“No, not just for a personal question,” Muriel agreed, “but other men have died. This thing sounds dangerous on its own, even if it didn’t lead to lasers and shuttles having at it in space.”
“Muriel, men die all the time, and we and the Russians are always involved in some skirmish or other, some of which I can influence, others I can’t. The stakes are a lot bigger here.”
She looked thoughtful for a long moment. “Okay, tell me if you have to. But for your sake, not mine.”
“We launched a nuclear device this morning. It’ll track the laser. If the laser is used, we explode it.”
“Oh, Bob. Oh, my god. What would the Russians do?”
“Who knows? That’s just the worry. What would we do if they used a nuclear device against us in space? We’d retaliate somehow. Two things frighten me. That unknown thing in the Earth, and the knowledge that we’re as close to the brink as we have ever been.”
“Bob, this is insane. You have the key to defuse this, and only McMasters in the way. Can’t you go to the Director? Go to the President, for god’s sake!”
“I have a pile of circumstantial evidence, no real proof. I think that with some thought and work the connection can be established, but doing that in an open fashion, never mind with the full-scale interagency cooperation that’s required, is just what McMasters has blocked. If I get myself sacked, then I really am useless. Somehow, I’ve got to assemble a stronger case so I can circumvent McMasters. And I’ve got to do it in the midst of this goddamned full-scale alert, when they want to know everything that’s happening, and why—yesterday.”
She reached over and touched his arm. “Bob, you do what you have to do. Take me home.”
He started the car and drove, barely seeing the road. He slowly realized that he had, besides Muriel, two possible allies. Maybe there was hope.
Korolev sat at his desk and stared at the incredible document in his hand. It was postmarked from New York, a simple attempt at subterfuge. Naive? Or sophisticated in its attempt to hide in plain sight? The fact that this letter was mailed to him just like any other piece of scientific correspondence that he received regularly from colleagues world-wide appealed to him greatly. What was the chance that this piece went unscreened by the authorities? Small, regrettably.
What a delight to see his confidence in this American vindicated. In the letter he confesses to pushing the meteorite idea, even as his confidence waned. Here is a man of conscience, trying honestly to struggle with forces beyond his control. How clearly he sees the disaster that has followed like night the day from the damage to the Novorossiisk.
And what a bizarre case he has compiled! A seismic signal that traverses the Earth every eighty and one half minutes. The Novorossiisk in the way. This destroyer of theirs also in the path, and sunk! Could we have such seismic data? Korolev sighed. Probably far inferior, and locked in tight bureaucratic compartments. Could he pry it out? What an effort to ask of an old man. Expend much of the capital of his prestige in an effort like that. But this Isaacs fellow had now neatly forced his hand. He must try.
What a nice touch, the straw on the camel’s back that would force him into action. Why, he queries, did the Novorossiisk not report a rising sonar signal? Ah, the subtleties of Soviet militarism. Isaacs must know that we do not keep tapes of sonar signals. There would be no point, without the ready computer power to analyze them. Our records are in the memories of men and the written page. What Isaacs does not know is that one of those memories was erased. The sonar man, not so far from retirement, had finally worked his way up to chief sonar officer on the Novorossiisk. No one was surprised at the heart attack that felled him. Until now, no one had questioned why his collapse had preceded the emergency, the fires on the ship. His second had taken over and had heard the descending signal. What had the first man heard that instigated his attack? Isaacs had asked a key question. Korolev was convinced he knew the answer.
Two problems. Could the disastrous chain of events be broken? From the Novorossiisk to the FireEye, the Cosmos, the shuttle, the new Cosmos, and now this evil new device of the Americans. Did this linkage have a momentum of its own that could not be stopped? Could he make a case that would cause his government to defuse the issue, to look to the common problem? If he could get independent evidence, beyond this document, to whom would he turn? Who in his stolid, conservative government would respond to this outrageous tale?
