The Krone Experiment k-1

by J. Craig Wheeler

  It was initialed by Isaacs.

  Danielson reread the two sentences with confusion and disappointment. She still had no inkling of what caused the strange signal, but she was captivated by it and had spent long hours wrestling with it. Only yesterday she had spoken briefly with Isaacs about it. They had expressed their mutual frustration that no solution had been devised, but his interest showed no sign of flagging, and he had expressed satisfaction with her work. Stunned by the surprise terse note, she was now assailed with doubt. Was her enthusiasm for the project misplaced? The signal a trivial curiosity? Even worse, was it through an inadequacy on her part that progress toward understanding had come to a halt?

  Without pausing to analyze the propriety of her actions, she logged off the computer, slammed her notebook shut and strode off toward Isaacs’ office, the memo crumpled in her hand.

  Kathleen looked up in mild surprise when Danielson appeared in her office and announced stiffly, “I’d like to see Mr. Isaacs.”

  “He’s in the middle of a conference call. Do you want to wait until he finishes to see if he has the time? It may be fifteen or twenty minutes.”

  Danielson was taken aback by the roadblock.

  “Oh, well, yes. Yes. I would like to wait,” she finished in a strong voice. She looked around and sat briskly in one of the office chairs.

  Kathleen recognized the wrinkled memo. After a moment, she nodded at it and spoke in a friendly tone.

  “Is that the problem?”

  Danielson looked at the slip of paper. She sat back in her chair and brandished the memo at Kathleen. “It was such a surprise. I’m a bit upset.”

  “Not my place to stick my nose in,” Kathleen said, “but I can give you a little insight. That’s nothing against you.”

  “I’d like to think so, but I’ve done the most work on it, spent every spare minute since I got back from Boston, and to have it canceled … I was afraid …”

  Kathleen leaned on her forearms. “Do you know about the tiff between Mr. Isaacs and McMasters?”

  “There’s some scuttlebutt. I haven’t paid much attention to it,” Danielson smiled in self-deprecation. “I don’t operate in that league.”

  “Who does?” Kathleen smiled in return. “But sometimes some of us get caught up in the battles.” She turned serious. “For some reason McMasters has it in for Isaacs. Bob, Mr. Isaacs, is always having to tiptoe around him. It’s too bad. Mr. Isaacs can be pretty ferocious when he’s worked up, but he really is very sweet.”

  “I’ve enjoyed working with him,” Danielson admitted. “He takes everything very seriously, but he’s reasonable.”

  “Well, he won’t toady to McMasters, and McMasters took a dislike to him early on. I don’t know the details, but McMasters is behind the cancellation of that particular project. As I say, it’s nothing personal against you, I’m sure.”

  “I’d like to believe that.”

  “Do you still want to see Mr. Isaacs?”

  “Yes,” Danielson said thoughtfully, “I think I still would.”

  “Well, you’re welcome to make yourself at home, but I’ve got to finish this briefing paper.”

  “Oh, please go ahead.”

  Kathleen turned back to her keyboard. Danielson watched her fingers rap the keys and then began to think about Project QUAKER. The project fascinated and haunted her. She also wanted very much to please Isaacs with her performance. How frustrating to do your best, she thought, try to gain some appreciation and be thwarted by something beyond your control, in this case interference by McMasters, some high muckety-muck I haven’t even met.

  She recognized the cord of tension, strong and familiar, the ambition to go her own way played against the need to satisfy another authority figure, no stranger at all. She slipped into a reverie, her thoughts drifting to her childhood, dim memories of the tragic, premature death of her mother in an auto collision with a drunk. Her father, a chief petty officer in the Navy, giving up the sea he loved to take a desk job, trying to be both father and mother, while she tried to be wife and daughter.

  She had worked hard to do well in school, at first to protect him from further disappointment, but then more to satisfy her own drives. She had been only dimly aware of the degree to which he lived his life through her, of her irrational guilt that his situation was somehow her fault, of her own repressed resentment that she had to be strong for him, that she could never, for even a brief moment, set all her burdens on his broad shoulders. In hindsight, she saw how the seeds had been slowly planted for the bitter row that still tainted their relationship years later, despite their love for one another.

  She was finishing high school and planning to join the Navy as he wished, but she aimed for, insisted on, sea duty. He wanted her to follow his path, but was too tradition- bound to countenance women on shipboard, particularly his own kin. Years of repressed feelings erupted. He called her headstrong and ungrateful for his years of sacrifice. “It’s not my fault that your wife died,” she shouted in return, and suffered immediate remorse.

  In the aftermath of their fight, she had spurned the Navy and gone to UCLA to study engineering. Now she found the work for the Agency stimulating and enjoyed the notion that she played an important, if small, role in the strategic balance of power in the world. Still, during those low points like the present, she could sense her father looking over her shoulder.

  Her head snapped up as Isaacs’ voice came over the intercom.

  “Yes, sir,” replied Kathleen, glancing at Danielson. “Do you have time to see Dr. Danielson? She’s waiting here.”

  Isaacs appeared quickly in the doorway.

