Foreign Enemies and Traitors (9 page)

After what seemed like several minutes of silence, the man standing over him with the pistol whispered one word.  “Stanley.”  Then he was quiet again.

“Are y-you the p-police?” Fromish asked hopefully.

“No.  We’re not.”

“Then, w-what do you want?”

“We just want to talk to you.”

“Who are you?  What…do you want?”  He was thinking about the three million TEDs he had in his safe, concealed behind a false wall in his basement.

“Stanley, we just want your help,” said the man with the pistol.

“My help?”

“Your help.”

“What…what can I do?”

“Stanley, we want some help at your gas station.  We want you to give us fuel when we need it.  Off the books.”

“That’s all?” he laughed nervously.  “Look, I would, but I can’t.  Every gallon is accounted for, I—”

“Don’t give us that bullshit, Stanley, it won’t play with us.  We know you too well.  We know when you get your deliveries.  We know how much goes to the Mexicans, how much goes to the traitor police, to the Kazaks, the Pakistanis, the Albanians, the Nigerians—all of them.  We’re just asking for a few extra gallons of gas and diesel now and then.  Without ration cards, without anything put in the record.”

“You don’t understand, that’s impossible.  I—”

“No, Stanley,
you
don’t understand.  You don’t understand that we can come back here anytime we want to.  We killed your two worthless dogs without making a sound—do you really think you can stop us?  No, of course not.”

“But I have no choice in—”

“Shut up, Stanley.  You’re happy to collaborate with the foreign troops, so I guess you’re profiting very nicely out of this occupation.  You could even feed those two great big German shepherds, while Americans are starving all around you.  It’s even nice and warm here in your house; what is it, oil heat?  Well, that figures, I guess it would be.  Yeah, you’re doing okay for yourself.  You’re living mighty high on the hog, selling gas to foreign troops and the traitor police.  But that’s okay—like you said, you have no choice.  Now all we’re asking for is a little help, a tiny little patriotic gesture now and then.  So that we won’t have a reason to come back here and visit you again.”

“There’s no way, I can’t—” 

“Oh, yes you can, and you will.  Stanley, think about it.  These foreign mercenaries won’t be here forever.  Sooner or later they’ll be gone.  But this won’t ever be over for you—not if we mark you down as a collaborator.  We’ll remember you for the rest of your life, Stanley, no matter what you do or where you go.  Even if you move back to Illinois or try to hide somewhere else.  You might not even live long enough to see the foreign mercenaries leave Tennessee.  Then who’ll take care of your daughters?  Maybe the foreign troops will get them, if you’re not around.  Who will get your daughters if you’re gone?  The Albanians?  The Nigerians?  The Kazaks?  I hear they all like young girls, the younger the better.  The Nigerians even think that screwing virgins can cure AIDS.  Virgins are big magic back in Africa.”

“Stop it!”

“Think about it, Stanley.  Think about your girls.  You have to plan for the long term.  You need to get on the right side of this war before it’s too late.  You have to come over to the patriotic side, right here and now.  Tonight.”

“How?  I can’t do what you’re asking.”

“Don’t worry, Stanley, we won’t stop you from doing business with the foreign mercenaries.  We understand, you have to live.  You have your daughters to take care of.  We understand that, it’s perfectly normal.  We just want our fair share of the gas, and some logistical support now and then.  Car parts, engine work.  Tires.  Things like that.  Easy stuff for you.”

Fromish was beaten.  He thought rapidly while the man talked about his dogs, who were probably dead, as they claimed, and his children, who he prayed were untouched.  “How will I know what you want?  I don’t even know who you are.”

“You’ll know when we send somebody to your station.  They might have a ration card for two gallons, but you’ll fill them all the way up instead.  You, personally, not one of your employees.  Or they’ll catch you in your office, almost at curfew time.  They’ll give you a sign, like this.”  The man in the mask held his left hand against his chest, crossing his fingers and tapping them against his heart.  “The man who makes that sign will be your contact.  He’ll give you more instructions, and you’ll obey them.  Later on, we might ask you to put somebody on your payroll—a mechanic.  We’ll let you know who and when. 

