Exile Hunter

by Preston Fleming

  “Oh, now I do remember,” she answered. “You were a fantastic dancer. Especially the rumbas and cha-chas. Your father used to make us go to the front and show off sometimes, though I was pretty terrible at it.”

  She laughed easily now and Warren laughed with her. Her date stared at the ceiling and tapped a foot nervously.

  “Yeah, Dad made me practice the rumba a lot,” Warren added. “After a while, those Latin beats get into your blood. That Xavier Cugat dude was definitely some kind of genius.”

  Patricia’s date, clearly growing restless, interrupted to ask if he could bring her something to drink.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she answered, placing herself between the two males. “Paul, this is… Excuse me, your name again?”

  “Warren. Warren Linder.”

  “Warren, meet Paul. Paul, meet Warren. And yes, I would so love a glass of fizzy water if you can find one.”

  “Sure thing, I’ll be right back,” Paul answered, pointedly ignoring Warren as he spoke but casting a dubious glance over his shoulder before setting off to the refreshment table.

  The music struck up again and, to Warren’s surprise, it was another of his father’s classic slow-dance tunes, “It’s All in the Game” by Tommy Edwards. Warren held out his hand and Patricia took it.

  “What brings you to Concord? Obviously, you’re not a CA student…”

  “No, I’m in town for the weekend with a classmate from Exeter. His sister is a sophomore at CA. She’s the one who brought us to the dance.”

  “And I’m glad she did,” Patricia replied airily. A long pause followed and Warren was careful to maintain a decorous distance from her while they danced.

  “So you’re an Exonian,” she resumed. “I guess that means you must be really smart. I applied there but they waitlisted me. And that’s even though my father’s an alum and gives them bushels of money.” But from the way she said it, Warren guessed that Patricia hadn’t wanted to get in so very badly or her father and the school might have found a way.

  “I remember meeting your father once,” Warren replied. “It was when he picked you up after class. I was amazed that he seemed to know exactly who I was, even before I introduced myself. I remember thinking, that’s pretty cool for a dad, considering how big a class it was and all.”

  Patricia looked at the floor in embarrassment.

  “Daddy always wanted to meet my friends. He tried so very hard. But my mother got sick that year. It wasn’t an easy time for him.” Her expression darkened and her eyes took on a distant look.

  At first, Warren failed to detect the change in mood and talked on.

  “I also remember that night because I’m pretty sure it was the last time I saw you,” he said. “I called your house a few times but they always said you were away.”

  By now Patricia’s discomfort was unmistakable.

  “Yeah, I was away quite a lot after Mom died,” she continued. “I’m sorry you had trouble reaching me, though it doesn’t surprise me…”

  Before either of them could speak again, the song ended and was followed by a tune with a lively rock beat. They stepped away from one another and Patricia stole a look at the refreshment table for signs of Paul.

  “How about another?” he invited.

  “Uh, sure,” she answered as if distracted. But as they danced, Warren noted that she had stopped smiling and no longer made eye contact. Instead, she seemed to be casting meaningful glances toward her girlfriends, who glared at Warren and spoke to one another in hushed tones.

  Moments later, Paul returned with a glass of sparkling water in hand and tapped Warren on the shoulder.

  Warren turned around to respond.

  “Song’s almost over,” he said quickly. “Give us another minute, okay?”

  But as soon as he turned his back on Patricia, she strode off toward the door with Paul in tow.

  Warren stood with mouth agape as they left him alone on the dance floor. His face flushed and he realized that he had not handled the situation well at all. Patricia had probably not thought of him in a very long time. More than that, perhaps the special bond that he had nurtured in his memory all these years had been an illusion, the relic of a puppy love that only he recalled. But then, perhaps he had just caught Patricia at a bad time. Maybe he still had a chance with her if circumstances changed. As he walked back to the refreshment table in search of his host, he decided to think about it again later, once the hurt was gone.

