A Fierce Radiance (51 page)

He laughed warmly. “I don’t even know you, Claire Lukins.”

She joined in his laughter, and yet the wisecrack was true. Her laughter turned cheerless. Years of marriage, two children, and he didn’t even know her.

A
bout a week later, on a Tuesday morning a little after 7:00
AM
, Claire answered the phone at home. The long-distance operator put through Andrew Barnett.

“Mrs. Shipley, at last.”

“Let’s see, how long has it taken you to return my calls?”

“Sorry, sorry, couldn’t be helped. One thing after another here.” He didn’t return her calls because she wasn’t important enough to take priority over other matters he had to attend to. Did she think penicillin was Dr. Bush’s only project? Barnett had been in Los Alamos when she left her messages. Penicillin and the atomic bomb: two weapons of war. “How are you?”

“Well enough.”

“Glad to hear it.” Barnett sounded falsely exuberant even to himself. A few days before, Barnett had learned that his brother had died in the Pacific. During a strafing, he’d received a shrapnel wound in the right calf. He’d been recovering. Then gangrene set in. The doctors amputated above the knee, but it was too late. Penicillin cured gangrene. But Mark’s ship didn’t have penicillin. No ships had any. Progress was never fast enough.

“Why are you calling me now?” Claire took a tip from Mr. Luce on handling unwelcome conversations. With Bill helping her, she didn’t need Barnett.

He was brought up short by her brusqueness. He wouldn’t tell her
about Mark. Everybody had family members at risk. He didn’t need sympathy from her. Besides, Claire Shipley’s usefulness was wearing thin. “I’ll get right to the point. Tell me, are you ever in touch with your highly esteemed former husband, William aka Bill Shipley?”

“As little as possible. He hasn’t had anything to do with me in years. And vice versa. I think he may have remarried, although I’m not positive.”

“I can confirm the remarriage.”

“Thank you. That certainly makes me feel better.”

“He’s been nosing around Washington and through the verdant meadows of New Jersey in a way that certain people are beginning to dislike.”

“If you had returned my calls in a timely manner, maybe he wouldn’t be.”

“Let’s deal with facts rather than hypotheticals, shall we?” Barnett turned nasty, and Claire had a sudden vision of him as a viper. “You have any influence over him? If so, perhaps you could do us both a favor and call him off.”

“I have no influence over him whatsoever. I don’t even like him, truth be told. But I never say anything bad about him, and I never allow anyone else to say anything bad about him, because he’s the father of my children.” She caught herself. “The father of my son. Please remember that.”

Barnett knew all about the death of Emily Shipley. “Yes, I promise to remember that he’s the father of your children—out of my own self-interest, hoping as I always do to remain in your good graces.” There—his sense of his own charm and competence was safely restored; he could manage to do his job no matter what he faced in his personal life. In fact, doing his job well was the greatest gift he could give Mark’s memory. “The point is,” he said before she could assert, if she were so inclined, that he wasn’t in her good graces, “he’s giving the impression of a bull terrier that never lets go.”

“A bull terrier?”

“I thought you’d appreciate a dog metaphor. Don’t you have a dog?”

“I suppose he is like a bull terrier.” Bill hadn’t changed, and he was doggedly carrying out the job she expected him to do. A job she needed him to do before she could confront her father.

Barnett went on, “I’m fielding complaints from a variety of places. Why people think they should complain to me, I don’t know.”

“Just one of the many crosses you have to bear, Mr. Barnett.”

“Precisely.”

“Besides, what’s it to you, if he goes about his business?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, he’s a famous reporter for the
Herald Tribune
.”

“You manage to find time to read the newspapers in your line of work?”

“Every now and again. Anyway, when I met Bill Shipley several days ago, I told him to step back, or words to that effect. Alas, I’m learning from subsequent reports that my admonitions served only to make him more determined.”

That was typical of Bill.

“He’s getting a little too close to home plate.” Barnett waited for her to grasp what he was trying to tell her. He couldn’t come right out and say, I can’t be held responsible for what happens to him. “Frankly, I can’t say I liked Bill Shipley.”

“Now, now, didn’t I warn you about speaking against him?”

“Luckily he won’t be around much longer.” That was saying too much. Barnett backtracked. “He’s due in Nebraska next week to visit family and then he returns to England, if my sources are correct, and they almost always are.”

“That makes me feel better, too.”

