“—ro!”
The damaged turbine exploded, tilling the engine compartment with high velocity titanium-blade shrapnel and burning fuel. Weakened by the small incident hole, the floor buckled under the disintegrated turbine. Flame leaped down along the vapors leading to the fuel tank. After the briefest hiatus, the fuel tank exploded. The force of this release was directed upward along the rising line of perforations. The penetrated structural members gave way, and a violent stream of shredded metal and superheated gas blew a cavity upward into the guts of the ship. The explosion also tore like a rocket into the surrounding water. In reaction, the destroyer listed rapidly and severely to starboard. As the ship pendulumed back to port, water rushed into the new gaping hole and splashed upward following the path of the blast into the ship. Great portions of the upper midship sections filled with water. The ship was rendered top-heavy. As it rebounded, its natural capacity to right itself was destroyed, and it carried on over. In the space of a minute the Stinson capsized, floating bottom up, the ragged hole in the hull aimed at the Sun, narrowly above the horizon. A handful of men survived. Avery Rutherford was not among them.
That evening, still numb from loss, Isaacs stared at the draft of the memo he had carefully composed. He was reticent to commit himself to writing, but he could not just go bursting into McMasters’ office and demand that Project QUAKER be reinstated. McMasters would never hear him out. Instead, he had put all the arguments he could muster into the memorandum. McMasters would not want to read anything from him, but he would read it, out of self-defense.
Memorandum
To: Kevin J. McMasters,
Deputy Director of Intelligence
From: Robert B. Isaacs,
Deputy Director for Scientific Intelligence
Subject: Connection between the loss of the USS Stinson, the Novorossiisk, and Project QUAKER
On June 14, the Navy Destroyer USS Stinson was lost at sea while on a mission indirectly related to our now inactive Project QUAKER. The circumstances bear marked resemblance to those involving the Soviet carrier Novorossiisk. In this memorandum, I set forth the case linking the USS Stinson, the Novorossiisk, and Project QUAKER and call for the immediate reactivation and vigorous prosecution of Project QUAKER.
Isaacs pictured McMasters resisting the urge to scrunch the memo into a ball and toss it in the can.
As you will recall, Project QUAKER produced evidence for a source of seismic waves that moved in a regular pattern through the Earth. The trajectory of this motion is fixed in space independent of the rotation of the Earth or its motion in orbit around the Sun. The source of seismic waves always approaches the Earth’s surface at 32° 47’ north longitude. Approximately forty and one-quarter minutes later it has passed through the Earth and approaches the surface again at 32° 47’ south longitude. It then returns to the northern hemisphere nearing the surface at a position about 1170 miles west of the previous location of surfacing, due to the rotation of the Earth in the intervening eighty minutes and thirty seconds.
One day later, the source of the seismic signal will return to the surface about 190 miles west of the point where it surfaced at nearly the same time the previous day. The source of the seismic waves has approached the surface about 2000 times since it was first detected. Because of the incommensurate motion of the seismic source and the rotation of the Earth, however, the probability of the source returning to the surface within even a few miles of any previous point of surfacing is very small. Despite the underlying regularity of the motion of the source of the seismic waves, the effects manifested at the surface will be perceived to be highly irregular.
Isaacs paused at this point. McMasters presumably knew the basic facts and he did not want to overdo here nor delay getting to the meat of his argument, but he felt compelled to summarize the issues to provide a context for the pitch to come. His mind whirled with details that he would have added for someone who wanted to really know what was going on, but he pictured McMasters’ sneering skepticism and decided for the fifth time that this was the best he could do.
