Star Chamber Brotherhood (33 page)

“I’m sorry, Dave,” Werner interrupted, “but to me your whole Star Chamber thing is nothing more than a glorified lynch mob. If that’s what you want me to support, count me out.”

“Not so fast, Frank. Do you happen to know why the original Star Chamber was created back in fifteenth-century England?”

Lewis paused for effect but Werner did not oblige him with an answer.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” Lewis resumed. “The English Crown established it to bring powerful noblemen to justice at a turbulent time when no ordinary court could be relied upon to convict them. The model wasn’t bad, though it was abused over time. Fast-forward to today and the Star Committees operate in a similar way to bring out-of-control apparatchiks to justice. Even in places like Kamas.”

“You make it sound perfectly wonderful,” Werner objected. “But if what you say is true, then why hasn’t your Star Committee gone after the Warden or the Deputy Warden or the Chief of Security? The only people who seem to get whacked around here are the poor slobs that Jack Whiting and his people trick or coerce into becoming stool pigeons. Sure, they’re traitors, but why go after just the little guys? I thought you said the original Star Chamber was formed to take down the rich and powerful?”

“It’s a fair question,” Lewis replied. “And the answer is that we haven’t figured out how to hit Rocco or Chambers yet. For the moment, our biggest challenge is to keep our own leaders from being fingered by Whiting’s stoolies and sent off to the Yukon. But if you think we ought to be going after bigger fish, then you ought to hear me out. Because right now we’ve got a big fish on the line. And that’s why we’re calling on you.”
 

“To fry him, I suppose,” Werner joked uneasily.

Lewis did not respond.
 

“All right, I’m listening. Who is he?” Werner asked.

“He’s one of our own,” Lewis confided. “Somebody on the Prisoners Council itself. None of us would have suspected him. But we have undeniable proof that he was reporting directly to Whiting even before the strikes broke out. And he’s fingered dozens, if not hundreds, of strike activists for transfer to punishment camps. The Committee has weighed the evidence against him, convicted him, and sentenced him to death, to be carried out in secret. Immediately.”

“Wait a minute,” Werner balked. “If your man’s a traitor and you have the evidence, why not accuse him publicly in an open trial? Wouldn’t that be better for everyone?”

“First of all, the Administration would never allow a trial,” Lewis pointed out. “They’d pull their man into protective custody the moment we accuse him. And a trial would expose our intelligence sources and methods, blinding us to the next traitor. On top of that, this man is very popular; his supporters might not believe the evidence, no matter how good it was. And finally, what does it say about fairness if the small-time traitors get their throats slit by night and the big-time traitors get a show trial?”

“Okay, I follow you,” Werner acknowledged. “But even if you’re right, a secret trial without the right to confront one’s accusers can’t possibly be fair. You must know that.”

“Look, Frank, we’re in a corrective labor camp here. The insane are running the asylum. It’s as fair as we know how to be,” Lewis conceded.
 

“Which means
you’re
okay with it. It doesn’t mean I’m okay with it,” Werner asserted.

“And I’m saying it doesn’t matter if you’re okay with it, Werner. You’re an officer, damn it, and the star I gave you represents an official order through the only chain of command we have,” Lewis cautioned. “If you don’t cooperate, you will be tried for dereliction of duty by the Star Committee operating as a general court-martial. Now, then, are you in or out?”

“Ah, now I get it,” Werner replied, shaken by the ultimatum. “And if I agree, what is it you want me to do?

“We want you to get the traitor alone so that you and I can kill him.”

“Sorry. No way,” Werner protested. “I’m prepared to die for my country but I’m not willing to kill for it.”

“Oh, so you refuse to get your hands dirty defending the rest of us, but you don’t mind if others defend you,” Lewis challenged. “You certainly didn’t wave me off when I pulled Ramon off your sorry ass. So tell me: would you send the police home if some gang-bangers broke into your house and attacked your family? Would you tell the Army to lay off if the Chinese invaded Alaska? You know, that non-violence stuff only works when your enemies are civilized. Look around. After all this, do you really believe that Rocco and his crew are civilized? Or are you so caught up in your moralistic mumbo jumbo that you’ve lost your God-given instinct to survive?”