“Glad to be of service.” Despite their banter, Barnett hoped she understood that nothing about their discussion was comical. Bill
Shipley was clearly determined to find and reveal information that could damage the project of supplying penicillin to the troops. He appeared set on revealing the patent compromises regarding the cousins. No doubt he’d talk to Detective Marcus Kreindler, who might reveal to him that Dr. Nicholas Catalano—one of the leaders of the penicillin program, now risking his life to conduct clinical trials under battlefield conditions in the Pacific—had been accused of murdering a colleague.

In the Solomon Islands, horrific battles were taking place. American boys were fighting and dying each day under the most brutal circumstances. Who was Bill Shipley, compared to those boys? Barnett didn’t need to secure permission from anyone to do what was necessary; he knew what was expected of him. He tried once more with Claire. The last time. “In a war there’s no morality.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Victories are never morally clean, Barnett thought. No matter who was doing the fighting. He let a long silence fall between them. “Well,” he said finally, “if you don’t know what that means by now, I can’t explain it.”

T
hat evening, Claire returned home exhausted from a long day’s work, covering a casting call to replace chorines on the hit Broadway musical
Oklahoma!
. Mack wanted to find one girl—one particular all-American girl, confident yet vulnerable, a kind of Every-girl—to follow from casting call through rehearsals and costume fittings, to her first performance. Claire may have found her in Estella Gant, a twenty-year-old from Raleigh, North Carolina, who came onstage for her audition and got the job. Tomorrow Mack would look at the contact sheets and decide if indeed Estella was the one.

Before Claire could start dinner, the telephone rang. “Hold for long-distance,” the operator said, and put the caller through.

“Claire.” It was Bill. “Finally. I’ve been trying your number all day.”

His tone indicated that any reasonable person would have waited at home on the off chance that he would call.

“You missed the story. Missed the entire thing.” He said this with smug pleasure. “Incredible—you missed it all.”

She felt tears smarting in her eyes. This was how Bill always spoke to her, whether discussing work or laundry or breakfast oatmeal for Emily. Forever elaborating on her incompetence. It still hurt. After she ran into him at Rockefeller Center, she’d fooled herself into thinking that she’d escaped this power he had over her. Obviously she hadn’t. With Bill, she must never, ever let down her defenses. She struggled now to push those defenses back into place.

“Okay, this is the real story: patent protection on natural products. The blue medicine is the first one to get it, and now the drug’s going to make a fortune. One rumor I’m hearing is that it was stolen from that poor woman in New York who slipped or jumped or got herself pushed off a cliff. One of the government’s top guys may be involved. The other rumor I’m hearing is that it was found in Syracuse, of all places. That’s something I’ve got to figure out. The clinical testing in Wyoming or Idaho or wherever it was—that just involves a bunch of Japs, let’s face it. They’re irrelevant.”

“Bill,” she protested, her outrage bringing back her confidence, “they’re internees. Entire families, experimented on and put at risk.”

“Oh, Claire, you are so naive. Really, your naivete amazes me.” With him, every disagreement was personal. She didn’t have the strength or the simple energy required to fight back. “Nobody cares about the well-being of a bunch of Japs. Nobody. Aren’t you reading about what they’re doing every day in the Pacific? What they’ve
been
doing for years? The brutality? Anyway, I’ll be in New York in a few days. Got some interviews set up. Detective Marcus Kreindler, you know him?”

“I’ve heard the name,” she said softly, feeling chastised in spite of her attempt to keep up her defenses.

“Then there’s the tycoon behind the blue stuff. Edward Rutherford. You know him?”

“Yes.” She hesitated. “Yes, I do. I have to tell you, he—”

“Looks like he’s behind the whole thing. Maybe ordered the murder, too. To get his hands on the medication. Can’t prove it yet, but I’m working on that assumption. He’s exactly the type. They’re all the same, these so-called captains of industry.”

“Bill, I need to tell you—”

But Bill wasn’t listening. She could hear Pammy’s voice, and Bill’s responses. They were making plans to leave for a cocktail party and then a formal dinner. He had to change.
Now.
They were already running late. Simultaneously he was adjusting the radio to the 7:00
PM
news reports and commentary. He was everywhere at once, everywhere except with Claire. Finally: “Listen, Claire, you still there? I’ll be in touch.” He hung up without saying good-bye.

She sat at the telephone table for a long time. So long that Lucas came and stretched out beside her on the floor. She might have no choice but to accept her father’s complicity. And yet…mixed with her anger and disappointment in Edward Rutherford was love, and an urge to protect him. Her father. The two warring impulses—to warn him, to denounce him—left her paralyzed.

