Scandal in the Secret City (15 page)

A
t the Solway gate, soldiers stopped my car and made me get out of the vehicle and wait on the side while they searched it, paying close attention to the glove box and the trunk. When they finished, one of them asked, ‘Where were you?’

‘The Andrew Johnson Hotel.’

‘Why were you there?’

‘To visit with my aunt who is travelling through the area on business.’

‘What is your aunt’s name?’

‘Dorothy Clark.’

‘Wait right here,’ he said then walked away and talked into his mobile radio. He waited in silence with his back rigid. I knew this delay was not the typical treatment for returning workers. Other residents would not be scrutinized in this way. But if they thought it would discourage me, they were wrong; it merely made me more convinced that I was right and firmed up my determination to find the truth.

The radio squawked. He spoke into it, his words indiscernible from the distance. He marched back and stood in front of me. ‘Your story has been confirmed, Miss Clark, you may pass.’

I was seething at the injustice as I stepped back into the car wondering who was behind it all. I could probably make a long list of the possibilities. I needed to think about who I could trust. The first person that came to mind was Gregg Abbott. I had some doubts about him, too, but I would have to take some risks or give up without trying.

The lab was in a state of high energy when I walked in the next morning. The new Calutron was being installed. It was only a matter of days before we’d actually have some product from it and be able to get down to serious work. We all tested and retested equipment, checked supplies, and did all we could to make sure we’d be ready when the racetrack was up and running.

Mid-morning, I slipped over to Gregg’s station and asked, ‘Think I could tag along with you at lunch?’

His eyes scanned my face as if, by doing so, he could find a reason for my request hidden there. Then he asked, ‘Something on your mind, Clark?’

‘Yes, Abbott.’

‘Something serious?’

I nodded.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘We’ll need to be the last to leave so that everyone is already seated and less likely to join our table.’

I agreed and went back to my work station. At lunchtime, I watched as one by one, the others drifted out on their way to the cafeteria. I cleared up my area and acted busy in order to leave the moment Gregg gave the word. Finally, he approached and said, ‘Ready?’

‘Yes,’ I said, grabbing my coat. At the door, we slipped off our good shoes and slid into our galoshes to trudge down the street.

‘I’ve noticed you’ve seemed preoccupied lately, Clark.’

‘Yes, I have been. By the way, I wouldn’t mind if you called me Libby.’

‘I wouldn’t mind that either,’ he said with a grin. ‘I always use your last name at work because I wanted to deliver the message that I considered you an equal.’

‘I appreciate that, Gregg. You may be in a minority, though.’

‘No, there are a few dinosaurs in the lab but most of them are smart enough and progressive enough to understand that a woman can be as smart – or smarter – than the rest of us. The others just make us look bad. Is that what this is about? Is one of the chemists giving you trouble?’

‘No, Gregg. I wish that were the problem, but it’s far more serious.’

Gregg pulled open the cafeteria door and said, ‘Let’s get something to eat and find a corner where we can talk without being disturbed.’

After we settled at a table, Gregg said, ‘I don’t know if you noticed but as we walked back here, a few guys waved at me, trying to get me to join them. I pretended as if I didn’t see them but it’s bound to stir up some talk.’

‘You mean about us?’ I asked and Gregg nodded. ‘I don’t mind. I stopped paying attention to idle chatter a long time ago.’

‘So what’s your problem?’

‘Before I start, I need to know that if you don’t want to help, you’ll keep what I tell you in confidence.’

Gregg furrowed his brow. ‘Does this have anything to do with the war effort, Libby?’

I swallowed hard before I answered. ‘I’ve been told it does, Gregg, but I don’t believe it. I think I’m being pressured to drop the matter under a false pretense.’

‘You’ve been threatened?’

I nodded.

‘Even though you were singled out by General Groves?’

‘Yes.’

‘Nonetheless, you’re confident it is not a matter affecting national security?’

‘Gregg, I’ve been over it in my mind looking for anything that might have a bearing on our war effort. I can’t find it. If you see something, I want you to tell me what I’m missing. At this point, I can only conclude that someone is pulling strings for his own personal benefit – using the security threat to protect himself from criminal prosecution.’