I have learned through informal sources
Ha! Let the bastard chew on that one, thought Isaacs. He’ll discover that Rutherford was on the Stinson and dig like a dog to find some proof I violated his stricture. Well, let him dig! I don’t confess to any active role for either me or the Agency, so he’ll stew, but there’s not much he can do. Except summarily reject the proposal. Damn!
that the Navy has sonar data that correlate with the motion of the seismic source. The source of the seismic noise apparently
Apparently. He pondered whether to leave that word to honestly portray the possibility, remote to his mind, that the strong circumstantial evidence had not been rigorously confirmed, that there was no case in which both seismic and sonar detectors picked up the signal of a single event to prove they were related. McMasters might seize on such a subtlety. Isaacs sighed and opted for honesty.
proceeds into the ocean. The source of the sonar signal goes to the surface, ceases for about forty seconds, then proceeds back to the ocean bottom. There is a strong presumption that the source of seismic and sonar waves is in the atmosphere for those forty seconds. The seismic and sonar waves generated by the source of energy propagate over great distances, contributing to their detectability. The lack of above-surface confirmation suggests that the effects there are very localized.
Now for the pitch, if he hasn’t set fire to it by this time.
To conclude from the evidence that the phenomenon is innocuous at the surface would be a grievous error. The fates of the Novorossiisk and the Stinson show that this phenomenon is destructive and must be understood and eliminated.
The Stinson was on a mission to investigate the sonar signals that are the counterpart of the seismic signals tracked under Operation QUAKER. On June 13, the Stinson witnessed the rising and falling sonar signal from a thousand yards, with no appreciable surface effect. An associated hissing noise was reported. On June 14, it was stationed directly on the path of the rising sonar signal. The ship exploded, capsized and sank with the loss of all but 23 of her crew of 259. Fragmentary evidence from the survivors suggests that the fuel tanks exploded.
I believe the facts show that the Novorossiisk suffered a similar fate. The Novorossiisk was at 32° 47’ when the incident occurred. Within the accuracy of our records, she was at a location that would have been in phase with the rising of the seismic/acoustic phenomenon. A hissing noise was reported on the Novorossiisk before the fires broke out. A sonar signal was reported afterwards.
The similarities between the Stinson and the Novorossiisk events and the relations to the signal of Operation QUAKER are too striking to be coincidence. There is every reason to believe that the phenomenon that made the holes in the Novorossiisk and triggered the fires on board had a similar, but unfortunately more destructive, effect on the Stinson. This phenomenon also generates the signals studied under Operation QUAKER.
The present facts are disturbing enough. Men have died, equipment has been destroyed and we have drawn closer to war. Even more troubling is that the underlying phenomenon is completely without precedent, and its nature totally unknown. In our present state of ignorance we may have no inkling of the true magnitude of the problem that besets us.
We must take immediate action to discover the nature of this phenomenon. I strongly recommend two steps. One is the reinstatement of Project QUAKER and the enactment of similar projects in all relevant agencies of the government. The second is to communicate these findings to the Soviet Union to forestall the developments that have succeeded the Novorossiisk event. In this regard, I recommend a query to the Soviets regarding the detection of a rising sonar signal just prior to the Novorossiisk event. Confirmation of this prediction would help to convince the Soviets of the innocence of the United States in the Novorossiisk affair and tie together more firmly the disparate phenomena described here.
When he finished reading the draft, Isaacs stare
d at the last page, his eyes defocused, straining with his mind’s eye to see where this attempt would lead. Despite himself, his mind filled with an image of Rutherford, those last seconds, desperately trapped in the submerged bridge. He shook his head and rose from his desk. Something fearful was at work here. McMasters had to free his hands to go after it. Kathleen was gone for the day. He unlocked a cabinet and placed the clipped sheaf of paper in the front of her work file.
In the parking lot he unlocked the door of the car and half-tossed his briefcase into the passenger seat. He sat behind the wheel a moment, feeling like driving, but with no particular place to go. Finally, he wheeled out of the lot to the rear exit from the grounds, past the guardhouse and down the long leafy lane. He turned right on Route 123, but the traffic heading into McLean was still fairly heavy, the driving unsatisfactory. He joined the throng on the beltway headed north. He took the first turn-off after crossing the Potomac and headed home, still frustrated and deeply troubled.
