by James C. Clar
The truth was that as soon as he heard Demorovic had seized power, Mokrzan knew he’d be arrested. In his country, a new broom swept clean, and there was no such thing as “retirement.”
They came for him on January 2nd, at 3:30 A.M., four men – three burly soldiers and a militia colonel he didn’t recognize. Strange, he thought; after thirty years in the capital’s bureaucracy, he knew almost every government functionary by sight. They must have imported these men from another district, fearful that locals would be inclined to treat him with the accustomed deference.
They even let him get dressed. That violation of protocol chilled him more than rough handling might have.
“Should I bring anything?” Mokrzan asked quietly.
“No,” the colonel said. “You won’t need it.”
He wondered if that meant they’d shoot him before sunrise.
Instead, after five and a half hours in a cell, he was taken to a courtroom in the Ministry of Justice. His “trial” started at ten. The huge portrait of the new president glared down over the judge’s bench. But what truly jarred him was seeing his son seated with the state prosecutors.
Their eyes met only once. The young man’s expression seemed to say, you taught me how the system works. You taught me how to survive. Neither spoke. Afterward, they avoided looking at one another.
The evidence came in crisp, damning waves. Transcripts of conversations with officials in several Western nations. Vouchers showing indulgent meals and foreign travel. A prosecutor waved the documents about like an orchestra conductor working his way through a particularly difficult symphony.
“Comrade Mokrzan’s appetites grew as his loyalty shrank,” the man stated matter-of-factly.
They produced surveillance photos of him meeting men suspected of having CIA ties.
Mokrzan said nothing. He could have explained that he’d been acting under orders from the Ministry of State Security, that two of his judges had approved those very missions. To reveal the truth would doom them now, and worse, his son.
At one point a young prosecutor asked coldly, “Do you deny consorting with agents of the West?”
Mokrzan’s voice was nearly a whisper. “I deny nothing. What would be the point?”
Reality in his country had always been malleable, truth a tool wielded by whomever held power. Thousands had perished over the years in shifting interpretations, variable exegesis. Now, inevitably, it was his turn.
At 12:30 P.M., the sentence was delivered: death by firing squad on January 16th at 9:00 A.M. The delay, he knew, was meant for interrogation. Fabricated evidence required a full and fabricated confession.
But days passed. No interrogators came. On March 10th he was trembling with dread. It wasn’t the execution that frightened him, that would be quick. It was the anticipation of torture, the hours or days that would precede it. He slept hardly at all. Meals remained untouched. By the 14th he was feverish. He understood that events seldom conformed to one’s anticipation of them. He thus allowed his mind to run wild, imagining horrors that surpassed even those he had witnessed over the decades.
On the morning of January 15th, at 1:45 A.M., he lay on his bunk, eyes closed but mind racing through a botched interrogation he’d once seen. Keys rattled in the door. He sat up sharply. Two guards entered.
“Time,” one said.
As their hands reached for him, Mokrzan felt his heart surge. He was dead before they could lift him from his bed.
On January 17th, the state newspaper reported succinctly: The traitor, Minister Mokrzan, was executed as scheduled.
The truth had never been in question.
In addition to his contributions to Sudden Flash, work by James C. Clar has appeared in Antipodean SF, Altered Reality Magazine, Freedom Fiction Journal, 365 Tomorrows, Bright Flash Literary Review and MetaStellar Magazine.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Remember that we are here to support each other.