'The physical evidence is very similar in the two cases. I put that in my preliminary report. That's what convinced Drefke to let us all off with that bit of wrist-slapping today and give me the green light.'
'Another?'
'No thanks. I've got to get home. This whole dung has been tough on Muriel. I promised her a nice quiet dinner out.'
'Fair enough.' Martinelli grinned, but then a serious look settled over his eyes. 'I read that copy you sent me earlier this week of your original memo outlining this mess. Frankly, I lost some sleep over it. Can you explain to me what the hell's really happening?'
Isaacs shook his head wearily. 'I'm relieved we're off the hook and the investigation can go ahead full throttle, but the truth is I'm scared. I don't know what we're up against. There's something damned serious going on.'
'So what's the next step?'
'We've got to get better heads than mine working on the clues. Pat Danielson and I had a brief consultation with Jason back in our underground days, three weeks ago. We're headed back there on Monday. I'm not sure anything will come of it, but we have some fresh evidence from Nagasaki and Dallas , and I can't think what else to do.'
'Well, good luck. Have a quiet weekend, will you? And my love to Muriel.'
'Thanks, Vince.'
Isaacs drained his glass and headed home.
Chapter 11
Pat Danielson was home. Her relief had turned to elation during Drefke's lecture to them the previous Friday afternoon. As he droned on in sombre tones, she slowly realized that he was not only reinstating them, he was granting Isaacs full authority to pursue Project QUAKER. She had invited Janine out to one of their favourite spots and had got gaily tipsy before dinner. Returning to the apartment, she had succumbed to a spontaneous urge and called her father in Los Angeles and made plans to spend the weekend with him.
She enjoyed it immensely, being back in the small house so flooded with childhood memories, now gently nostalgic in her buoyant good mood. She and her father took walks down familiar sidewalks, the cracks in them so much closer together than when she had played hopscotch along them. They talked long and avidly, sharing experiences past and present. More balm on the wound in their relation, now nearly invisible. Long Beach and the ocean were only two miles away. She spent Sunday afternoon on the beach, alternately body-surfing, jogging, and soaking up the sun, a teenager again. She rediscovered the simple pleasure of sitting on the seawall and watching the world go by — sunburned throngs on bicycles, roller skates, skateboards, even a few ordinary pedestrians, all in constant motion up and down the miles of beachfront sidewalk. She thought a lot about Project QUAKER and their scheduled meeting with Jason to renew their consultation. She thought about Alex Runyan. She looked forward to seeing him again.
Late Monday morning, she flew down to Son Diego and met Isaacs's incoming flight. By early afternoon, they were back in Ellison Gantt's room closeted with the same members of Jason. Both Wayne Plumps and Alex Runyan had greeted them on their arrival. Runyan, again in. shorts, T-shirt, and thongs, had attached himself to Danielson, escorting her with friendly chatter up the stairs and to a seat on the comfortable, slightly frayed sofa next to the portable blackboard. She had self-consciously enjoyed the attention. Now she looked around noting with amusement the tendency for people to resume the positions they had previously established, even three weeks before, some instinctual territoriality, she supposed. Noldt and Fletcher sat in the same chairs, next to the sofa. Noldt's round face beamed as he greeted her again. Fletcher had just come in from a run on the beach, his dark lean face still flushed and his hair wet from a shower. Gantt was again seated at his desk, looking as grey and undistinguishable as ever. Zicek and Leems came in. Leems scowled and took the chair by the door, but Zicek smiled and joined the pair on the sofa.
Plumps and Isaacs remained standing by the door until Zicek was seated, then Plumps spoke. 'Gentlemen, you remember Dr Danielson and Mr Isaacs and the novel problem they brought to us before. There have been a number of developments, among which is the change in status of this situation. They came to us informally before to seek what wisdom we had to offer. Now they are here on highest priority official status. I urge you to listen carefully to their new information and to address this problem with all the acumen at your command. I've no doubt that when you have heard the latest developments you'll need no further goad from me. Mr Isaacs.'
'Thank you. Professor Plumps.' Isaacs clasped his hands behind his back and looked around the room, last and longest at Harvey Leems seated close to his left side. 'You'll recall that Dr Danielson had predicted that our regular seismic, sonar signal was to impinge on Nagasaki on July 7 and on Dallas July 26, just a week ago.
'For Nagasaki we stationed a ground observer in the area and obtained high resolution aerial reconnaissance photographs. At about the predicted time, a chlorine tank in a nearby warehouse sprang a leak. A workman in the warehouse was killed by gas inhalation, and a number of others were hospitalized with lung damage. The tank was punctured with two holes approximately a centimetre in diameter. A vertical line through these holes was aligned with a similar hole in the concrete floor. The hole appeared to extend into the subsoil beneath the foundation, but there is a high water table and moist soil obliterated any sign after a few centimetres. The skylight above this line of holes was broken out. In the street we found a truck with its engine blown. There were signs of odd damage to it, but it had been moved and we can't determine with certainty that there is a connection. The aerial survey photos showed nothing.'
'While you're on that point,' Runyan interrupted. 'I had some astronomical colleagues take photos of the points in space the signal seems to travel between. Same result, zip.'
'I see,' said Isaacs. 'That's interesting.' And maybe not too smart, he thought to himself. If they had found something, a big goddamn cat could have been out of the bag.
'In Dallas ,' he continued, 'the details were different, but the overall picture was the same. Two buildings were damaged. In one, there is a hole roughly a centimetre across from the roof down through the basement. Again, evidence for penetration into the subsoil, but in Dallas it was too sandy to support the tunnel, or whatever it was. Once again there was a death, incidental, but related. A young woman was crushed when a structure collapsed on her.'
'How's that?' asked Noldt, his owlish face screwed in concentration.
'Well,' Isaacs paused, 'this was a two-storey place with a bar underneath and a strip joint upstairs.' He gestured with his hands flat, one above the other. 'The woman was, uh, dancing upstairs. This tunnel, or whatever it was, weakened a support structure on the stage and it collapsed on her.'
'I see,' said Noldt, sitting up straighter in his seat, a little embarrassed.
'A hundred metres away,' Isaacs continued, 'the rear quarter of a seven-storey building gave way and collapsed into the alley behind it. In this case, fortunately, no one was injured. The cause of the structural failure has not been positively determined, although some pieces of masonry show elongated gashes which bear similarity to the holes in the concrete floors in the other damaged buildings in Dallas and Nagasaki. Two agents in the area reported hearing a whistling noise of some kind. Their impression was that it receded up from the bar, and one of them thinks he heard it again about forty seconds later, prior, he believes, to the collapse of the building. There is no question now in my mind that this thing, whatever it is, causes physical damage, and that it was similar effects that damaged the Russian aircraft carrier, the Novorossiisk, and sank our destroyer, the Stinson.'
'You say,' remarked Zicek, 'that this phenomenon seems to have gone up and then down in Dallas , in consonance with your feeling that something goes back and forth in the earth.'
Isaacs nodded. 'I remind you that I remarked before I didn't see how any beam could do such a thing, reverse directions. That feeling seems to be reinforced with your new evidence.'
'Wait a second, now,' Leems broke in. 'What about satellite locations? I need to be convinced that more than one source isn't involved somehow, one shooting one way, one, the other.'
'I checked that,' Danielson responded to him. 'There are hundreds of Soviet satellites in orbit. Occasionally, there was a marginal coincidence of position with a single event, but no pattern that could explain all the incidents we know of. And no case when two satellites lined up on the trajectory simultaneously on opposite sides of the