‘That’s a serious charge, Libby.’

‘And I don’t make it lightly.’

‘I never suspected that you would. It’s serious enough that if your arguments make sense to me, I will agree to help you and, if I don’t I will agree to keep everything you say in confidence.’

‘Thank you, Gregg. Well, here goes. The best place to start is to explain about the people involved first.’ I outlined my history with Ruth and her sister Irene, the discovery of the body and the events following Irene’s murder.

Gregg listened with an open mouth and exclamations of surprise. ‘It is difficult to believe. But I don’t doubt what you’re saying. Libby, if it is a massive cover-up, whoever is behind it must be high up in the organization here.’

‘Maybe, Gregg, or maybe it’s just a simple matter of Roane-Anderson or the military not wanting anyone here to know that a crime took place. They’re always pushing the image of our safe, crime-free environment.’

Gregg laughed. ‘Except for those occasional drunken scuffles.’

‘But, they don’t really happen, Gregg – they couldn’t. We are in a dry county,’ I said.

‘Sarcasm noted. I know for a fact that the top-ranking officers and the management ranks have cocktail parties on a regular basis.’

‘And if there’s no one actually hiding a still on the premises, there are plenty of locals peddling Splo.’

‘Well, aren’t you one in the know. How did you learn about that name for the local home brew? I hope you’re not imbibing it. That stuff can kill you,’ Gregg warned.

‘Don’t worry, you won’t find me with any Splo. I’ve seen it in the dorm, but no thank you.’ I shivered at the thought of that stuff. ‘Seriously, Gregg, would you be willing to help me get to the bottom of Irene’s murder?’

Gregg chewed on his lower lip. ‘The cautious side of me tells me to run as far from you as I can. But my inquisitive nature abhors questions without answers. I don’t know how I could walk away from this, Libby. But I think the two of us will not be enough. We need a gathering of minds, pulling in data and applying logic to find the answers. I think this is a job for the Walking Molecules.’

I squinted at him, not sure if I’d heard him correctly. ‘The Walking Molecules?’

‘Yeah, it’s a pretty silly name, I admit. But it’s a group of us from the Alpha lab and the Beta lab who get together once a week to talk about scientific problems and solutions. We look at theoretical issues more than anything.’

‘But, the Walking Molecules?’

‘Yes, well, we walk, we’re comprised of molecules and the night we came up with it, someone had unveiled their secret stash of scotch.’

‘You get drunk and talk science?’

‘Only occasionally,’ Gregg said with a laugh. ‘Usually, we wet our whistles with some weak Barbarosa beer in a back room at Joe’s. Can’t hardly get drunk on that barely improved water.’

‘So what do you talk about?’

‘A lot of the time, we discuss what we think will be discovered and developed once the war is over and we’re not all focused on defeating the enemy. We start with the direction science was headed before Pearl Harbor and the path it will take when the world is at peace again. Sometimes, though, we veer into what was happening in Germany before the wall of silence came down as well as the hints we picked up in journals before the war about the experiements at the University of Chicago, Berkeley, Stanford and Princeton. We talk about what they were doing and, hypothetically, where it might have led.’

‘Could be dangerous territory.’

‘We’re careful not to talk about our work here – after all, we are from two different labs and we can’t know what the other lab is doing. One of the group brought along a new textbook one night:
Applied Nuclear Physics
. We’ve all read it and everything was pretty clear to all of us then. We all know it – we just don’t verbalize it. Lately, we’ve been getting a little philosophical and, in all likelihood, a bit too close to our reality here. We try to check ourselves but in the heat of discussion, it’s often difficult to find the brakes.’

‘Aren’t you concerned that your conversations will be reported to security?’

‘Of course, we worry about that but we try to minimize that probability. We know spies have been recruited in all the labs – probably all over the place – some of us have been approached. We’ve tried to identify and exclude those people, no matter how much we like them or respect them as scientists. We tried to form a group whose commitment to scientific exploration and aversion to absolute authority and regimentation is strong.

‘We all take an oath to keep everything said in the group within the group. I’ve told you more than I have ever told anyone on the outside. No matter how this goes, I need you to keep it all to yourself.’

‘I have no problem with that, Gregg.’

