He started in a calm tone, 'That signal is unprecedented,
McMasters interrupted him coldly.
'We operate in an environment awash with information, some of it unprecedented and most of it trivial. If we are to maintain our precarious hold on freedom, we must be ruthless in our drive to focus on the crucial and ignore the rest. This is no time to idly follow pet fancies. The monitoring of seismic signals is not even this Agency's business. I must question your competence in choosing to mobilize the resources of the Agency to chase such a chimera.'
The bald personal attack on his judgement stirred Isaacs's anger. Tension crept into his voice.
'Sir, we are in full agreement on our goals. We must select the important elements from a flood of information, but my record demonstrates that I am effective in doing just that.'
He had stressed the 'my' and McMasters's ears tinged with red at the riposte.
Isaacs extended a vigorous forefinger at the report on the desk and continued, 'There is something profoundly disturbing about this seismic signal. Of course, there is a chance that it is insignificant, but I don't believe that is the case. I believe we must pursue this thing until we understand it.'
'You believe?' McMasters spoke with anger and mockery. 'On what basis? Is there a clear and present danger to the nation?'
'Not clear and present. You can't expect.' Isaacs began hotly.
'Is there any hint of the slightest bother to anyone, anywhere?' McMasters interrupted.
'Not yet, but...'
'Your concern for this trivial matter is foolhardy.'
Isaacs suffered the second interruption and gritted his teeth.
McMasters continued, 'You occupy a position of great authority and the Agency can ill afford such lapses. I order you to desist totally in your pursuit of this matter. I will draft a memo summarizing your ill judgement. If there is any repeat performance, I will be forced to place that memo in your file and report your case to the Director.'
Isaacs recognized this as part bluff. His record was good and McMasters could not impugn him. recklessly to the Director without endangering his own position. Still, the Director's reliance on McMasters for advice on internal affairs was well-known. McMasters, in turn, used his favoured position adroitly. Isaacs was aware that McMasters could influence the Director in a manner which could damage Isaacs professionally, and worse, could interfere with important Agency operations.
Isaacs gestured with his hands at hip level, tense fingers spread, palms facing each other, an aborted, instinctive reaction to his desire to clutch and shake the object of his frustration.
'For god's sake!' he shot. 'You're taking me to task for doing my job the best I know how.'
'Perhaps your best is not good enough,' McMasters replied sharply.
Isaacs raised his arms and eyes towards the ceiling in dismay. Then he brandished a weapon-substitute finger at the older man.
'We both know the real reason for this confrontation,' he said, louder than he intended. 'The root of it is not my competence, but yours. You're irritated because I managed to scuttle some of your outdated programmes.'
'Don't raise your voice to me,' McMasters responded with surprising volume. 'My competence is not the issue here, whatsoever.'
Outside in the anteroom, the secretary smiled slightly. To this point the conversation within had been entirely muffled. The latter outbursts did not carry clearly through the soundproofed door, but their tone was clear. The two distinguished gentlemen were, indeed, at each other's throats.
As if aware of this monitoring, McMasters lowered his voice, if not the level of his irritation. He continued, glaring at Isaacs.
'Your suggestion borders on insubordination. You are not improving your position.'
Isaacs, on cue, lowered his tone.
'This discussion is ridiculous. We both want what is best for the Agency. You know I acted in good conscience when I argued against your programmes. You are doing neither us nor the Agency a service by threatening to interfere with me in general and a potentially critical area in particular.'
'I am threatening nothing,' McMasters responded. 'I am simply carrying out my assigned duty which is to see to it that the Agency functions in the most efficient possible manner. I am putting you on notice that your unilateral authorization of worthless projects and disrespect for this office will not be tolerated. I repeat you are to terminate the operation regarding this insubstantial seismic phenomenon.'
Isaacs calculated quickly. He was in a no-win situation, with no chance of talking McMasters out of his vindictive position. He had little beyond his intuition to justify the effort he had authorized to understand the queer seismic waves. The expenses involved were small, but still a finite dram on Agency resources. He did not want the project to come up for a full-scale Agency review as McMasters could easily arrange. In such a case he would be forced to rank the seismic project below a goodly number of others. Even the Director, through no malice, was likely to suggest a 'compromise' in an effort to quell disagreements among his subordinates. His best hope would be to lose only the seismic project and prevent McMasters from lopping off any other projects. He would be no better off than now, but the disagreement between himself and McMasters would have been aired widely, and that could only lead to other trouble. He had little practical choice but to accede to McMasters.
Isaacs stared down at the man before him.
'All right,' he conceded, 'both of us stand to lose if you insist on dragging our personal disagreements before the Director, but I won't risk Agency programmes being gratuitously interrupted for the sake of exposing your machinations.'
'You'll abandon your investigation of this seismic folly?' 'Yes.'
'You understand that this is an order carrying the full authority of my office?'
'Yes, dammit!'
McMasters eyed him for a moment, then snapped,
'You are dismissed.'
Isaacs promptly whirled and strode out of the office. He resisted a temptation to slam the door behind him. The secretary half expected another wink. Instead he treated her to the sight of his back as he crossed her office and disappeared down the corridor.
In his office, Kevin McMasters wrote a brief note to his secretary, attached it to the file before him and dropped the file in his 'out' box. His gaze lingered on it, and he smiled a small, self-satisfied smile.
That afternoon Pat Danielson was one of a handful of people to receive the following memo:
Due to a reordering of priorities, active investigation connected with operation code name QUAKER will terminate effective immediately. Please act promptly to deliver to central inactive files all material relevant to Project QUAKER which is in your possession.
