Chapter 6
Manilov assumed he would be flown to Baghdad with a fake passport and met at the airport by a member of the underground. Certainly, consideration would be given to his age and physical condition. At worst, he may have to hide in the trunk of a car. Somebody must have made a mistake.
September 28, 1990. A Turkish flag, white star and crescent in a red field, flutters on a pole next to a small hangar at the Pervari Airfield. Manilov has been fitted in a black dress shirt and black slacks. No commando wear is available in his size.
Latham and Manilov stand between two small black airplanes, each barely larger than a glider, but with a propeller and a very long wingspan.
Winter approaches. “I’m not big on these tiny planes. I would just bomb the shit out of those buildings. But we’re not at war yet. These babies will sneak you in. We call ‘em Black Flies. They’re made of carbon fiber—practically invisible to radar. You both lie down while you’re flying. Real first class.” Manilov asks, “No movie?”
“Nope.”
He puts hands close together as if holding a small bag. “Well, maybe little pack of smoked almonds?”
“Nyet.”
Manilov protests, “I don’t think this will work. It is too small. I cannot fit.”
“Hey, Greegor, this is your lucky day.”
Two men pull another Black Fly up to the hanger. It has a large bulge in the rear half and longer wheel struts. “I knew our pregnant Fly would come in handy.” Four British commandos squeeze into two of the planes. With some difficulty, Manilov is shoehorned into the back of the bigger plane. Latham takes the front.
In flight, a scrunched Manilov struggles with nausea and mutters a few Russian expletives, then is lulled to sleep by the wind and the gentle drone of the small aircraft engine. The engine starts to sputter. Panic strikes Latham then he realizes the noise is coming from behind him. He endures the snoring for a few moments, contemplates the “release cargo” level on the panel, then reaches back and taps the passenger on the foot. A groggy Manilov mutters, “Er, what?
Playing nursemaid to the corpulent Russian was not Latham’s first choice, but at least he was going to see some action. Maybe it would make up for his last review. He wasn’t promoted. The command was infested with some kind of psychobabble bullshit. He wasn’t “building relationships” with other officers. Latham knows orders, rewards, punishment. Keep it simple.
He had met an American named Mars, who had connections with the intelligence community. England didn’t appreciate his talents, but Mars did. Mars asked him to volunteer for this liaison post.
Latham spots the strip of lights on the clandestine airfield.
Six armed Kurds watch the three planes descend, then quickly douse the lights. They help the men out of the planes and take them to four horse-drawn carts, where they hide under stacks of hay. The Kurds pull the planes off the field and cover them with camouflage tarps and bushes. The carts enter a village. The Kurds escort their guests to two houses.
Morning finds Manilov lying on a ragged twin-size mattress on the floor. Eyes still closed, he flails a hand at a fly buzzing around his face. This morning, he will go fishing at the lake. Finally, he opens his eyes. This is not his beautiful dacha. Muscles and memories painfully meet. His legs and knees ache from the cramped flight. Across the room, an old, hawk-nose women in a rocking chair sews a floral dress and eyes him like carrion. This is not his beautiful wife. Latham enters the room. “We’re expected for breakfast.”
Latham, Manilov, and a middle-aged Kurdish man sit around a rough-hewn wooden table. In front of them are empty mugs and bowls of rice laced with fatty dices of pork. A haggard woman in her mid-forties comes in and pours them coffee. Manilov pokes at the food with his spoon. Latham eats tiny spoonful’s. The Kurd gobbles his down. A man in a wicker chair holds a rifle across his lap, guarding the front door. The Kurd scrapes the nearly empty bowl with his spoon. “We are very honored to have an Englishman and his guest to join us.”
“We are honored too,” says Latham. “We hope to kill many of Saddam’s men tonight,” says the Kurd. Manilov lifts a spoonful of rice to his mouth.
The Kurd gulps his coffee. “When the war comes and you destroy his army, you will help us get rid of Saddam. Yes?”
“Most certainly,” Latham assures him. “The Kurdish people have Her Majesty’s total and complete support.” Manilov gags on a cube of fat, pounds his chest and clears his throat.
After breakfast, Manilov, Latham, and the two Kurds join the rest of the raiding party outside. The British commandos are examining the weapons, explosives, and other supplies the Kurds have loaded onto a dozen horses.
A Kurd walks a horse up to Manilov. The physicist sizes up the animal and estimates the highest possible arc of his 230 pounds. This is not going to happen. The guard from the house brings the wicker chair out and places it beside the horse. Manilov tests the weight of a foot on the chair. It creaks. He stands on the chair. The twining sags but holds. Latham and a commando help Manilov swing his butt and thighs onto the saddle. The horse neighs a protest at the inhumane load. The guard turns the chair upside down and straps it to one of the other horses.
About a mile out of the village, the trail begins a gentle ascent into the Zagros Mountains. At first, there are few trees. Manilov’s pink flesh sweats profusely in the direct sun; he’s a glistening sausage in a greasy black napkin. Every few minutes, he imagines the clatter of a helicopter approaching the clearly visible target.
The wicker chair is tested five times. Manilov requires as many stops to relieve himself. Just as well; he is given a different horse at each break to even out the burden on the beasts. One Kurd suggests to another, “We should build a shrine on the trail to the Miracle of the Wicker Chair. We are like this chair, forever bearing the weight of the Pissing Oppressor.”
As the day drags on, the path becomes steeper. Oak trees collect into a forest, and branches shade the travelers. At twilight, the party dismounts. “What now?” asks Manilov. We’re on foot from here,” Latham explains. The group has gone less than a quarter mile when the waddling Russian stops and sits on a large rock. Manilov tries to wave off the approaching Latham. “Just go on. I’ll wait here until you come back.”
“Nobody is waiting for anything.” Latham walks back up the trail. He soon returns with a rolled-up stretcher and four Kurds. Manilov is momentarily embarrassed in his new role as great white potentate, elevated by his minions, his eyes traversing the heavens. Then again, maybe he should have complained miles ago, when his butt ached on the hard saddle.
The raiding party stops for a break. Manilov stretches his legs. Latham opens a small can and rubs black paste on his face. He instructs Manilov: “You just put it on like this.” It takes a while; the Russian’s face and jowls cover a lot of territory.
In another 30 minutes the group stops again. It is night. Manilov approaches Latham and a couple of Kurds, who are crouched behind trees. Ahead of them is a clearing in the woods occupied by a large building. A guard patrols the fenced perimeter. They have arrived.
⸎ The cab makes a right off Oxford Street. In the back seat, Neva puts her hand on Davis’ leg. “So where are you taking me?” he asks. “First I will take you to dinner. Then I will take you to a place where all good children go.” David begins to imagine all kinds of mommy/baby bedroom games.
The cab stops at an Indian restaurant. David pays the driver.
The maître d’ approaches them in the lobby. “Your usual seat, Ms. Deumas?”
“Yes, please.”
He escorts them to a secluded booth and hands them menus. “Someone will serve you shortly.” Across the aisle is a small alcove displaying a brass statue on top of a cabinet. The figure is that of a fierce, ugly, six-armed goddess who is eating the entrails of the man at her feet. David looks from the statue to Neva. “Am I here to eat or is she here to eat me?”
“What do you think?”
“I think that is the Hindu goddess Kali, the goddess of war and human sacrifice, a rather bloodthirsty dinner companion.”
“This would be a good time for Kali,” says Neva. “A million men ready to die in the desert and no other women to have their bodies.” She reaches out to touch David’s hand. “But Kali is both life and death. She must devour the old world so she can give birth and life to a new order. Kali is the Mother of All.”
The waiter approaches. “Are you ready to order?” David orders the lamb biryani. Neva adds the chicken tandoor and onion kulcha.
“So, what have you learned about Saddam’s dreams?”
“I can’t tell you much. National security and all that.”
“You think you can keep something from me?”
“Well, I can try. And, anyway, you ordered the onion bread. So, I guess I won’t be kissing you tonight.”
“Maybe not on the lips.”
⸎ In the hotel bed, Neva is perched atop David, her back to the headboard. All she wants is. Her fanny contracts on his face, her eyes and mouth strain at the labor of pleasure. I can’t breathe.
⸎ The Iraqi soldier grimaces as the wire rips his throat. His flailing arms fall limp, and he slumps to the ground at the feet of the Kurd. A British commander clips a hole through the fence, another cuts the wires atop a telephone pole.
The raiding party enters the doorway of what appears to be an administrative section. The reception desk is empty. Three of the British commandos and most of the Kurds go down the right hallway. The one other commando, three Kurds, Latham and Manilov take the left hall. They thread silently, nearly flush with the wall. As they approach the door to a men’s room, Manilov’s eyes light up and, as they pass, he slips through the door. After proceeding a few more feet, Latham sees Manilov has given him the slip.
Inside the bathroom, Manilov settles on the toilet seat and peruses an Iraqi newspaper courteously left by a previous occupant. He hears rapid gunshots, then an explosion. Plaster falls on the toilet stall floor. The noises create momentary interruptions in Manilov’s efforts to relieve himself.
In the smoke and dust, Latham pushes open the men’s room door. Leaning over the sink, his face three inches from the mirror, Manilov rubs at the camouflage makeup with one finger. Latham snaps, “Are you finished yet?”
“Coming, coming.” In the hallway, Latham and Manilov step over the bodies of dead Kurds and Iraqi soldiers. After carefully peeking through several doors, Latham finds a small room of interest. Inside, a dozen radiation suits hang from hooks on the wall. Along the opposite wall is a door and a thick, foot-square window that offers a view into a larger darkened room. “What do you make of this? Asks Latham.
Manilov presses his face to the window. “If we go in there, we must wear suits.” Manilov dons the largest suit and remembers that the facility director is a big person like himself. This must be his outfit.
Latham and Manilov, wearing the protective gear, enter the assembly room. Latham turns on the light switch. Five tables, like fingers on a hand, extend into the room from holes in the left wall. Coffin-shaped glass shields, with four glove holes on each side, cover shell casings of assorted sizes on each table.
Manilov opens a door in the left wall and is followed into a chilly, meat-locker room by Latham. The Russian opens the heavy lid of a lead-lined freezer and discovers cans marked with the yellow-and-black international radiation symbol. Manilov quickly drops the lid. “Not good. Not good at all. I would guess this is waste from Saddam’s nuclear power plants. They pack it in artillery shells.”
They walk back into the work room. Manilov gestures to a large, metal shell in the corner. “I think one of ours. Part of a Scud, I believe.”
“A few sticks of plastique will take care of this.” Manilov shakes his head. “Oh, no. You would poison whole countryside.”
“Good. We’ll show Saddam we mean business.”
As they leave the factory dressing room, minus the protective suits, Manilov and Latham are joined by two British commandos. One reports, “Colonel, I believe we’ve found the shipping room.” They enter a large room similar to an airplane hangar. At one end is a large metal garage door. Two forklifts and four wooden pallets are parked on the floor, but no weapons or nuclear materials are in sight. Manilov walks over to a vacant square of floor and stoops down. He touches black smudges on the floor and examines the stain on his fingers. “Not here anymore.”
“What?” asks Latham. Manilov braces his hands on his thighs as the struggles back to an erect position. “They took away bricks.”
The raid survivors collect outside. Latham, a commando, and one Kurd read a map as they stand near an Iraqi military truck and a Russian-made army jeep. Latham orders the Kurd, “Tell your friends we’re running out of time. We’ll take the vehicles to get back.” The Kurd runs off to join his comrades. The British commandos hop into the truck. Latham takes the wheel of the jeep, with Manilov as his passenger.
As the vehicles speed down the road, three explosions paint the sky with orange balls of fire. Manilov peers back but cannot see past the truck tailgating them. Roof shingles briefly rain down on the vehicles. Manilov covers his head with his arms.
The jeep and truck continue to speed down the twisting hill road. A truck with two Iraqi soldiers in the cab catches Latham’s and Manilov’s white faces in their high beams. The passenger comments, “Those aren’t our people.” The driver offers, “Must be Russian advisors. They drive like madmen.”
When they reach the airfield, the British uncover and tow the planes to the runway.
It is 4 a.m. The three planes race against the dawn. Manilov hears a loud roar and the plane shakes violently. “What was that?”
“Iraqi jet. I don’t think he saw us.” Manilov waits intently for another pass of the jet. There is none.
⸎ They didn’t find the reactor, but they destroyed the factory and safely brought home their team and the Russian. Latham could count the mission a success. He should reward himself. Maye he could restart something with Sharon, the radar technician.
They had been good friends and lovers. Her mind was as lean as her body. No web of manipulation. Or so he thought. Then out of nowhere, she started to complain that he wasn’t “sharing his feelings.” He was “emotionally constipated.” He teeth clenched at the memory. He silently suffered through her attacks. Then she wouldn’t return his calls. He should have been more passionate. He should have thrown her to the floor and fucked her in the ass. He should have grabbed her hair, pulled her head back and yelled in her ear, “Now you know how I feel. Are you happy?” But of course, he is too disciplined for that.
A young male butt is beginning to look better and better.
Next
Manilov assumed he would be flown to Baghdad with a fake passport and met at the airport by a member of the underground. Certainly, consideration would be given to his age and physical condition. At worst, he may have to hide in the trunk of a car. Somebody must have made a mistake.
September 28, 1990. A Turkish flag, white star and crescent in a red field, flutters on a pole next to a small hangar at the Pervari Airfield. Manilov has been fitted in a black dress shirt and black slacks. No commando wear is available in his size.
Latham and Manilov stand between two small black airplanes, each barely larger than a glider, but with a propeller and a very long wingspan.
Winter approaches. “I’m not big on these tiny planes. I would just bomb the shit out of those buildings. But we’re not at war yet. These babies will sneak you in. We call ‘em Black Flies. They’re made of carbon fiber—practically invisible to radar. You both lie down while you’re flying. Real first class.” Manilov asks, “No movie?”
“Nope.”
He puts hands close together as if holding a small bag. “Well, maybe little pack of smoked almonds?”
“Nyet.”
Manilov protests, “I don’t think this will work. It is too small. I cannot fit.”
“Hey, Greegor, this is your lucky day.”
Two men pull another Black Fly up to the hanger. It has a large bulge in the rear half and longer wheel struts. “I knew our pregnant Fly would come in handy.” Four British commandos squeeze into two of the planes. With some difficulty, Manilov is shoehorned into the back of the bigger plane. Latham takes the front.
In flight, a scrunched Manilov struggles with nausea and mutters a few Russian expletives, then is lulled to sleep by the wind and the gentle drone of the small aircraft engine. The engine starts to sputter. Panic strikes Latham then he realizes the noise is coming from behind him. He endures the snoring for a few moments, contemplates the “release cargo” level on the panel, then reaches back and taps the passenger on the foot. A groggy Manilov mutters, “Er, what?
Playing nursemaid to the corpulent Russian was not Latham’s first choice, but at least he was going to see some action. Maybe it would make up for his last review. He wasn’t promoted. The command was infested with some kind of psychobabble bullshit. He wasn’t “building relationships” with other officers. Latham knows orders, rewards, punishment. Keep it simple.
He had met an American named Mars, who had connections with the intelligence community. England didn’t appreciate his talents, but Mars did. Mars asked him to volunteer for this liaison post.
Latham spots the strip of lights on the clandestine airfield.
Six armed Kurds watch the three planes descend, then quickly douse the lights. They help the men out of the planes and take them to four horse-drawn carts, where they hide under stacks of hay. The Kurds pull the planes off the field and cover them with camouflage tarps and bushes. The carts enter a village. The Kurds escort their guests to two houses.
Morning finds Manilov lying on a ragged twin-size mattress on the floor. Eyes still closed, he flails a hand at a fly buzzing around his face. This morning, he will go fishing at the lake. Finally, he opens his eyes. This is not his beautiful dacha. Muscles and memories painfully meet. His legs and knees ache from the cramped flight. Across the room, an old, hawk-nose women in a rocking chair sews a floral dress and eyes him like carrion. This is not his beautiful wife. Latham enters the room. “We’re expected for breakfast.”
Latham, Manilov, and a middle-aged Kurdish man sit around a rough-hewn wooden table. In front of them are empty mugs and bowls of rice laced with fatty dices of pork. A haggard woman in her mid-forties comes in and pours them coffee. Manilov pokes at the food with his spoon. Latham eats tiny spoonful’s. The Kurd gobbles his down. A man in a wicker chair holds a rifle across his lap, guarding the front door. The Kurd scrapes the nearly empty bowl with his spoon. “We are very honored to have an Englishman and his guest to join us.”
“We are honored too,” says Latham. “We hope to kill many of Saddam’s men tonight,” says the Kurd. Manilov lifts a spoonful of rice to his mouth.
The Kurd gulps his coffee. “When the war comes and you destroy his army, you will help us get rid of Saddam. Yes?”
“Most certainly,” Latham assures him. “The Kurdish people have Her Majesty’s total and complete support.” Manilov gags on a cube of fat, pounds his chest and clears his throat.
After breakfast, Manilov, Latham, and the two Kurds join the rest of the raiding party outside. The British commandos are examining the weapons, explosives, and other supplies the Kurds have loaded onto a dozen horses.
A Kurd walks a horse up to Manilov. The physicist sizes up the animal and estimates the highest possible arc of his 230 pounds. This is not going to happen. The guard from the house brings the wicker chair out and places it beside the horse. Manilov tests the weight of a foot on the chair. It creaks. He stands on the chair. The twining sags but holds. Latham and a commando help Manilov swing his butt and thighs onto the saddle. The horse neighs a protest at the inhumane load. The guard turns the chair upside down and straps it to one of the other horses.
