Scandal in the Secret City (4 page)

‘Once basic knowledge is acquired, any attempt at preventing its fruition would be as futile as hoping to stop the earth from revolving around the sun.’

Enrico Fermi

M
y scheduled departure wasn’t quite as abrupt as I feared it would be. I had forty-eight hours from the time notice arrived until I was due at the train station. Aunt Dorothy acted quite stoic about it – exhibiting the stiff upper lip she’d claimed to have acquired as a student at Cambridge – but I saw tears welling up in her eyes before she quickly turned away. Our housekeeper and cook, Mrs Schmidt, was far more maudlin in her farewell. She couldn’t stop sniffling, hiccupping and apologizing for her German ancestry as I walked out the front door. At the train station, I quickly located a man in an army uniform holding a sign with my name on it. He handed me an envelope and said, ‘When you reach your destination, you’ll find someone waiting for you there.’

He spun around so crisply, I felt like I should salute. Instead, I tore open the envelope. Chicago! Since leaving Rochester, I’d been devouring scientific journals looking for more information about the research on uranium. I’d learned that the physicist Enrico Fermi was hard at work on his theories about fusion in that city and had also read vague discussions about the fission experiments that were thought to be ongoing at the Metalurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago. Fermi’s work was top secret. Is that where I would work? With Enrico Fermi? I grabbed the wall as a spell of light-headedness came over me. Would he share his secrets with me? Could I possibly provide a tiny, fresh insight that would lead to a breakthrough? As I rode the rails, I roamed through a daydream terrain, my excitement building with every clack of the train.

Disembarking, I could hardly contain my anticipation at the thought of heading for the laboratory. But, instead of a uniformed officer offering to collect my bags and giving me a ride to my new workplace, he handed me another envelope. He, too, said that when I reached my destination someone would be waiting for me.

I looked at the ticket. Knoxville? Tennessee? That made no sense. How could anything important be happening in Knoxville? How could I possibly do significant work with uranium – no, that word is not allowed – tube alloy. How could I expect to make a valuable contribution if they were shipping me to the middle of nowhere? But, maybe – maybe – it was just another stop on my route to someplace else. If it was my final destination, was I being banished for the duration of the war? Was it my punishment for being a woman?

It was nearing midnight as the train pulled into the station. This time the man holding a sign with my name on it was wearing a suit. And he wasn’t holding an envelope. I tried not to let my shoulders slump and telegraph my disappointment that this backwoods place was the end of the line. All the uranium talk must have just been a ploy to keep me interested and excited about the work ahead. After the devastation of the depression, I should have known better than to trust any corporation. Eastman Kodak had a good reputation, but it seemed now that it was only a charade.

‘Miss Clark? Miss Elizabeth Clark?’ the man in the suit asked.

‘Yes, I’m Miss Clark,’ I said as I reached out to shake his hand.

‘Charlie Morton. I’m head of Analytical Chemistry here at Clinton Engineer Works. You’ll be helping me set up our lab. But not until tomorrow. Because of the late hour, you’ll get to experience the best Knoxville has to offer: the Andrew Johnson Hotel. After breakfast, we’ll head out to the facility.’

Morton claimed my bags and we drove off to the hotel on Gay Street, the tallest building in town. ‘The local radio station is up on the seventeenth floor,’ he said. ‘Not my kind of music – it’s all hillbilly music to me but they call it country. I was raised in the countryside but that was Massachusetts. No one there sang like they do here.

‘The area feels very primitive,’ Morton continued. ‘A lot of the scientists call this place Dogpatch, but it’s the home of the Tennessee Valley Authority and gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It really does have a lot to offer. But don’t count on anything but formal southern hospitality from the natives here – you won’t be making any friends. There’s a bit of bitterness about the land the government took from farmers to build our little experiment in the sticks.’

By the time I’d climbed into bed, my future seemed a bit brighter than it had when I arrived at the Knoxville station. It certainly sounded as if there might be potential to do something significant, no matter how unlikely the location. The next morning, I was too excited to eat. I just moved my food around the plate with my fork as I drank coffee from a thick, white mug.

