Dead of Night

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

My gracious host and cook was no longer smiling. ‘He gave me a credit card. It’s from some bank in Toronto.’

A little voice spoke up in my head, and it sounded distinctly like my father’s. Fool, fool, fool.

The oldest man, heavyset and with a beard that came to the middle of his chest, looked at me. ‘Is that true?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Samuel Simpson.’

A man behind me said, ‘So. You from Toronto?’

‘Yes.’

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

I looked down longingly at my empty plate. ‘Having breakfast.’

A couple of the guys laughed, and then a hand fell on my shoulder. I kept on looking at the heavyset bearded man. ‘Not bad, mister,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you that. But any more smart answers and Tom here’s gonna whack you one. All right?’

‘All right.’

‘What are you doing here?’

I sighed, looked at their faces, wondering if this was anything like what my grandfather had felt when the raid on Dieppe had gone so drastically wrong.

‘Just walking around, checking things out,’ I said. ‘A tourist whose car broke down, that’s all.’

The bearded man nodded slowly. ‘Look, it’d be easier if you just gave it up, pal. I don’t want no blood on Beth’s floor here. That wouldn’t be polite, now, would it?’

‘No,’ I said, knowing the various forms of UN identification that were in my wallet. ‘It wouldn’t be polite at all.’

‘The truth, then.’

‘Truth? The truth is, I’m assigned to an investigation unit with UNFORUS. I’ve gotten separated from my group, and I’m just here, having breakfast, and then I’m going to the highway.’

I saw their faces change, all of them, as expressions darkened and eyes narrowed. Then the bearded guy said, ‘All right, then. You can finish your breakfast.’

I wiped my face slowly with a napkin. ‘I already have,’ I said. ‘Just as well — I’ve lost my appetite.’

The bearded man exchanged a look with the guy behind me who was holding on to my shoulder. Then the bearded man said, ‘Fine. You’re now under arrest.’

And then my arms were pulled back, and a hood was pulled over my head.

Even then, I was surprised at how polite they were. Two men helped me to my feet as another one finished binding my arms. My arms were tied together at the wrist, but not tight enough to cut off my circulation. The hood smelled of hay, and I was flanked on either side as two of the militiamen each grasped an elbow. They walked me to the store, opened the door and led me out, one of them saying, ‘Steps coming up, lower your foot down, there you go.’

Behind me, the woman said, ‘Well, who’s gonna pay for breakfast, then?’

A male voice: ‘…Got his goddamn credit card, now, don’t you? Use that…’

I stood still, trying to calm my breathing, trying not to think of too much, except I was attempting to grasp what the bearded guy had said: I was under arrest. He didn’t say I was going to be taken into the woods and shot, or out to a gravel pit and shot, or to the town square and shot. Not that these options weren’t open to me—and to my captors—but I was hoping for a little wiggle room. ‘Where am I going?’ I asked.

A nudge to the ribs. ‘No talking. And if you keep talking, you’ll get the shit kicked out of you. OK?’

I didn’t say a word, just stood there. Another—and sharper—nudge to the ribs. ‘Hey! I asked you a question. You understand?’

‘I do understand,’ I said, letting impatience slip into my voice. ‘And you said no talking. So I kept my mouth shut.’

The other guy laughed. ‘He got you there, Frank.’

‘Smart-ass fucker,’ Frank said. ‘You just keep quiet.’

Through the hood I made out the sound of a truck engine, and then I was grasped again by the elbows. ‘OK,’ not-Frank said. ‘Up you go. The back of a pickup truck.’

It was awkward, trying to ease my way up onto the bed of the truck with my hands tied behind me. Frank swore at me as I flailed around, but not-Frank gave me a boost. ‘Move it back, move it back,’ came a voice, and I slid my butt back against the metal bed until I bumped up against some canvas bags of something. There was the clump of boots and doors were slammed, and then we were off, bumping along the road. Something dull pressed against the back of my neck.

‘Listen well, UN man,’ Frank said, ‘I’ve taken down a lot of fuckers like you without losing a wink of sleep, so do me a favor: try to escape. I’ll blow your fucking head off, right here.’

Not-Frank said, ‘Oh, calm down.’

I didn’t say a thing.

The truck swung around and we started going down the road. There had been movies and poorly made television shows that I’d seen in the past where the bound and blindfolded hero kept track of his progress by listening to passing sounds, by measuring the thumps of the tires against potholes and by gauging through some internal compass how many lefts and rights he took to his place of captivity.

I never said I was a hero. The only thing I could gauge was when we left the paved road for a dirt road. We traveled for a bit until we stopped, and Frank said, ‘George, c’mon, time for a search.’

So George—previously not-Frank—helped me off and I stood by the side of the road, hearing the truck engine rumbling in front of me. Frank undid the ropes on my wrists and nudged me. ‘Strip,’ he said.

