"Can you describe the blockage in more detail?" he asked. "Is there something I'm doing wrong?"
"No, that's not it," Linda replied, still in reverie. "The forces at work here are powerful, but not unkind. I sense that they may be your spirit guides, the team representing you, so to speak, on the other side. They are quite firm about this. Their point is that you have some duty so important that it must come even before your family. It involves others who have already made a great sacrifice for a cause that you share with them, a cause that reaches far into the past and extends into the future. At some level, Frank, I believe you have already chosen this role as well as the duty that comes with it."
Linda Holt opened her eyes and gave Werner an expectant smile.
"After something like that, Frank, you must have questions. Please go ahead."
"I don't know where to begin. But, for starters, did you really get all that from the cards?"
"Not all of it, of course, but everything that came through is reflected quite clearly in the cards. There is no mistaking it, Frank. I don't recall ever having so many big cards come up in one reading as consistently as they did in yours. Something big is about to happen in your life. And when it does, everything is going to change for you."
Before Frank could answer, the Professor opened the door and poked his head into the room.
"I've been asked to summon you two to the next room," he announced with a knowing smile. "The candles are about to be lit on a perfectly beautiful chocolate cake and I suppose we'll all be expected to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ before any of us will be permitted to eat."
CHAPTER 4
Thursday, April 12, 2029,
Boston
Frank Werner stepped off the commuter train at Concord Station. It was just after three in the afternoon and the dense rows of bicycle racks were still full. Werner saw some interesting ones, too, bikes that looked as if they had stood neglected in garages and basements for years before being pressed into service. What with gasoline rationing, ever-steeper road taxes, prohibitive tariffs on imported cars, and waiting lists for new Government Motors cars, only the wealthiest of commuters and privileged government officials whose jobs included the perquisite of an official car still drove to work in the city.
The last time Werner had set foot in the town of Concord had been nearly seven years before, on the occasion of his older daughter's graduation from Concord Academy, a chilly late May morning when parents and students alternated between joy at graduating from secondary school and mourning the imminent death of their beloved institution.
Two years earlier, the President-for-Life had announced his New Education Plan, which called for the assimilation of all private educational institutions above the kindergarten level into the public educational system within two years. By then, the ranks of private secondary schools had already been reduced severely by attrition, owing to the dwindling supply of parents who could afford what amounted to an extra four years of college tuition during a time of wage controls, soaring taxes, and devastated balance sheets. And despite the hand wringing in intellectual circles across the land over the abolition of private education, the opponents of the President's new plan could muster little sympathy to preserve what most Americans considered an archaic privilege of the rich.
Werner also remembered his very first visit to Concord, when he and his wife had taken their older daughter, Justine, for her pre-admission tour and interview at the Academy. To Werner, the town seemed the embodiment of early American ideals and traditions. Within a few square miles were the Concord North Bridge, where the revolutionaries had fired the "shot heard around the world," Ralph Waldo Emerson's house, Thoreau's Walden Pond, Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House, the Old Manse and many other lesser monuments to the colonial era and the seminal influence of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and their intellectual heirs.
The natural beauty of the town and its surrounding countryside had been carefully preserved so that it was not difficult at times to imagine having stepped through a time portal into a bygone era. All this was possible because of the remarkable wealth that had been accumulated over nearly four centuries by the residents of Concord and their ancestors. Its charm and history, meticulously preserved across many generations, had made Concord one of the most desirable addresses in Greater Boston for the uncommon few who could afford to live there.
Werner crossed the street and continued past the row of shops that served Concord's rail commuters until he reached Middle Street and turned right. He consulted his notebook and went on until he found 50 Middle Street, an imposing three-story Federal-style mansion painted white with black shutters and trim. He knocked and heard a woman's voice answer from not far away. A moment later Nancy Widmer opened the door wearing a beige wool suit with an open jacket trimmed with brass buttons. Though she was preparing to relocate, clearly he had not interrupted her while packing her dishes and chinaware.
Nancy invited Werner inside and within moments he noticed that the dining room table had recently hosted a luncheon for ten. Four empty wine bottles stood guard over the remains of the meal, and he noticed at least five or six empty martini glasses. Displayed on the sideboard was what he guessed to be her farewell present, a panoramic oil painting depicting a row of seven women seated in a formal drawing room, each seen only from the waist down and each with her respective terrier seated on her lap or at her feet. Werner could not help but smile at the sheer joy reflected in the expressions of the well-tended canines.
"Oh, don't mind the mess," Nancy remarked casually as she led him back to the kitchen. "They stayed so long there was no time to tidy up."
Nancy was an attractive and unusually energetic seventy-three-year-old, a woman who had formed countless friendships and acquaintances over the years, not only in Concord, but among Boston society at large and at her summer home on Islesboro, off the coast of Maine. She took enormous pleasure in entertaining her friends, visiting them at their homes and socializing with them at her downtown club. Since her husband's death three years earlier, she had slashed her monthly expenses to the bone in order to maintain the house on Middle Street as long she could. Now, with house sale complete and the move to her daughter's house in Western Massachusetts two weeks away, Nancy Widmer seemed determined not to reveal even a trace of sadness or disappointment.
