Exile Hunter (22 page)

Instead, the prisoners
massed together to stay warm, nudging and prodding into wakefulness
anyone who nodded off to sleep. All night the wind blew and the snow
fell while the men clung tightly to one other and stomped their
numbed feet to save them from frostbite. Only the field kitchens,
which operated throughout the night to serve the usual sugary coffee,
kept the death toll within usual bounds.

On the fifth morning of
the convoy, Linder awoke from a fitful sleep to discover that the
storm had abated enough for the prisoners to dig the trucks out of
their snowdrifts and trample a path ahead of the lead truck to allow
the column to move. Linder helped bury the dead in a mound of snow
and said a silent prayer over their bodies. It was the first time he
had prayed in years but he felt better afterward.

Because of the steadily
mounting losses, the officer-in-charge went through roll call twice.
When they resumed the journey at last, progress was extremely slow
and guards sometimes joined the prisoners in pushing the trucks
through deep snowdrifts and up steep slippery grades. The air was so
frigid that it burned in Linder’s lungs and made the snow crunch
and squeak underfoot. Linder cursed aloud at the pain and for a
moment wished his heart would simply stop beating and put him out his
misery. After four days on the road, not knowing how much further he
had to travel had become an added source of torment. Much like the
psychological effect of the indeterminate prison sentence rather than
a term of years, Linder felt he would prefer to die now, even if the
destination were around the next bend, rather than face trudging on
day after day without knowing when it would end.

But, mercifully, that
feeling faded in the predawn of the following day, when Linder heard
the crack of a tree limb breaking overhead from the force of the wind
and looked up to find an arctic sky filled with more stars than he
could have imagined. He spent the next hour searching out familiar
constellations. Later, when the sun rose at the end of the first
march of the day, the column emerged onto a plateau covered with
slender larches that Linder found breathtakingly beautiful.

By mid-morning, the
highway re-crossed the frozen river it had been tracking and the
column veered onto a side road. Linder sensed excitement among the
guards, and before long rumors spread among the prisoners that they
were approaching their final destination. The pace of the lead truck
quickened as if eager to make up for lost time. After lunch, they
marched four more hours without a rest.

It was late evening
when the column passed through a dense stand of white pine and
descended onto a rocky plateau, where Linder spotted lights in the
distance. As they grew nearer, he saw swirls of mist and smoke rising
from a sturdy log stockade of the kind he had seen only in old
western movies, measuring some four hundred meters wide by six
hundred meters long. On the near side of the stockade stood a massive
rolling gate and, from his elevated vantage point, he noticed a tall
barbed wire fence enclosing the stockade to create a peripheral strip
of no-man’s land. At each corner of the stockade and at
hundred-meter intervals stood guard towers looking like birds’
nests perched on stilts. At a window in the nearest tower, Linder
spotted a pair of guards peering out at the column from behind the
protruding barrel of a machine gun.

Inside the stockade, he
observed a haphazard assortment of modern fabric-covered Quonset huts
and primitive log cabins around a vacant parade ground in the front
half of the camp. The rear half, separated from the front by a
double-walled barbed-wire fence, appeared largely empty but for three
rows of elongated log lodges arrayed against the stockade’s rear
wall.

As the column of some
five hundred exhausted prisoners passed through the gate, scarcely a
word was spoken. After nearly five thousand air miles and another
hundred and fifty miles on foot, their journey was finally over. Few
cared to contemplate that one man in five had not reached their
destination.

Once inside the parade
ground, the prisoners were detached from their respective cables and
allowed to gather around a dozen or more log bonfires set ablaze in
advance of their arrival. For the first time since leaving the
airport at Ross River, Linder felt a powerful heat penetrate and warm
him to the core. He approached as close as he dared to the leaping
flames, then sat cross-legged on the ground, his head drooping onto
his chest as he succumbed to sleep. But his sleep turned out to be
short-lived. For having seated himself in the inner ring of men
gathered around the fire, his front and back alternately froze and
thawed in the fire’s strong glow and from time to time he had to
fend off those in the outer circle who coveted his spot.

