Forty Days at Kamas (12 page)

During breakfast, every prisoner watched his neighbors for signs of whether he favored or opposed the strike. Close friends whispered among themselves in an effort to predict what others would do when the time arrived to line up for work. Anxious prisoners milled around longer than usual in the mess hall and at the edge of the parade ground to catch any last–minute portents of what was about to happen.

When the camp siren blew, it became evident at once that Division 3 had decided to strike. Those who had returned to the barracks after breakfast remained there while those who loitered outdoors or in the mess hall made a beeline for their bunks. No one wanted to be seen lining up on the parade ground.

I watched from the barracks door and could see the reinforced lineup of guards and warders waiting for us under the flagpole. They stayed another half–hour before they withdrew through the gate to Division 2. As soon as the last guard passed out of view, prisoners began to emerge cautiously from the barracks: first one at a time, then in small groups, then in torrents.

Freedom is an odd, uncomfortable feeling when you have gone without it for long. We hardly knew what to do with ourselves without being ordered around. Some prisoners were exuberant, tossing their orange caps into the air and offering high fives and victory hugs to everyone in sight. Others kept to their bunks.

Those who favored the strike gathered to discuss next steps. It took less than an hour for a plan to emerge. I watched Knopfler and others who had a very clear idea of what they wanted go into action. Over the years, activists like these had pieced together a loose system of camp self–governance that coexisted with the official camp administration but concerned itself primarily with issues over which the administration had no jurisdiction or control.

Messengers visited each barracks to order the inmates to elect a representative within one hour for a camp–wide meeting. The purpose of the meeting would be to assemble a delegation to deliver a message to the camp authorities before the end of the day.

The vote in Barracks C–14 was overwhelmingly in favor of Ralph Knopfler to represent us at the meeting. Knopfler circulated from bunk to bunk, seeking out the views of prisoners whom he knew and trusted. Having been in the barracks for only five days, I was flattered when Knopfler climbed up to speak to me. I was even more surprised when he made no reference at all to the strike.

"I've been watching you at the brickyard, Paul," he began. "You're a good worker. Maybe too good for a man your age. You ought to slow down a bit until you’re in better shape. Believe me, if you try to keep pace with kids like Jerry Lee or D.J., you'll get sick. And you can't afford that here."

"I’ll take your advice," I replied. "How long does a new man usually need to get up to speed?"

"You're getting there," Knopfler said. "Another week or two."

"I wouldn’t want the team to miss a quota on my account…"

"Screw the quota," Knopfler snorted. "The numbers are all fabricated, anyway. By the time a quota gets handed down to me, it’s usually utter nonsense. As a team leader, what I do is make sure we beat the quota by a hair on some days and miss it by a mile on others. That way we get full rations the greatest number of days and short rations the fewest."

"Now I get it," I said.

"My friend, if the path is crooked, there's no point to walking straight," Knopfler replied.

I was eager to turn the conversation back to the possibility of a strike.

"Do you really believe a strike would end up doing us any good?" I asked. "I hate to admit it, but it seems to me the bosses hold all the cards."

"They always do, but we shouldn’t let that stop us," Knopfler said with a self–assured smile. "Come watch the meeting. It’s got to be the only democracy within a thousand miles of here."

I took Knopfler at his word. The meeting was held later that morning in the mess hall. A voting representative attended from each of the thirty–six barracks in Division 3, along with a dozen or more observers like me. But apart from the novelty of watching a representative democracy at work among rebellious political prisoners, I found the meeting disappointing. The debate in Barracks C–14 had displayed a higher level of argument and far more relevant facts.

After two hours of inconclusive discussion, the informal body had elected a five–member delegation to draft a message to submit to the warden. Knopfler and Reineke were among the five. Their first action was to dispatch a note to a guard at the main gate inviting five officials of the Warden's choice to meet with them at three o'clock that afternoon.

