Recommendation Two: Immediately authorize an investigation of special-entry permits. You should issue a concomitant order to “freeze” such permits except as approved by you.
Recommendation Three: Direct the California National Guard to increase migration support. You may want to authorize some temporary visa control.
Recommendation Four: Place a request before the legislature asking for an additional $11 million for war relief. As permitted by the EWA, some of these monies can be used for migration control as well as for intrastate relocation.
Recommendation Five: Accelerate deportation activities by eliminating second- and third-stage appeal steps. This will no doubt produce some outcry, although it might be offset by the reduced drain on utilities and services.
Your request for recommendations for control/reduction of displaced illegals in the state will be ready by the end of the month.
The Prison Bus
Jim had noticed that San Francisco International had flights by the dozens to every imaginable destination. The idea of getting a closer look at that airport fascinated us. Quinn objected so strenuously that we had to give her the slip. But we couldn’t very well visit the West Coast without obtaining a first-hand report of the condition of air travel in the area.
To make a long story short, if an illegal goes to the airport, said illegal is going to be caught.
The Immigration Police are a fearsome crew, especially when they appear out of nowhere, their dark glasses glittering, their scorpion faces expressionless, and say, “ID, please”. We were on the concourse, passing an exhibit of new Ford Americars when it happened. We hardly even had our wallets out before there were two military police trotting over, and another three cops.
The reason? We didn’t have stamped airline tickets “visible on our persons at all times,” to quote the regulation.
The cop put our cards into a processor about the size of a recorder. The alarm flashed green (no doubt to con the criminal into thinking he’d passed the test and thus prevent a struggle). We were made to stand against the wall and searched. Jim’s recorder and his precious box of diskettes were left alone. California actually wanted us to keep our possessions. They don’t want potential deportees to leave so much as a used toothpick behind to give them a possible reason to return to the state after they have served their sentences and been ejected.
We were marched out of the airport, past the long rows of ticket counters. Japan AirLines, All-Nippon Airways, Singapore Airlines, Cathay-Pacific, Philippine Airlines, Thai Airlines, British Airways, Caledonian, Lufthansa, Alitalia, Aer Lingus, Air Prance, South African Airways, Pan Am, TWA, Delta.
You can fly from San Francisco to Tokyo ten times a week, to London, Singapore, or Paris eight times, to Bonn five times, to Taiwan four times, to Milan twice.
There is no American city except L.A. with near the service.
New York, Washington, and San Antonio are not on the schedules, of course, and most other American cities are barely there.
You cannot fly from San Francisco to Minneapolis at all, but you can go nonstop to Buenos Aires on British Airways or Pan Am, twice a week.
Just being in that airport—despite the cops and the handcuffs—made me long for the magnificent ease of jet travel as I remember it. I even have dim recollections of flying in pre-jet days from San Antonio to Corpus Christi with my father, and the hostess handing out mint Chiclets in cellophane packets. I remember my amazement on learning we were a mile high. I feel equally amazed now that I am earthbound.
Things one took for granted never quite seem lost. I suppose it’s a defense mechanism, but somewhere in the back of my mind I always assume that things will one day return to normal, which means life as it was in about 1984.
I remember when Hershey bars got bigger.
And the Ford Tempo, and Chinese restaurants with menus ten pages long, and they had it all.
I remember inflation, and how happy everybody was when it ended—and how unhappy when it started up again, right after the ’84 election.
And OPEC. I wonder if it still meets, and if the Israelis send representatives or allow their Arab client-states to continue the pretense of independent participation.
Walking along in that spit-and-polish gaggle of officers, I considered the idea of just breaking and running.
But I want to live. Badly.
Ticket clerks glanced curiously at us as we passed, and I thought of light on wings and how small the ocean seems from a jet.
I thought of the magical land of Somewhere Else.
They don’t have Immigration Police Somewhere Else.
They don’t have Red Zones and Dead Zones and British civil servants.
Somewhere Else the corn is always safe to eat and you don’t see cattle vomiting in their pens.
They never triage Somewhere Else, and they don’t write Bluegrams.
They don’t love each other as Anne and I do, either, not Somewhere Else, where the sky is clean and death is a hobby of the old.
