The Black Stone
by Robert Urbanek
First Edition Copyright © 1995 by Robert Urbanek. Revised Edition © 2022 by Robert Urbanek. All rights reserved.
The Black Stone was originally conceived in 1991 as a screenplay with a suggested cast of Marina Sirtis as Neva Deumas, Denzel Washington as David Compton, and Lindsay Crouse as Dr. Leslie Carney.
The characters and events in this story occupy "clones" of the master universe. See “The Quantum Physics of Time Travel” by David Deutsch and Michael Lockwood, Scientific American, pages 68-74, March 1994.
by Robert Urbanek
First Edition Copyright © 1995 by Robert Urbanek. Revised Edition © 2022 by Robert Urbanek. All rights reserved.
The Black Stone was originally conceived in 1991 as a screenplay with a suggested cast of Marina Sirtis as Neva Deumas, Denzel Washington as David Compton, and Lindsay Crouse as Dr. Leslie Carney.
The characters and events in this story occupy "clones" of the master universe. See “The Quantum Physics of Time Travel” by David Deutsch and Michael Lockwood, Scientific American, pages 68-74, March 1994.
Prologue
In the courtyard of the Haram Mosque, thousands of worshippers in white robes circle a cubic building: the Kaaba, the principal shrine of the Islamic world. The building measures approximately 13.1 meters tall, with sides measuring 11.03 meters by 12.86 meters, and is covered by black silken drapery decorated with gold embroidery. The hem of the cloth, pinned a few feet up the building sides, exposes rough-hewn, gray stone blocks. Pilgrims jostle for the opportunity to kiss the Black Stone embedded in the eastern corner. There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His Messenger.
A camera, invention of Western infidels, reveals a secret of the circumambulation: Time-exposed film captures the worshippers as a swirling circle of particles.
In Batavia, Illinois, scientists, and engineers also call to God through a swirl of particles. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, known as Fermilab, is located on a 6,800-acre site about 35 miles west of Chicago.
At ground level, the scene is dominated by the 16-story Robert Rathbun Wilson Hall, its cathedral walls proclaiming the supremacy of both Christianity and the scientific method. However, seen from above, the building is but a pea at the edge of a plate, circled by a four-mile ring that houses a powerful particle accelerator, the Tevatron. Twenty feet beneath the earth’s surface, 1,000 superconducting magnets in the ring tunnel accelerate protons to nearly one trillion electron volts. The swirling particles are focused to collide with antiprotons to produce short-lived subatomic particles: quarks and leptons. Scientists believe that the relationships and behavior of these particles may reveal the Supreme Design of the universe.
The Kaaba reveals matter; the Tevatron reveals spirit. Fiction reveals Truth. She is a dark goddess dancing in the shadows. She wears a thousand veils and whispers in metaphors.
In the courtyard of the Haram Mosque, thousands of worshippers in white robes circle a cubic building: the Kaaba, the principal shrine of the Islamic world. The building measures approximately 13.1 meters tall, with sides measuring 11.03 meters by 12.86 meters, and is covered by black silken drapery decorated with gold embroidery. The hem of the cloth, pinned a few feet up the building sides, exposes rough-hewn, gray stone blocks. Pilgrims jostle for the opportunity to kiss the Black Stone embedded in the eastern corner. There is no God but God, and Mohammed is His Messenger.
A camera, invention of Western infidels, reveals a secret of the circumambulation: Time-exposed film captures the worshippers as a swirling circle of particles.
In Batavia, Illinois, scientists, and engineers also call to God through a swirl of particles. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, known as Fermilab, is located on a 6,800-acre site about 35 miles west of Chicago.
At ground level, the scene is dominated by the 16-story Robert Rathbun Wilson Hall, its cathedral walls proclaiming the supremacy of both Christianity and the scientific method. However, seen from above, the building is but a pea at the edge of a plate, circled by a four-mile ring that houses a powerful particle accelerator, the Tevatron. Twenty feet beneath the earth’s surface, 1,000 superconducting magnets in the ring tunnel accelerate protons to nearly one trillion electron volts. The swirling particles are focused to collide with antiprotons to produce short-lived subatomic particles: quarks and leptons. Scientists believe that the relationships and behavior of these particles may reveal the Supreme Design of the universe.
The Kaaba reveals matter; the Tevatron reveals spirit. Fiction reveals Truth. She is a dark goddess dancing in the shadows. She wears a thousand veils and whispers in metaphors.
Chapter 1
April 1990. Dismal browns become creeping grays of the Iraqi night. Hills soldiered by gnarled, stunted trees descend to a plain mined with thorny shrubs and partitioned by a two-lane highway leading to a mud-colored compound. Only the second story has windows. The first floor conceals burned and bruised flesh, broken teeth, and open sores. Two guards walk beside an electrified fence topped with coils of razor wire.
At two windows, ghostly blurs move behind glazed panes. A third window is bordered with cinched and pleated drapes: a hint of humanity, even female design.
Inside, a flickering glow betrays a Western lifestyle. A big-screen TV, sound turned down to a buzz, blinks light on a king-size canopy bed. A military jacket, burdened with medals and epaulets, is draped over a Louis XIV chair. Scale models of a Russian tank and a SCUD missile launcher, a jewelry box, and several photos of Saddam Hussein and family members crowd the top of a 12-drawer cherry dresser.
The voluptuous and naked Neva Deumas lies on one side of the bed. Burgundy lipstick highlights wide, Greek lips. Sweat on her shoulders moistens wild rivers of black hair that run to her breasts. This woman’s most considered illusion, age, would place her in the mid-30s. On TV, an astronaut in a space pod watches the sun’s rays burst over the edge of a giant black stone. When the movie began, Saddam had pounded inside Neva to the booming kettledrums of Also Sprach Zarathustra. In his plans for the Iraq Reich, missiles of war will be followed by missiles in space. If there is a black stone out there, he will find it.
Neva lifts herself on one elbow and looks down at the dreaming Saddam. Within the dream, Saddam opens his eyes. He is lying on a cot in a small white tent and is wearing a simple military uniform. His hand reaches to his waist; the gun is not there. A section of cloth at the opening of the tent flaps in the breeze. Saddam gets up and walks outside. Twenty meters away is a Kaaba-sized structure covered by a plain black cloth. Coal-fisted clouds batter the sky. A wind blows the cloth away to reveal a solid black stone monolith.
Hussein approaches the stone and kneels. He kisses and touches the stone, which leaves a black stain on his fingertips and lips. He wipes them on his uniform. He hears a hissing sound and backs away. A black snake emerges, straight as a rod, from the center of the side of the stone facing him. It falls to the ground and turns into a sword.
Both sword and stone have a dull black finish—more like a fireplace poker than a weapon. Saddam tentatively touches the sword then picks it up. He looks around for whatever foe might appear, but there is none. He turns again to the stone. He touches the sword to the stone where the snake had emerged. A small white, glowing, sizzling crack appears. He taps the sword to the crack. It grows larger and louder. He raises his arm back and strikes the stone with his full strength. The glowing fissure breaks across the entire length of the stone. Two more fissures bolt down other sides of the cube.
The stone is breaking into three pieces. As the pieces fall outward, there appears in the center of the fragments a round black stone a foot in diameter and laced with glowing white-hot fissures. Among the broken black pieces are five other black snakes, which quickly slither away into the desert.
From the round stone, a dark gray tornado grows into the sky. The swirling, grumbling wind becomes swirling cloth, then wind again. Shoulders billow and sweep the sky with sleeves of tattered clouds. Hundreds of shriveled corpses appear, flotsam in the churning air.
Hussein smiles at the spectacle he has created. He knows what it means.
⸎ August 1990. Iraq occupies Kuwait.
The morning light softly illuminates Saddam’s bedroom. The burdened uniform again drapes the chair. On the dresser, the tank and missile launcher have been joined by a new toy: a model of the cube in the dream. It’s six inches high and painted black. A pencil-like black dowel, a nub at its end, extends an inch out of the cube. The bed is empty.
Neva, sipping coffee and reading a copy of Le Monde held to her face, sits at an umbrella-covered patio table in the compound courtyard. There is a pot of coffee, an extra cup, and a cordless phone on the table.
Saddam walks up and takes the seat opposite her. His tan uniform complements Neva’s sage green romper. He pours coffee for himself and then notices Neva’s newspaper.
“Where did you get that garbage you’re reading?” Neva is not intimidated. “We still have some friends at some embassies.” Saddam reaches over and pulls her paper down. “Look at me when I speak to you.” She eyes him impassively. “The people you call friends would stab us in the back. Your only friends are here, with my people.”
“If you say so.”
A male servant approaches with a large covered serving tray and a folding stand. He opens the stand and sets down the tray. Under the cover is Saddam’s breakfast: a plate of omelet, pita bread and large chunks of lamb. The servant puts the plate on the table and retreats “Our enemies are fools. If they try to take Kuwait back, I will crush them like ants under a stone.”
“Your black stone?” “Yes, the black stone. The stone changes everything.” Neva replies in a monotone. “That sounds very exciting.” She resumes reading the newspaper. Exasperated by her lack of interest, Saddam flicks his eyes impatiently around the courtyard. Near the far end of the yard is a seven-foot metal post embedded in the ground. On the back side of the post are metal knobs, clamps, and loops to which ropes or other items can be attached.
Saddam picks up the phone and dials a three-number extension. “Bring out the first prisoner.” Neva doesn’t look up. “Isn’t it a little early in the day for this?”
“It is never too early to deal with traitors.” Hussein speaks into the phone. “What is the charge?” He turns to Neva. “A spy. He has seen too much. We can fix that.”
From the compound wing at the end of the courtyard emerge two soldiers escorting a blindfolded Iraqi civilian. The prisoner, weak and disoriented, trips and drags his feet. The soldiers lift and pull him along. When they reach the stake, the soldiers tie the prisoner’s hands behind the post. One soldier removes the blindfold, the other pinches the prisoner’s nose. As the prisoner gasps for air, a soldier gags his mouth with the blindfold and ties the cloth around the stake. Another rag is tied around the prisoner’s forehead and attached to the posts, immobilizing his head. One of the soldiers removes a small, flat shoe polish jar from his jacket pocket. He opens the jar, which is filled with a jellied mixture of animal blood and fat. He scoops some of the gel with his fingers and smears it on the prisoner’s eyelids.
Saddam is wolfing down his breakfast.
Next to appear from the compound is the falconer. His dark caftan is topped with a checkered kaffiyeh that barely shades a dark, sun-beaten face. A hooded peregrine falcon sits on the gloved wrist of his extended right arm. Saddam looks up from his plate toward the falconer. Neva raises her newspaper to conceal her view of the bird.
The falconer removes the hood. The black raptor eyes make a quick, jerky pan of the courtyard and momentarily focus on Saddam and Neva. The falcon then glares at the prisoner. Streams of perspiration flow down the prisoner’s face. He takes desperate gulps of air through his nose. The falcon takes flight. Claws grab the scalp. For a few seconds, the prisoner hopes for a mere indignity; the bird will shit on his head. Then the beak swoops down.
Look with your heart, not with your eyes.
⸎ Neva, wearing pitch-black, wraparound glasses, loads suitcases into the trunk of a large black Mercedes in one of the compound’s three garages. She drives to the gate and stops at the guard booth. The guard peers down at her. “I am going into the city for some shopping.” The guard is satisfied with the explanation if not with his position on the sexual feeding chain: The men with the most power get the beautiful women. The gate opens.
⸎ Still wearing the sunglasses, Neva stands in the boarding gate line at Saddam International Airport in Baghdad. She reaches into her purse and pulls out three passports with different names: Seka Linh (India), Ofra al-‘Uzza (Jordan) and Neva Deumas (Greece). She keeps the Jordanian passport and puts the others back in her purse.
She shows the passport to the guard at the gate. He surveys her figure and wishes he had pulled customs duty. He could have placed heroin in her luggage then offered to resolve the problem in a private office. But who is he kidding? A woman that beautiful already belongs to a general or a rich businessman. Neva casually reaches her hand up to her glasses but doesn’t remove them. The guard lets her pass.
That evening, Saddam walks briskly down the hall, peering in each room, switching on each light. His right hand grips a riding crop. “Neva? Neva? Neva!” When the search proves futile, he goes into his office and summons security guards. Arif and Tahir, two no-neck thugs wearing black suits and spotted ties, approach his desk. Saddam hands them photos of Neva. “Find her.”
April 1990. Dismal browns become creeping grays of the Iraqi night. Hills soldiered by gnarled, stunted trees descend to a plain mined with thorny shrubs and partitioned by a two-lane highway leading to a mud-colored compound. Only the second story has windows. The first floor conceals burned and bruised flesh, broken teeth, and open sores. Two guards walk beside an electrified fence topped with coils of razor wire.
