Sabotage in the Secret City Read online

  Certainly, the war, our current work and concerns about our future careers did add stress to our lives. Others around me, though, seemed to keep their personal life on an even, steady keel in spite of it all. A line from Shakespeare kept running through my mind at the most inopportune times: ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars but in ourselves.’ Even the bard was shaking my confidence in my sense of self-awareness.

  After dinner Tuesday evening, I curled up with a cup of tea and a book with G.G. dozing and purring by my side. At ten, I scooped up the kitty and we both crawled into bed. I surprised myself on this chaotic day by falling asleep with ease. Blissful rest didn’t last long. I shot straight up in bed without knowing what had awakened me. Then, I heard pounding on my front door. I glanced at the clock. Ten minutes after midnight. It had to be bad news.

  G.G. darted under the bed as I slipped into my robe before rushing to answer the insistent knock. I looked at the window and saw a uniform. Whatever it is, it must be worse than I’d imagined. I swung open the door. The fist of the man pounding still hung in the air as he said, ‘Miss Clark, you need to come with us.’

  ‘Why, sergeant?’ I asked noting that his straight ahead stare was focused at some point above my head.

  ‘Ma’am, we are following orders. We were told to take you to the lab immediately but we were not told why.’

  ‘Of course not. And even if you were you probably couldn’t tell me.’

  The sergeant had the decency to blush and bring his gaze down to my eyes as he responded, ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘I can change into street clothes first, can’t I?’

  His blush brightened a bit more as if he just noticed my bedroom apparel. ‘Yes, ma’am. Of course, ma’am,’ he said while nodding.

  Not knowing where this night-time expedition would lead, I opted for hiking clothes. I didn’t want to end up in the woods somewhere in inappropriate attire. After dressing, I rushed to the door and stepped out onto the landing to another surprise. Soldiers at attention were lined up down the whole length of my stairs and seven military vehicles were parked in the street.

  The sergeant led the way, escorting me to a jeep. We were in the middle vehicle of a midnight convoy. I suspected all this security and secrecy had something to do with my botched rendezvous with the courier. When I arrived at Y-12, soldiers lined the sidewalk to the entrance. The noise from the always-spinning Calutron sounded like a prehistoric beast trying to break free, disturbing the peace on an otherwise serene night. None of the soldiers followed me inside to where Lieutenant Colonel Crenshaw waited.

  ‘Sorry for the inconvenience, Miss Clark. Please retrieve the package and we’ll be on our way to the meeting point.’

  ‘Where are we going, Crenshaw?’

  ‘You have no need to know.’

  Crenshaw trailed me as I walked back into my work area, ignoring my mumbles about the arrogant ways of the military. They are free to wake me in the middle of the night and cart me off but I don’t have the right to know where I’m going. So typical.

  Back outside, Crenshaw escorted me to a black sedan and opened the back door. I slid in one side and he on the other. The driver got behind the wheel and we watched as the soldiers, jogging en masse, split into small groups to board their assigned transports. After two jeeps and two trucks pulled away, we joined the formation, followed by another four vehicles.

  Since I was skeptical that the fire had been set deliberately and doubted the suspicions of a dark conspiracy, these precautions felt a bit silly. Crenshaw, however, was on heightened alert, which he obviously felt was essential. The question I couldn’t answer was if he knew more about the fire than I did or if his paranoid reaction was a hallmark of his character.

  We plunged through the gate and into the countryside, making turns down one twisty road after another. Sometimes, it seemed as if we were passing the same spot more than once. However, the darkened farmhouses and barns barely visible on the hills and in the valleys, bore a relentless sameness in the murky light. It all but made it impossible for me to know with certainty whether we were traveling in circles or if it just seemed that way.

  At last, we pulled up a dirt drive and stopped at a brightly lit red barn with a silvery tin roof. I reached for the door handle but Crenshaw grabbed and squeezed my arm. ‘Not yet,’ he ordered.