Somewhere Else they assume that they have a right to exist and do not stop to consider that it may be a privilege.
California needs the rest of America. It must not be allowed to become a separate nation. If there is such a thing as a geopolitical imperative in our present society, it is to prevent this from happening. The current California immigration laws are an affront to the very memory of the Bill of Rights—and in most parts of this country it is much more than a memory.
We were taken to a holding pen right in the airport, an airless, windowless room jammed with miserable people and booming with fluorescent light.
We remained there, without food or water or access to counsel, for fifty hours. We slept as best we could on the black linoleum floor, entwined with the other captured.
I was the first to appear before the magistrate. He was a cheerful young man in a blue Palm Beach suit and one of the raffish gray panamas that California’s affluent class wear nowadays.
They are gray because they are dusted with lead.
He was perhaps thirty. “Let’s see, you’re one of the ones dressed as a priest. Funny. This is funny too: By the power vested in me by the state of California, I sentence you to two years at hard labor, to be followed by transportation out of state.” He banged a gavel. “Next case,” he said, absently shuffling papers.
My mouth was dry. I was too shocked to make a sound. Two years in prison, just like that. No jury, not even a chance to ask a question. And where was my lawyer? What the hell happened to my side?
I didn’t hear Jim’s sentencing, but I could see by his expression when we entered the prison bus, which was waiting at the far end of the main building, that he had been hit too. I held up my hand, indicating the number two. He nodded and held up first one finger and then another, then another.
Jim had done worse than I had; he was in for three years. Why the stiffer sentence? I found out later that he had asked the judge for a jury trial.
The bus was an old model with cyclone fencing welded into the windows. It rattled and shook along. There were ten of us, men as well as women, all handcuffed, seated on narrow steel benches.
When I realized that no guards were back here in the un-air-conditioned part of the bus, I began to talk.
“Maybe we can get word to someone in the federal government,” I said. “Perhaps they can help.”
Jim stared at me as if I had gone completely mad. “Look,” he said, “I’ve still got my recorder and my disks. Once we get to the prison, they’re going to be locked in a property room. Maybe stolen or erased.”
Obviously there was no time to fool around with government officials. “So we break out of the bus. How?”
“Not too hard, it isn’t very secure. I think they expect illegals to be passive. You remember how to fall?”
My mind went back to basic training. I had fallen then, often enough. “I guess so.”
“We’re gonna jump and hope for the best.”
“Jim, we�
�re wearing handcuffs.”
“That’s not much more of a problem than that door.”
The rear door of the bus, once the fire exit, was welded closed.
“How can we possibly jump?”
With an angelic expression, Jim raised his eyes.
Right above us was a ventilator. It was pushed open. Jim passed the word that he and I were going out on the roof if we got the chance, and we’d pull anybody up who cared to follow.
We waited, then, for the bus to leave San Francisco proper. We had no idea of our destination, but we were soon across the Bay Bridge and going through Oakland on Route 80, heading toward Richmond.
We passed Richmond, moving at about forty miles an hour. The bus slowed as we reached the Hercules exit. We turned off and took a right beneath the railroad tracks onto a two-lane blacktop called Crow Canyon Road. It was 9:15 A.M. The Zephyr would be leaving San Francisco at noon.
I prayed that I would see Anne again.
We passed the Crow Canyon golf course and a big truck depot, then began climbing a hill. Soon our speed was dropping and the gears were making a lovely racket. Jim wasted no time. He raised his cuffed hands above his head and grabbed the edge of the ventilator. In a moment he had pulled himself up and hooked one arm over the edge. With his free hand he unsnapped the plastic armature that held the vent in place. It began to bang against his arm and I heard him stifle a scream. Then his legs were up to his chest and he had rolled out onto the roof. A second later he opened the vent for me.
Now we were passing an abandoned kennel. People don’t keep many dogs these days, not even in California. The road cut the edge of the hill, which rose steeply to our right. On the left was a horse farm and open countryside and a chance to get to Richmond and intercept the Zephyr.
We jumped and rolled into the grass at the roadside.
All up the hill, that bus leaked prisoners. By the time it got to the top, I don’t think there were three left inside!