B
ill Shipley liked to smoke in the open air and watch the night unfold. That predilection would be the death of him. Literally, thought Andrew Barnett.

They were on the late train from Washington to New York. Shipley hadn’t spotted him. Barnett kept his distance. Barnett also wore the uniform of an army private. Anyone looking closely would see that he was a little old to be a private, but this was the best Barnett could do at short notice. When they boarded the train, Barnett hadn’t had an exact plan. Shipley was making things easy.

He’d watched Shipley go outside onto the back—observation deck? Barnett couldn’t for the life of him remember what that narrow, gated place at the back of a train was called. The place where politicians stood during campaigns to wave to the passing crowds. Barnett didn’t usually have trouble retrieving words from his memory. He must be tired. Well, who wouldn’t be, with his job? Anyway, Barnett hoped, prayed, that Shipley wouldn’t decide to come back inside too soon…no, he stood there at the railing, smoking.

The last car of the train was packed, mostly with military boys, and it was hot. The breeze coming in the open windows only made the train hotter. Early August 1943: boys returning from leave, boys going on leave, new recruits heading toward training, trained soldiers and marines and sailors heading toward the ships in the giant port of New York—the ships that would take them to fight in the Solomon Islands or in Sicily.

Walking down the aisle, Barnett had to make an effort not to trip over the soldiers’ duffel bags. He also made his way around the soldiers’ arms and legs, which seemed strewn all over, as the soldiers fit themselves into whatever space they could find to sleep. With his brother dead, Barnett was more patient with these boys than he used to be. They had an extravagant youthfulness. They were like puppies who played until they were exhausted and then collapsed into sleep wherever they happened to be. Boys, being sent into the maw of hell.

He had his own cigarette going. He’d just be smoking outside, too. That was his plan. His excuse for appearing at the back of the train.

He opened the door. Went out. “Evening,” he said to Shipley. Politely, the way well-brought-up people were expected to behave.

“Evening,” Bill Shipley said in return, not recognizing him, not even looking at him, probably annoyed that someone had interrupted his meditations, especially an enlisted man, at the bottom of the heap. Shipley turned away, leaned against the far railing, indicating that he didn’t want company.

Good. It was after midnight. There was no moon. Darkness was all around them. A minute passed, and two guys, also in military uniform, joined them. Now the platform was crowded, which would discourage others from coming outside. The two newcomers were with Barnett, and they knew what to do. He left the timing to them.

They waited. They smoked. What were they waiting for? Barnett had been assured that they knew their jobs. That they were the best. Still they waited. Of course he couldn’t ask them any questions. He could only wait with them. He positioned himself so that he blocked the door leading into the train.

In the end, the issue of timing took care of itself. A freight train was suddenly storming past next to them in the opposite direction. Shipley was already leaning toward it. Barnett couldn’t see what happened, but it was over in a second. No shouting. No screaming. Nothing. Both trains careened onward in the dark.

The guys continued to smoke and chat. The freight train disappeared into the distance. The track was black and empty. Except for the rumbling of the passenger train, silence filled the night. Barnett smoked another cigarette, too. Out here, at least, the breeze was cool.

Then he made his way back to his seat, three cars from the back. Perfectly calm, that’s what he was. As he walked back, nobody paid attention to him. Almost everybody was asleep, anyway. He found his seat. His seatmate was a sailor, slumbering with his head against the windowpane.

Barnett sat down. He checked his watch. He’d been away from his seat ten, fifteen minutes. Now he started shaking. Sweating. The scene replayed itself in his mind. Over and over, he saw the whole thing play out. The shock of the freight train beside them. The guys making their move.

He lit another cigarette. He steadied his breathing. He calmed himself. In a war there’s no morality, he assured himself.

But maybe that notion wasn’t quite right. Maybe a war made its
own
morality. Barnett’s brother was dead, and Barnett would damned well do whatever he needed to do, to make certain that nothing and no one interfered with this boy, sleeping soundly in the seat next to him, getting what his brother hadn’t had: penicillin, the weapon of war.

A
day later, Detective Marcus Kreindler sat at his desk reading the morning papers. It was 7:45
AM
, and the office was still mercifully quiet. He’d made good time on his morning commute. Too good, in fact. He hadn’t meant to get here so early. But he couldn’t sleep. Last night they’d received news about their nephew Greg: Kreindler and Agnes happened to be having dinner at her sister’s. Right before dessert, the Western Union kid arrived on his bicycle. What a job to give a kid, delivering telegrams telling parents that their children were missing in action. On his way to work, Kreindler dropped off Agnes at her sister’s.