‘Excuse me?’ I asked.

‘Strip. Take off your clothes. Remove everything you’ve got on, except for the hood.’

I took a breath from inside the hood. ‘No.’

George played good cop. ‘C’mon, guy, don’t make a fuss. We don’t have that much time.’

‘Nope.’

Though I was expecting it, the blow to the back of my shoulders still stunned me. I fell to the ground, and then there were a few kicks before Frank, voice laboring from his exertions, said, ‘Will you take off your fucking clothes, huh?’

I gasped. ‘No. Take them off yourself if you’re in such a fucking hurry.’

Which was what they did—after a few more blows. In a couple of minutes I was standing there, swaying back and forth, naked in the cold except for the hood. I could hear Frank and George murmuring and then my clothes and boots were dumped at my feet. ‘Here. Dress yourself. But keep the damn hood on or we’ll shoot you.’

It was hard going, but I managed. As I struggled to finally get my boots on, I said, ‘What was that all about?’

Frank didn’t say anything. But George, again seemingly playing good cop, said, ‘You look like a smart guy, all things considered. I’m sure you can figure it out.’

I got everything back on and said, ‘My watch?’

‘Sorry,’ Frank said, laughing. ‘Confiscated. Hey, George, you want the book?’

George said, ‘Nah, I’ve got plenty of books. Orwell, huh? I remember reading one of his books back in high school. Nineteen Eighty-Four, it was called.’

Frank said, ‘Was it any good?’

‘Shit, I don’t know. Couldn’t finish it. Cribbed from Cliff s Notes for the term paper I had to write. Here you go.’ George stuffed the book back inside my coat and I was led back to the truck. As George was helping me up, I muttered, ‘Tracking device.’

‘Huh?’

I raised my voice. ‘You’re looking to see if I’m carrying some sort of tracking device. Am I right?’

George said nothing, but Frank said, ‘Yeah, I guess you’re a smart one. Yep, looking for a tracking device. Just in case you were a plant, being sent to infiltrate one of our base camps. Set up a homing signal for some of those fuckers to bomb us.’

Another nudge. ‘Just be glad you don’t have any fresh scars, you know? Heard from some militia groups in Idaho, by shortwave, that some UN guys were infiltrating their base camps with tracking devices that had been surgically implanted. So. Like I said. Be glad you don’t have any fresh scars.’

‘And why is that?’

George sounded apologetic. ‘We would have shot you at the side of the road.’

Though they didn’t ask me to, I kept quiet for the entire rest of the trip.

About fifteen or so minutes later we passed through two checkpoints, the truck having slowed down considerably. I could make out a variety of sounds—people talking, machinery, other vehicle engines—and the smell of woodsmoke. The truck came to a stop and once again I was helped off. My hands were untied and the hood was removed, and I stood there blinking, taking it all in. We were in a wooded area that had been cleared of brush and saplings, so only the taller evergreens shaded us from overhead. In front of me was an old school bus up on cement blocks, its yellow paint faded away almost to a dull white, the tires rotting in places, parts of the sides rusting away. The bearded guy who seemed in charge came up to me. ‘Here’s the rules. In there —’ he motioned to the school bus ‘- is your new home. You go in there and stay still until we come for you. There’s a potty in the rear. You come out the door, you look out the windshield or windows, and you’re a dead man. Understood?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Can I ask a question?’

‘Sure,’ the bearded man said.

‘You said I was under arrest,’ I said. ‘What’s the charge?’

‘Crimes against humanity,’ the bearded man said, with-out a trace of humor.

I went into the school bus, recalling all the times that I had climbed these same types of metal steps on my way to school when I was younger, dumber and sure as hell a lot happier. But I had never been in a bus like this before. It had been adapted for its new use: most of the seats had been unbolted and taken out. I walked down the aisle, past soiled mattresses lying on the metal. The floor creaked as I went to the rear where a green wool blanket hung, concealing a chemical toilet. Someone had come in earlier, painting the windows and the windshield black, and tiny-white light bulbs, looking like they came from a Christmas tree, provided a little illumination. I sat down on one of the surviving seats, rubbed my wrists and my hands and face, and waited. The bus smelled of grease, old clothes and stale air, and fear. Especially fear.

There were faint noises coming in from outside, and still I sat there, waiting. Not good, not good at all. But at least I had been arrested. I had been arrested for something -nutty as it sounded—so at any rate I was still breathing.

But until when? Nobody at the UN knew I was alive. Nobody at the UN knew where I was. And, judging by how stealthily these militiamen had brought me in, I doubted that the UN knew the location of this particular camp.