In the meantime, our entire group remained in the mess hall to eat. Despite the strike, the kitchen continued to prepare food, since most of the kitchen workers were prisoners and the rest were contract laborers unwilling to lose a day's pay by failing to work. The five elected delegates sat at a table normally reserved for warders. When they finished, Knopfler took me aside.

"Come back at about ten minutes before three if you want to see something interesting. That's when the Warden and his crew will show up. Glenn will arrive early, too. He told me he'd like to talk to you."

When I arrived for the meeting at the appointed time Knopfler took me aside once again. He said he had good news.

"You're in luck. The Warden has brought six men with him. That gives us two more places at the table and we're a man short. Care to join us?"

"I was hoping to avoid that kind of notoriety," I said.

"Too late for that," Knopfler replied. "After bringing Reineke into camp, I'm sure Jack Whiting knows all about you."

"All the same, I'd rather not rub his nose in it."

"Believe me, Paul, you're much better off if Whiting thinks you're a hard–ass than a coward. Come on, big guy, we need you."

I followed Knopfler inside and took a seat at a mess table along with the other six prisoner delegates. Besides Knopfler, Reineke, three other elected delegates, and me, there was an Argentinean surgeon from Division 2 representing the foreign prisoners.

The other three elected delegates were men I knew primarily by reputation. Seated to Reineke's left was George Perkins, a bookish former Washington legislative aide who had been working as a lobbyist for the German chemical industry when he was arrested on espionage charges. Although I had been annoyed to hear him defending the Unionist Party line in discussions earlier that morning, he seemed an intelligent man who might bring balance to the debate.

To Reineke's right was Chuck Quayle, a thirty–five–year–old former plant manager for a frozen foods company in Indiana who served as a team captain at the military recycling site. Quayle was highly popular in camp but he had such a generous and easygoing nature that some hard–liners considered him too soft to deal with the camp bosses.

The final elected member of the delegation was Pete Murphy, a recently retired Army officer from Kentucky who had served briefly with Reineke in the Russian Far East. He was generally a likeable fellow, but subject to frequent bouts of depression and was rumored to be a recovering alcoholic.

Kitchen workers were still delivering plastic water pitchers and mugs to our table and to the empty table directly opposite ours when the government delegation filed in.

Leading the government's side was Fred Rocco, a tall, trim, scholarly–looking man of about fifty–five dressed in a dark blue business suit. Rocco gazed at us through dark steady eyes that conveyed shrewd detachment. The Warden was a survivor of bureaucratic intrigues in both the State Security Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he had spent most of his career. He had landed in Kamas as warden through a combination of luck and years of networking inside the Washington law enforcement community. Faced with imminent arrest when his chief backer in the Bureau fell victim to political intrigue, Rocco pulled off a defensive coup by engineering his own transfer into the Department of State Security.

Once in the Department, his new backers defended him against his enemies in the Bureau and reached a compromise that satisfied all concerned. Under the deal, Rocco retained his rank and salary and his right to retire with full pension in three years, but only if he left Washington and served out those years as Warden of a labor camp in a Restricted Zone. For nearly his entire term as Warden, Rocco had rarely set foot inside the camp compound and remained a shadowy figure to most prisoners. By reputation, he was neither liberal nor draconian but followed regulations closely and let his deputy warden handle most day–to–day matters. He approached the negotiating table with a relaxed smile, took a seat near the center and unzipped a leather writing portfolio.

Close behind Rocco was the Deputy Warden, Doug Chambers, a fair–haired man several years short of forty with a broad forehead and deep–set blue eyes. On the surface, he projected an air of unshakeable self–confidence. But something about the man’s bravado didn’t quite ring true. Beneath his black State Security uniform, Chambers appeared to have gone soft and fleshy and, to my mind, showed signs of dissipation.