  S5

  Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Ralph Waldo Emerson

  LATE SEPTEMBER, SOUTHERN VIRGINIA

  Linder awoke with a racing heartbeat and a headache that hammered at both temples. He opened his eyes and perceived through the blur that he was lying on a cot in his new prison cell. He lifted his head by degrees and felt his gorge rise to a level just short of vomiting. A moment later, when attempting to swallow, it occurred to him that his parched throat, cracked lips, headache and racing pulse were highly unnatural and were more likely the result of drugs administered during a rendition flight than the symptoms of any illness.

  Linder raised his hands to his eyes and noticed that the skin was raw and abraded where his wrists had been shackled. As if summoned by the sheer act of attention, a deep soreness manifested in the muscles of his lower back, legs and shoulders, which ached as if from a strenuous workout. Suddenly he remembered having awakened en route while strapped to a stretcher with a silky hood over his head that made it difficult to breathe. In a fit of panic, he had struggled against the straps that bound him to the stretcher and screamed until his consciousness left him again.

  Linder had little idea how long the journey had taken. On the morning after his conversation with Bednarski in the Embassy cellar, he had devoured a breakfast of highly spiced Lebanese meat pastries that he might have suspected were drugged had he not been so hungry. Twenty minutes later, as he paced back and forth the length of the cell, he felt light-headed, then nauseous, and suddenly saw the floor rising up to meet him.

  By close examination of the new cell and overhearing a guard release a stream of all-American profanity upon dropping a meal tray in the corridor, Linder surmised that he had landed in one of the DSS’s interrogation centers or transit prisons, most likely in Northern Virginia or Maryland.

  The cell was about six feet by ten, windowless, with walls of unpainted gray concrete and a floor of beige composite resin. Its only fixtures were a steel door fitted with a spyhole and food delivery slot; a flickering fluorescent panel far overhead; a Third-World toilet consisting of a porcelain tile with a hole and raised footprints to either side; and a sheet-steel prison bunk bolted to the floor, with a thin vinyl-covered polyester mattress and a threadbare acrylic blanket on top. The cell smelled of a powerful disinfectant and was so chilly that Linder shivered in his thin cotton coveralls.

  Linder crossed the cold concrete floor in his bare feet and lifted the hinged door to the food slot, where he found a foil-wrapped meal bar and a battered plastic water bottle. While he nibbled guardedly on the bar and sipped at the water, he tried to recall the main principles of the standard DSS interrogation system that he had studied early during his training.

  The system was similar in most aspects to that used by the CIA and nearly all other modern security services around the world, particularly those of the major police states. Based on classic Soviet interrogation methods, the model relied upon social isolation, sleep deprivation, temperature manipulation, sensory deprivation and overload, omission of certain key nutrients from the diet, and gradual intensification of the prisoner’s general discomfort aimed at weakening, disorienting, and demoralizing him without resort to beatings or other physical torture.

  Throughout Linder’s first morning in his new cell, a torrent of seemingly random thoughts and emotions swept through his mind. Among his recollections were a series of training lectures on how to resist interrogation he had attended while still in the CIA. The lecturer, who had b
een a Special Forces interrogator in Iraq and Afghanistan, had emphasized that Washington assumed most American prisoners would spill their guts within 48 hours. Thus, heroic resistance was usually pointless unless the prisoner had a reasonable expectation of being rescued in a day or two.

  The key to resisting modern interrogation methods, the lecturer noted, was for the prisoner to study his surroundings in minute detail, record the passage of time and all changes in his environment, keep his mind occupied and maintain physical and mental discipline as far as humanly possible. Although the captors could bring enormous resources to bear against each prisoner, their time and attention were finite. Accordingly, an exceptionally determined prisoner could resist interrogation for long periods by superior force of will and readiness to sacrifice everything, including one’s life, liberty, and happiness, rather than capitulate. Faith in a higher power was an asset but not necessarily a requisite for success. Regardless of the methods applied, history showed that some prisoners simply would not break.

