A week later, Isaacs stood with his back to
the wall, away from the early Sunday crowds beginning to fill the
Air and Space Museum. He came here sometimes for the pleasure of
it, sometimes to think. This was a thinking time. His eyes caressed
the old F-86 Sabrejet. It was his favorite craft in the whole
place. The first grace of swept-back wings and tail. The
captivating curve of the intake maw, surmounted by the subtle
outward swell of the radar housing, a puckered lip to kiss the
wind. With none of the venomous dihedral of today’s fighters, the
Sabrejet gave him the profound feeling of inner peace that came
from witnessing perfect design.
He could not hold it. The peaceful feeling
slipped, shattered and fell away from him. Rather than despoil his
favored icon with secular thought, he wandered back toward the main
rooms. Starting with the loss of Rutherford and the Stinson, the
last week had been horrendous. Just like a roller coaster, Isaacs
had known what was coming as the chain ratcheted him toward the
top, but that did not keep his stomach from leaping as the dizzying
fall began.
The Soviets had completed preparations at
Tyuratam and launched their second laser flawlessly at midweek. The
President immediately put the armed forces on full alert. Around
the world, attack submarines encircled Soviet flotillas and Russian
and American aircraft flew sorties eyeing one another on radar. A
hundred hair triggers waited for the slightest pressure.
Drefke had returned from the NSC meeting
nearly hysterical. Hysteria may have been the only sane response.
Myriad alternatives sifted, the President had chosen the one he
felt most appropriate. Specifically targeted to the task. Limited
enough not to demand full-scale war if implemented. Stark enough to
be impossible to ignore. The US spelled out its position in graphic
detail to the Soviets at all diplomatic levels. If they used the
laser, retaliation would be swift and sure, treaties to the
contrary notwithstanding.
Isaacs stood looking up at the Mercury
capsule. Is this where it began? he wondered. Or maybe with his
Sabrejet out in the far wing. Or, over there, with the Wright
brothers. Or with the goddamned wheel! He gritted his teeth in
despair and frustration and wandered up the stairs toward the
Saturn booster. The new plateau of crisis had made him easy
pickings for McMasters. He reached in and felt the letter from
McMasters folded in his jacket pocket. Coincidence. No proof.
Crisis. No time. The fool! McMasters couldn’t, wouldn’t see the
truth. Of course the Agency was in overdrive, with no resources to
spare. But the root of the crisis was not in the White House, or
even in the Kremlin. It hurtled through the Earth, a sly unknown
enemy that had us at each other’s throats. If the world proceeded
to nuclear holocaust would this thing care? Would it continue to
sift through the seared rubble?
Isaacs followed the crowd into the auditorium
and sat, his eyes blitzed by the recorded history of the air, his
mind in its own warp. Subconsciously, he had known it would come to
this. His alternatives were sorted and handed up to him even as he
read the letter from McMasters. Someone had to focus on this evil
in the Earth. He had to go it alone. His career, his rapid rise to
authority, all his hard work, seemed like a fragile bird in his
hand. So easily it could die, or fly away. But what alternatives
did he have? To watch the world careen to disaster? A disaster that
might be forestalled if only they knew the true origin of this
thing? He thought of Muriel, her successful career built on the
precarious sands of political influence. If he failed, were found
out, disgraced, she’d have a lot at jeopardy as well. They would go
down together. Would they go down together? Would they be together?
Would she forgive him for sacrificing her to a cause of which she
was ignorant? What of his daughter? How would she take the news of
her father’s ejection from the Agency for willful violation of
policy? What would she think of a father in a unique position to
stem the rush to war who lacked the courage to act? Disgrace or the
prospect of nuclear war. Could there be any real choice?
One step at a time. He fumbled his way out of
the auditorium, the aisle sporadically lit by the flashing screen.
He pulled up his steep driveway twenty minutes later and stared for
a moment at the house, picturing the occupants, before getting out
of the car. As he closed the front door behind him, he could hear
the perpetual music from Isabel’s room and the rustle of paper from
the front room, Muriel digesting the Sunday Post. She looked up as
he came in.