It was initialled 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 towards understanding had come to a halt?
Without pausing to analyse the propriety of her actions, she logged off the computer, slammed her notebook shut and strode off towards Isaacs's 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 cancelled.. 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-muc 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's 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 weaselling 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 cancelled?'
'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 they'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 al keeping up the day to day affairs of the Agency, as long a tricky strategic questions aren't involved. If nothing else he keeps the Director from meddling in the details so w< can get our job done. We all have our strengths ant 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 cancelled 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 other 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.'
'Hotbed 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's 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 towards 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 labour 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's 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 townhouse 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.
She came in alternately damning a recalcitrant senatorial aide with whom she was forced to have dealings and crowing over the successful completion of another case in which an out-of-court settlement had saved their client the embarrassment of a court appearance. She elaborated on these developments in a keyed-up, stream-of-consciousness flow as she mixed herself a drink at the bar and sat alongside her husband. As she chatted, Isaacs half-listened, nodding and responding with appropriate monosyllables on occasion. Muriel realized he was down and covered for him for a while, but finally inquired.
'You're quiet tonight. How was your day?'
Isaacs smiled tiredly at his wife, then looked down at his drink. He sat up and tried belatedly to brush some of the collected moisture off the sofa arm.
He smiled again, more genuinely, at his gloomy forgetfulness.
'I shouldn't let him get under my skin. McMasters outflanked me this afternoon. A petty move on his part, but I had to put aside a potentially significant project which is only in the early stages. One of my young people was pretty disappointed. She'd put a lot of good work into it.'
'Can't you go over his head?'
'No, it's not that kind of thing. He put me on the spot before enough evidence was in to make a rigorous case. That's one thing that bothers me, though. Now we won't know. If it is serious, it'll catch us by surprise later.'
'I don't suppose you can continue surreptitiously?'
Isaacs chuckled.
'You've got too many clients who spend their lives going back on campaign promises. No. It would be hard to do and hell to pay if I got caught. He gave me an order as a senior officer. Even if it's stupid, I'd be putting my job on the line and jeopardizing a lot of programmes of proven importance. The Director would rule against me unless I had an overwhelming motivation for my insubordination.'
Muriel grimed and raised her glass in a mock toast. 'So you're going to eat it?' He returned the gesture.
'I can assure you I've already done so in my most humble and cooperative way.'
Chapter 6
McMasters interrupted him coldly.
'We operate in an environment awash with information, some of it unprecedented and most of it trivial. If we are to maintain our precarious hold on freedom, we must be ruthless in our drive to focus on the crucial and ignore the rest. This is no time to idly follow pet fancies. The monitoring of seismic signals is not even this Agency's business. I must question your competence in choosing to mobilize the resources of the Agency to chase such a chimera.'
The bald personal attack on his judgement stirred Isaacs's anger. Tension crept into his voice.
'Sir, we are in full agreement on our goals. We must select the important elements from a flood of information, but my record demonstrates that I am effective in doing just that.'
He had stressed the 'my' and McMasters's ears tinged with red at the riposte.
Isaacs extended a vigorous forefinger at the report on the desk and continued, 'There is something profoundly disturbing about this seismic signal. Of course, there is a chance that it is insignificant, but I don't believe that is the case. I believe we must pursue this thing until we understand it.'
'You believe?' McMasters spoke with anger and mockery. 'On what basis? Is there a clear and present danger to the nation?'
'Not clear and present. You can't expect.' Isaacs began hotly.
'Is there any hint of the slightest bother to anyone, anywhere?' McMasters interrupted.
'Not yet, but...'
'Your concern for this trivial matter is foolhardy.'
Isaacs suffered the second interruption and gritted his teeth.
McMasters continued, 'You occupy a position of great authority and the Agency can ill afford such lapses. I order you to desist totally in your pursuit of this matter. I will draft a memo summarizing your ill judgement. If there is any repeat performance, I will be forced to place that memo in your file and report your case to the Director.'
Isaacs recognized this as part bluff. His record was good and McMasters could not impugn him. recklessly to the Director without endangering his own position. Still, the Director's reliance on McMasters for advice on internal affairs was well-known. McMasters, in turn, used his favoured position adroitly. Isaacs was aware that McMasters could influence the Director in a manner which could damage Isaacs professionally, and worse, could interfere with important Agency operations.
Isaacs gestured with his hands at hip level, tense fingers spread, palms facing each other, an aborted, instinctive reaction to his desire to clutch and shake the object of his frustration.
'For god's sake!' he shot. 'You're taking me to task for doing my job the best I know how.'
'Perhaps your best is not good enough,' McMasters replied sharply.
Isaacs raised his arms and eyes towards the ceiling in dismay. Then he brandished a weapon-substitute finger at the older man.
'We both know the real reason for this confrontation,' he said, louder than he intended. 'The root of it is not my competence, but yours. You're irritated because I managed to scuttle some of your outdated programmes.'
'Don't raise your voice to me,' McMasters responded with surprising volume. 'My competence is not the issue here, whatsoever.'
Outside in the anteroom, the secretary smiled slightly. To this point the conversation within had been entirely muffled. The latter outbursts did not carry clearly through the soundproofed door, but their tone was clear. The two distinguished gentlemen were, indeed, at each other's throats.
As if aware of this monitoring, McMasters lowered his voice, if not the level of his irritation. He continued, glaring at Isaacs.
'Your suggestion borders on insubordination. You are not improving your position.'
Isaacs, on cue, lowered his tone.
'This discussion is ridiculous. We both want what is best for the Agency. You know I acted in good conscience when I argued against your programmes. You are doing neither us nor the Agency a service by threatening to interfere with me in general and a potentially critical area in particular.'