"No dogs today?" Werner asked her, surprised at the absence of barking from her twin Corgis.
"They're spending the day with their doggie friends on Sudbury Street. But never mind the dogs. Come over here, Frank. I want to show you something."
He followed her into the pantry. There he saw her slide the shelves into a recess to reveal a heavy steel door that led down a flight of stairs into a cellar.
"This house was built in 1820," she declared. "It had a small root cellar that was later enlarged and used until after the Civil War to hide escaped slaves traveling north along the Underground Railroad."
She pointed proudly to a small framed map showing the routes taken by escaped slaves moving north to safety, a faded print showing ragged slaves on the run, and a laminated plaque with the lyrics of "Follow the Drinking Gourd," a Negro Spiritual tune popular at the time.
"Did you know that the slaves used the stars for navigation in those days, Frank? They watched for the Big Dipper because it points to the North Star. I remember learning that song in grammar school. We all learned it. And the slaves probably sang it right here in this house!"
Werner read the first stanza and was surprised when it sent a chill up his spine:
When the sun comes back,
And the first quail calls,
Follow the drinking gourd,
For the old man is waiting
For to carry you to freedom
If you follow the drinking gourd.
For the briefest moment an image of the Yukon tundra flashed through his head. His 2,000-mile trek from Kamas, Utah, to the Canol Road in the Yukon Territory had been the polar opposite of what the s
laves had experienced. Unlike the Negro slaves marching toward freedom, with every step he had marched further away from freedom toward forced labor and premature death. More than a century and a half after the Emancipation Proclamation, he still could not comprehend how the Corrective Labor Administration had come into being and expanded so rapidly within a few years. And the knowledge that prisoners like him were still trudging in chains to their deaths in corrective labor camps throughout Alaska, the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories was sometimes more than he could endure.
Nancy Widmer waited for Werner to read the lyrics, then led the way into the cellar. Nancy's late husband must have paid a small fortune to the contractor who had converted the room into a temperature and humidity-controlled wine cellar. Along the far wall were floor-to-ceiling redwood wine racks, in both bin and column format, while to either side custom-built shelf units held sealed cases of wines as well as individual liquor bottles stored upright. And in the center of the room stood an antique walnut table for wine tasting and a pallet for stacking cases of spirits.
Werner moved closer to the shelves and inspected the loose bottles. To his delight, he found rarities that most social drinkers did not know, but that to cocktail enthusiasts were worth their weight in gold: applejack, anisette, Brazilian cachaça, Campari, crème de cassis, Haitian rhum agricole, Kentucky rye, Lillet, maraschino liqueur, French vermouth and others, along with several spare bottles each of Angostura, Peychaud's and orange bitters. He duly recorded the name and quantity of each on his inventory sheet.
Nancy noticed his intense concentration and soon returned to the kitchen to let him conduct his inventory undisturbed.
Next Werner turned his attention to the sealed cases of spirits: three full cases each of Crown Royal, Johnny Walker Black, Maker's Mark, Mount Gay, Absolut, and Beefeater, plus partials. Obviously Mr. Widmer was a man who entertained frequently, which was hardly unusual for a partner in an investment management company. Judging by the quantities, Mr. Widmer had also been sufficiently canny to collect his supplies before they became scarce. Werner silently blessed the late Mr. Widmer, for it was just this sort of far-sighted hoarder who enabled Frank Werner to make his living.
Surveying the wines, Werner found only a few cases that would fetch a respectable price. These were mainly lesser-growth red Bordeaux and two cases of California reserve cabernets. Nancy had warned him in advance that she had already consumed or given to her daughter most of her husband's better wines, and among the assorted bottles remaining in the racks, nearly all were everyday table wines. Being of pre-Unionist vintage, however, they were still quite saleable. Overall, the wines had been well worth the trip. But it was apparent that Werner's greatest fortune in coming to visit today had been that neither Nancy nor her daughter touched spirits.
When he had completed the inventory, Werner carried his clipboard upstairs to the kitchen, where he found Nancy Widmer preparing a pot of tea. She invited him to sit at the butcher's block table in the center of the room. When she had poured the tea he began.
"Your husband seems to have had excellent taste, Nancy. You should be pleased that you were able to enjoy the best of what he had put away before your move to Northampton. As for what's left of the wine, I can fetch a decent price for the five full cases, and I can sell whatever you want to leave me of the rest, but I'm afraid those aren't worth much.
"Overall, the market for wines has not been healthy this year. Part of the problem has been the Unionist propaganda vilifying the Moneymen and their conspicuous consumption. I wish your wines would bring more, but I must defer to the market."
Werner removed from the clipboard a summary sheet of his appraisal, pointing out to Nancy the number of bottles of each wine or spirit and indicating his offer per bottle. He used a pocket calculator to verify the total and then underlined the number at the bottom of the summary sheet.
"This offer remains firm for one week."
Nancy Widmer replaced her cup in its saucer, looked hard at the number and sighed.