We set out for Clinton Engineer Works and in a few miles, the paved city streets gave way to a dirt and gravel road running through rolling, lush, green and cow-filled countryside that reminded me of the hills of Virginia. Despite their primitive composition the roads were smooth and free of ruts. Things changed when we crossed a bridge. It was jarring to travel through all that natural beauty only to confront long barbed-wire-topped fences which ran for as far as I could see. Even more intimidating were the ponderous tanks squatting like all-powerful trolls, their turrets pointed straight at the entrance – straight at us. And not just tanks, I also spotted a machine gun barrel poking out of a pillbox-shaped shack.

A uniformed man emerged from that little building with a pistol prominently displayed on his hip. Charlie showed his identification badge to the soldier and the gate opened. Once inside, the smooth dirt and gravel road we’d travelled up to that point turned bumpy with a sparser smattering of stones and a plentiful supply of potholes.

We passed naked dirt fields littered with upturned stumps not yet cleared away. The earthy aroma of moist earth filled the air, resurrecting memories of long ago spring planting times. Then we went by a collection of wooden buildings, some still under construction, others shining like newborns – all of them emitting the scent of fresh sawn timber and sawdust.

A billboard sprouted up on the side of the road. On it, a man looked back over his shoulder. The message beside him read: ‘Who me? Yes you … keep mum about this job.’ Further along, another one displayed an eye with a swastika embedded in its pupil and read, ‘The enemy is looking … for information. Guard your talk.’ The mandate for secrecy was even more strident here than it had been in Rochester. But instead of the hushed quiet of whispered confidences, energetic bustle was everywhere. Heavy machinery moved dirt and dumped debris with no attempt to muffle the sound. Soldiers zoomed by in jeeps. People coming and going, working and doing – the hyperactivity of a city rising from bare soil like a bumper crop. The air jangled with the electricity of unceasing motion, tingling my nerve endings. A feeling of eager anticipation overcame me with the realization that I had entered a whole new world with a universe of promises and possibilities waiting to be discovered.

Charlie pointed to the left at an odd looking building with two smaller segments followed by a large one, and said, ‘That’s Y-12. That’s where we’ll be working.’

The structure seemed to stretch into forever. The thrill of working there nearly made me speechless but somehow I stammered out, ‘How long is Y-12?’

‘Oh, about four hundred feet. The second section is where our lab is housed.’

A little further down the road he turned into the drive of a large, boxy, utilitarian, and boring piece of architecture. ‘This is your dormitory. I’ll help you take your bags inside and then they’ll take it from there. They are expecting you. As soon as you get your badge, are assigned a room and get unpacked, go down to the bus station right over there,’ he pointed to a sign less than a block away. ‘Get on a bus marked Y-12 and come find me in the middle section.’

Inside the building, the smells of new construction were even stronger than outside: the slightly chemical scent of fresh-laid linoleum and the nose-wrinkling odor of freshly applied paint swirled through the air. The sun streaked through windows dancing on a fine haze of sawdust.

In my assigned room, all the furniture was brand new and made of wood – even the door knobs were wooden. They said I would have a roommate, in a matter of days or weeks. But as I surveyed that small space, I knew I’d be comfortable here alone, but it was going to feel cramped when someone else joined me. I wanted to rush to the lab but I dutifully unpacked my bags into the dresser and closet.

It was easy to find my way to Y-12 but when I stepped off the bottom step of the bus, my foot did not hit solid ground. Instead, it plunged into a pit of mud. I struggled to pull it out of the muck. When I did, though, my pretty, strappy shoe did not come out with it. I looked down in despair – one foot was a block of mud, the other still looked as cute as ever in its darling shoe. I couldn’t possibly go to work like that. What would Charlie Morton think? How would I ever recover my shoe? And where could I clean off my foot?

I started at the sound of a male voice. ‘Give up, sweetheart.’ I looked up at a soldier. ‘You’ll never find it,’ he added. ‘You might as well ditch the other one and don’t plan on wearing anything but tie-on shoes and make sure those laces are cinched up tight.’

Was he crazy? He looked perfectly normal.

He laughed and said, ‘Hey, don’t worry about it. It’s not an unusual sight here. You going into Y-12?’

I nodded, stunned that he found my predicament amusing.

