Holy City: Chapter Two
“You’re on guard duty.” Kadek woke Fontan up at the break of dawn with a swift kick of his boot.
Fontan kept her eyes closed. “I have three more days before my next shift.”
“Not the checkpoint, you idiot. The prisoner. You brought him in. He’s your responsibility. You have three minutes to get to the brig.”
Fontan opened her right eye and looked at the sergeant. “The brig?”
“You have two minutes and forty seconds.” Kadek was standing at the end of Fontan’s bed waiting, staring down at his wristwatch. “Two minutes and thirty seconds.” Fontan jumped up and dressed herself as though she were in the middle of a raid, throwing on her uniform as the sergeant kept time, making it with only five seconds to spare.
Jannis was sitting at a wooden desk at the entrance of the brig when Fontan entered. The first cell over Jannis’ left shoulder was empty, the prisoner must be in one of the next two cells further down the row. Jannis’ eyes drooped and his face hung heavy and low as a half-drunk mug of coffee sat on the desk in front of him.
“How long have you been here?” Fontan asked innocently. Jannis’ face turned a shade of red Fontan had never seen before. The sergeant probably woke him up right after lights out, after the captain decided they were going to keep the prisoner for interrogation instead of sending him to the interior.
Jannis stood up leaving the mug of coffee on the desk. “We should have shot him when we had the chance.” Jannis bumped into Fontan as he walked by. “I’ll be back at eighteen hundred.”
“Eighteen hundred?”
“Didn’t Kadek tell you? We’re the only two on brig duty. Two twelve-hour shifts. We should have shot him.”
Jannis slammed the door leaving Fontan alone with the prisoner.
Pvt. Fontan craned her neck to look at the second cell. That was empty, too. The prisoner had to be in the last cell, the one at the very end of the brig. Fontan wandered back, pretending she wasn’t gawking like a visitor to a zoo. The prisoner was on the bed with his eyes closed, lying face up to the ceiling. Fontan tiptoed back to the desk, not wanting to wake him.
Twelve hours is a long time to sit at a desk and stare at a wall. Fontan sat staring at the wall for four hours before she was interrupted. The door opened flashing in sunlight. The captain and an MP who Fontan knew by sight walked in.
Cpt. Horace looked down at the seated private. Fontan jumped to her feet several beats too late and saluted the captain who did not salute back. The captain pointed to a lined notepad on the desk. “You take notes,” and walked away, the MP following with keys in his hand. Fontan scrambled for the notepad spilling the half-full mug of coffee over the desk.
“Private!” Cpt. Horace shouted from down the row before Fontan had a chance to clean up the mess. By the time Fontan arrived with pad and pencil in hand, two chairs were in the cell across from the prisoner’s bed and the captain was sitting in one of them.
The prisoner was sitting sideways on his bed, his eyes barely peering through the thicket of hair. Fontan scurried to her seat and the MP shut the cell door, locking them inside.
Horace looked the prisoner up and down. The prisoner was getting used to being looked at in this way. “You need a shave.” The captain looked up and down again. “And a haircut.”
“Yes,” the prisoner replied in a soft, even tone.
“What’s your name?”
“I have no name.”
“That’s strange. Everybody has a name.”
“The desert took my name.”
The captain laughed an insincere laugh. “What was your name before the desert took it?”
The prisoner stared at the captain but did not answer.
“Why don’t you want to tell me your name? Only a man with something to hide would refuse to tell me their name.”
Horace took out a cigarette and lit it. He smiled at the prisoner, whose vision remained locked on the captain through the upper corners of his eyes, his head slightly stooped like a giraffe bending down to get the leaves on a short tree.
“I know you’re a deserter. Everyone here knows you’re a deserter. Hell, even Sgt. Kadek knows you’re a deserter and he barely knows his own shoe size. The only question I have,” the captain flicked some ash on the floor, “is which army did you desert from.”
The prisoner brushed the hair out of his eyes revealing a plain inexpressive face. “I’m a civilian.”
“There’s blood on your shirt?”
“There is?” The prisoner answered.
“Is it your blood?”
The prisoner was silent once again.
“If it’s not your blood then whose blood is it?”
The prisoner kept his head stooped, still staring up through the corner of his eyes.
“Did you have a companion in the desert?
“No.”
“There aren’t any wounds on your body.”
“That’s not true.”
Horace let out a little laugh.
“None that would cause that much blood.”
The prisoner raised his head for the first time and looked directly at Cpt. Horace. “I come from Alexandria. I walked through the desert to this checkpoint for refuge from the war.”
Horace waited. It seemed like the prisoner had stopped mid-sentence, mid-thought, cutting off his own words. The prisoner dropped his head again. He was done speaking.
“I suppose it’s possible you’re not a deserter, at least not in the normal sense. You could always be a spy,” the captain tapped more ash onto the floor. “Of course, we’d still have the same question, from which army. One might think it’s a little easier because instead of three options we’d have only two. And maybe it is easier, but it’s still a toss of a coin, I would like more assurance than that. My superiors are going to want more assurance than that. So we’re back to the original question. Which army are you from?”
Horace held the cigarette between his fingers, letting it slowly burn as he waited for the prisoner to answer. It was more than a simple cliché of interrogation. The cigarette was a provocation as well. In Vitesia smoking was common. In Lyonesse cigarettes were banned. And in Damasia they weren’t banned outright, but those who smoked were looked down upon for their weakness. The Party made it known that members and good citizens should not give in to such vice. Because of the Party’s position, the captain would have never have gotten away with smoking a cigarette like this back at headquarters or even while off duty at any public place in the interior. However, on the outskirts of the border, at the Accadan Checkpoint, he made the rules, it was an indulgence he enjoyed, but it was also a test of his prisoner. Horace was sure the prisoner’s reaction to the cigarette would give him his first clue.