At two windows, ghostly blurs move behind glazed panes. A third window is bordered with cinched and pleated drapes: a hint of humanity, even female design.
Inside, a flickering glow betrays a Western lifestyle. A big-screen TV, sound turned down to a buzz, blinks light on a king-size canopy bed. A military jacket, burdened with medals and epaulets, is draped over a Louis XIV chair. Scale models of a Russian tank and a SCUD missile launcher, a jewelry box, and several photos of Saddam Hussein and family members crowd the top of a 12-drawer cherry dresser.
The voluptuous and naked Neva Deumas lies on one side of the bed. Burgundy lipstick highlights wide, Greek lips. Sweat on her shoulders moistens wild rivers of black hair that run to her breasts. This woman’s most considered illusion, age, would place her in the mid-30s. On TV, an astronaut in a space pod watches the sun’s rays burst over the edge of a giant black stone. When the movie began, Saddam had pounded inside Neva to the booming kettledrums of Also Sprach Zarathustra. In his plans for the Iraq Reich, missiles of war will be followed by missiles in space. If there is a black stone out there, he will find it.
Neva lifts herself on one elbow and looks down at the dreaming Saddam. Within the dream, Saddam opens his eyes. He is lying on a cot in a small white tent and is wearing a simple military uniform. His hand reaches to his waist; the gun is not there. A section of cloth at the opening of the tent flaps in the breeze. Saddam gets up and walks outside. Twenty meters away is a Kaaba-sized structure covered by a plain black cloth. Coal-fisted clouds batter the sky. A wind blows the cloth away to reveal a solid black stone monolith.
Hussein approaches the stone and kneels. He kisses and touches the stone, which leaves a black stain on his fingertips and lips. He wipes them on his uniform. He hears a hissing sound and backs away. A black snake emerges, straight as a rod, from the center of the side of the stone facing him. It falls to the ground and turns into a sword.
Both sword and stone have a dull black finish—more like a fireplace poker than a weapon. Saddam tentatively touches the sword then picks it up. He looks around for whatever foe might appear, but there is none. He turns again to the stone. He touches the sword to the stone where the snake had emerged. A small white, glowing, sizzling crack appears. He taps the sword to the crack. It grows larger and louder. He raises his arm back and strikes the stone with his full strength. The glowing fissure breaks across the entire length of the stone. Two more fissures bolt down other sides of the cube.
The stone is breaking into three pieces. As the pieces fall outward, there appears in the center of the fragments a round black stone a foot in diameter and laced with glowing white-hot fissures. Among the broken black pieces are five other black snakes, which quickly slither away into the desert.
From the round stone, a dark gray tornado grows into the sky. The swirling, grumbling wind becomes swirling cloth, then wind again. Shoulders billow and sweep the sky with sleeves of tattered clouds. Hundreds of shriveled corpses appear, flotsam in the churning air.
Hussein smiles at the spectacle he has created. He knows what it means.
⸎ August 1990. Iraq occupies Kuwait.
The morning light softly illuminates Saddam’s bedroom. The burdened uniform again drapes the chair. On the dresser, the tank and missile launcher have been joined by a new toy: a model of the cube in the dream. It’s six inches high and painted black. A pencil-like black dowel, a nub at its end, extends an inch out of the cube. The bed is empty.
Neva, sipping coffee and reading a copy of Le Monde held to her face, sits at an umbrella-covered patio table in the compound courtyard. There is a pot of coffee, an extra cup, and a cordless phone on the table.
Saddam walks up and takes the seat opposite her. His tan uniform complements Neva’s sage green romper. He pours coffee for himself and then notices Neva’s newspaper.
“Where did you get that garbage you’re reading?” Neva is not intimidated. “We still have some friends at some embassies.” Saddam reaches over and pulls her paper down. “Look at me when I speak to you.” She eyes him impassively. “The people you call friends would stab us in the back. Your only friends are here, with my people.”
“If you say so.”
A male servant approaches with a large covered serving tray and a folding stand. He opens the stand and sets down the tray. Under the cover is Saddam’s breakfast: a plate of omelet, pita bread and large chunks of lamb. The servant puts the plate on the table and retreats “Our enemies are fools. If they try to take Kuwait back, I will crush them like ants under a stone.”
“Your black stone?” “Yes, the black stone. The stone changes everything.” Neva replies in a monotone. “That sounds very exciting.” She resumes reading the newspaper. Exasperated by her lack of interest, Saddam flicks his eyes impatiently around the courtyard. Near the far end of the yard is a seven-foot metal post embedded in the ground. On the back side of the post are metal knobs, clamps, and loops to which ropes or other items can be attached.
Saddam picks up the phone and dials a three-number extension. “Bring out the first prisoner.” Neva doesn’t look up. “Isn’t it a little early in the day for this?”
“It is never too early to deal with traitors.” Hussein speaks into the phone. “What is the charge?” He turns to Neva. “A spy. He has seen too much. We can fix that.”
From the compound wing at the end of the courtyard emerge two soldiers escorting a blindfolded Iraqi civilian. The prisoner, weak and disoriented, trips and drags his feet. The soldiers lift and pull him along. When they reach the stake, the soldiers tie the prisoner’s hands behind the post. One soldier removes the blindfold, the other pinches the prisoner’s nose. As the prisoner gasps for air, a soldier gags his mouth with the blindfold and ties the cloth around the stake. Another rag is tied around the prisoner’s forehead and attached to the posts, immobilizing his head. One of the soldiers removes a small, flat shoe polish jar from his jacket pocket. He opens the jar, which is filled with a jellied mixture of animal blood and fat. He scoops some of the gel with his fingers and smears it on the prisoner’s eyelids.
Saddam is wolfing down his breakfast.
Next to appear from the compound is the falconer. His dark caftan is topped with a checkered kaffiyeh that barely shades a dark, sun-beaten face. A hooded peregrine falcon sits on the gloved wrist of his extended right arm. Saddam looks up from his plate toward the falconer. Neva raises her newspaper to conceal her view of the bird.
The falconer removes the hood. The black raptor eyes make a quick, jerky pan of the courtyard and momentarily focus on Saddam and Neva. The falcon then glares at the prisoner. Streams of perspiration flow down the prisoner’s face. He takes desperate gulps of air through his nose. The falcon takes flight. Claws grab the scalp. For a few seconds, the prisoner hopes for a mere indignity; the bird will shit on his head. Then the beak swoops down.
Look with your heart, not with your eyes.
⸎ Neva, wearing pitch-black, wraparound glasses, loads suitcases into the trunk of a large black Mercedes in one of the compound’s three garages. She drives to the gate and stops at the guard booth. The guard peers down at her. “I am going into the city for some shopping.” The guard is satisfied with the explanation if not with his position on the sexual feeding chain: The men with the most power get the beautiful women. The gate opens.
⸎ Still wearing the sunglasses, Neva stands in the boarding gate line at Saddam International Airport in Baghdad. She reaches into her purse and pulls out three passports with different names: Seka Linh (India), Ofra al-‘Uzza (Jordan) and Neva Deumas (Greece). She keeps the Jordanian passport and puts the others back in her purse.
She shows the passport to the guard at the gate. He surveys her figure and wishes he had pulled customs duty. He could have placed heroin in her luggage then offered to resolve the problem in a private office. But who is he kidding? A woman that beautiful already belongs to a general or a rich businessman. Neva casually reaches her hand up to her glasses but doesn’t remove them. The guard lets her pass.
That evening, Saddam walks briskly down the hall, peering in each room, switching on each light. His right hand grips a riding crop. “Neva? Neva? Neva!” When the search proves futile, he goes into his office and summons security guards. Arif and Tahir, two no-neck thugs wearing black suits and spotted ties, approach his desk. Saddam hands them photos of Neva. “Find her.”
Chapter 2
As David Compton sees it, London is the fading capital of the white man’s greatest colonial empire. A tabloid royalty still draws the Anglophile tourists but offers nothing of interest to a 40-year-old African American male. He heard that the only decent food is found at breakfast or Indian restaurants.
David lives in his head, barely registering the change in climate and the jump across eight time zones from Vacaville, California. He takes cursory notice of the steeples, brick walls and cobblestone surfaces in his taxi trip from Heathrow to the hotel and concludes they depict a reasonable facsimile of the London he has seen in movies and TV shows.
He notes that his visual perception of London is filtered and altered by both the cab window and the plastic lenses of his metal-frame glasses. Socks, shoes, the cab floor, and the road separate him from English soil, which, in all probability, he will never physically touch during his entire stay, unless he were to walk to a park, stoop by a bush and stick his finger in the dirt.
His skepticism of travel industry propaganda extends to other forms of recreation, particularly certain white-dominated activities. For example, on a 48-hour ski trip to a crowded resort, a downhill skier may spend only 36 minutes in the act of skiing, for a recreation-to-time ratio of 1.25 to 100.
He holds golf in similar contempt. Four white males at an average hole hoard an area equal to four football fields. While the other three wait, one of the males challenges his cardiovascular system by swinging a lightweight club at a puny white ball.
A comparable area of basketball courts—not requiring fertilizer, seven times as much pesticides as farmland, immense quantities of scarce fresh water, and the constant attention of grounds keepers—would provide for the recreational needs of more than a hundred black males, with green space left over. As consumers of recreational resources, white people are greedy, wasteful, and obsolete.
⸎ Travel is packing, waiting in line, fearing a mixed connection. International travel seems an even greater annoyance if you don’t understand the prices or the language. And David didn’t like what he had heard about some European hotels; you don’t even get your own bathroom.
When management asked him to take this trip, he begged off, explaining that he didn’t have a passport. He was ushered into Human Resources, asked to fill out a passport application and pose for a photo. Two weeks later he had his papers. The Magellan Council had clout. Yesterday, he was sitting at a computer monitor, a senior research analyst retrieving data on the Middle East. Now, intelligence agents were asking him to help read the mind of Saddam Hussein. His comfortable detachment—ain’t no big thing, in a hundred years nobody will remember what I did here—was being seriously challenged.
⸎ Military Intelligence (MI6) Headquarters, London. The interrogation room is bare except for a plain, wood-laminate table and two padded metal office chairs. A mirror extends the full length of one wall.
Seated at one side of the table is David, wearing a gray, herringbone sports coat, charcoal slacks, white shirt, and a burgundy paisley tie—paisley being his best effort at flamboyance. Neva, in a hunter-green jacket that conceals her curves, sits across from him. David pulls from a folder an artist’s rendering of Hussein gazing at a snake emerging from a black stone. “Does this look right to you?”
“Well, it’s his dream. But yes, that would seem to be it.” She lets her eyes meet David’s. “Are they treating you well?”
“Treating me?”
“You’re an American, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Why her interest in him? David decides to play along. “Yes, they’re treating me well. They booked me at the Sterling. What about you?”
“I don’t stay in one place long. I fly around a lot. Do you have anybody special in the States?” Not very subtle, David notes. Could this really lead anywhere? It would be like a cop dating a suspect. “Just my mother.”
“Are you close to your mother?” Wants to know if he’s a momma’s boy. “Well, you know how it can be with mothers. I suppose she’s closer to me than I am to her.”
On the other side of the mirror, two men watch David and Neva. Major John Hedley, MI6 field director, is a gray-haired, distinguished looking man in his early sixties. “Extinguished-looking” is his self-effacing description. He is not impatient with David and Neva’s small talk; every word and nuance are clues to the truth. Hedley is taking a chance on Compton, an academic type inexperienced in interrogation, but their profile showed he had a non-threatening, non-judgmental demeanor that seemed to draw women out. It was worth a try; this Deumas woman had not made a single spontaneous remark in three previous interviews.
Colonel Merrill Latham, a stiff-necked mid-forties member of the Royal Air Force, views the proceedings with distain. Is this what today’s intelligence gathering is about: a nignog intellectual talking with Saddam Hussein’s whore about his mother? A nignog consultant. Latham sneered at the word. Consultant: a fancy name for a stupid-ass civilian. The observation room is stuffy and warm. Latham’s soft, puffy face turns greasy at any temperature above 70 degrees Fahrenheit. He wishes he could make that face as firm as his disciplined body—a chiseled chin, strong cheekbones, a full head of blonde hair—an Aryan poster boy for the Luftwaffe.
What is he doing in London anyway? London: the distended belly of the bureaucracy. He should be in Saudi Arabia, preparing for the war against Saddam, testing his mettle against the unforgiving sun and sand. He remembered the Falkland Islands War and the commando raid against an Argentine air base. His fists pulled a garrote around a sentry’s neck. A different memory came in his dreams. He used a soft cord, not a razor wire. They were naked. The sentry’s muscles strained against death, spasms in his butt squeezing Latham’s cock.
