Act of God (3 page)

"A hotel called the Wildner, on Connecticut Avenue."

"I know where it is. Come on, I'll drive you over. Maybe we can have lunch somewhere on the way."

In the parking garage beneath the building, they got into Taggart s handsome red-and-white automobile. She was still having trouble adjusting to the sheer number of such vehicles she encountered every day. Where she had come from, possession of such a machine would have typed Taggart as somebody of importance. Here, as she was finding out, it merely meant that he was beyond his early teens and not blind.

"What kind of car is this?" she asked, not really interested, but wanting to end the man's sullen silence, which had made her uncomfortable. He patted the dashboard and she saw him smile for the first time, very slightly.

" '56 Chevy Bel Air. 'Chevy' is short for Chevrolet. This one and the '57 from the same company are the best products ever to come out of Detroit."

"So old?" she said. She had never heard of an old car being a status symbol. She had always thought that the newer the auto, the higher the standing of the user. He drove up out of the building and out into the traffic. His smile faded and he resumed the frown he had worn earlier, his momentary good humor at an end. Several times, in traffic, she saw people looking at them. That had always been a danger signal to her, but then she realized that they were admiring the Chevrolet.

"Your car has admirers," she said.

"Just wait," he said with another small smile. "Before we get to your hotel, somebody'll try to buy if off me. Custom car freaks love these old Chevys. They'll chop and channel them, jack up the rear end and fit them with oversized rear wheels, install superchargers, all kinds of crap like that. I keep this one just like it was when it came out of the showroom, though." She understood less than half of what he said, but it seemed to be a safe subject.

He pulled in at a small restaurant. It was early yet for lunch and the place was almost empty, but he went to a table at the rear of the dining room, near the kitchen entrance. He took a chair against the wall. She would have preferred a table near the front window, but she sensed that this was a habit with him. A waitress brought them menus and she scanned the lengthy list. So many dishes, and so few of them were fish. They ordered and he lapsed into, silence once again. She found this annoying.

"Mr. Taggart, I am sorry that your assignment displeases you. I assure you that it was none of my doing."

He looked at her with what seemed to be genuine surprise. "I know that. It's certainly not you that's bothering me and I'm sorry if I've given offense."

The response startled her. She had expected an ill-tempered outburst. "What is it, then, if I may ask?"

He thought for a while, then: "I'm not really sure how to put this to you. Do you know what UFOs are?"

Caught off-balance by the obliquity of the question, she had to think for a moment. "Do you mean unidentified flying objects? Flying saucers?"

"Right. People are reporting them all the time. There are whole organizations devoted to studying them. They're always getting on the Air Force to study them, too. Some of them insist that the Air Force is hiding information about UFOs, so the Air Force had to establish a bureau to investigate UFO reports and convince people that they're not hiding anything."

"And so?" she asked, mystified.

"Well, I had a friend once, an Air Force officer. He had some problems which we won't go into just now, but they were causing him a lot of trouble with his career. One day, he found himself assigned to UFO investigations. You see, in the Air Force, assignment to that bureau is usually the kiss of death. Nobody in the Air Force takes it seriously, it's just a public relations gimmick they came up with to placate a bunch of crackpots. He told me that he knew it was time to resign his commission and return to civilian life."

She was not stupid. She saw immediately where this was leading. "Have you just been assigned to UFO investigations, Mr. Taggart?"

"I'm afraid so. When my boss told me this morning that I was going to work with a defector, I knew I had trouble. When I learned that the defector wasn't military or intelligence, I knew it was deep trouble. When I heard that bit about the comets, I knew I'd been kissed off."

"So, your government really is not interested in what I had to tell them? They think I am just another crackpot, like your UFO enthusiasts? Then why are they bothering? What will they do with our findings?"

"They'll make up a file. They're great ones for filing things. They'll look like they're keeping busy. And I'll be out of their way for a while."

"Is that a matter of some importance to them?" She did not want to rub salt in his wounds, but she had to know.