About a mile out of the village, the trail begins a gentle ascent into the Zagros Mountains. At first, there are few trees. Manilov’s pink flesh sweats profusely in the direct sun; he’s a glistening sausage in a greasy black napkin. Every few minutes, he imagines the clatter of a helicopter approaching the clearly visible target.
The wicker chair is tested five times. Manilov requires as many stops to relieve himself. Just as well; he is given a different horse at each break to even out the burden on the beasts. One Kurd suggests to another, “We should build a shrine on the trail to the Miracle of the Wicker Chair. We are like this chair, forever bearing the weight of the Pissing Oppressor.”
As the day drags on, the path becomes steeper. Oak trees collect into a forest, and branches shade the travelers. At twilight, the party dismounts. “What now?” asks Manilov. We’re on foot from here,” Latham explains. The group has gone less than a quarter mile when the waddling Russian stops and sits on a large rock. Manilov tries to wave off the approaching Latham. “Just go on. I’ll wait here until you come back.”
“Nobody is waiting for anything.” Latham walks back up the trail. He soon returns with a rolled-up stretcher and four Kurds. Manilov is momentarily embarrassed in his new role as great white potentate, elevated by his minions, his eyes traversing the heavens. Then again, maybe he should have complained miles ago, when his butt ached on the hard saddle.
The raiding party stops for a break. Manilov stretches his legs. Latham opens a small can and rubs black paste on his face. He instructs Manilov: “You just put it on like this.” It takes a while; the Russian’s face and jowls cover a lot of territory.
In another 30 minutes the group stops again. It is night. Manilov approaches Latham and a couple of Kurds, who are crouched behind trees. Ahead of them is a clearing in the woods occupied by a large building. A guard patrols the fenced perimeter. They have arrived.
⸎ The cab makes a right off Oxford Street. In the back seat, Neva puts her hand on Davis’ leg. “So where are you taking me?” he asks. “First I will take you to dinner. Then I will take you to a place where all good children go.” David begins to imagine all kinds of mommy/baby bedroom games.
The cab stops at an Indian restaurant. David pays the driver.
The maître d’ approaches them in the lobby. “Your usual seat, Ms. Deumas?”
“Yes, please.”
He escorts them to a secluded booth and hands them menus. “Someone will serve you shortly.” Across the aisle is a small alcove displaying a brass statue on top of a cabinet. The figure is that of a fierce, ugly, six-armed goddess who is eating the entrails of the man at her feet. David looks from the statue to Neva. “Am I here to eat or is she here to eat me?”
“What do you think?”
“I think that is the Hindu goddess Kali, the goddess of war and human sacrifice, a rather bloodthirsty dinner companion.”
“This would be a good time for Kali,” says Neva. “A million men ready to die in the desert and no other women to have their bodies.” She reaches out to touch David’s hand. “But Kali is both life and death. She must devour the old world so she can give birth and life to a new order. Kali is the Mother of All.”
The waiter approaches. “Are you ready to order?” David orders the lamb biryani. Neva adds the chicken tandoor and onion kulcha.
“So, what have you learned about Saddam’s dreams?”
“I can’t tell you much. National security and all that.”
“You think you can keep something from me?”
“Well, I can try. And, anyway, you ordered the onion bread. So, I guess I won’t be kissing you tonight.”
“Maybe not on the lips.”
⸎ In the hotel bed, Neva is perched atop David, her back to the headboard. All she wants is. Her fanny contracts on his face, her eyes and mouth strain at the labor of pleasure. I can’t breathe.
⸎ The Iraqi soldier grimaces as the wire rips his throat. His flailing arms fall limp, and he slumps to the ground at the feet of the Kurd. A British commander clips a hole through the fence, another cuts the wires atop a telephone pole.
The raiding party enters the doorway of what appears to be an administrative section. The reception desk is empty. Three of the British commandos and most of the Kurds go down the right hallway. The one other commando, three Kurds, Latham and Manilov take the left hall. They thread silently, nearly flush with the wall. As they approach the door to a men’s room, Manilov’s eyes light up and, as they pass, he slips through the door. After proceeding a few more feet, Latham sees Manilov has given him the slip.
Inside the bathroom, Manilov settles on the toilet seat and peruses an Iraqi newspaper courteously left by a previous occupant. He hears rapid gunshots, then an explosion. Plaster falls on the toilet stall floor. The noises create momentary interruptions in Manilov’s efforts to relieve himself.
In the smoke and dust, Latham pushes open the men’s room door. Leaning over the sink, his face three inches from the mirror, Manilov rubs at the camouflage makeup with one finger. Latham snaps, “Are you finished yet?”
“Coming, coming.” In the hallway, Latham and Manilov step over the bodies of dead Kurds and Iraqi soldiers. After carefully peeking through several doors, Latham finds a small room of interest. Inside, a dozen radiation suits hang from hooks on the wall. Along the opposite wall is a door and a thick, foot-square window that offers a view into a larger darkened room. “What do you make of this? Asks Latham.
Manilov presses his face to the window. “If we go in there, we must wear suits.” Manilov dons the largest suit and remembers that the facility director is a big person like himself. This must be his outfit.
Latham and Manilov, wearing the protective gear, enter the assembly room. Latham turns on the light switch. Five tables, like fingers on a hand, extend into the room from holes in the left wall. Coffin-shaped glass shields, with four glove holes on each side, cover shell casings of assorted sizes on each table.
Manilov opens a door in the left wall and is followed into a chilly, meat-locker room by Latham. The Russian opens the heavy lid of a lead-lined freezer and discovers cans marked with the yellow-and-black international radiation symbol. Manilov quickly drops the lid. “Not good. Not good at all. I would guess this is waste from Saddam’s nuclear power plants. They pack it in artillery shells.”
They walk back into the work room. Manilov gestures to a large, metal shell in the corner. “I think one of ours. Part of a Scud, I believe.”
“A few sticks of plastique will take care of this.” Manilov shakes his head. “Oh, no. You would poison whole countryside.”
“Good. We’ll show Saddam we mean business.”
As they leave the factory dressing room, minus the protective suits, Manilov and Latham are joined by two British commandos. One reports, “Colonel, I believe we’ve found the shipping room.” They enter a large room similar to an airplane hangar. At one end is a large metal garage door. Two forklifts and four wooden pallets are parked on the floor, but no weapons or nuclear materials are in sight. Manilov walks over to a vacant square of floor and stoops down. He touches black smudges on the floor and examines the stain on his fingers. “Not here anymore.”
“What?” asks Latham. Manilov braces his hands on his thighs as the struggles back to an erect position. “They took away bricks.”
The raid survivors collect outside. Latham, a commando, and one Kurd read a map as they stand near an Iraqi military truck and a Russian-made army jeep. Latham orders the Kurd, “Tell your friends we’re running out of time. We’ll take the vehicles to get back.” The Kurd runs off to join his comrades. The British commandos hop into the truck. Latham takes the wheel of the jeep, with Manilov as his passenger.
As the vehicles speed down the road, three explosions paint the sky with orange balls of fire. Manilov peers back but cannot see past the truck tailgating them. Roof shingles briefly rain down on the vehicles. Manilov covers his head with his arms.
The jeep and truck continue to speed down the twisting hill road. A truck with two Iraqi soldiers in the cab catches Latham’s and Manilov’s white faces in their high beams. The passenger comments, “Those aren’t our people.” The driver offers, “Must be Russian advisors. They drive like madmen.”
When they reach the airfield, the British uncover and tow the planes to the runway.
It is 4 a.m. The three planes race against the dawn. Manilov hears a loud roar and the plane shakes violently. “What was that?”
“Iraqi jet. I don’t think he saw us.” Manilov waits intently for another pass of the jet. There is none.
⸎ They didn’t find the reactor, but they destroyed the factory and safely brought home their team and the Russian. Latham could count the mission a success. He should reward himself. Maye he could restart something with Sharon, the radar technician.
They had been good friends and lovers. Her mind was as lean as her body. No web of manipulation. Or so he thought. Then out of nowhere, she started to complain that he wasn’t “sharing his feelings.” He was “emotionally constipated.” He teeth clenched at the memory. He silently suffered through her attacks. Then she wouldn’t return his calls. He should have been more passionate. He should have thrown her to the floor and fucked her in the ass. He should have grabbed her hair, pulled her head back and yelled in her ear, “Now you know how I feel. Are you happy?” But of course, he is too disciplined for that.
A young male butt is beginning to look better and better.
Next
Chapter 7
Leslie took what the doctor recommended: a modified radical mastectomy on the right breast; a preventative subcutaneous mastectomy on the left. Haynes had filled his visits to the hospital with vacuous cheer. “I’m sure you’ll be up and around soon. Are they treating you right? We miss you.” Blah, blah. Then the chaste kiss on the check. You jerk. They didn’t cut off my lips.
The scars. At first, she could not bear to look at or touch them at all. In the first few showers, she barely patted the breasts with her washcloth. Then came the days in which she monitored them every other hour, gently touching the wound, watching the red slowly turn pink. Now, she was down to a “normal” routine; she contemplated the wounds when she undressed for bed.
She wasn’t planning for the implant surgery. She was tired of her body being poked, prodded, and drained. She wanted—she needed—a long time to heal.
⸎ Haynes was trying to reinvent his fantasies. Wasn’t it some Amazonian lesbian tribe where they cut off their right breasts so they could shoot arrows better? They would capture one man to meet their reproductive needs then slay him when he was no longer needed. He tried to imagine the Amazon Leslie in a black leather bra.
She ties him to a bed post. She cracks a whip then coils it around his testicles. She sits on his chest and slaps his face. “I have only one use for this worthless piece of scum.” Then she mounts his obedient penis. Who was he kidding? Leslie wouldn’t lower herself to those kind of kinky theatrics.
⸎ In David’s hotel room, David and Neva face each other in bed. “How come we never go to your place?” David asks.
“I like to keep secrets too. So, have you been to London before?”
“No, but I’ve seen pictures of it. Neva smiles. “That’s not the same thing, silly. You can’t experience everything through books.”
“True, I didn’t find you in a book. But I don’t feel any need to explore England. I would be happy just exploring your body for the next month.” Under the sheet, he puts a hand on her right breast. Neva suggests, “Maybe when this is all over, we can go on a long cruise together.”
“Sounds okay to me.”
“Did you sleep well?” she asks. “I had a dream again.”
“What kind of dream?”
“I would see this bright light in the ceiling.”
“And?
“That’s all.”
“So, what do you think it means?”
David moves his head closer to hers. “It must mean you’re the light of my life.” Neva giggles, then kissed him softly. “You’re so sweet. I could just eat you up.”
⸎ Neva has persuaded David to do the “tourist thing” but he won’t admit to enjoying the beauty and grace of the British empire. They ride through Piccadilly on a red bus. “Reminds me of the Red Cars they had in Los Angeles. My mother rode them to work. When she was pregnant, a white woman kept sitting next to her, offering to buy her baby.”
“Somebody must have thought you were very special.”
⸎ They stand amid the pigeons and clicking Nikons in Trafalgar Square. “So, what do you think of London?” Neva asks. “Well, this is impressive.” David looks up from one of the four lions to the statute of Lord Nelson atop the 150-foot column. “Those African lions chased that white man up the pole. Now he’ll never get down.” Neva gives a hearty laugh.
From statues of dead white males to bodies of dead white males. In Highgate Cemetery, creepers and ivy, fed by desperate lost souls, cling to cracked tombstones and mausoleums, plotting against plots. Something powerful passes their way; green senses hot blood red; leaves shudder. David and Neva cross the street to the conventional mortality of the east cemetery. David feels compelled to test reality. “I’ve been kind of wondering.”
“Yes.” They stop at Karl Marx’s tomb and the larger-than-working class bust. “Well, you hang around the rich and famous. Don’t you usually date more powerful men?”
“Yes, but it is men like that who rape and mutilate Mother Earth. Both men and nations must learn humility. The conqueror shall become the conquered.” David didn’t expect such portentous words, but at least he had lucked out. Why was he messing with a good thing? This was their first time together in the daylight; maybe the sun emboldened him to shed light on the truth. Or was he grasping for validation?
⸎ Move the books. Thousands of books packed in hundreds of boxes. No, I can’t lift them; I just had surgery. History books, filled with terrible mistakes. History is in the wrong place. Hurry. You have to move them now. Leslie twists restlessly in bed. A wind gust through the room. She awakens and feels a draft. The drapes are fluttering. When did she open the window? Oh God, is there a burglar in the house?
Her eyes grasp at the darkness. She sees nothing moving, nothing out of place. She swings her legs over the edge of the bed. She walks to the window. The drapes stop moving. The window is already closed. She returns to bed and gradually falls to sleep. The elevator door opens. Leslie is being pulled toward flashing lightbulbs and a crowd of men. A fat man with a gun lunges toward her.
⸎ November 19, 1990. With no new intelligence on Hussein’s black stone, David is allowed to return home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. He does not get a chance to say goodbye to Neva. She never gave him her number.
David lives in Vacaville, a Northern California city still pursuing the suburban dream: affordable, fairly safe neighborhoods of new tract houses; major retail outlets; and just enough blacks to appear integrated, but not enough to scare white people away.
He pushes the button on his garage door opener. He sees the lawn mower and edger; so far, he believes his house has not been burglarized. He turns the water heater back on normal. He quickly checks the smaller bedroom. The computer and laser printer are still there. In that case, nothing was stolen.
In Napa, David provides a report to the Magellan Council director, who is in the security loop, and begins a study of the history between the Fermi experiment of December 2, 1942, and the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
David is wary of the ham and turkey holidays, the time you are forced to weigh family relationships. If he had brothers and sisters, his mother’s expectations would be diffused. She had worked hard all her life: picking cotton, waitressing in restaurants, and inhaling toxic fumes as she soldered circuit boards in aerospace factories. She sent him through college. Now she had crippling rheumatoid arthritis, feet problems, and a bad heart. And for what? “Am I going to have grandchildren?”
“We’ll see” is all he could say, then abruptly turn on the TV or go for a walk.
⸎ David was born David Washington on June 29, 1950.
At the time of the Watts riots in August 1965, David and his mother were living in a triplex at the west end of Lynwood, just a stone’s throw from the Watts Towers. The morning after the riots began, his mother decided that “this family” should not be exposed to such lawlessness. She packed breakfast and lunch in a brown grocery bag, work David up, and announced they were taking a trip to Big Bear. She told him to lie on the back seat of their white ’61 Chevy Bel-Air until they got on the freeway. The police would be on the lookout for young black males trying to loot white neighborhoods. If the police stopped them, she would say David was sick and she was taking him to the hospital.
They had juice and coffee cakes on the way to the mountains. David read the map while they listened to the riot news on the radio. He hated this. He was missing all the exciting riot coverage on TV. Not much to see in Big Bear in the summer, just trees and a lake on a hot, muggy day. At noon, they pulled off the side of the road and made a cooking fire from newspapers and small, fallen branches. The hot dogs were black and blistered on the outside, cold on the inside. At least there were potato chips and iced strawberry Kool-Aid in the big Thermos. They slept that night on the living-room size car seats, windows rolled down a fraction of an inch, just enough to let the air in and keep the bugs out.
When the riots were over, his mother decided to get rid of their inherited slave name. She chose the title of a place where black people lived: Compton, the city south of Lynwood. She wanted something American, not one of those foreign Arab names like Muhammed or Abdul. Maybe blacks did ride camels and build pyramids, but she suspected the interest in Islam and Egypt had something to do with being ashamed of the whole spear-throwing, drum-beating African image.
David’s father—a drunk, shoplifter and homosexual—left when he was five. David didn’t remember him. His mother threw out all photos of him and made David promise he would never search for his dad. Then one day, when he was about eighteen, a lawyer for his father showed up at their apartment, asking for a blood test to disprove paternity. She told him to go to hell.
He didn’t believe his mother has been unfaithful. It’s not that he thought of her as a pure Madonna; it was just that she was very prudish about sex and, after the divorce, she just wasn’t that interested in men or dating. She stopped going to dances after concluding that men “were interested in only one thing.”
David had no paternal instinct. He cringed at the high decibel scream of infants. He watched mothers struggling with their kids in the supermarkets. “Don’t touch that . . . Wait till I get you home . . . Do you want me to slap you right here?” Oh, he supposed if a woman got him all warm/fuzzy, lovey/dovey and his heart got softy/squishy, he could be seduced into becoming a father.
His mother did not question the “errands” he did for her friend. That teenage affair had kept him out of trouble. Well, almost. Once, some bullies found out and beat him up, calling him a motherfucker. Not a bad motherfucker, just a motherfucker. He figured they were jealous. He had regular pussy, good grades, and no time for losers. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Wrong. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man will get his eye poked out.
He had no patience for young women who created an obstacle course to their bodies. If nothing clicked in three dates, he moved on. An older woman had told him about a young woman who had collected several men from a personal ad. She told one her birthday was the next week, got a present on the second date, then dumped him and repeated the process on the next man.
He usually didn’t get that kind of BS from older women, but there was always the exception. An attractive real estate agent he invited to dinner spent the whole evening trying to convince him to buy a condo, then asked for his receipt to claim as her business deduction.
Maybe it was bad karma. David would admit that after a string of rejections from attractive women, he would take an ugly woman to bed. The next morning, his sexual confidence restored, he would think, “Heh, I can do better than this” and the cycle would begin again. He might feel more guilty except those women always made it easy to dump them. All you had to do was not call. Anyway, if he rejected one woman for every four that snubbed him, the balance of cruelty was still on the female side.
