Star Chamber Brotherhood

by Preston Fleming

  "What's the matter, Frank? Don't you remember me? Do I look that different without a jumpsuit?"

  Werner felt a shock. He could not place the face or the voice but now he knew where had met the man. Suddenly he realized why he had felt so odd all day. The long-awaited turning point had come; his life was about to change.

  The stranger pulled a folded piece of newsprint from his inside jacket pocket and laid it on the bar. As Werner reached for it, the man downed the remaining whiskey and stood to leave.

  "I have something else for you, Frank. Hold out your hand," the man announced in a tone that remained cordial but did not permit questioning.

  Werner did as he was told and the man handed him a white paper disc the size of a half dollar onto which was drawn a five-pointed star with the numeral "1" at its center.

  "If you remember the man in the article, you'll likely remember me. Now, listen carefully. When you leave here, I want you to walk up the hill and turn right onto Park Street. If I pass you, follow me. But if I don't pass you, just go on home and look for me another night. I can explain later."

  Without waiting for a reply, the man turned and walked out the door.

  Werner felt the blood rush to his cheeks as memories streamed into his head of the corrective labor camp in Kamas, Utah, where he had once been a prisoner. He glanced around the room but no one was paying any attention to him. He unfolded the newsprint and read.

  One side of the paper contained single-spaced government notices in small print. On the other side was an advertisement for a state-run department store and an article showing a photograph of a middle-aged government official under the heading, "Former DSS Official Appointed Regional FEMA Director."

  A wave of rage and disgust washed over Werner as he read the laudatory article about Frederick Rocco's career progression: first in the FBI and the Department of State Security and now in FEMA, where his new challenge centered on providing emergency housing for refugees from flooded coastal areas in northern New England.

  Of course, Werner remembered Rocco. Fred Rocco had been commandant of the corrective labor camp at Kamas during the prisoner revolt of 2024. It was Rocco who had brought in tanks and troops to retake the camp. And it was Rocco who had signed the order sending Werner and three thousand other prisoners to Arctic punishment camps to suffer and die without a trace.

  The presentation of the star could mean only one thing: the Star Committee had sentenced Rocco to die for his crimes at Kamas. And Werner had been selected to carry out the execution. This was an honor and a duty that he knew he could not refuse. And yet he questioned it.

  ****

  Though April was nearly half over, the weather was still wet and cold, with heaps of frozen snow generating pockets of fog on Boston Common. Ever since the decade-long series of volcanic eruptions that rimmed the north Pacific from Japan to Mexico and darkened the skies over the entire Northern Hemisphere, America's temperate zone had experienced a mini-Ice Age from which it was now only emerging. Much of Canada and Northern New England had been barely habitable until the mid-2020s. Fortunately for Werner, his two years in the Yukon had occurred after the thaw had begun.

  Werner had been fifty-one at the time of his arrest, fifty-three during the Kamas revolt, and fifty-five when he was released on the brink of death from the Yukon's infamous Mactung tungsten mine. Now, at fifty-eight, he had recovered much of his former health and strength and still possessed a phenomenal resistance to hardship that only the rare combination of extraordinary genes and the trials of the labor camp system could have imparted.

  Only by a series of miracles had he survived Kamas and the Yukon and found his way back to Boston. On reflection, Werner was astounded by the evidence that someone else had accomplished the same feat. Now he was eager to learn how this extraordinarily fit and prosperous-looking fellow prisoner had done it.

  Werner locked up the bar and wished the headwaiter a good night, then opened the door onto Beacon Street and felt the brunt of the icy wind across Boston Common. After years of working outdoors, sometimes with clothing that was miserably inadequate, Werner still suffered the misery and pain of cold weather the same as anyone else. What distinguished him from most people facing such conditions was direct experience of what terrible cold the human body can tolerate and the mental practices that enabled him to withstand it.