"It's beginning to look like it. You see, people like my straw boss, Morgan, or that man Steinberg back there, they're desk men. I'm a field operative. They call us spooks or cowboys but we just call ourselves grunts. That's a word that came out of the Viet Nam war. It meant an infantryman, a ground-pounder. Now it means the people who go out and put it on the line. The expendable ones."

Despite his colloquialisms, she could understand most of what he was saying, "There is little love then, between the desk men and the 'grunts'?"

In spite of himself, he had to grin at the pronunciation she put on the last word. He'd never heard it said that way. "Very little. And less every day. Years ago, they made heroes of us. It was taken for granted that we were in a war, even if it was an unofficial one, and rough stuff was expected. We got our assignments and we went out and accomplished them. Or we failed and that usually meant we didn't come back. In any case the hero stuff was a lot of crap but at least we were pretty free to do what had to be done.

"Now, they don't want field operatives to have any autonomy. And they don't like rough work. That's supposed to be a relic of the bad old days, before we all got civilized and polite. It seems that I 'm a relic of the bad old days, too. My last couple of jobs got pretty rough."

Their orders arrived. So this was one of the American hatchetmen she had been hearing about all her life from official propaganda. He certainly looked tough enough, but he didn't seem to be a sadistic maniac. But then, she thought, what does a sadistic maniac look like? He had ordered the biggest steak she had ever seen. Americans, apparently, were beef fanatics. His potato looked like something that belonged in a sporting event. She had ordered only a salad, but even that shocked her. She had seen smaller gardens.

"Anyway," he went on, "the time came, as it had to, when I muffed one. I won't go into the details, which I'm not free to discuss anyway, but I got shot up pretty bad. Nothing much to be done about it, I took the only course open as I saw it, but it cost me. They had to put up with my cowboy antics as long as I turned in positive results, but they can be unforgiving when an operation goes sour. This is the first assignment I've been handed since that one. I was wondering what it would be."

"And now you know?"

"Now I know." He wasn't sure why he was telling her all this. It was none of her business.

She studied him differently this time. She should have seen the signs, she thought, but she was still unused to this alien physiognomy. His extreme gauntness was unnatural, but she came from a place where most people were either gaunt or overweight by American standards, and she was not used to deeply tanned men. Now that she knew what to look for, she could see that he was only recently recovered from severe illness or injury. Not fully recovered, at that. At least there was nothing unhealthy about his appetite. She would not have believed that a human organism could absorb so much protein without going into shock, but the steak was disappearing fast. She was more circumspect with her salad. The vegetables were excellent, but the dressing was unfamiliar. She supposed she would adjust. She had a lot of adjusting to do.

"Mr. Taggart—"she began.

"Make it Sam," he said, "since we'll be working together for a while." His tone conveyed little enthusiasm for the prospect.

This must be the famous American informality. "Sam, then. Despite what your people think, I believe that what has happened to Project Peter the Great is terribly dangerous."

"Do you think it's being used as some kind of coverup for a new military weapon? Something nuclear, or something along the lines of the satellite-killers we keep hearing about?"

She shook her head. "No. The boosters were already being brought in before I was dismissed. They are quite unsuitable for anything of a ballistic nature. These are for placing massive payloads into near Earth orbit. They are bigger than the ones used in your moon shots. Of course, the expedition proper would be launched from a permanent space station in orbit."

"Expedition? Are we talking about a manned shot?"

She made an expressively uncertain gesture with her hands. "I do not know. That was one of Tarkovsky's proposals but I do not think he seriously hoped to get funding for such a thing. Still, I don't see how an unmanned mission could have much significance beyond pure scientific research. Nekrasov would have no interest in simple data-fathering."

"What I'm wondering," Taggart said, "is why somebody like Nekrasov should have any interest in comets at all. I've heard that Hitler was pretty buggy about lights in the sky, but it's hard to picture a former KGB boss worrying about them."