David needed peace and quiet; apartment living could be unpleasant. He once lived in a two-story apartment in Canoga Park, one of those seamless valley suburbs of L.A. He had convinced the young Jewish woman downstairs not to use her stereo as a wake-up call at 5:30 a.m. but had greater difficulty getting her not to use the radio after midnight. She huffed, “I had a bad day. I have a right to relax.”
In retrospect, the complaining wasn’t worth the trouble. The walls and floors were wafer thin. He could hear the next-door neighbor turn on the light switch when she came home.
Anyway, she now had a Lebanese boyfriend who seemed to have taken up residence. One night, about 1 a.m., they got into an ugly row. She was yelling, “No, no, damn you. You’re hurting me.” He surmised from the struggle that he was trying to sodomize here. He called downstairs (her number was in the directory) and asked if there was trouble. “Yes, he’s hurting me.”
“Do you want me to call the police?”
“Yes.”
He dialed 911 and reported that the woman downstairs was being hurt and she was crying for help. A few second later, the downstairs door slammed, and the boyfriend left. David heard a knocking at his door. He peered through the shades. She was at the door. He opened it.
“Things are okay now. You can call the police and tell them they don’t have to come.”
“I think they’re already on the way. You can tell them yourself.”
Two minutes later two policemen were at her door. She explained it was just an argument; things were okay now. About an hour later, the boyfriend knocked softly at the door. She opened it. He pleaded with her and said he was sorry. She let him in.
David, who had never forced a woman to do anything, had been dateless for a month, whereas the guy downstairs, despite his flaws, was getting it every night. He concluded that many women preferred an exciting, abusive man over a dull, nonviolent one.
⸎ When the Magellan Council moved from West L.A. to Napa, David first rented an apartment in Napa, then shopped around for a house. Not finding what he wanted locally, he finally settled on a newer, small house on Peregrine Way in Vacaville, near the prison. He then remembered that the first car he owned was a white 1961 Ford Falcon. After moving to Vacaville, he selected a new tax preparer: a black man who had two pictures of falcons in his office.
The coincidences prompted David to look up references to falcons. He discovered they were icons representing the Egyptian gods Ra and Horus. Maybe he was a pharaoh in a previous life.
Leslie took what the doctor recommended: a modified radical mastectomy on the right breast; a preventative subcutaneous mastectomy on the left. Haynes had filled his visits to the hospital with vacuous cheer. “I’m sure you’ll be up and around soon. Are they treating you right? We miss you.” Blah, blah. Then the chaste kiss on the check. You jerk. They didn’t cut off my lips.
The scars. At first, she could not bear to look at or touch them at all. In the first few showers, she barely patted the breasts with her washcloth. Then came the days in which she monitored them every other hour, gently touching the wound, watching the red slowly turn pink. Now, she was down to a “normal” routine; she contemplated the wounds when she undressed for bed.
She wasn’t planning for the implant surgery. She was tired of her body being poked, prodded, and drained. She wanted—she needed—a long time to heal.
⸎ Haynes was trying to reinvent his fantasies. Wasn’t it some Amazonian lesbian tribe where they cut off their right breasts so they could shoot arrows better? They would capture one man to meet their reproductive needs then slay him when he was no longer needed. He tried to imagine the Amazon Leslie in a black leather bra.
She ties him to a bed post. She cracks a whip then coils it around his testicles. She sits on his chest and slaps his face. “I have only one use for this worthless piece of scum.” Then she mounts his obedient penis. Who was he kidding? Leslie wouldn’t lower herself to those kind of kinky theatrics.
⸎ In David’s hotel room, David and Neva face each other in bed. “How come we never go to your place?” David asks.
“I like to keep secrets too. So, have you been to London before?”
“No, but I’ve seen pictures of it. Neva smiles. “That’s not the same thing, silly. You can’t experience everything through books.”
“True, I didn’t find you in a book. But I don’t feel any need to explore England. I would be happy just exploring your body for the next month.” Under the sheet, he puts a hand on her right breast. Neva suggests, “Maybe when this is all over, we can go on a long cruise together.”
“Sounds okay to me.”
“Did you sleep well?” she asks. “I had a dream again.”
“What kind of dream?”
“I would see this bright light in the ceiling.”
“And?
“That’s all.”
“So, what do you think it means?”
David moves his head closer to hers. “It must mean you’re the light of my life.” Neva giggles, then kissed him softly. “You’re so sweet. I could just eat you up.”
⸎ Neva has persuaded David to do the “tourist thing” but he won’t admit to enjoying the beauty and grace of the British empire. They ride through Piccadilly on a red bus. “Reminds me of the Red Cars they had in Los Angeles. My mother rode them to work. When she was pregnant, a white woman kept sitting next to her, offering to buy her baby.”
“Somebody must have thought you were very special.”
⸎ They stand amid the pigeons and clicking Nikons in Trafalgar Square. “So, what do you think of London?” Neva asks. “Well, this is impressive.” David looks up from one of the four lions to the statute of Lord Nelson atop the 150-foot column. “Those African lions chased that white man up the pole. Now he’ll never get down.” Neva gives a hearty laugh.
From statues of dead white males to bodies of dead white males. In Highgate Cemetery, creepers and ivy, fed by desperate lost souls, cling to cracked tombstones and mausoleums, plotting against plots. Something powerful passes their way; green senses hot blood red; leaves shudder. David and Neva cross the street to the conventional mortality of the east cemetery. David feels compelled to test reality. “I’ve been kind of wondering.”
“Yes.” They stop at Karl Marx’s tomb and the larger-than-working class bust. “Well, you hang around the rich and famous. Don’t you usually date more powerful men?”
“Yes, but it is men like that who rape and mutilate Mother Earth. Both men and nations must learn humility. The conqueror shall become the conquered.” David didn’t expect such portentous words, but at least he had lucked out. Why was he messing with a good thing? This was their first time together in the daylight; maybe the sun emboldened him to shed light on the truth. Or was he grasping for validation?
⸎ Move the books. Thousands of books packed in hundreds of boxes. No, I can’t lift them; I just had surgery. History books, filled with terrible mistakes. History is in the wrong place. Hurry. You have to move them now. Leslie twists restlessly in bed. A wind gust through the room. She awakens and feels a draft. The drapes are fluttering. When did she open the window? Oh God, is there a burglar in the house?
Her eyes grasp at the darkness. She sees nothing moving, nothing out of place. She swings her legs over the edge of the bed. She walks to the window. The drapes stop moving. The window is already closed. She returns to bed and gradually falls to sleep. The elevator door opens. Leslie is being pulled toward flashing lightbulbs and a crowd of men. A fat man with a gun lunges toward her.
⸎ November 19, 1990. With no new intelligence on Hussein’s black stone, David is allowed to return home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. He does not get a chance to say goodbye to Neva. She never gave him her number.
David lives in Vacaville, a Northern California city still pursuing the suburban dream: affordable, fairly safe neighborhoods of new tract houses; major retail outlets; and just enough blacks to appear integrated, but not enough to scare white people away.
He pushes the button on his garage door opener. He sees the lawn mower and edger; so far, he believes his house has not been burglarized. He turns the water heater back on normal. He quickly checks the smaller bedroom. The computer and laser printer are still there. In that case, nothing was stolen.
In Napa, David provides a report to the Magellan Council director, who is in the security loop, and begins a study of the history between the Fermi experiment of December 2, 1942, and the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
David is wary of the ham and turkey holidays, the time you are forced to weigh family relationships. If he had brothers and sisters, his mother’s expectations would be diffused. She had worked hard all her life: picking cotton, waitressing in restaurants, and inhaling toxic fumes as she soldered circuit boards in aerospace factories. She sent him through college. Now she had crippling rheumatoid arthritis, feet problems, and a bad heart. And for what? “Am I going to have grandchildren?”
“We’ll see” is all he could say, then abruptly turn on the TV or go for a walk.
⸎ David was born David Washington on June 29, 1950.
At the time of the Watts riots in August 1965, David and his mother were living in a triplex at the west end of Lynwood, just a stone’s throw from the Watts Towers. The morning after the riots began, his mother decided that “this family” should not be exposed to such lawlessness. She packed breakfast and lunch in a brown grocery bag, work David up, and announced they were taking a trip to Big Bear. She told him to lie on the back seat of their white ’61 Chevy Bel-Air until they got on the freeway. The police would be on the lookout for young black males trying to loot white neighborhoods. If the police stopped them, she would say David was sick and she was taking him to the hospital.
They had juice and coffee cakes on the way to the mountains. David read the map while they listened to the riot news on the radio. He hated this. He was missing all the exciting riot coverage on TV. Not much to see in Big Bear in the summer, just trees and a lake on a hot, muggy day. At noon, they pulled off the side of the road and made a cooking fire from newspapers and small, fallen branches. The hot dogs were black and blistered on the outside, cold on the inside. At least there were potato chips and iced strawberry Kool-Aid in the big Thermos. They slept that night on the living-room size car seats, windows rolled down a fraction of an inch, just enough to let the air in and keep the bugs out.
When the riots were over, his mother decided to get rid of their inherited slave name. She chose the title of a place where black people lived: Compton, the city south of Lynwood. She wanted something American, not one of those foreign Arab names like Muhammed or Abdul. Maybe blacks did ride camels and build pyramids, but she suspected the interest in Islam and Egypt had something to do with being ashamed of the whole spear-throwing, drum-beating African image.
David’s father—a drunk, shoplifter and homosexual—left when he was five. David didn’t remember him. His mother threw out all photos of him and made David promise he would never search for his dad. Then one day, when he was about eighteen, a lawyer for his father showed up at their apartment, asking for a blood test to disprove paternity. She told him to go to hell.
He didn’t believe his mother has been unfaithful. It’s not that he thought of her as a pure Madonna; it was just that she was very prudish about sex and, after the divorce, she just wasn’t that interested in men or dating. She stopped going to dances after concluding that men “were interested in only one thing.”
David had no paternal instinct. He cringed at the high decibel scream of infants. He watched mothers struggling with their kids in the supermarkets. “Don’t touch that . . . Wait till I get you home . . . Do you want me to slap you right here?” Oh, he supposed if a woman got him all warm/fuzzy, lovey/dovey and his heart got softy/squishy, he could be seduced into becoming a father.
His mother did not question the “errands” he did for her friend. That teenage affair had kept him out of trouble. Well, almost. Once, some bullies found out and beat him up, calling him a motherfucker. Not a bad motherfucker, just a motherfucker. He figured they were jealous. He had regular pussy, good grades, and no time for losers. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Wrong. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man will get his eye poked out.
He had no patience for young women who created an obstacle course to their bodies. If nothing clicked in three dates, he moved on. An older woman had told him about a young woman who had collected several men from a personal ad. She told one her birthday was the next week, got a present on the second date, then dumped him and repeated the process on the next man.
He usually didn’t get that kind of BS from older women, but there was always the exception. An attractive real estate agent he invited to dinner spent the whole evening trying to convince him to buy a condo, then asked for his receipt to claim as her business deduction.
Maybe it was bad karma. David would admit that after a string of rejections from attractive women, he would take an ugly woman to bed. The next morning, his sexual confidence restored, he would think, “Heh, I can do better than this” and the cycle would begin again. He might feel more guilty except those women always made it easy to dump them. All you had to do was not call. Anyway, if he rejected one woman for every four that snubbed him, the balance of cruelty was still on the female side.
David needed peace and quiet; apartment living could be unpleasant. He once lived in a two-story apartment in Canoga Park, one of those seamless valley suburbs of L.A. He had convinced the young Jewish woman downstairs not to use her stereo as a wake-up call at 5:30 a.m. but had greater difficulty getting her not to use the radio after midnight. She huffed, “I had a bad day. I have a right to relax.”
In retrospect, the complaining wasn’t worth the trouble. The walls and floors were wafer thin. He could hear the next-door neighbor turn on the light switch when she came home.
Anyway, she now had a Lebanese boyfriend who seemed to have taken up residence. One night, about 1 a.m., they got into an ugly row. She was yelling, “No, no, damn you. You’re hurting me.” He surmised from the struggle that he was trying to sodomize here. He called downstairs (her number was in the directory) and asked if there was trouble. “Yes, he’s hurting me.”
“Do you want me to call the police?”
“Yes.”
He dialed 911 and reported that the woman downstairs was being hurt and she was crying for help. A few second later, the downstairs door slammed, and the boyfriend left. David heard a knocking at his door. He peered through the shades. She was at the door. He opened it.
“Things are okay now. You can call the police and tell them they don’t have to come.”
“I think they’re already on the way. You can tell them yourself.”
Two minutes later two policemen were at her door. She explained it was just an argument; things were okay now. About an hour later, the boyfriend knocked softly at the door. She opened it. He pleaded with her and said he was sorry. She let him in.
David, who had never forced a woman to do anything, had been dateless for a month, whereas the guy downstairs, despite his flaws, was getting it every night. He concluded that many women preferred an exciting, abusive man over a dull, nonviolent one.
⸎ When the Magellan Council moved from West L.A. to Napa, David first rented an apartment in Napa, then shopped around for a house. Not finding what he wanted locally, he finally settled on a newer, small house on Peregrine Way in Vacaville, near the prison. He then remembered that the first car he owned was a white 1961 Ford Falcon. After moving to Vacaville, he selected a new tax preparer: a black man who had two pictures of falcons in his office.
The coincidences prompted David to look up references to falcons. He discovered they were icons representing the Egyptian gods Ra and Horus. Maybe he was a pharaoh in a previous life.
Chapter 8
In a hospital room, Leslie’s anxieties would bounce off the walls like hard, cold handballs, smashing back in her face, but here they are absorbed and muffled by the dark, heavy curtains and the plush teddy bears, dogs and monkeys piled in a warm-fuzzy mountain on the corner table. Dr. Seka Linh sits in an easy chair by her desk, a note pad on her lap. “Am I supposed to lie down?”
“Do whatever makes you comfortable.”
Leslie stays upright on the overstuffed couch. She doesn’t want to be a therapy cliché. “I had the elevator dream again but this time a man with a gun was coming toward me. I think I know who that is. It’s Jack Ruby, the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald.”
“You were watching it on TV?” asks Seka.
“No, I was there.”
“What about John F. Kennedy? Do you remember what you were doing when you heard he was shot?
“No, but I can remember Kennedy not being shot.”
“Kennedy not being shot?”
“I remember a different history.”
⸎ September 26, 1966. Leslie, in the front row of the Introduction to Physics class, stares glassy eyed toward the blackboard as a voice trails in her head, “. . . a different history.” The only other female is a brunette in the fourth row. Professor Samuel Haynes quietly bends over Leslie and squeaks, “Leslie, Leslie, dear . . . It’s Aunt Em, darling.”
The class laughs. Leslie awakes, startled. Still at her desk, Haynes smugly addressed the class. “Leslie is going to tell us what happened on December 2, 1942. I’m sure she knows this so well, she could tell it to us in her sleep.”
Leslie stalls. “1942.” She glances down at the book on her desk and begins to turn a page, but Haynes slams his hand down on the book. She strains to remember. “December 2, 1942.” Then she perks up with confidence. “The date on which Enrico Fermi conducted the first sustained nuclear reaction, at the University of Chicago.” How could she forget? She knows everything about the Fermi experiment. Haynes may still trip her up. “And why was that important during the war?”
“The experiment was the first step toward making an atomic bomb.”
⸎ Leslie walks between classes with her friend Carol, from the physics class. Carol defends her dreamy classmate. “Haynes can be such a shithead.”
“I guess.”
“What are you doing with your weekend?”
“I don’t know. Study.”
“Me and Johnny are going up to the cabin. We’re going to get away from everything. Maybe we’ll be safe there when they start dropping the bombs.”
She tries to engender some life in Leslie. “So, when are you getting yourself a boyfriend?”
“I’m not interested in boys. I’m interested in men.”
“Oh, you like older men.” She breaks into a broad smile. “Oh, God, you’re not interested in Haynes, are you? Carney doesn’t reply but can’t conceal a small grin. “Well, try to have some fun. We don’t have much time left. That Kennedy is going to get us all killed.”
⸎ Leslie had hedged her bet on physics with a minor in journalism. If she couldn’t learn everything about nothing, she could learn nothing about everything.
She sits in the college newspaper’s city room, constructing a story out of that night’s student council meeting and the two-hour debate over a resolution to oppose the Vietnam War. Like they really thought they were going to change something. It was voted down. The editor makes a few cursory changes to her story and nods his approval.
Leslie is lost in thoughts of the Vietnam Crisis as she walks to the parking lot. Kennedy had surprised the world by playing his “China card.” In return for diplomatic recognition, open trade and admission to the UN, China would withdraw all support from North Vietnam. Hanoi’s only lifeline was to the Soviet Union, and Kennedy was determined to cut that.
She had discovered some literature in the lunchroom. A crudely mimeographed sheet claimed Kennedy was a stooge of the Pope. We had been dragged into Vietnam to protect the Vietnamese Catholics.
Leslie walks past hedges and blind corners, past unlit spots on the winding walkway. What did she hear, a quick scuffing of shoes and a short, fast breath? She is pushed off the sidewalk. The note pad and books fly from her arms, and she feels the grass pressing her face. Some jerk had run into her. Then a hand grips the nape of her neck and a knife flashes near her eyes. “Do everything I say or die.” She catches a glimpse of a ski mask.
“Stay on your hands and knees.” He loops a belt around her neck and ties the end around a sapling. Her skirt is lifted to the chilling air, her panties torn down. Her arms and legs are shaking. She knows she will collapse in a moment. But the prodding stops. He unhooks the belt and runs off. She slumps to the ground, lies on her side, and waits for the shaking to stop. She pulls her panties back up and crawls to the note pad and books.
