Exile Hunter (12 page)

Now April seemed to be
fighting a losing battle against premature middle age. Her face was
pale and puffy and frown lines had appeared around her forehead,
eyes, and lips. Judging from the dark crescents under her eyes, the
burdens of caring for an ailing parent and the worry and shame of
having a brother accused of national security crimes had doubtless
cost her many a sleepless night and possibly her job. Linder observed
that April’s sweater, blouse, and slacks were faded and shapeless
from too many washings. His sister had always been a gentle soul who
saw the best in everyone and was capable of tireless effort to care
for those in need. But he could see that even she had reached the
limits of her strength.

Linder bristled at
recalling how the Unionist regime persecuted families of prisoners
charged with crimes against the state. Though Linder's father and
sister had both been Unionist Party members, their membership would
almost certainly have been suspended by now, along with the
substantial privileges it brought, and bureaucratic obstacles would
be raised to their collecting even ordinary government benefits like
social security or Medicare. The DSS would have ordered a meticulous
background check of both in hope of uncovering some past offense that
would sweep them into the same net as the accused family member. And,
once the investigators began grilling Linder’s relatives,
neighbors, classmates, and former coworkers, April’s friends and
fellow schoolteachers would shun her for fear of being associated to
a dangerous public enemy.

April’s presence in
the interrogation room could mean only one thing: that the DSS had
beaten her down far enough that she would urge him to confess. She
reached her slender pale hands across the tabletop and Linder took
them up and held them to his lips. Momentarily losing their awareness
of the guards standing a few paces behind them, brother and sister
rose at once as if to embrace across the table.

“No standing
allowed,” barked one of the guards.

They froze, still
holding each other’s hands, before sinking to their seats. Aware
that anything they said could be used against them, their eyes and
fingertips conveyed in an instant the most important message that
each had to convey: that their loyalty to one another remained
supreme, and that neither would take the side of state or party
against the other.

“Are you…?” Both
attempted to speak at once.

“…well?” April
continued when her brother stopped with a faint smile.

“Better than I look,”
Linder replied, forcing a brave smile.

“You’ve lost
weight.” April’s red-rimmed eyes held back tears.

“I could spare it,”
he said with a self-deprecating smile. “Listen, I’m sorry you
have to see me looking like this...”

“No, no, it’s
okay!” she exclaimed. “Really, I insisted on coming to see you as
soon as I heard you’d been detained. But it took them weeks to tell
me where you were.” She looked over Linder’s shoulder at the
guard behind him, then continued in a voice barely above a whisper.
“And even then they wouldn’t permit visitors for the longest
time.”

“Listen, April,” he
urged, “I don’t want you or Dad to worry about me. “Whatever
happens, you and Dad need to take care of each other. There’s
nothing you can do to help me. It seems the fix is in.”

“Warren, I’m so
afraid for you. They told me…”

“Don’t believe
anything they say,” he warned. “They’ll tell you whatever it
takes to have what they want. The only way to get the truth out of
them is to challenge them on every point and demand documents to back
it up.”

“But what about your
trial, Warren? They told me that if you don’t reach a plea
agreement, you could be shot for treason!”

“And I could also be
acquitted,” he assured her. “The DSS doesn’t like going to
trial if they think they might lose. That’s why they always seek a
plea bargain, and it’s why I demanded a trial.”

“But if you plead
guilty to a lesser charge, they said you might go free in as little
as five or ten years. You could still have a life…” A tear
streaked down April’s cheek and Linder reached out to erase it with
his thumb.

“After admitting to
having aided the insurgency?” Linder scoffed. “Not a bloody
chance. I’d never get out.”

April swallowed hard
and looked down at her trembling hands.

“You mentioned Dad.
I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

Linder felt all his
muscles go slack at once and slumped in his chair.

“He died two weeks
ago,” April continued. “In his sleep. They said he was too old to
qualify for another heart operation.”

“I was afraid that
might happen,” Linder replied, struggling to maintain self-mastery.
“Tell me, April: when he died, had he heard about my…” Now it
was Linder’s turn to peer over his sister’s shoulder at the
guard.

