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.
