Scandal in the Secret City (14 page)

A
ll that week, I kept busy on meaningless work, hoping that the rumors from the manufacturer, Allis Chalmers, were true. Supposedly, the new Calutron units were built and being loaded onto railroad cars for shipping south. Maybe soon we could return to the important work for the war effort that brought us all here. I’d also heard that the scientists and engineers in the mysterious K-25 building were laboring round the clock. I didn’t know what they were doing, but the fact that they were busy made me want to join them.

I kept my weekend deliberately uneventful, leaving the house only for necessary errands. I avoided talking to anyone about anything. A nod, a smile and a quick escape were all that was on my agenda. I dared not do anything that raised suspicion.

That Monday, we celebrated in the lab as the rumor became the official announcement. Not only had the new components for the racetrack left Chicago but they actually were sitting in freight cars in the rail yard waiting to be unloaded and moved into Y-12 for assembly.

Measuring samples at my work station, my scalp prickled as if I was being watched. I tried to shake the feeling – to pass it off as senseless paranoia – but it clung to me like the tendrils of early morning fog that drifted through the nearby mountains. I looked up and discovered it was not all in my imagination.

A man with black hair and brooding, bottomless brown eyes stood in the doorway, one shoulder resting on the jamb. He stared straight at me from under a pair of heavy eyebrows. His mouth was tight. His jaw twitched. He looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place him. I looked quickly away – but it was not quick enough. He’d raised a brow at my stare but he did not flinch.

I picked up a piece of scrap paper and walked over to the next work station to Gregg Abbott. Laying the page in front of him, I said, ‘Gregg, would you look at this for me?’

He picked it up and looked down at the scribble of notes and nonsensical doodles. ‘What’s this?’ he asked.

‘Look back down at the paper, please, and pretend like you are interested in it.’

He lowered his head and pointed a finger at an oblong shape with stripes. ‘What’s going on, Libby?’

‘There’s a man in the doorway who has been staring at me,’ I said placing a finger to the left of his.

‘Well, you’re not a bad looking girl. You ought to expect a few ogles.’

‘He is not ogling me, Gregg. It’s more like he’s giving me the evil eye. Do you know who he is?’

Gregg looked up and back down. ‘He looks familiar but I can’t place him. And you are right – he certainly doesn’t look like he’s carrying a torch for you.’

‘And he’s wearing a wedding band.’

Gregg sneaked another glance. ‘Yeah, he is. That’s something you want to avoid. He definitely can’t have honorable intentions.’

‘Trust me, Gregg.
That
is not a look of seduction.’

‘Wait. I know where I’ve seen him before.’

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘Remember when G.G. was here and he talked to you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Wasn’t he one of the men in that group around the general?’

‘Maybe. That could be why he looks familiar.’

‘Maybe he took exception to you figuring out the racetrack problem – maybe that was his responsibility?’

‘I guess that’s possible,’ I said, ‘although it seems a scientist doing work this important and timely would want a solution – any solution – even if it came from a Calutron girl. Does he work here in Y-12?’

‘I don’t know,’ Gregg said shaking his head. ‘You know how those big deal scientists are. They all use phony names. How can they possibly think we’d fall for it? I mean, really, that Eugene Farmer is so obviously foreign with his accent and mannerisms – at least they could have given him a code name that was a bit more realistic. Did they really think that none of us would recognize a prominent scientist like Enrico Fermi at first glance? That’s all wet.’

A shout rang out in the hall. ‘Hey, Dr Smith!’

The man in the doorway turned around, stretched out his arm and shook the other man’s hand. Except for the end of one limb, that other man remained out of sight. The two walked off together.

‘Ah, horsefeathers! See what I mean. Dr Smith? Please.’

‘Well, Smith is a common name,’ I said.

‘Libby, you don’t seriously …?’

‘No, not really.’ Who was he and why was he intently staring at me? Could he be Irene’s married boyfriend? Her killer? Had he somehow found out about my investigations?

