'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. 'Rumours 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 flung. 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, counsellor. 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 in 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 was 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 flung 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 fullscale 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 worldwide 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 prise 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 analyse them. Our records are in the memories of men and the written page. What Isaacs does not know is that one of those memories was erased. The sonar man, not so far from retirement, had finally worked his way up to chief sonar officer on the Novorossiisk. No one was surprised at the heart attack that felled him. Until now, no one had questioned why his collapse had preceded the emergency, the fires on the ship. His second had taken over and had heard the descending signal. What had the first man heard that instigated his attack? Isaacs had asked a key question. Korolev was convinced he knew the answer.
Two problems. Could the disastrous chain of events be broken? From the Novorossiisk to the FireEye, the Cosmos, the shuttle, the new Cosmos, and now this evil new device of the Americans. Did this linkage have a momentum of its own that could not be stopped? Could he make a case that would cause his government to defuse the issue, to look to the common problem? If he could get independent evidence, beyond this document, to whom would he turn? Who in his stolid conservative government would respond to this outrageous tale?
And what was this common enemy? This motive force within the earth, that punched holes in ships, and frightened men to death? What could be so omnipresent and yet so surgically precise that death can come and go and leave scarce a trace?
Korolev wrote a word in heavy blunt pencil in the margin Isaacs's letter: TUNGUS.
On the following Saturday the precious morning slipped away, but Pat Danielson still wore her nightgown and robe. She had worked late the night before, responding to the crisis atmosphere that gripped the Agency, trying to monitor and anticipate the Soviet response to the orbiting nuclear device. She was due back by two in the afternoon. Now she kept that tension at bay by methodically devouring the morning paper. The condominium ads
