The woman’s eyes remained fixed upon her computer screen as she scrolled through the record.
"Ah, now I see it. You’re right. This time it shows their exit visas as renewed, emigration tax paid, and air travel booked for tonight. They could have gone out earlier, but the office in charge was still searching for the other daughter."
"That would be Claire. Now that Claire is here," Martha continued, "I’d like to arrange for her to travel on the same plane as her mother and sister. Could you double check whether her exit visa is still valid?"
"It probably isn’t, but I’ll look." She paused to pull up the appropriate record from the database. "Hmm, it says here that all four exit visas were extended last week."
"Is there any reason why she couldn’t leave tonight?" Martha asked.
The clerk shook her head.
"She still doesn’t have her final release. For that she'll need to schedule a pre–release interview to explain her absence since February. And I know the Clearance Section is booked up for weeks."
"Could you put in a call to the head of the Clearance Section, please?"
The clerk looked askance at Martha but did as she was told. She asked the person on the other end of the line to have the section chief call her back as soon as he returned.
"You must understand, Mrs. Chambers, that the Department has booked tickets only for Juliet and Louisa. If you want to get Claire out on the same flight, you’re going to have to book her ticket yourself."
"Fine. Can you tell me what flight they’re on?"
"It looks like British Airways 867, departing Philadelphia for Gatwick at seven p.m. tonight.
"Now, here’s what you do. As soon as we hear back from the Clearance Section, go on up to the sixth floor and ask for Neil in Room 614. Tell him you need a final clearance number and that I told you not to take no for an answer. Once you have the clearance number, go back down to the Documents Section, on the second floor, across the hall from Registry. Give them your clearance number and they’ll issue Claire her exit visa and emigration tax voucher. You’ll need to show those to buy your ticket and to get past the emigration counter. Clear?"
Before Martha could reply the telephone rang.
"Neil’s back, but he only has fifteen minutes before he has to leave. You'd better hurry…."
"I can’t possibly thank you enough, Mrs.–"
"Just call me Betsy." The clerk shook Martha’s outstretched hand.
"Betsy, might I impose on you one last time?" Helen Sigler interrupted. "Could you check whether Claire’s father is cleared to emigrate, too? His name is Paul Wagner, and he’s been at the corrective labor camp in Kamas, Utah, since March."
The clerk stiffened.
"How do you know that? That’s not public information."
"I live in a town near Kamas. Local people know these things."
"I can promise you we won’t tell anyone," Martha added with a smile.
Betsy looked at Martha sympathetically, and then lowered her voice. "There’s a separate database. Wait here a minute and I’ll see what I can do."
She went to a computer terminal at the back of the room and logged in. The two women and Claire could see screen after screen pop up on the monitor. Then Betsy took a minute to read the contents of the last screen, logged off, and returned to her desk.
"I found a Paul Wagner from Pittsburgh. He left the Susquehanna Security Facility in February of this year bound for the Utah District. His case was up for review two weeks ago. The Special Hearing Panel commuted his sentence to exile for life."
"Then he’s free to leave?" Helen asked excitedly.
"Not so fast. The Panel ordered him to be returned to this District for deportation out of Philadelphia, but there’s no record of a response from Utah. It seems there was some kind of security hold at the facility he was in. No transfers in or out until further notice."
Helen thanked her, exchanged serious looks with Martha and took Claire by the hand to leave. Then Claire, who had said nothing through the entire exchange, spoke up.
"Do I really have to leave tonight?"
Both women stopped in their tracks to face her.
"Why wouldn’t you want to leave?" Helen asked her. "Your mother and little sister will be at the airport waiting for you. By tomorrow morning you can be with your grandparents in London. You wouldn’t want to miss that, would you?"
"No," Claire replied. "But I have this feeling that if I leave now, I won’t ever see my dad again. He needs me here to help him."
"If your dad has made it this far, Claire, I’m sure he’ll find his way back to you somehow," Helen continued. "Right now your mom and sister need you, too."
Claire nodded sadly and let Helen take her hand once again.
A few minutes later they found Neil at his desk in the Clearance Section. He resembled the prototypical bureaucrat, a jowly man in his mid–thirties who could easily pass for fifty.
"Are you the people Betsy called me about?" he began.
"Yes," Martha replied.
Martha handed Neil her DSS identity card. He glanced at it quickly and started typing on his computer.
"Could I see Claire’s passport, please?" he asked without raising his eyes from the monitor.
Helen handed it over.