  Linder’s first interrogation session took place some four to six hours after he emerged from his drugged stupor. A guard with a Tidewater Virginia accent ordered him to stand facing the far wall while the door slid open. The guard then shackled Linder’s wrists and ankles and linked the shackles to a waist chain while another guard slipped a loose hood over his head and shoulders. The Virginian then ordered Linder to keep silent while each guard grabbed one of Linder’s arms and marched him through a maze of damp, chill corridors that stank of mildew. A few minutes later, they entered a well-heated room where they removed Linder’s blindfold and instructed him to sit upright with his buttocks at the front edge of a straight-backed metal chair. The room was dimly lit except for a bank of four spotlights shining directly into his face from behind a three-by-five-foot stainless steel table that bore a stack of files and notebooks.

  At first the interrogator stood behind the lights, observing Linder but saying nothing. When he emerged from the glare, Linder could see that the interrogator was a short, barrel-chested man dressed in khaki shirt and trousers without military insignia. Coarse blond hair grew profusely on his head, chest, and the backs of his stubby hands. His diminutive height, together with his trimmed blond beard, pink cheeks, and bright blue eyes gave him the look of an exceedingly fierce troll. The expression on his face was that of utter contempt.

  “Who are you and why are you detaining me?” Linder challenged without waiting for the interrogator to speak.

  “Why do you think you’re here?” the troll replied with an ironic smile.

  “I think it's because certain people have been lining their pockets with other people’s money and now they're trying to cover their tracks by putting me away.”

  “What does that have to do with the fact that you’ve been aiding the insurgents?”

  “Because the thieves are the ones who cooked up the charges against me,” Linder answered. “I’ve never helped the rebels and they know it. If you’ve read my file, you’ll know that I’ve spent the past six years tracking down rebel exiles and putting them away.”

  “While tipping off their bosses so that they could stay one step ahead of us, the way you did with Eaton...” the troll accused, stepping out from behind the table.

  “I never tipped off Philip Eaton.”

  “You virtually admitted to him that you were a government agent,” the troll pressed.

  “Only because he volunteered to turn himself in, which was our objective.”

  “And you believed a lying son of a bitch like Eaton? If your Chief of Base hadn’t pulled him in, the whole gang would have vanished right out from under your nose!” The troll brought his face so close to Linder’s that he could feel flecks of spittle as the interrogator spat out the words.

  “Not so,” Linder answered, staring back at the troll and taking perverse pleasure in the fact that the man’s bulk shaded the spotlights’ glare from his eyes. “The main reason why Bednarski didn’t want to let Eaton return to the States to surrender was that he’d lose the chance to fleece him.”

  “Fleece him of what?” the troll challenged. “Eaton claimed he was broke, remember? And we've confirmed it. So you can forget the phony countercharges. We checked out your accusation that Bednarski was shaking down the rebels he caught in Beirut. There’s nothing to it. Bednarski came up clean.”

  The troll retreated a few steps to sit atop the steel table, prompting Linder to close his eyes against the bright lamps. Of course Bednarski came up clean, he thought. His backers cleaned up the mess after him. The Department looks after its own.

  “But as for you, Linder, the closer we look, the more dirt we seem to find,” the troll continued. “Does the name Phipps Chase mean anything to you?”

  “It’s Chase Phipps,” Linder corrected, remembering Kendall’s quip about Yale men having reversible names. “Yes, I’ve met him a few times. I used him to get an introduction to Kendall and Eaton. It’s all in my reports.”

  “All of it? Including the fifty thousand German Marks Phipps gave you in Rome?”

  The troll slid off the table and approached Linder again.

  “He donated it to the Mormon Return Movement, not to me personally,” Linder replied. “He knew me as Joe Tanner, a rebel from Utah. I was going to write up a receipt and turn it into Beirut Base for safekeeping but there wasn’t time.”

  “Nice try, Linder, but we’ve seen your stateside bank records. For the past three years, deposits have been made that exceed what we can account for from your government salary. The deposits correspond to your return from trips overseas.”