I shifted around, thought about all the children who might have ridden in these very same seats, wondered if they had grown up and were now busily slaughtering their long-distance neighbors who were coming up here for help. I looked at the window, saw something. I went closer and saw that somebody had carefully scraped away a bit of the black paint, allowing a tiny peephole to the outside. I remembered the warning—look out the windshield or the windows, you’re a dead man—but I couldn’t see how I could be caught.

But still…

I hesitated only for a moment. Had my grandfather hesitated at Dieppe? I looked closer out the window, saw the campsite. The grounds had been cleared of underbrush and other barriers, leaving tall evergreens and other trees. Camouflaged netting had been stretched between the tree trunks, hiding the complex from prying eyes overhead. If the militiamen could keep their machinery and fires under control, then thermal detection could be thwarted. Sure, maybe a spy satellite could peer through almost everything—I knew that some of the American satellites had wide-range radar that could penetrate the overhead netting—but since the Russians weren’t cooperating in this UN mission and the American satellites obviously weren’t available, I could see how this camp had remained hidden.

In front of me were mobile trailers, tents, pickup trucks and groups of armed men who were moving about, eating, talking among themselves or cleaning their weapons. There were even a dozen or so horses, off to the left, grazing peacefully from oatbags hung around their necks. I got up and went to the other side of the bus. The same type of peephole had been scraped away, but the view here was not as interesting: just a cleared lane of dirt and a woodline a few meters away, and a few strands of rusting barbed wire stretching away on both sides. That was all. Below the window someone had carved a message into the paint. I looked closer, felt a chill as I saw a Star of David, and below that, in tiny letters: S. Steinberg, please remember me. I went back to the seat, sat still for a moment and then looked at my wrist. No watch, of course. Confiscated earlier. I reached into my coat pocket, took out my book of Orwell essays, and settled down to read.

There was nothing else I could do.

Lost in thought after reading an essay about Orwell’s experiences in the Spanish Civil War, I jumped as the door up forward slammed open and a younger militiaman came in. His face was shadowed with stubble and his head was almost fully covered with a black wool cap.

‘Come along,’ he said.

I kept the book open, not knowing why I was doing what I was doing, only that it felt right. ‘You didn’t say the magic word.’

The militiaman looked confused. ‘What do you mean, “the magic word”?’

‘Please,’ I said. ‘That’s the magic word.’

He shrugged, reached under his coat, pulled out a pistol. ‘Here’s my fucking magic words: Smith and Wesson. How about that?’

I closed my book, put it back in my jacket. ‘They’ll do.’

I got up and headed to the front of the bus, the floor creaking again under my weight. Outside, two more militia members flanked me and I fell in with them. Again, this is the place in the movie where the hero overpowers the armed militiamen, hot-wires a pickup truck with a paperclip and a snappy quip, and then roars away to safety. But this particular hero just shivered and looked around at the campsite. It looked like nearly a hundred people were living there, under the trees and in the trailers and tents. I saw a number of women and children as well as the men I’d already noticed. If there was any particular uniform, it was blue jeans or camouflage pants plus military-surplus jackets. Almost every person I saw was carrying a weapon, even the women and some of the children. Two of the kids, young boys about nine or ten, pointed guns at me and made shooting noises. I flinched, making one of my escorts laugh. ‘Don’t worry, UN man,’ he said. ‘Those guns are just plastic.’

‘For now,’ the other one said.

I kept quiet.

At the nearest trailer, a militiaman standing guard opened the door and I went in. I noticed something odd on the side of the trailer, two words painted in red. RED RULES! This trailer looked like it had once been a residential home, but the chairs and couches had been taken away. The small room, with thick soiled carpeting, had a wooden desk in the center, and behind the desk was the same bearded man who had arrested me back at the general store. At each side of the desk stood an American flag and another flag sporting a blue ensign and seal that I couldn’t recognize. In front of the desk was an empty chair, straight-backed and wooden. My escorts stayed behind at the door. The bearded man looked up at me and said, ‘Have a seat.’

‘All right, I will,’ I said, taking the empty chair.

The bearded man picked up a pen and prepared to write on a yellow legal pad. ‘The name is Saunders. Royal Saunders. I’m colonel-in-chief of the Free Columbia Militia. Your name?’

‘Simpson. Samuel Simpson.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘Toronto, Ontario.’

‘Age?’ Saunders asked.

‘Twenty-six.’

The pen moved rather delicately, considering how large Saunders’s hand was. If I had been a prisoner of war I guess I could have gotten away with name, rank and serial number. But I’d been told in my training—which seemed like a lifetime ago!—that if captured one should cooperate as much as possible. What would be the point otherwise?

‘Occupation?’

‘Current or prior?’

‘Let’s start with prior,’ Saunders said.

‘A reporter with the Toronto Star.’

‘And currently?’