He had a hard time getting rid of those queer fantasies. He blamed it on the waiting. The waiting between wars. When minds and bodies get soft. Hedley interrupts the erotic drift. “So, what do you think of her?” Latham constricts his thoughts and hopes his penis quickly follows, and clutches at the first rational thought. “I think she’s wasting our time.”
In the next room, a matron empties Neva’s purse on a table and examines the contents. She makes copies of the three passports at a photocopying machine. As she finishes, there is a knock at the door and David and Neva enter. The matron hands Neva her refilled purse. “I apologize for their intrusions,” says David. Neva smiles. “There are more appropriate times and places to examine private things.”
⸎ David lies naked under the sheets, contemplating a photocopy of Neva’s Greek passport. The London hotel room has Victorian-era furnishings: dark, floral wallpaper, a brick-red carpet, and a pair of fox-hunting prints. On another wall, smoke rises from two burning sailing ships: “Peace —Burial at Sea,” an impressionist watercolor by Joseph Mallord Turner. He has his own bathroom.
David remembers Neva’s direct gaze and the “private things” comment, but their conversation about his mother—“I suppose she’s closer to me than I am to her”—cools his ardor and reminds him of another instance of motheritis interruptus.
About a year ago he had met a woman from Tennessee at Jack-in-the-Box. He was reading a newspaper article about panhandlers when a twentysomething white woman came up and said she knew had to tell which beggars deserved Christian charity. There was something about her arms: seemed like they were two inches too short. They talked and he took her phone number; he liked women who took the initiative.
That evening he came to her dumpy apartment, sinking in a springless, faded sofa as he waited for her to get ready. In a corner, she had built a little shrine to the Virgin Mary—an odd bit of Catholicism for a born-again Christian. They ate Chinese then went to his apartment. They sat on his gray leather love seat, watching TV. She put her hand on his leg. He started to toy with her nipples. She said she liked the way he did that; not every guy was so expert. They went to bed. The sex was okay.
Second date was dinner and a movie. She talked about her new job at the bookstore. She had chided the manager about having dirty magazines--Penthouse and Playboy—on the racks. David couldn’t figure her out: a prude who slept with him on the first date. Everything she believed said no, everything she did said yes. Forget male logic, leave well enough alone. They were about to go to bed when the phone rang. It was his mother. Paramedics were at her house. She was having a heart attack. She told him to come.
David drove his date home. She made some comment about his mother running his life. Then he sped the forty miles down Interstate 80 to the hospital.
The worst-case scenario unfolds in his mind. They will rush his mother into surgery. He will drive each day to visit her in the hospital then use up his vacation time to wait on her hand and foot at home. She will yell at him for not knowing how to cook. Her condition will deteriorate. He will have to move in. His evenings will be spent fixing her dinner, washing dishes, changing bed pans. His independent life gone, he will descend into a dark, Norman Bates depression. He realized those were selfish thoughts. Was that guilt he felt or fear that a black mark was being recorded on his soul . . . if he had one? The exit ramp broke his freeway stream of consciousness.
The doctor approached him in the emergency room. “Your mother has heart failure.” So, the worst was true. “It’s a less serious type of heart failure,” the doctor continued. Her enlarged heart was acting up. They would just observe her overnight and perhaps change her medication. David’s alarm changed to numbed relief while amused contempt bounced through his head. Did this idiot doctor know what the words “heart failure” mean to the average person? Failure. Not working. Stopped dead.
But there was no clue of those feelings on David’s face. The waiting game had taken its toll. Waiting for the right woman. Waiting for his real life to begin. Waiting gave him time to think, to anticipate every contingency, to defuse every dangerous emotion. Maybe he was just getting old and no longer had the energy to sustain any major anxieties. He wasn’t sure of the results: inner serenity or a dead heart. David did not know it then, but the waiting had a purpose. A seed was slowly germinating in his life. When it sprouted, the careful, measured life would be replaced by chaos.
He put off giving Woman with Short Arms another call. A few weeks later he saw her at the Solano Mall, squired by a short, muscular male of easygoing, blue-collar manners. A genuine dude.
⸎ In a London alley at 1 a.m., Latham hands a folder to Leon Mars, a trim American in his mid-forties, with a neat, barely-beyond-stubble beard. Mars opens the folder and scans the drawings of Hussein’s dream with a penlight. “Who else is on this case?” asks Mars. “Two Americans: David Compton, a black think tank consultant and a Colonel Mark Winter.”
“Winter is a clown,” says Mars. Latham senses Mars’ impatience with the pub-crawl English. Mars is fax, pager, cellular phone—instant knowledge, instant action.
As David Compton sees it, London is the fading capital of the white man’s greatest colonial empire. A tabloid royalty still draws the Anglophile tourists but offers nothing of interest to a 40-year-old African American male. He heard that the only decent food is found at breakfast or Indian restaurants.
David lives in his head, barely registering the change in climate and the jump across eight time zones from Vacaville, California. He takes cursory notice of the steeples, brick walls and cobblestone surfaces in his taxi trip from Heathrow to the hotel and concludes they depict a reasonable facsimile of the London he has seen in movies and TV shows.
He notes that his visual perception of London is filtered and altered by both the cab window and the plastic lenses of his metal-frame glasses. Socks, shoes, the cab floor, and the road separate him from English soil, which, in all probability, he will never physically touch during his entire stay, unless he were to walk to a park, stoop by a bush and stick his finger in the dirt.
His skepticism of travel industry propaganda extends to other forms of recreation, particularly certain white-dominated activities. For example, on a 48-hour ski trip to a crowded resort, a downhill skier may spend only 36 minutes in the act of skiing, for a recreation-to-time ratio of 1.25 to 100.
He holds golf in similar contempt. Four white males at an average hole hoard an area equal to four football fields. While the other three wait, one of the males challenges his cardiovascular system by swinging a lightweight club at a puny white ball.
A comparable area of basketball courts—not requiring fertilizer, seven times as much pesticides as farmland, immense quantities of scarce fresh water, and the constant attention of grounds keepers—would provide for the recreational needs of more than a hundred black males, with green space left over. As consumers of recreational resources, white people are greedy, wasteful, and obsolete.
⸎ Travel is packing, waiting in line, fearing a mixed connection. International travel seems an even greater annoyance if you don’t understand the prices or the language. And David didn’t like what he had heard about some European hotels; you don’t even get your own bathroom.
When management asked him to take this trip, he begged off, explaining that he didn’t have a passport. He was ushered into Human Resources, asked to fill out a passport application and pose for a photo. Two weeks later he had his papers. The Magellan Council had clout. Yesterday, he was sitting at a computer monitor, a senior research analyst retrieving data on the Middle East. Now, intelligence agents were asking him to help read the mind of Saddam Hussein. His comfortable detachment—ain’t no big thing, in a hundred years nobody will remember what I did here—was being seriously challenged.
⸎ Military Intelligence (MI6) Headquarters, London. The interrogation room is bare except for a plain, wood-laminate table and two padded metal office chairs. A mirror extends the full length of one wall.
Seated at one side of the table is David, wearing a gray, herringbone sports coat, charcoal slacks, white shirt, and a burgundy paisley tie—paisley being his best effort at flamboyance. Neva, in a hunter-green jacket that conceals her curves, sits across from him. David pulls from a folder an artist’s rendering of Hussein gazing at a snake emerging from a black stone. “Does this look right to you?”
“Well, it’s his dream. But yes, that would seem to be it.” She lets her eyes meet David’s. “Are they treating you well?”
“Treating me?”
“You’re an American, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Why her interest in him? David decides to play along. “Yes, they’re treating me well. They booked me at the Sterling. What about you?”
“I don’t stay in one place long. I fly around a lot. Do you have anybody special in the States?” Not very subtle, David notes. Could this really lead anywhere? It would be like a cop dating a suspect. “Just my mother.”
“Are you close to your mother?” Wants to know if he’s a momma’s boy. “Well, you know how it can be with mothers. I suppose she’s closer to me than I am to her.”
On the other side of the mirror, two men watch David and Neva. Major John Hedley, MI6 field director, is a gray-haired, distinguished looking man in his early sixties. “Extinguished-looking” is his self-effacing description. He is not impatient with David and Neva’s small talk; every word and nuance are clues to the truth. Hedley is taking a chance on Compton, an academic type inexperienced in interrogation, but their profile showed he had a non-threatening, non-judgmental demeanor that seemed to draw women out. It was worth a try; this Deumas woman had not made a single spontaneous remark in three previous interviews.
Colonel Merrill Latham, a stiff-necked mid-forties member of the Royal Air Force, views the proceedings with distain. Is this what today’s intelligence gathering is about: a nignog intellectual talking with Saddam Hussein’s whore about his mother? A nignog consultant. Latham sneered at the word. Consultant: a fancy name for a stupid-ass civilian. The observation room is stuffy and warm. Latham’s soft, puffy face turns greasy at any temperature above 70 degrees Fahrenheit. He wishes he could make that face as firm as his disciplined body—a chiseled chin, strong cheekbones, a full head of blonde hair—an Aryan poster boy for the Luftwaffe.
What is he doing in London anyway? London: the distended belly of the bureaucracy. He should be in Saudi Arabia, preparing for the war against Saddam, testing his mettle against the unforgiving sun and sand. He remembered the Falkland Islands War and the commando raid against an Argentine air base. His fists pulled a garrote around a sentry’s neck. A different memory came in his dreams. He used a soft cord, not a razor wire. They were naked. The sentry’s muscles strained against death, spasms in his butt squeezing Latham’s cock.
He had a hard time getting rid of those queer fantasies. He blamed it on the waiting. The waiting between wars. When minds and bodies get soft. Hedley interrupts the erotic drift. “So, what do you think of her?” Latham constricts his thoughts and hopes his penis quickly follows, and clutches at the first rational thought. “I think she’s wasting our time.”
In the next room, a matron empties Neva’s purse on a table and examines the contents. She makes copies of the three passports at a photocopying machine. As she finishes, there is a knock at the door and David and Neva enter. The matron hands Neva her refilled purse. “I apologize for their intrusions,” says David. Neva smiles. “There are more appropriate times and places to examine private things.”
⸎ David lies naked under the sheets, contemplating a photocopy of Neva’s Greek passport. The London hotel room has Victorian-era furnishings: dark, floral wallpaper, a brick-red carpet, and a pair of fox-hunting prints. On another wall, smoke rises from two burning sailing ships: “Peace —Burial at Sea,” an impressionist watercolor by Joseph Mallord Turner. He has his own bathroom.
David remembers Neva’s direct gaze and the “private things” comment, but their conversation about his mother—“I suppose she’s closer to me than I am to her”—cools his ardor and reminds him of another instance of motheritis interruptus.
About a year ago he had met a woman from Tennessee at Jack-in-the-Box. He was reading a newspaper article about panhandlers when a twentysomething white woman came up and said she knew had to tell which beggars deserved Christian charity. There was something about her arms: seemed like they were two inches too short. They talked and he took her phone number; he liked women who took the initiative.
That evening he came to her dumpy apartment, sinking in a springless, faded sofa as he waited for her to get ready. In a corner, she had built a little shrine to the Virgin Mary—an odd bit of Catholicism for a born-again Christian. They ate Chinese then went to his apartment. They sat on his gray leather love seat, watching TV. She put her hand on his leg. He started to toy with her nipples. She said she liked the way he did that; not every guy was so expert. They went to bed. The sex was okay.
Second date was dinner and a movie. She talked about her new job at the bookstore. She had chided the manager about having dirty magazines--Penthouse and Playboy—on the racks. David couldn’t figure her out: a prude who slept with him on the first date. Everything she believed said no, everything she did said yes. Forget male logic, leave well enough alone. They were about to go to bed when the phone rang. It was his mother. Paramedics were at her house. She was having a heart attack. She told him to come.
David drove his date home. She made some comment about his mother running his life. Then he sped the forty miles down Interstate 80 to the hospital.
The worst-case scenario unfolds in his mind. They will rush his mother into surgery. He will drive each day to visit her in the hospital then use up his vacation time to wait on her hand and foot at home. She will yell at him for not knowing how to cook. Her condition will deteriorate. He will have to move in. His evenings will be spent fixing her dinner, washing dishes, changing bed pans. His independent life gone, he will descend into a dark, Norman Bates depression. He realized those were selfish thoughts. Was that guilt he felt or fear that a black mark was being recorded on his soul . . . if he had one? The exit ramp broke his freeway stream of consciousness.
The doctor approached him in the emergency room. “Your mother has heart failure.” So, the worst was true. “It’s a less serious type of heart failure,” the doctor continued. Her enlarged heart was acting up. They would just observe her overnight and perhaps change her medication. David’s alarm changed to numbed relief while amused contempt bounced through his head. Did this idiot doctor know what the words “heart failure” mean to the average person? Failure. Not working. Stopped dead.
