The Krone Experiment (29 page)
“Seriously,” Martinelli said, “I appreciate
everything you did to save my butt.”
“For god’s sake, Vince, I got you into
it.”
“I’m a big boy, I knew what I was doing. I
appreciate you going to bat for me.”
“Well, I shouldn’t have gotten you involved.
I’m relieved we got out okay.” They both stared into their drinks,
a little embarrassed by this open exchange of gratitude.
Then Martinelli strove to recapture the
spirit of celebration. “So how is friend McMasters taking all
this?” he inquired in a jovial tone.
“He’s sulking.”
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”
They both chuckled.
“It really backfired on him,” Isaacs mused.
“Not only did he not get me booted, but now Drefke’s made the whole
investigation top priority and put me in charge. That’s really
going to hurt him.”
“I don’t suppose it’s too much to hope that a
little luster’s gone off his star?”
“My reading is that Drefke still appreciates
his ability to run internal affairs, but he sees him in a different
light now. McMasters had some rationale to argue Project QUAKER
wasn’t agency business, but his forbidding me to work on it and
then having me shadowed don’t look too hot in hindsight.”
“Ah, another toast then. To the future Deputy
Director of Intelligence.” Martinelli raised his glass to
Isaacs.
“C’mon, Vince,” Isaacs protested.
“You know it’s true.”
Isaacs was pleased, but embarrassed again. He
recognized the timetable for his promotion had probably
accelerated.
“So what’s happening in Dallas?” Martinelli
inquired.
Isaacs laughed, glad to change the
subject.
“You wouldn’t believe the confusion out
there. Your basic case of conflicting authorities. The city cops
are all over the place. The governor, and more importantly, his
chief financial backers, are all from Dallas. They feel personally
attacked, so the governor’s got a squad of investigators from the
state intelligence bureau on the spot. That’s already enough to
piss off the locals and make for a general madhouse because nobody
in those outfits has any idea what it is they’re supposed to be
investigating. Then we get into the act and that really stirs up
the pot.
“I wanted to send in a few of my people on
the quiet, but by the time Drefke made his decision to go ahead the
place was swarming with the Texas troops. Drefke decided we had to
follow the letter of the charter: no internal investigations.
“So we contacted the FBI and they sent a team
of investigators. We told them what sort of information we want,
but not why. We’re sitting on that till we better understand what’s
going on. One of the things this accomplishes is to get the local
FBI special agent riled up, first because he’s got these
out-of-towners descending on him, and worse because he knows
they’re working for us, not even for the FBI.”
Isaacs chuckled again.
“To complete the confusion, the local cops
and the state police have been ordered to cover up the FBI
involvement and to absolutely avoid any hint leaking out that the
Agency is interested. I doubt that will be totally hushed up, but
it’s got them in a pickle.”
“Wow, real circus then,” Martinelli laughed.
“I’ve got to sympathize with the local cops. If I’ve got the
picture right, they’ve got the formal public responsibility for the
investigation, but can only go through the motions while the spooks
crawl in and out of the woodwork.”
“That’s about it,” Isaacs said. “Actually, we
need to help them develop some cover story. They really are in a
bind.”
“So are you learning anything in the midst of
all this chaos?”
“A bit. We sent a team to check the site in
Nagasaki. We had less trouble with the Japanese government than
we’ve had with Texans.” Isaacs shook his head in amusement. “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
thing 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.
*****
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 somber 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 favorite spots and had gotten 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, Danielson flew down to
San Diego and met Isaacs’ incoming flight. By early afternoon, they
were back in Ellison Gantt’s room closeted with the same members of
Jason. Both Wayne Phillips 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.
Phillips and Isaacs remained standing by the
door until Zicek was seated, then Phillips 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 Phillips.” 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 centimeter 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 centimeters. 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 centimeter 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-story
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 meters away,” Isaacs continued,
“the rear quarter of a seven-story 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 that 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 Earth to account for the
reversal of direction.”
She looked down and brushed a piece of lint
from her skirt and then looked back at Leems.
“I also tracked all US, European, and
Japanese satellites, with again the same null result. Nothing
currently in orbit can account for what we have seen, even
discounting the question of what the technology could be, something
that could propagate through the Earth.”
Beside her, Alex Runyan smiled lightly,
taking pleasure in her neat parry. Leems scowled more deeply, but
did not respond. After a long quiet moment, Danielson leaned around
Runyan to address Zicek.
“Excuse me, Dr. Zicek, but there’s another
thing that I’m not sure came out clearly just now. The marks that
we’ve investigated, the holes in the concrete, look very clean.
There’s no sign of a great release of energy, no blackening, no
melting or fusing of the material. Perhaps that makes the situation
more confusing, but there’s no indication of explosion or burning
that you’d expect of radiation from a beam of energy. It looks more
like the material was drilled out; it’s just gone.”