'I am threatening nothing,' McMasters responded. 'I am simply carrying out my assigned duty which is to see to it that the Agency functions in the most efficient possible manner. I am putting you on notice that your unilateral authorization of worthless projects and disrespect for this office will not be tolerated. I repeat you are to terminate the operation regarding this insubstantial seismic phenomenon.'
Isaacs calculated quickly. He was in a no-win situation, with no chance of talking McMasters out of his vindictive position. He had little beyond his intuition to justify the effort he had authorized to understand the queer seismic waves. The expenses involved were small, but still a finite dram on Agency resources. He did not want the project to come up for a full-scale Agency review as McMasters could easily arrange. In such a case he would be forced to rank the seismic project below a goodly number of others. Even the Director, through no malice, was likely to suggest a 'compromise' in an effort to quell disagreements among his subordinates. His best hope would be to lose only the seismic project and prevent McMasters from lopping off any other projects. He would be no better off than now, but the disagreement between himself and McMasters would have been aired widely, and that could only lead to other trouble. He had little practical choice but to accede to McMasters.
Isaacs stared down at the man before him.
'All right,' he conceded, 'both of us stand to lose if you insist on dragging our personal disagreements before the Director, but I won't risk Agency programmes being gratuitously interrupted for the sake of exposing your machinations.'
'You'll abandon your investigation of this seismic folly?' 'Yes.'
'You understand that this is an order carrying the full authority of my office?'
'Yes, dammit!'
McMasters eyed him for a moment, then snapped,
'You are dismissed.'
Isaacs promptly whirled and strode out of the office. He resisted a temptation to slam the door behind him. The secretary half expected another wink. Instead he treated her to the sight of his back as he crossed her office and disappeared down the corridor.
In his office, Kevin McMasters wrote a brief note to his secretary, attached it to the file before him and dropped the file in his 'out' box. His gaze lingered on it, and he smiled a small, self-satisfied smile.
That afternoon Pat Danielson was one of a handful of people to receive the following memo:
Due to a reordering of priorities, active investigation connected with operation code name QUAKER will terminate effective immediately. Please act promptly to deliver to central inactive files all material relevant to Project QUAKER which is in your possession.
It was initialled 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 towards understanding had come to a halt?
Without pausing to analyse the propriety of her actions, she logged off the computer, slammed her notebook shut and strode off towards Isaacs's 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 cancelled.. 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-muc 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's 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 weaselling 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 cancelled?'
'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 they'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 al keeping up the day to day affairs of the Agency, as long a tricky strategic questions aren't involved. If nothing else he keeps the Director from meddling in the details so w< can get our job done. We all have our strengths ant 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 cancelled 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 other 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.'
'Hotbed 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's 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 towards 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 labour 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's 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 townhouse 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.
She came in alternately damning a recalcitrant senatorial aide with whom she was forced to have dealings and crowing over the successful completion of another case in which an out-of-court settlement had saved their client the embarrassment of a court appearance. She elaborated on these developments in a keyed-up, stream-of-consciousness flow as she mixed herself a drink at the bar and sat alongside her husband. As she chatted, Isaacs half-listened, nodding and responding with appropriate monosyllables on occasion. Muriel realized he was down and covered for him for a while, but finally inquired.
'You're quiet tonight. How was your day?'
Isaacs smiled tiredly at his wife, then looked down at his drink. He sat up and tried belatedly to brush some of the collected moisture off the sofa arm.
He smiled again, more genuinely, at his gloomy forgetfulness.
'I shouldn't let him get under my skin. McMasters outflanked me this afternoon. A petty move on his part, but I had to put aside a potentially significant project which is only in the early stages. One of my young people was pretty disappointed. She'd put a lot of good work into it.'
'Can't you go over his head?'
'No, it's not that kind of thing. He put me on the spot before enough evidence was in to make a rigorous case. That's one thing that bothers me, though. Now we won't know. If it is serious, it'll catch us by surprise later.'
'I don't suppose you can continue surreptitiously?'
Isaacs chuckled.
'You've got too many clients who spend their lives going back on campaign promises. No. It would be hard to do and hell to pay if I got caught. He gave me an order as a senior officer. Even if it's stupid, I'd be putting my job on the line and jeopardizing a lot of programmes of proven importance. The Director would rule against me unless I had an overwhelming motivation for my insubordination.'
Muriel grimed and raised her glass in a mock toast. 'So you're going to eat it?' He returned the gesture.
'I can assure you I've already done so in my most humble and cooperative way.'
Chapter 6
The USS Seamount, out of Pearl Harbor, sailed steadily towards the Bering Sea carrying a cargo of sixteen nuclear— tipped missiles. Her blunt hull cut cleanly through the water at four hundred fathoms, maintaining a steady twenty-five knots.
Lt. J.G. Augustus Washington sat at the controls of the sophisticated computerized sonar, his consciousness merged with the surrounding sea, as it would be eight hours a day for the next three months. Half his mind tuned to the sounds coming through his headset and to the green glow of the twin display screens in front of him. He automatically registered the turning of the screw on a distant Japanese tanker bound for Valdez , a school of whales somewhere to the west, and the anonymous squeals, rattles and clicks which characterize the undersea world. The other part of his mind wandered to his recently ended shore leave, to his wife. His quarterly sessions at sea were rough and lonely for a young woman married only a couple of years, but if she couldn't be home in Little Rock , Hawaii was not bad duty for her. At least blacks were not the bottom of the heap. There were always the native Hawaiians. And their reunions — oooeee! Almost worth three months of nothing doing. He swore it would be another two weeks before he would even begin to think about sex, then recognized that he had already succumbed and laughed softly to himself.