“Maybe we can find something to cut these cuffs at that truck depot back down the road,” Jim said. “If we don’t get them off, we might as well forget the train.”
We moved quickly. A lot of people were going to be trying to break into that depot today, all wearing handcuffs, all looking for shears. The place was open, so after the first ones came, the workers there would be on their guard.
The depot stood on the roadside in the heat, a broken semi blocking one driveway. In the other driveway, a new Mercedes truck was parked, getting diesel fuel. Behind it, an ancient eighteen-wheeler awaited its turn.
We went far up the hillside that backed the depot, and came around behind it. There was a door into the rear of one of the metal buildings. Inside, two men were working on a magnificent ’87 Thunderbird, a sleek red dream of a car with gleaming black leather upholstery. It was a breathtaking joy to see, that prewar car, and judging from the polished beauty of the engine compartment, we weren’t the only ones smitten by it.
I am a law-abiding man, but when Jim found those big metal shears and cut my cuffs, and I cut his, and I realized that we were both fugitives, it occurred to me that it would be an awful lot of fun to steal the T-bird.
“Too conspicuous,” Jim muttered. Just then, three more prisoners came in the rear door. I thought I heard a siren off in the mountains. It was time to leave.
We crossed the road and headed out into the countryside, moving back toward Route 80. It was eleven-thirty by the time we saw 80 in the distance. We had come about five miles. All during this time we had heard sirens, and seen an occasional police vehicle back on Crow Canyon Road.
There was a bus stop in the little town of Pinole. The schedule on the wall indicated that we should see the next Richmond bus at 12:10.
According to our timetable, the Zephyr would pull out of Richmond at 12:22.
If the bus was right on time, we would make our connection with exactly one minute to spare—assuming that the Immigration Police had not thought to extend their dragnet to cover the Richmond depot. Our Roman collars had become advertisements of fugitive status.
The bus came, and wheezed up onto Route 80. We would be in Richmond in a few minutes. The depot was the first stop. When I told the driver we were trying to make the train, he nodded and promised to do his best.
We sat there sweating, reading the aisle cards: the ubiquitous immigration warning; the Soyquick cereal ad; the BubbleRific poster with the sunny Valley Girl blowing a big yellow bubble; an appeal to orphans that read, “Don’t join the gangs. California has a home for you”; an ad for Shearson/American Express, “Tomorrow is going to work! And we know how.”
A man was humming an old song: “Jimmy Crack Corn.”
California is sun and the smell of watered lawns.
It is luxury trains and terror.
It is two-minute trials and prison farms.
And a beautiful prewar car, as exotic as a Maharajah’s coach, hidden in a nondescript garage.
California is fresh food, and lots of it.
It is also a very nice place to leave, if you don’t belong there.
The train was sitting in the Richmond station as the bus came to a stop out front.
We ran fast through the tiled lobby, past the ticket windows and directly to the train. A single Immigration Policeman lounged against the wall of the station.
The train was already in motion when we slung into the door a conductor was holding open for us.
“Come on, Fathers! You can make it.”
The Zephyr at last.
Soon it was picking up speed.
We went into the lavatory to change from the clerical clothes to our more ordinary jeans and shirts. We threw the incriminating clothes onto the roadbed somewhere between Richmond and Martinez.
Back in our seats, Jim began checking his disks to be sure none were damaged.
I leaned back, realizing how deeply tired I was. Despite the handicap of our illegal entry, we had done fairly well in California.
In Martinez, three Immigration Police came through the train fast, but they didn’t spot us. I suppose their eyes were going from throat to throat behind those mirrored sunglasses, looking for clerical collars.
I bought a soybean salad and some milk in the snack bar and sat watching the world go by. As we rounded Suisin Bay, I saw vast, empty docks that in the past would have been jammed with imported Japanese cars. Now there were perhaps a hundred of them standing in the afternoon sun, protected by chainlink fences.
Somebody began to play a tape of David Bowie’s new album, Dream Along, and I did just that.
I didn’t wake up until long after dark. There was a strong smell of salami. Jim was eating a sandwich that had been offered him by a magnificently uniformed British naval officer who now sat across the aisle from us, ready to give us what proved to be a truly extraordinary interview.
Jim glanced at me. “We’re in Nevada,” he said.