  Tonight Werner wore a handmade wool sweater from Maine under a traditional Burberry-style trench coat, without scarf or gloves, and felt adequately equipped to undertake the walk across the north side of Boston Common to the Park Street T Station.

  He was halfway along Park Street, having passed a row of boarded-up storefronts and vacant lots opposite the north edge of the Common, when he saw the stranger step out of a doorway some fifty meters ahead. The stranger turned left onto Tremont Street and Werner followed.

  On most nights when Werner left the Somerset Club, the sidewalks along Park Street were lined with unruly drunks, prostitutes, and panhandlers who harassed most every person passing by. The alleys and doorways along Tremont Street reeked with urine and feces where the homeless and the insane crowded together on cardboard flats against the cold. To Werner's relief, at this hour, the chilly north wind had driven the homeless off the streets, leaving only a few random night workers, all-night coffee venders, and transit police outside the Park Street T Station, while a few meters away on the Common, a pair of horse-mounted police surreptitiously shared a flask of hooch.

  When Werner saw the stranger vanish into a gated alley just short of the Tremont Theater, he followed. The stranger closed the gate behind them and the two men finally met in a recessed doorway that was invisible from every direction but straight up.

  In the darkness, Werner could see that the stranger wore an authentic Austrian hunting coat of green loden cloth with the leather collar turned up to meet the brim of his Tyrolean hat. Where he had obtained such stylish relics Werner could not begin to imagine.

  Werner waited for the stranger to begin.

  After a few seconds of silence, he addressed the man:

  "Excuse me, but I still can't recall your name. Would you mind refreshing my memory?"

  "Of course," the stranger replied. "I'm Dave Lewis. I was your inside contact on your first Star Committee mission. Remember? And later we were at Mactung together."

  "Okay, I do remember," Werner recalled. "Again, please forgive me, but both of those episodes are a bit blurry, since I spent a week in the isolator after the first and nearly died from exhaustion during the second. But I do remember your face and have the sense that we were buddies, at least at Mactung. Am I right?"

  "You are."

  "Then I thank you, Dave, because the isolator turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me. And, if it weren't for the fluke of being sent to Mactung, I would probably still be chopping wood in one of those Yukon death camps, if not buried in one. Tell me, how on earth did you make it out?"

  "I'm afraid that's not something I can share with you just yet, though I look forward to doing it soon. That is, once our mission is accomplished," Lewis added.

  "So a Star Chamber still exists for Kamas after all these years? And are you the Star Master?"

  The visitor nodded.

  "It took us a while to reconstitute, but we did. And now we have lists of those in the CLA and the Kamas administration accused of serious crimes against prisoners. Very few remain alive. Hardesty, Cronin, Whiting, Chambers–all dead within a year or two of the revolt. Of those still left, we have convicted only one: Rocco. When his sentence is carried out, the Committee has decided it will dissolve."

  "Okay, that's clear enough," Werner acknowledged. "But why come to me? I already did a mission for the Committee. I thought that each man only had to do one."

  "That would be correct, Frank. But, as you may recall, the mission was never completed. Our target, Uriah Tucker, survived and went on to betray hundreds of prisoners to Rocco, including you and me. And nearly all of them
died in the Arctic without a grave, without a record, without a memory. Except for us and a few others."

  "And none of the others is available to help?" Werner probed.

  "Frank, you are the only one who can possibly do what needs to be done. You live in Boston, you are a former intelligence officer, you're under their radar, and most of all, you have a stake in the outcome. We're counting on you to bring it together and make it happen."

  "But for God's sake, Dave, I don't even know how to begin! How do I put together a team for this? Where do I find teammates willing to risk their lives over a place that no longer exists?"

  "There are more survivors of the camps in Boston than you may realize. A surprising number of them are connected in some way to Kamas. Consider all your friends and acquaintances and casual contacts as potential candidates and you will find the men you need."

  Werner felt a growing unease in the face of Dave Lewis's persistence and apparent confidence that Werner would ultimately relent.

