A moment later she put the phone down and snapped her handbag shut with finality. She smiled warmly at the receptionist. “He’ll see me,” she said.
The long, high-ceilinged DIA headquarters was the center of a storm of subdued but feverish activity. There were half a hundred men there as Libby passed through, and a haze of cigarette smoke rose in the room, sucked upward by the ventilators. Telephones buzzed sharply; at some of the desks men were handling two and three calls at a time, speaking in rapid, hushed voices. For all the activity there was an unnatural hush over the place; a bank of teletypes clattered along one wall, and a dozen unit-dispatchers were speaking into sound-dampened microphones.
Everywhere was a flurry of clerks, division heads, scribes, all so feverishly intent on what they were doing that they nearly tripped over her as she came down the corridor.
Across the dispatching room she could see a huge wall map, with red flags mounted for each DIA field unit alerted—the focal point for all the activity—and Libby felt a sudden sick, uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. There was an air of tension here, a sense of suppressed urgency that suddenly recalled to her the confused, puzzling nature of the morning TV-cast she had seen. A powder keg smoldering, with the DIA working full strength to keep it under control, working so silently and smoothly that no one else sensed it, while the whole country coasted along in its usual indifferent, video-hypnotized, confident, imperturbably stable way.
She had a mental picture, suddenly, of a calm ripple-free ocean surface, with monsters locked in some sort of leviathan death struggle just beneath the surface.
The door to McEwen’s office was wide open. Julian Bahr sat at the director’s desk, the cone of a dictating machine in one hand. Frank Carmine was nearby. A dozen other people were there, shoving reports under Bahr’s nose, leaning over to exchange a word or phrase, nodding sharply and hurrying off. He saw her, and said something almost audible and unpleasant to Carmine, and went back to his dictating. His voice cut sharply across the murmur in the room, incisive, impatient, commanding.
She did not see McEwen, and the sick feeling grew stronger. Here was the center of the sense of urgency and tension that pervaded the place. Bahr’s face was tense and angry, his eyes bloodshot, his mouth a hard, confident line as he dictated. With her trained psychologist’s eye Libby could see the danger signals like foot-tall handwriting on the wall. The controls, the adjustments she had tried so hard to build into his personality were beginning to snap, one by one.
“Julian, I want to talk to you.”
He slammed the microphone down and pulled her to the side of the room. “Damn it, Libby, I can’t see you now. Go on down below and I’ll be down when I can break away.”
“We have an appointment now.”
“Yes, I know. In an hour.”
“You’re lying. You’re stalling me, and you know it.”
His scowl deepened. “So I’m lying. I told you I’m busy.”
“I know you’re busy. So am I. That’s why I’ve got to talk to you today. Now.”
“Look,” he said, “I’ve got a Condition C problem to handle, and a new job to get under control. I don’t have time for your . . . interview.”
The deliberate vulgar connotation on the last word made her face flush red, but she refused to be driven off with insults. “All right,” she said, “then I’ll drop your case right now. I’ll have another worker assigned to you tomorrow, if you like. A man, in case you don’t want any more . . . interviews . . . with women.”
Bahr stared at her, his face heavy with anger. She knew she had struck his Achilles’ heel—his savage, almost pathological fear of the DEPCO mind invaders, the one beast in his Twenty-First Century jungle he did not know how to cope with. He glared at her, his hand still clutching her arm. Then he nodded to the anteroom that still had his name on the door, and pushed her roughly inside. He kicked the door shut and turned on her. “All right, what do you want?”
“Julian, what’s going on here? Where’s Mac?”
Bahr told her. It was like a slap in the face. “We’re keeping it out of the newscasts until we have things under better control. Of course we notified the key government people.”
“But . . . dead.” She shook her head helplessly. Now there was no doubt why Adams had come to her office.
“He’s had a bad heart for a long time,” Bahr said.
“Particularly since you’ve been bucking him,” Libby said bitterly.
