Star Chamber Brotherhood (25 page)

For the most part, the prisoners sat in silence or spoke in low tones to their comrades on either side. From time to time, one or the other burst out in anger or despair, but their captors generally ignored the cries so long as the prisoners did not stir from their places. Guards patrolled slowly up and down the aisles and rows, descending like furies upon anyone who moved out of formation or rose above a seated position. Prisoners who lost consciousness and could not be revived were dragged by the ankles to a gap in the north wall and loaded into the back of a pickup or onto a flatbed truck for guarded transport to the nearest field hospital.

Every few minutes Werner heard gunfire, usually a single pistol round or a short burst from a submachine gun. He shuddered at the memory of seeing warders stack the dead and seriously wounded on flatbed trucks earlier in the day. To his horror, he had watched the warders finish off surviving rebels with a deft knife slash across the throat. The gunshots, he suspected, were a form of triage. Mutinous prisoners killed while attempting to escape did not require treatment or occupy hospital beds.

After two years in captivity as a political prisoner, Werner understood only too well the government’s merciless stance toward the Kamas prisoners. The forty-day Kamas revolt had been the first and only such event in the history of the Corrective Labor Administration. The Administration and its overseers in the Department of State Security despised the prisoners for besting them at a game in which the government held all the cards. They also feared that other prisoners might follow Kamas’ example and spark strikes and riots throughout the labor camp system. And, most of all, the officers in charge feared being held accountable for their errors and lapses by the Unionist Party leaders who had relied on them to keep the camp system under control and out of sight.

The solution was as obvious to the prisoners as it doubtless was to their captors. After crushing the rebellion with overwhelming force, the camp administration would move to cover up its failure by closing the camp, hiding all evidence of the rebellion and denying that it had ever happened. Essential to the plan would be to identify all prisoners who had led, participated in, or sided with the revolt, and to transfer them immediately to remote northern punishment camps. There they could be quietly worked to death and never heard from again.
 

Though not a leader of the revolt or of the strikes that preceded it, Frank Werner had supported these actions from the outset as an early volunteer. Most of the rebel leaders were his friends, and anyone who knew Werner would have had no doubt as to which side he was on. Accordingly, he fully expected that, when government security teams arrived on the parade ground to sort out the rebel activists from the bystanders, they would finger him immediately.
 

Werner spotted the first two security teams as they entered the parade ground through the east gate, then noticed a half dozen more emerge from gaps in the north wall. Each team consisted of a prisoner informant, generally a warder or stool pigeon who had sat out the revolt in government custody, a camp security officer, a civilian clerk, and a squad of troops armed with riot batons and pepper spray. The teams fanned out and began their work at the rear rank of each block, then moved among the ranks, deciding the fate of each prisoner as they went. Whenever they found a rebel, they recorded his name and serial number, and led him out to a waiting transport. The other prisoners remained in place.

The process, however fateful, did not hold Werner’s interest for long. His mind soon drifted back to his injuries, thirst, and the discomfort in his arms and legs until the security team arrived at the end of his row. He cast a look in their direction and was surprised to see two familiar faces among the team.
 

The first was Uriah Tucker, a former automotive engineer from Flint, Michigan, turned lay preacher, who years ago had achieved minor celebrity for leading a national campaign against the newly imposed federal church tax. A year later, he was arrested for helping political dissidents escape over the Canadian border, and promptly disappeared into the camp system. When Werner arrived in Kamas on the eve of the revolt, Tucker was already revered for his humanitarian efforts within the camp and seen as a natural leader for his intelligence, eloquence, and gentle strength of character. Confused murmurs arose among the prisoners as Tucker’s giant six-foot, five-inch frame came into view dressed in bright new orange prison overalls. But for Werner and a few others, all remained unaware that Tucker was a traitorous stool pigeon who had narrowly escaped a death sentence by the Star Committee.
 

