Forty Days at Kamas (49 page)

Having left Marie with Martha’s parents, who drove in from New Jersey to meet them at the train station, Martha, Helen, and Claire settled into a room and retired for the night. They rose shortly after dawn, ate breakfast in the motel coffee shop, then took their place in the queue that formed each morning outside the Federal Building Annex on Broad Street. Nearly an hour passed before they reached the metal detectors. Then they waited for another twenty minutes at the reception desk to ask where to inquire about administrative detainees located within the DSS’s Philadelphia District.

"Registry office, second floor. Next!" came the answer from a heavy–set clerk in a leatherette swivel chair.

Helen Sigler led the way up the steel staircase. Upon reaching the second floor she spotted the word "Registry" on a glass transom at the end of a forty–yard corridor. The queue stretched all the way from the door to where they stood.

After another hour of waiting, they reached a bank of six cashier windows. There Helen addressed herself to a pasty–faced woman of about forty with a huge head of frizzy orange hair. The woman wore the mask of boredom and indifference adopted by state employees throughout history.

"We’re looking for Juliet and Louisa Wagner. We believe they were taken into custody on the evening of March 24 this year at the Philadelphia Airport."

"How do you know they’re being held by State Security?" the woman challenged with narrowed eyes and an incredulous tone. "We’re not the missing persons bureau, you know. Have you tried the Philadelphia police or the Port Authority? The airport is under their jurisdiction, not ours."

"A witness saw men in DSS uniform pull them out of the emigration line and take them into the security office," Helen replied patiently. "Also, your own Pittsburgh Field Office confirmed to me that the Philadelphia District Office has them in custody. Now, would you mind checking your records for us?"

"Relation?"

"I beg your pardon?" Helen replied.

"What relation are you to the missing women?" the clerk asked.

"None. I’m here with the prisoner's daughter." Helen pushed Claire forward.

The clerk snatched a printed form from a many–tiered rack of government forms and slid it across the counter to Helen.

"All right then. Fill out this form and leave it in the wooden box by the door. Then come back next Monday to any of these windows and, if the girl’s mother is in our custody, we ought to be able to tell you more."

Martha Chambers stepped forward and held out her DSS identification card showing her as the spouse of an active–duty DSS field officer.

The clerk’s expression changed at once from indifference to a sincere eagerness to please.

"I’m so sorry, Mrs. Chambers, I didn’t realize–"

Martha cut her off.

"The problem is that we don’t have a week to spare. Couldn’t you do us a favor and look up their names in your computer while we’re here?"

"The database has been down all morning, but I'll give it a try."

She entered some keystrokes on her computer and waited. Suddenly she raised her eyebrows in surprise.

"Okay, it’s back up again. Do you know the missing woman’s Social Security Number?"

"I’m afraid we don’t. But we have Claire’s. Could you use hers to cross–reference her mother?"

"I doubt it, but I’ll do what I can."

Martha opened Claire’s passport so the woman could read her name, date and place of birth, and other identifying data. For several minutes the clerk entered intermittent keystrokes and waited for the computer’s response. At last she flashed a smile.

"Here it is. The database shows them in the District Detention Facility in Camden awaiting deportation."

"Deportation?" Martha replied indignantly. "That can't be right. They just had their exit visas reinstated a few days ago. They’re emigrating legally."

"Yes, but since they tried to leave without valid travel documents, it was handled as a criminal matter. That's why it’s coded as a deportation."

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 move 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.