‘Are you OK? Your face is as pale as a fish belly.’

‘It’s nothing, Gregg. I’d better go sit down. I feel a little woozy.’ I turned away and walked toward my station.

‘Can I get you anything? Glass of water? Anything?’

‘No. Thank you, Gregg. I’ll be fine.’

I placed my hands flat on the surface of my work counter, trying to still the tremors that seemed to give my fingers a life of their own. It was only a look. But the fear it transmitted loomed larger than the headline ‘WAR!’ that had blazed on the front of the newspapers more than a year ago.

How could I figure out who he was? We weren’t supposed to ask questions about secret identities. Should I even try? Two days. Two days and I’d see Aunt Dorothy. My insides felt as if they’d been dipped in liquid nitrogen and were crumbling with every breath I took.

Not knowing what I was going to do next was the worst part. Talking to Aunt Dorothy would enable me to make a decision. Once I did that, I would have a plan. Perils might abound in whatever course I took but awareness of the path ahead would make it manageable. If I approached the problem as if it was a lab experiment – one careful step at a time, everything moving forward in a linear fashion – ultimately it would lead to a solid conclusion.

Two days and I’d know the parameters of the experiment that lay ahead.

The time passed in a fog. I jumped at every unexpected sound, peering around every time I sensed a nearby presence. Always on the look-out for that Dr Smith who stared with such malicious intent. I didn’t see him again that week, but he never left my thoughts.

I drove the car to work on Wednesday so that I could leave immediately for Knoxville when the day was done. My hands started to tremble as I drove up to the Solway gate. Would they stop me again?

It was a different guard. He looked at my badge, asked when I expected to return and waved me forward. I crossed the bridge holding my breath, praying he would not have second thoughts. When I reached the other side of the span, I exhaled loudly. I’d made it out. I now focused my thoughts on my memories of the woman who had most shaped my life – Aunt Dorothy.

I
’d enjoyed my aunt’s visits to the farm as far back as I could remember. My mother often referred to Dorothy as a ‘modern woman’, using the phrase as an insult. When my father said it, though, it was with pride – his sister’s education and accomplishments were laudable in his mind.

Dorothy Clark, with her exceptional education and prominent position at Bryn Mawr, was a formidable role model. She always visited at Christmas bearing gifts and every year one of her wrapped packages was a new book or two for me.

Aunt Dorothy grew even more important to me when tragedy upended my life. I was only ten years old when my father died in a house fire in a valiant but failed attempt to rescue my brother. The burden of running the farm fell largely on me, as Mother withdrew into the shelter of willing helplessness. I took on responsibility for both of our lives, at times staggering under the oversized load.

Six months later, Mother made an unfortunate decision, marrying Ernest Floyd. He’d lost his own farm when the impact of the Great Depression hit rural Virginia and he proceeded to run our flourishing homestead into the ground, too. When the finances grew too pinched for comfort, he fired the farmhand and forced me to drop out of school to work full-time caring for livestock and the land. Aunt Dorothy came to the rescue, spiriting me to her home near Philadelphia to continue my education.

I couldn’t fathom the bleakness of the life I would have led under Ernest’s thumb – uneducated, stifled, devoid of any hope in the future. I shuddered at the thought. I felt a lot of animosity toward Mother for not standing up for me and not protecting me from her second husband. I was grateful for Aunt Dorothy’s intervention. It was a debt I could never repay.

Pulling up to the Andrew Johnson Hotel on Gay Street, I slipped off my muddy galoshes, replacing them with a pair of black pumps decorated with black-eyed susan bows, tucked a black envelope purse under my arm, and stepped out of the car. I brushed off the wrinkles in my skirt and walked into the lobby of the hotel.

At the front desk, the clerk called up to Aunt Dorothy’s room and said, ‘Miss Clark will be down in a moment.’ I stood by the elevator waiting for her arrival. Aunt Dorothy stepped out in a pinstriped suit that I didn’t remember. After exchanging a hug, I asked, ‘New suit?’

