“Can’t blame them there,” Barker said. “But I still think what you’re hearing could be a whale song. Don’t you have narwhals up there?”
Moon clicked some keys on her laptop to slow down the recording. “There,” she said. “That’s metal banging on metal. I’m sure of it.”
“Are you, though?” Barker asked. “I mean, the simplest explanation is the most likely. It’s probably the screws of your own ship pinging off an ice chunk. Didn’t you say you were in an open lead when you made the recording? That means ice all around you.”
“We were,” Moon said. “But that’s not what this is. I can clearly hear a metal door slamming shut when I slow down the loop. When I filter the lower frequencies I can make out what I think are voices — screaming, panicked voices.”
“Okay,” Barker said, only a little condescending. “I’ll bite. What are these voices saying?”
“I don’t know,” Moon said. “I think they’re speaking Chinese. Shad, if you’d been on the sonar and you heard this, wouldn’t you report it?”
“Of course.”
“Well, somebody needs to be made aware,” Moon said. “And I flat don’t have anybody else to tell besides Twitter.”
“Wait,” Barker said. “You want me to kick this up my chain of command?”
“It’s all I can ask.”
“I hate to point this out,” Barker said, “but nobody is likely to buy this, considering it’s coming from you.”
“I’m aware of my reputation in the Navy,” Moon said. “That’s why you should take the credit.”
“Not in a million years,” Barker said. “This is your baby.”
“But you will kick it up?”
“I’ll do it as soon as we’re done here,” Barker said.
Moon rolled onto her back, staring up at the bottom of the vacant bunk above her. She rubbed her face with an open hand, feeling the glow of warmth from a long day in the wind.
Inupiaq for
Barker groaned. “You used to always say that when you were pissed.”
“No,” she said. “Really. I do appreciate this. I’ll send you the coordinates where I picked up the voices—”
“The as-yet-unidentified sound transient—”
She stood her ground. “Voices. I’m certain of it.”
“You know I’m in your corner,” Barker said. “I’m just reminding you that not everyone thinks the shadows are full of conspiracies and secrets.”
“They should,” Moon said. “Because they are. Anyway, thanks again for doing this, Shad.”
“No worries,” he said. “It’s good to talk to you.”
“You, too.” She started to end the call, but was a fraction of a second late getting her finger to the keyboard.
“You ever wish we’d made more of a go of it?” Barker asked. “You know. That time in Manila?”
“That was fun,” Moon said. “But nah, I don’t think so. To be honest, I like you too much to screw everything up with romance.” She returned to the reason for her call. “So, you’ll pass this up the chain as soon as we hang up?”
“Roger that.”
“Good,” she said. “I’m hanging up now. Whoever it is screaming at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean is in your debt.”
The director of national intelligence was afforded not only an office for herself, but an entire suite of offices that housed her chief of staff and many advisers and assistants. Most were tucked away in other offices or small cubbies off a larger, top-floor lobby. None of these people were more imposing than the woman who greeted Monica Hendricks from behind the immaculately clean desk outside Mary Pat Foley’s closed office door. She was tall, even when seated, nearing sixty years old, with broad shoulders, naturally silver hair, and the hint of a perpetual squint, as if she did not quite believe what was going on before her eyes. Hendricks had made a life out of reading people and felt sure this woman had been a police officer of some sort in an earlier life, perhaps in the military. Or maybe she’d just raised a couple of teenage sons.
Secretaries might be called administrative assistants in the modern era, but at a certain level, there was an unwritten rule that they had to act as a sort of guard dog as well — the last line of defense outside the inner sanctum.
The woman glanced at the visitor’s badge clipped to the lapel of Monica’s navy-blue summer-wool suit. Similar to the ones issued at the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building, the badge had a bleed-through strip affixed to the front that would read EXPIRED twelve hours after it had been applied and issued.
“Mrs. Hendricks?”
Monica shot her a smile. “That’s right.”
“The director is just finishing up on a call,” the woman said. “I’ll let her know you’re—”
The oak door yawned open and Mary Pat Foley stepped out. “Thank you, Gladys. I’m good now.”
Foley took Monica’s hand in both hers, patted the back in a way that might seem condescending from someone else, but felt genuine coming from Mary Pat.