"On the strength of your association with the Department, Mrs. Chambers, I’m going to give Claire a clearance number. Can I have your personal assurance that this is not going to come back and bite me in the rear?"
Martha laughed.
"You have my word of honor."
They took the slip of paper with the clearance number and headed for the stairs. The queue in the Documents Section was mercifully short. Within fifteen minutes they reached the front of the line where a clerk entered Claire’s clearance number in a computer and printed out her exit visa and emigration tax voucher on special forgery–resistant stock. The moment she handed Claire her documents, she put a "Closed for Lunch" sign in the window and disappeared. It was now precisely one o'clock.
Helen, Martha, and Claire flagged down a taxi and rushed back to the motel to pack their bags, eat lunch, and find a bank on their way to the airport. They reached the international terminal of the Philadelphia airport just after four and took their place in a ticket queue that stretched all the way to the next terminal. They left the ticket counter shortly before six and made a headlong rush to the security checkpoint. There, an overzealous security crew insisted on conducting a full body search on each member of an Italian soccer team seeking to board the eight o’clock flight to Rome.
When Claire finally reached the emigration counter, it was a quarter past six. She heard a boarding announcement for the seven o’clock flight to Gatwick and felt her skin crawl while she waited for the woman behind the counter to stamp her papers.
Too anxious to bear watching the immigration officer’s expression as the woman examined her documents, Claire gazed down at her backpack and at the clothes that she had chosen for the trip. Despite the summer heat, she wore the same navy corduroy trousers, white turtleneck, blue cotton sweater, and green backpack that she had worn to the airport in February. It was her way of turning back the clock and repeating that fateful night in the hope that this time things would turn out differently.
Claire heard a metal door slam shut somewhere behind her and turned to see a young male immigration officer approaching. He spoke with the woman who held Claire’s passport, then addressed Martha and Helen.
"Would you mind stepping into my office for a moment?" the officer requested.
"I certainly would not," Martha replied, casting a worried look at Helen.
The women followed the immigration officer through a heavy glass door into a cramped office furnished with a gray metal desk and four straight–backed chairs. Claire could feel her heart pounding. She watched Helen grow paler by the minute. Martha, too, seemed nervous but resolute. Through the glass partition Claire watched other passengers advance through the emigration line and m
ove on toward the British Airways gate.
"Damn!" the officer muttered as he pounded what appeared to be a stuck key on his keyboard. "Excuse me, but for some reason I can’t seem to verify your final clearance number. I’ll have to reboot."
Claire watched the monitor screen go black, then saw a white flash as the rebooting process began.
"If it’s not too much trouble, could you tell us whether any other Wagners have come through emigration so far tonight?" Martha asked with a forced smile. "Claire is supposed to be meeting her family at the British Airways gate."
"Wait a second." A pause followed while the other immigration officer entered some keystrokes into a separate computer terminal.
"Here it is," he replied a few seconds latter. "The system shows two Wagners departing for London tonight: Juliet and Louisa."
"Any others? We’re expecting Claire’ father, too."
"Nope. Not yet, anyway."
"Would you mind if I made a phone call while we’re waiting?" Martha asked. "My husband works for the Department and I need to reach him at his office." She held out her State Security I.D. card.
He handed her a telephone.
Martha thanked him, dialed, and waited. She hung up, dialed again, and this time got someone on the line.
"Is this the duty officer? I’d like to speak with my husband, Doug Chambers."
"What do you mean, 'not available'? Is he on another line, in a meeting, or down at the camp? I need to reach him right away."
Martha listened, and then grew exasperated.
"Fine, I’d be happy to speak to the Warden," she snapped. "Yes, I’ll hold."
Martha waited for several minutes without raising her head to meet Claire’s or Helen’s anxious stares.
"Hello, Fred? Is that you? I’m trying to get through to Doug and your duty officer is giving me the runaround. Can you tell me what’s going on?"
Another long pause.
"I’m here at the emigration counter at the Philadelphia airport with Claire. Believe it or not, I’ve managed to find Claire’s mother through the Department’s District Office. For months her family has been waiting for approval to emigrate. Now their exit visas are final and they’re leaving tonight for London.
"The only problem is that we can’t locate Claire’s father. It seems he’s been in a labor camp but this month his sentence was commuted to exile. They tell us here that he’s cleared to leave the country as soon as he’s transferred back to Philadelphia. The reason I was trying to reach Doug is that–
"You already know…? Do you know whether Claire's father is still there?"
"Are you positive? When is he supposed to get here?"