He began to form an image of his woman standing on the bed in the moonlight, naked and spread-eagled over him when the angry boiling broke forth from the earphones.
Tension seized his gut and left his heart pounding. He jerked upright in his seat, his eyes fixed on the brilliant dot on the right-hand screen that passively recorded incoming signals. His gaze whipped to the left screen which registered the reflection of the active signals the submarine emitted and saw only the faintest reading.
'Holy Christ!'
His exclamation cut through the cabin, violating the hush of routine.
'What have you got?' inquired the duty officer, moving to his side.
Washington 's eyes remained fixed on the screens before him. He reached to flip on the external speaker and the bizarre hiss filled the cabin. He hit another switch and the right screen shifted to the target Doppler indicator mode. Offscale! He twisted a knob.
'Somethin's comin' at us like a bat outa hell! Five thousand — shit! No!' He looked at the right screen again. 'Coming on four thousand metres already — goddamn! I can't even get a reading on it. Closin' fast. From directly beneath us! And I can't even see it in active mode! Sucker must be small!'
'That's absurd,' retorted the officer, 'nothing moves that fast,' but his ears heard the noise and his eyes read the screens; his shaken voice belied the conviction of his words. He stepped quickly to the ship's phone.
Washington began expertly to assimilate the flow of information from the panel before him. He switched the left screen for a brief moment to the target noise indicator display and mumbled to himself, 'white noise, no sign of a screw frequency.' He switched the screen to the target data and track history mode, fed from the computer memory. 'Now at three thousand metres,' he sang out. The noise from the speaker grew steadily. The knot in his stomach tightened with each fraction of a decibel. He reached to turn down the volume and spoke over his shoulder.
'It's not coming right at us. It should pass us about eleven hundred metres off the port bow.' The duty officer repeated the message to the captain. They listened, ummoving, as the sound peaked and then diminished slightly with a perceptible change in pitch. Washington noted its passage through the ship's depth level, headed for the surface.
Abruptly the noise ceased, to be replaced with an almost painful silence as saturated ears tried to adjust. Active dials lapsed into quiescence and the bright blip on the screen disappeared. Washington swivelled in his chair to exchange wide-eyed looks of surprise with the duty officer who reported once more to the captain.
Washington returned his attention to his instruments. Ten, fifteen seconds went by. Slowly he turned up the sensitivity of the device and the volume on the speaker and earphones. Only the routine sounds of the sea issued. After twenty-five seconds the duty officer still stood with the phone clamped in a sweaty hand, but others in the cabin began to shuffle in relief. Washington increased the gain a bit more and concentrated his trained ear to detect any hint of abnormal sound. He systematically switched display modes but found no clue to the thing that had just assaulted them.
With the suddenness and impact of a physical blow, the cabin filled with the sound again. Washington shrieked, ripped off his earphones and slapped a palm over each ear. He slipped off his chair and knelt in a daze of confusion, his body pumped with adrenalin, his ears ringing with an intense hollow echo. Several figures rushed to the sonar console. Two friends bent to Washington. Someone fumbled, then found, the volume control. The frightening hiss dropped to a muted roar and the duty officer was left in the new quiet, shouting hoarsely into the phone.
The noise dropped gradually, and then just before it faded below a perceptible level it ceased abruptly once more. Silence fell in the cabin, broken only by the chatter of the sonar and the quiet moan of the man who remained on the floor, rocking gently, his hands over his ears and his eyes squeezed shut.
Several days after the cancellation of Project QUAKER, Isaacs played a closely fought game of handball with a friend and colleague. Captain Avery Rutherford, one of the senior officers in Naval Intelligence. Rutherford was three years older than Isaacs, but in excellent shape. They split the first four games and went to a tie breaker on the match game. Isaacs scored once and served at game point. After several volleys, Isaacs took a shot in front court. Calculating to catch his opponent off guard, he hit the ball softly to the front wall, but it went a bit too high and gave Rutherford time to cover it. With Isaacs in the front court, Rutherford played a favourite shot which came off the front wall as a lob calculated to land in the rear corner, a troublesome left hand return at best. He then retreated rapidly to centre court just behind the service area to await the return, hoping to hear the satisfying silence of a missed shot.
Isaacs knew the other man's tactics, however, and back— pedalled furiously to cover most of the distance to the left rear corner before the ball left the front wall. This gave him time to plant his feet firmly, eye locked on the descending sphere. The ball bounced on the floor, then off the back wall, nicely clearing both it and the side wall. Isaacs made the shot at hip level, putting into it everything his weaker left hand could muster. The ball rifled cross court, just missing Rutherford 's left knee. It struck almost dead in the corner, the from wall a fraction of a second earlier than the right, two inches above the floor. It skittered once and then meekly rolled across the court to bump gently into Rutherford 's toe.
The sudden denouement caught Rutherford by surprise and he just stared at the ball. Then he scooped it up and turned.
'Damnation, Bob, that was a hell of a shot!'
'Thanks,' Isaacs grinned. 'Amazingly enough, that's just what I wanted it to do.'
They played two more games for exercise, but without quite the fire. Isaacs took the first by a comfortable margin, Rutherford the last.
After the game, they left sweat-sagged piles of gym clothes in front of their lockers, grabbed their towels and stepped into the steam room. They sat on the bench and rehashed their play, each enthusiastically recalling the other's good points and mixing in an occasional soft-pedalled critique.
They fell silent for a couple of minutes. Then Rutherford swivelled his head and looked at his companion.