April nodded. “Some
people from Washington came by the house while I was at work. They
told Dad you were under arrest and asked him a lot of questions. He
told them to go pound salt. You know Dad…”

Linder brightened and
April smiled back while dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. “Don’t
beat yourself up over Dad,” she went on. “He could see the end
coming for a long time. After forty years of smoking, it almost
seemed like…”

“Yeah,” Linder
interrupted. “He knew exactly what he was doing. But how about you,
April? How are you coping all by yourself?”

“Oh, I get by,” she
said without conviction.

“How is your job? Did
you get the promotion to assistant principal?”

April lowered her eyes.

“Yes, but I’m on
leave without pay till after your trial,” she replied. “The Party
suspended my membership and the principal told me to stay home.”

“How are you covering
the bills?” Linder asked with pain in his voice.

“I had some savings
tucked away. And Dad left a little something for each of us when he
died…”

“Please take my
share,” Linder insisted. “All of it. I’d give you more, but
I’ve lost access to my accounts. If they let me, I’ll send you a
list and you can try to gain access to whatever’s there. I’ve
designated you as co-owner or beneficiary wherever I could…”

“That’s all right,
Warren. You keep what you have,” April replied, giving her
brother’s hand a squeeze. I put the house up for sale. That ought
to cover things for a while.”

Linder bowed his head
in shame.

“I’m so sorry to
leave you alone like this, April,” he declared. “If I had known,
I might have…”

“No, don’t say it.
There’s no point in beating yourself up. None of us can see the
future,” his sister replied. “All I ask is that you do your best
to save yourself. You’re all I have left, Warren. Promise me you
won’t stay away a minute longer than you have to. Will you do
that?”

Linder nodded rather
than speak, for his eyes filled with tears and he feared losing
control.

“One minute warning,”
the guard announced.

“How will I find you
again?” April asked with urgency when the guard retreated. “They
said you’d be transferred after the trial. Where will you be?”

Now Linder lowered his
voice to just above a whisper.

“You can inquire at
the District DSS office but they probably won’t tell you anything.
I’ll try to get a message out to you somehow. But not at the house.
I’ll write to you through one of our relatives.”

“I’ll be watching
for it,” his sister replied softly. “But please find a way to
come back, Warren. If anyone can do it, it's you. I don’t know how
I could go on if you...”

“Don’t think that
way,” Linder broke in. “I’ll get out. Till then, keep praying
for me.”

Brother and sister rose
in the same instant and embraced before the guards rushed forward and
pulled April away.

After his sister’s
visit, Linder was led back to his original cell, the one he had
occupied before his stint in the punishment block. There he collapsed
onto the cot, mentally and emotionally drained, and sank into a
dreamless sleep. After what seemed like many hours, the guards
rousted him from bed and brought him to one of the usual
interrogation cells, where the troll awaited him.

“You’ve wasted
enough of my time, Linder,” the interrogator snarled, his eyes
smoldering with malice. “I’ve signed you over for trial.”

The troll drew a stack
of legal-size documents out of a battered aluminum briefcase and
slapped them down on the table before continuing.

“We’ve prepared a
confession based on the material covered during your interrogation.
If you sign it and help pursue your co-conspirators, I can guarantee
you’ll get no more than ten years at hard labor. If you go to trial
and are convicted, you could face a firing squad.”

“Or the judge could
laugh your phony evidence out of court,” Linder replied.

“You don’t know our
judges,” the troll answered with a smirk.

“I’ll take my
chances.”

“I wouldn't be so
optimistic if I were in your shoes,” the troll replied. “The
trial is set for tomorrow. There’s still time to change your mind.
Allow me to present my closing argument.”

With that, the troll
stepped behind Linder and suddenly kicked the chair out from under
him. Before he could right himself the tip of a heavy boot struck
Linder in the cheek and filled his mouth with the taste of blood.