‘Yes, it’s the latest in patriotic fashion,’ Aunt Dorothy said with a chuckle.

‘Patriotic?’

‘The newest rage, my dear. Plunder the attic for your father’s old suits and turn them over to the seamstress who turns it into a woman’s suit with scraps of fabric left over for making quilts. I bought one of those, too. You won’t believe how warm they are with all those squares of worsted wool. After using it for a few cold nights, I put my name on the waiting list for another one to send down to you.’

We didn’t say much until after we were seated and had placed our orders. Then, Aunt Dorothy said, ‘I imagine what you want to discuss with me is not fit for a public forum. I thought we could save that for after dinner in my room and just catch up on other things.’

‘I don’t know what I could possibly talk about in my life that doesn’t touch on the big issue. So, please, tell me all the news from back home and how your new graduate school of social work is going.’

Dorothy talked about my old friends from the neighborhood and school – most were still at home, waiting for boyfriends or husbands to return from the war, but two of them were now nurses working in the Pacific theater. I silently said a quick prayer for the safety of those now in harm’s way. I listened to her description of the progress she’d achieved at the school but had to struggle to focus and prevent my thoughts from drifting to the matter in the forefront of my mind.

‘Now, Libby, surely there is something about life in general in your new home that you can tell me about. For example, how are you doing for food?’

‘Well, I eat a lot of spam and canned salmon but I am so happy to be able to make my own dinners. The food in the cafeteria was atrocious. Vegetables are cooked to death and loaded up with fatback. And chicken is usually fried to a crisp – all very southern cooking, much like my mother’s. But I’ve gotten so used to Mrs Schmidt’s cooking that it was a real shock to go back to the way I used to eat.’

‘Is it difficult to get the food and other things you need?’

‘Sometimes. Unlike the women with husbands and children and no jobs, I don’t have whole days to stand in line. I do it when I know it’s something I need but I don’t have the time to join mysterious queues and hope there’s something worthwhile at the end.’

‘People do that?’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said and laughed. ‘Remember me writing to you about my friend Ann?’

‘Is that the girl who had you over for Thanksgiving dinner?’

‘Yes, that’s the one. I was so impressed that her mom was able to pull together everything for a traditional meal that day, I talked to her about how she did it. Mrs Bishop said she’d always keep an eye on her front window. If she saw a group of women heading down toward Towncenter, she’d grab her purse, follow them and get in line. She didn’t know what they were selling but when she got to the front of the line, she’d buy whatever it was. She figured if it was something she didn’t need, she could trade it with someone for something she did want.’

‘What a strange way to live. Life is peculiar for everyone right now with the rationing but it certainly seems a bit worse down here.’

‘Yes, it is. But at least we have some shops now. When I first got here, the only store was Williamson’s drugstore and it was nothing more than one glass counter with cosmetics, aspirin and things like that set up in the corner of the cafeteria. There’s one item, though, that’s pretty easy to get here – easier than most places, I would imagine.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Stockings. I can get all I want whenever I need them.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Oh, yes. How do you think I could send you three pairs at Christmas?’

‘I couldn’t imagine how difficult that was at the time. But now, you’re saying it’s easy. How’s that possible?’

‘There’s a hosiery manufacturing plant right outside of the gates in a town called Clinton. Inside the fence, there are several women who have family working there. They make a little money on the side by selling them to the rest of us.’

‘Lucky you. Feel free to send me stockings every birthday and Christmas for the duration of the war.’

With dinner eaten and all the conversation fit to be overheard done, Aunt Dorothy requested coffee for two in her room. As we ascended in the elevator, I ran over the important points I wanted to make, apprehensive about her reaction to it all.

I
tried to deliver the facts of the situation and keep my emotions in check but sometimes my voice caught in my throat, betraying me. I explained about meeting Ruth’s sister, Irene, for the first time on Christmas night, the search for Irene the next day, and the discovery of the body under the bleachers at the high school football field.