But there was no clue of those feelings on David’s face. The waiting game had taken its toll. Waiting for the right woman. Waiting for his real life to begin. Waiting gave him time to think, to anticipate every contingency, to defuse every dangerous emotion. Maybe he was just getting old and no longer had the energy to sustain any major anxieties. He wasn’t sure of the results: inner serenity or a dead heart. David did not know it then, but the waiting had a purpose. A seed was slowly germinating in his life. When it sprouted, the careful, measured life would be replaced by chaos.
He put off giving Woman with Short Arms another call. A few weeks later he saw her at the Solano Mall, squired by a short, muscular male of easygoing, blue-collar manners. A genuine dude.
⸎ In a London alley at 1 a.m., Latham hands a folder to Leon Mars, a trim American in his mid-forties, with a neat, barely-beyond-stubble beard. Mars opens the folder and scans the drawings of Hussein’s dream with a penlight. “Who else is on this case?” asks Mars. “Two Americans: David Compton, a black think tank consultant and a Colonel Mark Winter.”
“Winter is a clown,” says Mars. Latham senses Mars’ impatience with the pub-crawl English. Mars is fax, pager, cellular phone—instant knowledge, instant action.
Chapter 3
At the reception desk outside Major Hedley’s office sits Arlene Templeton, 62, shaving pencils with an electric sharpener. While sharp as a tack by Hedley’s standards, she has become extremely self-conscious about some slight lapses of memory and coordination. Her preparation of the meeting room was meticulous. At the large rectangular table, she had placed at each setting a cup and saucer, a note pad, a folder containing documents and a sharpened pencil.
At the center of the table is a wide silver platter containing neat stacks of scones and napkins. On a small table nearby is a pot of tea. Four men sit around the larger table: Major Hedley, Colonel Latham, David Compton and U.S. Army Colonel Mark Winter, a bulldog who fancies himself another Patton. Winter surveys the English clutter: a floor-to-ceiling shelf of leather-bound books, a small letter-writing desk, a globe on a floor stand, a copper-plated telescope pointing toward a small, draped window, and a child’s rocking horse. Hidden microphones and cameras could be anywhere.
Major Hedley speaks: “Gentlemen, Mr. David Compton is from the Magellan Council. He is a consultant on religion and mythology. I believe we can start. Miss Deumas has promised to join us in a few minutes. David and Winter reach for the scones. Winter questions these sloppy Brits. “What do you mean, ‘promised’? You are not bringing her from a safe house?”
“Miss Deumas insists on taking care of her own arrangements,” says Hedley. “The CIA would never put up with that. Why do you trust this woman? How do you know she hasn’t been sent by Saddam?”
“I believe Mr. Compton will be able to shed some light on that question.” David, about to eat his scone, puts it back down on the napkin. “I believe you have all read Ms. Deumas’s account of the dream Saddam related to her. If you could all review the items in your folder.” Latham opens his folder and shuffles through the contents: four drawings of Saddam’s dream (Saddam looking at the cloth-covered stone, the snake emerging from the stone, Hussein striking the stone with a sword, and the tornado of energy rising from the broken stone), a photograph of the Kaaba surrounded by a crowd of worshippers, and a photocopy of a news article.
David continues, “The photograph is of a building called the Kaaba, the holiest site in all of Islam. Embedded in an outside corner of this building is the Black Stone. The faithful touch and kiss this stone. The Black Stone is said to represent ‘the right hand of Allah.’ Major Hedley.” Hedley responds, “Yes, you will note the news story in your folder . . .”
Winter skims the article in his folder: a one-column, four-inch story headlined “Saddam Asks Allah for Help.”
“. . . in which Saddam is quoted as saying he will invoke ‘the right hand of Allah’ to strike down the enemies of Islam. Saddam apparently believes he can call on the power of this stone to fight us.” Winter reminds everyone that Uncle Sam is running the show. “Well, I don’t know what ‘Soddom’ thinks he has, but we’ll shove that stone up his ass.” Hedley winces at the blasphemy. “Thank you, Colonel Winter. However, as some of us will be in direct contact with the Arabs, I suggest that we practice showing greater respect for the Islamic faith.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Privately, Winter wouldn’t concede anything to Islam; not going to believe that some guy with twelve wives was a holy man. Mohammed hoarded all the babes; eleven guys didn’t get any. And since Muslims hated fags, the men left out in the cold couldn’t even fuck each other.
David hurriedly swallows a bit from his scone. “Pardon me.” He clears his throat. “It is said that a white stone fell from heaven to provide the cornerstone for the Kaaba. Across the millennia, the stone has been stained black by the impure touch of countless human beings. As you recall, in Saddam’s dream, the cube leaves black smudges on his lips and hands.” Pausing, David wipes his fingers on a napkin. “One could interpret this to mean that the black stain—the evil of generations—has now been passed to Saddam.” He added, “Admittedly, the symbolism gets a little blurred. The large Kaaba-like black cube in the dream is not the Black Stone, which is much smaller. Conflating the two and weaponizing the Black Stone might be considered a kind of blasphemy.”
⸎ In a building in Iraq, Saddam stands next to a wall of black bricks. He runs his fingers across the bricks then examines his blackened skin.
⸎ Templeton fiddles with the pencil sharpener, which seems to be broken. She looks up to see Neva enter. Templeton had seen her in the office before and had developed an instant, unprofessional distain for the woman. Neva strikes an arrogant pose in her black, curve-hugging jumpsuit. Templeton opens the bottom of the sharpener. The section holding the shavings falls off, and the pencil shavings spread over her hands. She hurriedly tries wiping them off with a napkin, and then pushes a button on her speaker phone. “Major Hedley, that woman is here.”
Neva enters the meeting room. The men stand up. Neva takes the empty seat opposite David, and they all sit down. Hedley speaks first. “Miss Deumas, can you tell us again why you came to London?”
“There is nothing more for me in Iraq. It is becoming more and more difficult to move about freely. I do not like to be restrained.” Templeton enters, pours tea for Neva, and starts refilling the other cups at the table. “Saddam has become impossible to live with. He is obsessed with this ‘stone’ thing.”
As Templeton pours tea for David, he suddenly grasps her arm. “Don’t move.” The alarmed woman freezes. “Please put the pot down carefully.” She sets it down. The other men gape at the pot as if it were a bomb. “Give me your hand,” says David. Templeton holds out the hand that had been holding the pot. David examines the black smudges on her fingers and palms. “Where did this come from?”
“Well, I was sharpening some pencils and then this woman came in, and things fell apart. I got that pencil stuff on my hands. I can clean it off, sir.”
“No, that’s all right.” David addresses the others at the table. “I believe we may have something here. There may be a link between this stain and the stain on Saddam’s fingers.” Latham and Winter look at him incredulously. Neva watches David intently.
Hedley breaks the silence. “Could you elaborate, Mr. Compton?” David lets go of Templeton’s hand. She quickly steps away from him. He reaches, in vain, for an explanation. “I need to give this more thought.”
Templeton, arms trembling, carries the tea pot back to the serving table, quickly setting it down before she drops it. Why is there silence in the room? Are they all watching her? Does Hedley think the biddy is coming unglued? She walks quickly out of the room.
Latham turns to Neva. “Just why should we believe this dream story of yours?”
“I don’t care if you believe me or not.”
“Why should Saddam tell you his military secrets?” Neva pushes her hair back with her hand and looks across the table at David. “Men do not keep much from me.”
⸎ The participants emerge from the meeting room. Latham lights a cigarette. Winter, his eyes pawing her bosom, is trying to corner Neva. “Miss Deumas, have you ever seen the Grand Canyon?” Neva turns away. “I’ve seen everything.” She focuses on David, who is conversing with Hedley.
“I’m sorry for making such a scene,” David offers. “Think nothing of it,” says Hedley.
Winter kicks himself for the inept pickup line. Was he losing his touch? Why would a Swiss chalet, shopping-in-Paris kept woman be interested in a big hole in the ground? Must have been all that stone-in-desert imagery—got him off on the wrong tangent.
⸎ David, wearing a night robe, stirs in bed, wired from three cups of Earl Grey and a chocolate éclair. On the nightstand are his folder from the meeting, a note pad, and a pencil. He picks up the pencil and examines it closely. He picks up the pad. With the pencil at nearly a flat angle with the paper, he makes several pencil strokes with the full length of the pencil’s lead, leaving a black swatch about an inch wide. He presses a finger firmly against the swatch then looks at the black smudge on his finger. He picks up the phone on the nightstand and dials an outside number. The guard in the MI6 lobby answers. “Let me connect you to the library.”
A librarian-computer maven in a rumpled white shirt and loosened tie sits before a computer screen, playing a game in which a jet attacks ground targets. His beard, a steel-wool tangle of black and grey, flops over the receiver cradled on his shoulder. “Good evening, Mr. Compton. How can I be of service? I have all the information you could possibly need at my fingertips.” The librarian hits a key combination, and a data screen replaces the computer game. “Yes, we do have books. Yes, we do keep night hours.”
He could use the walk. His legs had been fidgeting under the sheets and it was less than a mile to the New Ministry of Defence Building. And he could save the bucks. He had already spent a quarter of his “walking around” money on the cab fare from Heathrow. David tosses the copies of his dream drawings into his attaché case.
The library, a floor below MI6, has twelve rows of nonfiction and only two rows of fiction, nearly all the latter devoted to spy novels or military adventures which glamorize British resolve—several by authors spoon-fed by the intelligence service bureaucracy.
David bypasses the computer stall offering a popular encyclopedia on CD-ROM. Too generalized. He’ll start with the 20-pound dictionary on the pedestal. He flips to the entry on pencil. “A narrow, cylindrical implement consisting of a thin rod of graphite, crayon or similar substance encased in wood.” Graphite.
David turns to the encyclopedia shelf and removes the volume GOLEM-HEALEY. He finds the entry for graphite: “A soft, steel-gray to black allotrope of carbon, used in lead pencils, lubricants . . . and as a controlling element in nuclear reactors.” He pulls out the appropriate “N” books from three encyclopedias, choosing entries under both “nuclear power” and “nuclear reactors.” He examines photos and drawings of nuclear power plants, atomic bomb blasts and the major personalities of the Manhattan Project.
He turns a page and sees an illustration showing a two-story stack of black graphite bricks. A scientist, partially obscured by scaffolding, is pulling a rod out of the structure as other scientists observe from a spectator section above and across from the block. The illustration caption reads:
“The first sustained nuclear reaction, conducted by Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago, December 2, 1942.” David opens his case and retrieves the illustration of the rod-like snake emerging from the black cube. He places the drawing next to the Fermi experiment illustration in the book.
At the reception desk outside Major Hedley’s office sits Arlene Templeton, 62, shaving pencils with an electric sharpener. While sharp as a tack by Hedley’s standards, she has become extremely self-conscious about some slight lapses of memory and coordination. Her preparation of the meeting room was meticulous. At the large rectangular table, she had placed at each setting a cup and saucer, a note pad, a folder containing documents and a sharpened pencil.
At the center of the table is a wide silver platter containing neat stacks of scones and napkins. On a small table nearby is a pot of tea. Four men sit around the larger table: Major Hedley, Colonel Latham, David Compton and U.S. Army Colonel Mark Winter, a bulldog who fancies himself another Patton. Winter surveys the English clutter: a floor-to-ceiling shelf of leather-bound books, a small letter-writing desk, a globe on a floor stand, a copper-plated telescope pointing toward a small, draped window, and a child’s rocking horse. Hidden microphones and cameras could be anywhere.
Major Hedley speaks: “Gentlemen, Mr. David Compton is from the Magellan Council. He is a consultant on religion and mythology. I believe we can start. Miss Deumas has promised to join us in a few minutes. David and Winter reach for the scones. Winter questions these sloppy Brits. “What do you mean, ‘promised’? You are not bringing her from a safe house?”
“Miss Deumas insists on taking care of her own arrangements,” says Hedley. “The CIA would never put up with that. Why do you trust this woman? How do you know she hasn’t been sent by Saddam?”
“I believe Mr. Compton will be able to shed some light on that question.” David, about to eat his scone, puts it back down on the napkin. “I believe you have all read Ms. Deumas’s account of the dream Saddam related to her. If you could all review the items in your folder.” Latham opens his folder and shuffles through the contents: four drawings of Saddam’s dream (Saddam looking at the cloth-covered stone, the snake emerging from the stone, Hussein striking the stone with a sword, and the tornado of energy rising from the broken stone), a photograph of the Kaaba surrounded by a crowd of worshippers, and a photocopy of a news article.
David continues, “The photograph is of a building called the Kaaba, the holiest site in all of Islam. Embedded in an outside corner of this building is the Black Stone. The faithful touch and kiss this stone. The Black Stone is said to represent ‘the right hand of Allah.’ Major Hedley.” Hedley responds, “Yes, you will note the news story in your folder . . .”