  “Pat, please come in.” He held the door for her and gestured her to a chair. “I’m sorry that was so impersonal,” he pointed his chin at the note still wadded in her hand. “I was too busy to get around, and it did have to be in writing anyway.”

  “I didn’t mind that,” she lied a little, “but I was shocked.”

  “It was sudden, a decision from upstairs.” Isaacs looked at the young woman, wondering how much of the real problem he should reveal to her.

  Danielson searched for words that would not seem too bald an appeal for approval.

  “I couldn’t help wondering, if I had made more progress, if I had isolated the source of the signal, would that have kept the project alive?”

  Isaacs spoke thoughtfully.

  “Perhaps. Unfortunately, we can’t answer that, since we didn’t find the source.” He noted the look of discomfort that passed over her face and hastened to add reassurance. “Please don’t feel responsible for this. You did some very good work to get as far as you did. You can’t blame yourself for getting bogged down. It turned out to be a problem with no simple resolution, and you had lots of other things to do the last two or three weeks.”

  He disliked the tone of those words. By weaseling around the real issue, he made it sound as if she might shoulder some blame for not working quite hard enough or being quite bright enough. He sighed mentally. If this young woman had a future in the Agency, she might as well learn the ropes.

  “Pat, let me level with you. Unless you had showed that this was a new Russian weapon aimed at the Oval Office, the project would have been killed. The decision really had nothing to do with the project itself. It was strictly politics.”

  Danielson was relieved to hear these words from Isaacs, but as her potential guilt feelings receded further she found anger in their place.

  “But that’s so unfair! I worked hard on that project. Why should it be canceled?”

  “Maybe not fair, but logical in the scheme of how things really work around here.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “If you want to get things done, you have to fight for what you think is right.” He pointed a finger at her. “Just as you’re doing right now.”

  She met his gaze straight on. He continued.

  “The fact that I use the word fight means that somebody holds opposite views, and t
hey’re going to be fighting back. I push for what I think is right and get pushed back. You lose some skirmishes to win the battles. I’m sorry that this skirmish was particularly important to you personally.”

  Danielson glanced at the closed door to Kathleen’s office.

  “I guess I see.”

  Isaacs was quick on the uptake.

  “Kathleen told you about me and McMasters,” he stated flatly, then laughed gently as Danielson looked surprised. “Kathleen knows everything that goes on around here. I would have been disappointed if she hadn’t bent your ear a little out there.

  “McMasters is old school, losing his touch and very defensive about it. I’ve had to challenge him on occasion and he doesn’t like that. Frankly, I don’t think he likes me. He may resent the fact that my grandfather wore a yarmulke. Who knows? The feeling is fairly mutual. In any case, let me give it to you straight out. He killed Project QUAKER out of spite because I killed some of his projects. Simple as that.”

  The fire was in her eyes again.

  “I don’t think that’s so simple. I think it’s wrong.”

  “Wrong. Yes, I think it was wrong, too, but you’re not looking at the bigger picture. If I let McMasters get his way here, I can get other more important things done more efficiently.”

  “But I don’t see how he can get away with this—this obstructionism.”

  “For one thing he’s not a total loss. He’s effective at keeping up the day to day affairs of the Agency, as long as tricky strategic questions aren’t involved. If nothing else, he keeps the Director from meddling in the details so we can get our job done. We all have our strengths and weaknesses.”

  “But how can you write QUAKER off as unimportant. Doesn’t it worry you that we don’t know what that signal is?”

  “You misunderstand me. I am worried about that signal. I’m sorry as hell McMasters canceled it. But we don’t really have any proof that it’s important. That’s why he picked it. And there are other projects of proven merit that can proceed without his interference.”

  Danielson sat, looking angry and unconvinced.

  Isaacs wondered how much of her reaction was righteous indignation and how much resentment at not being allowed her own way on the project. Did she betray some inflexibility in the face of interference? She would have to learn to get along if she wanted to move up.

  “How did you come to work for the Agency?” he asked.

  The change in topic and tone caught her off guard.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Isaacs folded his hands and leaned on his forearms. “I was thinking about your future in the Agency. That got me to wondering what brought you this way in the first place.”

  Danielson gave him a long look, wondering what was on his mind. She did not reveal her inner thoughts often, but as her boss, maybe Isaacs had a right to be curious about her underlying motivation. He did seem sympathetic. She was in a mood to talk and succumbed to that.

  “It’s funny you should ask.” She relaxed back in her chair and looked at her hands then up at Isaacs. “I was thinking about that while I was waiting.

  “Like anyone, I suppose I had a mixture of emotional and logical reasons. I had a desire to serve my country. My senior year I interviewed a bunch of Orange County firms, and the Agency, mostly out of curiosity. They ended up offering me a stipend to go to graduate school and a job when I got my degree. That appealed to me.” She laughed briefly. “If some of my fellow graduate students at Stanford had known I was funded by the Agency, they would have gone wild.”

  “Hot bed of radicals, eh?”

  “Well, you know, that’s the time of life for feeling that way. I guess I was raised differently.”

  Isaacs leaned back in his chair. “It’s been a long time since I looked at your file. You were raised by your father, if I remember correctly.”