The second familiar face Werner saw was that of the Warden, Fred Rocco, a tall, trim, scholarly-looking man of about fifty-five, dressed in desert camouflage fatigues lacking any insignia. Werner recognized him from recent meetings when Rocco had addressed rebel representatives in the camp’s dining hall. Now as well as then, Rocco’s brilliant blue eyes darted rapidly from side to side like those of a lizard.
 

It seemed quite remarkable to Werner that the Warden would participate in such a hands-on, low-level security activity as identifying rebels on the parade ground. It made sense only if the rumor were true that Major Jack Whiting, the camp’s Chief of Security, had died of wounds suffered in the morning attack. For nothing could be more important to Rocco’s future and that of his superiors than to round up every last rebel and send them off to oblivion. Rocco stood behind Tucker and the civilian clerk, peering over the clerk’s shoulder at the prisoner roster, his hand resting on his holster as if prepared to shoot Tucker should he dare to bolt.

Tucker entered Werner’s aisle and peered into the face of each prisoner as the clerk ordered each to shout out his name and serial number. At that moment, Werner heard someone call to him in a loud whisper from the right, the side opposite the security team.

“It’s over, Frank,” the voice said without emotion. “Let him denounce us. It doesn’t matter anymore if it’s Uriah or one of the others who does it.”

Werner swung around and found the man sitting adjacent to him on the right was none other than Dave Lewis, a former workmate who had become a senior rebel leader. Oddly, Werner did not recall Lewis having been next to him when they marched onto the parade ground and could not imagine how Lewis had managed to change places later in full view of the roving guards.

Before Werner could respond to his friend, the prisoner beyond Lewis, a lithe, rail-thin Mexican with wild hair and hatred in his eyes, rose and rushed at Tucker screaming wildly in Spanish. In the blink of an eye, Lewis extended a leg and snared the youth by the ankle, sending him sprawling headlong into the dust. The squad of guards escorting Rocco raised their weapons the moment they saw his approach. Werner judged that they would have shot the Mexican without warning if Lewis had not stopped him.

“Don’t be stupid!” Lewis hissed at the youth as the guards rushed forward with truncheons raised. “You’re young. Survive!”

Then the blows rained down on the hapless Mexican, with plenty to spare for Werner, Lewis and the other prisoners immediately surrounding the prostrate youth. Werner covered the back of his neck with his hands and lay on his side in a fetal position until the guards dragged their prey back to his place and returned to their positions flanking Rocco and the clerk.

A few minutes later the team reached Werner and the clerk ordered him to give his name and serial number. Werner noticed a glimmer of recognition in Uriah Tucker’s eyes as they glared coldly at one another. Meanwhile, Rocco and the civilian clerk looked hard at Werner and Lewis and exchanged knowing glances. Tucker had not yet denounced a single prisoner. What would he say now when confronted with these two notorious rebels?

“Frank Gilbert Werner, W7228,” Werner called out to the clerk.

The clerk flashed a confident smile at Rocco, as if both knew full well Werner was a rebel and that Tucker could not possibly be unaware of it.

But Tucker passed Werner by without a word. The puzzled clerk looked to Rocco for guidance but Rocco shook his head as if telling him to watch and wait.

Now Tucker stepped in front of Dave Lewis. The two glared at each other, their eyes showing both hurt and rage, as if each felt deeply betrayed by the other. But neither spoke.

“Name and serial number,” the clerk demanded.

“David Belknap Lewis, L6173,” Lewis responded coldly, without taking his eyes off Tucker.

Again Tucker remained silent and moved on to the next man in line, the Mexican youth who had risen to attack him. But the youth was still sprawled on the ground, writhing in pain, and unaware that the team had reached him.

Werner’s heart raced with exhilaration at having narrowly missed being denounced as a rebel. Casting a sidelong glance at the injured Mexican, he felt sympathy mixed with a selfish hope that the youth would draw the team’s attention even further from himself and Lewis. But the hope was short-lived.