Blow upon blow fell
from the troll’s rubber truncheon upon Linder's back, ribs,
shoulders, and arms. He curled into a ball and protected the nape of
his neck with his hands, but the blows fell on his knuckles and
wrists with agonizing pain. When the blows stopped, the guards lifted
Linder onto a chair. He slumped forward with his chest on his knees
and noticed that the salty taste wouldn’t go away. There was an
object in his mouth, something jagged and superfluous. He spit it
onto the floor. It was a tooth.

The troll waved a copy
of the printed confession in Linder’s face.

“Sign it.”

“I haven’t even
read it,” Linder responded through the swelling pain.

“You don’t need to.
Just sign it and I’ll leave you alone.”

Linder’s tongue
probed the gap where his tooth had been while his mind methodically
assessed the damage to the rest of his body.

The guards pulled him
upright and deposited him on the chair, where he sat while the troll
circled, occasionally whacking him on a shoulder or an exposed elbow
with a well-aimed truncheon blow. Before long, the muscles of
Linder’s lower back and legs seized up in a series of agonizing
cramps. He teetered on the edge of the chair until the troll once
more kicked it out from under him. Linder’s tailbone hit the
concrete floor and sent a spasm of pain up his spine.

“Had enough?” the
interrogator breathed inches from Linder’s face as he lay stunned
on the concrete.

Linder made no reply.

“Sign it!” the
troll bellowed into his ear.

Linder was at the edge
of his endurance but one small defiant part of his consciousness
clung to the knowledge that confession meant almost certain death. So
long as he retained the will to live and could raise an ounce of
resistance, he would not sign a document that could legalize his
execution.

“Never,” Linder
whispered.

The beating continued.
How much pain could his body tolerate? The limit was far beyond what
Linder had imagined. He passed out and reawakened. The beating
resumed. He passed out again. When he returned to consciousness, he
saw the troll hovering above him with a hypodermic needle in his
hand. One of the guards held Linder’s arms in an iron grip while
the troll injected him.

They hoisted him onto
the chair and prodded him in the ribs to make him sit upright.
Seconds passed, then minutes, while the pain ebbed and an odd mental
clarity took hold of Linder. All at once, it entered his mind that
the injection might be some sadistic innovation to prolong the
torture by preventing him from passing out when the pain became
intolerable. But the thought passed quickly and Linder thought it odd
that it no longer worried him.

The guards seized hold
of the chair on either side and dragged Linder forward to the steel
table. The printed confession lay before him, folded back to the
signature page.

“Now sign,” the
troll ordered.

Linder raised his hand
with difficulty and pushed the papers aside.

“Take the pen and
sign it,” the troll repeated through clenched teeth. He seized
Linder’s right hand and formed it around the pen.

“Sign!”

Linder felt another jab
in the ribs but didn’t flinch. Both pain and anxiety had receded
now and the cramped muscles in his legs and back were relaxing. He
welcomed the sense of comfort and ease that suffused his awareness.
As he stared at the pen in his hand, he became unsure what to do with
it. Whatever it was didn’t seem important any more.

* * *

Linder awoke once
again to the sound of the cell door clanging open. His eyes seemed
glued shut and his mouth filled with cotton. He sensed a chill
dampness at his hips and groin and realized that he had wet himself
while sleeping.

Linder rolled over to
search for his water bottle. The movement triggered a series of
hammer blows inside his head and a strong urge to retch. He tried to
remember what had happened to him just before he passed out but
recalled only the beating and the injection. Apart from the nausea
and pain, a sense of indefinable dread enveloped him like a cloud of
poison gas.

At that moment, his
cell door rolled open and a guard tossed him a pair of cheap plastic
flip-flops.

“Up on your feet,”
the guard barked before stepping inside to shackle him. “Time to
get moving.”

Once safely shackled
and hooded, Linder shuffled down the corridor between his two guards.
After making several unexpected turns and passing through doors never
before encountered, Linder entered a section of the building that
seemed completely unfamiliar. He heard the whir of an approaching
elevator. When it stopped, the guards shoved him inside. He counted
to twelve until it bumped to a stop, the door rolled open and his
guards led him out again through a sliding steel door and down a few
steps.