The only people Rear Admiral Silver had called the night before were those individuals who had to know at once about the death of Charlotte Davies. The ones who had to be thinking about what came next. The only ones he had spoken with at length were his superiors at NORDSS, the Pentagon’s Naval Office of Research and Development, Submarine Systems. The admirals, led by Van Grantham, were noncommittal about proceeding with or postponing the test run. They did not have all the information about Dr. Davies’s replacement, Dr. Mike Carr. It wasn’t just a question of his scientific knowledge and his familiarity with all aspects of the project. How he got along with Captain Colon and the other members of the science team were also important. So were his leadership skills.
Rear Admiral Silver forwarded copies of Carr’s quarterly psychological profile. Conducted by a Pentagon psychiatrist, these tests not only looked for signs of mental fatigue and intrasystem tension but also checked on stress at home. Professional disappointments accounted for 33 percent of the insiders who became foreign agents. Personal problems with parents, spouses, or fiancées accounted for the other 67 percent.
When asked, Silver told the board that Charlotte Davies’s psych profile had said she was fine, save for a tendency to “overdemand both personal results and consensus.” In other words, she took on too much. Obviously, Grantham pointed out, that was a warning Silver had missed.
Silver recognized that as Grantham’s opening shot of CYA—cover your ass. If the project suffered any setbacks, Grantham had just told the rear admiral where the Congressional Oversight Committee would plant their flag.
Silver had been awake most of the night reviewing Carr’s personnel files. The Hawaiian-born Carr was not a people person the way Charlotte had been, and that mattered. Working as liaison between a military crew and a tech team required communications skills and tact. But his professional credentials were strong. Before the navy had grabbed him, the thirty-year-old Caltech quantum engineer had worked as a graduate student for the institute’s affiliated Jet Propulsion Laboratory. His specialty was supplementary spacecraft drive systems for NASA’s ion-propelled solar sails. He was accustomed to thinking about materials in a below-freezing environment, something Charlotte had had to learn. But he was definitely checklist-oriented. Caution first. In theory, that was good. In practice, it minimized Joe Guinea Pig, as the military called their test pilots and maiden-sail seamen. A professional crew could usually push or finesse their way over a technological speed bump. Silver’s attitude was that they should be given the final word. Not just because they were on-site, but because they had the most to lose.
By very early morning Silver had not reached any conclusions about Carr. He’d grabbed three hours’ sleep, then dressed to go to the meeting. Before leaving, he spoke briefly with the EMO’s chief investigator, Paul Roman. Roman and his team had spent the night dismantling the car and studying the brakes, steering, tires, and other key components. Silver was not surprised by the findings, though they did make him sad. Nothing was wrong with the car. In a strange way he wished it were otherwise.
It was a half-mile walk from Silver’s quarters to the Ant Hill. Though he was entitled to a driver, he preferred to walk. The extra man could be better used elsewhere. More importantly, those ten minutes of solitude allowed the rear admiral to reflect on whatever issues he was facing. Usually, the open air was enough to clear his mind and give him a fresh perspective. Not today.
Silver had told everyone to meet him in the commissary. Though not the largest room at the facility, it was the warmest. When the old shipyards were replaced by the Ant Hill, Silver had commissioned murals showing the history of submarines. Not the vessels but the people. The Englishman William Bourne, who, in 1580, first theorized that a submarine was a possibility. Cornelius Drebbel, a Dutchman who built the first working model of a submarine in 1623. Marin Mersenne, a French priest, who ascertained in 1634 that a cylindrical shape was best for submarines. David Bushnell, a Yale man, who built a submarine called the Turtle in 1776 and used it to attack a British ship in New York harbor. There were many others, including the centerpiece, a portrait of cotton broker Horace L. Hunley, who, during the Civil War, used his fortune and influence to advance and standardize the science of submarines. Silver wanted the team, especially the civilian members, to understand that they were part of a long and distinguished history of human achievement.