'Do you mind a little shop talk, off the cuff?'
Isaacs leaned back against the wall, his eyes closed.
'Of course not, what's on your mind?'
'Well, we've had scattered reports of a strange acoustic phenomenon, sort of an underwater sonic boom. This thing's been kicking around. Nobody's done anything about it because no one knows what to make of it. I just wondered whether it might ring a bell with you?'
'No,' said Isaacs lethargically, 'I haven't heard anything about it. We've been up to our ears counting screws and bolts in Tyuratam, waiting for them to launch the other shoe. Some kind of explosion?'
'No,' Rutherford shook his head and pinched some sweat out of his eyes, 'it's not localized like that. Something seems to be moving through the water, making a hell of a racket as it goes. It comes from the ocean bottom and apparently disappears momentarily at the surface. Then, it reappears and proceeds back down to the bottom.'
'Some kind of missile, torpedo?'
'Seems like it, doesn't it? But there's no indication of any launching craft. Besides this starts from really deep down, miles.'
'How about an underwater volcano, maybe spewing out blobs of lava, or rocks?'
'There's probably too much drag in the water for that to be possible, but I'd give some credence if the reports were from one spot. They're not, though. They're from all over the globe. Several from mid-Atlantic shipping lanes, a few near Japan, a couple from the Sixth Fleet in the Med, one south of Madagascar, another in the Sea of Tasman between Australia and New Zealand. The latest one came from a sub north of Hawaii , that's why it's on my mind. A particularly close call, poor bastards thought they were being attacked. Anyway, the thing seems 'to hop all over.'
The men fell silent. Rutherford leaned over to examine a chipped nail on his big toe. Isaacs had not really been concentrating on the conversation. Now snippets of it rolled around in his head. Suddenly, a surge of adrenalin went keening out of his belly and through his body. His eyes snapped open and, despite the heat, he felt as if someone had just raked a large icy comb down his back.
He sat up and faced Rutherford who still bent over his foot.
'Those reports you just described, they seem to be either north or south of the equator, about equal distances.' He tried to keep his voice casual.
'Oh yeah, I forgot to mention another curious feature. This thing appears at random times, not always near the same latitude, sometimes north, sometimes south.'
'Thirty-three degrees.'
Now Rutherford swivelled his head in surprise.
'Hey, friend, you've been holding out on me!'
Nervous energy drove Isaacs off the bench. 'Nothing like it,' he said intently, 'just slow to make the connection.' He paced the small room randomly, oblivious to his steamy surroundings, his mind racing. 'Good lord, in the water, too! What the hell does that mean?'
Rutherford had witnessed his friend's burst of intensity before and, failing to understand what had set him off, watched bemusedly as Isaacs moved about, his cock flipping drops of sweat and condensed steam at each sudden turn.
Isaacs stopped in front of him.
'Up to last week we were analysing the seismic equivalent of your phenomenon. Something's moving through the earth, generating seismic waves.'
He sat suddenly next to Rutherford and continued.
'I had some of my people keeping an eye on it, even though we didn't know what to make of it.'
Then he was thinking out loud.
'The seismic data only told us what was happening in rock. I convinced myself that whatever it what was confined to the earth's crust, that the seismic waves were its essence. Now you tell me something about it continues into the water.' He shook his head. 'I don't like it. I don't like this at all.
'Listen, we've learned some things you apparently haven't stumbled onto yet. This thing is always there, and very methodical. It just goes back and forth, back and forth, always on the same path through the earth.' He waved his arms. 'And then out into the ocean! Shit! No reason to think it doesn't continue into the atmosphere! No telling how far it goes.'
He leaned back against the wall. 'Our problem is that McMasters scuttled our operation, claimed it wasn't Agency business.' He paused for a moment. 'Damn, it's hot in here! Let's go someplace where we can do a little serious talking. Better make it your office, since the subject is officially verboten on my turf.'
As Rutherford steered his staff car through the prerush hour traffic, Isaacs explained animatedly how his interest in the seismic signal became aroused during his duty at AFTAC. He then outlined the progress Danielson had made, culminating in her conclusion that the phenomenon followed a trajectory fixed in space. They finished the drive in silence while Rutherford ruminated on this new information.
A half hour later they entered Rutherford 's office. Rutherford ordered up the Navy file on the acoustic phenomenon. He sat behind his desk while Isaacs remained standing, rocking nervously on the balls of his feet. Rutherford spoke first.
'Boy, I'm really having trouble absorbing this. I had a notion of a random, infrequent occurrence, and now you describe something punching through the surface like clockwork, every eighty minutes or so. I guess I still don't get the picture. Tell me again how this fixed motion works.'
'Let me use this globe,' Isaacs said as he lifted a fancy relief model of the earth off its shelf and put it on Rutherford 's desk. He grabbed a pencil and held it pointed towards the surface of the globe, about a third of the way above the equator. 'The thing always moves along a line, like this.' He moved the pencil in and out, parallel to itself, 'Zipzip, zipzip. But as the earth turns,' he spun the globe slowly with his free hand, 'the thing always comes up in a different place.' He tapped the pencil rhythmically as he spun the globe, each tap hitting it an inch further on than the last.
'Let me see that,' said Rutherford , reaching for the pencil. He held it alongside the globe so that he could project it in his imagination into the centre of the globe. Then he moved it back and forth along its length as he spun the globe slowly, eraser to the northern hemisphere, then point to the southern, eraser to the north, point, south. 'Okay, I think I get the picture, but what could possibly do that? Through the centre of the earth? Jesus Christ!'
He jerked his head up as a knock sounded at the door.
'Come in.'
