Forty Days at Kamas (43 page)

Ever since our dreary visits to the camps at Orem and Provo, we had come to accept the fact that we were alone in our revolt against the Unionist regime. We had cast aside any illusions that someone would come to our aid, be they fellow rebels from other camps, the voice of domestic or foreign opinion, or any of the officials who had made so many high–sounding promises to us. Nor was there any hope now of escape, with the gates closed to deserters and the military noose drawn tight around the camp.

The only glimmer of hope that remained was for some angel of mercy on the Unionist Party Central Committee to intervene on our behalf. A small number of prisoners, mainly Unionist sympathizers, still dreamed that the stately, white–haired Sturgis or the florid, garrulous Cook would drop out of the sky just outside the main gate in a shining white helicopter and demand to meet with our duly elected commission. He would come, that kind and righteous man, inspect the camp from top to bottom, and marvel at our stoicism for having survived such intolerable conditions. Then he would call for the murderers to be put on trial, for Rocco and Chambers to be placed under arrest, and for all our oppressors, civilian and military, to be dismissed on the spot. But such glimmers grew fainter by the day and looked more and more like a mirage.

Yet such minute quantities of hope were sufficient for some, particularly the camp newlyweds, who came forward nearly every day to be married and in most cases with a religious ceremony. Despite years of anti–religious agitation, most Catholics, Evangelicals, and Orthodox Jews in camp would not marry without one. For those who were wedded at Kamas, the bliss and the sadness normally encountered in marriage succeeded one another with a swiftness that ordinary people seldom experience in their orderly, slow–paced lives. The newlyweds at Kamas treated each day as their last and each delay in the government's assault as a wedding gift from heaven.

To the believers, it was never a question of hope. These prisoners prayed and meditated and were content to leave the outcome in God's hands without asking for a particular result. As in every camp, spiritual men and women were the calmest of souls and took earthly events in stride. By their example, they attracted more than a few converts as the weeks wore on.

Two days after the buffer zone massacre, a self–proclaimed prophet went around the camp calling for repentance and predicting the end of the world. As our entire world was the Kamas camp, his message seemed plausible enough to many and his credibility was helped along by an unseasonable, three–day cold spell that arrived the day after he received his call to preach. His followers sat cross–legged on the chilly ground, shivering as they called out to their Maker, and extended their arms to the thundering storm clouds that swept in from the north.

There are always some hearts that will not bear the strain of an impending doom. As we could no longer reasonably expect pardon or leniency, all that was left was to live out our last days of freedom and either resist or submit as the will of the majority might dictate. But this was harder for some than for others.

Some behaved like ostriches, assuring themselves that they were not implicated in the revolt and need not be considered rebels if they stood apart. Others blamed their fate on the hard–liners. Still others, having been crushed mentally, begged secretly for the physical crushing to begin. Finally, some knew that they were fatally compromised and had only a few days left to savor life. These prisoners focused on how to squeeze more out of their remaining days and were not the unhappiest people in camp. The unhappiest were those who prayed for the end to come swiftly.

One of the oddest phenomena of the revolt was that, when all these people gathered at meetings in their barracks or mess halls and were asked whether we should surrender or hold out, the supercharged moral and political atmosphere caused their instinct for self–preservation to melt away. When it came to a vote for or against our continued defiance, the majority invariably voted in favor.

Such a vote was held in Division 3 the Saturday night after the buffer–zone battle. The occasion brought out strong expressions of resolve even from those who had not been the revolt's staunchest supporters. Colonel Majors, for example, spoke with unsurpassed confidence in the revolt, as though he were privy to many secrets, and all of them to our advantage.

"We have more defensive firepower than we have talked about, and I tell you right now that the enemy will suffer at least 50 percent of our own losses or I am no soldier…. Even if we are destroyed, our destruction will not be cheap…"

Chuck Quayle added his own prediction that the bosses would think twice before launching an assault and that they would swerve rather than collide with us. He urged us not to give up hope for a settlement on good terms.