Winter skims the article in his folder: a one-column, four-inch story headlined “Saddam Asks Allah for Help.”
“. . . in which Saddam is quoted as saying he will invoke ‘the right hand of Allah’ to strike down the enemies of Islam. Saddam apparently believes he can call on the power of this stone to fight us.” Winter reminds everyone that Uncle Sam is running the show. “Well, I don’t know what ‘Soddom’ thinks he has, but we’ll shove that stone up his ass.” Hedley winces at the blasphemy. “Thank you, Colonel Winter. However, as some of us will be in direct contact with the Arabs, I suggest that we practice showing greater respect for the Islamic faith.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Privately, Winter wouldn’t concede anything to Islam; not going to believe that some guy with twelve wives was a holy man. Mohammed hoarded all the babes; eleven guys didn’t get any. And since Muslims hated fags, the men left out in the cold couldn’t even fuck each other.
David hurriedly swallows a bit from his scone. “Pardon me.” He clears his throat. “It is said that a white stone fell from heaven to provide the cornerstone for the Kaaba. Across the millennia, the stone has been stained black by the impure touch of countless human beings. As you recall, in Saddam’s dream, the cube leaves black smudges on his lips and hands.” Pausing, David wipes his fingers on a napkin. “One could interpret this to mean that the black stain—the evil of generations—has now been passed to Saddam.” He added, “Admittedly, the symbolism gets a little blurred. The large Kaaba-like black cube in the dream is not the Black Stone, which is much smaller. Conflating the two and weaponizing the Black Stone might be considered a kind of blasphemy.”
⸎ In a building in Iraq, Saddam stands next to a wall of black bricks. He runs his fingers across the bricks then examines his blackened skin.
⸎ Templeton fiddles with the pencil sharpener, which seems to be broken. She looks up to see Neva enter. Templeton had seen her in the office before and had developed an instant, unprofessional distain for the woman. Neva strikes an arrogant pose in her black, curve-hugging jumpsuit. Templeton opens the bottom of the sharpener. The section holding the shavings falls off, and the pencil shavings spread over her hands. She hurriedly tries wiping them off with a napkin, and then pushes a button on her speaker phone. “Major Hedley, that woman is here.”
Neva enters the meeting room. The men stand up. Neva takes the empty seat opposite David, and they all sit down. Hedley speaks first. “Miss Deumas, can you tell us again why you came to London?”
“There is nothing more for me in Iraq. It is becoming more and more difficult to move about freely. I do not like to be restrained.” Templeton enters, pours tea for Neva, and starts refilling the other cups at the table. “Saddam has become impossible to live with. He is obsessed with this ‘stone’ thing.”
As Templeton pours tea for David, he suddenly grasps her arm. “Don’t move.” The alarmed woman freezes. “Please put the pot down carefully.” She sets it down. The other men gape at the pot as if it were a bomb. “Give me your hand,” says David. Templeton holds out the hand that had been holding the pot. David examines the black smudges on her fingers and palms. “Where did this come from?”
“Well, I was sharpening some pencils and then this woman came in, and things fell apart. I got that pencil stuff on my hands. I can clean it off, sir.”
“No, that’s all right.” David addresses the others at the table. “I believe we may have something here. There may be a link between this stain and the stain on Saddam’s fingers.” Latham and Winter look at him incredulously. Neva watches David intently.
Hedley breaks the silence. “Could you elaborate, Mr. Compton?” David lets go of Templeton’s hand. She quickly steps away from him. He reaches, in vain, for an explanation. “I need to give this more thought.”
Templeton, arms trembling, carries the tea pot back to the serving table, quickly setting it down before she drops it. Why is there silence in the room? Are they all watching her? Does Hedley think the biddy is coming unglued? She walks quickly out of the room.
Latham turns to Neva. “Just why should we believe this dream story of yours?”
“I don’t care if you believe me or not.”
“Why should Saddam tell you his military secrets?” Neva pushes her hair back with her hand and looks across the table at David. “Men do not keep much from me.”
⸎ The participants emerge from the meeting room. Latham lights a cigarette. Winter, his eyes pawing her bosom, is trying to corner Neva. “Miss Deumas, have you ever seen the Grand Canyon?” Neva turns away. “I’ve seen everything.” She focuses on David, who is conversing with Hedley.
“I’m sorry for making such a scene,” David offers. “Think nothing of it,” says Hedley.
Winter kicks himself for the inept pickup line. Was he losing his touch? Why would a Swiss chalet, shopping-in-Paris kept woman be interested in a big hole in the ground? Must have been all that stone-in-desert imagery—got him off on the wrong tangent.
⸎ David, wearing a night robe, stirs in bed, wired from three cups of Earl Grey and a chocolate éclair. On the nightstand are his folder from the meeting, a note pad, and a pencil. He picks up the pencil and examines it closely. He picks up the pad. With the pencil at nearly a flat angle with the paper, he makes several pencil strokes with the full length of the pencil’s lead, leaving a black swatch about an inch wide. He presses a finger firmly against the swatch then looks at the black smudge on his finger. He picks up the phone on the nightstand and dials an outside number. The guard in the MI6 lobby answers. “Let me connect you to the library.”
A librarian-computer maven in a rumpled white shirt and loosened tie sits before a computer screen, playing a game in which a jet attacks ground targets. His beard, a steel-wool tangle of black and grey, flops over the receiver cradled on his shoulder. “Good evening, Mr. Compton. How can I be of service? I have all the information you could possibly need at my fingertips.” The librarian hits a key combination, and a data screen replaces the computer game. “Yes, we do have books. Yes, we do keep night hours.”
He could use the walk. His legs had been fidgeting under the sheets and it was less than a mile to the New Ministry of Defence Building. And he could save the bucks. He had already spent a quarter of his “walking around” money on the cab fare from Heathrow. David tosses the copies of his dream drawings into his attaché case.
The library, a floor below MI6, has twelve rows of nonfiction and only two rows of fiction, nearly all the latter devoted to spy novels or military adventures which glamorize British resolve—several by authors spoon-fed by the intelligence service bureaucracy.
David bypasses the computer stall offering a popular encyclopedia on CD-ROM. Too generalized. He’ll start with the 20-pound dictionary on the pedestal. He flips to the entry on pencil. “A narrow, cylindrical implement consisting of a thin rod of graphite, crayon or similar substance encased in wood.” Graphite.
David turns to the encyclopedia shelf and removes the volume GOLEM-HEALEY. He finds the entry for graphite: “A soft, steel-gray to black allotrope of carbon, used in lead pencils, lubricants . . . and as a controlling element in nuclear reactors.” He pulls out the appropriate “N” books from three encyclopedias, choosing entries under both “nuclear power” and “nuclear reactors.” He examines photos and drawings of nuclear power plants, atomic bomb blasts and the major personalities of the Manhattan Project.
He turns a page and sees an illustration showing a two-story stack of black graphite bricks. A scientist, partially obscured by scaffolding, is pulling a rod out of the structure as other scientists observe from a spectator section above and across from the block. The illustration caption reads:
“The first sustained nuclear reaction, conducted by Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago, December 2, 1942.” David opens his case and retrieves the illustration of the rod-like snake emerging from the black cube. He places the drawing next to the Fermi experiment illustration in the book.
Chapter 4
A charcoal metal abstract sculpture—a featureless man pulling a stick from a cube—sits inside the entrance of Fermi Hall, the administration building of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois. The ground floor welcomes visitors with a tree and shrub-filled atrium that narrows to a peak in the 16-story building. Four middle-aged congressmen in business suits mill about in front of the sculpture. One, the jowly Texas Representative Stuart Howell, glances at his watch for the third time. “Well, what should we expect; it’s a woman.”
On the top floor, Dr. Leslie Carney is seated at her desk, talking on the phone, and watching a 13-inch TV. Leslie is an attractive blond woman in her mid-forties, of medium frame, with strong, almost androgynous German features. She is wearing a photo ID badge. Her office has windows, a chair across from her desk, a small sofa, and a kitchenette with a microwave oven and a coffee maker. On TV, talking heads discuss the UN blockade and economic boycott of Iraq.
Leslie is speaking to her friend Carol. “They won’t tell me the results over the phone. She said the doctor wants to discuss it with me. If there was nothing wrong, they could tell me now. I’m tired of this. It’s always something that happens ‘to me.’ A hysterec-to-me. Now a mastec-to-me. Maybe just a lumpec-to-me.” There is a knock on the door. “Could you hold on a moment? . . . Come in.”
Dr. Samuel Haynes, the lab director, opens the door and partially enters the room. Dr. Haynes, in his early sixties, is a half inch taller than Dr. Carney, has black and gray thinning hair and wears glasses. He is wearing a dress shirt and sports coat, with a lab ID badge the coat.
“We mustn’t keep our guests waiting.” Leslie speaks into the phone. “Listen, I’ll have to get back to you.” She smiles and looks toward Haynes. “Somebody very annoying is here to bother me.”
⸎ Drs. Carney and Haynes walk down the hallway toward the elevator. Haynes speaks in a soft, reassuring tone that makes Leslie feel like a little girl on daddy’s lap. “Leslie, I have complete confidence in your ability to do this. Just think of this as another group of people who want to learn about our inner journey of the universe.”
“Sam, these aren’t people, these are congressmen.” They enter the elevator. Haynes raises his voice in a more insistent voice. “These are the people who decide how much money we get. If they build the supercollider in Texas, we are going to have to fight harder than ever for our share of the pie. I know you can turn on that charm when you want to.”
The elevator door opens. Leslie freezes. She feels a bright light on her face; people are crowding her; unseen hands grip her arms. She is being pulled toward flashing lightbulbs. “Something wrong?” Haynes asks. She looks through the open doors, it’s just the atrium, no lights, no crowd. “Uh, no.” She must stop daydreaming. They leave the elevator. “Good luck,” says Haynes.
He pauses near the elevator as Leslie approaches the front of the atrium. Damn it, what was he thinking? He should have led the tour himself. Congressional cost cutters were piranhas slashing at their ankles. He couldn’t afford Leslie’s smartass complacency. But he needed to push her, force her to take more responsibilities. She didn’t volunteer for anything. He had allowed her work to slide, and other administrators knew it. And now, half the time he sees her, she’s staring off into space.
When Haynes brought Leslie up from the Fixed Target Division five months ago, he was pleased to see that her successor, Dr. Karen Davidow, didn’t skip a beat in continuing Leslie’s meticulous budget-keeping and outstanding presentation graphics. A lunch with Davidow exposed the sham. Karen raved how her administrative assistant, Andrea, gave her every budget adjustment and meeting presentation on a silver platter.
Haynes checked Leslie’s budget requests and discovered that, as associate director, she was sending her administrative assistant to budget and business presentation seminars. When he confronted her on the issue, Leslie explained that she was merely delegating responsibilities, freeing herself to pursue theoretical work on the Standard Model. And, anyway, what really counted, the results or how you got them? Haynes was seduced by the arguments. He wasn’t sure if he should be angry with Leslie or amused that, given the right software and seminars, any ambitious secretary was capable of being a division director.
Still, he suspected that sleeping with Leslie was clouding his professional judgement. Maybe it was time to edge out of the relationship. But he would have to be careful. If that lump were breast cancer, his actions could be misinterpreted. He would try to appear as supportive as possible.
Haynes realized that the prospect of Leslie’s disfigurement may have prompted his reconsideration of their relationship, but he quickly discarded that line of thought; it could only lead to an unproductive guilty trip.
⸎ The congressmen turned toward Leslie. She approaches them with a forced smile. “Good morning, gentlemen and welcome to Fermilab.”
She offers perfunctory handshakes to the delegates. “I am Dr. Leslie Carney, associate director. We are going to begin a journey today that will help us learn how our universe came into being.” Howell has his own agenda, “Well now, pardon me, Miss Carney, but I do believe there is no great mystery here. God created the universe and everything in it.”
“Thank you, Congressmen Howell. Of course, we can discover much that is beneficial to humanity by learning how He or She created the universe.”
“God is a He, Miss Carney. He made the universe.” Leslie ignores the comment. “If you will look over here, you will see one of the most important moments in the history of our planet.” The congressmen turn toward the Fermi experiment sculpture.
“Most of us think the Nuclear Age began with the first explosion of the atomic bomb. But to many scientists, this is the real beginning, December 2nd, 1942, when, under a section of bleachers at the University of Chicago, Enrico Fermi conducted the first sustained nuclear reaction, proving that nuclear power could be harnessed, whether for the benefit or harm of humanity.”