A week later, Isaacs stood with his back to the wall, away from the early Sunday crowds beginning to fill the Air and Space Museum. He came here sometimes for the pleasure of it, sometimes to think. This was a thinking time. His eyes caressed the old F-86 Sabrejet. It was his favorite craft in the whole place. The first grace of swept-back wings and tail. The captivating curve of the intake maw, surmounted by the subtle outward swell of the radar housing, a puckered lip to kiss the wind. With none of the venomous dihedral of today’s fighters, the Sabrejet gave him the profound feeling of inner peace that came from witnessing perfect design.
He could not hold it. The peaceful feeling slipped, shattered and fell away from him. Rather than despoil his favored icon with secular thought, he wandered back toward the main rooms. Starting with the loss of Rutherford and the Stinson, the last week had been horrendous. Just like a roller coaster, Isaacs had known what was coming as the chain ratcheted him toward the top, but that did not keep his stomach from leaping as the dizzying fall began.
The Soviets had completed preparations at Tyuratam and launched their second laser flawlessly at midweek. The President immediately put the armed forces on full alert. Around the world, attack submarines encircled Soviet flotillas and Russian and American aircraft flew sorties eyeing one another on radar. A hundred hair triggers waited for the slightest pressure.
Drefke had returned from the NSC meeting nearly hysterical. Hysteria may have been the only sane response. Myriad alternatives sifted, the President had chosen the one he felt most appropriate. Specifically targeted to the task. Limited enough not to demand full-scale war if implemented. Stark enough to be impossible to ignore. The US spelled out its position in graphic detail to the Soviets at all diplomatic levels. If they used the laser, retaliation would be swift and sure, treaties to the contrary notwithstanding.
Isaacs stood looking up at the Mercury capsule. Is this where it began? he wondered. Or maybe with his Sabrejet out in the far wing. Or, over there, with the Wright brothers. Or with the goddamned wheel! He gritted his teeth in despair and frustration and wandered up the stairs toward the Saturn booster. The new plateau of crisis had made him easy pickings for McMasters. He reached in and felt the letter from McMasters folded in his jacket pocket. Coincidence. No proof. Crisis. No time. The fool! McMasters couldn’t, wouldn’t see the truth. Of course the Agency was in overdrive, with no resources to spare. But the root of the crisis was not in the White House, or even in the Kremlin. It hurtled through the Earth, a sly unknown enemy that had us at each other’s throats. If the world proceeded to nuclear holocaust would this thing care? Would it continue to sift through the seared rubble?
Isaacs followed the crowd into the auditorium and sat, his eyes blitzed by the recorded history of the air, his mind in its own warp. Subconsciously, he had known it would come to this. His alternatives were sorted and handed up to him even as he read the letter from McMasters. Someone had to focus on this evil in the Earth. He had to go it alone. His career, his rapid rise to authority, all his hard work, seemed like a fragile bird in his hand. So easily it could die, or fly away. But what alternatives did he have? To watch the world careen to disaster? A disaster that might be forestalled if only they knew the true origin of this thing? He thought of Muriel, her successful career built on the precarious sands of political influence. If he failed, were found out, disgraced, she’d have a lot at jeopardy as well. They would go down together. Would they go down together? Would they be together? Would she forgive him for sacrificing her to a cause of which she was ignorant? What of his daughter? How would she take the news of her father’s ejection from the Agency for willful violation of policy? What would she think of a father in a unique position to stem the rush to war who lacked the courage to act? Disgrace or the prospect of nuclear war. Could there be any real choice?
One step at a time. He fumbled his way out of the auditorium, the aisle sporadically lit by the flashing screen. He pulled up his steep driveway twenty minutes later and stared for a moment at the house, picturing the occupants, before getting out of the car. As he closed the front door behind him, he could hear the perpetual music from Isabel’s room and the rustle of paper from the front room, Muriel digesting the Sunday Post. She looked up as he came in.
