Forty Days at Kamas (20 page)

"I’ve taken the liberty of preparing a simple plea bargain contract for you to consider. You're welcome to read it before signing but the gist of it is that you confess to murdering Renaud. In return for your guilty plea we give you a suspended sentence for as long as you continue working for State Security."

I made no reply.

"Why not look it over?" Whiting suggested, pushing it across the table. "You may find our terms quite attractive, all things considered."

I finished the cup of coffee and set it back on the table before picking up the document and ripping it in half, then doubling it up and ripping it again.

Whiting stared at me without speaking. His cold eyes were devoid of any anger, sympathy, or pity. He called for the guards.

"Take him back," he said. He remained seated as they yanked me onto my feet. "This one seems to be a slow learner."

I believe that I spent another two and a half days in the isolator after my interview with Whiting. The coffee worked wonders in clearing my mind and I spent the next few hours thinking carefully about the visions I had experienced. Were they nothing more than my own subconscious mind wrestling with my guilt and grief? Or did the visions represent actual communication?

Having resolved for so long to think only of my own survival and to not torment myself over my wife and daughters, I realized that I had made a crucial mistake. Far from distracting me from my survival, love for my family gave me a reason to survive–even to escape. Since my arrest my strength had been in decline because I had stopped believing I would ever rejoin my family and thus no longer even held it out as my goal. Now, I resolved to find a way back to my wife and daughters or die in the attempt. Within moments, I felt my strength return.

C
HAPTER
18

"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."
—Steve Biko, South African dissident

FRIDAY, MARCH 29

The next time I heard the cell's steel doors open I was fully awake. At first I thought it was simply my ration bars and water being delivered and was startled when the door opened and the room filled with light.

Two guards waded across the dark waters to grasp me under the armpits and ferry me out to the corridor. Seeing that I might lack the strength to stand on my own, they set me down on a bench in the corridor while one of them closed the cell doors and the other removed my clothes and boots from the steel locker and ordered me to put them on. Desperate for warmth, my numbed fingers fumbled to remove my wet underwear before I stepped into my coveralls and boots. I stuffed the underwear into a pocket and grabbed my hat and gloves in time to be hustled down the hall toward a brightly lit holding cell. I sat shivering on the floor, eager for the warmth of the heated room to raise my temperature.

One by one, the other prisoners who had arrived with me at the isolator appeared. The first was Dennis Martino, a sharp–witted medical student from Atlanta in his mid–twenties, who had been convicted of harboring deserters from the armed forces. At the time of his arrest, he had been moonlighting as a bartender. His fatal error had been to turn away State Security officers who had asked him to report on certain patrons of the bar. He later learned that among those patrons had been men wanted for desertion. For failing to denounce them he was sentenced to eight years of corrective labor under Title 18, Section 1381.

I had seen Martino around the camp from time to time and I recalled him as an amiable fellow with a wide range of acquaintances. But there was no trace of his sunny disposition when the guards brought him into the holding cell. His face was a deathly white, his lips a dull blue, and his shivering even more violent than mine. Without a word, he lay on his side in a fetal position and closed his eyes.

The next to join us was Brian Gaffney, a red–bearded giant from Portland, Oregon. Gaffney had been a commercial artist before the Events but, with the decline of marketing and advertising activity, had despaired of finding work in his specialty and had settled for work as a night shift supervisor in a Kansas City molding and extrusions plant. Gaffney had somehow managed to retain an air of cheerfulness at Kamas and could claim many friends in camp. But I barely recognized him when he shuffled into the room. His face was gaunt and his eyes seemed to have retreated back into his head. His breathing was so shallow and labored that I feared he had pneumonia. He returned my greeting with a feeble smile and then sank into sleep.

Some ten minutes later we were joined by J.J. Johns, a black taxicab owner from St. Louis who had been convicted of economic sabotage for refusing to sell his cabs to the municipal taxi collective.

"How are you holding up, brother?" J.J. asked.

"Better than I expected," I replied. "Somebody once told me that solitary confinement is like going to the dentist. You always think that the worst is yet to come when it's really already behind you."

J.J. returned a thin smile.

"Don't I know you from somewhere?" he asked.

"We came in on the same transport," I said.

"Oh, yeah, one of Reineke's boys."

I winced.

"I didn't kill any of those stoolies, if that's what you mean."

"I don’t mean nothing at all," J.J. replied. "You boys do what you got to do. I'm too damned worn out to think about that shit."

The door opened and Gary Toth limped into the center of the room. His entire face and neck were a mass of swollen and discolored bruises together with fresh cuts and scratches that had barely stopped bleeding. He nodded to us without a word, then took off his boots and began winding his footcloths around his feet in preparation for our release back into the frozen outdoors.

Moments after he finished the door opened again and eight guards stood outside.

"Into the truck. All of you."

All of us rose except for Martino.

The chief guard pointed at J.J. and me.

"You two, pick him up and bring him along. Move!"

When the double doors opened at the end of the corridor, the sunlight reflecting off the snow nearly blinded us. The four of us lifted Martino into the waiting van, climbed in after him and took our seats on the benches facing each other as we had the week before.

"We were nine on the way in," Gaffney pointed out as soon as the door was locked behind us. "What about the others?"

"Dead," Toth answered. "They check once a day and remove anybody who's gone cold."

Toth spoke with an odd lisp. Then I saw that the entire top row of his front teeth had been broken. Toth showed no embarrassment at the loss and continued to speak despite the pain his cut and swollen lips must have caused him.

"Let's see if we can wake him," Toth continued, pointing to Martino. "You hold him up. I'll try to shake him out of it."

As we lifted Martino's violently shivering body into a sitting position, he mumbled incoherently and pushed us away. After three or four minutes of vigorous rubbing on his back, arms, and thighs, Martino's eyes opened. Then Toth kept him propped up while we alternated massaging his back, legs, and arms.