She leads them to the next tour stop. She wonders, why this fundamentalist bullshit from Howell. The Miss Carney? This isn’t the campaign trail. We’re all adults here. She figures he’s trying to provoke her into making some bitchy, castrating remark that will plant a thought in his fellow congressmen that this lab is a den of feminists, and federal monies should go to the supercollider in Howell’s beer-drinking, gun-toting Texas, where men are men.
Leslie and the congressmen stand before a giant lattice of black rods connecting silvery metal disks—Tinker toys for a 50-foot child. “The Cockroft-Walton generator provides the first stage of acceleration to drive particles up to the energy we need for our experiments.” The congressman from Indiana, the one with the generic, golf-pro face speaks, “It looks like something out of a science fiction movie.”
Leslie next leads the congressmen through part of a four-mile circular tunnel. The two rings of magnets in the tunnel are like two trains of boxcars, red and blue cars on top; red and yellow on the bottom. Each “car” is a foot square and about six feet long. She stops. “Through the rings in this tunnel, we are driving streams of subatomic particles faster and faster until they reach the energy level of nearly one trillion electron volts. These particles are then diverted to experiments where they are forced to collide and break into even smaller particles, such as muons, quarks, and charms. In these experiments, we hope to duplicate, on a tiny scale, those collisions that took place at the Big Bang, the moment when the universe was created.” Howell interjects, “This Big Bang thing sounds kinda’ dangerous.”
“There isn’t the remotest danger. We would require ten million times the power of one of these collisions just to light a match.”
“You mean we’re spending billions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money on something that wouldn’t even light my cigar?” Leslie’s eyes roll toward the ceiling, begging for divine intervention. “Please, does anyone else have a question?” The men say nothing.
It’s a long, silent walk to the Main Control Room. Three scientists monitor a multitude of instruments in a green-walled room. Leslie walks from the group to one of the instrument banks. Her voice has lost its spirit. “With these instruments we monitor the acceleration process.” One of the scientists is watching a monitor that shows a three-dimensional view of the accelerator ring: a loop made of two colored adjacent rings. He notices something unusual. A spray of dots is fanning out from a point along the bottom ring. The scientist addresses a colleague. “I think we’re having a problem.”\Leslie and the congressmen turn and study the monitor. She asks, “Where?”
“In the accelerator.”
⸎ A swarm of invisible particles emanate from the magnets. What the scientist sees on the monitor are not the particles themselves but only points of vibration, disturbances in the field of energy.
Language struggles to describes particles at the atomic and subatomic level. At first, scientists used a planetary analogy: an atom was a solar system where electrons orbited around a nucleus of protons and neutrons. Then quantum physics interpreted particles as vibrations and formulas. You saw the buzz, not the bee. But even numbers and equations would be hard-pressed to describe what is leaving the accelerator. These particles are curves of thought, little “6”s spinning through the air. And while their being is ephemeral, their purpose is not. They have places to go and things to do.
The “6”s serve Dr. Seka Linh, a.k.a. Neva Deumas, who stands in the tunnel, watching the swarm. An ant walks a confused circle on the floor. The ant serves the Queen. This one has lost it way. Seka steps on it with her croc pint slip-on. She looks back at the train of magnets and the swarm of sixes. That is enough for now.
In the control room, the swarm of dots disappear and the array of antiprotons in the upper ring is dissipated. “Whatever it was, it’s gone, “says a scientist. “And we lost the stack.”
“Oh shit,” says Leslie. Howell feigns shock. “Why, Miss Carney!”
The control room door opens, and Dr. Haynes sticks his head in. “How are things going in here?” Leslie glares at him.
⸎ The congressmen chuckle and shake their heads as they walk past the Fermi sculpture to exit the building. Standing near the elevator, Leslie, arms tightly folded, fumes at the good old boys and Haynes.
In small deliberate steps, Haynes seemed to be moving away from her. Ever since he felt the lump in her breast, he has started backing away. From two evenings together a week to one, and now he was always too tired for weekend trips. Or is she just imagining the connection? Leslie has an emotional investment in this relationship. She’s afraid to confront Sam about his fading ardor, and, anyway, once a week is a lot better that some couples.
Leslie walks out the front door and approaches the vast rectangular reflecting pool. She leans on the railing and lets her eyes enjoy the coolness. To her right, a 32-foor stainless steel obelisk rises from its mirror image in the pool.
If Haynes was talking to her less in bed, he was talking to her more at work. Why was he riding her about the congressional tour? What happened to their mutual contempt for those know-nothings in Congress: the hypocrites who demand higher educational standards, then throw the best educated out of work? Women supportive of men—what a one-way street. She reaches into her pocket for a penny and tosses it into the pool. Leslie sees her own reflection distorted by the ripples, then the wavy image of the woman behind her: Dr. Seka Linh, staff psychologist. “Making a wish?”
“I wish I could change things.”
“Like what?”
“Like knocking some sense into men. Here we are, manipulating the most powerful forces in the universe. But outside this lab, we can’t turn the screws on anything—not poverty, not racism, not war.”
“Maybe you’ve changed things more than you realize.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, sometimes other people see us and the things we do in ways we don’t notice.”
Leslie isn’t in a mood for It’s a Wonderful Life speculations, but she welcomes Seka’s effort. She envies Seka’s big emphatic eyes and her easy, free emotions. She could picture her twirling fiercely in a Greek restaurant, smashing dishes on the floor. But what kind of name is Seka Linh? Some odd Indian-Oriental mix. She wonders if this “consultation” by the pool is billable minutes. Leslie turns from the railing. “I’ve got to get back.” Seka joins her in the walk back to the atrium. “Still having those dreams?"
“Sometimes.” Well, more than sometimes, but Leslie didn’t want anybody to think she was coming unhinged. She had told Seka about the crowd and flashing lightbulbs, but even stranger images were starting to crowd her head. “Maybe we should set an appointment,” Seka offers. Leslie looks at the Fermi sculpture, which now seems both more and less familiar.
A charcoal metal abstract sculpture—a featureless man pulling a stick from a cube—sits inside the entrance of Fermi Hall, the administration building of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois. The ground floor welcomes visitors with a tree and shrub-filled atrium that narrows to a peak in the 16-story building. Four middle-aged congressmen in business suits mill about in front of the sculpture. One, the jowly Texas Representative Stuart Howell, glances at his watch for the third time. “Well, what should we expect; it’s a woman.”
On the top floor, Dr. Leslie Carney is seated at her desk, talking on the phone, and watching a 13-inch TV. Leslie is an attractive blond woman in her mid-forties, of medium frame, with strong, almost androgynous German features. She is wearing a photo ID badge. Her office has windows, a chair across from her desk, a small sofa, and a kitchenette with a microwave oven and a coffee maker. On TV, talking heads discuss the UN blockade and economic boycott of Iraq.
Leslie is speaking to her friend Carol. “They won’t tell me the results over the phone. She said the doctor wants to discuss it with me. If there was nothing wrong, they could tell me now. I’m tired of this. It’s always something that happens ‘to me.’ A hysterec-to-me. Now a mastec-to-me. Maybe just a lumpec-to-me.” There is a knock on the door. “Could you hold on a moment? . . . Come in.”
Dr. Samuel Haynes, the lab director, opens the door and partially enters the room. Dr. Haynes, in his early sixties, is a half inch taller than Dr. Carney, has black and gray thinning hair and wears glasses. He is wearing a dress shirt and sports coat, with a lab ID badge the coat.
“We mustn’t keep our guests waiting.” Leslie speaks into the phone. “Listen, I’ll have to get back to you.” She smiles and looks toward Haynes. “Somebody very annoying is here to bother me.”
⸎ Drs. Carney and Haynes walk down the hallway toward the elevator. Haynes speaks in a soft, reassuring tone that makes Leslie feel like a little girl on daddy’s lap. “Leslie, I have complete confidence in your ability to do this. Just think of this as another group of people who want to learn about our inner journey of the universe.”
“Sam, these aren’t people, these are congressmen.” They enter the elevator. Haynes raises his voice in a more insistent voice. “These are the people who decide how much money we get. If they build the supercollider in Texas, we are going to have to fight harder than ever for our share of the pie. I know you can turn on that charm when you want to.”
The elevator door opens. Leslie freezes. She feels a bright light on her face; people are crowding her; unseen hands grip her arms. She is being pulled toward flashing lightbulbs. “Something wrong?” Haynes asks. She looks through the open doors, it’s just the atrium, no lights, no crowd. “Uh, no.” She must stop daydreaming. They leave the elevator. “Good luck,” says Haynes.
He pauses near the elevator as Leslie approaches the front of the atrium. Damn it, what was he thinking? He should have led the tour himself. Congressional cost cutters were piranhas slashing at their ankles. He couldn’t afford Leslie’s smartass complacency. But he needed to push her, force her to take more responsibilities. She didn’t volunteer for anything. He had allowed her work to slide, and other administrators knew it. And now, half the time he sees her, she’s staring off into space.
When Haynes brought Leslie up from the Fixed Target Division five months ago, he was pleased to see that her successor, Dr. Karen Davidow, didn’t skip a beat in continuing Leslie’s meticulous budget-keeping and outstanding presentation graphics. A lunch with Davidow exposed the sham. Karen raved how her administrative assistant, Andrea, gave her every budget adjustment and meeting presentation on a silver platter.
Haynes checked Leslie’s budget requests and discovered that, as associate director, she was sending her administrative assistant to budget and business presentation seminars. When he confronted her on the issue, Leslie explained that she was merely delegating responsibilities, freeing herself to pursue theoretical work on the Standard Model. And, anyway, what really counted, the results or how you got them? Haynes was seduced by the arguments. He wasn’t sure if he should be angry with Leslie or amused that, given the right software and seminars, any ambitious secretary was capable of being a division director.
Still, he suspected that sleeping with Leslie was clouding his professional judgement. Maybe it was time to edge out of the relationship. But he would have to be careful. If that lump were breast cancer, his actions could be misinterpreted. He would try to appear as supportive as possible.
Haynes realized that the prospect of Leslie’s disfigurement may have prompted his reconsideration of their relationship, but he quickly discarded that line of thought; it could only lead to an unproductive guilty trip.
⸎ The congressmen turned toward Leslie. She approaches them with a forced smile. “Good morning, gentlemen and welcome to Fermilab.”
She offers perfunctory handshakes to the delegates. “I am Dr. Leslie Carney, associate director. We are going to begin a journey today that will help us learn how our universe came into being.” Howell has his own agenda, “Well now, pardon me, Miss Carney, but I do believe there is no great mystery here. God created the universe and everything in it.”
“Thank you, Congressmen Howell. Of course, we can discover much that is beneficial to humanity by learning how He or She created the universe.”
“God is a He, Miss Carney. He made the universe.” Leslie ignores the comment. “If you will look over here, you will see one of the most important moments in the history of our planet.” The congressmen turn toward the Fermi experiment sculpture.
“Most of us think the Nuclear Age began with the first explosion of the atomic bomb. But to many scientists, this is the real beginning, December 2nd, 1942, when, under a section of bleachers at the University of Chicago, Enrico Fermi conducted the first sustained nuclear reaction, proving that nuclear power could be harnessed, whether for the benefit or harm of humanity.”
She leads them to the next tour stop. She wonders, why this fundamentalist bullshit from Howell. The Miss Carney? This isn’t the campaign trail. We’re all adults here. She figures he’s trying to provoke her into making some bitchy, castrating remark that will plant a thought in his fellow congressmen that this lab is a den of feminists, and federal monies should go to the supercollider in Howell’s beer-drinking, gun-toting Texas, where men are men.
Leslie and the congressmen stand before a giant lattice of black rods connecting silvery metal disks—Tinker toys for a 50-foot child. “The Cockroft-Walton generator provides the first stage of acceleration to drive particles up to the energy we need for our experiments.” The congressman from Indiana, the one with the generic, golf-pro face speaks, “It looks like something out of a science fiction movie.”
Leslie next leads the congressmen through part of a four-mile circular tunnel. The two rings of magnets in the tunnel are like two trains of boxcars, red and blue cars on top; red and yellow on the bottom. Each “car” is a foot square and about six feet long. She stops. “Through the rings in this tunnel, we are driving streams of subatomic particles faster and faster until they reach the energy level of nearly one trillion electron volts. These particles are then diverted to experiments where they are forced to collide and break into even smaller particles, such as muons, quarks, and charms. In these experiments, we hope to duplicate, on a tiny scale, those collisions that took place at the Big Bang, the moment when the universe was created.” Howell interjects, “This Big Bang thing sounds kinda’ dangerous.”
“There isn’t the remotest danger. We would require ten million times the power of one of these collisions just to light a match.”
“You mean we’re spending billions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money on something that wouldn’t even light my cigar?” Leslie’s eyes roll toward the ceiling, begging for divine intervention. “Please, does anyone else have a question?” The men say nothing.