And what was this common enemy? This motive force within the Earth, that punched holes in ships, and frightened men to death? What could be so omnipresent and yet so surgically precise that death can come and go and leave scarce a trace?
Korolev wrote a word in heavy blunt pencil in the margin of Isaacs’ letter: TUNGUS.
On the following Saturday the precious morning slipped away, but Pat Danielson still wore her nightgown and robe. She had worked late the night before, responding to the crisis atmosphere that gripped the Agency, trying to monitor and anticipate the Soviet response to the orbiting nuclear device. She was due back by two in the afternoon. Now she kept that tension at bay by methodically devouring the morning paper. The condominium ads had caught her attention. After a brief stay with friends of her father upon her arrival in Washington, she had moved into the present high-rise apartment. She shared the rent with her roommate, Janine Corliss, a secretary in the FDA, an amicable arrangement, but looked forward to the independence and tax advantage of owning her own dwelling and had nearly accumulated a down payment.
A key rattled in the lock and Janine came in clutching a tennis racquet and a handful of mail, sweaty from an early match with the young lawyer from down the hall. She threw the mail on the coffee table and extracted one piece. She walked down the hallway and into Pat’s room and tossed the letter on the stack of discarded newspaper sections. “A letter for you.”
She bustled into her own room and then into the shower. Danielson picked up the envelope and examined the address written in a strong hand. She ran through her brief list of friends, unable to place the writing. She opened the envelope and looked at the terse message in surprise:
Pat,
Please meet me at the Olde English Pub, 87412 Wisconsin in Bethesda tomorrow (Sunday) at 3:00 p.m. Please do not mention or show this note to anyone.
Bob Isaacs
Danielson read the message three times quickly and then stared at it. They had ample opportunity every day of the week, and then some lately, to discuss Agency business. She had spent a half hour with Isaacs the previous Wednesday and their interchange had been routine, although he had been more preoccupied than usual. The message was so oddly clandestine; that wasn’t even their branch of the Agency. That it represented the prelude to some romantic entanglement seemed preposterous. Not that it couldn’t happen, but there would have been some other clue. She thought back to their conversation after the cancellation of Project QUAKER. The question of her social life, or lack of it, had come up. Had she sent him some kind of false signal? Had she misread him so badly? He seemed straightforward and sincere, but how could you ever tell what people were thinking?
Whatever its motivation, the request put her on the spot. She realized after some reflection that she would keep the appointment, but knowing she would have a few more hours off tomorrow afternoon, she had accepted a rare date for a concert at Wolf Trap. How did Isaacs know she wouldn’t be working? Easy enough for him to check the roster, she supposed. Anyway she would have to break the date. The easiest thing would be to claim that something had come up at work, but especially if it were true, that would violate the spirit of Isaacs’ request for discretion. Maybe Janine would get sick, and she would have to stay home with her.
Janine came into Pat’s room dressed in her robe and wringing her hair in a towel. Danielson recognized that to ignore the note would be the best way to arouse her roommate’s interest. She waved the letter by one corner and then tossed it into the wastebasket.
“An insurance salesman, begging me to call him and com
pare policies when my auto insurance comes due. Apparently, a struggling independent who can’t afford his own stationery.”
Janine shrugged.
“Well, he shows initiative. Maybe you should call him up and check him out.”
Danielson grinned. She felt she had pulled off her little lie, but her pulse pounded with the effort. She recalled the polygraph test that had constituted part of her screening for the Agency position, glad not to be hooked up to it now.
Janine plopped down on Pat’s bed and began to comb her hair.
Isaacs sat in the back of the bar where the afternoon sun barely penetrated from the opaque plastic panels in the front windows. He had debated the alternatives: to meet in a crowded place where strangers would take no note, but where the probability of a chance acquaintance was higher; or to pick a quiet spot where the bartender and the few patrons might have some vague memory of their presence, but their chances of being recognized together were near zero. He opted for the latter.