“But if you pull anything smart, if you try any kind of double cross…then we’ll send another team right back here to your house, and we won’t be in such a forgiving mood.  Remember, Stanley, you’re choosing sides, right here, tonight.  Double-cross us and…well, I’m sure you love your daughters too much for that.  And always keep this in mind: no matter what happens this year, or next year, or ten years from now—when this occupation is over—we’ll remember you, and the decision you made tonight.  There are hundreds of patriotic Americans all around you, Stanley, and we’ll remember you.  There’ll be no forgive and forget.  One way or the other, we’ll all remember how you acted while Tennessee was under foreign occupation.  So there’s really nothing to think about, because you don’t have a choice.  You want to get on the right side of this war, don’t you?”

“Yes, yes, of course…”

“Good.  So, you understand what we want, and how we’re going to contact you?”

Stanley Fromish was amazed that they hadn’t dragged him out of his bed, to torture him, to force him to open his safe and hand over his thick bundles of red TEDs.  Promises of future cooperation were easy to make.  It was all the same to him: he cooperated with whoever was holding the guns at any given moment.  “Yes, I understand.  I’ll help you; I’ll be on your side.”

“Good.  Very good.  We’re leaving now, but we have somebody with a night scope who will be watching you through that window—so don’t do anything stupid.  Wait ten minutes, and then go check on your daughters.  Lovely girls, your wife Molly must have been beautiful.  Okay, ten minutes.”  The two masked bandits flicked off their painfully bright lights, and Stanley Fromish was plunged into utter dark, white flares pulsing where the lights had been.

When his eyes regained their normal functioning, he looked at his watch.  Its illuminated face told him that it was 12:43 a.m.  He wanted to leap from his bed and check on his children, but he looked at the open shades of his window and remembered what the man had said about a watching sharpshooter.  He spent the next ten minutes horrified that the intruders might be doing terrible things to his daughters.  He also considered ways to finagle the accounting on the fuel deliveries and adjust the flow meters, in order to divert gasoline off the books to whomever the masked men sent to his office.  He wondered if he would have the courage to falsify his paperwork, to run bogus accounting past the military government.  If he was caught, they would hang him in Jackson for black marketing or for helping terrorists.  Literally hang him from the marble arch in Unity Park, where they hanged rebels, terrorists and bandits almost every Saturday at high noon.  That was dead certain.  But only if he was caught.  On the other hand, these masked men could come back at any time, and his girls…

At exactly 12:51 he slid out of his bed, his heart thudding, and padded silently down the cold hallway to his daughters’ bedroom with a flashlight in his hand.  They shared a bedroom now, to conserve precious heat.  He slowly opened their door and scanned the twin canopy beds.  Grace and Emily were both sleeping, undisturbed.  He walked closer, crossing the carpet in his stocking feet.  Thirteen-year-old Grace was sleeping on her side, facing him, her angel eyes closed, her lips a perfect bow.  Across her neck was a wide red line, and he stifled a scream with the back of his left hand.  His light’s beam swung to eleven-year-old Emily, sleeping on her back across the room, and to another crimson trace across her delicate throat.  He closed the gap to Grace’s bed in an instant, the light bright in her face, and she awakened and then shut her eyes tightly against the blinding glare.

“It’s me, pumkin.”  

“Daddy?  What’s wrong, Daddy?”

Across the room, Emily stirred and rolled onto her side, facing him, her eyes opening in little blinks.

He breathed again, kneeling by her bed, touching Grace’s throat, smearing greasy red paint—no, it was red lipstick—on his fingertips.  An open tube of lipstick was standing on her little bedside table.  Next to the lipstick stood a rifle bullet, copper tip over golden brass.  He recognized the red lipstick by its silver-and-black cylinder; it was his wife’s, taken from atop her bureau in their bedroom.  Stanley had left the bureau as it had been before she was lost in the first Memphis quake.  The intruders must have been wandering freely around their upstairs bedrooms before waking him up.  And that, after defeating his security systems and killing his dogs.  If their intention had been to terrorize him, they had succeeded.