“Just a minute, Tucker,” Rocco demanded. “Do you know either of these two men?” He pointed to Werner and Lewis.

Uriah Tucker remained silent and would not look at Rocco.

“I believe you do,” Rocco continued. “One of them ordered you murdered and the other tried to carry it out. You testified against both of them at a disciplinary hearing in April. Are you holding out on us, Tucker?”

Tucker lowered his head in resignation but said nothing.

“One last time. These men are ringleaders in the revolt and you damned well know it,” Rocco declared. “Are you going to identify them or not?”

Fred Rocco removed the pistol from his holster and held it to Tucker’s temple.

“Answer me, Tucker. It’s now or never.”

“Go ahead, shoot me!” Tucker blurted out in despair. “I’m not ratting on anybody else for you. So do it. Shoot, motherfucker!”

“Sergeant, take this prisoner behind the wall and shoot him as he requested,” Rocco ordered coldly. “And on your way back, bring me a fresh informant from the trailer. Go! Now!”

Two guards seized Uriah Tucker’s arms and hustled him down the aisle toward the north wall, sobbing and wailing as he went. Werner could pick up only a few fragments of what Tucker shouted, but it sounded like an agonized plea to be forgiven for having betrayed his fellow prisoners. Werner had never seen a sadder end to a once fine man than this.

“And as for these three here, take them to the transport,” Rocco continued, looking directly at Lewis. “If Kamas wasn’t good enough for them, we’ll see how they like Yellowknife.”

The rest of the squad came forward with pistols drawn and led Werner, Lewis and the Mexican toward the gate. A few moments later, Werner heard a pistol shot, then a second.
 

Uriah Tucker was dead.

Chapter 15

Sunday, May 12, 2029
Back Bay, Boston

The travel alarm on Frank Werner’s bedside table rang with a fierce insistence, the bell’s vibration edging the clock off the table and onto the parquet floor before ending its obstinate clang. Upon opening his eyes, the first thing Werner saw was the morning sun framing the heavy, pull-down window shade with a rectangle of brilliant white light. He stretched an arm across the bed to touch Carol but no one was there. Three weeks after his move into Linda Holt’s spare bedroom, he still reached out every morning.

Though Werner had stayed at the Somerset Club until one o’clock sorting out the aftermath of Jake Hagopian’s ill-fated experiment with live music, this was not a morning when he had the luxury of sleeping in. He raised the shade and checked the time: 7:30 a.m.
 

After a quick visit to the bathroom, Werner dressed and made a beeline for the front door of the apartment to retrieve the morning newspaper. There on the third page, below the fold, he found the article he was looking for. To his surprise, however, the man in the photo under the headline in no way resembled the tall and trim Fred Rocco. This was a much smaller man, narrow shouldered and wide of girth, whose bald pate and pencil-thin mustache made him resemble a latter-day Himmler. The dead man was not Rocco but Daniel Devane, Regional Director of the Department of State Security.
 

The headline read: “Federal Official Killed by Stray Bullet in Weston.” In reading the first few lines, Werner found not even a hint that the shooting might have been a political assassination. On reflection, this did not surprise him much, since the Unionist regime had for nearly a decade imposed a media blackout on all incidents of violence against government officials. Yet clearly the article confirmed that a shooting had occurred the previous night in Weston, and that his team appeared to have shot the wrong man.

Werner let out a low whistle as he considered the implications of the news. He was shaken out of his reverie a moment later by the sound of approaching footsteps down the hall. He quickly shut the door behind him and spun around to read the article.

“A stray bullet from a hunting rifle fired by an illegal deer hunter struck down a senior federal official Saturday night as he arrived at a private reception in Weston,” the article began. “The victim, Daniel Devane, was a veteran of thirty-five years in law enforcement, serving most of his career in New England with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of State Security. According to police sources, the gunman remains at large, but reports of illegal hunting are common in the area and an investigation is underway.”