Despite the jostling,
Linder felt oddly light-headed as he stamped his feet against
frostbite and waited for the field kitchens to prepare the last meal
of the trip. Not even his physical misery lessened his euphoria as he
grasped that the terrible journey was over.

You die first. I’ll die later.
Camp saying

LATE DECEMBER, CAMP N-320, YUKON

Linder eyed the rows
of log lodges at the compound’s rear end greedily as wafts of smoke
scattered in the wind from their sheet-metal chimneys. He hoped
against hope that enough vacant beds would be available for every new
man to claim his own berth. Some lodges looked freshly built, though
all were of the same design, about eight meters wide by about forty
long, with doors facing south for shelter against the northwest wind.

Linder estimated that
each lodge contained two rows of about twenty triple-deck bunk beds,
for a total of more than a hundred prisoners. With three rows of six
lodges already built, existing bunks would accommodate more than two
thousand prisoners. Depending on the current occupancy rate, it might
be a squeeze to take in another five hundred men, even if some of
them doubled up or slept on the floor. But lying on the floor of a
heated lodge still beat digging a hole in the snow. Linder let out a
deep sigh of relief.

The clang of a hammer
on a steel rail soon brought the men to their feet again, filing past
the field kitchens to collect dinner. Tonight the stew seemed thicker
than usual, having been enriched with meat from a caribou the escorts
had shot earlier in the day. In addition to their usual soup and
bread, each man received a foil-wrapped meal bar from the convoy’s
reserve stores, probably to avoid hauling them back to Ross River. In
any event, Linder could not remember being as satisfied with a meal
since his arrest.

When at last the field
kitchens followed the escort trucks out the gate, Linder returned to
his bonfire to stare into the dancing flames while lifting his head
from time to time to peer through double-walled barbed-wire fence
toward the log lodges. A fresh wind swept down from the north,
showering him with sparks from the bonfire’s glowing embers.

The final roll call of
the day took place along the barbed wire at the yard’s rear. The
guards, dressed in the blue-white winter camouflage uniforms of the
Corrective Labor Administration, arranged the new arrivals in blocks
of a hundred while a squad of record-keepers consulted their
clipboards. They were still apparently sorting out the prisoner
roster when an officer entered the yard, flanked on each side by a
guard with a submachine gun.

“Attention!” an
orderly announced through a portable bullhorn. “The Deputy
Commandant will address you now.”

The Deputy was a tall
and powerfully built man of around forty, dressed in an officer’s
sheepskin overcoat and a military peaked cap. According to the
veteran prisoners who had been working among the newcomers to prepare
the roster for roll call, the Deputy’s nickname was “Wolfman.”
Now Linder could see why. The officer’s shaggy black beard seemed
to cover his entire face but for his eyes, with a heavy unibrow
nearly connecting to thick sideburns. More than that, he had a flat,
upturned nose with flaring nostrils and abnormally large canine
teeth.

The Deputy climbed onto
a stump and gazed down on the prisoners, inspecting them like a wolf
surveying a herd of grazing deer.

“Prisoners,” he
began, “You have come here for one reason: to work. Each of you has
been convicted of crimes against the state for which you are expected
to make amends through physical labor. If you labor hard enough, you
may someday leave this facility as a free man. If you do not work,
you will not eat. I expect you know where that path leads.

“My name is Bracken.
I am the Deputy Commandant of this camp. I expect each of you to
learn our rules and follow them to the letter or reap the
consequences. Morning roll call begins at six, with departure for
worksites at half past. Those who claim they are too sick to work may
report to the dispensary before breakfast for an examination. Any
diagnosis of unfitness for duty must be made before roll call. No
exceptions. Those judged fit will report to roll call on time whether
they have eaten or not.

“Your first
assignment will be to construct shelter for yourselves. Those
barracks,” the Deputy added, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at
the log huts across the wire, “were built by prisoners just like
you. You will do the same or die in the attempt. That is all.”

