Exile Hunter (33 page)

* * *

On his third morning
in the infirmary, Linder awoke shortly before breakfast and was
pleased to find Kendall chatting with a neighboring patient while
they waited for the breakfast cart. Linder hurried to the lavatory,
returned in time to wolf down his breakfast, and rushed off to the
outpatient waiting room where he was scheduled to undergo a
pre-release physical exam. Since CLA regulations required the exam to
be conducted by a physician and the camp doctor considered such exams
a waste of his time, Linder waited ninety minutes for an examination
that lasted fewer than five.

On his return to the
ward, Linder found his former work team leader, Charlie Yost, seated
at Kendall’s bedside, their heads huddled in hushed conversation.
Having not seen Yost since being sent to the Point, Linder looked
forward to telling his former team leader that he would be returning
to Yost’s unit upon his release from the ward. But upon seeing
Linder’s approach, the two older men lowered their voices until he
came within earshot.

“Welcome back to the
land of the living,” Yost greeted Linder as they shook hands. “Now
I owe you, big-time. When you get back to the unit, don’t worry
about making your quota for a while. Get your strength back up.”

Linder grinned. “Quite
a surprise to see you here, Charlie. I didn’t realize you two knew
each other. Is Roger an alumnus of your forestry unit?” he asked
Yost.

“Yes, and a fellow
Clevelander,” Yost replied. “Before you came, I was telling him
how you saved my life.”

“The dog deserves all
the credit,” Linder protested.

“But the dog isn’t
from Cleveland,” Kendall pointed out.

“True enough, I
suppose,” Linder agreed. “Tell me, do you two know each other
from Cleveland, or did you meet here?”

“Charlie’s an old
friend of the family,” Kendall replied, leaning back in his chair.
“For many years he worked for my…”

“Oh, there you go
again, glorifying the old days,” Yost interrupted sharply. “Let’s
just say I knew Roger as a young man, before he left for New York to
make his fortune on Wall Street.”

“Now who’s
glorifying,” Kendall countered, apparently taking Yost’s cue to
change the subject. “On Wall Street, we lawyers weren’t the ones
who made the big money. All we did was protect those who had it from
losing it. And in the end, I suppose we even failed at that...”

Linder opened his mouth
to respond but thought better of it. Like many other Wall Street
moneymen, even now Roger failed to grasp how their excesses fueled
the class hatred that swept the Unionists into power. But nothing
Linder might say was likely to make Kendall see it now.

“Anyway, putting all
that aside,” Kendall continued, “Charlie is someone to keep close
to you. He knows all the Clevelanders here, including the ones to
avoid. If Charlie vouches for you, that’s good enough for me.”

At that, Yost grasped
Kendall’s hand and gave him a concerned look.

“I’m sorry to leave
so soon, Roger, but they’ll be out looking for me if I don’t
board the truck back to the logging site. I’ll come again as soon
as I can. Meanwhile, get lots of rest. Warren will be here a while
longer to help if you need him.”

And without waiting for
a response, Yost made for the door.

* * *

At the midday meal,
Kendall ate heartily and seemed more at peace than he had been in two
days, but after rising from his afternoon nap, he appeared anxious.
Despite Linder’s best efforts to draw him into conversation, the
lawyer became withdrawn and faded in and out of consciousness. At the
evening meal, his appetite was weak. He ate a few bites at Linder’s
insistence but soon pushed the tray away, urging Linder to eat the
rest. But no sooner did Linder reach for Kendall’s plate than he
noticed the elderly native across the aisle eying the food hungrily.
On impulse, Linder carried the remains of the dinner tray over to old
man’s bed.

“Here, take it,” he
told Scotty. “If a man your age still has that strong a will to
live, you should have it. But tell me, after all you’ve been
through, why would you want so badly to go on living in a place like
this?”

The old man dug into
the food at once and did not speak until he had wolfed down most of
what was on the plate.

“Some men here need
help,” Scotty replied. “I am medicine man; they respect me. If I
not teach them old ways of healing and keeping strong, some will die
too soon. But not me. I will live until my time come.”