A little stiffly, she said: "Mr. —Sam, you must not confuse astrology with astronomy, they are—"

"Hell, I know that," he interrupted. He reminded himself ruefully that her command of the language did not necessarily qualify her to recognize such subtleties as irony or even heavy sarcasm. "I was being facetious. My point is that I've never heard of the space sciences having any real military or security significance beyond the orbital phase."

"It was not so long ago," she reminded him, "that even sub-orbital rocketry was believed to have little military application. As for orbiting satellites and manned space flight and permanent space stations such as we have now, these were purest fantasy when I was a small child."

"Right," he admitted. "Buck Rogers stuff."

"Buck Rogers?" she said.

"American trivia. A comic-strip hero of the Forties, long a synonym for anything having to do with space programs. Even so, this comet business seems a little far-fetched. What's your guess?"

She was uncomfortable with the question. She was trained in rigid scientific disciplines and found premature extrapolation on insufficient data distasteful. "Are you asking me for—what is the expression I have heard since coming here—a stomach feeling?"

"Gut feeling. Yes, I guess that's what I'm asking for."

Gut feeling. How odd that Americans found viscera superior to brains for problem-solving.

"Very well. My gut feeling, for what it is worth, is that Sergei Nekrasov has seen in Project Peter the Great some implication that has escaped other people. It must be something that will give the Soviet Union some kind of advantage, either in space or on the Earth. The advantage will be of a military nature, otherwise a man like Nekrasov would not be interested. And he must have seen this implication in something submitted to him, perhaps in Tarkovsky's original proposal, perhaps in some earlier work by Tarkovsky or a close associate that was included with the proposal. He is not a scientist and it is unlikely that he will have formulated any original thoughts on his own. There is, of course, the possibility that someone else brought the idea to him. Whatever it is, it is something important enough to warrant the personal intervention of the Deputy Premier of the Politburo."

"You missed your calling. You were cut out for intelligence work."

She supposed that he was paying her a compliment. "In the sciences one is trained to reason along certain lines, with a certain discipline of thought, although one does not always succeed." Several teenage boys came into the restaurant and began feeding coins into a machine that stood by the door. Its television screen lit up with lurid, incomprehensible graphics and screeching sound effects filled the air. A thin, undersized boy in thick glasses began annihilating attacking spaceships with merciless ferocity. His friends cheered him on.

Sam glared at the boys. "Damn space cadets."

She smiled for the first time that day. "Your next generation of fighter pilots."

"So where do we go from here? I'll admit that this is out of my depth. If it was espionage or counter-terrorism or something like that, I'd know what to do next. But comets?"

"Comets. Exactly. It is time for us to talk to some people who know about comets. People who are familiar with Tarkovsky's work. We must consult with such experts as you have on the Soviet space program. That will be important. Space projects are enormously expensive and are run on very rigid budgets. A sudden expansion of one program will be reflected in many of the others. Resources will be reallocated, some projects will be set back or cancelled. We could extrapolate a great deal from that. For instance—"

"Hold it," Sam said, palms out to forestall a flood of information. "One thing at a time. I think it's time to set up appointments with some people at NASA. We have a lot of time left today. Are you tired or would you like to go to work on this right away?"

"Just walk right in and talk with personnel at NASA? We could do that? But, yes, you have all the right clearances, don't you? They will talk with us if you show credentials."

He laughed aloud. She liked his laugh. "Credentials? My god, you don't need credentials to get those people to talk! The problem's in getting them to shut up once they've started on their pet subject. Believe me, if they're not involved in defense or intelligence work, you'll hear all you want to hear from them. More than you want to hear."

"Then let's go." Behind them as they left, loud cheers announced the destruction of another alien spaceship.

CHAPTER THREE

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Sam ducked into a telephone booth and made a few calls. He returned to announce that they were going to pay NASA headquarters a visit. "Is it that easy to get an appointment?" she asked.