Then Glenn Reineke poured cold water on their optimism by repeating the warning that he and Gary Toth had given before:

"Just remember this," he said, looking slowly over the audience. "If anyone feels luck is on his side today but decides to cash in his chips tomorrow, we will settle accounts the moment he heads for the gate!"

He did not have to pull the Bowie knife from his belt for everyone to know what he meant.

****

On the following Wednesday my afternoon watch at the rooftop observation post ended uneventfully. The continuous roar of bulldozers offered welcome relief from the droning of nearby loudspeakers.

I was also excited to have received my first message from Alec Sigler’s widow since the bus trip to Orem and Provo. From a mountaintop to the east of camp, Helen Sigler had used a mirror to flash a coded message that indicated how many tanks and armored personnel carriers she had observed being unloaded at the Heber rail yards. Her message also included a report on training exercises conducted at a mockup of the Kamas camp that included the use of tear gas.

I handed my binoculars to Jimmy Vega as soon as he climbed onto the roof to relieve me. Behind him came Al Gallucci, my old brickyard teammate, of whom I had seen little in recent days.

"Since when are you pulling O.P. duty, Al?" I asked him. "I thought you worked in the Technical Department."

"I did," Gallucci replied. "All my projects are completed or canceled."

"Tell me, Al, was the Technical Department as big a bust as people are saying? Did you guys come up with anything at all that you could honestly describe as a secret weapon?"

"Not that I ever saw," Gallucci replied. "The closest thing I can think of was the long–range radio transmitter we built. If we had ever been able to cut through the jamming we might have created enough of a stir to make the Unionists back off a bit. But it never happened."

"Couldn't you have beamed your message up to a communications satellite and made it through that way?"

"What satellite?" Gallucci protested. "The only communications satellites left in the sky are military, and all of those belong either to the Unionists or the Chinese. It's not like before the Events, when the heavens were filled with them."

"How about electronic warfare, then? With all those computer experts you couldn't hack into the enemy's computer system?"

Gallucci regarded me with puzzlement.

"Hack with what, Paul? You can't whittle a microchip out of a piece of wood. We never had a chance."

****

I made my way back to the barracks more depressed than ever. I had missed my opportunity to sneak out the gate with the deserters and now it appeared that my next stop would be the Yellowknife transit facility and a camp somewhere in the Arctic. I lay in my bunk awaiting dinner, feeling angry with myself and wondering if I would ever get a second chance. I closed my eyes and caught a hurried glimpse of my wife and daughters recalled from the day of my arrest. Claire held out her hand to me. I reached out to her but before we could touch she evaporated.

After dinner, the loudspeaker fell silent for nearly a half–hour, and then crackled back to life. I was tired of hearing the government’s dreary propaganda and thought of stuffing bits of cloth into my ears to keep out the noise, but for some reason decided to listen. What I heard was a surprise so hard to accept that I called out to Knopfler and Gallucci to make sure I wasn't hallucinating.

It was the Warden's voice announcing that, at the direction of the Central Committee of the Unionist Party, Director Cronin had vacated his order of the previous Wednesday and had agreed to grant the principal requests that the Kamas commission had made in late May. To ensure that the Central Committee's order was carried out, two of its ranking members had departed Washington that evening and would appear in Kamas the next day for an official meeting with us and with our elected representatives.

As soon as the Warden completed his announcement, the loudspeaker fell silent. Moments later, the prisoner–controlled loudspeakers carried a brief but emotion–filled statement from Colonel Majors, confirming what the Warden had said. There would be no assault. We had won, after all.

Although many prisoners had not heard or paid attention to the two loudspeaker announcements, news of Director Cronin's reversal spread at lightning speed throughout the camp. The news released an enormous reservoir of nervous tension among the prisoners. Shouts and cries of celebration could be heard everywhere. Inmates talked excitedly about what the news meant for our future. Skeptics and hard–liners were put to shame, while Unionist sympathizers considered themselves vindicated. So desperate was the average prisoner's hunger for deliverance that he let the Warden's statement sweep aside any lingering doubts.