An aide came in bearing a file folder.
'Bob, Lieutenant Szkada. Lieutenant, Bob Isaacs, Central Intelligence.'
Isaacs nodded at him.
'Sir.' The young man placed the folder on Rutherford 's desk.
'That'll be all,' Rutherford said to him with a note of paternalism.
'Yes, sir.' The lieutenant turned and left.
'Sharp young man, that,' Rutherford confided. 'My right arm.' He pulled the file towards him. 'Let's see what we have here.' He extracted a list of reported detections and banded it to Isaacs. Rutherford leafed through the corresponding write-ups, looking for ones that were not hopelessly sketchy.
As Isaacs scanned down the list of sonar reports, he let out a loud exclamation.
'I'll be damned!'
'What?'
'One of life's little ironies. Several of these reports are from the undersea arrays of acoustic monitors.'
'Sure, we have those babies all over, bound to pick up something like this. So?'
'That system is also operated by AFTAC. The whole ball of wax was right under my nose, both seismic and sonar data. I'm kicking myself, I was so hung up on the seismic signal propagating through the earth. I had my people trying to put together a puzzle with half the pieces missing.'
Isaacs threw the list on the desk and pulled a chair around beside Rutherford. They spent fifteen minutes checking the tune and position on earth for each of the reports and converting that data into a projected position on the celestial sphere, to see what stars were overhead. As near as they could tell, it was always the same patch of stars. All the sonar events fell on the path predicted by the seismic data. Trying to estimate whether the influence was precisely at the phase which brought Danielson's seismic signal to the surface was more difficult, but the evidence they had seemed damning enough.
'So what did you say you are doing about all this?' Rutherford wanted to know.
'Not jackshit.' Isaacs described his skirmish with McMasters.
When he finished, Rutherford inquired, 'Can't you get McMasters to reopen the file, now that you have this confirmation from our data?'
'I doubt it.' Isaacs frowned in concentration and rubbed his prominent nose. He got up and paced the room. Post handball thirst nagged at him. He wished he had a cold beer.
'You've told me something new. The source of energy driving the seismic waves somehow proceeds into the ocean. That banishes my lingering suspicion that we were dealing with an ordinary, if highly regular, seismic phenomenon. But we're no closer to understanding what's really happening. Without a more substantial change in the situation, McMasters would stand to lose face if he backs down. I've got to have something beyond the fact that this thing is amphibious before I can go back to him and convince him to reopen our investigation.'
Lt. J.G. Augustus Washington sat at the controls of the sophisticated computerized sonar, his consciousness merged with the surrounding sea, as it would be eight hours a day for the next three months. Half his mind tuned to the sounds coming through his headset and to the green glow of the twin display screens in front of him. He automatically registered the turning of the screw on a distant Japanese tanker bound for Valdez , a school of whales somewhere to the west, and the anonymous squeals, rattles and clicks which characterize the undersea world. The other part of his mind wandered to his recently ended shore leave, to his wife. His quarterly sessions at sea were rough and lonely for a young woman married only a couple of years, but if she couldn't be home in Little Rock , Hawaii was not bad duty for her. At least blacks were not the bottom of the heap. There were always the native Hawaiians. And their reunions — oooeee! Almost worth three months of nothing doing. He swore it would be another two weeks before he would even begin to think about sex, then recognized that he had already succumbed and laughed softly to himself.
He began to form an image of his woman standing on the bed in the moonlight, naked and spread-eagled over him when the angry boiling broke forth from the earphones.
Tension seized his gut and left his heart pounding. He jerked upright in his seat, his eyes fixed on the brilliant dot on the right-hand screen that passively recorded incoming signals. His gaze whipped to the left screen which registered the reflection of the active signals the submarine emitted and saw only the faintest reading.
'Holy Christ!'
His exclamation cut through the cabin, violating the hush of routine.
'What have you got?' inquired the duty officer, moving to his side.
Washington 's eyes remained fixed on the screens before him. He reached to flip on the external speaker and the bizarre hiss filled the cabin. He hit another switch and the right screen shifted to the target Doppler indicator mode. Offscale! He twisted a knob.
'Somethin's comin' at us like a bat outa hell! Five thousand — shit! No!' He looked at the right screen again. 'Coming on four thousand metres already — goddamn! I can't even get a reading on it. Closin' fast. From directly beneath us! And I can't even see it in active mode! Sucker must be small!'
'That's absurd,' retorted the officer, 'nothing moves that fast,' but his ears heard the noise and his eyes read the screens; his shaken voice belied the conviction of his words. He stepped quickly to the ship's phone.
Washington began expertly to assimilate the flow of information from the panel before him. He switched the left screen for a brief moment to the target noise indicator display and mumbled to himself, 'white noise, no sign of a screw frequency.' He switched the screen to the target data and track history mode, fed from the computer memory. 'Now at three thousand metres,' he sang out. The noise from the speaker grew steadily. The knot in his stomach tightened with each fraction of a decibel. He reached to turn down the volume and spoke over his shoulder.
'It's not coming right at us. It should pass us about eleven hundred metres off the port bow.' The duty officer repeated the message to the captain. They listened, ummoving, as the sound peaked and then diminished slightly with a perceptible change in pitch. Washington noted its passage through the ship's depth level, headed for the surface.
Abruptly the noise ceased, to be replaced with an almost painful silence as saturated ears tried to adjust. Active dials lapsed into quiescence and the bright blip on the screen disappeared. Washington swivelled in his chair to exchange wide-eyed looks of surprise with the duty officer who reported once more to the captain.