At the end of the nearest building, she sees a familiar caged soft light marking the rest rooms. She grasps the dirtied things to her arms and runs to the inviolate space—the women’s room. Leslie pushes open the door and rushes to a stall. She rocks on the seat, her teeth gripping her fist. She waits to catch her breath, waits for the panic to stop. She can’t talk to anyone yet. She can’t let anyone touch her. When she collects her thoughts, when she calms down, then she will go to the police.
Only a small red spot on her panties. Did she bleed on the grass? She puts a piece of toilet paper to her vulva and picks up a thin red stain. Her muscles relax. She stops rocking. She urinates. She has to give this more thought. What would she tell the police anyway? She doesn’t know what he looks like. She doesn’t want anybody touching her, not even a nurse. Her body is tensing again, racing to get away.
Leslie glances at her watch: 11:30. Her father will be worried. She needs to get home. She can’t see anyone now. Maybe in the morning. She looks in the bathroom mirror and sees on her chin a small grass stain from the fall. On her hands are small creases and dots from the grass and dirt. She washes them.
⸎ At home, Leslie parks in front of the house and hopes the clattering Beetle didn’t wake her father. She slowly unlocks the front door and steps quietly to her bedroom. She quickly undresses. She doesn’t want to explain the grass stains on her clothes.
She enters the shower. Maybe she’s washing away evidence, but she doesn’t care. Wash everything away. What did she remember about him? He was white, not very tall or heavy. Could she identify the voice? Those smirking frat faces—was it one of them? Can she even go back on campus again? He will be there, secretly leering at her, knowing he got away with it.
She should learn how to protect herself. One Monday night, after turning in her story, she will hide on the top floor of a tall campus building, in a storage room, waiting with a rifle. Look down on the campus and watch for him. She will see a woman student walking alone, then he stalking her. No mistake, he’s wearing a mask. Before he can jump on her, she will pull the trigger, then shoot again and again until he lies still in his filthy pool of blood.
Leslie sees the deep, pink wrinkles in her fingertips and realizes she’s been under the shower too long.
She wraps the bath towel around her and peeks into the hallway. No light from her father’s room. Well, if he heard her come in, he’s probably relieved.
⸎ Charles Carney checks his tie in the mirror, grabs his briefcase, and walks to Leslie’s bedroom door. He knocks. “Leslie, are you all right? Leslie, in a fetal position, is clenching the comforter to her chin. “Yes, I just overslept. I’ll see you later.” Her father, momentarily concerned, walks away.
Leslie stays home all day, drifting from bed to bathroom to the TV in the living room, then to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal or a piece of cheese. Something about dairy products relaxes her. About 5 p.m., she feels a sudden burst of energy—or fear. She knows she needs to get her act together before her father gets home. She doesn’t want to explain everything. She puts on her face and her clothes.
When her father’s car pulls up the driveway, she starts the water boiling for the spaghetti.
⸎ Leslie and her father sit at opposite ends of the dining table. Leslie picks at her salad. In the adjacent living room, the black-and-white TV set mumbles. “I there anything wrong, honey?"
“No.”
“Is everything okay at school?
“Everybody is acting like there’s no tomorrow. She looks across the living room and recognizes the handsome face and Boston accent. “The President is speaking.” She feels that explanation is enough to excuse her from the table. She hides in the easy chair, watching the TV.
The President seems assured. “Yesterday, in the Gulf of Tonkin, we intercepted a Soviet cargo ship carrying weapons bound for North Vietnam. Our destroyer, the USS Maddox, fired a shot across the bow. The ship refused to stop. Another shot was fired, causing munitions on the ship to explode, and sinking the vessel. Twelve Soviet crewmen were rescued from the ship, and we have made arrangements to return them to their home country.”
Kennedy pauses. “We have continued to make it clear to the Soviet Union that the blockade will stand. We will not allow the delivery of weapons to be used against our boys in Vietnam.”
Newsman Chet Huntley appears on the screen. Behind him is a map of Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin, with simple renderings of a sinking cargo ship and destroyer. “I believe we now have film of that ship, which has been identified as the Neva, named after the Russian river.”
Leslie’s father stands next to the easy chair. On TV, smoke billows from the Soviet cargo ship.
⸎ Three hours later, Leslie, in flannel pajamas, embraces a pillow in her arms and tries to remember better times: sitting in her daddy’s lap, watching television while her mother fixed dinner. Her mother died from cancer when she was nine, and Leslie is no longer sure which of her memories are genuine and which are imagined. But she was sure none of the women her handsome father brought home measured up. She disdained their efforts at familiarity. They didn’t know this family was special.
A teddy bear sits on a corner table, a reminder of innocent times. There is a knocking at the door. “Come in.” Her father enters. “How is my little angel?” He sits on her bed. “Things are still bad on the news. This could be our last night together.”
⸎ When the car pulls out of the driveway, Leslie relaxes, then gets out of her bed. She quickly sheds her pajamas and takes another long shower. She then throws on a pink and green shirt and white knit pants and slips on a pair of tennis shoes. In the kitchen, she reads a note posted on the refrigerator door: “I’ll be staying late in the city. Love, Dad.”
As long as she can keep moving and not thinking, she will be all right. She is already late for classes. Maybe there’s something interesting on TV.
The set takes a couple of seconds to warm up. The round-the-clock coverage of the Vietnam Crisis continues. David Brinkley sits in front of a map of Germany. A graphic of an airplane torn apart by an explosion appears halfway between the West/East German border and Berlin.
“To update, last night, a Soviet MIG fighter shot down a U.S. cargo plane carrying supplies to Berlin. There were six crewmen on board, with no report of any survivors. The Air Force has suspended further flights to Berlin. Meanwhile, on the ground, NATO forces have commandeered at least three German highways and are moving troops toward the East German border.”
Leslie pumps her right leg up and down; she is restless. She wants to get out of the house, but she is glued to the screen.
The camera switches to Chet Huntley, who is sitting in front of a Mercator projection of the globe. “We now have a report from the White House.”
A reporter stands outside a back gate of the White House. “Off the record, some of the President’s advisors have expressed concern about our assessment of the Russians. The original consensus was that the Soviets knew the limits. They would back down in Vietnam like they did in Cuba.”
A helicopter lands. The camera switches from the newsman to the copter. “That is the President’s helicopter.” A party of eight people quickly exits the White House and approaches the copter. Two Secret Service agents flank the President; another two hold the elbows of a distraught First Lady. The reporter begins, “There’s a bright light . . .” A burst of white flashes across the screen, followed by a storm of static.
Leslie gets up and turns the knob to another station. It’s an old movie. Through the glazed window of an office door, two men are seen struggling with a gun. A shot is fired. Inside the office, the ricochet knocks the statue of a black bird off the mantle. It breaks open on the floor. An actress gasps, her hands flying to her face. There are no jewels inside. The falcon is a fake.
Leslie gets up again and turns off the TV.
⸎ In a pitch-black room, Seka sits before a desktop computer. Two folders are on the screen, one marked Leslie, the other Leona. Moving the mouse, Seka puts the Leslie folder inside the Leona folder.
⸎ Leslie grabs a sweater and goes outside. She walks through the park across from her house. She stops for a moment and looks east at the faint, distant skyline of Chicago. Somewhere out there is her father; somewhere is her rapist. She wants all of it to go away; she wants to start over. She resumes walking and begins murmuring to herself. “No, no.” She presses her hands to the sides of her head, trying to squeeze out the memory, “NO, GOD, NO.”
In the east, a false dawn in born. Leslie feels the light shrieking through her face to the center of her brain. She covers her eyes with her hand and sees an X-ray of her fingers. Leaves fly past her.
But the wind stops and the new sun suddenly disappears. Leslie removes the hand from her face. The park is gone. She stands in a field of high grasses and weeds. She looks east toward Chicago. The city still stands there but there are fewer, smaller buildings. She looks at her hand. Something isn’t right. And her clothes are different. She is wearing a three-button gray jacket over a white shirt.
She turns toward the sound of a car engine. An old car, a tall mass of curved black metal, moves slowly her way. A stack of chrome grill vents leer at her. For a moment, Leslie imagines a bootlegger standing on the running board, a tommy gun aimed at her. The sun reflecting off the split windshield conceals the driver. The car stops and a figure within reaches over and opens the passenger door.
Leslie moves toward the side of the car. The huge whitewalls are flecked with mud and leaves. The driver wears a Navy-blue calf-length dress and a matching pill box hat, which barely restrains a Gypsy swirl of black hair. It is Seka. “Get in,” she commands. Leslie climbs onto the bench seat and shuts the door.
She asks Seka, “Do you have a mirror?” Seka pulls a compact cosmetic mirror from her purse and hands it to Leslie. She flips it open and looks at the image. It is of a young woman about her age, but with softer features and black hair. “That is not me.”
“That is Leona Woods, the only female scientist working with Enrico Fermi in Chicago,” says Seka. “You are going to stop Fermi and stop the A-bomb. Kennedy will never start the war. You have a couple of days to fix things.”
It is Sunday, November 29, 1942.
⸎ Leslie sits on the couch, clutching the teddy bear. “The woman in the car is you. Why are you in my memories?” Seka replies, “You need someone to help you through your dream. You trust me to be your guide.”
“It doesn’t seem like a dream. These memories came to me while I was awake.” Seka looks at the notepad on her lap. “Did these dreams begin when you discovered you had cancer?” Leslie thinks back. “Not when the doctor told me. Well, yes, I think they begin when I discovered the lump.”
“Sometimes a traumatic experience in the present can shake loose bad memories from the past.” That made sense, thought Leslie. Put the cancer behind her and the nightmares would end. “What happened after you met me in the car?”
“I don’t remember much.” That was not entirely true.
In a hospital room, Leslie’s anxieties would bounce off the walls like hard, cold handballs, smashing back in her face, but here they are absorbed and muffled by the dark, heavy curtains and the plush teddy bears, dogs and monkeys piled in a warm-fuzzy mountain on the corner table. Dr. Seka Linh sits in an easy chair by her desk, a note pad on her lap. “Am I supposed to lie down?”
“Do whatever makes you comfortable.”
Leslie stays upright on the overstuffed couch. She doesn’t want to be a therapy cliché. “I had the elevator dream again but this time a man with a gun was coming toward me. I think I know who that is. It’s Jack Ruby, the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald.”
“You were watching it on TV?” asks Seka.
“No, I was there.”
“What about John F. Kennedy? Do you remember what you were doing when you heard he was shot?
“No, but I can remember Kennedy not being shot.”
“Kennedy not being shot?”
“I remember a different history.”
⸎ September 26, 1966. Leslie, in the front row of the Introduction to Physics class, stares glassy eyed toward the blackboard as a voice trails in her head, “. . . a different history.” The only other female is a brunette in the fourth row. Professor Samuel Haynes quietly bends over Leslie and squeaks, “Leslie, Leslie, dear . . . It’s Aunt Em, darling.”
The class laughs. Leslie awakes, startled. Still at her desk, Haynes smugly addressed the class. “Leslie is going to tell us what happened on December 2, 1942. I’m sure she knows this so well, she could tell it to us in her sleep.”
Leslie stalls. “1942.” She glances down at the book on her desk and begins to turn a page, but Haynes slams his hand down on the book. She strains to remember. “December 2, 1942.” Then she perks up with confidence. “The date on which Enrico Fermi conducted the first sustained nuclear reaction, at the University of Chicago.” How could she forget? She knows everything about the Fermi experiment. Haynes may still trip her up. “And why was that important during the war?”
“The experiment was the first step toward making an atomic bomb.”
⸎ Leslie walks between classes with her friend Carol, from the physics class. Carol defends her dreamy classmate. “Haynes can be such a shithead.”
“I guess.”
“What are you doing with your weekend?”
“I don’t know. Study.”
“Me and Johnny are going up to the cabin. We’re going to get away from everything. Maybe we’ll be safe there when they start dropping the bombs.”
She tries to engender some life in Leslie. “So, when are you getting yourself a boyfriend?”
“I’m not interested in boys. I’m interested in men.”
“Oh, you like older men.” She breaks into a broad smile. “Oh, God, you’re not interested in Haynes, are you? Carney doesn’t reply but can’t conceal a small grin. “Well, try to have some fun. We don’t have much time left. That Kennedy is going to get us all killed.”
⸎ Leslie had hedged her bet on physics with a minor in journalism. If she couldn’t learn everything about nothing, she could learn nothing about everything.
She sits in the college newspaper’s city room, constructing a story out of that night’s student council meeting and the two-hour debate over a resolution to oppose the Vietnam War. Like they really thought they were going to change something. It was voted down. The editor makes a few cursory changes to her story and nods his approval.
Leslie is lost in thoughts of the Vietnam Crisis as she walks to the parking lot. Kennedy had surprised the world by playing his “China card.” In return for diplomatic recognition, open trade and admission to the UN, China would withdraw all support from North Vietnam. Hanoi’s only lifeline was to the Soviet Union, and Kennedy was determined to cut that.
She had discovered some literature in the lunchroom. A crudely mimeographed sheet claimed Kennedy was a stooge of the Pope. We had been dragged into Vietnam to protect the Vietnamese Catholics.
Leslie walks past hedges and blind corners, past unlit spots on the winding walkway. What did she hear, a quick scuffing of shoes and a short, fast breath? She is pushed off the sidewalk. The note pad and books fly from her arms, and she feels the grass pressing her face. Some jerk had run into her. Then a hand grips the nape of her neck and a knife flashes near her eyes. “Do everything I say or die.” She catches a glimpse of a ski mask.
“Stay on your hands and knees.” He loops a belt around her neck and ties the end around a sapling. Her skirt is lifted to the chilling air, her panties torn down. Her arms and legs are shaking. She knows she will collapse in a moment. But the prodding stops. He unhooks the belt and runs off. She slumps to the ground, lies on her side, and waits for the shaking to stop. She pulls her panties back up and crawls to the note pad and books.
At the end of the nearest building, she sees a familiar caged soft light marking the rest rooms. She grasps the dirtied things to her arms and runs to the inviolate space—the women’s room. Leslie pushes open the door and rushes to a stall. She rocks on the seat, her teeth gripping her fist. She waits to catch her breath, waits for the panic to stop. She can’t talk to anyone yet. She can’t let anyone touch her. When she collects her thoughts, when she calms down, then she will go to the police.
Only a small red spot on her panties. Did she bleed on the grass? She puts a piece of toilet paper to her vulva and picks up a thin red stain. Her muscles relax. She stops rocking. She urinates. She has to give this more thought. What would she tell the police anyway? She doesn’t know what he looks like. She doesn’t want anybody touching her, not even a nurse. Her body is tensing again, racing to get away.
Leslie glances at her watch: 11:30. Her father will be worried. She needs to get home. She can’t see anyone now. Maybe in the morning. She looks in the bathroom mirror and sees on her chin a small grass stain from the fall. On her hands are small creases and dots from the grass and dirt. She washes them.
⸎ At home, Leslie parks in front of the house and hopes the clattering Beetle didn’t wake her father. She slowly unlocks the front door and steps quietly to her bedroom. She quickly undresses. She doesn’t want to explain the grass stains on her clothes.
She enters the shower. Maybe she’s washing away evidence, but she doesn’t care. Wash everything away. What did she remember about him? He was white, not very tall or heavy. Could she identify the voice? Those smirking frat faces—was it one of them? Can she even go back on campus again? He will be there, secretly leering at her, knowing he got away with it.
She should learn how to protect herself. One Monday night, after turning in her story, she will hide on the top floor of a tall campus building, in a storage room, waiting with a rifle. Look down on the campus and watch for him. She will see a woman student walking alone, then he stalking her. No mistake, he’s wearing a mask. Before he can jump on her, she will pull the trigger, then shoot again and again until he lies still in his filthy pool of blood.
Leslie sees the deep, pink wrinkles in her fingertips and realizes she’s been under the shower too long.
She wraps the bath towel around her and peeks into the hallway. No light from her father’s room. Well, if he heard her come in, he’s probably relieved.
⸎ Charles Carney checks his tie in the mirror, grabs his briefcase, and walks to Leslie’s bedroom door. He knocks. “Leslie, are you all right? Leslie, in a fetal position, is clenching the comforter to her chin. “Yes, I just overslept. I’ll see you later.” Her father, momentarily concerned, walks away.
Leslie stays home all day, drifting from bed to bathroom to the TV in the living room, then to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal or a piece of cheese. Something about dairy products relaxes her. About 5 p.m., she feels a sudden burst of energy—or fear. She knows she needs to get her act together before her father gets home. She doesn’t want to explain everything. She puts on her face and her clothes.
When her father’s car pulls up the driveway, she starts the water boiling for the spaghetti.
⸎ Leslie and her father sit at opposite ends of the dining table. Leslie picks at her salad. In the adjacent living room, the black-and-white TV set mumbles. “I there anything wrong, honey?"
“No.”
“Is everything okay at school?
“Everybody is acting like there’s no tomorrow. She looks across the living room and recognizes the handsome face and Boston accent. “The President is speaking.” She feels that explanation is enough to excuse her from the table. She hides in the easy chair, watching the TV.
The President seems assured. “Yesterday, in the Gulf of Tonkin, we intercepted a Soviet cargo ship carrying weapons bound for North Vietnam. Our destroyer, the USS Maddox, fired a shot across the bow. The ship refused to stop. Another shot was fired, causing munitions on the ship to explode, and sinking the vessel. Twelve Soviet crewmen were rescued from the ship, and we have made arrangements to return them to their home country.”
Kennedy pauses. “We have continued to make it clear to the Soviet Union that the blockade will stand. We will not allow the delivery of weapons to be used against our boys in Vietnam.”
