CHAPTER 16
Chaz Bradley smiled when he heard Paige’s voice on the other end of the line. He’d had a lot of calls over the last several days, and very few of them had been anything to smile about.
It was nice to spend a few minutes chatting with his wife about something… anything…that didn’t involve a national emergency.
Paige was calling from the Secret Service limo on her way back from Annapolis. She’d been asked to deliver the keynote address at a fundraising dinner for the Maryland Women’s Caucus. Chaz was sorry to have missed it.
She was a gifted orator. Witty, engaging, and far more naturally eloquent than her husband. Chaz hoped that someone had recorded the evening. It was bound to be worth watching.
“How did your speech go?” he asked. “Did you knock ‘em dead?”
Paige chuckled softly. “I doubt they even remember me.”
“What?”
“Nobody remembers my speech. I guarantee it.”
“Why is that?”
“I got upstaged by Emmaline Halloway. She did her ad lib rendition of Cirque du Soleil, and totally stole the show.”
Chaz tried to reconcile Paige’s words with what he knew of Ms. Halloway. The woman was large, intimidating, and — quite possibly — the most stoic human being on Earth. She had once referred to the infamous 9/11 attacks as, “that disturbance in New York.”
“Okay,” Chaz said. “This I’ve got to hear.”
“It was a shoe malfunction,” Paige said. “Sergio Rossi, I think, but they might have been knock-offs. Gray leather pumps, pointy toes, and that ultrathin stiletto heel Rossi is famous for.”
Chaz gave a mock sigh. “You’re determined to drag this out all night, aren’t you?”
“Well,” Paige said, “it turns out that those thin stilettos have a weight limit. Emmaline broke a heel, and that’s when everything went to pieces. She lost her balance and tumbled onto her well-padded rump. There was quite a bit of thrashing on the way down, and she kicked over the lectern in the process. It toppled off the stage and crashed into the front row of tables. People were knocking over chairs trying to get out of the way. And our dear Emmaline was bellowing like a wounded cow the whole time.”
“You’re making this up,” Chaz said.
Paige chuckled again. “Actually, I’m not. If there’s not already a cell phone video of it on YouTube, there will be soon.”
Chaz Bradley laughed. For the first time in days, his body gave itself over to something other than tension.
He was still laughing when Paige spoke again. “Just a second! Are you seeing this?”
Chaz made an effort to chop his laughter off short. “Seeing what?”
“Looks like a blackout,” Paige said. “We’re a mile or so past the Anacostia on the 50, and everything just went dark.”
“Everything?”
“As far as I can tell,” Paige said. “Nothing shining but car headlights. Everything else is pitch black.”
The laughter was gone as quickly as it had started. “Maybe it’s localized,” Chaz said.
“Maybe.”
“Hang on,” Chaz said. “I’m going to set the phone down for a second.”
He stepped over to the bank of windows behind his desk and pulled back the sheer drapery. Through the triple-paned bulletproof glass, he could see the lights of the White House grounds, but nothing beyond. Except for vehicle lights on Constitution Avenue, everything outside of the fence was dark.
He was reaching for the phone when Agent Hugh Parrish, head of the Presidential Security Detail, walked into the Oval Office without knocking.
Parrish crossed the rug toward his protectee at just short of a trot. “Mr. President, we’ve got a problem. I’m going to need you to step away from the windows.”
CHAPTER 17
The writings of Aristotle credit his student, Alexander III, with employing divers and “underwater devices” to destroy submerged defenses during the siege of Tyre in 332 BC. Descriptions of the battle don’t specify the nature of the underwater devices and the texts don’t contain any terms which could reasonably be translated as “submersible” or “submarine.”
Nevertheless, a growing number of historians associate the birth of submarine technology with Alexander’s tactical experiments, a notion that may have been reinforced by a series of Renaissance paintings which depict the Greek warrior exploring the sea bottom from a transparent diving bell.
Apart from similar diving bell experiments over the next few centuries and China’s legendary (but probably apocryphal) Han Dynasty submersible, the next attempt to conquer the ocean depths occurred around 1502 AD.
While serving as military engineer for an Italian nobleman, master artist and inventor Leonardo Da Vinci created plans for a submersible craft which he referred to as “a ship to sink another ship.” His notes were deliberately vague, making it difficult to determine whether the craft would operate under water or only partially submerged.
He was secretive about the design because he considered it the most dangerous weapon ever conceived, predicting that submersible warships would bring new levels of horror to a planet that was already too proficient at making war.
Where Da Vinci’s descriptions of submarine construction were frustratingly nonspecific, William Bourne’s later writings on the subject were far more detailed.
Bourne — a mathematician and former gunner in the British Royal Navy — wrote navigational manuals for sailing vessels. His book, Inventions or Devises, published in 1578, described an enclosed craft capable of mechanically decreasing the volume of it hull to submerge beneath the water.
The vessel consisted of a wooden frame covered in waterproofed leather, propelled by oars that penetrated the hull through watertight ports.
Although Bourne’s apparatus for submerging would be made obsolete by floodable ballast tanks, his descriptions showed that the problem of depth control was solvable.
In 1623 a Dutchman named Cornelius Drebbel, employed by King James I of England, built what may have been the first working submarine. Drebbel didn’t use Bourne’s depth control mechanism, but he adopted the method of propulsion recommended by Inventions or Devises.
Written accounts of Drebbel’s craft described a decked-over rowboat propelled by twelve oarsmen. According to these reports, the Drebbel I made a journey down the Thames River submerged to a depth of fifteen feet.
James I may have witnessed a demonstration, but reports that the king took an underwater ride are dismissed as exaggeration.
The crude submersible was limited to low speeds, shallow depths, and dives of short duration. It’s also worth noting that reports only describe movement in a downriver direction, suggesting insufficient power to maneuver against the current. Nevertheless, Cornelius Drebbel had proven that a manmade vessel could travel under the water.
Thirteen years later, French theologian Marin Mersenne applied mathematical reasoning to the problems of hull construction. Aware that water pressure increases by about one half pound per square inch (PSI) for every foot of depth, Mersenne realized that hulls constructed from wood and leather risked being crushed even during relatively shallow dives. Balancing material weight against ability to withstand pressure, he determined that copper plating would be more suitable for the hull of a submarine.