  “Oh, I can explain that,” Linder replied easily. “I used to stretch my salary and expenses sometimes by trading currency in the black market. Sure, currency speculation was illegal in the countries where I was posted. But it didn’t break any U.S. law and I was far from the only government employee who resorted to it. Besides, it had absolutely nothing to do with Eaton or the rebels.”

  The troll seemed to ignore Linder’s defense. He opened a bound notebook that lay atop the stack on the table and made an entry at the head of the page.

  “Prisoner admits violating Treasury Regulations and U.S. income tax laws over period of three to six years,” he read aloud. “Care to add anything else to your confession? It’ll go easier for you if you tell us the whole truth up front…”

  “Oh, go to hell,” Linder told his interrogator. “You don’t give a damn about the truth. All you want is my scalp.”

  The troll smiled and withdrew a thick manila file from his reference pile. He opened it and began to read aloud the charges arrayed against Linder: treason, seditious conspiracy, sabotage of government operations, advocating the overthrow of government, espionage, terrorism and, finally, tax evasion.

  Each day the routine was the same. Every eight to fourteen hours, by Linder’s estimate, the guards marched him blindfolded through the silent corridors to an interrogation room where one, and sometimes two, interrogators matched wits with him for hours at a time. Often the material covered was trivial or redundant or both. An exhaustive dossier on his background and activities appeared to inform their questions.

  Each session dealt with events from Linder’s DSS career, generally in reverse chronological order, starting with his refusal to sign a confession in the Beirut Embassy’s cellar and working back to his alleged tip-off to Eaton and his offer on Eaton's balcony to “go to bat” for him with Headquarters. From there, the questions reached further back to his alleged conspiracy with Chase Phipps and other insurgent leaders to subvert and overthrow the Unionist State. With each session, Linder’s interrogators delved more deeply into his past, including his early days in the DSS, his prior service in the CIA and even his education. They also hinted darkly that Linder’s father and sister might have participated in the alleged conspiracy.

  The interrogators presented daily interrogation summaries to Linder for his signature but each day he refused to sign. They scolded, insulted, threatene
d, and cajoled, all to no avail. They even read aloud from Linder’s DSS psychological profile, which was based on psychometric testing conducted during the lengthy application process for joining the Department. The profile allegedly described Linder as having a borderline narcissistic personality, characterized by exaggerating his sense of self-importance, lacking empathy, resenting criticism and authority, demanding constant attention and reinforcement, clinging to unrealistic fantasies of success or power, and exploiting others to pursue selfish goals.

  It was the classic profile of a traitor, the interrogators claimed, and represented further proof of his guilt. Everyone except Linder knew what a shitheel he was and that he was due for a comeuppance. Small wonder that his family and friends hadn’t bothered to write or visit, they said; everyone he knew had gladly written him off. But to Linder, it seemed ironic that this same psychological profile had seen him hired by both the CIA and the DSS. The most plausible explanation, he thought, was that the same breed of borderline sociopath that the government favored to do its dirty work might also have a nasty tendency to bite the hand that fed him.

  Day by day, Linder’s interrogations grew longer, his cell colder and the noisy interruptions to his sleep more frequent. His twice-daily meals shrank to one, consisting of a brick of stale bread and a ration bar, served with a reduced ration of foul-tasting water. His weekly change of uniform stopped. And now, whenever Linder asserted his innocence or charged Bednarski with trying to frame him, the interrogators struck him on the shoulders from behind with a rubber truncheon and restarted the interrogation script from the beginning.

  After weeks without extracting a confession from him, the interrogators transferred Linder to a chimney-like punishment cell where the walls pressed in like a concrete coffin and he could stand but not sit or lie down. Linder tried to rest his knees against its sides but before long the pressure grew intolerable. He had to defecate where he stood and was given only two minutes in a shower stall to douse his body and rinse his soiled coveralls with cold water before the next interrogation. He reeked so badly that the interrogators would not come near him. Still he would not sign.