chairs and got to their feet. There was an awkward moment at the door as they each tried to ignore the other, which prevented signals as to who should go first. Finally, Isaacs stepped back and gave a brief gesture. McMasters charged through. Isaacs waited until McMasters passed the outer doorway and then slowly closed Drefke’s door behind him.
Drefke got up and walked to the window. He looked out for a long time, hands clasped behind his back. Then he took his seat and pulled the typewritten pages from the envelope Isaacs had left him. He began to read.
Robert Isaacs resigned himself to the fact that the situation was out of his hands. Under the terms of his partial suspension awaiting the outcome in Dallas, he could not engage in policy decisions, so for the next two weeks he busied himself with routine things neglected in the recent press of events. To his relief the confrontation with the Russians cooled. The fragile status quo held. On the final weekend before Dallas, he arranged for his daughter Isabel to stay with a friend and convinced Muriel to spend the time with him sailing on the Chesapeake.
Pat Danielson spent the two week period in an agonized limbo. She, too, went about her duties, but the upcoming event that would profoundly affect her career was never very far from her mind. Some mysterious force would push through the Earth six hundred times, she mused, while she chewed her nails, waiting for it to hit Dallas. In a way, she was glad that Drefke had explicitly forbidden both Isaacs and her from going to Dallas, as well as from exercising any other connection to Project QUAKER. She recognized the great likelihood of futility, but knew that if the trip were not proscribed she would have gone to Dallas to try to see something, anything, that would give a clue to the force that would erupt there.
On the final Saturday she dragged her roommate, Janine, on a prolonged shopping trip and then to a movie. Sunday she could not shake the doldrums and spent the day in fretful listlessness. Monday evening she went to bed early, but tossed in a restless, unsatisfying sleep. Something in her kept time, and she later found herself wide awake, staring at the ceiling. Without looking at the clock she knew that it must be nearly one a.m. An hour earlier in Dallas it was about to happen. She continued to stare in the darkness, straining to project herself into the scene. What would she see? What would it do? She felt completely halted in that prolonged state of painful anticipation, but then the alarm pulled her up from a deep sleep. She pried her eyes open. The world still looked the same.
“You ever been to Dallas before?” Glen Wilson asked his partner in a subdued voice.
The two men walked slowly, purposefully, down the street, eyes catching every facet of the subdued activity.
“Me? Nah,” replied Sam Spangler. “Unless you count changing planes in the airport. You ever ride those little trolleys?”
“Um. Yeah, couple of times. Kinda fun at first, no driver and all. Irritating, though, when they stop for no apparent reason.”
They skirted a disheveled old man, slumped asleep against the wall, legs sprawled onto the sidewalk, brown bag cradled in his lap.
“I was just thinking,” Wilson continued, “I’ve seen a few boots and hats, but except for the fact that it’s damn awful hot, it’s hard to tell where we are. I mean, look at this. Bars, strip joints, porny flicks. The only women you see that aren’t hookers are with some guy hustling ‘em off somewhere else. Just a little seedy piece of anywhere, USA.”
“You’re right about that,” Spangler agreed. “They do move a lot of produce through here in the daytime, I guess.” He flicked a rotting cabbage with the side of his shoe. It rolled up against the barred storefront. Behind the bars were partitioned tables waiting the next day’s yield.
“You’re also right about the heat. Feels like I’m wearing a blanket. Told you we should’ve gone native, jeans and T-shirts. Would have fit right in and been a damn sight cooler than these suits.”
“Hey, better than that,” Wilson shot him a quick smile, “I coulda dressed as a wino and sat around taking it easy and you coulda come in drag and walked the streets ‘til something happens. You might’ve made a few bucks.”
Spangler smiled back and swaggered a few steps. They reached a corner and turned to cross the street, waiting for the light. Wilson looked up at the buildings around them. The tallest ones of the main commercial area were a few blocks away. Around them, the buildings ranged from two to ten stories in height, the upper stories mostly dark as midnight approached. Once across the street they turned and headed back in the direction from which they had come. Wilson glanced at his watch.
“Five minutes?”
Spangler nodded confirmation. “Beats the hell out of me how they can know where something is going to happen, and when, to the second, and not know what. Screwy damn assignment.”
They walked on in silence, checking their watches more frequently as the assigned time approached, unconsciously walking more slowly, watching more carefully. Finally they stopped. Wilson noticed the digits on his watch that indicated seconds as they flashed to zero-zero, signaling the onset of the final minute during which the unspecified, but potentially dangerous event should occur. He tried to simultaneously register the numbers on the watch as they swapped places, second by second, and the urban visage around them. Thirty seconds later, he realized he had been holding his breath as he strained for any clue. He stared at the watch and exhaled, more loudly than he had intended.
The sound of his released breath mingled with and covered the onset of a strange whistling roar. The two agents glanced suddenly at one another and then turned to look down the street, trying to fix the location of the noise. It seemed to rise rapidly above the buildings.
The roar diminished, to be replaced by a hoarse cry. In the middle of the next block a man emerged onto the sidewalk and stood there, his frantic screams tearing the night.
A hole appeared in the concrete foundation of the basement of the Poodle Lounge. Twin punctures followed in the keg of beer immediately above it. As the pressurized brew began to spurt a frothy spout, another hole was ripped in the floor of the bar. Chaos ensued there as the quiet atmosphere was split by the sound of smashing glass shelves and bottles, as if someone had suddenly taken an ax to the racks behind the bar. As the bartender spun to stare in disbelief, a new hole had already been drilled in the ceiling above his head.
Upstairs at Crazy Lil’s they played out the quiet midweek evening. The smoky room was dominated by a small oblong stage surrounded by seats for patrons. At the four corners of the stage were pillars that supported a canopy with mirrored undersurface and ruffled trim, the whole thing a grotesque parody of an old four-poster bed. Along one wall a screen was mounted for entr’acte movies. Opposite were a pair of coin-operated pool tables. At one of these, a tough- looking pair played eightball, studiously ignoring the woman working on the stage.
The audience was sparse. Three young cowboy-types in boots, jeans, and carefully sculpted straw hats. One of these boasted an unlawful eagle feather, the emblem of little britches rodeo days, not long past. A few bored salesmen sat each by himself, their common predicament being insufficient grounds to bring them together. The only spirit came from two stray out-of-town convention goers. One of these had just crooked a finger and gestured with a dollar bill. The dancer had interrupted her gyrations to pause in front of him, pelvis outthrust, as he worked the bill under the strap of her g-string. That position was one of precarious balance and left her unprepared for what happened next.
She felt as if the floor were suddenly thrust up under her, as with the rapid rise of an elevator. She fell backward heavily onto the stage. As she tipped, a large ragged gash was torn along the length of one of the four canopy posts. The post snapped and splintered. Deprived of symmetrical support, the mirrored canopy sagged and then twisted as the remaining three posts tilted in unison.
The dancer stared upward in numb shock and saw her image grow. With a burst of panic she realized the canopy was collapsing upon her. She flung her arms over her face and shrieked. The men seated along the perimeter recoiled frantically as chairs and bodies went sprawling. The young cowboy with the eagle feather made an aborted move toward the woman, but he was too far away. The canopy crashed down putting an abrupt end to her screams.
The bouncer-cashier-projectionist, who had been sitting on a stool by the entrance attempting to read a paperback western in the dim light, dropped the book when the first post splintered and stood as if paralyzed, watching the collapse of the canopy. In the stillness that followed, he took a few tentative steps toward the stage.