Word arrived by messenger that the Warden, General Boscov, and Colonel Tracy were already on their way to the camp for an impromptu meeting with the commission. Ralph Knopfler and I set out at once for the commission offices. But, by the time we crossed the length of the camp and arrived in Division 1, the three State Security men were already emerging from the conference room, the session apparently having been adjourned. Ecstatic commissioners approached their former oppressors to embrace them and shake their hands. In such a delirious atmosphere it seemed beyond question that all had been forgiven.

Yet, as I gazed upon these heartless jailers in their black uniforms, they appeared not an iota different than they had been on previous occasions when they had voiced the most outrageous lies to us without blinking. Why did they insist on coming here tonight? What really lay behind the Warden's announcement that the government had reversed its stance?

I spotted Reineke across the room with Gary Toth. He sent me a stern look that told me that he gave no credence to the announcement. Toth's downturned mouth and clenched jaws said much the same. I waited until Colonel Majors had led his guests out of the crowded offices and into the yard before I approached Reineke. He had put some distance between himself and the crowd and was watching the joyous throng march off toward the Service Yard.

"Is it for real?" I asked. "Should we be on guard in case it's a trick?"

"More than ever," Reineke replied. "But Majors has ordered me not to spoil the party by voicing my suspicions. So I suppose I had better not tell you what the lying bastard is up to, should I?"

"Let me guess," I said. "An attack at dawn?"

"Not quite that soon," Reineke replied. "Listen, Paul, I'm still working on a way to get you out of here. But first, I have a little job for you. I want you to go to my office, lock the door behind you, and open the bottom right drawer of my desk. Take the black telephone out of the drawer, pick up the receiver, and listen for the sound of my voice. Then just keep on listening. I'll tell you what comes next later."

"You bet, Glenn," I replied. "But don’t worry any more about getting me out of here. You did what you could. The time has passed."

I set out at a run for the Security offices, checked in at the front desk, and did as Reineke had told me. I held the black telephone receiver to my ear and waited. Some ten minutes later I heard Reineke's voice and one I didn’t recognize immediately. A door slammed and the second man spoke again.

"What more do you want, Reineke? It seems to me that we’ve given you people just about everything you could ask for."

The voice belonged to Warden Fred Rocco.

"I'm not quite as easy to convince as Mitch Majors, I'm afraid," Reineke replied. "I'd like to ask you for a token of your good faith."

"What sort of token?" the Warden asked with an undertone of suspicion.

"There are some prisoners who opposed the revolt from the start but never got around to leaving camp when the gates were still open. The irony of it is, they never wanted to be lumped together with us rebels. And now that we've won, we aren't so keen on having them around, either. What I'd like to propose is that you and General Boscov take these men with you tonight. I'll draw up a list for you. If you're agreeable, I'll bring them to you at the gate."

The Warden paused and I could imagine Reineke’s cold unblinking eyes waiting for his response.

"Have you cleared your proposal with Colonel Majors?"

"Not yet, but I will," Reineke said.

"Show me the list."

There was another pause and I thought I heard the rustling of paper before the Warden spoke again.

"Paul Wagner? Is this the same guy who sat in on the settlement talks? Quiet, middle–aged, business type?"

"That's him," Reineke replied.

"Well, if he's a Unionist, I'm a bloody Chinese," the Warden snapped. "We received a message about him from Headquarters yesterday. It seems his wife's rich relatives have pulled some kind of strings in Washington to get him released into exile. I told Chambers to say no. The guy is a rebel. Let him rot."

"Really, Warden, what difference is it to you if he rots on your side of the wire or ours? Letting him leave the camp doesn't mean you have to set him free."

"I don't plan on doing either," Rocco declared. "He stays."