The Deputy Commandant’s
reference to building new barracks dashed Linder’s hopes of
spending his first night at camp under a roof, even if on a bare
floor. For the next hour or more, he stood in the windswept yard
brooding over the news while orderlies called the roll and
distributed blankets. It was nearly midnight when he returned to the
bonfire, numb with cold and barely able to walk.

At breakfast the
following morning, Linder’s shivering hands could hardly hold his
tin of oatmeal to his face without spilling its precious contents. If
not for an ample ration of coffee, he feared he might not even make
it through roll call. While waiting for that event to begin, Linder
watched dozens of miserable men return from the dispensary, having
forfeited breakfast in the vain hope of being found unfit for work.
He marveled at the inhumanity of officials who devised and enforced
so cruel a system. His years of service to the same DSS that
condemned men to camps like this now seemed like a chapter from
another lifetime.

Directly after
breakfast, fifty or more veteran prisoners of the camp arrived on the
parade ground and were presented to the new arrivals as the men who
had built the lodges and surrounding stockade. These prisoners, in
their new role as technical advisors, were to organize and train the
newcomers to build barracks for themselves and then for two thousand
more new men to follow. By Linder’s calculation, this worked out to
twenty new lodges, roughly doubling the camp’s capacity.

The supervisors went to
work at once assigning the men to teams and seeking out architects,
engineers, carpenters and various skilled workers from among the
newcomers. Those with no special skills were issued axes, hatchets,
and two-man crosscut saws and organized into crews of twenty for work
at nearby logging sites.

Amid the confusion,
Linder and Rhee found themselves assigned to the same crew and waited
together in line for a truck to carry them to their worksite. While
they stood before the gate, Linder heard scuffling and cursing from
behind. He turned in time to see a tall prisoner with red-rimmed eyes
and sunken cheeks sitting astride a smaller man; he was pummeling the
smaller man’s bloodied face with both fists.

“Ah, there
is
a God!” the larger man exclaimed in bitter triumph. “I knew I’d
find you one day!”

He struck again with
all his strength but delivered only a feeble glancing blow to his
victim’s cheekbone. By now, his chest heaved so with the exertion
that he could barely speak between rasping breaths.

“Remember me? Well, I
remember you!” the tall man continued. “You’re the lying scum
who bore false witness at my trial!”

The victim, a wiry
prisoner of about forty-five, whose salt-and-pepper hair spilled out
from under his watch cap in tight ringlets, replied by spitting a wad
of bloody mucus into his tormentor’s face.

“And I’d do it
again. You damned moneymen had it coming to you!” he sneered
without apparent fear or remorse.

“Well, take a good
look at me, because I’m the last moneyman you’ll ever see,” the
tall man replied and wrapped his long-fingered hands around his foe’s
neck.

To Linder’s surprise,
the other prisoners watched but made no move to intervene. One
onlooker, horror-stricken to see deadly violence at such close range,
doubled over and vomited onto his boots. His teammates groaned in
disgust and shoved the weakling out of the transportation queue.

By the time the guards
noticed the scuffle, the tall man had made good on his threat. The
face of his one-time accuser had turned a ghastly bluish gray. A pair
of guards, who looked no older than twenty, trotted up to the victor
and struck him from behind with their rifle butts before hauling him
to his feet while dispatching a colleague to find the Deputy
Commandant. Within minutes, Bracken arrived, gave the corpse a swift
kick as a check against malingering and, having forced the killer to
kneel, fired a single pistol shot to the back of his head. The guards
then ordered the quaking bystanders to drag the pair of corpses out
the gate by their hands and feet.

Moments later, the
Deputy joined a pair of assistants questioning a succession of
prisoners who had been culled out from the herd. One after another,
these prisoners were either escorted to the camp administration
building or assigned to a work team.

“Why are those men
getting special treatment?” Linder asked Rhee.