  We sat in the car until a group of soldiers drill-marched into the building and another group lined up from the car to the barn door. The man closest to the sedan opened my door and offered a hand to help me out.

  I followed Crenshaw down the path lined with men leading us into the barn’s spacious interior, capped with high ceilings and filled with farm implements. The familiar earthy aroma of livestock and hay still filled the air but the dust on the tractor seat made it apparent that we weren’t on a working farm. Standing in the shadows was a man wearing a dark suit and fedora, casually smoking a cigarette as if it was a normal night in a normal place.

  ‘Miss Clark,’ he said, ‘I’ll take that package off of your hands.’

  ‘One moment,’ Crenshaw barked. ‘Let me see your identifying papers and your orders.’

  He pulled a handful of documents out of his suit pocket and presented them to the lieutenant colonel. Crenshaw turned toward the nearest light, perused and returned them before he said, ‘Carry on.’

  I handed over the shipment unsettled by the shadows engulfing the nameless man’s face and by the clandestine creepiness of the whole scene. I couldn’t wait to get back to the familiar comfort of my own bed.

  ‘This way, Miss Clark,’ Crenshaw said as he led me back outside and into the car.

  Again, we waited for the outside troops to hop into the assortment of vehicles. None of the men in the barn emerged. This time, two vehicles led us and two more brought up the rear.

  We drove back in silence, taking a far more direct route and arriving back at my flat-top in less than half the time it took to arrive at our clandestine destination. As I stepped out of the car at the bottom of my stairs, the lieutenant colonel said, ‘This expedition never happened, Miss Clark.’

  I nodded.

  ‘I need verbal confirmation, Miss Clark.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said while giving a mock salute, hoping I successfully communicated my sarcastic intent. Those initial heebie-jeebies about this assignment had now returned with vengeance.

  FIVE

  Despite my middle of the night ramblings, I woke early Wednesday morning. I wanted to dawdle over my coffee and breakfast but I felt too unsettled and anxious. Once again, I arrived at work before anyone else was in the lab. I unlocked the door and in the dim light seeping in from the hallway, I thought I saw a movement inside. I thought it had to be my imagination but I turned towards it just the same. Two glittery orbs caught my attention and then they were gone. Was it nothing but a reflection or was it a pair of beady little eyes?

  I switched on the light switch and saw a furry rump and a whip-like tail go over the edge of the top of a table, followed by a soft thud and scampering feet. A rat? I couldn’t think of any other explanation. I shivered as I exited the room, slammed the door shut and relocked it.

  I rushed to the building exit and informed the soldier on guard. He laughed. ‘What, lady? You scared? You ain’t ever seen a rat before?’

  ‘You don’t understand. Our lab conditions are a controlled environment. A rat can contaminate and compromise results. It can also damage the wiring that enables some of our equipment to work. It needs to be gone. Now.’

  ‘Okay. I get it. You’re scared.’

  In anger, I sucked in a loud breath and exhaled harshly. ‘Private, roll up your flaps. This is a serious matter. Contact your superior officer and tell him we have an urgent situation demanding an immediate solution.’

  ‘Jeez! Don’t flip your wig, lady. I’ll get on the horn right now.’ As he spoke, his hand moved toward his brow.

  ‘Don’t you dare salute me,’ I snapped. The last thing I wanted right now
was to have my act of sarcasm to Crenshaw thrown back in my face by another member of the military.

  The response to the private’s call was quick, abundant and quite gratifying. I feared that all the brass would be as dense as the private. Still, the situation was more complicated than it should have been. Apparently, rat eradication had its own department and the experts had been in and out of cafeterias, dormitories and other buildings without a problem. In this case, these men were being admitted into Y-12 without having security clearance to go there. Crenshaw personally showed up to remind them of their loyalty oath and the importance of secrecy before they were let into the lab.

  Half an hour later, Crenshaw emerged with a reddened face and a furrowed brow. Poking a rude finger in my direction, he shouted, ‘How could you work in there with all those rats and not notice a thing? Don’t you pay any attention to your environment?’