“Look, Lib, you know I’d have gone down on the floor for Mac. When he heard that Project Frisco had been compromised, it was more than he could take.”
“And you’re the director now,” Libby said.
“For the time being, yes. I can’t let this Project Frisco sag while DEPCO bickers about a new appointment.”
“Oh, it won’t sagl Not with Julian Bahr running things.” She turned on him viciously. “You should have seen yourself out therel The Commanding General, whipping his whole Army into trembling readiness. They’re like a pack of bloodhounds baying for the hunt. You love it, don’t you? Blood pressure up, adrenals pumping, ego swelling up lite a big purple balloon . . . .”
“That’s about enough from you,” Bahr said.
“No, it’s not quite enough, Julian. Adams was in to see me this morning. You’re going to have to resign as director.”
“Resign!” The anger fell away from Bahr’s face, leaving incredulity in its place. “But I’ve been working for five year for this job.”
“I know that. I’ve been watching you, and I knew all along it was coming to this. You can’t keep the job. DEPCO won’t let you.”
“They’ve got to let me,” Bahr said flatly. “Nobody else knows what Project Frisco is . . . not even BRINT. They’re going out of their minds over there; they don’t even know the cover-name for the Project. But since Wildwood, Project Frisco is a Condition C operation. We aren’t dealing with Eastern Bloc activity, Lib. It’s more than that.”
Then he told her about the U-metal, and the exit monitors, and the whole story.
“You mean you think something . . . extraterrestrial . . . was responsible for the raid?”
“For everything. God knows how long it’s been going on. The thermite fires, the disappearances . . . Did you know that James Cullen vanished from his home last night? There’s no man in the country who knows more about our Stability Control system, and now all of a sudden he’s gone. Libby, somebody’s got to track this thing down and find out what’s happening while there’s still time. Nobody else could do it, but I can push it through. I’ll do it if I have to run my men into their graves.” He stopped suddenly. “You think I’m lying, don’t you?”
“No, Julian, I think you’re telling the absolute truth.”
“You don’t think I can do it, do you?”
Libby did not answer.
“And you don’t want me to try,” Bahr said bitterly. “You’d rather have me stick my neck in the yoke like a work horse and just pull, let somebody crack a whip over me . . . pull like all the other workhorses all day long, and at night trot home to my own little pasture and play stud to you. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Well, I don’t like taking orders from people who aren’t as good as me. I’ve taken too damned many orders, and now I’m going to give some . . . .”
“Julian, you just won’t understand.” She turned away, but he jerked her around. The enthusiasm was gone from his face now, and there was anger in its place.
“You’d like to stop me, wouldn’t you?” he said. “Push me back in the rut. Punch some new holes in my Stability Card and dump me back at the bottom of the heap again. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“It isn’t what I want or don’t want,” Libby said wearily. “If you won’t step down now, I can’t protect you any more. You’ll have a DEPCO man in your office before you can turn around. You’ll never know what hit you. They’ll find that you’re unstable and dangerous for anything but a green-card job. They’ll get one look at your Stability p
rofile and downgrade you right into Critical Ward. Then they’ll give you recoop and shock-analysis, and if there’s anything left you’ll spend the rest of your life picking oranges somewhere. That’s not what I want, Julian. That’s the law.”
He looked at her and suddenly laughed. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “You’ve been handing me this Stability garbage for five years now. Acting like I’d committed some crime that you were covering up for me. Always trying to make me stop pushing. Why, every time I took a step up the ladder you’d nearly have a fit. As if I couldn’t handle the job.”
“It’s not that,” she said. “It’s what you might do in the job. And I’ve been covering for you, believe me, but I can’t do it any longer. If you don’t quit this job right now, I can’t help you any more.”
He walked around the room, slamming his fist into his palm. “Okay,” he said unexpectedly. “Ill quit, then. But not now. Not today. Project Frisco is urgent, and there’s nobody else to take over. Ill need time to get it straightened out.”
“How much time? Two days? Three?”