Although horribly tragic, those facts marched straight and true to the drumbeat of reality. Aunt Dorothy murmured and nodded in response as I ticked off the details.

Then I had to veer away from the typical thread of a tale of murder to a place where everything became distorted like a step through Alice’s looking glass into an alternate universe where facts were incidental and truth was variable. I knew this part of my story would be the most difficult for Aunt Dorothy to accept at face value.

‘The police insist there was no body under the bleachers. The military agreed with them. So who moved Irene’s body from where I’d seen it with my own eyes to where it was later found on the other side of the Solway Bridge?’

Aunt Dorothy’s face grew long and pale as the story twisted into something unrecognizable. I told her about the promise I made to Ruth and Hank, my frustrating encounter with the sheriff, my confrontations with army officers and civilians, and the military’s inquisitive visit to Ann’s home.

Two things I kept to myself were the mittens with the menacing message and the unsettling stare from the mysterious Dr Smith. I wasn’t sure they were related to the big problem and I didn’t want to make Aunt Dorothy worry anymore than she already was.

After I finished, we sat in silence for a few moments. Then Aunt Dorothy said, ‘So as I understand it, your dilemma is between a promise to a friend and the insistence by the authorities that revelation would be detrimental to the war effort. Is that correct?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Do you have any reason to suspect that Irene was involved in anything nefarious?’

‘You mean, like spying? No. She was nothing more than a fun-loving girl looking for good times and a husband. Nothing more serious than that ever crossed her mind. I’m certain of it.’

‘If that’s true,’ she said, ‘then there would be no official reason that she needed to be silenced.’

‘Silenced? You think our government would do such a thing? Kill a civilian?’

‘Worse things have happened in time of war. If she saw something she wasn’t supposed to see, whether she understood the importance of it or not, who knows? When the stakes are this high, some men will stop at nothing.’

I tried to process this possibility but it conflicted with my notions about my government. ‘How could that be possible?’

‘The people have given up so much in the name of this cause. I have. You have. I believe our mission is just. I believe this war is necessary. But no matter how valiant the effort and how willing the populace, we no longer have freedom of movement throughout this country. We no longer have ready access to goods and food. We no longer have any assumptions about privacy in our correspondence. No matter how great the cause, there are always scoundrels around – men in power who will use this trying time and these extraordinary circumstances to seek their own advantage. That’s one possibility. Another is that this unknown boyfriend is someone whose work is vital to the war effort and no one wants to interfere with his progress. The last possibility I can imagine is that you’ve been told the truth. They are genuinely concerned about the morale and they fear what would happen if the residents lost their sense of safety and security. And then, of course, there is the possibility that it is a combination of the above or something that hasn’t even crossed my mind.’

‘Poor Irene, a simple country girl dazzled by her new life, she didn’t deserve to be discarded as if she didn’t matter. And now the authorities are willing to destroy her memory by alluding that she was up to no good at the hutments.’

‘The hutments?’ Aunt Dorothy asked.

I described the primitive living conditions in the colored area of the community. ‘I don’t know how our government can treat human beings that way.’

‘It’s deplorable how the poor are treated the whole world over, Libby. I’ve been working to change that all my life.’

I was lost in despairing thoughts about the intransigence of poverty until Aunt Dorothy spoke again. ‘Before you make your decision on your course of action, Libby, make sure you are certain that there is no possibility that Irene did something that made her a target. If she’s in the wrong, you do not want to join her.’

‘Irene worked in the guest house, Aunt Dorothy. She was never near any of the labs. Nothing that I can understand, or even imagine, would make Irene a threat to security.’

‘You’re probably right. And the first question is: who moved the body? Was it the same person who killed her?’

‘I don’t think it could have been her killer. Irene was there until the police and military arrived and I can’t imagine them standing idly by while the murderer whisked away the body. It had to be the army or law enforcement that moved the body or someone working under their auspices.’