  "I have one more problem, Dave," he continued. "And it's a big one: I'm not a spring chicken anymore. I'm pushing sixty, I'm worn out, and I'm tired of the fighting and killing and struggling to survive. Sure, Rocco deserves punishment, but why not leave it to God? It's been five years since Rocco flattened Kamas.

  "You many not know this," he went on, "but I have a daughter out there somewhere I'm trying to find. And a fine woman right here in Boston has kindly taken me in and seems rather fond of me. And there are other people in this town who count on me more or less for their livelihood.

  "Somehow I've managed to make a life for myself at age fifty-eight in a town I've never much liked, and here you come along and tell me I've got a higher duty to a bunch of guys who are long dead. How am I supposed to convince other men with less of a stake in this than I have to risk it all when I'm not fully on board with it myself?"

  Dave Lewis paused, took his hands out of the wide slit pockets in his loden coat, rubbed them together, and blew on them. Then he spoke softly, all the while looking into Frank Werner's eyes as if searching deeply for clues.

  "I've come a long way for this conversation," Lewis began. "Believe me, none of us would have placed this burden on your shoulders if there were any other way.

  "Frank, it is not flattery when I say that you are an officer and a leader and man strong in both intellect and character. Make no mistake: it is the nature of strong people that they create the choices from which others select. When you pick the members of your team, it will be up to you to find reasons to help each of them to make the right choices. And in doing so, you, too, will come to accept the wisdom of what you've done."

  "And maybe I will," Werner replied. "You've made a persuasive case and I would probably regret it for the rest of my life if I turned you down. But if I agree to put this team together and we succeed in killing Rocco, I will have committed premeditated murder, which is wrong by any moral or spiritual code on this earth. Can you honestly tell me that killing Rocco is worth taking on that kind of sin or karma or whatever it is that the angels weigh when we cross over to the other side?"

  Dave Lewis smiled.

  "I can't answer that one for you, Frank. But throughout history, God-fearing men have decided soberly to take on the burden of sin when faced with extraordinary evils like totalitarianism and tyranny. It can be a slippery slope, I'll admit, but philosophers in ancient China, Greece, Rome, the Catholic Church, and even modern theologians have all made reasoned cases for it.

  "Think of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, or the Taliban. Would God have preferred good men to have stood by and let the usurpers take everything? One can't expect to live in a free country without defending it, and that's not limited to repelling foreign invaders. In times of tyranny, men who aspire to remain free must bind together to bring down the tyrant or live out their lives as slaves. It's always been that way, and that's going be my own defense when I meet my Maker."

  Werner sighed before lowering his head in submission as if a heavy weight were being placed on his shoulders.

  "All right, then. How much time do I have for this?

  The visitor shrugged.

  "Rocco will be well protected. You'll need to allow enough time to assemble your team and plan the operation."

  "That could take months," Werner mused.

  "Perhaps, it doesn't necessarily have to. You see, this year will mark five years since the Kamas revolt. The anniversary of the first day is about forty days from now, on May 19. And the revolt lasted for forty days. How about that for a coincidence?"

  "I don't believe in coincidences," Werner replied.

  "Neither do I, to be honest. But, in any event, I'll be back in forty days. We'll each have a glass of your excellent bourbon and drink to the men who couldn't be here. What do you say?

  "Forty days. I'll do my best."

  ****

  It was past two in the morning when Frank Werner unlocked the front door to the apartment building on Harvard Street in Brookline. Yet, when he passed the building superintendent's door, he saw a light through the peephole. He had never encountered such a dedicated gatekeeper–or busybody–as this odd and irksome woman who seemed to mind everyone's business but her own yet was always willing to lend a hand when needed. He waved as he walked past the peephole toward the staircase.

  When he reached the sixth floor at last and entered the apartment, he was surprised to see Carol at her desk writing a letter.

