The investigators caught up with her, and she turned away from me as Odo led them through the airlock. I realized that I had stopped breathing.

I left my pudding, stopped at Quark’s to buy a bottle of kanar,and retired to my quarters. It took half of the bottle before I began to breathe again; and only when it was empty did I finally ask myself the question: Why hadn’t she betrayed me as I had betrayed her?

4

A deep sadness I had not felt in a long time reemerged as I walked through the Coranum Sector to my meeting with Madred and the group he referred to as the Directorate. Not one of the old, stately buildings had been spared by Dominion revenge. Perhaps there was a cruel justice at work here, Doctor, since these were the families that had initially agreed to the alliance with the Dominion. But if anything marked the end of Cardassia as we remember it and symbolized the stripped and naked state of our civilization, it was the devastation of this first settlement, the “birthplace” of the Union.

The sadness was most keenly felt when I passed the Coranum Grounds. Every bit of vegetation had been engulfed by the firestorm, and any evidence of that soft and protected place of assignation had been reduced to ashes. I quickened my pace.

As I stood in front of the building debris I tried to locate the entrance to the basement Madred had described. Judging from the enormous amount of rubble that had already been cleared, this had been an impressive home. Finally, I made out a path that led to the rear of what would have been the ground floor, and followed it to a temporary structure that functioned as both an entrance and a cover for the staircase. The darkness swallowed me as I carefully made my way down the stairs and into a makeshift anteroom. At that moment a door opened and Madred appeared.

“Ah, good. I was concerned that you weren’t coming,” he said with some irritation. I realized that I had gotten lost in my thoughts as I’d walked through the sector. In a sense, Doctor, my new world has become timeless, especially in the absence of all my old routines and landmarks.

“I wanted to make sure no one was following me,” I lied. At our previous meeting, when I’d suggested that I might be able to provide some helpful intelligence about the Reunion Project, Madred warned me to maintain absolute secrecy about the meeting and its whereabouts.

“Did you notice anyone?” he asked with concern.

“No,” I replied. Actually I could have been followed by an army and I wouldn’t have noticed. I’m afraid I’ve become careless as well as timeless, Doctor. Madred led me down a short corridor that had formerly been much longer but truncated now to adjust to the new living circumstances.

“Is this your home?” I asked as I followed him.

“What’s left of it,” he replied. A door opened, and we entered a large room badly lit by several emergency lamps. The city had to live with intermittent blackouts as the power grid was being realigned. As my eyes adjusted, I was able to discern the shapes of seven people arranged around a table in the center of the room. Most of them looked familiar, and I wasn’t surprised to see them here. One person, however, did surprise me. Two people I didn’t know. My “schoolmate” wasn’t here.

“This is Elim Garak. Some of you may know him,” Madred said as introduction. He offered me a seat and took his place to my right.

“Elim Garak,” the person to my left repeated with amused wonder. “How are your tailoring skills these days?” he asked. It was Gul Hadar, who had been one of Dukat’s aides on Terok Nor; a man of weak character who easily participated in the worst excesses of the occupation.

“Under the present circumstances, Hadar, they come in quite handy,” I replied. He nodded, studying me in his diffident manner. He also came from one of the old families.

“I wonder if that’s why Madred invited you here.” He turned to the others. “Because Skrain Dukat claimed Garak was a dangerous traitor who was responsible for the deaths of his father and Barkan Lokar. Are we in need of a tailor?”

“Skrain Dukat was the traitor,” said the voice across from me. It was Gul Evek, a blunt, unsmiling soldier who I’d thought had been killed pursuing the Maquis in the Badlands. “I think we can safely say that anyone who was his enemy has a right to be here. Especially anyone who fought with Damar.” He looked at me with his stern face, and I acknowledged his support. I heard Hadar sigh, and understood that the “Directorate” was far from unified.

“The issue is not Dukat. It’s the future of the Union!” the man next to Evek maintained. This was Legate Parn. He challenged the group with a look that made me believe that he was the leader in this room. Parn had administered the Cardassian colonies in the demilitarized zone after the treaty with the Federation, a treaty he and Evek had believed was the beginning of the end when Cardassia signed it. They were outspoken in their view that accommodation with the Federation had fatally compromised our resolve.

“The dead are dead. Those of us left–who believe in the ideals that have guided our race for millennia–are faced with the threat of utter annihilation by the very disease that has brought us to this sad place. Federation ideas will finish the work the Dominion began.” Again he challenged each of us. I followed his look. On the other side of Madred was Nal Dejar, a sharp‑faced, saturnine woman who had been a member of my last cell at the Order. She once came to Deep Space 9 on an as signment with two scientists, and refused to make any contact with me. Judging from her averted look, she was still refusing. Next to her was a man with a severely disfigured face that was still recovering from what appeared to be burns. One eye was completely covered, and I was careful not to be rude in my inspection. He and an attractive woman sitting on the other side of Evek were the two people who weren’t familiar to me.

The surprise guest, Korbath Mondrig, sat between this woman and Hadar. Considering that Madred believed he was nothing more than a demagogue stirring up the service class with old resentments and divisive rhetoric, I wondered how this group planned to use Mondrig.

“Let us be clear about what unites us,” Parn warned. “We have our differences. We’ve even had our troubles in the past,” he said, looking directly at me. “But they can’t be allowed to deter us from our main purpose.”

“Which is?” I asked, returning his look.

“To crush any attempt by any group to espouse Federation ideals as we rebuild our society,” he answered.

“Rebuild it to where it was before we doomed ourselves with that treaty,” Evek added.

“And I believe that’s why you’ve joined us today, Garak,” Parn said, never taking his eyes off me.

“If I may,” the woman next to Evek spoke up. I was grateful for her interruption; I needed more time to orient myself. She signaled to Madred for recognition; he appeared to be the moderator.

“Of course, Gul Ocett,” he replied. So this was Malyn Ocett, I realized; the only resistance leader who had survived when the cells were betrayed by Gul Revok. Her courage and resourceful tactics had not only inspired her followers, but her call to the military after the Lakarian City massacre was largely responsible for our soldiers turning against the Dominion at the crucial moment.

“I share Legate Parn’s concern that the Federation wants to ‘absorb us,’ ” she said. “All of us here know their strategy has never been a military one; it’s political. At this point, we’re weakened, vulnerable. The Federation recognizes that the current dislocation is the moment to inject us with their democratic ideas, because there are people like Natima Lang and Alon Ghemor who would gladly carry them to the rest of us.” Natima Lang, Quark’s old paramour, was obviously back on Cardassia along with every other political opportunist. “We’re deeply wounded now, and if we’re not careful we could end up with a political system that would not only place us firmly within Federation hegemony, but would destroy our identity.”