“No. I mean, I didn’t like it, but . . . .”
“Who bribed you, Major? What was the loophole in your security system at Wildwood?”
“There wasn’t any loophole.”
Bahr threw up his hands. “We’re getting nowhere. You admit your security system broke down. There must have been loopholes. You won’t tell us what they were. We’ll just have to stimulate your memory.” He pulled the syringe tray toward him.
“You can’t use that,” Alexander protested. “I have not been charged with any major crime or espionage. I have no legal counsel here. And only qualified therapists in DEPCO can use drugs, after a case has been properly reviewed.”
“He’s right,” McEwen said wearily from the side of the room. “He’s on sound legal ground.”
Bahr turned to the older man. “This is an emergency, and you know it. The man is obviously lying.”
“We can’t help that.”
“Mac, Project Frisco itself may hang on the information he has. This is the first real break we’ve had . . . .”
“The law is the law, Julian,” McEwen said, “Project Frisco or no Project Frisco. You can’t deep-probe this man.”
Alexander felt like yelling with relief. Bahr’s eyes glittered, and for a moment his heavy, impassive face started to twist with rage. Then he shrugged.
“Okay,” he said. “You’re the boss. We’ll just hold him, and try to clear it through Washington. We’d better check the teletype and see if anything new has turned up.”
Together Bahr and McEwen started for the door. Bahr looked back, nodded to his assistants. “See that the major is taken care of,” he said.
When Bahr was gone they took off the pressure bandages, the per-plates and salivators, the respirator and the restraining jacket. A man began winding up the long spool of polygraph tape. For Alexander the relief was almost shock-like; some inner tension that had been holding him together began to give way, and he sagged weakly when he tried to stand up. One of Bahr’s serious-faced young men wheeled in a mobile stretcher and they lifted him onto it gently, in spite of his protests that he would be all right in a moment.
“Cigarette, Major?”
He nodded, inhaled gratefully. Like many people of ability and imagination who had battled feelings of guilt and insecurity all their lives, and had gained enough insight to recognize them for what they were, Harvey Alexander feared more than anything else the psychologically abhorrent process of having his brain picked by strangers. Now, having escaped it, he was almost dizzy with elation and departing fear, hardly noticing the skillful hands that were attending him, until he felt an itching in his nose, and went to scratch it.
His wrists were bound.
He strained and thrashed, and found his ankles strapped too. A huge light was being lowered from the ceiling. Above him, like serious, pale, eager-faced gargoyles, were Bahr’s young men.
He shook his head desperately, pleadingly as the amphetamine and curare needles were flashed before his eyes, and he was suddenly violently sick, bound and helpless.
There was a sudden sharp pain in his thigh, and hopelessly, he screamed.
Chapter Three
It was a break; to Julian Bahr there was no question of that, it was the break he had been waiting for since the very beginning of it eleven months before, and now, at last when there was something for him to grab hold of, John McEwen had decided to put on the brakes. It was at that moment that Julian Bahr made the decision he had known all along was coming: John McEwen was through.
“I don’t like it,” McEwen was saying now, deliberately avoiding Bahr’s eyes as the big man paced the DIA teletype room. “I don’t like any part of it. I’ve been liking it less and less, and this thing puts the lid on it. Julian, I’ve given you a free hand; I’ve backed you right from the start of this thing, but I can’t do it any more. We’re out of our depth. We’re dealing with something we can’t handle by ourselves . . .” His voice quavered and he spread his hands helplessly.
Bahr smashed his fist into the palm of his hand, trying to choke down the anger and impatience. He liked McEwen. In the early days of his DIA work he had liked him thoroughly, and felt a powerful obligation to this fatherly, impeccably honest older man who had salvaged him from the drunken, thwarted existence he had sunk into after his court-martial from the Army.
But McEwen had changed. Since the beginning of Project Frisco, Bahr had watched him crumbling, bit by bit, until it seemed incredible that this sick-looking creature could be the same man that he had known before.
Bahr remembered the morning five years before “when Libby had come to get him at his dingy third-story flat over the New Jersey waterfront. She had taken in the stacks of filthy dishes in the sink and the half-empty whiskey bottles on the floor at a glance, and with one disgusted shake of her head, started packing a bag for him. She got him sober with coffee and thiamin, and made him shower and shave. “Quickly,” she had urged. “We’re driving to Washington.”
Then she told him why.
“McEwen!” He sat bolt upright on the bed, staring at her. He had heard about the DIA . . . plenty and enough to make him stiffen with alarm. “What does he want with me?”
“He has a spot open. You’ve been recommended. An old friend of yours said you could fill it.”
“I don’t have any old friends.”
“You’d be surprised. And even if you didn’t, you’ve got a new one, whether you like it or not.” She had stared at him, pleading. “Julian, won’t you trust me this much? What are you going to do, just rot here? You’ve got to give this a chance.”
He had driven the girl’s sleek imported Sonata onto the Washington Speedway, pushing it up to 300 and flashing past the trucks and casual traffic. Libby had been tense at first; finally she relaxed and leaned her head against his shoulder. An hour later they rolled into McEwen’s parking channel. The very distinguished-looking DIA Director was there to greet them; and then, inside, grinning at the surprised and baffled look on his face, he saw Frank Carmine . . . .
There were others there, half a dozen of his closest friends from Fort Riley, veterans of the 801st and now high up in DIA. With McEwen, Bahr was stiff and reserved; then Libby got the director out of the room for a moment and he and Carmine began to pummel each other. The rest of the 801st boys joined in, and they were laughing and singing and more than a little drunk by the time Libby’s high heels came click-clicking down the hall at them.
Later, they had talked, and Bahr liked the way McEwen looked at him when he talked, and said what he meant without a lot of double-edged words. Gradually Bahr’s violent bitterness toward everything disciplined and governmental began to soften, and he would talk. “I’ve got a green card,” he said. “They gave me that after the court-martial. They told me I was dangerously unstable, and you know what that means these days when it comes to finding work.”
“I know,” McEwen had said. “Do you think that you’re unstable?”
“I’m like a rock,” Bahr said flatly.
“All right, then I don’t think we need to worry about your official Stability Rating too much. With a little pressure on DEPCO from this end, we can swing it. Anyway, you’ve got an inside track with your therapist.” He smiled at Libby.
“I can handle the details at DEPCO,” she had said. “If you’ll co-operate a little.”
“Hell, I’ll co-operate,” Bahr said.
They had shaken hands on it, and when he had Libby a safe distance away in the parking lot, Bahr had grabbed her and hugged her until she gasped. They drove back to New Jersey slowly, and he felt that the past was falling sharply away, the future bright before him.