“Then you think there’s something rotten in the DIA?”
“Well, what does it sound like to you?” Alexander said. “Bahr has some of the men so loyal to him that they take orders from him regardless of McEwen or the law.” He chewed his lip, thinking. “I’ve got to contact McEwen, some way, and let him know. Maybe he won’t listen to me, but Julian Bahr is dangerous. McEwen ought to know it.”
“You’re a little late for that,” BJ said flatly. “McEwen died early this morning. Of a heart attack.”
Alexander swallowed hard. “Then Bahr is running the DIA?”
“Pending appointment of a new director, yes.”
He swore. “Then my only chance to avoid recoop, or being shot for implication in the Wildwood theft, is to find out what actually happened to the U-metal that was taken out of the piles.”
BJ frowned. “But they know what happened. DIA denies it, of course, but the European and African news nets have been jabbering about it all day. Radio Budapest has been beaming it over here in English . . . .”
“Beaming what over in English?”
BJ reached out and switched on the radio. She flicked the dial through squalling and static and picked up the nasal voice of the intercontinental Radio Budapest announcer.
“. . . still have not retracted the belligerent and idiotic denial of the theft of a large quantity of atomic materials from the atomic power plant at Wildwood, Illinois, by alleged interplanetary aliens,” the voice was saying, “in spite of the now familiar Canadian interception of the messages sent between the different DIA units that were attacking the saucer at the time the aliens allegedly blew themselves up in a semi-atomic explosion. Radio International has been trying to reach Julian Bahr, new head of the DIA secret police, to find out why the facts about the aliens are not being brought into the open, but Director Bahr cannot be reached.
“Reliable sources in New York now believe that another alien landing has occurred in northern British Columbia near the Yukon border. BRINT and DIA investigating units are now en route to the site of the landing. We will continue to broadcast the true facts on this latest incident, in spite of (he militaristic security procedures resorted to by the DIA secret police . . . .”
BJ turned it off, and looked at Alexander. He shook his head, staring dazedly at the radio. “I saw that thing in the woods before it blew up,” he said finally. “I thought I was sick, seeing things . . . but aliens , . .” He shook his head again. “BJ, I’ve just been through eighteen hours of interrogation on how the U-metal got out of the plant, and I tell you it couldn’t have. Even aliens couldn’t have gotten U-metal out of that plant unless they used the fourth dimension to do it, and then they certainly wouldn’t have set off a Geiger on the road.”
“They think they know how it was done,” BJ said, and told him what Radio Budapest had reported about a neuronic shield.
“But why? And how is Radio Budapest getting all this information if the security lid is on? There must be a hell of a leak somewhere in the DIA.”
“I don’t know, but BURINF is nearly going wild. Even John John got flustered on his TV-cast tonight. And an awful lot of people are listening to the Radio Budapest reports . . . .”
The car whizzed through the thinning residential areas. Alexander sat silent for a long time. “I still say that U-metal couldn’t have gotten out,” he said at last. “There were people at the plant that hated my guts for changing the security system around and making them do some honest work for a change. I wouldn’t put it past one of them to do something deliberately just to get my neck under the axe. I can’t tell about this alien thing, but I know there were plenty of non-aliens at Wildwood who would gladly have seen me thrown out of there.”
BJ gave him a long look. “I hate to say it in these terms,” she said, “but that argument has a very paranoid slant to it. Everybody against you, and everybody wrong but you.”
“You think I’m lying?”
“I think . . . well, I think you’re excited, and desperate.”
Alexander didn’t answer. He realized now that he had been blocking from his mind what he had seen in the woods north of Wildwood, because he had seen it and yet could not understand what he had seen. Now he was forced to face it. He needed a plan, some simple stratagem he could act on and carry out to clear himself, but there seemed no place to turn, nothing he could do but wait helplessly until the police or a DIA field unit found him and picked him up . . . .
He saw BJ watching him, her eyes wide with concern, her dark hair framing her thin, sensitive face. She looked as young and vital now as she had twenty years ago, and it came to him in a rush of warmth that just being with her now made him feel quieter, safer and farther from danger. Here was a haven in the storm, one person he could trust without a qualm. It was incredibly good to be with BJ again.
He laughed suddenly, as though some tough, unbreakable fiber in him had come to life again. “A hell of a thing,” he said. “I’ve been in the Army for so long I’ve almost forgotten how to fight. They’re going to have to find me before they can drag me in, and I think that’s going to take some doing.”
“What are you going to do?” BJ asked.
I m going to find out what happened to that Uranium,” he said. “It’s the only hope I’ve got, with Bahr running the DIA. If I get any information, I’ll get in touch with BRINT, I can trust them. Can you drive me down to Wildwood?”
“Harvey, if these reports are true, it’ll be crawling with DIA men.”
“Ill have to chance that.”
“All right. We can stop at my place and get you some clothes.”
“Good. I could stand a drink, too.” On the surface he felt a lot easier, but deep in his mind the questions were still nagging him.
DIA was corrupt, and Bahr, in the face of the rigid DEPCO control system, was making a power grab. That much he could understand.
But an alien invasion—what did that mean?
Chapter Six
The flight into Canada took over eight hours, and to Julian Bahr every moment of it was torment.
BRINT had the whip hand, which was intolerable in itself, and they were using it with every evidence of relish. Aside from the bare fact that an unidentified craft had made an unauthorized landing somewhere in the wilderness of northern British Columbia, Bahr had been able to extract no information whatever from BRINT’s New York offices.
They were regretful, but firm. London had been explicit in its instructions. If Mr. Bahr wished, he could contact I heir BRINT agent in Montreal and accompany him to the site of the landing. Every precaution had been taken to seal off the area and preserve it for the DIA investigating team-accompanied by BRINT, of course.
In Montreal he had waited, fuming, for four hours in the rain until the BRINT man, unaccountably delayed, made his appearance. Bahr had had enough experience with BRINT in the past to expect the unexpected; Paul MacKenzie exceeded even his worst expectations. The BRINT man was small and wiry, with sandy hair and a soft Scottish burr, and an air of vacuous naivete about everything he said or did. There was no BRINT team . . . only MacKenzie, extremely apologetic about his “delay,” and obviously not impressed by the presence of the new DIA chief.
Only now, hours later, as the streets and buildings of Dawson Creek slid past below their ’copter, Bahr was realizing uncomfortably that the facade of naivete was only a facade, and that Paul MacKenzie was very sharp, exceedingly sharp, and in perfect command of what he was doing.