Now he had over an hour to drink his coffee and give the papers more than the usual front-page once-over. He had a meeting at 9:00
AM
with William Shipley, reporter. Shipley wanted to discuss with him a secret medical project and its link to the death of Lucretia Stanton.

Hearing her name on the phone several days earlier had given Kreindler a jolt. He pictured that beautiful face once more. Evidently Andrew Barnett had done nothing with the information about Nicholas Catalano that Kreindler had so generously provided him. Well, Kreindler couldn’t spend his time worrying about what Barnett might or might not do. Catalano was in the Pacific, doing his extremely important government work. When and if Catalano returned to New York, Kreindler (with the approval of his boss, Barnett be damned) was planning a little welcoming party for him.

Kreindler put aside the
Daily News
, picked up the
Tribune
. Agnes stuck with the
News
, but he tried at least to look at them all, because you never knew when a newspaper story would shed light on a case, the way the local papers in Chinatown had opened up the black market murder case. Besides, it was a good idea to give the
Tribune
a read on a day when he was meeting a
Trib
reporter. He could offer Shipley a little flattery, if appropriate.

But even hardened Detective Kreindler got a shock this morning. On the front page, beneath reports on the Allies fighting their way across Sicily, was the headline:
WAR CORRESPONDENT KILLED IN RAIL ACCIDENT. WILLIAM SHIPLEY DEAD AT 39.
There was a picture of him, labeled as taken in 1935. Shipley looked handsome enough in a jacket and tie. A little severe. It was a professional studio shot.

The article continued on the inside. It took up a full column. Kreindler read slowly. The truth was, he wasn’t what teachers called a smooth reader. He had to go slowly if he wanted to catch the nuances. Enjoying a brief holiday leave, Shipley was traveling through America with his wife, a star reporter for the British newspaper
The Guardian
. There was no mention of Claire or Claire’s son. Guess Shipley
didn’t list them on his
Tribune
CV. People were sensitive about divorce, of course. A train accident in Delaware the night before. Body not discovered until the following morning, by which time, multiple fractures, head injuries, loss of blood…the words gave a hint of the gruesome reality that Kreindler could imagine only too well. The death was being treated as an accident. Speculation was that he’d gone out for a smoke and fell asleep on his feet, exhausted from his labors. A tragedy.

Kreindler put down the paper. Yet another
accidental
death. He wondered what Andrew Barnett would think about the coincidence. Actually, Kreindler figured, Andrew Barnett had probably arranged the coincidence.

I
n Greenwich Village, Claire sat in her garden with the newspapers. She was still dressed in her nightgown and robe. Later the day would be warm and humid, but now, beneath the trees, the air was cool, weightless, and fresh. The ersatz coffee was hot at least, coaxing her awake. Lucas settled himself under the garden table, rubbing his nose against her bare ankles.

She’d been up late, doing a story at the Stage Door Canteen at Times Square. Actress Dorothy McGuire had been there, dancing with the servicemen. Claire was glad to be back at work full-time, even if the stories Mack gave her were fluff.

By chance the
Trib
was on top. Fierce fighting in Sicily. Naples bombed. She turned over the paper, for the stories beneath the fold, as newspaper parlance went. And there she saw the picture, and skimmed the report on a man she didn’t exactly recognize. Was it—her
husband
? This was perplexing. She looked again to verify her first impression. Yes, William Shipley. She felt…nothing. She took another sip of coffee.

Then the reality pushed in on her. She read the inside portion. To her relief, she and Charlie weren’t mentioned.

She cradled her coffee mug, still warm, in both her hands. The sunlight filtered through the trees. Bill Shipley. The father of her children. Barnett had warned her. He’d virtually told her that this would happen. By putting Bill on this story, had
she
sent him to his death?

Thank God Charlie wasn’t here today, with his scissors and his scrapbook. What was the best way to tell him the news? Should she go to his camp upstate, or could the news wait until he returned home? She’d discuss this with her father. He’d know what to do.

Her father.
Your people killed my sister
, Jamie’s words rushed through her mind. Was her father responsible for Bill Shipley’s death, too?

No, it wasn’t possible. She wouldn’t believe it. And yet…her father was ever present.

In a war
,
there’s no morality
. Who was it, who’d told her that bit of wisdom? Ah, yes: Andrew Barnett, economist turned philosopher.

Suddenly, sitting there beneath the trees, with the soft morning sunlight filtering around her, Claire wondered if the late Bill Shipley was right, and she was indeed most naive.