“God, no! I couldn’t get anything done that soon.”
She shook her head. “No good, Julian. I’ve got to have a definite date. You’re up for an automatic DEPCO check right now. You can’t get away from it . . . the best I can do is stall them. And if you won’t give me a definite date, I’ll call them right now.”
“For Christ sake, what do you want me to do?” Bahr burst out. Then he stopped, searched her face. “Libby . . . .”
“I mean it, Julian.”
“You’re bluffing,” he said. “You won’t call them.”
“I took an oath when I joined DEPCO. I can’t leave you in this job.”
“Oath, garbage! You haven’t lived up to that thing since the day you signed it. If I get my Stability clearance revoked, it’s your neck, too. There goes your career. Think about that.”
“I already have.” Libby turned and picked the phone off the desk that used to be his desk, and dialed the DEPCO exchange.
Bahr watched her make the connection all the way through to Adams’ office. Then he hit her with it.
“You’d better think about Timmy before you make that call,” he said.
Very slowly, Libby put the phone back on the hook, turned to face him. All the fight was gone from her suddenly. She felt weak, and sick. “You couldn’t be that rotten,” she said. “Not even you.”
“I want this job.” He wouldn’t look at her face.
“Julian, you promised.”
“Sure, I promised. Things are different now, that’s all. I’m not going to do any parting favors for somebody who’s going to sell me down the river.”
“Julian, he’s your child, too. I’m entitled to one child, with my job rating. I’ll raise him and support him. I won’t tie you down or ask for partial support. All I want is your signature and a BHE test. Is that asking a favor?”
“You can stand a five-point cut in your Stability rating,” Bahr said. “I can’t. I can’t even stand a DEPCO review. Particularly when my therapist has been . . . .”
“I can claim it was part of the therapy,” she pleaded. “I’m willing to take the blame.”
“They’ll put you under polygraph.”
“I have contacts. Some of my father’s friends . . . .”
“Then get me a white card!” Bahr said.
“I can’t do that. Julian . . . he’s your son. I don’t want to lose him. Do you want him to go through the same thing you did: the Playhome, and Playschool, and Techschool and everything? You don’t know what those schools are like now. They didn’t experiment with the children when you went . . . .”
“Those are DEPCO projects,” Bahr said. “That’s your outfit running them. Don’t you like them?”
“There’s a lot about DEPCO I don’t like, but that’s neither here nor there . . . .”
“Then get them changed!”
“They’re all right, most of the time. Most of the kids come through all right, as long as they’re not too stubborn or independent. But what if he’s like you, Julian? What if he lights back?”
“Then good for him. I took it, he can.”
Libby pushed away from him, looked at him coldly. “I could name you anyway, and have you dumped as a Stability risk for refusing to accept paternity.”
“And I can get eight men to swear you picked them up and look them to bed without a prostitute’s license. Eight men who can keep up the story under polygraph.”
“Julian,” she said, “what makes you such a rotten bastard?”
“You’re the psych doc. You ought to know.” He looked at her, and suddenly, inexplicably, she was in his arms, and he was crushing her against him, his face in her hair, his hands digging desperately into her shoulders. “Oh, God, Libby, I don’t want to fight you. I didn’t mean it about Tim. I swear I’ll quit this job just as soon as I can get things under control, but it means too much to me right now. It just means too damned much. You’ve got to go along on my terms for now . .
“I know.” She tried to keep the tears back, clinging to him. “But believe me, I’m going to watch you, and if you start to go off the deep end, I’ll turn your case over to DEPCO lock, stock and barrel.”
Bahr laughed, the old confidence returning, and he tipped her chin up gently, kissed her. “That’s fair enough. You watch me.”
On the desk behind them the intercom crackled. “Julian? Frank. We’ve got a BRINT man on the wire here.”
“What does he want?” Bahr snapped. “I can’t talk to him.”
“I think you’d better,” Carmine’s voice said. “There’s been a landing up in Canada. BRINT won’t let us into the area unless you head the team yourself. They want to know right now.”