"Appointments are things that bureaucrats cancel," he answered. "I avoid them whenever possible." With that cryptic remark, he put the Chevy in gear and pulled out into traffic. It did not take long to reach the corner of Independence and Maryland Avenues where, miraculously, Sam found a parking space almost immediately. He slid from under the steering wheel and extended a hand to Laine. A little uncertain about proper American automobile etiquette, she took the hand and slid across the seat and out in a single, flowing motion.

Across the street, an immense building immediately caught her attention. In contrast to the pseudoclassical architecture all around, it was severely modern, its surrounding terrace adorned with metal sculpture that looked like vegetation from another planet. A large number of people were milling about outside the building, many of them foreign tourists, as well as an animated group of school children. It did not have the kind of grim, authoritarian look she habitually associated with government buildings. "Is this NASA?" she asked.

"No, that's the Air and Space Museum. That's NASA." He pointed at a gray, nondescript building exactly like a hundred others she had already seen in the city.

"That is better," she said.

"What?"

"It restores my faith in the universality of government agencies," she said. This time it was his turn to be mystified. They entered the building by way of a gray foyer as anonymous as the exterior. The atmosphere inside was that of faceless civil service everywhere. Its function might as easily have been finance as space exploration.

The woman behind the reception desk looked up nonchalantly as Sam stepped up with an uncharacteristically ingratiating smile.

"Pardon me, ma'am, but might I borrow a NASA phone directory for a minute? I need to look up a name." Wordlessly, she handed him the directory. He glanced through the organizational pages until he spotted the Associate Administrator for Space Science and noted the name and room number. He returned the directory. "Is this Federal Office Building 10?"

"That's right," the woman said, "FOB 10."

"Thank you," he said, his smile undaunted by her bored monotone. He took Laine lightly by an arm and guided her to an elevator. "We're going to call on the Associate Administrator for Space Science," he told her.

She was not familiar with official ranks in the U.S. government, but that sounded entirely too lofty a title to accept a casual, unannounced visit from a grunt. "Surely," she said, "this calls for an appointment."

"I guess so. But, it would probably take several weeks while his secretary tried to find five vacant minutes on his calendar. He may not be in now, anyway, not that it matters. Our business isn't with him just now. It's with his office."

"I don't understand, but lead on." She was be ginning to enjoy this.

He favored her with another of his rare, tight smiles, quite different from the fake smile he had used on the receptionist. "Just stand back and watch a pro operate," he told her.

The office of the Associate Administrator for Space Science was only one floor up from street level, at the end of a hallway. As they walked into the pleasantly furnished anteroom, an alert, conservatively-dressed woman looked them over swiftly and asked pleasantly, "What may I do for you?"

"This is Dr. Tammsalu, and I'm Sam Taggart from the State Department. We're here on a matter in of some importance. We'd like to see the Associate Administrator for Space Science, please."

The woman made a show of looking through her desk calendar. "Dr., ah, Tammsalu, was it? And Mr. Taggart? I'm sorry, I don't see any appointment here."

"Actually," Sam said, "Doctor Tammsalu has just arrived from overseas and the people over at State thought it important that she speak with the Administrator. Didn't anybody contact you?"

"From the State Department? I'm afraid not. In any case, the Associate Administrator is on the Hill today, all day, I'm afraid. His appointment schedule is full until next week. Would you care to make an appointment for next week? Or, could anyone else help you?"

"That's a pity," Sam said. "We truly are pressed for time. We'll talk to his deputy, or whoever else is in charge of the study of comets."

"Well, the Deputy Associate Administrator is currently overseas but let me see what I can do for you." She reached for her phone and began punching buttons. She spoke inaudibly to someone, then hung up and placed another call. This time she was smiling as she hung up. "A Doctor Ken Bridges, who is the Discipline Scientist for comets and several other research areas, is available and is expecting you now. His office is down the hall." She jotted down the room number on a memo slip and handed it to Sam.

In the hall, Laine said. "You never expected to talk to the Associate Administrator, did you?"