All I did was nod.
INTERVIEW
Captain Malcolm Hargreaves, Sub-Popper
I am on a five-day leave, on my way to see the Rocky Mountains.
I’ll shift in Ogden to the Rio Grande Zephyr for the scenery and go down to Denver. Then I’ll fly back to base.
We have been in California for eight days. The Royal Navy has enjoyed learning about the famous California lifestyle. I’m from Yorkshire, and I believe I’ve seen more sunlight in a week here than we do in a whole Yorks’ summer. And every time you turn around, there’s another swimming pool. Not to mention an aspect my men have particularly enjoyed, which is meeting some of your wonderful girls. I confess to being unattached myself, so this hasn’t been without interest for me, either.
Now I did tell you at the outset that I would not be discussing details of the range or speed of my ship, or exactly how our weapons operate. But of course we are what is popularly called a “sub-popper,” and that is not a completely inaccurate name. It does describe our mission very well. As you know, the war left a large number of u
nidentified submarines, armed with nuclear missiles, sailing about the oceans of the world. They are all what we call “code blind,” which is to say that there is presently nobody to send them the codes they need either to fire their missiles or to come home. So they continue on station, generally, until they get low on nuclear fuel or some essential supply, or break down in a critical part, whereupon they either return to base and are disarmed, or they sink.
If you are like three-quarters of the people we naval types encounter, you’ll want to know something about the present naval situation. GHQ Pacific Office of Information gives us a prepared summary, which I can read into your machine.
“On Warday there were more than one thousand major combatant U.S. and Soviet ships at sea, of which 380 were submarines, 100 of them American and 280 Soviet. Of these craft, as far as is known, only the S. Shuvakov actually fired weapons, and this ship was responsible for the destruction of the United States Seventh and Third Fleets in the Pacific. In this case, a single submarine of the Typhoon class destroyed the most massive assemblage of capital ships in human history and took, in a few moments, over twenty thousand human lives, utilizing eleven SS-N-20 missiles, each deploying six warheads of four megatons each. The destruction of the other American surface fleets was carried out by land-based weapons, except the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, which was an operation of unknown nature, possibly involving the firing of nuclear-armed SS-N-9 missiles by a Nanuchka-class corvette, or AS-43 fired by a TU22-M bomber. All American operational aircraft carriers on the high seas were destroyed within the first ten minutes of the war, including the four nuclear aircraft carriers and eight of the ten conventional carriers. Of the 190 other major combat vessels in the U.S. surface navy, 141 were destroyed or damaged and later abandoned. With the destruction of the naval staff and all personnel records in Washington, the U.S. Navy ceased to be an operational fighting force on Warday.
“The Soviet surface navy was also rendered nonfunctional on Warday. Both carriers were destroyed, the Kiev in Motovskij Gulf along with approximately one hundred other ships in the immediate area. The Soviet Baltic Fleet attempted to escape into the North Sea, but was substantially repelled by NATO forces, primarily U.K. and Danish antisubmarine forces, which were responsible for the confirmed destruction of eighty-two Soviet submarines of various classes, including numerous nuclear-powered types. The eight Typhoon-class submarines in the Baltic did not sortie. Three of these have subsequently been destroyed by the Royal Navy, one has ceased to be operational, and the other four remain functional, but the political situation in the Soviet area is too unstable to allow a determination of the present loyalties of the crews. These submarines are extremely dangerous, and will be sunk. The Pacific Fleet at Vladivostok was destroyed by American action. Some Soviet ships were found disabled for lack of fuel by French relief forces entering Vietnam in 1989. The bulk of these ships were at Cam Ranh Bay and were scuttled by their crews. The Soviet units stranded at Aden were interned by the Royal Navy. These included the helicopter carrier Moskva, with a complement of eighteen KA-25 helicopters; three GW-ASW cruisers fully armed and lacking only fuel; twelve GW destroyers in the same condition, all of the Kildin class; four GW corvettes of the Tarantul class and three of the Nanuchka class; and four Matka-class hydrofoils, which had been posted down from Black Sea ports during the Syrian affair in 1987. The fleet replenishment vessel Berezina was intercepted in the Indian Ocean at this time, and has been refitted as HMS Triumph.
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