  “Since I was five. My father has been a big influence on me, for better or worse. He was Navy. I suppose the Agency is my way of carrying the flag.”

  “Nothing wrong with that. We’re all here for that reason in one form or another.” He regarded Danielson for a long moment.

  “Do you plan to make a career in the Agency?”

  “I haven’t any thought of quitting.”

  “Not the same thing. Right now you’re down in the trenches, working hard, trying to please everyone.”

  Danielson wondered if he had been reading her mind as she had daydreamed in the outer office.

  “You have three choices,” Isaacs continued. “You can continue doing what you are doing. You can move up. Or you can do something else. You ought to think about it. The Agency would love to have you right where you are, hard working, productive, underpaid, forever. If you want to get out of that slot you need to set your sights.

  “I’ve been watching you. Your work on Tyuratam has been first rate. You didn’t crack QUAKER, but your insight about the trajectory would have escaped a lot of people. That showed a rare gift for breaking out of established channels of thought. You have the talents necessary to get ahead. I’d like to see you do it. But it’s a big challenge.”

  “I’m not sure what to say. I appreciate your support. I do have some vague ambitions,” she laughed quietly. “But I haven’t been actively coveting your job.”

  Isaacs smiled with her and thought about the special toughness of mind needed to get ahead in the Agency. He wondered whether any woman could make it in this male bastion. Pat Danielson had some of the necessary qualities. A patriotic upbringing and a workaholic nature got her through graduate school, brought her here, and kept her here. Did being an only child of a single parent give her that extra edge, or portend a problem as yet unseen?

  This time it was as if Danielson read Isaacs’ mind.

  “I know I have a built-in handicap,” she said. “I don’t see a lot of women in charge around here.”

  Isaacs nodded thoughtfully.

  “No woman has ever risen to the level of a Deputy Director. You couldn’t hope to in less than a decade even if you were the President’s daughter-in-law. But if, as a woman, you have any desire to aim at that level, you’ll have to be particularly resourceful at setting your goals and working toward them.”

  He leaned up on his forearms again.

  “You wouldn’t be crazy to decide there are better things to do with your life.”

  “Better things,” she mused. “I haven’t found anything better.”

  Isaacs picked up a pencil and fiddled with it. He looked up at her. “Nor anyone?”

  Danielson understood his line of thought and found it irritating, despite her original willingness to get a little personal.

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, that’s a bit chauvinistic. Are you worried someone will turn my head, and I’ll run off to the suburbs to make babies?”

  “I’m sorry. It does sound that way. But even if I denied my culpability there are people in the Agency who will raise that kind of argument. Fact is, they’ll hit you both ways. If you don’t get married, they’ll suggest there’s something wrong there.”

  “So I need to snap up a quick husband and continue to labor in the trenches until the powers that be, present company excepted, stamp me with the seal of approval.” Her irritation waned to be replaced by bemusement. “Somehow, even with all the emphasis on security, it never occurred to me that the Agency would have any interest in my love life. They don’t check up, do they?”

  “No,” Isaacs laughed. “Not without special cause. They turn up a few tidbits of everybody’s past during the security check. Yours couldn’t have been too sordid; you’re here.”

  Danielson wondered if Allan was in the file. Allan with the blond hair, golden tan, easy smile. Peter Pan with surfboard. He was probably still on the beach.

  Isaacs detected her pensive look and switched gears.

  “I’ve managed to get off the point. I just wanted you to know that I think you have a future with the Agency, if you want to work for it. One thing
you’ll have to learn is that hard work alone isn’t all there is. You will always have to do a little getting along by going along. The art is to make the most judicious choice of what to give and what to get. I had to make a hard choice with QUAKER. I hope we’ll find that I chose correctly.”

  Danielson looked at him seriously. “I appreciate your taking the time to talk with me like this. I’ll try to give some thought to exactly where I’m heading.”

  “If I can give you any more bad advice,” Isaacs smiled, “give me a call.”

  Danielson smiled good-bye and let herself out. Despite other pressing duties, she spent the remainder of the day glumly divesting herself of any involvement with Project QUAKER. She gathered up a number of files and voluminous personal notes. The better part of an hour was required to transfer several analytical computer programs and extensive sets of data onto master storage tapes and to delete all active files from the computer memory. Despite Isaacs’ attempt at explanation, she drove home that evening thinking that she knew what a miscarriage would feel like.

  That same evening Isaacs sat in his living room looking at, but not perceiving, the early evening television news. He loosely supported a half-consumed drink on the arm of the sofa where beaded moisture slowly soaked into the velveteen. The coaster on the side table went unused. The cook made final preparations for dinner and from upstairs the bass from his daughter’s stereo carried subliminally. The town-house perched over a two-car garage off a steeply sloping Georgetown street. Inside it was furnished in a refined, tasteful way. In his wry moods Isaacs estimated he could afford between a quarter and a third of it. The person responsible for the lion’s share came bustling in, discarding her purse and jacket. His wife, Muriel, was a dark-haired, slender woman, attractive, although a bit long in the face. She had some money of her own and, more important, a successful, politically-oriented law practice.