"Of course not. But if you want to see somebody in a big bureaucracy, start at the top. It's much quicker to get kicked down to the office you want than it is to climb up from the bottom. We've been here for ten minutes and we're going to see the man we want. It might've taken days to get past all the secretaries if we'd gone through channels."

She surprised him by laughing girlishly. "I've always suspected it worked that way, but I never had the courage to try it myself." The corridor seemed endless. "What is the Hill? That woman said the Associate Administrator was on the Hill."

"That's Capitol Hill. He must be up there lobbying for more funds for NASA. He may be the big shot here, but up there he's standing with his hat in his hand, smiling at some bunch of political hacks he despises, trying to pry nickels loose for the space program. Department heads are just beggars like everybody else on the Hill." She was surprised by the real bitterness in his voice, and she suspected that it had nothing to do with the woes of NASA.

The Discipline Scientist's office was a modest room with a fair view of Independence Avenue and the museum across the street. The man who greeted Them was in his forties, with thinning hair, turning gray and square glasses. "I'm Ken Bridges. I take it you're Dr. Tammsalu?" He shook hands with Laine, then with Sam.

"Sam Taggart, from State," Sam said, bending the truth slightly for the sake of cooperation. People often clammed up at the mention of CIA. "Dr. Tammsalu is a refugee from Estonia, and she's come to us with a rather peculiar story. Since it involves your realm of expertise, we wondered if you'd be able to help us out." As always, he chose his words carefully while trying to seem spontaneous and casual. For some reason, most people reacted sympathetically to a "refugee" while a "defector" was often regarded with suspicion. One was a victim, the other a turncoat.

"Of course," Bridges said, "I'll be happy to extend any help I can. What's the nature of the problem?"

"I'll let Dr. Tammsalu explain," Sam said.

Resignedly, Laine launched into her story yet another time. She found it a bit easier though, since Bridges' occasional interruptions with pertinent questions and comments displayed understanding and interest. He did not dismiss her story as too far-fetched. As her recitation ended, he leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers across an incipient paunch. He looked distinctly puzzled.

"I'll confess," Bridges said at last, "that this has me stumped. We've known about the big Soviet push into exploration and exploitation of space for a long time, of course. We've been expecting them to announce a manned expedition to Mars, for instance. Mars makes sense. It could be colonized eventually, and it would be a massive propaganda coup. An exploratory mission to a passing comet makes sense, too. Even a manned expedition to a comet isn't out of the question, though it sounds awfully ambitious. But," he raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness, "why the cometary mission should be taken over and given top priority by the Deputy Premier I can't imagine. Current knowledge of comets is that they're just big, dirty snowballs. Most of them spend much of their time so far from us that Pluto's close by comparison. It would do no good to build a military base on one. An analysis of a comet's makeup would be of great scientific interest, naturally, but it could be done without a manned expedition, and it would be of no interest to the likes of Nekrasov, anyway. The expense would be enormous, too."

"Then they must be expecting to find something pretty valuable out there," Sam said.

"I can't imagine what," said Bridges. "Scientific value is one thing. Military or commercial value is another. Even the propaganda value isn't all that great. The typical layman doesn't even know what a comet is. Everybody knows about the Moon, or Mars." He thought a while. "Look, I'm not the best person to talk to on this subject. There's going to be a colloquium on comets sponsored by the International Astronomical Union week after next in Baltimore. It'll be at the Space Telescope Science Institute. I could try to organize a special evening session to have comet specialists listen to you. Maybe someone at the meeting could come up with an intelligent guess."

"Will there be a lot of Soviet bloc scientists there?" Sam asked. "At this stage, it would be a mistake to let them know that we're asking questions."

"It's an international colloquium. It'd look funny if we tried to exclude anybody. Let me talk to the chairman of the scientific organizing committee. He's an acquaintance of mine, from West Germany. I know we can trust him and he might be able to think of something. There may be nothing to worry about. This kind of event is like sports or cultural exchanges. When diplomatic relations are strained, the Soviets stay home in protest. Right now, relations are pretty strained."