Isaacs dawdled over his drink, feeling alternatively morose, angry, and expectant. He recalled his attempt at fatherly advice to Danielson and felt the sting of irony. This was not the way to get ahead in the Agency. He smiled with relief when the door opened, revealing her silhouetted in the doorway. He was grateful that his confidence in this competent young woman had not been misplaced. The thought also passed through his mind that his goal could have been personal, rather than the business at hand, and she would have responded the same.
Danielson stood for a moment as her eyes adjusted from the sunlit afternoon. She instinctively peered toward the darkest area of the room and saw Isaacs arise from the booth. As she strode to greet him her senses were alert to his manner and carriage. His smile was warm, but did not quite reach his eyes, which looked troubled. He clasped her hand firmly, maintaining his grip just a fraction longer than necessary before giving it a last small pump and gesturing her into the seat.
“Thank you for coming,” he said.
Before she could respond the bartender had rounded the bar and sauntered to their table. He glanced at Danielson and raised an eyebrow toward Isaacs.
“Will you have a drink?”
“Well, it’s early, but it is hot out. I’ll have a gin and tonic.”
The bartender nodded and lackadaisically retraced his path.
“I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you, springing this on you. I know you have precious little time off these days.”
“I did have a date this afternoon.”
“I’m sorry. I tried to give you a day’s notice. I’m afraid I haven’t played the dating game in quite a while.”
Danielson raised an eyebrow. Was he playing it now?
“I did try to pick a time when I thought you’d just be relaxing at home.”
“I might have been, but this afternoon’s concert happened to fit my schedule. Anyway, I told him my hay fever had flared up, and I couldn’t face either sitting in the grass sneezing or doping myself silly with antihistamines. I got a rain check for next week at the Kennedy Center, safely inside and air-conditioned. Now if I can just get the DCI to let me off—”
Her voice trailed off, her real question left floating in the air. Isaacs sensed her reserve and grinned nervously as the bartender arrived with her drink. He put down a fresh coaster, then promptly soaked it as he deposited the glass too abruptly. Danielson started to take a sip, but the coaster stuck to the bottom of the glass. She looked on with mild surprise as Isaacs unpeeled the coaster, reached for the shaker, and shook some salt on it. He gestured at the coaster. She placed her glass down and then lifted it. The coaster stayed nicely in place on the table. She took a sip, then raised her glass in an abbreviated toast. Isaacs nodded his appreciation. After a moment a serious look settled on his face.
“I need to talk to you about Operation QUAKER.”
Danielson smiled wryly to herself. She had been right; romance was a preposterous notion. Aloud she said, “I find myself pondering it on occasion.” She glanced around the bar. “Do we need to meet here to beat a dead horse?”
“Circumstances have changed. I think it’s imperative that Operation QUAKER be revived.” Isaacs looked down into his drink and then up at Danielson. “I need your help, but the political roadblocks still exist so there are risks.” He smiled briefly. “That’s the reason for this skullduggery today.”
He leaned forward and spoke intently.
“Let me explain what has happened.”
Isaacs described his relation with Rutherford, the naval operation that had ensued, and its connection to the Novorossiisk. He gave a brief, professional description of the fate of the Stinson and her crew, but Danielson felt his pain. She sensed that his personal loss spurred him on in this venture. She asked herself how much of his renewed enthusiasm for Operation QUAKER was a reaction to his grief, how much a need for retribution against McMasters, and how much a cool objective decision that he alone must shoulder the responsibility.
“If you’re right about the Stinson and the Novorossiisk, then the whole situation we’re caught up in now,” Danielson looked around and lowered her voice even further, “the Russian satellite and our, uh, device, stems from whatever is causing the seismic signal.”
“That’s my reading.”
Danielson leaned back in the booth, her mind swimming, trying to assimilate all that Isaacs had said. “This damage,” she mumbled, almost to herself, “how could the seismic signals I was tracking possibly sink a ship?” She looked directly at Isaacs. “What could this thing be?”