By the time he arrived at the meeting, roughly a third of the personnel were already there. They were seated quietly at the cafeteria-style tables. Some were drinking coffee, a few were chatting, most were just sitting quietly. They were all wearing “moon pies,” as his Polish-born grandmother used to describe pale, sad expressions. Obviously, everyone had heard the news. Some had worked closely with Dr. Davies; some—like Lt. Brance Michaelson, Colon’s number two—barely saw her during the course of a week. But all of them knew her work and her dedication. They also knew the scientist’s importance to the project.
He poured himself coffee and then sat on the short edge of a table to confirm the rumors. Silver told them that the funeral would probably be held in Connecticut but that there would be a memorial service here. New arrivals clustered around the rear admiral, listening without comment. Dr. Carr was among them. Most looked at the scientist with long, questioning glances, but he was impassive. Silver said that nothing had been decided about the status of the Tempest Project. No one seemed surprised.
The rear admiral finished his impromptu briefing by saying that the address of the Davies family would be posted, but that cards and flowers should be ordered on-line and sent without return addresses. Foreign operatives sometimes infiltrated local post offices to snag information about civilian employees of government installations. Kings Bay was certainly a potential target. When the U.S. navy began designing the nuclear-powered Nautilus in the early 1950s, the high incidence of atomic engineers working in and around the Electric Boat Company in Groton, Connecticut, was noted by Soviet “observers”—nationals who were not trained or authorized to infiltrate facilities, only to watch. Believing that a new generation of submarine was being built, they would go to diners the scientists frequented after work and collect paper place-mats, napkins, and newspapers they found in the trash. Numbers that had been sketched and circled on a discarded matchbook suggested that the top speed for the ship would be at least nineteen knots, much higher than that of conventional submarines. That scrap of information made it imperative for the Soviets to accelerate their own nuclear submarine program. The arms race accelerated in earnest. That the Soviets were able to steal nuclear weapons secrets at this time and build their own bomb made security an even more pressing issue.
And just as now, paranoia had gone from medium boil to high, Silver recalled.
Captain Colon had entered the commissary moments before the rear admiral began speaking. Colon stood just inside the doorway, his arms crossed. He was outfitted with his usual sense of purpose: eyes ahead, shoulders squared. There was no “moon pie” here, Silver noted. When the short talk was over, the scientists and crew dispersed into smaller groups and Colon made his way over. He snapped off a salute, then apologized to the rear admiral for not having contacted him sooner. He said he had not collected his messages until this morning.
“You were off duty,” the rear admiral said.
“So were you, sir,” Colon replied.
“I’m not the moving target you are,” Silver said with a forgiving smile.
“Poor lady,” Colon said. The men continued to speak as they walked toward a corner of the room. “Her folks are where—New York?”
“Connecticut.”
“That’s right. She rooted for the Pats. We ought to find out if they have a kids’ charity, make a donation.”
“Nice idea,” Silver said.
The men were quiet for a moment. The minimum respectful silence. Then Colon said, “I assume, sir, you spoke with NORDSS.”
“I did. They’re reviewing the timetable and options. We’ll be talking again at ten o’clock.”
“Did you get a sense of things one way or the other?”
“No.”
“You’ll forgive my asking at this time, sir, but the Abby is due in today and my crew is hyped and primed. I’d like to let them know what the game plan is ASAP.”
“I understand. What’s your feeling, Captain?”
“My call would be ‘go.’ You, sir?”
“If NORDSS bucked it down to me, my inclination would be the same,” Silver said.
“You don’t sound one hundred percent.”
“I’m not.” The rear admiral looked for Mike Carr. He was not surprised to see that the scientist had left. The men stopped and Silver faced Colon. “You know the problem as well as I do. Dr. Carr is untested in the key-man spot. If it turns out he can’t handle this, there’s no one else who can do the job.”
“With respect, we don’t need one man,” Colon said. “We can assemble a backup tech team to act as liaison with the Abby and the D.”
