D.C. had the opposite effect. On steroids. Being plunked down here in the middle of a rat race made her chest tight to the point she thought she might be having a heart attack. By the time Forestall took the 14th Street Bridge across the Potomac into D.C. proper, Moon resolved that she would attend her little meetings, answer some bureaucrat’s questions, and then haul her ass out of here as fast as she could.
Then Independence Avenue and the National Mall appeared in the windshield and she began to wonder where they were going. Her theory had gone up through Navy channels, so she’d figured they’d put her up somewhere in Crystal City. There were some damned fine hotels there that gave the government rate and were always crawling with service members from all branches that had business at the Pentagon. Must all be full, she thought.
“What hotel am I at?”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure,” the commander said, easy and honest, like they were old friends. “I’m thinking they have you at the Willard. It’s just a block away, but I’ll drive you over. It’s no problem at all.”
Moon had read somewhere about the Willard, but couldn’t place it.
“A block away from what?”
“The White House,” Forestall said. “That’s where your meeting’s at.”
Moon leaned forward, craning her neck over the front seat. “Wait, wait, wait. Commander, are you telling me that the national security adviser wants to meet with me at the White House about the noises I recorded under the ice?”
Forestall gave her a wry smile. “Not exactly.”
“Whew,” Moon said. “Because that would have given me a stroke.”
The commander laughed out loud. “I am so sorry,” he said. “Your meeting isn’t with the national security adviser. I thought you already knew…”
Jack Ryan had just walked into the Oval from the colonnade, still wearing his black Orioles baseball jacket against the evening chill, when Commander Forestall entered from the secretaries’ suite. Arnie van Damm, Mary Pat Foley, SecDef Bob Burgess, and Admiral Talbot, chief of naval operations, were already present.
Dr. Moon was not.
Ryan raised his hands, palms up, shooting a glance at Forestall. “Did she escape?”
“I apologize, Mr. President,” the commander said. “I have her signed in and set up with a visitor’s badge, but she insisted on calling her father before coming in. She’s standing outside the entrance by the press briefing room to make the call. Millie from Secret Service Uniform Division has an eye on her, but giving her space.”
Ryan sat down beside his desk.
He’d already been to the Residence and grabbed a quick dinner with Cathy — crab salad with quinoa that was tasty enough but left him craving crab cakes from Chick & Ruth’s in Annapolis. He’d changed out of his suit, thinking that since Dr. Moon was coming straight off a plane, she’d be more relaxed if he were dressed in jeans and an open-collared shirt.
“I’m really sorry, sir,” Forestall said. “She was very insistent.”
“It’s not your fault, Robbie.” Ryan waved off the apology, resting his elbows on the desk, looking glum as a schoolboy benched during a ballgame. “At our level, you get used to people waiting on you instead of the other way around.”
Forestall chuckled. “Our level, Mr. President?”
“You know what I mean,” Ryan said. “In charge of things.”
Van Damm crossed to the door. “I’ll go get her.”
“Give her a second,” Ryan said. “Everyone processes these meetings differently. What we have here before us, as my dad used to say, is the opportunity not to be assholes. He held leaders to a high standard, my old man. You were either a good leader or a bad one. Good leaders could make mistakes, but the higher up the chain they were, the better my dad expected them to treat their subordinates.” Ryan’s eyes glistened. “Remember that anecdote about the Army private who was late for formation and he ran around the corner and knocked General Eisenhower to the ground. There they were, the bottom rung of the enlisted ladder, and the five-star supreme commander of Allied Forces. Remember what General Eisenhower said to the kid?”
No one answered.
“‘You better be glad I’m not a lieutenant,’” Ryan said. “I don’t even know if it’s true, but it’s a damned good story.”
Dr. Moon arrived two minutes later, giving a decidedly jaundiced eye to everyone in the room. Ryan took her hand and smiled. “I’m not going to beat around the bush,” he said, “except to say that we’re reading you in to some extremely sensitive subjects that shouldn’t be discussed with anyone outside this room unless you clear it with Commander Forestall.”
“Understood, Mr. President,” Moon said, her face a granite wall, impossible to read.
“All right, then.” Ryan took a seat in his customary chair by the fireplace and offered Moon the chair beside him while everyone else took the couches. “A lot of big, giant brains seem to be divided about whether your recordings depict something made by man or fish noises. Certain events have transpired that give weight to the ‘man-made’ argument, but you’re the closest person we have to the source. I’d like you to make your case.”
It took less than two minutes for Moon to recount what she’d heard and where she’d heard it, after which she glanced at Commander Forestall’s tablet. “Are the audio files I sent you on that?”
The room listened to a series of whistles and grunts and buzzing sounds, illustrated by a dancing bar graph on the computer screen that rose and fell with the pitch and volume of the sounds.
“That’s a recording of an Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua,” she said, before opening a second file on the heels of the first. It was hollow, eerie, and haunting. “This one is uguruq bearded seals, recorded from my father’s boat.” She tapped the tablet and a green graph appeared, superimposed over the red lines that depicted the seal song. “Now we add the ice.” The whistles, screams, and chattering groans sounded incredibly human.
She tapped the screen again. “We’ll mute the ice and the biologics, but leave up the visual graphs while we add the recording in question.”
The room sat enthralled by the distinct splash as the hydrophone slipped beneath the surface and the burble as it descended into the deep. A wailing whistle, somewhere in the distance, overlaid significantly with a red graph — the bearded seal. The screech of the ship’s hull against floating ice closely matched the green. Ryan had listened to the file before, but heard it differently now.
The new yellow graph suddenly jumped as new sounds came over the tablet’s tiny speakers. The room sat in rapt silence as the sounds blanked out and then reappeared a few moments later when the hydrophone cable was retrieved.
Ryan took it all in, impressed with the young woman’s forthright demeanor — folksy, from a life lived close to the land, yet bolstered by science.
Moon folded the cover over the tablet screen and gave a somber nod. “This is not fish flatulence, Mr. President, as some of my fellow scientists have suggested. And I do not believe it is ice. I’ve spent my life listening to ice talk and sing. I know what it sounds like.”
Ryan gave a contemplative nod. “I agree.”
Moon’s eyebrows inched up, just a hair, but enough that Ryan noticed. That might be the most emotional outburst he was going to get from this stoic woman.
“It is interesting,” Ryan continued, “that the voices you recorded appeared and then disappeared as the hydrophone went deeper. I’m assuming that you’re working with some sophisticated equipment. I’ve listened to your recording and it sounds almost like the flip of a switch, as if someone turns off the voices and turns them back on again. Why would they not fade away as the hydrophone grew more distant?”