“Hi!” she said cheerily. “Have a nice
drive?”
He sat on the edge of a chair next to her. “I
worked some things out.”
She sobered at his look.
“I need to talk to you. Can you get some
clothes on? I’d just as soon get out of the house.”
“Well, sure.” She pinched at the lapels of
her robe. “I’ll just be a few minutes.” She gave him a perplexed
look and headed up the stairs. Five minutes later, he heard her
knock on Isabel’s door and announce they were going for a ride.
“My hair’s a mess. We’re not going anywhere
in public are we?” she asked as he joined her in the hallway.
“No, you look fine. I just want to find a
quiet place to talk.”
In the car he headed them toward the Naval
Observatory grounds and found an empty turnoff where they could
park. He turned off the ignition and looked out over the rolling
lawns.
Muriel broke the silence.
“This is a little frightening, you know.”
“I am frightened,” he said with a shy grin.
He half turned in his seat to face her. “I’m about to take a big
step. I’ve never involved you in Agency business, but if I miss my
footing here, it could be very bad.”
“You know I trust you.”
“You trust a guy who has always played by the
rules. I have to break some rules now.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t know.”
“According to the rules you shouldn’t. That’s
one of the rules I need to break. I can’t go into this leaving you
in the cold.”
“It’s got to do with Avery, doesn’t it?”
He nodded. “You read about the alert?”
“What there is to read,” she said, befuddled.
“Rumors of a full alert, unconfirmed by the White House. Official
mumblings about routine training exercises.”
“And you remember my last dust-up with
McMasters.”
“Humble pie.”
“They’re all tied in together. I don’t have
to tell you the details, but I need to sketch it for you, to
explain what I’m going to do.
“There’s some influence moving through the
Earth. We picked it up by seismic signals, microscopic Earthquakes.
Avery stumbled onto it by sonar signals. We have no idea what
causes the noise as it goes, but, whatever it is, it moves back and
forth through the Earth. No one seems to have noticed it above the
surface, but Avery was on a mission to investigate that, and I’m
convinced it sank his ship.”
“It? You mean you have no idea what sank a
ship?”
“That’s right. Incredible as it seems,
there’s something deadly out there, down there, and we have no clue
to what it is. Last spring a Russian aircraft carrier was damaged
in a mysterious way. All the evidence points to the same
phenomenon. The carrier was in the right place at the right time to
have run into this thing. They blamed us, thought we had some
mystery ray. They zapped one of our spy satellites with a laser
satellite; we snatched their laser with the shuttle.”
“Oh, yeah.” Muriel wagged a finger in memory.
“There were some reports of skullduggery with the shuttle. Someone
high up sat on that one very hard.”
“Right. Well, it’s continued to escalate. The
Russians have launched another laser. That’s led to the alert.” He
paused. “I know you realize that this is all confidential, but what
I’m going to tell you next, you really have to regard in the
strictest confidence. If it gets out, then the whole works go down
the drain.”
“Don’t tell me.”
“This is the crux. You won’t understand my
motivation otherwise.”
“It seems pretty clear. Something strange is
going on. You’ve lost a good friend to it. We and the Russians are
at odds over it, without even knowing it. That neanderthal
McMasters has blocked your way, and you’re going to defy him by
continuing to dig when he has forbidden you to. If he catches you,
he skins you and makes a gift of your tanned hide to the Director,
no matter the motivation.”
Isaacs smiled. “An admirable summary,
counselor. You’re right. It was the investigation of these seismic
signals that McMasters squelched. I appealed to him last week, but
with this alert on he just slapped me down, got to tend to the
business at hand. The problem is, of course, that I think the
business at hand is the outgrowth of this mystery noise. We must
understand that.”
“Then go after it.”
“If I’m wrong, or if I’m found out mucking
around before I can come up with incontrovertible proof, I’ll be
kicked out, disgraced. I’m worried about your position, about what
Isabel would think. It wouldn’t be worth the risk if all that were
at stake was my concern for what happened to Avery.”