  ‘One rat, sir. That’s all I said. Just one rat.’

  ‘There’s a lot more than that in there. They’re crawling all over the place.’

  ‘What?’ One rat could happen. An unnoticed exploding population, on the other hand, was not in the realm of possibility.

  ‘Yes. How could you overlook this for so long?’

  ‘Sir, it is not possible that we have been infested with rodents for an extended period of time. Rat feces and hair would have shown up as anomalies in our testing results. We might not have known what they were in our initial analysis, but we would not have stopped until we identified them. However, if they are all over the place as you say, then I suspect that there is a recent and peculiar reason for it.’

  ‘What? The big cheese rat led a group raid on the lab in the middle of the night?’

  ‘You’re mocking me, sir.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’ Crenshaw asked, his wide-eyed ridiculing expression on full display.

  ‘I was very skeptical of your suspicions about sabotage at the fire on Monday but I am beginning to think that you were correct. And that this is another act designed to create problems for us.’

  ‘So, you think someone broke in and dumped rats in the lab? Or do you think the rats set the fire and then moved over here? Really, Miss Clark? Ludicrous ideas. But I suppose to protect your pride you would have to believe it was something other than negligence by you and your staff – your blindness to what was going on all around you.’

  Fortunately, at that moment, someone called Crenshaw back inside. If he’d stood in front of me another moment, I would have said something I might regret. As it was I shouted, ‘Fathead’ at his disappearing backside. He gave no indication that he had heard which was probably a good thing.

  What would be the motivation for an act that seemed just as much prank as serious disruption of our work? Surely, no one could think that we’d throw up our hands and quit over this incident. Or even over a fire at the exchange point. The only logical reason was that someone or some group wanted to cause delays or undermine morale – or both. Wasn’t it? Or am I too close to the situation to discern the motivation?

  ‘Hey, Libby!’

  ‘Teddy? They cleared out your lab, too?’

  ‘They said they’re checking for rat infestation. Why would they interrupt our work for that? Couldn’t they do it overnight?’

  I paused before answering. Aware of the many ears roaming about outside of the building, I had to be cautious. We weren’t supposed to talk about what was happening in the lab with people outside of our own. Was the topic of vermin covered by that rule, too? ‘It seems there is a problem in our space. I imagine checking the adjacent lab is just an added precaution.’

  ‘I hope they’re quick about it. I’ve got just—’ he stopped to look down at his watch – ‘forty-two minutes before I need to interact with my project or the whole sample will be wasted and I’ll have to start again.’

  ‘A lot of folks milling about right now, Teddy. Best we talk about this at the meeting tonight.’

  I heard my name called again by another voice. Charlie, just emerging from the building, was coming my way. ‘If you’ll excuse us, Teddy.’ Grabbing my elbow, Charlie steered me away from the others.

  ‘I’m going to send everyone home and ask them to come in as early as possible tomorrow morning.’

  ‘We’re going to lose a whole day? Why?’

  ‘There are dozens of rats in there, Libby. They’re considering using an aerial poison to make sure they’ve gotten them all.’

  ‘A poison gas? What kind? And what will it do to our equipment? Our samples?’

  ‘Apparently, I don’t have a need to know what they are thinking about using. Anyway, they haven’t made a firm decision on that one way or another. The supervisor assured me that everything would be sealed up first and the lab would be sealed from the rest of the building. As I said, though, they’re not sure if it is needed. The supervisor explained that it would only be necessary if they find any evidence of nesting and thus far they haven’t, which is good news on a couple of fronts.’

  ‘No nesting means no colonizing which means they have not been present for much time at all?’ I asked.

  ‘Exactly, as well as minimal damage and contamination,’ Charlie said with a nod. ‘But there’s also bad news.’

  ‘Of course, there is. It means they were introduced by human hand, right? Has Crenshaw been informed of that?’

