'No woman has ever risen to the level of a Deputy Director. You couldn't hope to in less than a decade even if you were the President's daughter-in-law. But if, as a woman, you have any desire to aim at that level, you'll have to be particularly resourceful at setting your goals and working towards them.'
He leaned up on his forearms again.
'You wouldn't be crazy to decide there are better things to do with your life.'
'Better things,' she mused. 'I haven't found anything better.'
Isaacs picked up a pencil and fiddled with it. He looked up at her. 'Nor anyone?'
Danielson understood his line of thought and found it irritating, despite her original willingness to get a little personal.
'If you don't mind my saying so, that's a bit chauvinistic. Are you worried someone will turn my head, and I'll run off to the suburbs to make babies?'
'I'm sorry. It does sound that way. But even if I denied my culpability there are people in the Agency who will raise that kind of argument. Fact is, they'll hit you both ways. If you don't get married, they'll suggest there's something wrong there.'
'So I need to snap up a quick husband and continue to labour in the trenches until the powers that be, present company excepted, stamp me with the seal of approval.' Her irritation waned to be replaced by bemusement. 'Somehow, even with all the emphasis on security, it never occurred to me that the Agency would have any interest in my love life. They don't check up, do they?'
'No,' Isaacs laughed. 'Not without special cause. They turn up a few tidbits of everybody's past during the security check. Yours couldn't have been too sordid: you're here.'
Danielson wondered if Allan was in the file. Allan with the blond hair, golden tan, easy smile. Peter Pan with surfboard. He was probably still on the beach.
Isaacs detected her pensive look and switched gears.
'I've managed to get off the point. I just wanted you to know that I think you have a future with the Agency, if you want to work for it. One thing you'll have to learn is that hard work alone isn't all there is. You will always have to do a little getting along by going along. The art is to make the most judicious choice of what to give and what to get. I had to make a hard choice with QUAKER. I hope we'll find that I chose correctly.'
Danielson looked at him seriously. 'I appreciate your taking the time to talk with me like this. I'll try to give some thought to exactly where I'm heading.'
'If I can give you any more bad advice,' Isaacs smiled, 'give me a call.'
Danielson smiled good-bye and let herself out. Despite other pressing duties, she spent the remainder of the day glumly divesting herself of any involvement with Project QUAKER. She gathered up a number of files and voluminous personal notes. The better part of an hour was required to transfer several analytical computer programs and extensive sets of data onto master storage tapes and to delete all active files from the computer memory. Despite Isaacs's attempt at explanation, she drove home that evening thinking that she knew what a miscarriage would feel like.
That same evening Isaacs sat in his living room looking at, but not perceiving, the early evening television news. He loosely supported a half-consumed drink on the arm of the sofa where beaded moisture slowly soaked into the velveteen. The coaster on the side table went unused. The cook made final preparations for dinner and from upstairs the bass from his daughter's stereo carried subliminally. The townhouse perched over a two-car garage off a steeply sloping Georgetown street. Inside it was furnished in a refined, tasteful way. In his wry moods Isaacs estimated he could afford between a quarter and a third of it. The person responsible for the lion's share came bustling in, discarding her purse and jacket. His wife, Muriel, was a dark-haired, slender woman, attractive, although a bit long in the face. She had some money of her own and, more important, a successful, politically oriented law practice.
She came in alternately damning a recalcitrant senatorial aide with whom she was forced to have dealings and crowing over the successful completion of another case in which an out-of-court settlement had saved their client the embarrassment of a court appearance. She elaborated on these developments in a keyed-up, stream-of-consciousness flow as she mixed herself a drink at the bar and sat alongside her husband. As she chatted, Isaacs half-listened, nodding and responding with appropriate monosyllables on occasion. Muriel realized he was down and covered for him for a while, but finally inquired.
'You're quiet tonight. How was your day?'
Isaacs smiled tiredly at his wife, then looked down at his drink. He sat up and tried belatedly to brush some of the collected moisture off the sofa arm.
He smiled again, more genuinely, at his gloomy forgetfulness.
'I shouldn't let him get under my skin. McMasters outflanked me this afternoon. A petty move on his part, but I had to put aside a potentially significant project which is only in the early stages. One of my young people was pretty disappointed. She'd put a lot of good work into it.'
'Can't you go over his head?'
'No, it's not that kind of thing. He put me on the spot before enough evidence was in to make a rigorous case. That's one thing that bothers me, though. Now we won't know. If it is serious, it'll catch us by surprise later.'
'I don't suppose you can continue surreptitiously?'
Isaacs chuckled.
'You've got too many clients who spend their lives going back on campaign promises. No. It would be hard to do and hell to pay if I got caught. He gave me an order as a senior officer. Even if it's stupid, I'd be putting my job on the line and jeopardizing a lot of programmes of proven importance. The Director would rule against me unless I had an overwhelming motivation for my insubordination.'
Muriel grimed and raised her glass in a mock toast. 'So you're going to eat it?' He returned the gesture.
'I can assure you I've already done so in my most humble and cooperative way.'
Chapter 6
The USS Seamount, out of Pearl Harbor, sailed steadily towards the Bering Sea carrying a cargo of sixteen nuclear— tipped missiles. Her blunt hull cut cleanly through the water at four hundred fathoms, maintaining a steady twenty-five knots.
Lt. J.G. Augustus Washington sat at the controls of the sophisticated computerized sonar, his consciousness merged with the surrounding sea, as it would be eight hours a day for the next three months. Half his mind tuned to the sounds coming through his headset and to the green glow of the twin display screens in front of him. He automatically registered the turning of the screw on a distant Japanese tanker bound for Valdez , a school of whales somewhere to the west, and the anonymous squeals, rattles and clicks which characterize the undersea world. The other part of his mind wandered to his recently ended shore leave, to his wife. His quarterly sessions at sea were rough and lonely for a young woman married only a couple of years, but if she couldn't be home in Little Rock , Hawaii was not bad duty for her. At least blacks were not the bottom of the heap. There were always the native Hawaiians. And their reunions — oooeee! Almost worth three months of nothing doing. He swore it would be another two weeks before he would even begin to think about sex, then recognized that he had already succumbed and laughed softly to himself.
He began to form an image of his woman standing on the bed in the moonlight, naked and spread-eagled over him when the angry boiling broke forth from the earphones.
Tension seized his gut and left his heart pounding. He jerked upright in his seat, his eyes fixed on the brilliant dot on the right-hand screen that passively recorded incoming signals. His gaze whipped to the left screen which registered the reflection of the active signals the submarine emitted and saw only the faintest reading.