“Amen to that,”
Linder replied before retreating across the aisle.

Later in the evening,
after Kendall had gone to sleep, Linder considered his own situation.
He would be discharged from the infirmary the next morning. Yet he
had not summoned the courage to reveal to Kendall the truth of how
they had met in Beirut.

If he failed to clear
his conscience of what he had done to Roger and his family, not only
would he carry a burden of guilt, but he might also miss a chance to
heal his soul and do something useful with his remaining time on
earth. As he contemplated this, he felt an unexpected surge of hope
and resolved that, if he managed somehow to survive the camps, he
would find Patricia Kendall and her daughter, ask their forgiveness
and do everything in his power to atone for what he had done to them.

Linder sat by Kendall’s
side throughout the evening, returning to his own bed only when the
orderly came for his nightly lights-out inspection. He waited for
Kendall to wake of his own accord, possibly from thirst or a bad
dream or a fit of coughing, rather than disturb the lawyer’s rest.
If the man did not wake during the night, Linder decided he would
rouse Kendall before breakfast to offer his confession.

It was three o’clock
in the morning when Kendall finally let out a low murmur, rolled onto
his side to face Linder, and opened his eyes.

“Roger?” Linder
greeted him softly so as not to wake the others.

“I’m here,” came
the terse reply.

“I have something to
tell you. You’re not going to like it.”

“If you’ve been
waiting there all night to tell me, I don’t expect I will,”
Kendall answered. “But go ahead.”

“When we first
spoke,” Linder began, “you questioned whether I was Warren Linder
and wanted to know if we had met in London. The answer is no; we met
in Beirut. I came to you in disguise as Joe Tanner and I said I was
from the Mormon Return Movement. You and I had lunch and then we went
to your father-in-law’s apartment. And that’s where they grabbed
us.”

Kendall remained silent
and appeared not even to breathe. Yet, in that brief moment, Linder
felt a burden fall from his shoulders that emboldened him to
continue.

“I was the undercover
officer sent by State Security to lure Philip back to the U.S. The
operation failed and they arrested all of us instead.”

“But why?” Kendall
asked in a hoarse whisper, his eyes wide. He let out a sharp, rasping
cough before speaking again. “Philip had retired from the Movement.
His war chest was almost gone, for God’s sake. He was a toothless
old lion. Why did they have to send in the storm troopers? What could
the regime have to gain from it?”

“I don’t know the
whole of it,” Linder answered. “All I can say is that that they
had Philip’s place wired from the start. They heard him expose the
flaws in my cover story and offer to turn himself in if the DSS would
just leave Patricia and you alone. My mistake was to break cover and
agree to take Philip’s offer to my superiors. They thought it
treasonous of me to make a deal with an insurgent and decided to step
in and do things their way.”

“Treason? Merely
because you offered to pass along Philip’s offer?” Kendall
challenged, newly energized by Linder’s admissions.

“It’s more
complicated than that,” Linder responded. “They needed my help to
get Lebanese government clearance to fly us out, which involved my
confessing to crimes I didn’t commit. When I refused, they threw
the book at me and the situation spun out of control. That’s how I
ended up here with you.”

“So the delay in
flying us out of the country—that was your doing?” Kendall asked,
laying a cold hand on Linder’s wrist.

“You could say that,”
Linder answered, sensing that something significant lurked behind the
question. “I imagine my refusal to be the fall guy set back their
schedule by a day or two.”

Kendall remained silent
for a long time before withdrawing his hand and speaking again.

“Did you know that
Philip Eaton is dead?”

Linder’s throat
tightened.

“I found out at
trial,” he replied. “I’m terribly sorry.”

“My father-in-law had
an adverse reaction to the gas they used to knock us out. He suffered
a stroke soon afterward and never woke up.”

“Oh, my God,”
Linder replied softly.

“They brought in a
doctor to examine him but, instead of taking him to the American
University Hospital, they waited to fly him back to the States before
giving him proper treatment. By then, the damage was done. Philip was
dead on arrival.”

Linder felt his own
blood pressure rise and suppressed an urge to scream.

