conveniently omitted mentioning the thirty-day residence limit and
employment ban that the DSS man in Great Falls had cited.

“Does that mean you
intend to stay a while?” Jay went on.

“So long as I have a
job,” Linder affirmed. “It may take a while to find my buddy’s
wife, I expect. And it’s nice to have a roof over my head while I’m
looking.”

But then, as a seeming
afterthought, Linder spoke again. “Just tell me one thing. You and
your dad aren’t going to turn me in, are you?”

“Your secret is safe
with us,” Jay assured him gravely. “We’re not bastards.”

Had anyone else given
the same answer to Linder before his arrest, he would have
automatically taken the exact opposite to be true. But his experience
in the camps had given him quite a different view of men’s
character than the one he’d had before, and he saw something in Jay
that he felt he could trust. Ever since his arrival in Ross River, he
had come to realize how much of his destiny lay outside his control.
Faith and action were both essential to his survival, and he decided
to place some of his faith in Jay and Larry Becker.