“Okay, I see your point,” Werner allowed. “I never intended to minimize the sacrifices of people in the police or the military—and even the Star Committee, to an extent. But killing is wrong, damn it! I don’t care who your traitor is. I just won’t do it. You’ll have to get someone else.”

Dave Lewis listened intently and paused for a moment before speaking in a subdued voice and with evident empathy.

“Believe me, Frank, none of us would have placed this burden on your shoulders if there were any other way. You’re the only person we can turn to for this. In normal times, we’d all agree with your insistence on following conventional ethical rules. But during times of necessity, a responsible person has to consider the circumstances and apply his reason. And sometimes his responsibility can require a deviation from traditional ethics, sometimes even an attack on the very laws he’s trying to preserve. In times like these, Frank, responsible people sometimes have to take morally unacceptable action, and do it without the easy assurance that it is the right thing to do. It’s in the very nature of leadership: by their actions, leaders create the choices from which others must choose. Whether you like it or not, Frank, you are one of those leaders. And that’s why we need your help.”

Frank Werner frowned and looked away.

“Who’s the target,” he asked softly.

“Your best friend, of course.,” Lewis replied.

Werner laughed uneasily.
 

“Surely, you’re joking. You can’t mean…”

“Yes, the traitor is Uriah Tucker. And in five minutes, God willing, the two of us are going to find him and kill him.”

****

The delivery van arrived at the camp perimeter and passed through the series of gates that led into the Service Yard, where the dispensary was located. Hurst led the two prisoners in through the emergency room dock at the rear of the building, where a clerk logged them in and an orderly removed the disposable restraint loops that bound their hands and feet. Except for the guards and a few of the physicians, everyone who worked in the dispensary was a prisoner.

A physician’s assistant called next for a nurse to lead them to the examining area. When the nurse arrived, Werner took her aside. She was a dour woman, apparently in her early fifties, who moved briskly and appeared to brook no nonsense.

“Is Uriah on duty tonight?” he asked her in a deferential tone. Werner recognized the woman from a previous visit as one of the first prisoners to occupy the camp’s women’s division years before.

“Yes, he’s doing workups in Radiology,” she replied. Why do you want to know?”
 

“Any chance you could get him here to examine me?” he asked with an ingratiating smile.

“Does Uriah know you?”

Werner nodded confidently.

“If you tell him I’m here, he’ll want to come.”

“Your name?”

“Frank Werner, from Barracks C-10.”

“I’ll send someone to talk to him,” the nurse responded coolly. “If he’s free to come—it might take a few minutes.”

Ten minutes later the nurse returned and, without further comment, led Werner to a room with multiple examining tables.

“Strip to your shorts and sit on the table,” she ordered while assembling bandages, disinfectant, and other supplies from a nearby cabinet.

As soon as Werner was seated, she examined each cut and bruise, starting from the crown of his head, cleaning and dressing each with such speed that Werner worried that she would be finished before Uriah arrived. She was already dressing the cuts on Werner’s hands when a black man the size of an NFL lineman entered quietly, dressed in pale blue hospital scrubs. His head was shaved and he wore a close-cropped beard and wire-rimmed glasses, giving him a distinctly professional look for a prisoner.
 

The visitor’s face lit up momentarily on seeing Werner before momentarily going slack, leading Werner to question whether Uriah was distressed to see his friend’s injuries or was concerned over something else.

“Frank!” Uriah exclaimed with a jovial grin. “What the devil brings you here? Don’t tell me you’ve been fighting those young bloods again?”

“Word travels fast, doesn’t it?” Werner answered genially. Then, when Tucker had come closer, he added in a low voice, “Say, Uriah, is there a private room or someplace where we can have a quick word? I’ve got some information for you.”