Isaacs shrugged his shoulders and looked pained.
“I’ve asked myself that over and over. I don’t have a single rational suggestion. Only a profound vague fear.”
“Could it be a Russian weapon of some kind? But why would they use it on their own ship? An accident? And why would they blame us? Bluster to cover up?”
Isaacs shook his head again in worried fashion. “My instincts tell me the Soviets aren’t behind this. They really don’t understand what happened to the Novorossiisk. Everything else has followed naturally, god forbid.”
“Then who?”
“Who? What? No answers.”
Danielson was silent for a moment, thinking.
“What is the Navy doing about it? It was their destroyer that was lost.”
“The Navy is continuing its surveillance, but sporadically and from a great distance. Of course, they’re on full alert as well, so the energies of any of their brass who could make some constructive decisions are focused on what they see as the immediate problem—trying to monitor everything in the world that floats and flies a red star.
“There’s a self-defeating dichotomy in their approach. They don’t really know what happened to the Stinson and won’t officially admit any direct connection to its mission. And yet, they’re afraid there was some direct cause and won’t commit any ships or equipment to close surveillance. As it stands, they aren’t learning anything new, not even establishing in their own minds that this thing is definitely dangerous.”
“But you think it is.”
“I’m convinced of it.”
“What you suggest is so totally inexplicable, maybe coincidence is the only reasonable explanation after all.”
“There’s the slimmest chance that I’m overreacting to some outrageous coincidences. But I think the situation must be resolved one way or another. I’m certainly convinced that the present hiatus is unacceptable. Someone must take steps to determine what is really happening here.”
“Can’t you go back to McMasters and appeal to him to reopen the file on its merits?”
“I tried that. I drafted a long memo setting out the case. It only succeeded in getting him more angry. He suspects I had some role in the Navy’s interest, but can’t prove it. In any case, he’s clever enough to turn it around on me. He made an issue of the fact that there is no proof that the loss of the Stinson was not coincidence and that the Novorossiisk was not, after all, sunk, and henc
e that there is still no evidence that anything important is going on, much less for a connection between the two. I sent him the memo, what, eleven days ago, the day before the second laser was launched and we started this whole new loop. So he also gave me a healthy dose of ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’, ignoring my argument that the issues are one and the same. He also maintains that since the Navy now has some official interest in the phenomenon, there is no reason for the Agency to duplicate the effort.”
Danielson toyed with a small puddle of spilled tonic on the table, tracing a random pattern with her finger. She looked up.
“AFTAC is still collecting the seismic data—and sonar data from the undersea network, from what you say.”
“That’s right,” confirmed Isaacs, “but the Cambridge Research Lab stopped analyzing this particular signal, once we terminated our official interest in it. The AFTAC sonar data would help to pin down accurate positions, but since I didn’t have enough sense to make the connection, there’s been no analysis of it whatsoever. By rights the Navy should at least be studying the AFTAC sonar data, but from what I can tell, they’re not.”
“So all the data are piling up,” Danielson summarized, “but no one is looking at them.”
“True. And we can’t get at it. None of this is official Agency business, so a special request through channels is necessary— and McMasters has that approach effectively blocked.”
Danielson concentrated. “There are the data we gathered before the halt came. But that’s all in the inactive file. I didn’t save anything out.”
Isaacs punched a finger into the table. “I think we must start there. I’ll have to camouflage my request, but I can get some of that retrieved without it necessarily coming to McMasters’ attention. Particularly if you can give me an idea of the few things, data tapes and such, that would be of greatest use.
“The problem,” he continued, “is that I can’t do any of the analysis. I’m rarely directly involved with raw data and computer analysis any more. If I were to go anywhere near that data on a regular basis, McMasters would be on my back immediately. Any kind of blowup is apt to foreclose the investigation completely.”
The Krone Experiment k-1 Page 15