I looked at that calm bearded face, a face that wouldn’t have looked out of place anywhere in Toronto, at the CN Tower or the Astrodome, the face of a man who was judging my fate. I cleared my throat. ‘Special investigator, UNFORUS.’

Somebody behind me muttered something. Saunders motioned with his free hand. ‘For those of us who don’t know acronyms, could you explain what “UNFORUS” stands for?’

I had a feeling that he was playing with me, but I went along with the game anyway. ‘United Nations Force in the United States.’

‘Where did you train?’

‘Ottawa, to start. Then here in Albany, where I was assigned to my unit.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Saunders said. ‘And who invited this force into our country?’

I didn’t answer.

Saunders looked up from the legal pad. ‘I asked you a question, Samuel. Who invited this force into our country?’

‘I think you know who.’

A slight smirk. ‘Since I’m the one asking the questions, I want the answers from you. So, Samuel, who invited this force into our country?’

Third time lucky. ‘A Security Council resolution, which authorized UNFORUS after the terrorist attack on New York City and the balloon strikes last spring resulting in the… disorders and riots in certain states. You know that’s why the UN came in.’

‘A resolution. A piece of paper. And it gave you and everybody else reason to invade us, is that right?’

‘The Security Council authorized the force, because of the…the disturbances taking place here. That’s why. Even the American ambassador to the UN didn’t vote against the resolution. He abstained. Even your President didn’t come out directly to oppose it. Some of your senators and congressmen were even in favor of the intervention. Which enabled the resolution to pass, which in turn authorized the creation of UNFORUS.’

‘And how long did that traitorous ambassador live after that vote? One week? Two weeks? Even with him being in Geneva and all?’

‘I don’t recall.’

‘And why did you join this force?’

I shrugged. ‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’

‘Try me.’

‘I like the States. Always have. And when the troubles started, well, I wanted to do my part to help out. I was bored with my reporting job. I thought I could make a difference by signing up with the UN.’

‘By spying against us?’ Saunders asked sharply.

‘I wasn’t spying.’

More murmuring behind me. Saunders talked lower and slower, like he was trying to make a point. ‘You’re a foreigner. You’re in this country illegally. You and the rest of your crew have high-tech surveillance and tracking equipment. We don’t care what you say about why you’re here. We know your real mission. You’re identifying targets, identifying areas to strike, for the next round of attacks, to weaken us even further.’

‘I wasn’t spying.’

Saunders went on as though he hadn’t heard me. ‘Bad enough that you and the other UN folks snuck in after the bombings and the balloon strikes, killing more of us and forcing us to accept your intervention. Now you’re setting us up for the next round of attacks, even worse than before. Take away our sovereignty. Take away our flag. Take away our guns.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘That’s our secret plan. Take away your guns. You see, we have this funny little idea about men and guns. We think it’s a bad thing when men with guns start killing their neighbors, start raping their women, slaughtering their children, shooting them in hotels or buses or cars. We think it’s a bad thing when—for whatever reason—the local, state and federal governments seem incapable of preventing such slaughter. That’s why we’re here. To stop the killing and document what happened -and to prosecute the guilty.’

Someone behind me whispered, ‘See? They admit it. They’re here to take everything away from us.’

I rubbed at my eyes. ‘Listen, do you folks know anything about sarcasm? Do you?’

Saunders stared right at me. ‘We know a lot of things. We also know that you and your kind don’t belong here.’

‘There’s been an agreement, an armistice.’

He made a motion with his hands. Then, in a blur of activity, I was grabbed and wrenched back as the chair was pulled away. I fell on my butt and then the kicking started as I turned over and tried to protect my head with my hands and arms. I rolled around the floor, screeching and hollering, remembering my earlier training: if you’re ever attacked, make a lot of noise. It’ll either attract help or it will satisfy your attackers that they are doing enough damage.

No help was likely anytime soon, but I guess the second part worked because the kicking didn’t last that long. They stopped and I lay there as Saunders leaned over his desk and said, ‘Can you sit up?’

‘I think so.’

‘Then do it.’

I sat up, my ears ringing. The inside of my cheek hurt where a kick had slammed it against my teeth. I looked behind me at the two militiamen, who were breathing hard, faces red, looking pretty satisfied with themselves. Then I stood up, weaving back and forth, and limped over to the chair, where I sat down.

Saunders also sat back down. ‘You asked me earlier if I knew anything about sarcasm. I’ll tell you what I know. “Sarcasm” is in the dictionary, just before “shithead”. Understand?’

I gingerly touched the edge of my jaw. ‘Yeah, I do.’

‘Good,’ Saunders said. ‘Samuel, this was a lousy interrogation. You should think of doing better next time. Or else we’re gonna start by breaking your fingers. All right?’

I just looked at him, said nothing. Saunders said, ‘Fine. Take him back to the bus. And in case you haven’t figured it out, the armistice is over.’

I guessed it was.