"That’s wonderful! Claire will be overjoyed–"
"No, we don’t have much time, either. Go ahead with the reason why you were trying to reach me."
Martha drew a sharp breath then suddenly sat bolt upright in the hard metal chair.
"When did it happen?" she asked weakly as she stared out through the glass partition. "And the doctor…"
"Yes, Fred, I will. I’ll call from the motel."
Martha hung up the phone and said nothing.
Helen waited for Martha to speak. Claire waited eagerly for news of her father. But Martha’s face remained utterly blank, as if she had gone into a trance.
"Do you know where he is?" Claire pressed. "Is he coming?"
Martha faced her with a distracted smile.
"Your father is on his way here," she said.
"And the other news?" Helen asked. "Is everything all right?"
Martha shook her head. "It’s Doug. They say he had an accident. Cleaning his pistol…"
At that instant the immigration officer came over to the women waving a computer printout in his hand.
"Here’s the clearance number," he said, handing the printout to Claire. "Take it back to the counter and you'll be free to go."
Claire took the paper and bolted through the glass door to the emigration counter with Martha and Helen not far behind.
A moment later, Claire heard the distinctive clunk of the self–inking rubber stamp marking her papers, then the sharp slap of the passport being returned to the counter. The young woman behind the counter cocked an eyebrow toward the gate, as if to suggest that Claire not waste any more time before boarding her flight.
Claire snatched up the passport and stepped briskly past the counter into the transit area, then abruptly retraced her steps and threw her arms around Helen’s neck.
"This time everything is going work out fine," Helen assured her. "Will you promise to send me a letter as soon as you arrive?"
"I will," Claire answered with glistening eyes. She turned to Martha and embraced her.
"I miss Marie already," she told Martha, stifling a sob. "Can you send me a picture of her now and then?"
"Of course," Martha replied. "And we won’t forget you, either, Claire. But you really must go now or you'll miss your flight. Quick, get on board and find your mother and sister!"
With Helen and Martha urging her on toward the gate, Claire turned around one more time, as if to imprint their faces in her mind.
By the time she reached the gate, only a handful of passengers remained in the waiting area. The gate agents had already closed the departure counter and were preparing to shut the door to the ramp.
Claire was out of breath when she reached the door and handed the agent her ticket.
"Not a moment too soon," said the agent, a woman of fifty who smiled at Claire in a motherly way. "You’re the last to board, except for the gentleman in the corner."
Claire glanced into the ill–lit corner of the waiting area, where a rail–thin man with a gray crew cut stood between two broad–shouldered giants in baggy blue suits. To her mind, the thin man’s long–sleeved khaki shirt and khaki trousers made him look like a forest ranger or a gardener. She was about to turn away and enter the walkway to the plane when she saw one of the giants pull a key from his breast pocket and unlock the handcuffs that bound his own wrist to that of the thin man.
At that moment the thin man noticed Claire looking at him and stared back. He took a step forward and continued to return her gaze.
All at once Claire dropped her backpack and rushed into the thin man's arms. She looked into her father's laughing eyes, felt his bony ribs under her hug, then seized his callused but still gentle hands.
"Claire, Claire, Claire," he repeated over and over.
He held his daughter at arm’s length and gazed at her with fatherly pride. Paul Wagner’s eyes now brimmed with more tears than all the ones he had shed during his imprisonment.
"Dad, is it really you?" Claire sobbed. "I tried to find you!"
"I know," he replied. "Thanks for not giving up on me."
Claire drew back from her father and laughed.
"Dad, you look so skinny! Mom’s not going to believe it!"
Paul Wagner peered down at his legs and grasped a fold of loose khaki around his scrawny thigh. He neither smiled nor frowned, but instead gave a look of benign acceptance, as if the suffering of the last two years were being washed away. When he took his daughter’s hand again a bright new smile started in his eyes and radiated lines of happiness not seen on his gaunt face since long before his arrest. He let out a soft laugh.
"Come on, Claire, let’s go surprise your mom."
****
Preston Fleming was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He left home at fourteen to accept a scholarship at a New England boarding school and went on to a liberal arts college in the Midwest. After earning an MBA, he managed a non–profit organization in New York before joining the U.S. Foreign Service and serving in U.S. Embassies around the Middle East for nearly a decade. Later he studied at an Ivy League law school and has since pursued a career in law and business. Preston lives in Boston with his wife and two children. He has written five novels.
E–mail: [email protected]
on Fleming, Forty Days at Kamas
Forty Days at Kamas Page 38