  "You certainly are a dedicated correspondent, Carol," he said as he greeted her. "I hope you're not telling all your friends about how I hang out in bars until two in the morning every night."

  Carol Dodge put down her pen and faced Werner with a coy smile.

  "I never worry about you becoming a lush, Frank. You're much too sensible to drink up your profits. And I don't much worry about your seeing other women, either. I've begun to wonder if you even notice women anymore. You've lived in a man's world so long that we've become invisible to you."

  Werner approached her from behind and planted a tender kiss at the nape of her neck. He had met Carol just over a year ago and had moved in with her not long after. She was still a very attractive woman at the age of forty-eight and Werner had surprised himself on that memorable occasion by mentally undressing her as they spoke about their children, who had attended the same private school in the years leading to the Events.

  Carol had been grocery shopping near her apartment in Brookline and her black jeans and black t-shirt had revealed a trim and graceful figure. Similarly, her shoulder-length black hair, tied with a red ribbon into a ponytail, had given her a distinctly girlish air. If they had been twenty years younger, Carol Dodge would most definitely have been Werner's type, or one of them.

  Before the Events, Carol had been married to Peter Dodge, the CEO of the Boston teaching hospital where she was a senior pediatric oncologist. Though she had no children of her own, she was devoted to her stepson, who had once dated Werner's older daughter. She had lost that son, a newly minted naval officer, in the Russian War, and had lost her husband a few months later in the Longwood Riots, during which he had acted heroically to preserve the Longwood hospital district from destruction at the hands of crazed rioters, arsonists, and looters.

  "I worried about you, Frank. What happened?"

  "The T broke down again. I had to walk."

  Werner released her shoulders and walked across the living room to the windows and looked out toward nearby Beacon Street.

  "You know how I hate your being on the streets so late at night," she complained. "It's dangerous. Stay at the Club, if you must. But don't risk your life on the streets. There are people who care about you, Frank! I certainly do!"

  "I promise I won't do it again, Carol. I'd swear on a Bible if I could find one anywhere in this town."

  "I don't like when you joke that way, Frank. Someone could hear you."

  "Okay, I'll try not to," Werner mocked in a loud voice, looking up at the ceiling as if speaking into a listen
ing device. "But enough about me, Carol. Why on earth are you still up at two a.m.? Your rounds start at seven, for heaven's sake."

  "I couldn't sleep. Squatters got into the building again. They broke into Mrs. Leibowitz's apartment and tried all the doors on the second and third floors before somebody called in the block watch."

  "How did they manage getting past Harriet? She's like the dragon outside the castle's gate. She would have had the police here in a minute."

  "Harriet was out," Carol answered with anxious eyes. "Mrs. Leibowitz took refuge with a neighbor and they got on the phone till they found someone who would help. Frank, I'm worried. It's not just the squatters. I received another letter from the Housing Authority today. They want to take measurements of the apartment."

  "Okay, I understand why that might spook you, Carol. But we've been through this before. You have an ironclad exemption. If you get notice that the BHA wants to move more people in with you, the hospital will fix it, just as they would do for any doctor on staff. It's a condition of your employment."

  "You keep telling me that, Frank," Carol objected, "but Harriet makes it her business to be very well informed about goings-on at the Housing Authority, and she says changes are coming. This new FEMA campaign to find housing for the refugees is putting the Housing Authority under enormous pressure. Old exemptions aren't being renewed and they're even thinking of allotting fewer square meters per person."

  Werner stepped away from the window to the sideboard where he kept the liquor. He poured a few ounces of dark rum from a decanter into a sherry glass and took a sip.

  "I wouldn't take Harriet's word at face value on this. I seem to recall that she has some relatives among those refugees. But whatever is going on, it can wait till morning. You need some sleep."

  "And you? Aren't you coming to bed?"

  "Yes, in a few minutes. Why?" Werner replied.

  "Because it's Wednesday and you never drink during the week. Is something wrong? You had an odd look when you came in."