“A committee can’t run this end of the operation,” Silver said.
“No, sir, but we could inform Dr. Carr that there’s been a change, that either you or I would be making the final decisions regardless of who is monitoring the data flow,” Colon said.
Silver didn’t feel like debating the matter just now. “Let’s wait until the admiral weighs in. Until then, this is just talk.”
“Yes, sir,” Colon said. “Sir, there is one more thing.”
Silver looked at him. He knew what Colon was going to ask. The question no one else would.
“Do we know if the crash was an accident?”
“The EMO’s preliminary report says it was,” Silver quietly informed him.
“I only asked because of that whole no-return-address thing.”
“I understand,” Silver said.
Colon said nothing more. Silver had grown up in the era of Cold War fear where a Communist was under every bed, but the younger officer had been raised in an era of conspiracy paranoia and terrorist plots. The government was out to get you. Foreign governments were out to get you. UFOs were out to get you. Admiral Grantham was a student of the Roswell flying saucer scare; he maintained that the era of paranoia began there, fostered by the federal government, as a means of deflecting public attention from real problems, real terrors. Which wasn’t to say the idea of sabotage was out of the question. It was just less likely than the captain might be inclined to believe. If the car had been tampered with, the Defense Intelligence Agency would be all over Kings Bay and everyone in it. The Ant Hill would be “decontaminated,” the workers grilled, and the entire system flushed of personnel regardless of what was found.
Silver looked around. There was no paranoia here. Not at the moment, anyway. There was only sadness. What had originally been planned as a rally of sorts, a chest-thumping send-off for the crew of the Tempest D, was instead a wake.
The question was whether it was just for Dr. Davies or for themselves as well.
After leaving the briefing, the rear admiral went to his office, poured himself coffee, then began to read the preliminary report from the coroner. He had barely gotten through the overview—stating that there was no evidence of drugs in Dr. Davies’s system—when Grantham called. There was still an hour before a decision was due; Silver guessed that NORDSS wanted to be rid of the responsibility for this as quickly as possible.
He was correct.
“We continue to stand behind Tempest and believe its implementation is in the best interests of national defense,” Grantham told him, as though he were reading from a prepared statement. Perhaps he was. “But we are removed from the daily operations and cannot fairly judge the readiness of the team to undertake the scheduled trial. We leave that decision to you.”
“I understand,” Silver replied. That had been the formal proclamation. The arm-around-the-shoulder part would come next.
“What can we do to help you with this, Stone?”
“Nothing I can think of.” Silver didn’t bother to ask what they thought of Dr. Carr’s dossier; he already knew. They found nothing to object to and nothing outstanding to support. If Tempest went ahead and worked, NORDSS could claim they had approved Carr by not disapproving. If the project went south, they could tell the Congressional Oversight Committee it was Silver’s decision.
“Have you got a ballpark for me?” Grantham asked.
“By ten,” Silver replied.
“That’s less than an hour from now.”
“Yes, sir. I’ve had a long night to think about it.”
“That’s true,” Grantham said.
The admiral asked for copies of the reports from the coroner and the EMO and Silver promised to send them. The conversation ended quickly after that.
Silver leaned forward and stared at the steam rising from his coffee. The phone call had been like the Japanese Bunraku puppet theater Silver had taken Elizabeth to see when she was seven or eight. The players went through predictable, stylized motions. The entertainment was in the comforting familiarity, not in any surprises. It seemed silly for two men to be going through this charade, but they had. It was a rehearsal. If the test went ahead and failed, there would be a hearing. Then they would do the performance again for an audience. An audience of congressmen and top brass.
Silver refused to let that influence him. In the end, there was one compelling reason to launch on schedule. It had to do with who they were. CYA notwithstanding, the U.S. military did not wait for something to be certain or easy. If they did, he’d be paying taxes to the queen.
Silver finished his coffee and asked his orderly to have Captain Colon and Dr. Carr come see him.