She did not protest, but picked up some clothes and headed for the bathroom.
It was bad, far worse than he had expected. How could a woman go to pieces like that? He paced the floor, lit a cigarette, wondering if he had made a terrible error. He needed her, everything he had planned depended on her, but she would have to be strong, not broken and washed out.
Clothes and make-up made a change. She seemed a little more alive when she reappeared. He stood up. “All right, my name is Alexander, and I’m not DIA. I’m with Army Intelligence, assigned to BRINT. I want to talk to you, but it’s nearly dinner time. I have a car outside. Where do you want to eat?”
Libby looked at him for a moment, confused and disbelieving, and her face colored. Then she seemed to stand a little straighter, to look more like the attractive, intelligent girl the BRINT dossier had described. “Do you know Boston?” she asked.
“Chicago, yes. Boston, no.”
“I know a place . . .” She smiled at him. When they reached the car, he opened the door for her, and her eyebrows lifted slightly. “If this is an arrest,” she said, “I hope they’re all this way.”
It was not an arrest, and it was critical that she be made to understand that. Making friends with her, Alexander decided, had indeed been the right policy. A good meal, a couple of cocktails, some small talk, a little light banter—the rituals of a culture that had twice been eroded out of society, and Libby Allison was a new person. Her self-respect had been knocked apart. He would have to have the details, later, but she was basically a strong person, and Alexander began to feel that just possibly he might still accomplish what he wanted.
He didn’t question her that night, even though he was eager to sound her out. She looked exhausted, and her apartment was still a mess. He said he would be back in the morning, and left her at the door. Before he left the neighborhood, he made certain that the BRINT stakeout understood its job. She was to be there when he came back.
As he had expected, the morning saw a new person. Drab as it was, the apartment was in order, and she offered him coffee when he came in. They talked, and Alexander told her enough to make it clear that he knew a great deal about her, and about Bahr.
And then, quite abruptly, the pain and terrible grief came out in a torrent, a storm of emotion that she had been tormenting herself trying to hold in. Alexander listened, and knew for the first time that he was going to win.
“I knew he would be angry when I left him,” she said. “I didn’t realize that he would be so violently, vindictively furious. It wasn’t just me, it couldn’t have been just me; he never cared that much about me. It was something else that he had to make me suffer for.
“The morning after I left, he canceled DEPCO. People were picked up for questioning, and the files cleaned out. He canceled my clearance and my stability rating, though of course those don’t mean much now, unless he wants them to mean something. That first day his men found out where I was staying. When I came back home my car had been stolen and my apartment looted. I took Timmy and found another place. I thought if we could just wait it out for a few days he would forget it, it would blow over.”
She looked up at Alexander, and the fear and grief were still in her eyes. “I was wrong, oh, but I was wrong. The second day they attached my bank account, and I had no money. That afternoon the police came, with a committee of Education and Conditioning people. They were very regretful, but very firm. I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have an income, so obviously I could not adequately support a child. They took Tim away. I thought I knew Julian, but I couldn’t believe that he’d let his own son go into the Playschool system. He did it just to hurt me. I tried to get in touch with him, but all I got was the run-around. Inside of three days I didn’t have enough money to eat with Then Bahr nationalized my apartment building, and I was out. He put in this miserable currency reform, and I didn’t have a bond or security that was worth the paper it was written on. Even my life insurance . . . well, you know the hell he’s been raising with this economic mobilization . . . .”
She broke off, and poured herself a drink.
“Why did you leave him?” Alexander said.
“I wish I knew that. I wish I knew, for sure.” The girl threw herself down on the sofa, searching his face as if somehow she might find the answer written there. “Mark Vanner wasn’t really my uncle, but he brought me up from the time I was a little girl. He was a national figure when Julian Bahr was a scrawny little road-rat smuggling watered-down antibiotics for a living. Mark Vanner held this country together for years on just faith, and respect and decent, honest leadership. Do you think Julian Bahr could have done that?” She spread her hands helplessly. “Vanner was a man, a magnificent man. When he became chief of economic planning there wasn’t a factory in operation anywhere in the country. He didn’t have money, or a gang of gunmen to back him up. But he talked to people, and he went around to the colleges and defense agencies, and the people volunteered by the hundreds and thousands—the best minds in the country. They came to Washington, knowing that they weren’t going to be paid, sincere people who believed in Mark Vanner and believed that his social-economic system •was the only thing that could pull us together again. Harrison, Kronsky, Williams, Otto Lieblitz . . . my mother and father before they were killed . . . those were the kind of people who started DEPCO.”
It was silent in the room, and outside the rain was coming down against the window. Libby Allison was talking, and Harvey Alexander listened. Gradually the pieces were falling into place, the picture he was trying to see.
“They worked for five years,” Libby went on. “They built this country up again, from a dying giant to a prosperous, stable world power. It was only supposed to be a temporary measure, a chance for the country to get back on its feet again, to get its bearings. I wanted to help. I wanted to do more. Do you know how many years I spent getting my doctorate? Eight years, and three years of field work. I had the highest rating of any L-12 in fifteen years. I got a letter of commendation for some of the work I did on the Playschool analysis. And then Julian Bahr came into power. He hated DEPCO, and he was afraid of DEPCO, and in one week—less than one week—he destroyed the DEPCO organization that it took twenty-five years to build.”
“But that DEPCO organization wasn’t all good,” Alexander said. .
“Of course it wasn’t all good, but the point is, it wasn’t all bad, either. And me, I was the fool, the wide-eyed virgin.” She bit her lip. “I suppose you know how Bahr got through the DEPCO screening for the last five years. I first ran across him when he was being screened after his court-martial. I couldn’t believe that his IQ was really that low, I wanted to help him channel that awful drive and ambition, I practically forced him to work with me. I was terribly in love with him when we first met, and I told myself lies about him and made myself believe things that never could have been true. But then, when he had broken down DEPCO, even I couldn’t pretend to myself that I could ever control him. I could see what he had done to me. He knew I had the same kind of hate in me that he did; he saw that when I hit Adams. But when I found myself standing there deliberately mutilating a man that I hated, I knew if I stayed with Bahr I would have to destroy things the way he wants to destroy things. I had already compromised DEPCO and broken every promise and moral contract I’d ever made, and betrayed everything I’d ever believed in.”