"Can you talk?" Toth asked him.

"Leave me alone," came Martino’s faint reply.

"He'll make it."

Toth then turned to me.

"Did Whiting bring you in for a talk?" he asked gruffly. "About halfway through the week? Give you hot coffee?"

I hesitated.

"Yeah, he called me in," I admitted.

"How about you, J.J.?" Toth went on.

"I saw him," J.J. said.

"Brian?"

"Me, too."

"Hey, Martino, listen up," Toth continued, speaking directly into Martino's ear. "Did the Wart take you out of the can for a talk?"

Why?" Martino asked, suddenly grown canny.

"Don't ask me why, Martino. Did he or didn't he?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, that makes it unanimous. Nobody gets to the isolator without the Wart bringing him in for a little java. See these teeth? That's how I paid for mine."

He drew back his bloodied lips and paused to make sure he had our attention.

"Unless Whiting has changed his M.O., he leaned on every one of you to become his stool pigeon and report on your buddies. No question, the isolator softens a man. So if you turned him down, good for you. It takes grit to say no when you're half crazy from the cold and the darkness and the goddamned dripping water and everything else that rips you apart in that stinking hole.

"But if you said yes, I'm telling you right now that you have nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing at all. That is, if you admit right now in front of all of us that you knuckled under. Nobody knows what you went through better than we do. The main thing is that you undo any promise you made in there and tell Whiting to pound salt when he tries to recontact you. Believe me, if you turn back now, you have nothing to fear from him. He won't punish you because that might blow his chances to get to you later. It may be years before he gives up on you.

"But now, you may ask yourself, what if I don't admit to going along with the Wart? What if I just quietly meet his people now and then for a chat? Well, sooner or later we'll find out. And we’ll come after you. And all the suffering you’ve gone through will have been wasted because you'll die a traitor's death."

Toth glared at each of us in turn and then faced me.

"You first, Paul. Did you accept Whiting's pitch?"

"I refused. He sent me away and that was it."

"J.J.?"

"I walked out before we got to the second mug. I could see it coming."

"Brian?"

"Turned it down."

"Dennis?"

Martino hung his head and didn't respond.

"What did you tell him, Martino? Yes or no?"

His answer could barely be heard above the sound of the van’s engine.

"Yes."

Martino's shoulders shook with silent sobbing. He drew a desperate breath and put his head between his knees. His sobs turned to dry heaves.

Toth put his arms around Martino and spoke softly to him.

"Dennis. What you’ve told us required more courage than most men find in a lifetime. Hold onto that courage. Hold on and try not to let it get away again."

The van stopped and Toth addressed the rest of us.

"Anybody want to change his story before we go back to work?"

I looked around the van. J.J. and I looked at each other and then at Toth and shook our heads. Gaffney wouldn't meet my gaze and jumped out of the van without speaking.

When I followed him out I saw that we were at the new wing of the camp dispensary in the Service Yard. I had been to the camp dispensary only once before, on a weekend when I had cut myself with a saw while stripping branches from a fallen tree. The guards had taken me to the old wing of the dispensary, which was generally the only one that prisoners were permitted to enter. The new wing was used primarily to treat camp staff and contract workers. It also housed the medical unit’s storage rooms and administrative offices.

The guards led the five of us into an empty waiting room that was connected to the treatment areas by a steel door. One by one, a pair of guards led each of us through the door into a vestibule and then through a second door, each controlled electrically by the receptionist inside. When my turn came, I passed through an open reception area staffed by a foursome of middle–aged nurses in white uniforms and went down a corridor lined with empty hospital beds. The dispensary smelled of disinfectant, alcohol, and ether and was the cleanest, most civilized place I had seen since my arrest. I found myself scheming to find some way to stay there.

At the end of the corridor the guards turned right and stopped at a white curtained enclosure whose only furnishing was a stainless–steel examining table. The older of the two guards ordered me to sit on the table and be quiet. A few minutes later, a short, plump, dark–haired woman of about fifty entered the room wearing a knee–length laboratory coat. A balding, round–shouldered man in his mid–fifties followed behind. Both wore gold–rimmed spectacles and cold, dour expressions and carried clipboards under one arm. The name on the woman's badge was Dr. Renée Nagy while that on the man's badge was Dr. Ernest Fell.

"Prisoner W–0885," the guard announced to the doctors.

"How long ago was he released from the punishment block, Sergeant?"

"Less than an hour ago," the guard answered.

"W–0885, we are going to give you an examination and ask you some questions. You are to speak only when you are spoken to. Remain standing."

They told me to undress and began what seemed to be a routine physical exam. Then Dr. Nagy turned to the next form on her clipboard and started asking me questions from a standard medical questionnaire.

After the fourth or fifth question, I interrupted her.

"May I ask a question, Doctor?"

Dr. Nagy seemed surprised that I was capable of speech.

"What is it?" she asked impatiently.

"May I ask what is today's date and the time of day?"

"Friday, March 29th, about four in the afternoon."

"Can you also give me something to eat? I haven't eaten for twenty–four hours."

"This is not the mess hall," she retorted. "Dinner begins at six. You seem well enough to survive till then."

"You
are
a doctor, aren't you?"

"This is not a treatment session. This is an examination. Now please answer my questions. Have you ever been treated for…."

Suddenly it became clear to me what they were doing, and I thought of Al Gallucci and the reason he gave for not becoming a foreman.

"I get it," I interrupted. "You're studying my reactions to the isolator so you can make it more effective in crushing the next poor slob you throw in there."

Trembling with rage, I reached out and grabbed the clipboard, tore off the entire set of forms and ripped them in half, then doubled them and ripped them again, and doubled them again until they were too thick for me to tear.