CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Six Long’s Legionnaires stood watching him. LaBayeux grabbed his right arm and said quietly, “Now, whoever the hell you are, I know you’re carrying a piece. Probably a revolver in a shoulder holster. Get it out with your left hand, drop it on the porch.”

Sam looked at the ring of faces about him, all of them staring, unfriendly, waiting. With his left hand—and part of him was proud that his hand wasn’t quivering—he reached in under his coat and grabbed the butt of his revolver. He let it fall to the porch steps.

LaBayeux said, “Okay, now kick it off the porch.”

Sam did that, watching his weapon clatter to the ground. Oh, what a mess, what a goddamn mess.

LaBayeux twisted his arm, and Sam grunted in pain. The camp commandant leaned in and said, “What, you think we’re from the South, we’re stupid, son? Huh?”

Another twist of the arm, and Sam was silent this time, not wanting to give the man any satisfaction by asking him to stop. LaBayeux said, “Minute you got in this camp, the phone calls started up. You ain’t from the Boston FBI office. They don’t got no one comin’ up here to check on us. So who the fuck are you?”

“I’m a police inspector from Portsmouth, New Hampshire.”

“You Sam Munson?”

“No, the name is Sam Miller.”

“Why the fuck are you here, Sam Miller?”

“Because of Wotan … Wowenstein … he ended up dead in my hometown. I’m a cop. It’s my job. To find out why he was murdered there.”

LaBayeux let his arm go abruptly. “And it’s my job to do what my President tells me to do, and keep it secret, and keep shit asses like you out of the way if I have to.”

“You said earlier, do I think Southerners are dumb?”

“And?” LaBayeux had a merry grin on his face.

“No, most Southerners I meet are okay guys. Not dumb.”

LaBayeux’s grin got wider. “Nice to hear.”

“So why don’t you be an okay guy and let me out of here so I can do my job?”

“Guess I don’t feel like being an okay guy today, Yankee.”

LaBayeux punched Sam in the face, and after he fell to the ground, the kicking started.

After a few long minutes the kicking stopped, and then he was picked up, ears ringing, nose bloody, ribs aching, and LaBayeux called out, “Process him, boys, take ’im away and process ’im. His ass is now ours.”

And so he was processed.

* * *

He was dragged off the porch, and he struggled, fighting, and cried out as two burly Legionnaires twisted his arms back and cuffed him, then threw him on the ground. He tried to get up and was kicked in the head. He fell flat, eyes blurry, spit running down his chin. A car came up, and more hands grabbed him, threw him in the rear, his head and torso on the floor. A Legionnaire climbed in and Sam winced, feeling cold metal at the back of his head.

“Move or fight me, bud, and then what little brains you got are gonna be splattered o’er this fine leather, got it?” came a thick Southern voice.

Sam closed his eyes, thinking, God, what a screwup, what a total and complete screwup. “Look, I’m a cop … okay? Get ahold of my boss, this’ll all be straightened out.”

The pistol barrel pressed into his skull. “Shut up. Last month I had to clean blood ’n’ brain off this leather, don’t wanna do it again.”

He shut up.

The car sped along, taking corners and dips, and Sam was thrown back and forth. The car stopped, words were exchanged, and the car sped up again, then quickly braked.

The door flew open, hands came in, and dragged him out, stood him up. He was in a fenced-in area, facing a building, concrete and stone, letters on a wooden sign outside: PROCESSING—NO TALKING.

“Let’s go,” and he was shoved in the back, then half dragged, half propelled into the building. He was slammed through an open door and was halted on a concrete floor with a drain in the center and gray metal benches on either side of the stained plaster walls. Before Sam was a metal counter with a slim man sitting on a stool, a leather-bound ledger open before him. Bare lightbulbs hung from the concrete ceiling.

The thin man coughed, picked up a fountain pen. His Legionnaire’s uniform hung off him as if it had once belonged to a heavier man. “Name?” he said, his voice reedy.

“Sam Miller. Look, can I see LaBayeux again, the commandant, there’s been a mistake—”

A slap to the rear of his head. He tried to turn, but the Legionnaires held on to him vise-tight.

The man with the pen laboriously wrote something down in the ledger. “Son, just to make it easy for you, these be the rules. I ask you a question. You answer. You give me more than an answer, then Luke back there, he’ll whack your thick head. And each time he’ll whack you harder. You keep it up, you’ll be on the cee-ment down there, bleedin’ from your noggin. So let’s go on. Address?”

“Fourteen Grayson Street, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.”

“Occupation?”

“Police inspector, city of Portsmouth.”

The man looked up. “Religion? You don’t look Jewish. What be you, then?”

“Catholic.”

The man scribbled again. “Thought so. All right, fellas, you know the drill. Get ’im through.”

His arms were twisted up, and they pushed him past the counter. Sam thought sourly of how many times he had brought prisoners to be booked back in Portsmouth, back when he was in charge, back when the prisoners weren’t people, weren’t anything save the offenses they had done: public drunkenness, brawling, petty burglary. Sam’s offense? A simple one, a new one, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A smaller room, also made of concrete and soiled plaster, stinking of chemicals, another drain in the center of the room. Lockers and laundry baskets and another blow to the head. “Here. Strip.”