‘Are you sure she was seeing that married scientist exclusively? Are you certain she wasn’t seeing someone else at the same time and when that man found out about the scientist, he flew into a jealous rage? Maybe that man was a policeman and the department wanted to protect one of their own. Or maybe a soldier – or even an officer, a high-ranking one possibly – whom the military thought was too essential to the mission.’

‘She’d dated all of the above,’ I had to admit. ‘But Ruth believed that her sister was only seeing the one man right before she died. I suppose, though, that one of her former dates could have killed her in anger because she ended their relationship.’

‘Jealous rage is a strong motive, you can’t overlook it. Sometimes the line between love and hate can run precariously thin. For the sake of argument, let’s say you decided to keep your promise to the Nance family. What do you think would be the first thing you should do?’

‘I’d say the most productive first step would be to determine the identity of that married scientist named Bill.’

‘I agree: that is logical.’

‘But how can I do that, Aunt Dorothy? I’m being watched. I know it. I have to be careful. I can’t put an announcement in the newspaper. I can’t ask everyone I see. And to make it even more complicated, all the top scientists have code names and I don’t know if “Bill” is his real name or an alias.’

‘You’re not an investigator. You can’t do this on your own. You need allies. So who would be your best choice? The women in the dorm who knew Irene?’

‘No, except for Ruth who’s now back home, there’s no one there who really trusts me. They hold me at a distance because I’m unnatural. I’m not waiting for the war to end so that I can get married and make babies, because my work is more important to me than a happy little home in the suburbs.’

‘What about the young scientists you work with? Now that I mention it, that does sound best. You scientists naturally question authority and seek meaningful answers. Wouldn’t that be the best place to turn since you’re looking for one of them?’

‘That’s just it, Aunt Dorothy. I don’t fit in there, either, because I’m not a man.’

‘You’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt, Libby. Don’t waste time hoping for the impossible. There is a special power in being a woman and you’ve been gifted with more than just good looks. You’re intelligent, educated and full of common sense. You’re a strong woman, Libby Clark. You’ve demonstrated that all of your life.’

‘But Aunt Dorothy that takes me back to the first and most basic question: is it right for me to pursue these answers?’

Dorothy leaned forward and grabbed both of my hands and looked into my eyes. ‘Let’s start with what you know for a certainty. You know you promised Ruth that you would find out what happened to her sister, right.’

‘Yes,’ I said, nodding my agreement.

‘You accepted a car from her family in order to help you keep that promise, correct.’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve been told that keeping that promise would be a violation of the nation’s security, right?’

‘Yes, but not specifically why – it was so vague.’

‘That’s right, Libby. You don’t know for a fact that it is an honest claim because you have not been given details and because those who told you are possibly involved in Irene’s murder or in the cover-up of that crime. If they are involved, it would be irresponsible and immoral for you to allow them to get away with it.’

‘Agreed.’

‘So tell me madam scientist, when you put those two opposing viewpoints on the scale, which side wins?’

‘My promise. But if I do what is right, I could lose my position here. I could be sent home in disgrace. I could embarrass you.’

‘If you stand up for your principles and do what you think is right, I will never be ashamed of you and I will always stand by your side with pride. You must look for answers unless or until you uncover something that tells you that you are endangering the nation’s security or crippling the war effort. If that happens, stop long enough to think it through and re-evaluate the situation – make sure what appears to be is actually what is. Then, if it is, take that knowledge and move in that direction, even if it means putting it all into reverse.’

I closed my eyes in a vain attempt to stop the tears seeping through my eyelashes. ‘Am I strong enough, Aunt Dorothy?’

‘Absolutely! But beyond that, you have to be clever. You need to think carefully about who your allies should be and then pursue them in any way you can. And if you make a mistake along the way, learn from it and move forward to your goal.’

‘Irene deserves justice – who could deny that? That goal should not be dismissed by anyone in this country.’

‘You are right, she does. Seek the truth and find that justice – not just for Irene and her family but for all of us. We are not working to defeat the Axis just to destroy ourselves along the way.’