“No, not just for a personal question,”
Muriel agreed, “but other men have died. This thing sounds
dangerous on its own, even if it didn’t lead to lasers and shuttles
having at it in space.”
“Muriel, men die all the time, and we and the
Russians are always involved in some skirmish or other, some of
which I can influence, others I can’t. The stakes are a lot bigger
here.”
She looked thoughtful for a long moment.
“Okay, tell me if you have to. But for your sake, not mine.”
“We launched a nuclear device this morning.
It’ll track the laser. If the laser is used, we explode it.”
“Oh, Bob. Oh, my god. What would the Russians
do?”
“Who knows? That’s just the worry. What would
we do if they used a nuclear device against us in space? We’d
retaliate somehow. Two things frighten me. That unknown thing in
the Earth, and the knowledge that we’re as close to the brink as we
have ever been.”
“Bob, this is insane. You have the key to
defuse this, and only McMasters in the way. Can’t you go to the
Director? Go to the President, for god’s sake!”
“I have a pile of circumstantial evidence, no
real proof. I think that with some thought and work the connection
can be established, but doing that in an open fashion, never mind
with the full-scale interagency cooperation that’s required, is
just what McMasters has blocked. If I get myself sacked, then I
really am useless. Somehow, I’ve got to assemble a stronger case so
I can circumvent McMasters. And I’ve got to do it in the midst of
this goddamned full-scale alert, when they want to know everything
that’s happening, and why—yesterday.”
She reached over and touched his arm. “Bob,
you do what you have to do. Take me home.”
He started the car and drove, barely seeing
the road. He slowly realized that he had, besides Muriel, two
possible allies. Maybe there was hope.
Korolev sat at his desk and stared at the
incredible document in his hand. It was postmarked from New York, a
simple attempt at subterfuge. Naive? Or sophisticated in its
attempt to hide in plain sight? The fact that this letter was
mailed to him just like any other piece of scientific
correspondence that he received regularly from colleagues
world-wide appealed to him greatly. What was the chance that this
piece went unscreened by the authorities? Small, regrettably.
What a delight to see his confidence in this
American vindicated. In the letter he confesses to pushing the
meteorite idea, even as his confidence waned. Here is a man of
conscience, trying honestly to struggle with forces beyond his
control. How clearly he sees the disaster that has followed like
night the day from the damage to the Novorossiisk.
And what a bizarre case he has compiled! A
seismic signal that traverses the Earth every eighty and one half
minutes. The Novorossiisk in the way. This destroyer of theirs also
in the path, and sunk! Could we have such seismic data? Korolev
sighed. Probably far inferior, and locked in tight bureaucratic
compartments. Could he pry it out? What an effort to ask of an old
man. Expend much of the capital of his prestige in an effort like
that. But this Isaacs fellow had now neatly forced his hand. He
must try.
What a nice touch, the straw on the camel’s
back that would force him into action. Why, he queries, did the
Novorossiisk not report a rising sonar signal? Ah, the subtleties
of Soviet militarism. Isaacs must know that we do not keep tapes of
sonar signals. There would be no point, without the ready computer
power to analyze them. Our records are in the memories of men and
the written page. What Isaacs does not know is that one of those
memories was erased. The sonar man, not so far from retirement, had
finally worked his way up to chief sonar officer on the
Novorossiisk. No one was surprised at the heart attack that felled
him. Until now, no one had questioned why his collapse had preceded
the emergency, the fires on the ship. His second had taken over and
had heard the descending signal. What had the first man heard that
instigated his attack? Isaacs had asked a key question. Korolev was
convinced he knew the answer.
Two problems. Could the disastrous chain of
events be broken? From the Novorossiisk to the FireEye, the Cosmos,
the shuttle, the new Cosmos, and now this evil new device of the
Americans. Did this linkage have a momentum of its own that could
not be stopped? Could he make a case that would cause his
government to defuse the issue, to look to the common problem? If
he could get independent evidence, beyond this document, to whom
would he turn? Who in his stolid, conservative government would
respond to this outrageous tale?