Sam didn’t move.

Another, harder blow. His knees sagged and then the cuffs were freed, and he was lifted back up. A Legionnaire said, “You’re gonna be naked here in a sec, and your choice whether you’re gonna be bleedin’ hard or not.”

Sam fumbled at his buttons while three Legionnaires watched him, and he had a quick, sharp memory of his first time in a locker room in high school, his first time being naked in front of other men, feeling awkward, shy, embarrassed, like everybody was staring at him.

He stripped. Stared at a brown spot on the far wall that looked like old blood spatter. His legs started shaking. “Stand still,” and a hand on his shoulder, the hum of an electric razor, and his hair was on the floor. “Keep still.” A man with a hose in his hand stood in front of him, laughed. “Poor bastard’s hung like a hamster,” and sprayed him with a cloud of dust. Sam coughed, his legs shaking harder, and some clothes were tossed at him. Thin cotton, not even thick enough to be called pajamas, striped blue and white, and his shoes fell at his feet.

“Feeling generous today,” one of the men said. “You get to keep your shoes.”

“But no socks!” another one called out. “Don’t want people think we’re goin’ soft.”

Sam awkwardly put his bare feet into his leather shoes. “Guys, let me make one phone call, to the FBI, a guy named LaCouture, and—”

The Legionnaire who had disinfected him raised his truncheon. “Shut up or those new clothes of yours, they’re gonna be stained. Now let’s go. And it’s your lucky day, asshole, our tattoo man is gone for the day. So no number on your wrist. Tomorrow.”

Aches and pains everywhere, Sam walked out into the cloudy sunshine, the sound of the equipment thumping in his brain. Up ahead, a gate opened at a fence, and he was pushed in.

“Barracks Six, your new home. Work hard, and you’ll have a nice life.”

More laughter, and he walked unsteadily forward, by himself knowing he was no longer Sam Miller, police inspector for the city of Portsmouth. He was cold, he ached, and his ribs and jaw hurt. He was inside the camp for real, in an area filled with barracks, the ground packed dirt. In the distance the walls of the quarry rose up on three sides, smoke and dust in the air. He stood before one of the barracks, shivering, the thin clothing providing hardly any protection. He rubbed at his eyes, crusted from the stone dust in the air. Barracks Six, the numeral painted in dark blue. It was made of rough-hewn wood and built on square concrete piers. His new home. He opened the door. It creaked.

Darkness.

Strong stench of unwashed bodies, other odors as well.

He took a step in, his eyes adjusting to the weak light. There were bunks crammed tight, floor to ceiling, four beds up. Movement as well, as men turned to stare at him, raising their thin shaved heads. He took a step forward, winced at the sharp pain in his ribs and hips.

“Hello?” he said.

Voices murmured in his direction. He took another step forward, the boards creaking underfoot.

The heads turned away. He kept on walking, trying to breathe through his mouth, to block out the stench that seemed to surround him like an old blanket as he went deeper into the barracks. Two small coal stoves with chimneys going up through the roof, more bunks, and in the very rear, what had to be the latrine, for the stench was thicker there. By the latrine was an empty bunk. He saw a bare mattress, a single blanket folded at the end, and a threadbare pillow.

One man unfolded himself from a nearby bunk and came over, favoring one hip. “You new, eh?” the man said.

“Yeah, I am,” Sam said.

“Thought so. Look too clean, too fresh. American?”

“Yeah.”

The man was about six inches shorter than Sam, his head close-shaved. He had a thin dark beard and a prominent Adam’s apple. His prison uniform hung like old laundry on his thin body. “My name is Otto,” he said.

“I’m Sam. Are you German?”

Otto shook his head. “Netherlander. Dutch. Though originally German. Are you Juden?”

“Excuse me?”

“Juden. Jew.”

“No, I’m not.”

Otto looked nervous. “Ah. So why are you here?”

“Because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and asked the wrong questions.” Sam looked at the faces and said, “Why are they staring at me?”

Otto glanced back and said, “They are nervous. You are clean, an American, and you say you’re not a Jew. They think you are a spy. An informer. Who can blame them?”

“And you?”

The Dutchman cocked his head. “Not sure. Maybe I’m more trusting. Who knows, eh?”

Sam said, “Look, are you all Jews here?”

“Of course.”

“From where?”

Otto shrugged. “Everywhere. Germany. Poland. Holland. Even some English in another bunkhouse, all Jews.”

“How did you get here?”

Another shrug. “How else? We were taken from other camps, brought into trains and then ships. Ships across the Atlantic. All of us got very sick. And then to a military port. Virginia, I think, and then another train here.”

Sam could barely believe what he had just heard. “You mean you all came here from Europe?”

“Yes, of course.”

“But why are you here?” Sam asked.

Otto smiled, his lips twitching mirthlessly. “We all volunteered.”

“Volunteered? To come here to this camp?”

Otto’s smile remained. “Of course. Why wouldn’t we?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Why would you volunteer?”

“America. We were told we would come to America to work, to survive, and even if we came here to work, who would not want to come to America?”

Sam looked to the man’s wrist.

It bore a series of tattooed numbers.