  Charlie laughed. ‘The super said that Crenshaw is too busy decrying the idiocy of the lab personnel to listen right now. He said in an hour or two he should be certain of his conclusion. Then and only then, will he face down Crenshaw.’

  ‘I can’t say I blame him for that. So, if he’ll be done in an hour or two, why can’t we just wait him out and then get back to work.’

  ‘Rats are very efficient masters of destruction,’ Charlie said with a sigh. ‘They’ve spotted damage to cabinets, walls and electrical wiring. Electricians and carpenters are coming in once the exterminators clear out. But if the death squad decides to fumigate, they’ll need to clear the air in the labs first. In that case, the repair teams won’t get in until tomorrow.’

  Seeing Teddy and others head back through their lab entrance, I pointed it out to Charlie. ‘Looks like they don’t have a problem like we do. Any indications of similar situations anywhere else?’

  ‘Not that I’ve heard about. But reportedly K-25 is working round the clock, seven days a week right now so it would be unlikely that anyone could pull it off over there.’

  ‘Do you know what they’re doing in K-25? What makes their work more pressing than ours?’

  ‘That, I don’t know. I know it’s different but have no idea of how it differs. Well, let’s spread out and spread the word before our guys start getting too impatient with waiting.’

  Fifteen minutes later I looked around and saw no one from our lab still lingering outside the building except for me and Charlie. Charlie offered me a ride back home but I waved him off. I needed to think and walking always helped.

  The fresh tang of spring in the air did little to ease my anxiety as I headed home. An indisputable and unsettling fact pushed its way into dominance in my thoughts. If the fire and the rats were both deliberate acts to stall our progress, then the person responsible had to be someone who worked with me. Someone I knew well. An individual working in my lab. But who?

  We only had one new member working here. Stan had joined us a couple of weeks after Marvin’s murder by members of the spy ring. We’d discussed bringing him into the Walking Molecules. Consensus was that he’d be a valuable and enjoyable member of our little group, but paranoia had a firm grip on some of our members making us decide to give it a little more time before we extended an invitation. Tom had been with us since the beginning and had just suffered a loss. That did make him vulnerable to acting out of character, but he was at his father’s funeral in Pennsylvania and out of the picture.

  A couple of other men in our lab were strongly suspected of being recruited to report back to the authorities about the
ir co-workers. They never questioned authority. It seemed as if they would be the last to take any subversive action. Was it possible for something to happen to one of them causing that person to sour on the whole system?

  Maybe. More likely, it was someone I trusted. A person no one would suspect. It could be any one of us. The only person I could vouch for with any certainty was myself. That was a lonely place to dwell.

  SIX

  I saw a package nestled against my door. The experience with the anonymous gift of mittens that had been left on my doorstep before made me wary. I went up the steps slowly, holding my breath, until I saw the return address. Aunt Dorothy. I grabbed the box, hustled it inside, sat down on the rug, cutting the parcel string, tossing it in the air. G.G. snatched it before it hit the floor and scampered off to examine it in privacy. I tore at the wrapping, praying there was coffee and chocolate inside.

  And there was. That and four new books I hadn’t read: A Bell for Adano by John Hersey, The Razor’s Edge by Somerset Maugham, Earth and High Heaven by Gwethalyn Graham and the one I had requested, Dragon Seed by Pearl S. Buck. I pulled out the letter that accompanied the goodies.

  Dearest Libby,

  I know you asked for just one of these volumes but when I went to the bookstore, there was a sale. I couldn’t resist. I hope you enjoy them all.

  I clutched the letter to my chest. How could I possibly not love Aunt Dorothy? Just seeing her very recognizable handwriting always filled me with warmth and fondness. I pulled her note away from my body and continued to read.

  I traveled down to Richmond during my Easter break to visit your mother at the Virginia State Penitentiary. What a dismal, gloomy place! Before I even saw Annabelle, I entertained serious doubts that she could survive twenty years in that place. After she walked out, I knew she wouldn’t.