“Hi!” she said cheerily. “Have a nice drive?”
He sat on the edge of a chair next to her. “I worked some things out.”
She sobered at his look.
“I need to talk to you. Can you get some clothes on? I’d just as soon get out of the house.”
“Well, sure.” She pinched at the lapels of her robe. “I’ll just be a few minutes.” She gave him a perplexed look and headed up the stairs. Five minutes later, he heard her knock on Isabel’s door and announce they were going for a ride.
“My hair’s a mess. We’re not going anywhere in public are we?” she asked as he joined her in the hallway.
“No, you look fine. I just want to find a quiet place to talk.”
In the car he headed them toward the Naval Observatory grounds and found an empty turnoff where they could park. He turned off the ignition and looked out over the rolling lawns.
Muriel broke the silence.
“This is a little frightening, you know.”
“I am frightened,” he said with a shy grin. He half turned in his seat to face her. “I’m about to take a big step. I’ve never involved you in Agency business, but if I miss my footing here, it could be very bad.”
“You know I trust you.”
“You trust a guy who has always played by the rules. I have to break some rules now.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t know.”
“According to the rules you shouldn’t. That’s one of the rules I need to break. I can’t go into this leaving you in the cold.”
“It’s got to do with Avery, doesn’t it?”
He nodded. “You read about the alert?”
“What there is to read,” she said, befuddled. “Rumors of a full alert, unconfirmed by the White House. Official mumblings about routine training exercises.”
“And you remember my last dust-up with McMasters.”
“Humble pie.”
“They’re all tied in together. I don’t have to tell you the details, but I need to sketch it for you, to explain what I’m going to do.
“There’s some influence moving through the Earth. We picked it up by seismic signals, microscopic Earthquakes. Avery stumbled onto it by sonar signals. We have no idea what causes the noise as it goes, but, whatever it is, it moves back and forth through the Earth. No one seems to have noticed it above the surface, but Avery was on a mission to investigate that, and I’m convinced it sank his ship.”
“It? You mean you have no idea what sank a ship?”
“That’s right. Incredible as it seems, there’s something deadly out there, down there, and we have no clue to what it is. Last spring a Russian aircraft carrier was damaged in a mysterious way. All the evidence points to the same phenomenon. The carrier was in the
right place at the right time to have run into this thing. They blamed us, thought we had some mystery ray. They zapped one of our spy satellites with a laser satellite; we snatched their laser with the shuttle.”
“Oh, yeah.” Muriel wagged a finger in memory. “There were some reports of skullduggery with the shuttle. Someone high up sat on that one very hard.”
“Right. Well, it’s continued to escalate. The Russians have launched another laser. That’s led to the alert.” He paused. “I know you realize that this is all confidential, but what I’m going to tell you next, you really have to regard in the strictest confidence. If it gets out, then the whole works go down the drain.”
“Don’t tell me.”
“This is the crux. You won’t understand my motivation otherwise.”
“It seems pretty clear. Something strange is going on. You’ve lost a good friend to it. We and the Russians are at odds over it, without even knowing it. That neanderthal McMasters has blocked your way, and you’re going to defy him by continuing to dig when he has forbidden you to. If he catches you, he skins you and makes a gift of your tanned hide to the Director, no matter the motivation.”
Isaacs smiled. “An admirable summary, counselor. You’re right. It was the investigation of these seismic signals that McMasters squelched. I appealed to him last week, but with this alert on he just slapped me down, got to tend to the business at hand. The problem is, of course, that I think the business at hand is the outgrowth of this mystery noise. We must understand that.”
“Then go after it.”
“If I’m wrong, or if I’m found out mucking around before I can come up with incontrovertible proof, I’ll be kicked out, disgraced. I’m worried about your position, about what Isabel would think. It wouldn’t be worth the risk if all that were at stake was my concern for what happened to Avery.”
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