“Hey man. We here.”

He paid the cabbie and got out. Sunny today and not so damned cold. He threw his head back and searched for contrails, reflecting on his fantasies. Bev always managed to prove her point without waving banners: she was thirty-four, divorced, feminine, adminstrative assistant to Speaker of the House Milton Luke. He looked at his watch. Right now she would be dictating replies to Luke’s constituents. Dear Mr. Smith, Thank you for your letter of January second. Regarding your request.… Efficient by day; languorous by night; she had compartmentalized herself crisply and Lime envied her.

The reporters knew him now. They laid siege in the corridor; its musty soot seemed to have settled in their clothes. Lime pushed at the air with his palms and when they subsided from baying to muttering he told them, “No comment—and you may quote me,” and went past them through the cop-guarded doorway to the stairs.

Upstairs an FBI man had the interrogation; the subject was Sandra Walberg. The young lawyer from Harding’s office sat in a corner, very bored. The kid looked like all Harding’s disciples—shaggy, discontented, righteous. Harding had achieved his notoriety by inciting his clients to riot in court.

Lime crossed over and sat at the FBI man’s right so that he wouldn’t get the glare from the window when he looked at the girl. As he pulled the chair out and sat down the FBI man acknowledged him with a nod; the defense lawyer ignored him; Sandra glanced at him once. She was a small-boned girl with pinched features, full of sullen defiance.

The FBI man was young and vinegary, up to date in his field. His questions were compelling and logical. He spoke in a cautious tone, reserving malevolence. Of course none of it did any good: Sandra wasn’t talking. None of them was talking. There had been a few remarks from the prisoners—particularly from Bob Walberg who was more nervous than the others. “A few alterations in the Capitol.” And a grin and a clenched fist raised: “Right on!” But the young lawyer always cut in quickly, shutting them up: “Everything’s cool, baby. Keep it.”

Harding’s clients were going to be executed and the state could not seriously pretend to offer clemency because Harding had to know such an offer would be in bad faith.

Harding was handling the case in the full knowledge that there was no way on earth for him to avoid losing his clients’ lives to the executioner. The only advantage gained by anybody would be gained by Harding himself: by defending the bombers he would cement his position as mouthpiece for the radical left. Afterward he would be able to go to his people and say to them that he—the best of his kind—had tried, and had been beaten by the corrupt and unfeeling system: therefore choose violence, which I have advocated all along, because I have just proved to you that nothing else works. Lime despised the Hardings; they would fight to the very last drop of their followers’ blood.

You had to go through this charade. It was all sham and nonsense; everybody, Harding included, knew it. But you brought the prisoners up separately and interrogated them politely all day long, always with a lawyer present, always with reminders that the prisoner didn’t have to say a word.

In the evening you returned the prisoners to their solitary cells and the lawyers went home. Then after dinner you rousted the prisoners out again and took them secretly into interrogation cells and you worked them over sans lawyers and sans recitations of rights. You did this because the case demanded it: until you traced this thing to its roots you had no way of knowing how substantial the overall danger was. You had to find Sturka and you had to find out where Sturka would lead you in turn, and one way to find Sturka perhaps was to pry it out of these prisoners.

The normal pressures had been applied, and had proved minimally effective, so drugs had been introduced. Thus far the results had been poor but tonight might prove more satisfactory. In the meantime the prisoners each morning complained to their lawyers of the nightly roustings and the interrogators replied gravely that the prisoners were either dreaming or lying maliciously, The Establishment could produce a plethora of reliable witnesses to testify that the prisoners had lain undisturbed in their cells all night long; the Establishment could also produce doctors to testify that the prisoners had not been drugged. These radicals, Lime thought, had imagined a fascist police state and had created it.

In court it would be the Justice Department’s job to goad the prisoners into confessing their guilt aloud. The issues were inflammatory and volatile and only public confession by the bombers would assuage public unease. Such a confession would be obtained.

It wasn’t Lime’s department to obtain it and he was thankful for that, but he recognized the Government’s needs and knew that somehow the Government would find a lever to use against one or another of the prisoners.

He listened for ten minutes to the FBI agent’s questions. Sandra Walberg said very little and none of it was in direct response to the questions. The kid lawyer in the corner yawned without bothering to cover his lips. Lime exchanged jaded glances with the FBI man and twisted past the table and went out.

In the lobby of the Executive Office Building he found his boss DeFord and Attorney General Ackert talking to reporters. Ackert was talking without saying much, with a politician’s practice. He did it very well; his delivery was as impersonal as a print-out from a computer and he sounded like a cop testifying in court. It made him appear professional and competent; in fact he was both those things, but the act he was putting on at the moment was a conscious and deliberate role, therefore false. DeFord on the other hand was a fool but in public he had a way of giving the impression of informed crispness: he cloaked his incompetence in a fabric of secretiveness: I know the answers of course but security prevents me from divulging them at this time. He didn’t exactly say it in so many words.

There was more questioning and Attorney General Ackert was saying tonelessly, “Naturally. They’ve been informed, in the presence of their attorneys, that they have every right to remain silent, that anything they say can and will be used against them, and that they have the right to counsel at all times during questioning.”

Lime and DeFord broke away from the journalists and walked toward DeFord’s sanctum.

DeFord, twisting the doorknob, said, “I’d like to see them hang that lawyer while they’re at it.”

They went inside and the woman at the desk gave them her equitably chilly smile. Lime followed on into DeFord’s office.

DeFord sat down and tugged at the slack in his amply fleshed throat. “I, ah, had a telephone call from a gentleman named Walberg a few hours ago. The twins’ father. He’s just flown into Washington. I gather he’s tried to see his children and nobody wants to talk to him.”

Lime nodded. “He can’t comprehend that his children could possibly have had anything to do with it. There must be some mistake—a misunderstanding or a frame-up. Or maybe under the influence of bad companions. But it can’t be their fault.”

“You already talked to him, then.”

“No.”

“Eh. Well. I’m sure that’s the way I’d feel if I were in his place.”

“I’m sure it is.” Lime was thinking of Sandra Walberg. A determined up-yours resenter, that girl; how anyone could go on believing in her innocence——

“David, I’m sorry but I told the man you’d explain things to him.”

“You did.”

“He’s, eh, waiting down in your office. I thought I ought to tell you.…” DeFord trailed off, turning an apologetic hand over, palm up.

“You damn fool.” Lime’s anger intensified the meaning of the drab words.

He walked out of the office and instead of slamming the door he pulled it shut with a quiet reproachful click.