“Christ!” Bahr said. He pushed Libby away. “Look, Frank, tell them yes. I’ll be in the air in three minutes.” He snapped the speaker switch to off.
“Julian . . . .”
“Not now, not now. This is important.” He paused at the door, looked back at her. “You stall that DEPCO team,” he said. “I don’t care how you do it, but stall them. This may be the break we’ve been waiting for.”
Then he was gone. She walked around the room, trying to smooth her dress, straighten her hair, fix her make-up, cursing him for the things he could do to her, and herself because she couldn’t fight him. Two people. A man who could not possibly understand, or give a damn, and a woman who could not help loving him.
She found the elevator and started down for street level.
Part II
The Man In The Middle
Chapter Five
Harvey Alexander accepted the proffered capsule without a word and popped it into his mouth while the nurse and attendant watched. He took a mouthful of water, tossed his head back and swallowed, coughed a couple of times, and took another swallow of water to stop the coughing.
The nurse nodded. “That should hold him for another eight hours,” she said.
“He’ll be on the list for recoop in the morning,” the attendant said. “Doc says around nine.”
Alexander leaned weakly back against the pillow. His eyes were already beginning to blink. He groaned, rolled his head for a moment, and lay still, his breathing returning to the slow steady respiratory rate of the drugged.
As the nurse and attendant left, he opened his eyes and turned his head sharply, listening to hear if the door locked from the outside. The solenoid lock did not buzz, and he leaned back with a sigh. Very sloppy, but then they probably counted on the sleeper to keep him immobilized until dawn. He opened his mouth and lifted the not-yet-dissolved capsule from under his tongue and stuffed it under the pillow.
They would not be back. He had eight hours.
During all the dizzy, kaleidoscopic period while he had been recovering from the deep-probe, a single idea had been evolving in his mind—escape. His treatment at the hands of Bahr and his men convinced him that he could not expect their investigation to clear h
im, even if McEwen would back him to the hilt. The chance of even the legal process of a court-martial seemed remote. He would be recooped, and treated with chemo-shock, and wind up in a fruit-picking battalion with a new name, a new identity, and a blacked-out memory.
He looked out the window of his room. The hospital was surrounded by a ten-foot brick wall, with guards at the gates. He had only a limited view of the building itself. He was undoubtedly in a maximum-security wing that could be reached only by elevator, or by passing guards. It was, surprisingly, a suburban hospital. From the rows of dingy apartment flats spreading out beyond the wall, he guessed it was probably twenty miles or so out of Chicago.
He thought over the hospitals he knew of in the Chicago suburbs. Only two had psychotic-security facilities: the George Kelley and the Sister Andrea Farri. The Kelley seemed more likely, especially since the DIA was involved. And if he were in the Kelley . . . .
Five years before, three max-security patients had escaped from the Kelley. They were of course picked up again inside of two hours, but the incident had shaken the administration, and the entire security system had been revamped to make a similar occurrence impossible.
But Alexander, when he was assigned to the Wildwood Plant, had spent several weeks studying all the major security systems of note in the world: prisons, psychotic wards, A-plants, computing centers, the Kingsley mines, the Chinese and Soviet political camps. He had also spent three months in the Army hospital in Buenos Aires after the Antarctic incident, where as an esteemed guest he had had the run of the place, and had learned a certain amount about hospital customs and routines.
During his Mexican tour he had worked with a special Army Central Intelligence team that was trying to break up the Qualchi ring of smugglers who were constantly moving Chinese guerillas, weapons, and supplies into the southwestern United States. After six weeks of intensive coaching, and with a cyanide capsule adequately concealed, he was methodically beaten up, flogged, and dumped in a filthy Mexican bastille where three known Qualchi agents had been incarcerated, after much careful maneuvering, for slugging and robbing a couple of American touristas (actually CI agents) who were slumming in Mexicali.
The Invaders Are Comming! Page 6