But the prisoner wasn’t giving away any clues, even as the end of the cigarette turned to ash hanging precariously over the floor like a high diver waiting for the right moment to jump. The captain gave it a push, flicking the long stem.
“You speak very good Damasian for a man from Alexandria. You don’t have an accent.”
“I was raised that way. I speak several languages.”
“Raised? Raised by who?”
“My mother.”
“And her name is?”
The prisoner did not answer. Instead he smiled. He smiled as if recollecting a pleasant childhood memory. This annoyed the captain.
“If you really were a refugee from Alexandria you wouldn’t have any hesitation to tell me your name.”
“If I was a spy or a deserter I could make up a name and you wouldn’t know any better. My name will mean nothing to you. It’s only a name. Like any other. When I left Alexandria I left that name behind.
“Were you in government there? Were you a criminal? Why would you choose to exile yourself? Why would you choose to make an impossible journey through the Aten Desert?”
“Life had become difficult.”
“Difficult? How?”
“You may not know this captain but the people of Alexandria are starving. This war that your nation and the other nations have decided to wage against each other is strangling our population. The blockade has stopped all shipments of food. And the bombs. The bombs fall most nights now. They have sent many underground like rats hiding from the world above. But unlike rats, we don’t hide very well. Many are killed each night. Soon my city will be rubble. I decided I wasn’t going to stay there to die.”
“So you decided to come here instead. Why Damasia?”
“I heard that life was perfect here.”
Horace raised his eyebrows and studied the prisoner, caught off-guard by the answer. He weighed his next words carefully. He could sense the prisoner was trying to trap him somehow. If that feeling was correct, there could be no doubt the prisoner was a spy and not just any spy, but a spy from his own nation that had been sent to this outpost. To what end? To test him? To test the troops, the morale? Maybe it was another purge. Horace had survived the last two, but his luck would run out. Everybody’s luck eventually runs out in Damasia. There was always a stray comment, an imperfect political stance, an unfortunate hesitation that could be used to convict.
Horace looked at the prisoner’s hair again, which dangled like overgrown weeds. He looked at the prisoner’s unkempt beard, which was in danger of swallowing his face and removing all recognizable traits of his previous life. Was he looking at a disguise?
“You need a shave. And a haircut. I can’t trust a man if I can’t see his eyes.” Horace abruptly got up from his chair and threw what was left of the cigarette on the floor. He didn’t stub it out with his foot. He let it smolder on the ground.
“Did you get all of that private?”
“Yes, sir.” Fontan was standing next to the captain, notepad in hand. The captain leaned over to look at the handwritten notes. The prisoner hadn’t moved from his place on the bed, his posture stooped, his eyes now focused on the cigarette. His eyes stayed on the cigarette as the cell door closed hard, iron rattling against iron.
“I want those notes typed up by fourteen hundred. No one else is to see them. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir”
“It looks like I picked the right person for the job. I don’t think anybody else could read your writing if they tried. It’s like a secret code.”
“Yes, sir.”
Although he was outside of the cell now, the captain’s eyes were still on the prisoner, who in turn still hadn’t taken his eyes off the smoldering cigarette. The captain waited for a full minute before he turned away. Fontan followed. The MP was already at the front door.
“Follow me outside, private.”
“I don’t think I’m supposed to leave my post, sir.”
Horace gave Fontan a withering look.
“I’m sorry. Of course, sir.”
The MP stayed behind while Fontan and the captain stepped outside.
“Walk with me.”
Fontan matched the captain step for step as they walked over the grounds.
“What do you think of our new friend?”
“I don’t know.”
Horace stopped walking, so Fontan did as well. “Don’t be afraid, private. Tell me the truth. I know you have an opinion. You have to have an opinion. I want to know your opinion.”
“I just…”
“Pretend I’m not your superior officer, but another cadet. Ok?”
Fontan nodded and tried to pretend the captain was Renne or maybe Barta, she never had trouble telling either of them what she thought.
“Do you think he’s telling the truth?”
“Yes.” Fontan surprised them both with her answer. “I mean no. I mean…what I mean sir, is I believe him when he speaks. He sounds like he’s telling the truth, but it can’t be true, can it? No one could survive that journey on foot, not even the most experienced scout. He’s a deserter from our army. That’s got to be the truth, doesn’t it?”
Horace encouraged Fontan to continue.
“If he’s from our army, if he’s a deserter, aren’t there photos we can check against?”
“That’s why he needs a shave. Bring him a shaving kit tomorrow morning. I’ll have Larkin there, just in case. And those notes, don’t forget to type up those notes right away.”
“Of course, sir.”
“And one more thing, private. I want to know what he does with the cigarette.”
“The cigarette, sir?”
“The one I left in his cell. Let me know if he picks it up, if he tries to smoke it, throws it out the window, whatever he does with it.”
“Yes, sir.” Fontan gave the captain an emphatic salute, happy with her new mission.
“Don’t put the cigarette stuff in your official report. Type it up at the end of your shift and give it to Larkin when you see him in the morning. It’ll be our secret.”
Next Chapter: Chapter Three
Previous Chapter: Chapter One Part Two