“Nothing.  Nothing’s wrong princess, nothing at all.”  He switched off his light, leaned over and hugged her.  “Nothing at all, Gracie.”

Diverting the gasoline would be no problem.  Not compared to the danger of another midnight visit from the masked men, if he failed to cooperate with them.

                                                            
3

It was Carson’s first morning in the quarantine camp.  
He was already awake when he heard the national anthem playing over a distant loudspeaker at 0800 hours.  Temperatures had dipped to near freezing overnight, and he had slept with his clothes over his scrubs, in a green Army sleeping bag on a cot.  The cot and sleeping bag had been brought to the tent the evening before, after he’d been fingerprinted and had his photo taken by a pair of MPs in masks and rubber gloves. 

He tied back the two narrow door flaps to let in some daylight; the sky was leaden and the air heavy with cold mist.  Breakfast had been brought around on a handcart after reveille: oatmeal and grits in a plastic bowl, and some kind of orange drink in a plastic cup.
 
He was told to keep the cup; he would not get a new one at each meal.  In the future, his cup would be refilled from a jug on the handcart.

He could have easily slipped away from the quarantine center overnight, but what would that have accomplished?  He would still have been inside a huge military reservation, without any of the forms of identification necessary for traveling.  As he paced around outside his tent, he reconsidered the wisdom of his chosen strategy.  Two other options had been available to him yesterday: stay aboard the wrecked catamaran and try to find another escape vessel, or travel overland covertly, moving only at night.  Well, he’d chosen a third strategy, and now he was stuck with the consequences.

At 10:15, a camouflage-uniformed visitor approached while Carson was outside the tent doing stretching exercises.  He was about Carson’s age, which meant he should have been too old to be serving in the military.  The oak leaf rank on his chest indicated that he was a lieutenant colonel.  The nametape over his right pocket said FOLEY and over the other pocket it said U.S. ARMY.
 
He was wearing a black beret like most of the soldiers Carson had seen on the base.
 
The man’s hair was just as gray as his own but a bit longer, a good inch past strict military regulation length.

The lieutenant colonel kept a polite distance and made no offer to shake hands.  Carson wasn’t offended.  This was a quarantine camp, and the man wasn’t wearing a mask or gloves.  He had a round, pasty face, and brown eyes beneath gold wire-rimmed glasses.  He spoke slowly, as if he was addressing an utter moron.  “Well, good morning, ‘John Doe.’  I’m Doctor Foley.  My medics brought me up to speed on your case.  I came by to check your cut, and see if you’ve regained any of your memory.”

Like hell you did
, thought Carson.  But no matter the reason, the appearance of the doctor was a good sign.  Carson said, “You know, I think I do remember these Army tents, and that beret you’re wearing seems sort of familiar, but that’s about all.”

“The medics that brought you in said you had an Airborne tattoo on your arm.  Army jump wings.  You must have been in the service at some point.  If you were in the service, then your fingerprints should be on file, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t get a match.  A lot of the old paper records never made it into the modern databases.  But if I had to guess, I’d say you must have been in the Army to get an Airborne tattoo.”

“I suppose so, but I’m not really sure.  It’s all kind of hazy.  I’ll tell you what, though: I got a flash of something when I put my cot together last night.  Sort of like déjà vu.” 

“Good, that’s something at least.  Somewhere to start.”  The doctor paused, and then set out on a different line of conversation.  “Say, I’ve got to thank you for something.”

“Excuse me?  Thank me for what?”

“For the best cup of coffee I’ve had in months.”

Carson kept his face blank as he replied, “Coffee?”  The old peanut butter jar he’d filled with ground Brazilian coffee had been intentionally left in his pack as bait.  When passing through customs he sometimes left racy magazines or a carton of cigarettes packed inside his bag.  Whatever was rare, forbidden or valuable in that country—it always paid to throw the low-level inspectors a bone.  Once they had their own pilfered contraband to spirit away, they were much less interested in conducting a more detailed search.