“But they had a
world-class hospital right there in Beirut!” he exclaimed.

“Dennis said the
Lebanese government wouldn’t let the Embassy repatriate any of us
until they received an official account of what happened during our
capture and the opportunity to interview everyone involved in the
incident,” Roger went on. “Since the Embassy refused any
interviews on diplomatic grounds, the flight clearance took longer
than expected.”

“Then Philip never
regained consciousness?” Linder inquired, curious to know whether
Eaton’s stroke prevented the DSS from interrogating him.

Kendall shook his head.

“His secrets died
with him,” the lawyer added. “But, of course, the people who held
us didn’t want to believe that. Instead, they spent months trying
to coerce Patricia and me into telling them where Philip kept the
money the militias removed from the downtown banks. By God, they must
have injected us with every known drug in the psychiatric
pharmacopoeia. But it was a waste of time. Patricia and I had no idea
where Philip kept the money. He never spoke of it.”

“And Patricia?”
Linder asked in a quiet voice, affecting sympathy but not too much.
“How did she come through it all? Did you see each other at all
during your interrogation?”

He watched Kendall’s
face closely for signs of suspicion but saw none.

“In Virginia they
brought us together every week,” Kendall answered in an oddly
detached tone. “I saw Patricia and Caroline for the last time at a
transit camp in Utah before I was sent here.” A note of fatigue had
crept back into his voice.

“Do you know where
they were held?”

“At a labor camp
outside Park City called Kamas. I wrote to Patricia for weeks
afterward, using every address I could find. But all my letters were
returned.”

Kendall’s half-closed
eyes took on a distant look. “She probably thinks I’m dead by
now,” he added in a barely audible voice.

Linder put a hand on
Kendall’s shoulder to comfort him. Whatever sort of relationship
Roger and Patricia may have had before their arrest, they would
likely never see each other again. And Linder knew that was wrong,
though his hand had been in it.

“Do you know anything
else about the camp at Kamas? I mean, it’s not as grim as this one,
is it?” Linder asked, aiming to strike an upbeat note.

“I don’t know,”
Kendall replied weakly. “I rather doubt it, but then...”

Linder cast an
expectant look at his companion and Kendall went on in a weary voice.

“Perhaps it’s only
wishful thinking, but the reason I believe Patricia and Caroline may
be spared harsh treatment is that the people in charge don’t seem
to have given up on using them to recover Philip’s assets. You see,
they coerced Patricia into signing some legal documents before we
left the interrogation prison and they’ve hired a Beirut law firm
to file a claim on her behalf to inherit any assets Philip held in
the Lebanese banking system. Though Lebanon has strict bank secrecy
laws, I suspect that the DSS has figured out which banks Philip dealt
with. So they might use Patricia as a stalking horse to get their
hands on whatever turns up.”

“Do you think
Patricia would go along with that?” Linder questioned, not having
foreseen the legal tactic.

“Not if she can help
it,” Kendall replied. “But she has Caroline to consider. If it
came to a choice between her daughter’s welfare and her
inheritance, I can imagine how she would choose.”

“And you believe
Philip had enough tucked away to make the Beirut lawsuit worth the
government’s while?” Linder asked in a low voice after making
sure no one was close enough to overhear.

“It depends,”
Kendall explained. “If they’re looking after the government’s
interests, they needn’t worry about Philip having enough money to
revive the insurgency. But if their plan is to steal whatever he left
behind for some secret DSS slush fund or to line their own pockets,
it might well be worth pursuing.”

Linder found this far
from reassuring, knowing the sheer force of malign attention that
Bednarski, Denniston, and the DSS were capable of focusing on their
exile targets to rob them of their wealth.

“The trouble is,
Roger, if you’re right and the lawsuit comes up dry, or even if the
DSS gets its hands on the money, then they would have no reason to
continue giving Patricia and Caroline favorable treatment. Which
means that nothing would stand between them and…”

Kendall finished the
sentence for him. “A camp like this. I know.”

Both men fell silent,
their eyes locked on each other in the hope that the other might come
up with a more promising outcome.