“For you, Frank, anything is possible. Come, follow me,” he replied and led Werner to a small private examining room. He pointed to the stainless steel examination table inside and waited for Werner to be seated, leaving the door open behind him.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have much time, Frank. Radiology is swamped today. What do you have for me?”

While Tucker spoke, Dave Lewis slipped into the room behind him and quietly closed the door. As Tucker noticed the movement behind him, Lewis slipped an improvised garrote made of telephone line around his neck, and pulled Tucker backward off his feet. In an instant Werner leapt on top of the victim and grabbed him around the knees to prevent him from rising or wrenching free of Lewis’ grip.
 

Looking up, Werner could see astonishment and desperation in Tucker’s eyes, mingled, he supposed, with fury at being betrayed. He felt a convulsive heave of the man’s chest and a final squeeze of his hands before Tucker’s body finally went limp.
 

The two men had barely relaxed their grip when a pair of warders opened the door and descended upon them with wooden batons, forcing them within seconds to release their prey. Werner felt stabs of pain where Ramon’s pipe had left cuts and bruises little more than an hour before. And then he felt nothing.

Chapter 19

Sunday, May 19, 2029
Back Bay, Boston

Sam Tucker pulled the stolen Honda sedan slowly to the curb on the westbound side of Commonwealth Avenue, half a block from Fred Rocco’s apartment building. Across from him in the passenger seat sat a newly disguised Frank Werner, his gray hair trimmed back to a crew cut and dyed dark, horn-rimmed eyeglasses on his head, and dressed in gray flannel trousers, an olive herringbone sport coat, and a whale-motif bow tie over a blue pinstriped shirt. Between his feet sat an antique leather doctor’s bag.

 
“This is it,” Tucker offered as the car came to a stop. He glanced across at Werner, who was eyeing himself in the rearview mirror.

“I really appreciate your delaying the move to West Virginia on my account, Sam. I don’t know what I would have done without you,” Werner admitted. “And coming up with a getaway car on such short notice, that definitely goes above and beyond.”

“Don’t mention it,” Tucker answered. “Now that I know what Rocco and the DSS did to my father, I couldn’t have left you alone to finish the job. Besides, we both have a strong interest in your safe exit. If the DSS caught either of us, the other would be burned sooner or later.”
 

“Not an encouraging thought,” Werner replied. “If you don’t mind changing the subject, how do I look?”

Tucker gave Werner a quick once-over and suppressed a laugh.

“Very medical and very Bostonian,” he pronounced. “I just love the whales on your tie. And where did you score that fantastic doctor’s bag?”

“A friend of mine. It was her father’s,” Werner answered.
 

“Anything else you might need before you go?”

“Yeah,” Werner replied distractedly. “Tell me one more time about Rocco’s apartment.”

“Sure. It’s on the third floor,” Tucker obliged. “Rocco’s bed is in the guest bedroom, straight back at the end of the corridor when you enter from the elevator side. The TV in his room is on all day. Good background noise. Since the patient spends most of his time under sedation, the nurse spends a lot of her time in the kitchen or on the phone in the living room. The bodyguard has a chair by the front door. What else do you want to know?”

“Anything new on his condition?” Werner probed.

“Rocco’s been pretty stable since the hospital released him on Wednesday. He gets morphine every four hours around the clock through his IV drip. Otherwise he’d be in massive pain from a couple of fractured thoracic vertebrae, a bad concussion and dozens of sutures in his scalp. Ouch. The problem is that he keeps waking up with terrible nightmares. Rocco’s wife has been on the phone nonstop searching for an anesthesiologist who’s willing to jack up her husband’s prescription. So far she’s had no success.”

“Maybe the current doc is afraid of what might happen to him if he accidentally overdosed a high-ranking DSS officer,” Werner speculated.

“Or maybe he’s just tired of being harassed by Rocco’s wife,” Tucker replied. “She is a real piece of work.”