Newsman Chet Huntley appears on the screen. Behind him is a map of Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin, with simple renderings of a sinking cargo ship and destroyer. “I believe we now have film of that ship, which has been identified as the Neva, named after the Russian river.”
Leslie’s father stands next to the easy chair. On TV, smoke billows from the Soviet cargo ship.
⸎ Three hours later, Leslie, in flannel pajamas, embraces a pillow in her arms and tries to remember better times: sitting in her daddy’s lap, watching television while her mother fixed dinner. Her mother died from cancer when she was nine, and Leslie is no longer sure which of her memories are genuine and which are imagined. But she was sure none of the women her handsome father brought home measured up. She disdained their efforts at familiarity. They didn’t know this family was special.
A teddy bear sits on a corner table, a reminder of innocent times. There is a knocking at the door. “Come in.” Her father enters. “How is my little angel?” He sits on her bed. “Things are still bad on the news. This could be our last night together.”
⸎ When the car pulls out of the driveway, Leslie relaxes, then gets out of her bed. She quickly sheds her pajamas and takes another long shower. She then throws on a pink and green shirt and white knit pants and slips on a pair of tennis shoes. In the kitchen, she reads a note posted on the refrigerator door: “I’ll be staying late in the city. Love, Dad.”
As long as she can keep moving and not thinking, she will be all right. She is already late for classes. Maybe there’s something interesting on TV.
The set takes a couple of seconds to warm up. The round-the-clock coverage of the Vietnam Crisis continues. David Brinkley sits in front of a map of Germany. A graphic of an airplane torn apart by an explosion appears halfway between the West/East German border and Berlin.
“To update, last night, a Soviet MIG fighter shot down a U.S. cargo plane carrying supplies to Berlin. There were six crewmen on board, with no report of any survivors. The Air Force has suspended further flights to Berlin. Meanwhile, on the ground, NATO forces have commandeered at least three German highways and are moving troops toward the East German border.”
Leslie pumps her right leg up and down; she is restless. She wants to get out of the house, but she is glued to the screen.
The camera switches to Chet Huntley, who is sitting in front of a Mercator projection of the globe. “We now have a report from the White House.”
A reporter stands outside a back gate of the White House. “Off the record, some of the President’s advisors have expressed concern about our assessment of the Russians. The original consensus was that the Soviets knew the limits. They would back down in Vietnam like they did in Cuba.”
A helicopter lands. The camera switches from the newsman to the copter. “That is the President’s helicopter.” A party of eight people quickly exits the White House and approaches the copter. Two Secret Service agents flank the President; another two hold the elbows of a distraught First Lady. The reporter begins, “There’s a bright light . . .” A burst of white flashes across the screen, followed by a storm of static.
Leslie gets up and turns the knob to another station. It’s an old movie. Through the glazed window of an office door, two men are seen struggling with a gun. A shot is fired. Inside the office, the ricochet knocks the statue of a black bird off the mantle. It breaks open on the floor. An actress gasps, her hands flying to her face. There are no jewels inside. The falcon is a fake.
Leslie gets up again and turns off the TV.
⸎ In a pitch-black room, Seka sits before a desktop computer. Two folders are on the screen, one marked Leslie, the other Leona. Moving the mouse, Seka puts the Leslie folder inside the Leona folder.
⸎ Leslie grabs a sweater and goes outside. She walks through the park across from her house. She stops for a moment and looks east at the faint, distant skyline of Chicago. Somewhere out there is her father; somewhere is her rapist. She wants all of it to go away; she wants to start over. She resumes walking and begins murmuring to herself. “No, no.” She presses her hands to the sides of her head, trying to squeeze out the memory, “NO, GOD, NO.”
In the east, a false dawn in born. Leslie feels the light shrieking through her face to the center of her brain. She covers her eyes with her hand and sees an X-ray of her fingers. Leaves fly past her.
But the wind stops and the new sun suddenly disappears. Leslie removes the hand from her face. The park is gone. She stands in a field of high grasses and weeds. She looks east toward Chicago. The city still stands there but there are fewer, smaller buildings. She looks at her hand. Something isn’t right. And her clothes are different. She is wearing a three-button gray jacket over a white shirt.
She turns toward the sound of a car engine. An old car, a tall mass of curved black metal, moves slowly her way. A stack of chrome grill vents leer at her. For a moment, Leslie imagines a bootlegger standing on the running board, a tommy gun aimed at her. The sun reflecting off the split windshield conceals the driver. The car stops and a figure within reaches over and opens the passenger door.
Leslie moves toward the side of the car. The huge whitewalls are flecked with mud and leaves. The driver wears a Navy-blue calf-length dress and a matching pill box hat, which barely restrains a Gypsy swirl of black hair. It is Seka. “Get in,” she commands. Leslie climbs onto the bench seat and shuts the door.
She asks Seka, “Do you have a mirror?” Seka pulls a compact cosmetic mirror from her purse and hands it to Leslie. She flips it open and looks at the image. It is of a young woman about her age, but with softer features and black hair. “That is not me.”
“That is Leona Woods, the only female scientist working with Enrico Fermi in Chicago,” says Seka. “You are going to stop Fermi and stop the A-bomb. Kennedy will never start the war. You have a couple of days to fix things.”
It is Sunday, November 29, 1942.
⸎ Leslie sits on the couch, clutching the teddy bear. “The woman in the car is you. Why are you in my memories?” Seka replies, “You need someone to help you through your dream. You trust me to be your guide.”
“It doesn’t seem like a dream. These memories came to me while I was awake.” Seka looks at the notepad on her lap. “Did these dreams begin when you discovered you had cancer?” Leslie thinks back. “Not when the doctor told me. Well, yes, I think they begin when I discovered the lump.”
“Sometimes a traumatic experience in the present can shake loose bad memories from the past.” That made sense, thought Leslie. Put the cancer behind her and the nightmares would end. “What happened after you met me in the car?”
“I don’t remember much.” That was not entirely true.
Chapter 9
Leslie lights the joint, then pushes halfway back on the recliner. Not all the way; she might doze off. She clicks on the TV. She’s missed the first 15 minutes of Beaches. Chemotherapy was not half as bad as she imagined. Carol’s best stash of Acapulco gold virtually eliminated the nausea. Yes, she lost her hair, but she kept waiting for the poison to knock her off her feet.
On screen, Bette Midler is making her off-Broadway debut in the Falcon Theater. She’s belting out some Wagnerian goofiness about war and industry. Then, before passing through the plastic flames to hell, she turns around to reveal the face of a hag.
Leslie asks herself: When would poison not feel like poison? When you have built up a resistance. Of course, she hadn’t taken any of those drugs before. Perhaps there was a link between mind and body. She had endured a lot of emotional poison in her life. Metaphor had become reality. Now she could endure poison, even thrive on it. She clicks the TV sound up a couple of notches.
⸎ " I think I’ve discovered how marijuana prevents nausea,” Leslie announces. The oncologist frowns. “You didn’t tell me you were taking something other than your prescriptions.”
Damn it, I’m trying to tell him something important and all he can think of is controlling me. Dr. Martin, as in martinet. “It happened last night. I had dozed off when I was wakened by the TV. The marijuana must have dulled my hearing, so I had turned up the sound. Then, when it wore off, the TV was loud again.” The doctor interjected, “It sounds like you’ve discovered another reason not to take drugs.”
She wants to bang his head with a skillet. This is your brain on chauvinism. “It’s not just hearing. Your inner ear also controls balance. That’s why people rocking in a boat get nauseated—because the fluid in their inner ear is sloshing around. Marijuana must desensitize your inner ear.”
The doctor is filling out a prescription pad. “You don’t want to be buying stuff off the street. It could be laced with LSD, angel dust, or God knows what. I’m going to prescribe Marinol, the legal form of THC.” Leslie wanted to tell him where to stuff his prescription. I didn’t get it off the street. I got it from a good friend. But she’ll play along. If he’s going to act like a narc, she’s certainly not going to give him any information that would betray her “dealer.”
⸎ In the lab gym, Dr. Haynes walks on a treadmill. Leslie steps on a treadmill next to him and turns it on at his speed. “Why haven’t you been asking me out?”
“You’re still recovering from your surgery.”
“I’m okay now. I’ve been okay for weeks.”
“I’ve had a lot of work to do.”
Leslie turns up the speed on her machine. “Maybe you’re just not man enough to keep up with me.”
⸎ Leslie, in bed, reaches over to the nightstand, opens a drawer, and pulls out a vibrator. She turns it on then slips it under the sheets. At the lab, another proton stack is being stimulated. In progressive stages of acceleration, protons move from the Cockroft-Walton generator to the linear accelerator, to a cycling synchrotron, to the Main Ring, and finally to the circular yin Tevatron. Moving faster and faster. A bead of sweat forms on Leslie’s upper lip as her heartbeat quickens. Protons collide with antiprotons, and Her mysteries are revealed.
⸎ David is called back to London after New Year’s. He is assigned the same hotel room.
On January 16, 1991, the air war against Iraq begins. In the port city of Basra, Iraqi soldiers enter a mosque. They place small charges around the edge of the dome in the central building, and larger charges along the walls and other structures. They set them off. Iraq accuses the U.S. of bombing a mosque.
February 19, 1991. Dr. Manilov, still nursing aches from his adventure in Iraq, watches TV in his hotel room. At a press briefing, an American officer stands behind an aerial photo that shows, he says, how the Iraqis have faked an air attack on a mosque. He noted that the dome was too nearly shaved off to be the result of a missile or bomb dropped from the air.
The dome was blown off. Manilov remembers. He puts on the snug, stuffy radiation suit. He and two other Russian scientists in protective suits walk down a corridor. Electrical cords dangle from the ceiling. Chunks of plaster clutter the floor. They enter a wide chamber, girded by twisted pieces of metal exposed by sunlight. A gaping hole has replaced the ceiling and roof of the No. 4 Reactor, Chernobyl. Of course.
⸎ February 21, 1991. In Hedley’s meeting room, Manilov stands next to the easel, on which is mounted the dream illustration of the snake emerging from the black cube. There are murmurs among the other men seated. Hedley, Latham, Winter and Compton. Manilov taps the easel with the pointer to call their attention.
“We agree black cube is nuclear reactor. I know tell you this: Reactor is not making weapon. The reactor is the weapon. Saddam Hussein is going to Chernobylize Kuwait.” David is doing a slow burn. Damn it, it’s so obvious now. Why hadn’t he thought of it first?
Manilov replaces the snake/stone drawing with an aerial photo of the damaged mosque in Basra. “This is a photo of mosque from the news program.” He points to the center square in the picture. “The Iraqis blew off dome to make us think they were faking U.S. bomb attack. They have something bigger in mind. Somewhere in Kuwait is mosque like this. They have put a reactor core inside it. They know we will not bomb mosque. They will melt reactor and dome will blow off.”
Manilov waves his arms to indicate an explosion. “Your pilots flying overhead . . . “He sweeps his left hand flat over this head, moving it like a jet. “will think Saddam was hiding ammunition in mosque and it exploded.”
He replaces the aerial photo with a map of Kuwait and the surrounding countries. In the center of Kuwait is a little black cube, surrounded by a shaded ellipse extending eastward into the Persian Gulf. “The meltdown will make poison cloud. Your soldiers liberate Kuwait, get sick, and die. Nobody can go in to put out oil fires.”
He points the stick to Saudi Arabia. “Radiation may even spread to Saudi oil fields. Mr. Hussein very clever. He makes nuclear accident into nuclear weapon.”
Winter is gleefully indignant. “Shit. That’s exactly the sort of thing that bastard would do.” A triple whammy: black oil spill, black oil fire, black nuclear cloud; an unholy Trinity.
The urgent, excited conversation blurs and fades around David. Something is wrong. Something is unreal. Nuclear fission was accomplished in 1942 and only now did someone figure out you could use a reactor as a weapon. Had all the scientist, generals, and politicians been asleep at the wheel for half a century? Nuclear plant accident, nuclear sub accident, nuclear factory accident. Package and deliver an accident and now it’s a weapon.
This is more than physics; this is metaphysics, philosophy, theology. A secret hidden in plain sight, invisible to the entire human race. Just a discovery? Seems like a Revelation to David.
A few hours later in the MI meeting room, Latham places before a seated Hedley an aerial photo of a mosque. “We estimate the Iraqis built this mosque in Kuwait four months ago. It appears that Manilov could be right.”
⸎ A soldier is taking photos requested by Hussain. Two men in white radiation suits pose in front of a Kaaba-shaped reactor sixteen feet high. Surrounding three sides of the core are brick arches that peak three feet above the core. Behind the core is a solid brick wall. Portable electric lights cast harsh shadows in the room. The floor is bare ground, a moonscape tracked by boot marks.
⸎ Mars and Latham walk along the south shore of the Thames, approaching Westminster Bridge. Latham casts a contemptuous glance at the House of Parliament, where undisciplined politicians are surrendering the country to the multicultural hordes. Mars talks conspiracy. “If this idea gets out, every Third World dictator could build one of these in months. We could see a ship coming up this river with a melting reactor. Thousands will die and London will be abandoned for decades.”
“So, you want to reduce the number of people who know about the reactor as a weapon?”
“Yes. Immediately.” Latham decides not to contradict Mars. The Royal Docks had closed in 1981, though it was conceivable a cargo ship could sneak up the Thames a night.
⸎ At a writing desk, Manilov puts the latest touches to his sketch of a melting reactor, then sticks the drawing into a valise. He assumes his phone is bugged; he will make a personal visit.
He exits the taxi a block from the Soviet Embassy; he wants an opportunity to see who, if anyone, is following him. Manilov watches the taxi leave, then begins a measured pace toward the guarded gate, glancing at the figures and cars on both sides of the street. A man with an umbrella walks toward him. The posture and features are familiar, but the mustache hides something. Manilov clutches his valise tighter under his arm.
Three steps from him, two steps. The umbrella springs erect and a spray showers Manilov’s face. His free hand struggles to find a handkerchief. He is dizzy. The valise is grabbed from his numb hand. His knees buckle. Latham runs off.
A coroner will conclude Manilov suffered a heart attack.
⸎ February 25, 1991. The major allied ground assault on Kuwait enters its second day. A helicopter lands at an outpost in Saudi Arabia. David, wearing spackled camouflage wear, steps out and is met by Latham, who escorts him to a large tent. Inside is Winter and a gaunt Arab, who leaves as David and Latham enter. Winter reaches out to shake David’s hand. “Well, Mr. Compton, we meet again. Latham here is going to fly you and the others.”
“How many others?”
“Nine. A scientist and eight soldiers. This is going to be a low-profile mission. There are people in Washington who are very nervous about attacking a mosque. They think this may be a trap.”
“And what do you think?”
“That fellow who just left is a member of the Kuwaiti resistance. He said the Iraqis built the mosque in Kuwait just for their own solders. They won’t let the locals worship there, but yesterday the place seemed nearly vacant; just one flatbed truck and a jeep parked in front. That cinches it for me. I don’t care if it’s a mosque or the Sistine Chapel. If there are Iraqis in there with guns, we’re going after them.”
“So, why am I here?”
“I don’t know. Hedley had some kind of hippie, New Age reason. He said we needed somebody who can grasp the cosmetology of what is happening.”
“I believe he meant ‘cosmology’.”
“Whatever.” Winter knows David is smart, but here in the field, he’s just another Pont—person of no tactical significance, as useful as some pansy hairdresser.
Latham hands a holstered pistol to David. “You’ll need this.” David nods. “Just be careful. Give me the gun.” David hands it to Latham. “This is the safety. This is the safety on. This is the safety off.” He hands the gun back to David. Latham’s singsong explanation reminds David of the simplistic “This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs.”
⸎ Dr. Noon, Pakistani, 40ish, wearing a white radiation suit and carrying a hood, gets out of a Chinook and walks over to Latham. “The soldiers don’t have radiation gear.” Latham has his explanation ready. “For their safety. The suits slow them down and block their peripheral vision. We can’t have that in a combat situation.” Noon walks back to the copter.
The Chinook takes off. David, in the cockpit with Latham, looks back into the interior of the chopper and sees eight black U.S. soldiers and Noon, who holds the suit hood on his lap. David turns to Latham. “Why are all the soldiers black?"
“Black Muslims. If they must send American soldiers into a mosque, they thought it would be better if they were all Muslim.” Latham knows that eight soldiers and himself is a marginal force, but it reduces the number of combatants who are privy to the mission. “And the other guy?”
“Dr. Noon, a nuclear scientist from London, Born in Pakistan. Muslim, of course.”
Leslie lights the joint, then pushes halfway back on the recliner. Not all the way; she might doze off. She clicks on the TV. She’s missed the first 15 minutes of Beaches. Chemotherapy was not half as bad as she imagined. Carol’s best stash of Acapulco gold virtually eliminated the nausea. Yes, she lost her hair, but she kept waiting for the poison to knock her off her feet.
On screen, Bette Midler is making her off-Broadway debut in the Falcon Theater. She’s belting out some Wagnerian goofiness about war and industry. Then, before passing through the plastic flames to hell, she turns around to reveal the face of a hag.
Leslie asks herself: When would poison not feel like poison? When you have built up a resistance. Of course, she hadn’t taken any of those drugs before. Perhaps there was a link between mind and body. She had endured a lot of emotional poison in her life. Metaphor had become reality. Now she could endure poison, even thrive on it. She clicks the TV sound up a couple of notches.
⸎ " I think I’ve discovered how marijuana prevents nausea,” Leslie announces. The oncologist frowns. “You didn’t tell me you were taking something other than your prescriptions.”
