Alongside Night(76)

Alongside Night

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“You have my word,” said Dr. Vreeland. “What I hear will not leave this room.”

“Thank you, Professor. As I believe you already know, we will be holding our first news conference in about an hour. This will be the first time our organization has ever formally gone on the record. We wish you to attend us, announcing at the conference that your supposed death was a defense against the government aggression toward your family, and that your wife and daughter were kidnaped by them to blackmail you into cooperation.”

“You know the risk I took in coming here,” Dr. Vreeland said, tapping his fingertips together professorially. “It is likely that simply through my refusal to follow through on my agreement with the Administration, I have already condemned my wife and daughter to death. Must I make certain of it by publicly embracing you as well?”

“If that is how you feel, Dr. Vreeland, then why—?”

“You know why,” Dr. Vreeland said angrily. “I cannot honor a contract with murderers …no matter what the personal cost.”

“I would have expected no less of you,” Dr. Rampart answered. “But the cost may not include your wife’s and daughter’s lives. In a kidnaping, whether or not the ransom is paid—in this case your cooperation being the ransom—has little to do with the kidnapers’ future behavior, which is based on their view of current self-interest.”

Lorimer nodded. “Bureau statistics show almost the same chance for a kidnaper to release the victim whether or not the ransom is paid.”

“And you believe,” said Dr. Vreeland, “that publicly revealing the kidnaping would shift the Administration’s interest to releasing Cathryn and Denise?”

“Yes,” said Dr. Rampart, “if there’s any modicum of sense left in their camp. This Administration is in the most precarious political balance of any Administration in this country’s 240

Alongside Night

history. While it is wholly unlikely that they can save their rule, they might wish to save their necks. There is a spirit of bloodlust in the air.”

“Dr. Vreeland,” said Guerdon, “this revolution has been, all along, a war of propaganda and counterpropaganda. The Utopia prison atrocity has just given the government the worst publicity possible. Whichever group—or groups—offers the public order in such chaotic times will gain support—perhaps the critical balance. I doubt the government will wish to appear lawless at this time. In the past, the government has preferred to bargain with the barrel of a gun. With the military strikes, they have just lost the gun. If they now wish to seek the support of human beings, they will now have to utilize the civilized methods of human beings. Whatever chances your wife and daughter have at this point rest with our ability to pressure the rulers into realizing this. And whatever else we may think of them, I do not think they are less analytical than we are.”

“Even if this is so,” Dr. Vreeland said, “why should I appear at your press conference, aligning myself with your Cadre?”

“May I be so impolite as to point out,” Harper said, “that through your son’s association with this school you are already—in the Administration’s view—aligned with the Cadre. The difference between a radical and a revolutionary is an esoteric one at best, understood by those involved in the factionalism and few others. Don’t expect the differences in our philosophy to be understood by Lawrence Powers. So long as you advocated reforming the State, instead of advocating abolition as we do, you were tolerated—perhaps even considered counterrevolutionary. In fact, without your support of the moderates in Citizens for a Free Society, the government might have fallen months ago. Remain silent, and the Administration will fall,anyway …perhaps deciding to take your wife and daughter with them as revenge. Publicly align yourself with Alongside Night

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us and accuse them of the kidnaping …and they might back down.”

At that moment, the door slid open, a gray-haired man in Cadre uniform entering. Elliot recognized him as the man on the screen who had announced the G-raid alert. He walked up to Merce Rampart and said, “We found two.”

She nodded. “May I introduce our chief of security, Ron Daylutan? Dr. Vreeland, his son Elliot, and Ms. Powers.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

“Descriptions?” Dr. Rampart asked.

“Very professional work. Would have blown half the building. My guess is that it’s a present from the CIA—their style of work.”

“Any possibility there are more?”