Washington returned his attention to his instruments. Ten, fifteen seconds went by. Slowly he turned up the sensitivity of the device and the volume on the speaker and earphones. Only the routine sounds of the sea issued. After twenty-five seconds the duty officer still stood with the phone clamped in a sweaty hand, but others in the cabin began to shuffle in relief. Washington increased the gain a bit more and concentrated his trained ear to detect any hint of abnormal sound. He systematically switched display modes but found no clue to the thing that had just assaulted them.
With the suddenness and impact of a physical blow, the cabin filled with the sound again. Washington shrieked, ripped off his earphones and slapped a palm over each ear. He slipped off his chair and knelt in a daze of confusion, his body pumped with adrenalin, his ears ringing with an intense hollow echo. Several figures rushed to the sonar console. Two friends bent to Washington. Someone fumbled, then found, the volume control. The frightening hiss dropped to a muted roar and the duty officer was left in the new quiet, shouting hoarsely into the phone.
The noise dropped gradually, and then just before it faded below a perceptible level it ceased abruptly once more. Silence fell in the cabin, broken only by the chatter of the sonar and the quiet moan of the man who remained on the floor, rocking gently, his hands over his ears and his eyes squeezed shut.
Several days after the cancellation of Project QUAKER, Isaacs played a closely fought game of handball with a friend and colleague. Captain Avery Rutherford, one of the senior officers in Naval Intelligence. Rutherford was three years older than Isaacs, but in excellent shape. They split the first four games and went to a tie breaker on the match game. Isaacs scored once and served at game point. After several volleys, Isaacs took a shot in front court. Calculating to catch his opponent off guard, he hit the ball softly to the front wall, but it went a bit too high and gave Rutherford time to cover it. With Isaacs in the front court, Rutherford played a favourite shot which came off the front wall as a lob calculated to land in the rear corner, a troublesome left hand return at best. He then retreated rapidly to centre court just behind the service area to await the return, hoping to hear the satisfying silence of a missed shot.
Isaacs knew the other man's tactics, however, and back— pedalled furiously to cover most of the distance to the left rear corner before the ball left the front wall. This gave him time to plant his feet firmly, eye locked on the descending sphere. The ball bounced on the floor, then off the back wall, nicely clearing both it and the side wall. Isaacs made the shot at hip level, putting into it everything his weaker left hand could muster. The ball rifled cross court, just missing Rutherford 's left knee. It struck almost dead in the corner, the from wall a fraction of a second earlier than the right, two inches above the floor. It skittered once and then meekly rolled across the court to bump gently into Rutherford 's toe.
The sudden denouement caught Rutherford by surprise and he just stared at the ball. Then he scooped it up and turned.
'Damnation, Bob, that was a hell of a shot!'
'Thanks,' Isaacs grinned. 'Amazingly enough, that's just what I wanted it to do.'
They played two more games for exercise, but without quite the fire. Isaacs took the first by a comfortable margin, Rutherford the last.
After the game, they left sweat-sagged piles of gym clothes in front of their lockers, grabbed their towels and stepped into the steam room. They sat on the bench and rehashed their play, each enthusiastically recalling the other's good points and mixing in an occasional soft-pedalled critique.
They fell silent for a couple of minutes. Then Rutherford swivelled his head and looked at his companion.
'Do you mind a little shop talk, off the cuff?'
Isaacs leaned back against the wall, his eyes closed.
'Of course not, what's on your mind?'
'Well, we've had scattered reports of a strange acoustic phenomenon, sort of an underwater sonic boom. This thing's been kicking around. Nobody's done anything about it because no one knows what to make of it. I just wondered whether it might ring a bell with you?'
'No,' said Isaacs lethargically, 'I haven't heard anything about it. We've been up to our ears counting screws and bolts in Tyuratam, waiting for them to launch the other shoe. Some kind of explosion?'
'No,' Rutherford shook his head and pinched some sweat out of his eyes, 'it's not localized like that. Something seems to be moving through the water, making a hell of a racket as it goes. It comes from the ocean bottom and apparently disappears momentarily at the surface. Then, it reappears and proceeds back down to the bottom.'
'Some kind of missile, torpedo?'
'Seems like it, doesn't it? But there's no indication of any launching craft. Besides this starts from really deep down, miles.'
'How about an underwater volcano, maybe spewing out blobs of lava, or rocks?'
'There's probably too much drag in the water for that to be possible, but I'd give some credence if the reports were from one spot. They're not, though. They're from all over the globe. Several from mid-Atlantic shipping lanes, a few near Japan, a couple from the Sixth Fleet in the Med, one south of Madagascar, another in the Sea of Tasman between Australia and New Zealand. The latest one came from a sub north of Hawaii , that's why it's on my mind. A particularly close call, poor bastards thought they were being attacked. Anyway, the thing seems 'to hop all over.'
The men fell silent. Rutherford leaned over to examine a chipped nail on his big toe. Isaacs had not really been concentrating on the conversation. Now snippets of it rolled around in his head. Suddenly, a surge of adrenalin went keening out of his belly and through his body. His eyes snapped open and, despite the heat, he felt as if someone had just raked a large icy comb down his back.
He sat up and faced Rutherford who still bent over his foot.
'Those reports you just described, they seem to be either north or south of the equator, about equal distances.' He tried to keep his voice casual.
'Oh yeah, I forgot to mention another curious feature. This thing appears at random times, not always near the same latitude, sometimes north, sometimes south.'
'Thirty-three degrees.'
Now Rutherford swivelled his head in surprise.
'Hey, friend, you've been holding out on me!'