"Tell me about it," Sam concurred.

Bridges turned to Laine. "I'm glad you've come to America, Dr. Tammsalu. Do you plan to go into teaching or research?"

"Research, if I can find a position," she said, smiling radiantly.

"What's your specialization in astrophysics? I may be able to help you. I'm afraid I'm not well acquainted with the names of astronomers in the Soviet Union."

"There is no reason for you to have heard of me. I was never terribly important. My personal interest has been high energy astrophysics, in particular gamma-ray astronomy. We have not done much experimental work in this field, although we did have a rather ambitious plan for gamma-ray and x-ray satellites as a scientific arm of Project Peter the Great. Now, I have no idea as to what will become of that project, much less about its scientific satellite programs."

"Let me look into it," Bridges said. "There may a good position open for you. Let me write some colleagues. Can't make any promises, of course. Funding for scientific work's gotten pretty tight again. A few years ago, you'd have had your pick of a dozen jobs."

"You are very kind. It is good to know that someone is willing to take in a wandering Estonian."

"Actually, you're not the first Estonian astronomer I've met. Back when I was a grad student, far too long ago, I attended a seminar given by Ernst Opik. It was a great privilege. After that, I specialized in symbiotic stars. Do you have a number where I can get in touch with you?" There was an exchange of telephone numbers, then Sam put on his best official smile and they shook hands with Bridges and took their leave.

"High-energy astrophysics," Sam said, as they trudged down the long hall, "x-ray and gamma-ray astronomy, symbiotic stars." Head down and hands in pockets, he was a picture of perplexed dejection. "I haven't felt so lost since my first day in boot camp. At any rate, I think you've won a fan."

"It's good of him to want to help me," Laine said, "and if you really want to feel lost, try defecting to an alien culture. Your '56 Chevy is as strange to me as a gamma-ray telescope to you."

Sam released one of his infrequent laughs. "Thanks. I was starting to feel sorry for myself."

Outside, Laine pointed at the modernistic facade of the Air and Space Museum. "Could we go in there?"

"Sure. We're in no rush. I should've thought of it myself. Here you've been in D.C. for days and you haven't had a chance to be a tourist yet."

"How could I? I've spent all my waking hours since I got here in one of those interrogation rooms."

He took her arm and escorted her across the street. "Please, ma'am," he said with mock gravity, "We have no 'interrogation rooms.' Those were debriefing rooms.' "

"How can you take a briefing back from somebody?"

"True, but 'interrogation room' puts people in mind of blinding lights and rubber hoses. If you think 'debriefing' sounds evasive, I'll take you up on the Hill and you can hear some real doubletalk." At the entrance to the museum he remembered something. "Wait here a minute." Laine watched bemusedly as he ran back across the street and fed coins into a meter next to his Chevy. He made it just as a woman in a police uniform came into sight mounted on an odd, three-wheeled motorcycle. "Just made it," he said when he returned. "D.C. cops are fierce about parking tickets. They can't do anything about all the cars with diplomatic plates, so they take it out on the rest of the citizens. Come on, let's go in."

The interior was immense. Apparently, the Americans were as fond of the grandiose as the Russians. The scale was so numbing that she had no idea of the true size of the place until she looked upward to see the aircraft dangling from the ceiling on cables. "Is that really a full-sized airplane?" she asked, pointing at a twin-engine craft overhead. She could see that it was an old design, but it had marvelously graceful lines.

"It's a Douglas DC-3," Sam said. He stood looking up with hands on hips, smiling broadly. "Military designation C-47. It was the workhorse cargo plane of World War Two. Most beautiful plane ever built. You might call it the '56 Chevrolet of airplanes. Used to see 'em flying a lot when I was a kid. We lived near an airport. I wanted to be a pilot more than anything."

So hatchetmen had childhoods, too. "Why didn't you? Become a pilot, I mean?"