“Yes.”
“That was how he organized the prisoners around the country. No one could stop him. His newsletters that were mailed from Washington, Berlin, Warsaw, back to the prisoners …”
“Yes, yes. Our friend Kris Kriegel is a genius at organization. A spellbinder, too. What’s this?” Wolfe leaned over Jack’s head. From the computer screen, he read, “‘Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their Tribe
With Wolfe’s hands on his neck, Jack closed his eyes. He took a deep breath.
“Excellent!” Wolfe clapped him on the shoulder. “Simple, familiar statements! Exactly what is needed! Give them the familiar in a new context, and people will believe and do whatever you want! Isn’t that what preachers have been doing for centuries?”
Jack sighed. “If you say so, sir.”
“And what’s this? ‘And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman.’ Moses married a nigger?”
“So it was reported, sir. Moses married interracially.”
“Ah, yes. Of course.” Wolfe cleared his throat. “Moses was a Jew, wasn’t he?”
“Such is commonly believed.”
Jack typed:
“Ah, yes.” Looking up, Jack saw Wolfe frown as he read. “I’m sure Brother Kriegel knows what he’s doing.”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
Wolfe squeezed Jack’s shoulders. “Still, it is so late in the night.” Wolfe ran his hand up Jack’s arm. “You are so sweaty. Such a sweaty boy. Don’t you think it is time you filled at least one condom?”
“Sir?”
“Perhaps you need to be stimulated. Eh? You need to be stimulated a little?”
“Sexually stimulated?”
“Yes.”
“By you? Sir?”
Abruptly, Jack stood up.
In the desk’s lamplight, he faced Wolfe from a meter away.
Wolfe was shirtless, but otherwise dressed. He wore his uniform-like trousers. His boots. His holstered six- shooter.
Jack said, “Sir! The regulations of The Tribe prohibit the use of liquor and or other drugs!”
Mildly, Wolfe said, “Certainly.”
With a straight arm, Jack pointed through the cabin’s windows. “Sir! There was wide and general use of liquor and other drugs in this camp tonight!”
“Of course,” Wolfe said. “So? The boys have to blow off a little steam. More to the point”—he smiled at Jack—“we must attract them. How can we be responsible for the habits they bring with them? Someday, we will have tighter control….”
“Sir!” Jack could feel his torso pouring with sweat. He guessed the dose of salt he had had at breakfast that morning had held the sweat in his body until this unfortunate moment. “The regulations of The Tribe abhor any homosexual activity!”
“Homosexual?” Wolfe’s scalp, his hairline, appeared to move backward on his head. His right hand raised slightly toward the grip of his revolver.
“Anything that smacks of homosexuality. Sir!”
“Goddamn you! You think that I just suggested”—Wolfe breathed hard—“a homosexual…”
“You suggested stimulating me sexually. Sir!”
“That is not homosexual! You have been in prison! With nothing but men …” Staring at Jack, Wolfe lifted his revolver from his holster. “Are you accusing me of homosexuality? I will shoot you for saying such a thing! You think I will have you saying such a thing about me? I will say I came into the office and found you stealing files from the computer!”
Jack looked at the disks he had already filled on the desk.
Wolfe raised the revolver. He aimed it at Jack. “You fought with me. I had to shoot you.”
In a bored, indifferent voice, Jack said, “Shoot me.”
He waved a dismissive hand at Wolfe.
Jack sat on the edge of the cot along the inside wall of the office. He picked up the guitar. He picked a few notes, strummed a few chords.
Still aiming his revolver at Jack’s head, Wolfe said incredulously, “You son of a bitch, you think you can charm me, or something?”
Jack nodded to him. “Yes.”
Jack played and sang for Commandant Wolfe the Kander-Ebb song “Tomorrow the World Belongs to Me,” from the musical
Listening, Commandant Wolfe slowly lowered the revolver. In the lamplight, his eyes glistened.
“Goddamn you!” Wolfe said.
Before he left the office, Wolfe said to Jack, “If you mention one word of this to anyone, ever, I will shoot you! I will kneecap you! I will shoot your balls off!”
Jack played the commandant to bed.
Then he returned to pulling files from the computer.
“HI.” JUST BEFORE dawn, Tracy stuck his head around the jamb of the office door.
“‘Mornin’,” Jack said.
He had copied everything from the computer and every system attached to it he could find via Tracy’s code book. Labeled in his smallest handwriting, in his own code, he had put the floppy disks back into their boxes, back into their plastic bags, doing his best to make them look new and unused.
He had been looking forward to a few moments’ sleep.
“What are you doin’?” Tracy asked.
Jack said, “Wonderin’ about coffee.”
“You just get up?” Tracy looked at the cot at the side of the office.
“I’m up.”
“I’ll get coffee. Black?”
“Sugar.”
While Jack stirred around the office, making the cot look more slept in, reinserting the charged battery in the camcorder, he wondered if Tracy was documenting on his ever-in-hand clipboard that at that moment in history he was taking two teaspoons of instant coffee, one teaspoon of sugar, and two pints of water from the cabin’s kitchen.
Jack was grateful for Tracy’s sense of order.
He admired the way Tracy had established the camp’s computer. So very orderly. So very comprehensible. So very penetrable.
Everything in it had been wonderfully easy to steal.
“Here.” Dressed only in underpants, Tracy handed Jack his coffee. “One sugar.”
Then Tracy sat on the cot, knees drawn up, back against the wall. He was a slim teenager with dark hair, dark eyes.
“Tracy what?” Jack asked. “What’s your last name?”
“Wolfe.”
“Son of Carston Wolfe?”
“Yes.”
Although he was tired of it, Jack swiveled the desk chair around to face Tracy and sat in it. “Is Wolfe your
