by Jack Du Brul
Cali continued to press. “You hadn’t come across his name in any other source?”
“No, sorry.” Serena sipped at her soft drink. “What is this all about?”
Mercer set aside the notebook he was thumbing through. “We found a canteen in a small village in Central Africa that once belonged to Chester Bowie. An old woman there remembered him from her childhood. She also told us that shortly after Bowie left, other white men came and killed a number of people.”
“My God, that’s awful. Why would they do such a thing?”
Mercer just shrugged, since she didn’t need to know about the uranium mine. “We don’t know. We hoped that this material might provide a clue.”
Serena bit her lower lip. “Are you two looking into this for yourself or is this some kind of government thing?”
“I work for the government,” Cali replied. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you in what capacity. Mercer’s a civilian consultant.”
Mercer tried to suppress a smile. Cali had put just the right hint of intrigue in her voice for Serena Ballard to make her own inference and also to make the offer without being asked. “I was going to let you keep this stuff overnight so I can return it to Keeler, but if this is something official you should keep it until you’re done with it. Just get it back to me so I can forward it.”
Mercer gave her his best smile. “I’ll do you one better. I’ll send it to Keeler myself, with the promise that we’ll keep you informed as best as we’re able.”
Serena beamed at being included. “I can’t ask for anything more.” She stood. “Oh, and good to my word I got you some rooms compliments of the Deco Palace Hotel. You should be in the system already. Just give your names to one of the receptionists.”
“And don’t you worry,” Harry said, shaking her hand, “the hotel will more than make up the cost by the time I’m through tonight.”
After Serena had gone, they received their room cards at the reception desk. Harry dumped his overnight bag on Mercer with the vague promise to be back before they left Atlantic City in the morning. He gave his cane a jaunty wrist flick with each pace as he headed for the craps tables. Their rooms were on different floors, so Mercer gave Cali half of the documents Serena had provided and kept the other half for himself. They made arrangements to meet for dinner at eight.
Mercer decided against a quick shower and instead sat himself in a club chair in his room and began scanning Chester Bowie’s notebooks. After leafing through just a dozen pages he was convinced that Jody, the alumni receptionist at Keeler College, was correct. Bowie was a whack job. His writing style rambled from subject to subject with no discernible pattern. In one paragraph he railed against Sir Arthur Evans’s work on Minoan culture at Knossos and in the next he gave scientific reasons why the sun couldn’t have melted Icarus’s wax-and-feather wings. He wrote that the boy must have blacked out from hypoxia and crashed into the sea, as if the mythological story was fact.
Once he’d established in his mind that the bones of ice age creatures were the basis for demons and monsters, Chester Bowie treated all the ancient myths as if they were real and sought to explain them logically. Or at least as logically as he could. He believed that the famous Gordian knot was simply a hedge maze at the entrance to Phrygia and Alexander the Great merely chopped it down with his sword.
Mercer was well into the third notebook when the phone rang. “Hello?”
“I forgot what room you are in,” Cali said breathlessly.
“1092.”
“I’ll be right up. I found it.”
A minute later he opened the door to Cali’s insistent knock. She blew into the room, her eyes alight. She’d removed her blazer and he could see the shape of her small breasts and how they moved under the silk of her shell. “Chester Bowie was certifiable but he was also a genius.”
Mercer found himself immediately caught up in her enthusiasm. “What did you find?”
“Adamantine.”
“Huh?”
She threw him a teasing smile. “Not the geologist you thought you were?”
“Always suspected I wasn’t,” Mercer replied. “What’s adamantine?”
“In Greek stories of creation, after the gods had fashioned the earth,” she glanced at a note card, “Epimetheus and his brother were given the job of fashioning all the animals. Some were given wings, others claws, some got speed, some got strength. Unfortunately Epimetheus gave out all the best attributes, so when it came to man he had nothing left in his bag of tricks and he asked his brother for advice. The brother told him what would make an appropriate gift to man so Epimetheus went up to the heavens and lit a torch from the sun and bestowed fire to man, making him superior to all creatures. As you might imagine this wasn’t what Zeus, chief god of all the gods, had in mind. In anger-”
Mercer finished the story. “In anger Zeus had Epimetheus’s brother, Prometheus, chained to a mountain where birds ate his spleen.”
“Exactly.” Cali checked her card again. “It was Mount Caucasus and it was his liver, actually. The chains were reportedly made of unbreakable metal called adamantine that Jupiter himself had mined. Only Hercules’ strength was enough to break the links and free Prometheus.”
“So what does this have to do with Bowie?”
“Don’t you see? Through his research he thought he had found Jupiter’s secret adamantine mine. He went to Central Africa to prove that adamantine really existed, just one more step in proving that everything about ancient mythology was real. But instead of some legendary metal he discovered a vein of naturally enriched uranium.”
Mercer shook his head. “Hold it. He trekked into the most remote part of the world because he thought he’d found the mother lode of an imaginary metal.”
Cali grinned at his skepticism. “I’ll do you one better. He got a grant from Princeton in the fall of 1936 to go looking for his adamantine mine.”
“Princeton? Princeton backed this lunatic?”
“To the tune of two thousand dollars. Not large by today’s standards but in the 1930s that’s not chump change.” She handed him a memo on Princeton letterhead. The letter, from a Professor Swartz at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, stated that indeed Bowie had been given two thousand dollars to pursue his work on procuring ‘the elemental metal you outlined in your grant request.’ Mercer read the short note a second time, as if not believing his first reading. He looked up. Cali had a smug look on her face.
“Why the hell would someone fund this guy? He was off his rocker.”
“Apparently this Professor Swartz didn’t think so. Since I found our link, you’re buying dinner.”
Mercer didn’t acknowledge her. There was something about the date that struck a chord. Princeton in the 1930s. What was happening at Princeton in the 1930s?
“Did you hear me?” Cali noted the faraway look in Mercer’s eyes.
And then Mercer remembered. Not what was happening at Princeton in the 1930s. The question was who. Without thinking he reached across and drew Cali to him, kissing her hard. “You are a genius!”
Flustered, but not disturbed by the sudden kiss, she asked, “What? What did I do?”
“Do you know who happened to be at Princeton in the Institute for Advanced Study in the 1930s? Hell, he was there until he died in the fifties.” Mercer didn’t wait for an answer. “Albert Einstein, that’s who. And while he didn’t send that letter to President Roosevelt until just before the war detailing how his theories could create an atomic bomb, he must have suspected that Bowie was on to something and had this guy Swartz fund the expedition. Einstein knew Bowie hadn’t found adamantine, but believed that he might stumble on highly concentrated uranium, maybe a source with naturally occurring isotopes of U-235, which is usually refined from the more common U-238 in centrifuges. That’s what they needed to sustain a chain reaction.”
“Einstein sent Bowie to find the uranium?”
“That’s the only theory that fits the facts.” Mercer spo
ke faster and faster. “Somehow, God knows where, Bowie found something in his studies that mentions the location of Zeus’s adamantine mine. Maybe he made the connection to uranium or maybe it was someone else, but his idea eventually gets Einstein’s attention. Einstein knew that Fermi and a couple of others were working on creating a nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago. He believed that Bowie’s adamantine might just be the uranium isotopes the team needed for their experiment, so he gets Princeton to fund the expedition.”
“So what happened? The first sustained chain reaction didn’t occur until 1942.”
Mercer was surprised she knew the date but had to remind himself that Cali wasn’t a medical researcher, as she’d once claimed. