“Well, it’s early, but it is hot out. I’ll have a gin and tonic.”
The bartender nodded and lackadaisically retraced his path.
“I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you, springing this on you. I know you have precious little time off these days.”
“I did have a date this afternoon.”
“I’m sorry. I tried to give you a day’s notice. I’m afraid I haven’t played the dating game in quite a while.”
Danielson raised an eyebrow. Was he playing it now?
“I did try to pick a time when I thought you’d just be relaxing at home.”
“I might have been, but this afternoon’s concert happened to fit my schedule. Anyway, I told him my hay fever had flared up, and I couldn’t face either sitting in the grass sneezing or doping myself silly with antihistamines. I got a rain check for next week at the Kennedy Center, safely inside and air-conditioned. Now if I can just get the DCI to let me off—”
Her voice trailed off, her real question left floating in the air. Isaacs sensed her reserve and grinned nervously as the bartender arrived with her drink. He put down a fresh coaster, then promptly soaked it as he deposited the glass too abruptly. Danielson started to take a sip, but the coaster stuck to the bottom of the glass. She looked on with mild surprise as Isaacs unpeeled the coaster, reached for the shaker, and shook some salt on it. He gestured at the coaster. She placed her glass down and then lifted it. The coaster stayed nicely in place on the table. She took a sip, then raised her glass in an abbreviated toast. Isaacs nodded his appreciation. After a moment a serious look settled on his face.
“I need to talk to you about Operation QUAKER.”
Danielson smiled wryly to herself. She had been right; romance was a preposterous notion. Aloud she said, “I find myself pondering it on occasion.” She glanced around the bar. “Do we need to meet here to beat a dead horse?”
“Circumstances have changed. I think it’s imperative that Operation QUAKER be revived.” Isaacs looked down into his drink and then up at Danielson. “I need your help, but the political roadblocks still exist so there are risks.” He smiled briefly. “That’s the reason for this skullduggery today.”
He leaned forward and spoke intently.
“Let me explain what has happened.”
Isaacs described his relation with Rutherford, the naval operation that had ensued, and its connection to the Novorossiisk. He gave a brief, professional description of the fate of the Stinson and her crew, but Danielson felt his pain. She sensed that his personal loss spurred him on in this venture. She asked herself how much of his renewed enthusiasm for Operation QUAKER was a reaction to his grief, how much a need for retribution against McMasters, and how much a cool objective decision that he alone must shoulder the responsibility.
“If you’re right about the Stinson and the Novorossiisk, then the whole situation we’re caught up in now,” Danielson looked around and lowered her voice even further, “the Russian satellite and our, uh, device, stems from whatever is causing the seismic signal.”
“That’s my reading.”
Danielson leaned back in the booth, her mind swimming, trying to assimilate all that Isaacs had said. “This damage,” she mumbled, almost to herself, “how could the seismic signals I was tracking possibly sink a ship?” She looked directly at Isaacs. “What could this thing be?”
Isaacs shrugged his shoulders and looked pained.
“I’ve asked myself that over and over. I don’t have a single rational suggestion. Only a profound vague fear.”
“Could it be a Russian weapon of some kind? But why would they use it on their own ship? An accident? And why would they blame us? Bluster to cover up?”
Isaacs shook his head again in worried fashion. “My instincts tell me the Soviets aren’t behind this. They really don’t understand what happened to the Novorossiisk. Everything else has followed naturally, god forbid.”
“Then who?”
“Who? What? No answers.”
Danielson was silent for a moment, thinking.
“What is the Navy doing about it? It was their destroyer that was lost.”
“The Navy is continuing its surveillance, but sporadically and from a great distance. Of course, they’re on full alert as well, so the energies of any of their brass who could make some constructive decisions are focused on what they see as the immediate problem—trying to monitor everything in the world that floats and flies a red star.
“There’s a self-defeating dichotomy in their approach. They don’t really know what happened to the Stinson and won’t officially admit any direct connection to its mission. And yet, they’re afraid there was some direct cause and won’t commit any ships or equipment to close surveillance. As it stands, they aren’t learning anything new, not even establishing in their own minds that this thing is definitely dangerous.”
“But you think it is.”
“I’m convinced of it.”
“What you suggest is so totally inexplicable, maybe coincidence is the only reasonable explanation after all.”
“There’s the slimmest chance that I’m overreacting to some outrageous coincidences. But I think the situation must be resolved one way or another. I’m certainly convinced that the present hiatus is unacceptable. Someone must take steps to determine what is really happening here.”
“Can’t you go back to McMasters and appeal to him to reopen the file on its merits?”
“I tried that. I drafted a long memo setting out the case. It only succeeded in getting him more angry. He suspects I had some role in the Navy’s interest, but can’t prove it. In any case, he’s clever enough to turn it around on me. He made an issue of the fact that there is no proof that the loss of the Stinson was not coincidence and that the Novorossiisk was not, after all, sunk, and hence that there is still no evidence that anything important is going on, much less for a connection between the two. I sent him the memo, what, eleven days ago, the day before the second laser was launched and we started this whole new loop. So he also gave me a healthy dose of ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’, ignoring my argument that the issues are one and the same. He also maintains that since the Navy now has some official interest in the phenomenon, there is no reason for the Agency to duplicate the effort.”
Danielson toyed with a small puddle of spilled tonic on the table, tracing a random pattern with her finger. She looked up.
“AFTAC is still collecting the seismic data—and sonar data from the undersea network, from what you say.”
“That’s right,” confirmed Isaacs, “but the Cambridge Research Lab stopped analyzing this particular signal, once we terminated our official interest in it. The AFTAC sonar data would help to pin down accurate positions, but since I didn’t have enough sense to make the connection, there’s been no analysis of it whatsoever. By rights the Navy should at least be studying the AFTAC sonar data, but from what I can tell, they’re not.”
“So all the data are piling up,” Danielson summarized, “but no one is looking at them.”
“True. And we can’t get at it. None of this is official Agency business, so a special request through channels is necessary— and McMasters has that approach effectively blocked.”
Danielson concentrated. “There are the data we gathered before the halt came. But that’s all in the inactive file. I didn’t save anything out.”
Isaacs punched a finger into the table. “I think we must start there. I’ll have to camouflage my request, but I can get some of that retrieved without it necessarily coming to McMasters’ attention. Particularly if you can give me an idea of the few things, data tapes and such, that would be of greatest use.
“The problem,” he continued, “is that I can’t do any of the analysis. I’m rarely directly involved with raw data and computer analysis any more. If I were to go anywhere near that data on a regular basis, McMasters would be on my back immediately. Any kind of blowup is apt to foreclose the investigation completely.”