‘No one will be surprised to see you walk in missing a shoe – or even barefoot. Happens here all the time. They’ll just want you to wipe off your muddy foot before you go inside.’

What kind of place was this? No one surprised by someone coming to work in bare feet? This really was a hillbilly town. Even at the farm in Virginia, I was expected to exhibit more decorum unless I was mucking the stables or shoveling the chicken coop.

Not knowing what else to do, I limped into the laboratory area feeling mortified – one shoe off, one shoe on. How was I going to explain this to Charlie Morton? To my surprise, he looked down at my feet and grinned. ‘I see you’ve gotten your official welcome to Clinton Engineer Works. Everybody loses shoes in the mud. We’re building changing houses attached to the buildings with lockers and sinks for cleaning up, but they’re not finished yet. And soon the boardwalks will connect just about every place here so you’ll be able to walk on them instead of slogging in the mud. In the meantime, did you pack a pair of galoshes?’

Was he really undisturbed by my dishevelment? Or was he just humoring me? ‘No. I didn’t. I didn’t know where I was going until I got here,’ I said.

‘Right. Well, you can’t buy any now with the rubber shortage going on – and it probably won’t ease up till the war is over. Do you have a pair at home that somebody could ship down to you?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Write a letter back home tonight and get them to do that. Just remember, all your mail goes through censors so don’t say anything about this place or where it is located. You can mention the abundance of mud – but no other details. You’ll have your official orientation tomorrow and they’ll fill you in on all the rules. A lot of what you hear won’t be applicable to you because you have clearance for more information. Still, it will be useful.’

‘If I can’t tell my Aunt Dorothy where I am, how can she ship anything to me?’

‘Everything goes to a drop box. I’ll jot the address down for you so you have it. Now, let’s give you a tour and you can get a general idea of what is going on here. In your position, you will know more than most of the other chemists. Remember not to volunteer information to anyone – or answer any questions. If they don’t know, they probably don’t need to know.

‘As you see, our laboratory is in the beta chemistry building, the second section of this structure.’ A sparkling room of long black tables and fume hoods looked capable of housing dozens of scientists. ‘You and I will have to figure out what we will need and order the supplies and instrumentation so it’s all ready by the time the others arrive.’

I struggled to forget about the condition of my feet and focus on what Charlie was saying but every uneven step refreshed my memory of my encounter with the mud.

‘Follow me to the first section,’ he said walking up the corridor. ‘This is the alpha chemistry building, for bulk treatment. They’ll be purifying the tube alloy and turning it into tube alloy tetrachloride.’

The long lab counters were all framed but only one section of stations was completed with fume hoods in place.

‘They’ll be stocking their own lab when they arrive so we don’t have to worry about them. Our lab will be testing their results, looking for ways to improve methodology and tracking the efficiency of the process. Are you wearing a watch?’

‘Yes,’ I said, holding up my wrist.

‘Take it off and leave it in here,’ he said as he unbuckled his watch band and laid it on the small counter.

How odd? Shoes are optional and watches forbidden? I complied and I also discarded my only shoe since the sound of my uneven walk was nerve-wracking. My thoughts must have been clearly etched on my face because when Charlie looked at me, he laughed again.

‘You’ll see why in a minute,’ he said. ‘We’ll also handle any problems connected to chemistry in the third section where the Calutron is housed.’

‘Calutron?’

‘You’ve heard of the cyclotron out at the University of California, haven’t you?’

‘Of course.’

‘This machine is a variation on that – the name is a combination of cyclotron and California.’ He shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me why. You will have clearance for all three sections of Y-12, unlike most of the others. People in the alpha lab go in and out of their entrance and never see the rest of the building. Your badge is color-coded for your clearance. You probably noticed the guard at the door glance at it before you came inside. If it hadn’t been the right colors, he would have stopped you and refused your admittance. Now, here is the Calutron,’ he said, flinging his arm wide.

It was monstrous. Charlie explained that the oval-shaped hunk of metal was a 77-foot wide, 8-foot tall, 122-foot long, oval-shaped piece of machinery. It looked a lot like a racetrack, but instead of horses’ pounding hooves, it was raw ore that sped around the curved field.