It’s a long, silent walk to the Main Control Room. Three scientists monitor a multitude of instruments in a green-walled room. Leslie walks from the group to one of the instrument banks. Her voice has lost its spirit. “With these instruments we monitor the acceleration process.” One of the scientists is watching a monitor that shows a three-dimensional view of the accelerator ring: a loop made of two colored adjacent rings. He notices something unusual. A spray of dots is fanning out from a point along the bottom ring. The scientist addresses a colleague. “I think we’re having a problem.”\Leslie and the congressmen turn and study the monitor. She asks, “Where?”
“In the accelerator.”
⸎ A swarm of invisible particles emanate from the magnets. What the scientist sees on the monitor are not the particles themselves but only points of vibration, disturbances in the field of energy.
Language struggles to describes particles at the atomic and subatomic level. At first, scientists used a planetary analogy: an atom was a solar system where electrons orbited around a nucleus of protons and neutrons. Then quantum physics interpreted particles as vibrations and formulas. You saw the buzz, not the bee. But even numbers and equations would be hard-pressed to describe what is leaving the accelerator. These particles are curves of thought, little “6”s spinning through the air. And while their being is ephemeral, their purpose is not. They have places to go and things to do.
The “6”s serve Dr. Seka Linh, a.k.a. Neva Deumas, who stands in the tunnel, watching the swarm. An ant walks a confused circle on the floor. The ant serves the Queen. This one has lost it way. Seka steps on it with her croc pint slip-on. She looks back at the train of magnets and the swarm of sixes. That is enough for now.
In the control room, the swarm of dots disappear and the array of antiprotons in the upper ring is dissipated. “Whatever it was, it’s gone, “says a scientist. “And we lost the stack.”
“Oh shit,” says Leslie. Howell feigns shock. “Why, Miss Carney!”
The control room door opens, and Dr. Haynes sticks his head in. “How are things going in here?” Leslie glares at him.
⸎ The congressmen chuckle and shake their heads as they walk past the Fermi sculpture to exit the building. Standing near the elevator, Leslie, arms tightly folded, fumes at the good old boys and Haynes.
In small deliberate steps, Haynes seemed to be moving away from her. Ever since he felt the lump in her breast, he has started backing away. From two evenings together a week to one, and now he was always too tired for weekend trips. Or is she just imagining the connection? Leslie has an emotional investment in this relationship. She’s afraid to confront Sam about his fading ardor, and, anyway, once a week is a lot better that some couples.
Leslie walks out the front door and approaches the vast rectangular reflecting pool. She leans on the railing and lets her eyes enjoy the coolness. To her right, a 32-foor stainless steel obelisk rises from its mirror image in the pool.
If Haynes was talking to her less in bed, he was talking to her more at work. Why was he riding her about the congressional tour? What happened to their mutual contempt for those know-nothings in Congress: the hypocrites who demand higher educational standards, then throw the best educated out of work? Women supportive of men—what a one-way street. She reaches into her pocket for a penny and tosses it into the pool. Leslie sees her own reflection distorted by the ripples, then the wavy image of the woman behind her: Dr. Seka Linh, staff psychologist. “Making a wish?”
“I wish I could change things.”
“Like what?”
“Like knocking some sense into men. Here we are, manipulating the most powerful forces in the universe. But outside this lab, we can’t turn the screws on anything—not poverty, not racism, not war.”
“Maybe you’ve changed things more than you realize.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, sometimes other people see us and the things we do in ways we don’t notice.”
Leslie isn’t in a mood for It’s a Wonderful Life speculations, but she welcomes Seka’s effort. She envies Seka’s big emphatic eyes and her easy, free emotions. She could picture her twirling fiercely in a Greek restaurant, smashing dishes on the floor. But what kind of name is Seka Linh? Some odd Indian-Oriental mix. She wonders if this “consultation” by the pool is billable minutes. Leslie turns from the railing. “I’ve got to get back.” Seka joins her in the walk back to the atrium. “Still having those dreams?"
“Sometimes.” Well, more than sometimes, but Leslie didn’t want anybody to think she was coming unhinged. She had told Seka about the crowd and flashing lightbulbs, but even stranger images were starting to crowd her head. “Maybe we should set an appointment,” Seka offers. Leslie looks at the Fermi sculpture, which now seems both more and less familiar.
Chapter 5
David makes six photocopies of the Fermi experiment illustration, then takes the elevator to the lobby. He peers out the swinging doors to a darker night. The caffein that sent him jauntily into the street now gives a paranoia buzz. The walk back to the hotel seems foolhardy. The street seems like a gauntlet of hidden assassins and thieves. He phones for a taxi.
⸎ In bed, David ponders if there really is a connection between the snake in the stone and the rod in the reactor. After his embarrassing assault on the secretary, did he really want to go out on another limb? He takes a break from his indecision to calculate the effort it will take to get up and turn off the light switch on the door. The phone rings. At the reservation desk, the clerk leers indirectly at Neva, who is wearing black gloves and a black mink stole over a strapless black dress. “There is a Miss Deumas to seek you.”
Time had been jogging through David’s life but now it walked in Neva’s shoes. He could almost count her steps. He made a mental note; the possibility of sex stops the clock. Finally, two crisp knocks. David opens the door. Neva leans an elbow against the frame of the door and removes one of her gloves. “So, would you like to examine my hands?”
David suspects things are going to move rather quickly. He grins. “Or something. Please come in.” He sits on the bed. “To what do I owe this visit?”
Neva sits on a chair and places the glove on a small stand. “You strike me as a man who knows how to seize the moment. I am interested in such men.”
“Oh, you mean grabbing that woman’s arm. I don’t know what possessed me. I’m usually not that assertive.” Neva takes off her hat and places it next to the glove. “You should be. You are intelligent and not bad looking. Have you ever been married?” David lies down. “No.”
“Why not?” David’s ego dips. He suspects Neva is following some woman’s magazine advice: Don’t date someone who hasn’t sustained a long-term relationship. “I guess the ones I want are already taken. I always seem to get along better with older women.” Neva unpeels her other glove. “How much older? Five years? Twenty years? A thousand years?”
“A thousand years?” Maybe he doesn’t need to take this grilling so seriously. “When did you start seeing older women?”
“When I was 13.” David isn’t sure if that’s a boast or a confession. “Oh my,” she says coyly. “She was in her forties. She used to babysit me. She told my mother she needed someone to help move some furniture. When I got there, she put on a record and said she would teach me how to dance. It was slow dancing. As you can imagine, one thing led to another.” Neva smiles mischievously. “No, I can’t imagine. You’ll have to show me.” She stands up. “We don’t have any music.” She reaches back to unhook her dress. “We don’t need any music. We can dance lying down.”
⸎ David dreams. The muffled sound of machinery grumbles in the darkness. He sees a long thin streak of sunlight in the ceiling. The band of light grows wider as if a large sliding door is being opened.
⸎ Neva, fully dressed, looks out the window into the dense London morning. She focuses on a rental car parked across the street, where a man’s elbow sticks out the window. Sitting in the car are the two thugs Hussein has sent to find her.
David is still asleep. Neva goes to the bathroom and removes lenses from her eyes. She returns to the window wearing her pitch-black sunglasses. She picks up the phone and dials. “This is Neva Deumas. You offered me protection. I think I could use it now.” Let them think they are useful. Let them think she is vulnerable. She knows only one man can kill her.
Neva emerges from the building and turns her head toward Hussein’s men. She removes her sunglasses. Arif and Tahir gaze into her eyes, into darkness, into lost possibilities. Neva puts the glasses back on and continues walking down the street.
Arif surveys the courtyard. A fountain cascades in celebration over tiles in six shades of aqua. Arches and walls meet in impossible angles—magic from his drafting table; his dream of being a famous and successful architect. General Tahir watches his soldiers glide on armored aeroboats above the Iranian swamp, the surprise swath capturing another eighty square kilometers for the glory of Iraq.
Two British intelligence agents sneak up to the car, pull out their guns, and point them at the heads of the occupants. They don’t move. The agents shake the goons’ shoulders. Arif feels the congratulatory pat on his shoulder from the proud owner of the new building. Tahir feels the nudge. Who wants his attention? Maybe it’s another personal message from Saddam. Arif and Tahir emerge from their daydreams to see guns aimed at their faces.
⸎ David wakes up, looks around and soon realizes Neva has left. He decides to head to M16 to share his theory with Hedley.
Later that morning, at the Soviet embassy, a KGB officer is called to the phone to speak to Hedley. “No . . . We do not violate international agreements . . . Yes, I am certain there is someone in our scientific community who can explain this.”
⸎ In the terminal at Sheremetyevo International Airport, Dr. Gregor Manilov, an overweight man in his early sixties, carries one large suitcase and one small suitcase over to the inspection table. Manilov places the small case on the table and opens it. Inside is a black brick in a transparent plastic bag. The armed inspector lifts the bag. “What is this?”
“Brick of graphite.”
“You are taking a brick out of the country?”
“Yes, I am brick smuggler.” The inspector doesn’t smile. “I suppose you will be wanting papers for this.” Without waiting for a reply, Manilov reaches into his coat pocket and hands over a document. The inspector studies it. “I think you will find all in order. Permission to take one brick out of country.”
⸎ In Hedley’s meeting room, breakfast has been Americanized. At the center of the table is a serving tray with two rows of ten chocolate and plain cake donuts, stacked in twos, black on black, white on white. David removes a chocolate donut. Templeton pours coffee for Major Hedley, who announces, “Mr. Compton has requested a change in our breakfast. I hope none of you object.”
Templeton serves others at the table: Latham, who frowns at the violation of tradition; Winter; and Manilov, who has his bagged brick in front of him. David, dryly chewing on his first bite, holds up his unfilled cup. Hedley reassures his assistant, “It’s okay, Miss Templeton.” She nervously splashes coffee into David’s cup, then quickly backs away. He takes a sip. Winter and Manilov take donuts. Templeton calms down. At least that whore isn’t here to stare at her.
“You may go, Miss Templeton.” She sets the pot on the serving table and walks numbly out the door, replaying Hedley’s words in her head. “You may GO, Miss Templeton.” The GO shoves her out the room. She imagines impatience in the tone: “GO, hurry it up. Do I have to tell you everything?”
David approaches an easel at the end of the table. Illustrations lie face down on a small table next to the easel. He speaks with a new confidence, not just from his brilliance in solving a puzzle, but from sleeping with Neva. “Gentlemen, Mr. Hussein is up to some nuclear mischief.” He holds up a pencil. “This is your common lead pencil. Actually, there is no lead in a lead pencil.” He puts his thump on the tip of the instrument. “This is really graphite, which, as you recall, put a black mark on Miss Templeton. I believe it also left a mark on Mr. Hussein.”
David puts the pencil in his coat pocket. He then places on the easel a blown-up version of the Fermi experiment illustration from the encyclopedia. “Graphite has a number of uses, but none more important that its use as a controlling substance in nuclear reactors. This is the first nuclear reactor, built in 1942. Basically, it’s just purified, natural uranium plugs embedded in blocks of graphite. Today, graphite continues to be a major component of some reactors, particularly those built by the Russians.” David introduces the scientist, “Dr. Manilov.”
Manilov slowly gets up and shuffles to the easel, carrying the brick with him. “He places the brick on the edge of the table. “Making bricks . . . you know, it’s something we do well. We make bricks for prison walls. We made bricks for Berlin Wall. So, when Saddam Hussein says he wants to buy bricks, how could we refuse?” Winter interjects, “But you knew what he was using them for?”
“Oh, yes. But if we didn’t sell to him, someone else would. This is not exactly high technology. Or as you Americans say, this is not rocket science.”
Latham is impatient. “I do not see where we’re going with this. Hussein already has two reactors. He doesn’t need another reactor to make weapons-grade uranium or plutonium. He needs centrifuges or a gaseous-diffusion plant."
Hedley replies, “Very true, Colonel Latham. However, those two reactors are stationary, water-cooled units. They can be attacked. This reactor can be taken apart and moved around. We need to do something about it while we still know where it is. Dr. Manilov.”
Manilov takes the reactor drawing off the easel and places it on the table. He then gazes blankly as the easel. David tugs at his sleeve then points behind the easel. Manilov acknowledges the help. “Oh . . . oh, yes.” Manilov retrieves a mounted photograph leaning against the back of the stand and places it on the easel. He fiddles with it to make sure it’s exactly centered. The reconnaissance photo shows three buildings in a hilly wooded area. “I believe this is it.”
“What is it?” asks a testy Winter.
“This is where they took our bricks.”
“How do you know that?”
“I went there. They wanted advice on making pile. Actually, they seemed to know very well what they were doing.” Hedley has already decided the outcome of the meeting. “Well, gentlemen, we will just have to find out what Mr. Hussein is up to.”