Nervous energy drove Isaacs off the bench. 'Nothing like it,' he said intently, 'just slow to make the connection.' He paced the small room randomly, oblivious to his steamy surroundings, his mind racing. 'Good lord, in the water, too! What the hell does that mean?'
Rutherford had witnessed his friend's burst of intensity before and, failing to understand what had set him off, watched bemusedly as Isaacs moved about, his cock flipping drops of sweat and condensed steam at each sudden turn.
Isaacs stopped in front of him.
'Up to last week we were analysing the seismic equivalent of your phenomenon. Something's moving through the earth, generating seismic waves.'
He sat suddenly next to Rutherford and continued.
'I had some of my people keeping an eye on it, even though we didn't know what to make of it.'
Then he was thinking out loud.
'The seismic data only told us what was happening in rock. I convinced myself that whatever it what was confined to the earth's crust, that the seismic waves were its essence. Now you tell me something about it continues into the water.' He shook his head. 'I don't like it. I don't like this at all.
'Listen, we've learned some things you apparently haven't stumbled onto yet. This thing is always there, and very methodical. It just goes back and forth, back and forth, always on the same path through the earth.' He waved his arms. 'And then out into the ocean! Shit! No reason to think it doesn't continue into the atmosphere! No telling how far it goes.'
He leaned back against the wall. 'Our problem is that McMasters scuttled our operation, claimed it wasn't Agency business.' He paused for a moment. 'Damn, it's hot in here! Let's go someplace where we can do a little serious talking. Better make it your office, since the subject is officially verboten on my turf.'
As Rutherford steered his staff car through the prerush hour traffic, Isaacs explained animatedly how his interest in the seismic signal became aroused during his duty at AFTAC. He then outlined the progress Danielson had made, culminating in her conclusion that the phenomenon followed a trajectory fixed in space. They finished the drive in silence while Rutherford ruminated on this new information.
A half hour later they entered Rutherford 's office. Rutherford ordered up the Navy file on the acoustic phenomenon. He sat behind his desk while Isaacs remained standing, rocking nervously on the balls of his feet. Rutherford spoke first.
'Boy, I'm really having trouble absorbing this. I had a notion of a random, infrequent occurrence, and now you describe something punching through the surface like clockwork, every eighty minutes or so. I guess I still don't get the picture. Tell me again how this fixed motion works.'
'Let me use this globe,' Isaacs said as he lifted a fancy relief model of the earth off its shelf and put it on Rutherford 's desk. He grabbed a pencil and held it pointed towards the surface of the globe, about a third of the way above the equator. 'The thing always moves along a line, like this.' He moved the pencil in and out, parallel to itself, 'Zipzip, zipzip. But as the earth turns,' he spun the globe slowly with his free hand, 'the thing always comes up in a different place.' He tapped the pencil rhythmically as he spun the globe, each tap hitting it an inch further on than the last.
'Let me see that,' said Rutherford , reaching for the pencil. He held it alongside the globe so that he could project it in his imagination into the centre of the globe. Then he moved it back and forth along its length as he spun the globe slowly, eraser to the northern hemisphere, then point to the southern, eraser to the north, point, south. 'Okay, I think I get the picture, but what could possibly do that? Through the centre of the earth? Jesus Christ!'
He jerked his head up as a knock sounded at the door.
'Come in.'
An aide came in bearing a file folder.
'Bob, Lieutenant Szkada. Lieutenant, Bob Isaacs, Central Intelligence.'
Isaacs nodded at him.
'Sir.' The young man placed the folder on Rutherford 's desk.
'That'll be all,' Rutherford said to him with a note of paternalism.
'Yes, sir.' The lieutenant turned and left.
'Sharp young man, that,' Rutherford confided. 'My right arm.' He pulled the file towards him. 'Let's see what we have here.' He extracted a list of reported detections and banded it to Isaacs. Rutherford leafed through the corresponding write-ups, looking for ones that were not hopelessly sketchy.
As Isaacs scanned down the list of sonar reports, he let out a loud exclamation.
'I'll be damned!'
'What?'
'One of life's little ironies. Several of these reports are from the undersea arrays of acoustic monitors.'
'Sure, we have those babies all over, bound to pick up something like this. So?'
'That system is also operated by AFTAC. The whole ball of wax was right under my nose, both seismic and sonar data. I'm kicking myself, I was so hung up on the seismic signal propagating through the earth. I had my people trying to put together a puzzle with half the pieces missing.'
Isaacs threw the list on the desk and pulled a chair around beside Rutherford. They spent fifteen minutes checking the tune and position on earth for each of the reports and converting that data into a projected position on the celestial sphere, to see what stars were overhead. As near as they could tell, it was always the same patch of stars. All the sonar events fell on the path predicted by the seismic data. Trying to estimate whether the influence was precisely at the phase which brought Danielson's seismic signal to the surface was more difficult, but the evidence they had seemed damning enough.
'So what did you say you are doing about all this?' Rutherford wanted to know.
'Not jackshit.' Isaacs described his skirmish with McMasters.
When he finished, Rutherford inquired, 'Can't you get McMasters to reopen the file, now that you have this confirmation from our data?'
'I doubt it.' Isaacs frowned in concentration and rubbed his prominent nose. He got up and paced the room. Post handball thirst nagged at him. He wished he had a cold beer.
'You've told me something new. The source of energy driving the seismic waves somehow proceeds into the ocean. That banishes my lingering suspicion that we were dealing with an ordinary, if highly regular, seismic phenomenon. But we're no closer to understanding what's really happening. Without a more substantial change in the situation, McMasters would stand to lose face if he backs down. I've got to have something beyond the fact that this thing is amphibious before I can go back to him and convince him to reopen our investigation.'