Damn it, I’m trying to tell him something important and all he can think of is controlling me. Dr. Martin, as in martinet. “It happened last night. I had dozed off when I was wakened by the TV. The marijuana must have dulled my hearing, so I had turned up the sound. Then, when it wore off, the TV was loud again.” The doctor interjected, “It sounds like you’ve discovered another reason not to take drugs.”
She wants to bang his head with a skillet. This is your brain on chauvinism. “It’s not just hearing. Your inner ear also controls balance. That’s why people rocking in a boat get nauseated—because the fluid in their inner ear is sloshing around. Marijuana must desensitize your inner ear.”
The doctor is filling out a prescription pad. “You don’t want to be buying stuff off the street. It could be laced with LSD, angel dust, or God knows what. I’m going to prescribe Marinol, the legal form of THC.” Leslie wanted to tell him where to stuff his prescription. I didn’t get it off the street. I got it from a good friend. But she’ll play along. If he’s going to act like a narc, she’s certainly not going to give him any information that would betray her “dealer.”
⸎ In the lab gym, Dr. Haynes walks on a treadmill. Leslie steps on a treadmill next to him and turns it on at his speed. “Why haven’t you been asking me out?”
“You’re still recovering from your surgery.”
“I’m okay now. I’ve been okay for weeks.”
“I’ve had a lot of work to do.”
Leslie turns up the speed on her machine. “Maybe you’re just not man enough to keep up with me.”
⸎ Leslie, in bed, reaches over to the nightstand, opens a drawer, and pulls out a vibrator. She turns it on then slips it under the sheets. At the lab, another proton stack is being stimulated. In progressive stages of acceleration, protons move from the Cockroft-Walton generator to the linear accelerator, to a cycling synchrotron, to the Main Ring, and finally to the circular yin Tevatron. Moving faster and faster. A bead of sweat forms on Leslie’s upper lip as her heartbeat quickens. Protons collide with antiprotons, and Her mysteries are revealed.
⸎ David is called back to London after New Year’s. He is assigned the same hotel room.
On January 16, 1991, the air war against Iraq begins. In the port city of Basra, Iraqi soldiers enter a mosque. They place small charges around the edge of the dome in the central building, and larger charges along the walls and other structures. They set them off. Iraq accuses the U.S. of bombing a mosque.
February 19, 1991. Dr. Manilov, still nursing aches from his adventure in Iraq, watches TV in his hotel room. At a press briefing, an American officer stands behind an aerial photo that shows, he says, how the Iraqis have faked an air attack on a mosque. He noted that the dome was too nearly shaved off to be the result of a missile or bomb dropped from the air.
The dome was blown off. Manilov remembers. He puts on the snug, stuffy radiation suit. He and two other Russian scientists in protective suits walk down a corridor. Electrical cords dangle from the ceiling. Chunks of plaster clutter the floor. They enter a wide chamber, girded by twisted pieces of metal exposed by sunlight. A gaping hole has replaced the ceiling and roof of the No. 4 Reactor, Chernobyl. Of course.
⸎ February 21, 1991. In Hedley’s meeting room, Manilov stands next to the easel, on which is mounted the dream illustration of the snake emerging from the black cube. There are murmurs among the other men seated. Hedley, Latham, Winter and Compton. Manilov taps the easel with the pointer to call their attention.
“We agree black cube is nuclear reactor. I know tell you this: Reactor is not making weapon. The reactor is the weapon. Saddam Hussein is going to Chernobylize Kuwait.” David is doing a slow burn. Damn it, it’s so obvious now. Why hadn’t he thought of it first?
Manilov replaces the snake/stone drawing with an aerial photo of the damaged mosque in Basra. “This is a photo of mosque from the news program.” He points to the center square in the picture. “The Iraqis blew off dome to make us think they were faking U.S. bomb attack. They have something bigger in mind. Somewhere in Kuwait is mosque like this. They have put a reactor core inside it. They know we will not bomb mosque. They will melt reactor and dome will blow off.”
Manilov waves his arms to indicate an explosion. “Your pilots flying overhead . . . “He sweeps his left hand flat over this head, moving it like a jet. “will think Saddam was hiding ammunition in mosque and it exploded.”
He replaces the aerial photo with a map of Kuwait and the surrounding countries. In the center of Kuwait is a little black cube, surrounded by a shaded ellipse extending eastward into the Persian Gulf. “The meltdown will make poison cloud. Your soldiers liberate Kuwait, get sick, and die. Nobody can go in to put out oil fires.”
He points the stick to Saudi Arabia. “Radiation may even spread to Saudi oil fields. Mr. Hussein very clever. He makes nuclear accident into nuclear weapon.”
Winter is gleefully indignant. “Shit. That’s exactly the sort of thing that bastard would do.” A triple whammy: black oil spill, black oil fire, black nuclear cloud; an unholy Trinity.
The urgent, excited conversation blurs and fades around David. Something is wrong. Something is unreal. Nuclear fission was accomplished in 1942 and only now did someone figure out you could use a reactor as a weapon. Had all the scientist, generals, and politicians been asleep at the wheel for half a century? Nuclear plant accident, nuclear sub accident, nuclear factory accident. Package and deliver an accident and now it’s a weapon.
This is more than physics; this is metaphysics, philosophy, theology. A secret hidden in plain sight, invisible to the entire human race. Just a discovery? Seems like a Revelation to David.
A few hours later in the MI meeting room, Latham places before a seated Hedley an aerial photo of a mosque. “We estimate the Iraqis built this mosque in Kuwait four months ago. It appears that Manilov could be right.”
⸎ A soldier is taking photos requested by Hussain. Two men in white radiation suits pose in front of a Kaaba-shaped reactor sixteen feet high. Surrounding three sides of the core are brick arches that peak three feet above the core. Behind the core is a solid brick wall. Portable electric lights cast harsh shadows in the room. The floor is bare ground, a moonscape tracked by boot marks.
⸎ Mars and Latham walk along the south shore of the Thames, approaching Westminster Bridge. Latham casts a contemptuous glance at the House of Parliament, where undisciplined politicians are surrendering the country to the multicultural hordes. Mars talks conspiracy. “If this idea gets out, every Third World dictator could build one of these in months. We could see a ship coming up this river with a melting reactor. Thousands will die and London will be abandoned for decades.”
“So, you want to reduce the number of people who know about the reactor as a weapon?”
“Yes. Immediately.” Latham decides not to contradict Mars. The Royal Docks had closed in 1981, though it was conceivable a cargo ship could sneak up the Thames a night.
⸎ At a writing desk, Manilov puts the latest touches to his sketch of a melting reactor, then sticks the drawing into a valise. He assumes his phone is bugged; he will make a personal visit.
He exits the taxi a block from the Soviet Embassy; he wants an opportunity to see who, if anyone, is following him. Manilov watches the taxi leave, then begins a measured pace toward the guarded gate, glancing at the figures and cars on both sides of the street. A man with an umbrella walks toward him. The posture and features are familiar, but the mustache hides something. Manilov clutches his valise tighter under his arm.
Three steps from him, two steps. The umbrella springs erect and a spray showers Manilov’s face. His free hand struggles to find a handkerchief. He is dizzy. The valise is grabbed from his numb hand. His knees buckle. Latham runs off.
A coroner will conclude Manilov suffered a heart attack.
⸎ February 25, 1991. The major allied ground assault on Kuwait enters its second day. A helicopter lands at an outpost in Saudi Arabia. David, wearing spackled camouflage wear, steps out and is met by Latham, who escorts him to a large tent. Inside is Winter and a gaunt Arab, who leaves as David and Latham enter. Winter reaches out to shake David’s hand. “Well, Mr. Compton, we meet again. Latham here is going to fly you and the others.”
“How many others?”
“Nine. A scientist and eight soldiers. This is going to be a low-profile mission. There are people in Washington who are very nervous about attacking a mosque. They think this may be a trap.”
“And what do you think?”
“That fellow who just left is a member of the Kuwaiti resistance. He said the Iraqis built the mosque in Kuwait just for their own solders. They won’t let the locals worship there, but yesterday the place seemed nearly vacant; just one flatbed truck and a jeep parked in front. That cinches it for me. I don’t care if it’s a mosque or the Sistine Chapel. If there are Iraqis in there with guns, we’re going after them.”
“So, why am I here?”
“I don’t know. Hedley had some kind of hippie, New Age reason. He said we needed somebody who can grasp the cosmetology of what is happening.”
“I believe he meant ‘cosmology’.”
“Whatever.” Winter knows David is smart, but here in the field, he’s just another Pont—person of no tactical significance, as useful as some pansy hairdresser.
Latham hands a holstered pistol to David. “You’ll need this.” David nods. “Just be careful. Give me the gun.” David hands it to Latham. “This is the safety. This is the safety on. This is the safety off.” He hands the gun back to David. Latham’s singsong explanation reminds David of the simplistic “This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs.”
⸎ Dr. Noon, Pakistani, 40ish, wearing a white radiation suit and carrying a hood, gets out of a Chinook and walks over to Latham. “The soldiers don’t have radiation gear.” Latham has his explanation ready. “For their safety. The suits slow them down and block their peripheral vision. We can’t have that in a combat situation.” Noon walks back to the copter.
The Chinook takes off. David, in the cockpit with Latham, looks back into the interior of the chopper and sees eight black U.S. soldiers and Noon, who holds the suit hood on his lap. David turns to Latham. “Why are all the soldiers black?"
“Black Muslims. If they must send American soldiers into a mosque, they thought it would be better if they were all Muslim.” Latham knows that eight soldiers and himself is a marginal force, but it reduces the number of combatants who are privy to the mission. “And the other guy?”
“Dr. Noon, a nuclear scientist from London, Born in Pakistan. Muslim, of course.”
Chapter 10
Leslie, sitting on the couch, picks a plush monkey from the corner table and tries to make light of her visit. “Do I get one of these if I’m a good girl?”
Seka has moved her chair halfway to the couch. “I give them to men who cry. It’s harder for them to show their emotions.” Leslie puts the monkey back.
“It’s been a while. You shouldn’t stay away if you have issues to work out.” Leslie lies. “I needed more time to remember.” She wasn’t sure if she could trust Seka. This seemed like a conflict of interest: asking Seka to interpret Seka’s place in her memories. But Leslie decided there was more at stake than her emotional well-being. There was a mystery to be solved and Seka seemed to have the keys to the locks. “Where did we leave off?” asked Seka.
“It was 1966. There was a nuclear war but as the bombs dropped, I was swept back in time.” Leslie picks up a toy car. “You were taking me for a ride. We were going to Chicago. It was November 1942. And I wasn’t me.”
⸎ The black DeSoto is parked in front of a Chicago diner. Seka and Leslie sit at a booth, each sipping a mug of coffee. On the table, next to the wall, are salt and pepper shakers, a bottle of catsup, a napkin holder, and a toothpick dispenser. A waitress in a pink uniform walks up and puts a plate with two frosted chocolate donuts in front of Seka. The waitress hovers over Leslie. “You sure you don’t want anything else, sweetie?”
“No, thank you.” The disappointed waitress jots down the small total on her order and then leaves. “How can I be here and be someone else?” asks Leslie Seka takes two toothpicks from the dispenser and holds up a donut. “Time is like the surface of this donut.” She pokes one toothpick into the surface. “This is the past.” She pokes the other toothpick into the opposite side. “This is the future.” She twirls the donut around. “There is no forward or backward.” She puts the donut down. “I’m giving you a chance to change history, to stop those men from hurting you.”
Leslie responds, “That still doesn’t explain my new identity.”
“Our minds and bodies are just streams of data that can be rearranged.” That seems a bit too glib, but Leslie has another objection. “If you are some kind of time traveler, why do you need me?" Seka is impatient. “I write the music. I conduct the orchestra. Do I have to play all the instruments too?
⸎ Leslie and Seka enter the third-floor room of the hotel, located just two blocks from the university. Seka explains, “These are temporary quarters, so you won’t have to interact with your mother. You need to call her and say you need to stay a couple of days on campus for some urgent work. Tell her digging for potatoes will have to wait.”
It’s Sunday; the experiment is on Wednesday. “Do I have enough time?” Seka replies, “It’s very straightforward. Your office, with your name on the door, is two doors down from Fermi’s. Three more doors down is the equipment lab. Leona has been experimenting with different wires and other materials, so you should have all you need to sabotage and replace the equipment.” She hands Leslie a folded sheet of paper. “Here is a map of the campus and the squash court.”
⸎ Monday morning. Following the map, Leslie heads straight to her office and closes the door. She checks her calendar and any other notebooks on the top of the desk to know what appointments and assignments she will need to make. Her morning is free; she is to review the block instruments in the afternoon. Nothing on her calendar past December 3.
Fermi knocks on her door and enters. “Too busy to say good morning?” Leslie looks up from her desk at the intense black eyebrows and the hairline that circles Fermi’s head like a pair of earphones, She has prepared an excuse for being curt and noncommunicative. “There are some problems at home.” Fermi asks, “Is your mother okay?”
“She is fine. There are other things going on.”
“Well let me know if I can be of help.”
Fermi leaves and returns to his office. On his desk is a large ring of six keys, including a small old black one that seems out of place. Leslie checks the drawers of her desk. Just office supplies; notepads, rulers, a box of paper clips, a bottle of glue.
She heads for the equipment lab, where there are three long worktables and metal shelves lining the walls, and a desk at the back of the room. The shelves are full of various instruments and labeled boxes with instrument parts, rolls of wires of different compositions, and four canisters of gases. She spots two Geiger counters of different sizes on one shelf. On another shelf are two identical thermocouples for measuring heat from the reactor, and a boron trifluoride neutron detector. She also discovers a large, zippered leather bag with a handle at the top, big enough to carry a Geiger counter and thermocouple but not the neutron detector. On still another shelf is a large box marked, “Used, Faulty.” Was Leona a hoarder or just meticulous?
In the desk are files containing instruction manuals, experiment logs, screwdrivers, pliers, various cutting tools, rulers and tape measures, rolls of tape and bottles and tubes of glue. There are various tools scattered atop the tables.
Leslie walks up to the Geiger counters and notices a small box labelled “Windows.” She opens it. Inside are small glass-like mica disks of two different sizes. Apparently, Leona has been assembling her own counters. The transparent disks fit in the front of the detector tube and have a precise density to allow radiation particles to enter the device. If they are too dense, they will underestimate the radiation.
The front of the counter tube extends nearly an inch beyond the mica disk. She takes one of the extra disks and tries inserting it in the front but it’s too large. The disk inside must be lodged in a groove cut into the metal. It is larger than the interior tube width. She doesn’t risk disassembling the tube. The gases inside would leak out. She tries a disk designed for the smaller instrument. It falls directly on the disk inside but doesn’t fit snugly; it will drop out.
Leslie finds a glue tube with a long narrow nozzle. She puts one drop in the center of the disk, then drops it down the tube. She then squeezes a narrow band of glue around the edge of the smaller disk. There is still a half inch margin from the second disk to the front of the tube. Nobody will notice unless they know what to look for. She figures the extra disk will halve the radiation detection or more if the blocking effect is exponential.
Screwing with the thermocouples will take more thought. The Geiger counters are freestanding and can be easily switched. The thermocouple will be connected to the reactor block, and she needs to discover where it can be disconnected.
Leslie, sitting on the couch, picks a plush monkey from the corner table and tries to make light of her visit. “Do I get one of these if I’m a good girl?”
Seka has moved her chair halfway to the couch. “I give them to men who cry. It’s harder for them to show their emotions.” Leslie puts the monkey back.
“It’s been a while. You shouldn’t stay away if you have issues to work out.” Leslie lies. “I needed more time to remember.” She wasn’t sure if she could trust Seka. This seemed like a conflict of interest: asking Seka to interpret Seka’s place in her memories. But Leslie decided there was more at stake than her emotional well-being. There was a mystery to be solved and Seka seemed to have the keys to the locks. “Where did we leave off?” asked Seka.
“It was 1966. There was a nuclear war but as the bombs dropped, I was swept back in time.” Leslie picks up a toy car. “You were taking me for a ride. We were going to Chicago. It was November 1942. And I wasn’t me.”
⸎ The black DeSoto is parked in front of a Chicago diner. Seka and Leslie sit at a booth, each sipping a mug of coffee. On the table, next to the wall, are salt and pepper shakers, a bottle of catsup, a napkin holder, and a toothpick dispenser. A waitress in a pink uniform walks up and puts a plate with two frosted chocolate donuts in front of Seka. The waitress hovers over Leslie. “You sure you don’t want anything else, sweetie?”
“No, thank you.” The disappointed waitress jots down the small total on her order and then leaves. “How can I be here and be someone else?” asks Leslie Seka takes two toothpicks from the dispenser and holds up a donut. “Time is like the surface of this donut.” She pokes one toothpick into the surface. “This is the past.” She pokes the other toothpick into the opposite side. “This is the future.” She twirls the donut around. “There is no forward or backward.” She puts the donut down. “I’m giving you a chance to change history, to stop those men from hurting you.”
Leslie responds, “That still doesn’t explain my new identity.”
“Our minds and bodies are just streams of data that can be rearranged.” That seems a bit too glib, but Leslie has another objection. “If you are some kind of time traveler, why do you need me?" Seka is impatient. “I write the music. I conduct the orchestra. Do I have to play all the instruments too?
⸎ Leslie and Seka enter the third-floor room of the hotel, located just two blocks from the university. Seka explains, “These are temporary quarters, so you won’t have to interact with your mother. You need to call her and say you need to stay a couple of days on campus for some urgent work. Tell her digging for potatoes will have to wait.”