⸎ David and Neva are under the sheets. She hangs her breasts in his face. “So, what do you think of white women?” David smiles under the flesh. “I think they are devils.”
⸎ Dr. Madsen could have walked in from Central Casting. Every move was easy and patient, as though he had an hour to spend with her. Early sixties with a bit of a paunch, which Leslie somehow found reassuring. Not someone who is ratcheting up the weights at the gym and ratcheting up the surgeries in his practice. She couldn’t quite place that charming inflection, sounds like . . . sounds like that doctor on Murder, She Wrote, the one in Cranberry Cove or Crab Apple Cove or Crab . . . Crabsomething Cove.
“You have a three-centimeter invasive-ductal cancer.” There’s that New England maple syrupy voice again. “That’s the lump you felt in your right breast. But you have some new cancer cells that have spread all through your milk ducts. And the new cancer cells are very much like healthy cells so you can’t selectively destroy them with radiation. I recommend a mastectomy.” Well, that was about as thorough and concise an explanation as Leslie could want or rather, not want.
“I’m sure you have some questions.” She didn’t know what to challenge. Should she demand another lab test? “I see you brought some notes.” Leslie opens the crumpled, moist memo in her right hand. Irrelevant questions about the size of the lumpectomy scar. The words “cave in.” Would the breast cave in a little where the lump was removed? Nothing “little” anymore.
“I want you to consider an option.” An option? She had a choice? Must be a new drug therapy. “Considering your family history of cancer, you may want to take the precaution of having the other breast removed.” Option?! What kind of damn option is that? The kindly town doctor was now the redneck sheriff.
“There are some advantages. Besides not worrying about cancer appearing in that breast, it will also be easier to match implants if, in fact, you want them.”
“I don’t know. I’ve heard bad things about silicone.”
“There is no need to make a decision about that right away. You can take all the time you want. And you might want to consider saline implants.”
Saline. Salt water. Ocean. Maybe her new breasts would rise and fall with the tide.
David makes six photocopies of the Fermi experiment illustration, then takes the elevator to the lobby. He peers out the swinging doors to a darker night. The caffein that sent him jauntily into the street now gives a paranoia buzz. The walk back to the hotel seems foolhardy. The street seems like a gauntlet of hidden assassins and thieves. He phones for a taxi.
⸎ In bed, David ponders if there really is a connection between the snake in the stone and the rod in the reactor. After his embarrassing assault on the secretary, did he really want to go out on another limb? He takes a break from his indecision to calculate the effort it will take to get up and turn off the light switch on the door. The phone rings. At the reservation desk, the clerk leers indirectly at Neva, who is wearing black gloves and a black mink stole over a strapless black dress. “There is a Miss Deumas to seek you.”
Time had been jogging through David’s life but now it walked in Neva’s shoes. He could almost count her steps. He made a mental note; the possibility of sex stops the clock. Finally, two crisp knocks. David opens the door. Neva leans an elbow against the frame of the door and removes one of her gloves. “So, would you like to examine my hands?”
David suspects things are going to move rather quickly. He grins. “Or something. Please come in.” He sits on the bed. “To what do I owe this visit?”
Neva sits on a chair and places the glove on a small stand. “You strike me as a man who knows how to seize the moment. I am interested in such men.”
“Oh, you mean grabbing that woman’s arm. I don’t know what possessed me. I’m usually not that assertive.” Neva takes off her hat and places it next to the glove. “You should be. You are intelligent and not bad looking. Have you ever been married?” David lies down. “No.”
“Why not?” David’s ego dips. He suspects Neva is following some woman’s magazine advice: Don’t date someone who hasn’t sustained a long-term relationship. “I guess the ones I want are already taken. I always seem to get along better with older women.” Neva unpeels her other glove. “How much older? Five years? Twenty years? A thousand years?”
“A thousand years?” Maybe he doesn’t need to take this grilling so seriously. “When did you start seeing older women?”
“When I was 13.” David isn’t sure if that’s a boast or a confession. “Oh my,” she says coyly. “She was in her forties. She used to babysit me. She told my mother she needed someone to help move some furniture. When I got there, she put on a record and said she would teach me how to dance. It was slow dancing. As you can imagine, one thing led to another.” Neva smiles mischievously. “No, I can’t imagine. You’ll have to show me.” She stands up. “We don’t have any music.” She reaches back to unhook her dress. “We don’t need any music. We can dance lying down.”
⸎ David dreams. The muffled sound of machinery grumbles in the darkness. He sees a long thin streak of sunlight in the ceiling. The band of light grows wider as if a large sliding door is being opened.
⸎ Neva, fully dressed, looks out the window into the dense London morning. She focuses on a rental car parked across the street, where a man’s elbow sticks out the window. Sitting in the car are the two thugs Hussein has sent to find her.
David is still asleep. Neva goes to the bathroom and removes lenses from her eyes. She returns to the window wearing her pitch-black sunglasses. She picks up the phone and dials. “This is Neva Deumas. You offered me protection. I think I could use it now.” Let them think they are useful. Let them think she is vulnerable. She knows only one man can kill her.
Neva emerges from the building and turns her head toward Hussein’s men. She removes her sunglasses. Arif and Tahir gaze into her eyes, into darkness, into lost possibilities. Neva puts the glasses back on and continues walking down the street.
Arif surveys the courtyard. A fountain cascades in celebration over tiles in six shades of aqua. Arches and walls meet in impossible angles—magic from his drafting table; his dream of being a famous and successful architect. General Tahir watches his soldiers glide on armored aeroboats above the Iranian swamp, the surprise swath capturing another eighty square kilometers for the glory of Iraq.
Two British intelligence agents sneak up to the car, pull out their guns, and point them at the heads of the occupants. They don’t move. The agents shake the goons’ shoulders. Arif feels the congratulatory pat on his shoulder from the proud owner of the new building. Tahir feels the nudge. Who wants his attention? Maybe it’s another personal message from Saddam. Arif and Tahir emerge from their daydreams to see guns aimed at their faces.
⸎ David wakes up, looks around and soon realizes Neva has left. He decides to head to M16 to share his theory with Hedley.
Later that morning, at the Soviet embassy, a KGB officer is called to the phone to speak to Hedley. “No . . . We do not violate international agreements . . . Yes, I am certain there is someone in our scientific community who can explain this.”
⸎ In the terminal at Sheremetyevo International Airport, Dr. Gregor Manilov, an overweight man in his early sixties, carries one large suitcase and one small suitcase over to the inspection table. Manilov places the small case on the table and opens it. Inside is a black brick in a transparent plastic bag. The armed inspector lifts the bag. “What is this?”
“Brick of graphite.”
“You are taking a brick out of the country?”
“Yes, I am brick smuggler.” The inspector doesn’t smile. “I suppose you will be wanting papers for this.” Without waiting for a reply, Manilov reaches into his coat pocket and hands over a document. The inspector studies it. “I think you will find all in order. Permission to take one brick out of country.”
⸎ In Hedley’s meeting room, breakfast has been Americanized. At the center of the table is a serving tray with two rows of ten chocolate and plain cake donuts, stacked in twos, black on black, white on white. David removes a chocolate donut. Templeton pours coffee for Major Hedley, who announces, “Mr. Compton has requested a change in our breakfast. I hope none of you object.”
Templeton serves others at the table: Latham, who frowns at the violation of tradition; Winter; and Manilov, who has his bagged brick in front of him. David, dryly chewing on his first bite, holds up his unfilled cup. Hedley reassures his assistant, “It’s okay, Miss Templeton.” She nervously splashes coffee into David’s cup, then quickly backs away. He takes a sip. Winter and Manilov take donuts. Templeton calms down. At least that whore isn’t here to stare at her.
“You may go, Miss Templeton.” She sets the pot on the serving table and walks numbly out the door, replaying Hedley’s words in her head. “You may GO, Miss Templeton.” The GO shoves her out the room. She imagines impatience in the tone: “GO, hurry it up. Do I have to tell you everything?”
David approaches an easel at the end of the table. Illustrations lie face down on a small table next to the easel. He speaks with a new confidence, not just from his brilliance in solving a puzzle, but from sleeping with Neva. “Gentlemen, Mr. Hussein is up to some nuclear mischief.” He holds up a pencil. “This is your common lead pencil. Actually, there is no lead in a lead pencil.” He puts his thump on the tip of the instrument. “This is really graphite, which, as you recall, put a black mark on Miss Templeton. I believe it also left a mark on Mr. Hussein.”
David puts the pencil in his coat pocket. He then places on the easel a blown-up version of the Fermi experiment illustration from the encyclopedia. “Graphite has a number of uses, but none more important that its use as a controlling substance in nuclear reactors. This is the first nuclear reactor, built in 1942. Basically, it’s just purified, natural uranium plugs embedded in blocks of graphite. Today, graphite continues to be a major component of some reactors, particularly those built by the Russians.” David introduces the scientist, “Dr. Manilov.”
Manilov slowly gets up and shuffles to the easel, carrying the brick with him. “He places the brick on the edge of the table. “Making bricks . . . you know, it’s something we do well. We make bricks for prison walls. We made bricks for Berlin Wall. So, when Saddam Hussein says he wants to buy bricks, how could we refuse?” Winter interjects, “But you knew what he was using them for?”
“Oh, yes. But if we didn’t sell to him, someone else would. This is not exactly high technology. Or as you Americans say, this is not rocket science.”
Latham is impatient. “I do not see where we’re going with this. Hussein already has two reactors. He doesn’t need another reactor to make weapons-grade uranium or plutonium. He needs centrifuges or a gaseous-diffusion plant."
Hedley replies, “Very true, Colonel Latham. However, those two reactors are stationary, water-cooled units. They can be attacked. This reactor can be taken apart and moved around. We need to do something about it while we still know where it is. Dr. Manilov.”
Manilov takes the reactor drawing off the easel and places it on the table. He then gazes blankly as the easel. David tugs at his sleeve then points behind the easel. Manilov acknowledges the help. “Oh . . . oh, yes.” Manilov retrieves a mounted photograph leaning against the back of the stand and places it on the easel. He fiddles with it to make sure it’s exactly centered. The reconnaissance photo shows three buildings in a hilly wooded area. “I believe this is it.”
“What is it?” asks a testy Winter.
“This is where they took our bricks.”
“How do you know that?”
“I went there. They wanted advice on making pile. Actually, they seemed to know very well what they were doing.” Hedley has already decided the outcome of the meeting. “Well, gentlemen, we will just have to find out what Mr. Hussein is up to.”
⸎ David and Neva are under the sheets. She hangs her breasts in his face. “So, what do you think of white women?” David smiles under the flesh. “I think they are devils.”
⸎ Dr. Madsen could have walked in from Central Casting. Every move was easy and patient, as though he had an hour to spend with her. Early sixties with a bit of a paunch, which Leslie somehow found reassuring. Not someone who is ratcheting up the weights at the gym and ratcheting up the surgeries in his practice. She couldn’t quite place that charming inflection, sounds like . . . sounds like that doctor on Murder, She Wrote, the one in Cranberry Cove or Crab Apple Cove or Crab . . . Crabsomething Cove.
“You have a three-centimeter invasive-ductal cancer.” There’s that New England maple syrupy voice again. “That’s the lump you felt in your right breast. But you have some new cancer cells that have spread all through your milk ducts. And the new cancer cells are very much like healthy cells so you can’t selectively destroy them with radiation. I recommend a mastectomy.” Well, that was about as thorough and concise an explanation as Leslie could want or rather, not want.
“I’m sure you have some questions.” She didn’t know what to challenge. Should she demand another lab test? “I see you brought some notes.” Leslie opens the crumpled, moist memo in her right hand. Irrelevant questions about the size of the lumpectomy scar. The words “cave in.” Would the breast cave in a little where the lump was removed? Nothing “little” anymore.
“I want you to consider an option.” An option? She had a choice? Must be a new drug therapy. “Considering your family history of cancer, you may want to take the precaution of having the other breast removed.” Option?! What kind of damn option is that? The kindly town doctor was now the redneck sheriff.
“There are some advantages. Besides not worrying about cancer appearing in that breast, it will also be easier to match implants if, in fact, you want them.”
“I don’t know. I’ve heard bad things about silicone.”
“There is no need to make a decision about that right away. You can take all the time you want. And you might want to consider saline implants.”
Saline. Salt water. Ocean. Maybe her new breasts would rise and fall with the tide.
Robert S Urbanek grew up in Southern California and earned a BA in journalism from California State University, Long Beach, in 1973. He has more than two decades of experience as a writer and editor for community newspapers and medical and legal-related publications, which included several years each with the National Notary Association, The Doctors' Company and CCH Incorporated. The author lives in Vacaville, California. © Robert S Urbanek.