Werner waited for her to speak before continuing.
"Unfortunately, Nancy, the sort of people today who have a taste for fine drinking and the money to pay for it want only the labels that everyone else has heard of. They won't shell out big money to drink obscure wines in private, regardless of quality or value. On the other hand, they'll gladly pay top dollar for a label that will impress their friends and clients."
Werner paused again to observe Nancy Widmer's reaction. Though she was old and widowed and in some ways vulnerable, she was nobody's fool. She had spent a lifetime buying and selling all sorts of things in all kinds of markets and remained both well informed and well connected. Not for a moment did he sell short her ability to see through his puffery. She might have heard, for example, that the Unionist elite and their New Class enablers had recently begun to fuel a renewed boom in fine wines and spirits. What she could not know, since she was not a professional in the field, was that that the supply of famous labels has dwindled to the point where even formerly unfashionable wines and liquors now fetched prices that sometimes exceeded pre-Unionist levels.
Nancy Widmer remained silent. This was not going quite as smoothly as he had expected.
"I'm very sorry if the total wasn't what you expected," he summed up. "But here's what I can do for you. I'm willing to take up the price on all the spirits by 10 percent. That will bring the new total north of five thousand New Dollars. Would that be acceptable?"
Nancy Widmer appeared to breathe a sigh of relief as she nodded her assent.
"Yes, I'll accept that," she declared, putting on a brave smile–or possibly faking it.
"Very good," Werner concluded. "Then we have a deal. I'll bring the money on Saturday."
"Excellent. Where I come from, that calls for celebration. May I freshen up your cup of tea, Frank?"
"Certainly," he replied.
But instead of reaching for the teapot, Nancy Widmer rose and opened a cabinet near the stove from which she took a bottle of Mount Gay Extra Old rum. She poured an ounce or two in each of their cups and added tea until both were filled.
"I suppose you know this, Frank, you being educated at Exeter and all. But back in colonial days, coastal New England practically ran on rum. A few in the interior made whiskey from their corn and rye, but true New Englanders never considered whiskey fit for human consumption. So let's celebrate the end of one New England tradition with another…"
She raised her cup and drank deeply. Werner did the same. With their business behind them, Nancy asked Werner to tell her more about his career and what path had led him to Boston. Werner gave her a capsule version of his life story, starting with his birth in Grosse Pointe, boarding school at Exeter, back to Ohio for college, four years with the U.S. Government in the Middle East, then an MBA, a new job in New York, marriage, children, and a succession of other jobs that eventually brought him to Boston.
"When we moved here from Salt Lake City in '16," he explained, "we didn't even look at houses in Concord. When the girls started going to Concord Academy, we wished we had. But by then, the economy had crashed and the value of our house had plummeted and we just couldn't afford to move. Too bad we didn't, because it seems to me that Concord managed to remain untouched by the crisis longer than many other parts of Boston. Every time I came here in those days, it was a sort of haven to me."
Nancy poured more rum into his cup as he spoke, then added some to her own.
As he knew she had been an Establishment Liberal and a Unionist throughout the Events, he was careful not to turn the conversation toward politics.
But suddenly, to his surprise, Nancy Widmer leaned across the table and addressed him in a low voice.
"Tell me, Frank, how could it have come to this? With a President-for-Life, no less! How on earth could we have supported these scoundrels without having any idea where they were taking us? And all the while thinking we were doing everything right!"
"Don't ask me, Nancy," Werner
replied with a bland smile. "I was still in Utah back in 2008 when the problems started. In those days I think I favored secession."
Werner gave a good-natured laugh. Nancy Widmer looked at him oddly, as if she had never heard someone utter such a word out loud.
"I'm not familiar with Utah, Frank, but for us in Concord, the Unionist side was the only conceivable choice at the time. That's simply how it was. But, honestly, how could we have known? How could any of us have known what kind of people were running the Unionist Party and what they intended to do when they had power? We thought they were Progressives like us. So we took them at their word. And now they turn out to have been bloody Bolsheviks!
"And my husband helped put them in power!" she continued. "Ron and his partners contributed millions over the years to the Democrats and the Unionists. But when they came into power, we lost everything. And I don't mean just money. When Ron was diagnosed with heart disease, the doctors told him it was treatable. But when the time came to schedule his operation, the Health Service disapproved it. Too old! After a lifetime of paying taxes! But never mind; we thought we'd do it privately. Except that no surgeon would treat him outside the system for fear of losing his license. And by then, no exit visas were being issued for treatment abroad. So when the heart attack finally came, they gave him sedation to ease his pain, and then more sedation, and more, till he died. ‘Terminal sedation‚ is what they call it. What I call it is euthanasia. And it's why I will never ever set foot in a hospital again."
Nancy Widmer's eyes welled with tears but her jaw was firmly set and she sat perfectly erect in her spindly Windsor chair. At that moment Werner sensed in her an inner strength that had been handed down from New England ancestors who had cleared the rocky land, fought the Indians, overturned British rule, and authored the great enduring experiment called America.
Star Chamber Brotherhood Page 4