It’s Sunday; the experiment is on Wednesday. “Do I have enough time?” Seka replies, “It’s very straightforward. Your office, with your name on the door, is two doors down from Fermi’s. Three more doors down is the equipment lab. Leona has been experimenting with different wires and other materials, so you should have all you need to sabotage and replace the equipment.” She hands Leslie a folded sheet of paper. “Here is a map of the campus and the squash court.”
⸎ Monday morning. Following the map, Leslie heads straight to her office and closes the door. She checks her calendar and any other notebooks on the top of the desk to know what appointments and assignments she will need to make. Her morning is free; she is to review the block instruments in the afternoon. Nothing on her calendar past December 3.
Fermi knocks on her door and enters. “Too busy to say good morning?” Leslie looks up from her desk at the intense black eyebrows and the hairline that circles Fermi’s head like a pair of earphones, She has prepared an excuse for being curt and noncommunicative. “There are some problems at home.” Fermi asks, “Is your mother okay?”
“She is fine. There are other things going on.”
“Well let me know if I can be of help.”
Fermi leaves and returns to his office. On his desk is a large ring of six keys, including a small old black one that seems out of place. Leslie checks the drawers of her desk. Just office supplies; notepads, rulers, a box of paper clips, a bottle of glue.
She heads for the equipment lab, where there are three long worktables and metal shelves lining the walls, and a desk at the back of the room. The shelves are full of various instruments and labeled boxes with instrument parts, rolls of wires of different compositions, and four canisters of gases. She spots two Geiger counters of different sizes on one shelf. On another shelf are two identical thermocouples for measuring heat from the reactor, and a boron trifluoride neutron detector. She also discovers a large, zippered leather bag with a handle at the top, big enough to carry a Geiger counter and thermocouple but not the neutron detector. On still another shelf is a large box marked, “Used, Faulty.” Was Leona a hoarder or just meticulous?
In the desk are files containing instruction manuals, experiment logs, screwdrivers, pliers, various cutting tools, rulers and tape measures, rolls of tape and bottles and tubes of glue. There are various tools scattered atop the tables.
Leslie walks up to the Geiger counters and notices a small box labelled “Windows.” She opens it. Inside are small glass-like mica disks of two different sizes. Apparently, Leona has been assembling her own counters. The transparent disks fit in the front of the detector tube and have a precise density to allow radiation particles to enter the device. If they are too dense, they will underestimate the radiation.
The front of the counter tube extends nearly an inch beyond the mica disk. She takes one of the extra disks and tries inserting it in the front but it’s too large. The disk inside must be lodged in a groove cut into the metal. It is larger than the interior tube width. She doesn’t risk disassembling the tube. The gases inside would leak out. She tries a disk designed for the smaller instrument. It falls directly on the disk inside but doesn’t fit snugly; it will drop out.
Leslie finds a glue tube with a long narrow nozzle. She puts one drop in the center of the disk, then drops it down the tube. She then squeezes a narrow band of glue around the edge of the smaller disk. There is still a half inch margin from the second disk to the front of the tube. Nobody will notice unless they know what to look for. She figures the extra disk will halve the radiation detection or more if the blocking effect is exponential.
Screwing with the thermocouples will take more thought. The Geiger counters are freestanding and can be easily switched. The thermocouple will be connected to the reactor block, and she needs to discover where it can be disconnected.
Fermi's fission reactor
After lunch, she walks to the squash court. A chorus of lab coats hang from hooks along a hallway. Inside, a grayish-black balloon cloth lines the ceiling, floor, and three walls of the court, leaving only the spectators’ balcony undraped. Rising from the floor is a black behemoth, fifty-seven layers of graphite bricks, forming a cubed ellipsoid twenty feet tall and twenty-seven feet wide. Squaring the circle, pushing female form to male purpose.
A Geiger counter and thermocouple are on one table, with wires from the latter leading to the pile. On another table in the spectator section is a boron trifluoride neutron detector, a much bulkier instrument, with a wire leading to a counter on Fermi’s table in the balcony. Six other scientists are in the room, discussing aspects of the experiment.
She goes outside and surveys the court building and other athletic facilities. She finds an outdoor garden faucet behind a building next to the court.
⸎ Leslie finds Seka in her room when she returns to the hotel. “Made any progress today?” asks Seka. “I found a way to sabotage the Geiger counter, but this is getting complicated. Sometimes I think it would be simpler if you just gave me a gun and I killed everybody and let the reactor run wild.”
“I appreciate your enthusiasm, but the incident must look like an accident and there is something fundamentally wrong with the experiment.”
Not really enthusiasm, thinks Leslie. More like weariness and exasperation. “So, what happens to me after the experiment? Do I run away?”
“No, you must stay and be there with the other scientists. Don’t worry. I got you into that body and I will get you out before things become too uncomfortable.” Maybe she can trust Seka, but this could be a suicide mission.
⸎ Tuesday morning. Time is running out, but Leslie still fears Fermi or another scientist will ask her a question that tests her knowledge. She pours through the experiment logs, which includes inspections and test results of the equipment. One entry catches her eye: a note that Leona had replaced an oxidized chromel wire in the thermocouple. Bingo. The “green rot” reduces the emf output and the thermocouple reads low. Leslie rummages through the “Used, Faulty” box until she finds an envelope marked “chromel” with the wire inside. She unscrews a panel of the thermocouple and replaces the good wire with the bad.
She puts the altered Geiger counter and thermocouple in the tote bag. She finds a small tool kit bag and fills it with assorted small tools, including a Phillips screwdriver and regular screwdriver, gator clips, and a needle nose pliers, then places the kit bag in the larger bag. There is still some room left over for the face towel she will steal from the hotel room. In her office, she finds a brown paper shopping bag. She will take it home tonight.
⸎ Wednesday morning. No one questions the contents of the bag Leslie brings to work. She goes straight to the lab and stuffs the towel from the bag into the equipment tote, which she takes to her office. She heads to the squash court, minus the bag, where 49 scientists are assembled for the experiment in the viewing stand.
Samuel Allison stands ready with a bucket of cadmium nitrate solution, which he will throw on the pile if the reaction appears to be out of control. Walter Zinn removes the zip emergency control rod, which is now suspended by a scram line over the pile. In an emergency, a scientist will cut the line with an ax, allowing it to fall into the pile hole.
Leslie loudly calls out the count from the baron trifluoride detector. George Weil, the only one on the floor, withdraws all but one of the control rods. He then slowly withdraws the last control rod six inches at a time, with measurements taken at each step. At 11: 25 Fermi orders the control rods reinserted and announces a lunch break. They will reconvene at 2 p.m. to continue the experiment.
The crowd leaves the court. Leslie walks quickly to her office, picks up the equipment bag and immediately heads back to the court. She finds Seka inside the front door. “Has there been a change of plans?”
“No,” says Seka. “I will stay here to see that you are not disturbed.” Leslie wonders how she can stop any intruders but doesn’t press the matter.
She is relieved to find the room is empty. First, the easiest part; replace the Geiger counter. Next, detach the wires from the thermocouple and replace it with the faulty instrument. She sets the untampered instruments at the end of the table.
The trifluoride detector will require a lot of hands-on work. No, wait. She doesn’t need to do that. She is manning the instrument; she can announce any reading she wants. She doesn’t have to change anything. It will be a lot easier to fiddle with the counter at Fermi’s station. She steps up into the viewing stand with her tool kit and the towel.
Leslie unscrews the top of the counter. Inside the machine, the graph arm is connected to a coiled copper spring. Leslie takes a gator clip from the tool bag and uses it to bind two spirals of the spring, then she adjusts the internal calibration screws so the instrument will underreact even more to the neutron emissions.
She then scrambles to the top of the reactor and stuffs the towel into the zip hole, to prevent the rod from descending. Back on the floor, she picks up the bucket of cadmium nitrate solution and heads for the door. She nods to Seka and goes outside. Behind the court, she dumps the solution on a patch of grass. She then goes to the garden faucet and refills the bucket with water, returns to the court, and places the bucket where she found it.
She places the original Geiger counter and thermocouple in the equipment bag, along with her tool kit, and heads straight for the equipment lab. She puts the untampered instruments on the shelves. She pauses to catch her breath. She has 20 minutes left to get back to the court.
⸎ Scientists are returning to the squash court. Fermi ascends the stairs. On the observation deck, he sits as the table with the cylindrical pen counter. The crowd pressing around him has grown larger; another dozen scientists have joined the show. Fermi places his ring of keys on the table. He peers over the railing to see Weil standing next to the base of the reactor.
Fermi starts where they left off, ordering all but one control rod removed. He orders Weil to pull the last rod seven feet out. Fermi studies the instrument. The pen is etching a small hill. “Another three feet,” Fermi calls out. Weil complies. Scientists crowd the railing, watching intensely.
Fermi taps the chart recorder box with his knuckles then tells Weil to remove the rod completely. The chart records a modest spike. Fermi calls out to Leslie, “What are you getting?” She calls out a low false reading.
Fermi stares at the instrument for another twelve minutes. The Geiger counter clicks at a leisurely pace. The thermocouple registers a small heat increase. The spectators grow restless. Weil places his right hand in front of one of the holes. Perspiration gathers on the hand. He looks up at Fermi. “I think something may be wrong.” Fermi replies, “Okay, shut down the block.”
Weil lifts a rod and puts it into a hole, but half the rod won’t go in. Inside the block, melting graphite is already blocking the holes. Fermi has abandoned the chair and is now leaning over the railing. Weil starts reinserting the other rods, but they also stop short. Fermi looks at the ZIP rod. “Cut the rope,” he calls to the scientist hovering with the ax. The physicist chops the rope; the rod falls into the hole but stops at 15 inches.
“What is blocking that?” Fermi calls out. The scientist pulls the ZIP rod out, peeks into the hole but can’t make anything out. He yells to Allison, “Release the solution.” He tosses the water on the pile, which quickly turns to steam on the quickly heating pile. He calls to Fermi, “This isn’t cadmium.”
A thin stream of melting black liquid trickles out of three of the control rod holes. In a carefully measured but loud voice, Fermi tells the crowd, “I would recommend that we leave immediately.” The bricks begin to disassemble and clatter. Black liquid is now leaking from all the control rod holes. Smoke starts bellowing from the top of the reactor, then quickly envelopes the entire room as the scientists try to grope their way out.
⸎ Seka again sits before the computer screen. She opens the Leona folder. Inside is the Leslie folder. Seka moves Leslie’s folder back to the display screen.
⸎ Wisps of smoke rise from the reactor ruins. A congealed blob of graphite the size of a small desk rests among pieces of broken masonry and charred timber. A figure in a black hood and a long black robe enters the site. Seka’s face is young, but her hair is gray. She stoops down to pick up Fermi’s ring of keys. She removes the small, black ancient one.
⸎ The accident requires the evacuation of the university, businesses, and residences in a three-mile radius under the guise of a chemical explosion. Cancer incidence statistics for the metropolitan Chicago area are suppressed under wartime censorship rules. As knowledge of the long-term effects of the radiation leak out, the circle of abandoned buildings grows larger.
⸎ September 26, 1966. Leslie stares glassy-eyes toward the front of the class—the introductory physics class at the University of New Chicago. A voice trails in her head. “Maybe you’ve changed things.” Professor Haynes bends over her and squeaks, “Leslie, Leslie, dear . . . It’s Aunt Em, darling.” The class laughs. Leslie awakes, startled.
Haynes smugly addresses the class. “Leslie is going to tell us what happened on December 2, 1942. I’m sure she knows this so well, she could tell it to us in her sleep.” Leslie stalls. “1942.” She looks down at the book on her desk and begins to turn a page, but Haynes slams his hand down on the book. She strains to remember. “December 2, 1942.” Then she perks up. “The date on which Fermi’s nuclear reactor melted down at the University of Chicago.”
“And why was this important during the war?”
“Three years later we sent ships with melting reactors into the ports of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Leslie opens her book. For some reason, she feels compelled to confirm the obvious. She flips to page 40. In one photo, smoke rises from a ship in the port of Hiroshima. The other picture shows radiation victims in a hospital.
⸎ Leslie, walking with her friend Carol, stops at a newsstand. The newspaper headline “Savannah Sinks” tops a large aerial photo of a burning ship. The subhead reads: “Nuclear-Powered Ship Lost in Mid-Atlantic.”
⸎ That night Leslie walks past hedges and blind corners, past unlit spots on the winding walkway. What did she hear? She stops. Behind a row of bushes, a hand grips the nape of Carol’s neck, and a knife flashes near her eyes. “Keep quiet or die,” he whispers.
The sound stopped. Leslie resumes walking.
⸎ Back in the present, Leslie now lies on the couch. Seka is still in the chair facing her. “What do you think the meltdown means?” Seka asks. “I was angry.”
“Yes, that too. The nuclear meltdown signifies the long-term emotional poison of your rape and incest. In the dream, you turned that poison against the men who represent your father.”
“What are you talking about? My father didn’t hurt me.”
“Is that what you want to remember?” Leslie tries to change the subject. “What if it’s more than a dream? What if we face some real nuclear disaster?”
“Leslie, I know you want to intellectualize this. You have to look at this with your heart, not your head.”
Chapter 11
Lieutenant Nayif sees the approaching Chinook and ducks inside the mosque minaret. The helicopter flies over and around the clouds of burning oil. The mosque is about two thousand feet below and a mile away. Along the walkway facing the approaching chopper are a pickup truck with a tarp-covered long bed, and a Russian jeep. “Are we too late?” David asks.
The truck starts to move. Latham pushes the copter into a sharp descent. David braces himself. Lathan fires the anti-tank cannon, punching holes into the cab and bed. The full gas tank explodes, the tarp pops like a balloon and black shards rocket through the flames and smoke.
Latham circles the mosque and sees no further activity below. He lands the Chinook about fifty yards from the mosque and a few yards from the burning truck. He tells David, “You may want to stay here until they secure the building.” Everyone except Latham and David jump out. Dr. Noon is carrying his suit hood in one hand. The soldiers and Noon position themselves behind the arches of the two nearest walkways.
The covered, arched walkways are 10 feet wide and border a courtyard of bare ground about 90 feet across. In the center of the yard is a brick cube building 24 feet square and 30 feet tall. At the southeast intersection of two walkways is a minaret about 40 feet high, topped by a dome cupola. An open well filled with water is at the opposite corner of the courtyard.
Captain Malik is with Noon, who leans against the walkway arch. He feels a slight give; what is this, particle board? A rush job, built on the cheap.
Three soldiers, Maktar, Omar, and Salim, run from the walkway to the single door of the building at the center of the yard. They stand flush against the wall next to the door.
Another soldier, Radhi, approaches the minaret door. He kicks it open and, rifle pointed, enters. He looks up from the straw-covered floor to see a circular metal staircase rising to the top. “Anyone up there?” he yells. He could walk up the stairs, but if someone opens the hatch and fires, he will have no cover. Radhi pulls a card from his pocket and loudly reads the Arabic words for “Surrender now and you will be protected by the rules of the International Geneva Convention.” After waiting for a response, Radhi fires one shot at the floor of the observation deck. The bullet ricochets off the metal-plated deck and the metal stairway. Radhi flinches.
Hearing the shot from the tower, the three soldiers take cover behind the center building. They peer toward the tower. Radhi comes out of the minaret, walks a few steps away and looks up at the observation deck. He sees nothing.
Lieutenant Nayif, clutching a rifle, squats on the cupola floor. He peeps through a small hole in the wall of the minaret, seeing Radhi below.
The three American soldiers resume their position at the door of the central building. Omar opens the unlocked door and all three rush in. There is no one inside. The inside walls are made of the same plain brick as the outside. The soldiers peer down into the square opening and see the smooth black top of the cubic reactor. Maktar exclaims, “Look at that mutha.” Salim goes to the doorway and signals a thumbs up to those still in the walkways.
Noon, the captain, and the three other soldiers—Abdi, Masud, and Yazuf—enter the building, carrying bags of equipment. Radhi, still facing the minaret, backs into the doorway, catching the captain’s attention. “Radhi, I want you to stay outside with Masud. There must be another entrance.”
Noon turns on his Geiger counter, which clicks rapidly. “Captain, we need to act quickly.” He looks down at the smooth surface of graphite bricks on the reactor top. Where are the holes for the control rods? You drop the rods from the top; gravity works for you to contain the reaction. He mentally chides himself. Oh, you silly goose! You’re still thinking like an engineer, not a terrorist.
Peering past the edges of the reactor, the captain can see only part of the floor below. “Abdi and Yuzuf, the flash grenades.” In the reactor cavern, a blinding light shatters four instruments on a nearby table. Maktar, Oman and Salim jump on top of the reactor and aim their M16s in arcs across the cavern, but don’t fire. Maktar yells up, “Nobody down here, captain.”
David, who has been standing about 30 feet from the chopper, runs back to the helicopter. “I think I heard explosions.” Latham is unfazed. “They’ll let us know if they need help.”
Maktar, Omar and Salim climb down ropes to the floor of the reactor caverns. Noon, now wearing his hood, steps down a rope ladder, the Geiger counter strapped around one arm, sill clicking rapidly. Noon examines the reactor, which is at one end of a room about 24 feet wide and 48 feet long. Five holes at the front of the reactor form points of a pentagram around a sixth hole in the center, which is about five feet from the floor. Wires from the reactor lead to the broken instruments. Noon peers into the dark, empty holes, then scans the room. “The control rods are gone.”
Omar jumps at the conclusion. “The truck.” Just as he thought. That white pilot—whatizname—is a trigger-happy asshole.