Most prisoners were aware that the deputy warden had fought for the Unionists throughout the Events and later in Mexico and Canada. The veterans among them, however, regarded Chambers with a mixture of envy, mistrust, and hatred. Had it not been for a lucky wound that saved him from the Russian–Chinese War, Chambers might well have ended up inside the wire like them. Instead, he had traded on his combat record to transfer into State Security, where he became just another self–promoting careerist whose job was to make their lives hell.

The third man at the Warden's table was one I had never seen before. He wore the same black uniform as Chambers, but his shoulder insignia outranked those of Chambers, indicating a rank of full colonel. He appeared to be in his early forties, but had a puffy, florid face that had turned jowly and double–chinned. He sat before us as silent and immovable as a roadblock and I recognized his pugnacious expression as that of the typical schoolyard bully. Before long we learned that the colonel’s name was Tracy and that he was as stubborn and cruel as he looked.

The next man at the table was well known to all of us. This was the camp security chief, Major Jack Whiting, or simply "The Wart," so nicknamed for the growth on his left cheek. Whiting had once served on the police force in Denver. Soon after the Colorado riots, he joined the newly formed State Security Department and rotated through a series of camps as security officer. Whiting was notorious at every labor camp west of the Rockies for being an enterprising sadist who never let go of a grudge.

The final two members of the Warden's delegation were anonymous staff aides whose role seemed limited to note taking and recording the meeting on tape.

Rocco banged his mug on the metal table as soon as his aides opened their notebooks. All eyes were upon him except mine. Instead I glanced down the table at my colleagues and saw their narrowed eyes and firmly set jaws, braced for the severest kinds of threats and reprisals from the Warden and his crew.

"Before anything else is said here today," Rocco began, "I want you all to know that I take full responsibility as Warden of this camp for the shooting of prisoners yesterday at Recycling Site A. I give you my personal assurance that nothing of the kind will ever happen again at this camp as long as I am in charge."

Rocco leaned forward on his elbows and looked at us serenely over his half–rimmed bifocals. From the expressions on the faces of others around the room, I could see that I was not the only one in shock.

Rocco continued.

"I have brought my senior deputies here today to express our sincere regret for this tragic loss of life, to listen to your accounts of how the shooting happened, and to receive your proposals for how we ought to deal with it. So unless Doug or Jack or Colonel Tracy here has anything to add, what I'd like to do is listen to what your side has to say."

To all appearances, Rocco's words were well intentioned, sincere, and delivered with sensitivity. But coming from a man with Rocco's history, none of us was quite ready to believe them.

"Warden, I'll be the first to admit that what you've said comes as a welcome surprise," Glenn Reineke replied. "If State Security is genuinely willing to take responsibility for what happened and to prevent any more unprovoked shootings, this meeting might go more smoothly than I had expected."

"I certainly hope so," Rocco answered.

"But just to make sure we don't misunderstand each other, I'd like to read out a number of points that were raised this morning among the barracks representatives."

Rocco nodded amiably.

"What our fellow prisoners want is summarized in the following points:

"One. Suspension without pay of any camp official who fired on a prisoner or issued a command to fire, pending a full investigation.

"Two. A joint commission of camp officials and prisoners to report on their investigation within two weeks.

"Three. Prompt trial of anyone charged with wrongdoing and punishment of anyone convicted.

"Four. Compensation to the families of dead prisoners and full medical care for the wounded, along with disability pay.

"If you are willing to grant us those four items, Warden, along with the apology that you've already given us, I think we might convince the men to go back to work."

Rocco listened patiently and Chambers did the same, showing no sign of agreement or disagreement. Whiting, however, curled his upper lip in disdain and looked off into the distance. Colonel Tracy’s cheeks turned crimson with rage. He opened his mouth to speak but Rocco cut him off, responding to Reineke without so much as a glance at anyone else on his own side of the table.

"Well, I didn't hear anything so unreasonable in all that. You're asking for the officers involved to be suspended pending an investigation; for a report within two weeks; for swift trials and punishment of anyone found guilty; and for compensation to the victims. Is that it, or have I left something out?"