‘I can’t guarantee we don’t have any stoolies but the odds are good. Where our discussions have gone lately with the lull in real work has been a bit too near the edge, to my way of thinking. I think it would be good if we all focused on a question that could divert us for a while. Irene’s murder might well be the perfect answer.’

‘No problem, Gregg. What happens now? Do I just show up at your next meeting?’

‘No. You need to be nominated by someone in the group first. I’ll do that at the next meeting.’

‘When is that?’

‘Wednesday night.’

‘And what? You just vote on me?’

Gregg hung his head and red spots appeared on his cheeks. ‘It’s not that simple.’

‘Are you embarrassed?’

‘Yes, this is the goofy part.’

‘Goofy?’

‘Actually, I never considered it goofy until just now. It’s one of those ritual things that closed organizations tend to adopt.’

‘You mean like an induction ritual?’

‘More like seeing if you measure up.’

‘I can understand that, Gregg. What makes it goofy?’

‘Sitting here explaining it to a woman.’

‘Really …’ I objected.

‘Well, I have two sisters, one younger and one older. They both gang up on me sometimes about the inadequacy of men.’

My lips twitched as I suppressed a laugh. ‘And …?’

‘I can hear my older sister Isabelle now. If I told her about this, she’d say: “For the life of me, I cannot understand why men get to run the world when you act like boys so much of the time.”’

‘She does have a point …’

‘I can’t argue against it. I just tell her, “Please, take over. See how well you handle it.” And she says, “We’re trying, little brother.”’

‘So, tell me, what is this ritual? Even if I think it is ridiculous, I’ll have to do it, right?’

‘Yes, otherwise you won’t be seen as a proper member of the group if we make an exception for you. I’ll propose you and if the majority agrees to allow you to take the test, we’ll do it. Probably next Sunday.’

‘What would I have to do, Gregg?’

‘You have to go into Dossett Tunnel, the railroad tunnel up in the hills.’

‘Is that all?’

‘It’s not as easy as it sounds.’

‘And I’m a lot tougher than I look.’

‘Look, maybe I could get them to make an exception.’

‘Don’t you dare! If I want their help, I need to prove myself. Don’t even suggest anything less. Is that clear?’

‘I don’t think you know what you’re getting into, Libby, but you sure sound a lot like my older sister.’

‘As you said, Gregg, I have to do what I have to do or I will never be considered an equal in the group. I’ve been fighting for respect since I left the comfort of an all-female university and I’m not going to stop now.’

‘OK. Thursday at work, I’ll let you know what happens at the next meeting.’

For the next couple of days, I tensed whenever I saw anyone looking in my direction. I had that continuous, uncomfortable feeling that someone was always looking over my shoulder, following me down the street. Was it all in my imagination or was I under official scrutiny on a day-to-day basis? In an environment of hyper-security, it was hard to separate normal observation from special treatment.

Thursday morning, I held my breath as Gregg walked across the lab. ‘We’re on,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t easy. Some objected to a woman in the group on general principle. A couple of us shamed them out of their backward, nineteenth-century attitude. But I need to warn you: there are those who are hoping you’ll chicken out or fail.’

‘I can handle that,’ I asserted, my chin involuntarily thrusting upward. I’d faced bigger challenges growing up on the farm that anything these men could possibly offer.

‘OK, then. We’ll all meet up at the Elza gate at 0800 Sunday morning and hike through the woods to the tunnel.’

‘I’ll be there.’

Gregg looked down at my pair of navy pumps. ‘I hope you have something better than those to wear on the hike.’

‘I was raised a farm girl. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a pair of Chippewa ranger shoes – they don’t get much sturdier than that. So, don’t you worry about me keeping up, Gregg.’

‘I hope I don’t regret this.’

‘Gregg, I promise, I will not embarrass you.’

‘That’s not my worry, Libby. I know you won’t act like a girl, oh man, I mean …’

I laughed at his distress. ‘That’s all right, Gregg. I know what you mean.’

‘Sorry. But it’s your safety I’m worried about, Libby.’

‘Don’t.’

‘Can’t help myself. The first time I saw the Dossett Tunnel, I wanted to run away as fast as I could.’