Whiffs of smoke rise from the demolished truck. Three scorched, contorted bodies sit in the cab. Control rod pieces, ranging from six inches to two feet, some melted, lie on the tilted truck bed or are strewn about the ground. Wind covers two pieces with sand. Yuzuf, the captain, and Abdi run up the wreck. Yuzuf touches a rod and flinches from the heat. “Shit.” He puts down his rifle, takes off his flak jacket and shirt. He rolls the shirt around his hand and uses it to gingerly pick up and cradle three foot-long pieces in the jacket. The captain and Abdi follow his example.
In the minaret cupola, Nayif examines, for the 18th time, a surrender pass showing a cartoon of two Iraqi prisoners eating a feast. The Arabic caption reads “Prisoners enjoy full meals and complete medical care.” He then pulls from his jacket a photo of himself, in a row of soldiers, shaking hands with Saddam Hussein. Nayif looks through the peephole and sees Yuzuf carrying the rod pieces toward the central building. Nayif chooses loyalty and the role of fedaie. He rises and points the rifle out the cupola window.
Two bullets rip Yuzuf’s chest. He drops the rods and collapses forward. Radhi, waiting near the central building, swivels, and fires at Nayif. Masud ducks under a walkway and takes a shot at the Iraqi. The captain and Abdi, about 50 feet behind Yuzuf, drop their rods and run behind the walkway arches. Latham starts the copter engine. David jumps into the chopper.
Radhi, who has retreated behind a corner of the building, fires three more rounds at the Iraqi. Hearing the approaching chopper, Nayif opens the cupola floor hatch and descends into the stairwell. Latham fires the anti-tank cannon, shredding the cupola to pieces. Nayif rushes down the stairs as debris showers on his head and shoulders. The chopper turns and approaches the minaret again. Cannon fire shatters another six feet of the structure. Nayif opens the floor hatch as bricks and plaster pour down on him. Latham blows away another section of the minaret.
In the cavern Noon looks up as Abdi and the captain peer into cavern. The captain calls down, “Watch out. This stuff is hot.” Noon, Omar, Salim and Maktar step back as nine rod pieces are hurled down into the cavern. Noon picks them up with his gloved hands and shoves them into the reactor holes. The three soldiers stand idly by. Abdi calls down to them. “Use your shirts.”
In the building above, the captain covers Yusuf’s body with a blanket, then joins Abdi, Radhi and Masud, who are again collecting rod pieces at the truck site. David watches the soldiers at the truck as Latham casually lights a cigarette. “Shouldn’t we be helping them?”
“You don’t want your hands on that stuff.”
In the reactor cavern, more rods tumble down to Noon and the soldiers. Salim follows one that rolls under a dingy Oriental rug hanging from a wall. He pulls the rug aside and discovers a tunnel entrance. He calls back to the others, “I’m going to check this out.” Salim picks up his rifle, switches from three-shot to single-shot, pulls a small flashlight from his belt, and enters the tunnel. He sees a ladder at the end of the tunnel, dimly lit from a light source at the left. The light goes out. Realizing he’s an easy target, Salim turns off the flashlight and slowly walks ahead.
The ladder is again lighted but from a source above. Salim rushes forward and sees Nayif atop the ladder, his body halfway through the hatch. Salim fires three rounds into his butt. Nayif, grasping at straws, falls back down the hatch, landing face up. Salim turns his flashlight back on and examines the body. He reaches into the soldier’s inside jacket pocket and pulls out the photo of Nayif shaking Hussein’s hand. He drops the photo to the floor and spits on it.
Back in the cavern, Omar pushes rod pieces into reactor holes. He’s not going to complain but he suspects something is wrong. He volunteered for this mission because he thought it would be a no-brainer. The Iraqis were a pushover. But now they were trying to fix something before it blew up. Nobody told them they were going to be a bomb squad. Noon’s wearing protective clothes. So, blacks are expendable, as usual.
Already hot under the hood, Noon feels a new flush of panic. If the uranium is concentrated in the center of the block, maybe only half or three-quarters of each rod length contains the cadmium suppressant. He may have been putting “blank” end pieces into the center of the reactor. Well, it’s too late now.
Standing next to the chopper, David watches Abdi, Masud and Radhi vainly search for more rod pieces. Latham, still in the pilot’s seat, is reviewing the Mission Data form. Sections I and II will be completed at the unit’s discretion. He’ll skip that. Secrecy is discretion. Section III is mandatory for all sorties. He scans the fuel column. David cautiously interrupts the colonel. “I have to find out what’s going on.” Latham sees the restless Davis shifting from leg to leg, as if he had just asked the teacher to go to the washroom.
David turns and runs to the mosque building. Inside, he finds the captain alone. “What’s going on?” asks David. “Noon says we don’t have enough rod pieces.”In the cavern, the Geiger counter still clicks rapidly. Maktar, Omar and Salim stand idly by. Noon yells up to David and the captain, “Not enough pieces are reaching the core elements.”
David stares at the top of the reactor, recalling every image of the cube: the Kaaba in Mecca, the Fermi block, the drawings of Hussein and the cube. The snake coming out, becoming a sword. The snake is the rod. The sword is a rod. “If we had a sword or something.” The captain suggests, “Or a bayonet?” The soldiers down below hear the remarks and fix bayonets to the ends of their carbines. They shove them into the reactor holes, pushing the rod pieces further toward the reactor center. The Geiger counter slows to two clicks per second.
Maktar, Salim and Omar grin spontaneously and give each other high fives. Noon pulls a dosimeter from his suit pocket and sees the needle in the red. “We’re finished here. Let’s get out.”
A half mile from the mosque, binoculars emerge from a mound of sand. A motorized radio antenna rises from the earth.
⸎ In an underground bunker in Baghdad, a glowering Saddam Hussein nervously pushes the wooden dowel in and out of the model reactor cube. Saddam sits at the head of the conference table; farther down the table are three generals to the right, three to the left. They stare ahead silently but one casts a furtive glance a Saddam, who continues to push the rod in and out.
In the bunker radio room, a young military aide is listening to a short-wave radio. He pulls the headphones off and gets up from the table.
He walks down a winding metal staircase and through a narrow corridor. He approaches a guard who stands next to an armored bulkhead door, like that found in submarines. The guard turns the wheel on the door and opens it.
The aide walks over to Hussein, stoops down and whispers something in his ear. The aide leaves. After a moment, Saddam’s face turns livid. His hands clench and break the dowel in the cube. Saddam glares at the cube in one hand and the dowel piece in the other. He shakes the cube but the dowel piece inside the cube won’t come out. He holds the cube up to his face and peers into the hole. He bangs the cube on the table. Finally, he throws the cube down the length of the table, and it bounces off a wall. The generals cringe.
Lieutenant Nayif sees the approaching Chinook and ducks inside the mosque minaret. The helicopter flies over and around the clouds of burning oil. The mosque is about two thousand feet below and a mile away. Along the walkway facing the approaching chopper are a pickup truck with a tarp-covered long bed, and a Russian jeep. “Are we too late?” David asks.
The truck starts to move. Latham pushes the copter into a sharp descent. David braces himself. Lathan fires the anti-tank cannon, punching holes into the cab and bed. The full gas tank explodes, the tarp pops like a balloon and black shards rocket through the flames and smoke.
Latham circles the mosque and sees no further activity below. He lands the Chinook about fifty yards from the mosque and a few yards from the burning truck. He tells David, “You may want to stay here until they secure the building.” Everyone except Latham and David jump out. Dr. Noon is carrying his suit hood in one hand. The soldiers and Noon position themselves behind the arches of the two nearest walkways.
The covered, arched walkways are 10 feet wide and border a courtyard of bare ground about 90 feet across. In the center of the yard is a brick cube building 24 feet square and 30 feet tall. At the southeast intersection of two walkways is a minaret about 40 feet high, topped by a dome cupola. An open well filled with water is at the opposite corner of the courtyard.
Captain Malik is with Noon, who leans against the walkway arch. He feels a slight give; what is this, particle board? A rush job, built on the cheap.
Three soldiers, Maktar, Omar, and Salim, run from the walkway to the single door of the building at the center of the yard. They stand flush against the wall next to the door.
Another soldier, Radhi, approaches the minaret door. He kicks it open and, rifle pointed, enters. He looks up from the straw-covered floor to see a circular metal staircase rising to the top. “Anyone up there?” he yells. He could walk up the stairs, but if someone opens the hatch and fires, he will have no cover. Radhi pulls a card from his pocket and loudly reads the Arabic words for “Surrender now and you will be protected by the rules of the International Geneva Convention.” After waiting for a response, Radhi fires one shot at the floor of the observation deck. The bullet ricochets off the metal-plated deck and the metal stairway. Radhi flinches.
Hearing the shot from the tower, the three soldiers take cover behind the center building. They peer toward the tower. Radhi comes out of the minaret, walks a few steps away and looks up at the observation deck. He sees nothing.
Lieutenant Nayif, clutching a rifle, squats on the cupola floor. He peeps through a small hole in the wall of the minaret, seeing Radhi below.
The three American soldiers resume their position at the door of the central building. Omar opens the unlocked door and all three rush in. There is no one inside. The inside walls are made of the same plain brick as the outside. The soldiers peer down into the square opening and see the smooth black top of the cubic reactor. Maktar exclaims, “Look at that mutha.” Salim goes to the doorway and signals a thumbs up to those still in the walkways.
Noon, the captain, and the three other soldiers—Abdi, Masud, and Yazuf—enter the building, carrying bags of equipment. Radhi, still facing the minaret, backs into the doorway, catching the captain’s attention. “Radhi, I want you to stay outside with Masud. There must be another entrance.”
Noon turns on his Geiger counter, which clicks rapidly. “Captain, we need to act quickly.” He looks down at the smooth surface of graphite bricks on the reactor top. Where are the holes for the control rods? You drop the rods from the top; gravity works for you to contain the reaction. He mentally chides himself. Oh, you silly goose! You’re still thinking like an engineer, not a terrorist.
Peering past the edges of the reactor, the captain can see only part of the floor below. “Abdi and Yuzuf, the flash grenades.” In the reactor cavern, a blinding light shatters four instruments on a nearby table. Maktar, Oman and Salim jump on top of the reactor and aim their M16s in arcs across the cavern, but don’t fire. Maktar yells up, “Nobody down here, captain.”
David, who has been standing about 30 feet from the chopper, runs back to the helicopter. “I think I heard explosions.” Latham is unfazed. “They’ll let us know if they need help.”
Maktar, Omar and Salim climb down ropes to the floor of the reactor caverns. Noon, now wearing his hood, steps down a rope ladder, the Geiger counter strapped around one arm, sill clicking rapidly. Noon examines the reactor, which is at one end of a room about 24 feet wide and 48 feet long. Five holes at the front of the reactor form points of a pentagram around a sixth hole in the center, which is about five feet from the floor. Wires from the reactor lead to the broken instruments. Noon peers into the dark, empty holes, then scans the room. “The control rods are gone.”
Omar jumps at the conclusion. “The truck.” Just as he thought. That white pilot—whatizname—is a trigger-happy asshole.
Whiffs of smoke rise from the demolished truck. Three scorched, contorted bodies sit in the cab. Control rod pieces, ranging from six inches to two feet, some melted, lie on the tilted truck bed or are strewn about the ground. Wind covers two pieces with sand. Yuzuf, the captain, and Abdi run up the wreck. Yuzuf touches a rod and flinches from the heat. “Shit.” He puts down his rifle, takes off his flak jacket and shirt. He rolls the shirt around his hand and uses it to gingerly pick up and cradle three foot-long pieces in the jacket. The captain and Abdi follow his example.
In the minaret cupola, Nayif examines, for the 18th time, a surrender pass showing a cartoon of two Iraqi prisoners eating a feast. The Arabic caption reads “Prisoners enjoy full meals and complete medical care.” He then pulls from his jacket a photo of himself, in a row of soldiers, shaking hands with Saddam Hussein. Nayif looks through the peephole and sees Yuzuf carrying the rod pieces toward the central building. Nayif chooses loyalty and the role of fedaie. He rises and points the rifle out the cupola window.
Two bullets rip Yuzuf’s chest. He drops the rods and collapses forward. Radhi, waiting near the central building, swivels, and fires at Nayif. Masud ducks under a walkway and takes a shot at the Iraqi. The captain and Abdi, about 50 feet behind Yuzuf, drop their rods and run behind the walkway arches. Latham starts the copter engine. David jumps into the chopper.
Radhi, who has retreated behind a corner of the building, fires three more rounds at the Iraqi. Hearing the approaching chopper, Nayif opens the cupola floor hatch and descends into the stairwell. Latham fires the anti-tank cannon, shredding the cupola to pieces. Nayif rushes down the stairs as debris showers on his head and shoulders. The chopper turns and approaches the minaret again. Cannon fire shatters another six feet of the structure. Nayif opens the floor hatch as bricks and plaster pour down on him. Latham blows away another section of the minaret.
In the cavern Noon looks up as Abdi and the captain peer into cavern. The captain calls down, “Watch out. This stuff is hot.” Noon, Omar, Salim and Maktar step back as nine rod pieces are hurled down into the cavern. Noon picks them up with his gloved hands and shoves them into the reactor holes. The three soldiers stand idly by. Abdi calls down to them. “Use your shirts.”
In the building above, the captain covers Yusuf’s body with a blanket, then joins Abdi, Radhi and Masud, who are again collecting rod pieces at the truck site. David watches the soldiers at the truck as Latham casually lights a cigarette. “Shouldn’t we be helping them?”
“You don’t want your hands on that stuff.”
In the reactor cavern, more rods tumble down to Noon and the soldiers. Salim follows one that rolls under a dingy Oriental rug hanging from a wall. He pulls the rug aside and discovers a tunnel entrance. He calls back to the others, “I’m going to check this out.” Salim picks up his rifle, switches from three-shot to single-shot, pulls a small flashlight from his belt, and enters the tunnel. He sees a ladder at the end of the tunnel, dimly lit from a light source at the left. The light goes out. Realizing he’s an easy target, Salim turns off the flashlight and slowly walks ahead.
The ladder is again lighted but from a source above. Salim rushes forward and sees Nayif atop the ladder, his body halfway through the hatch. Salim fires three rounds into his butt. Nayif, grasping at straws, falls back down the hatch, landing face up. Salim turns his flashlight back on and examines the body. He reaches into the soldier’s inside jacket pocket and pulls out the photo of Nayif shaking Hussein’s hand. He drops the photo to the floor and spits on it.
Back in the cavern, Omar pushes rod pieces into reactor holes. He’s not going to complain but he suspects something is wrong. He volunteered for this mission because he thought it would be a no-brainer. The Iraqis were a pushover. But now they were trying to fix something before it blew up. Nobody told them they were going to be a bomb squad. Noon’s wearing protective clothes. So, blacks are expendable, as usual.
Already hot under the hood, Noon feels a new flush of panic. If the uranium is concentrated in the center of the block, maybe only half or three-quarters of each rod length contains the cadmium suppressant. He may have been putting “blank” end pieces into the center of the reactor. Well, it’s too late now.
Standing next to the chopper, David watches Abdi, Masud and Radhi vainly search for more rod pieces. Latham, still in the pilot’s seat, is reviewing the Mission Data form. Sections I and II will be completed at the unit’s discretion. He’ll skip that. Secrecy is discretion. Section III is mandatory for all sorties. He scans the fuel column. David cautiously interrupts the colonel. “I have to find out what’s going on.” Latham sees the restless Davis shifting from leg to leg, as if he had just asked the teacher to go to the washroom.
David turns and runs to the mosque building. Inside, he finds the captain alone. “What’s going on?” asks David. “Noon says we don’t have enough rod pieces.”In the cavern, the Geiger counter still clicks rapidly. Maktar, Omar and Salim stand idly by. Noon yells up to David and the captain, “Not enough pieces are reaching the core elements.”
David stares at the top of the reactor, recalling every image of the cube: the Kaaba in Mecca, the Fermi block, the drawings of Hussein and the cube. The snake coming out, becoming a sword. The snake is the rod. The sword is a rod. “If we had a sword or something.” The captain suggests, “Or a bayonet?” The soldiers down below hear the remarks and fix bayonets to the ends of their carbines. They shove them into the reactor holes, pushing the rod pieces further toward the reactor center. The Geiger counter slows to two clicks per second.
Maktar, Salim and Omar grin spontaneously and give each other high fives. Noon pulls a dosimeter from his suit pocket and sees the needle in the red. “We’re finished here. Let’s get out.”
A half mile from the mosque, binoculars emerge from a mound of sand. A motorized radio antenna rises from the earth.
⸎ In an underground bunker in Baghdad, a glowering Saddam Hussein nervously pushes the wooden dowel in and out of the model reactor cube. Saddam sits at the head of the conference table; farther down the table are three generals to the right, three to the left. They stare ahead silently but one casts a furtive glance a Saddam, who continues to push the rod in and out.
In the bunker radio room, a young military aide is listening to a short-wave radio. He pulls the headphones off and gets up from the table.
He walks down a winding metal staircase and through a narrow corridor. He approaches a guard who stands next to an armored bulkhead door, like that found in submarines. The guard turns the wheel on the door and opens it.
The aide walks over to Hussein, stoops down and whispers something in his ear. The aide leaves. After a moment, Saddam’s face turns livid. His hands clench and break the dowel in the cube. Saddam glares at the cube in one hand and the dowel piece in the other. He shakes the cube but the dowel piece inside the cube won’t come out. He holds the cube up to his face and peers into the hole. He bangs the cube on the table. Finally, he throws the cube down the length of the table, and it bounces off a wall. The generals cringe.
Image Drawing of Chicago Pile-1, U.S. government, public domain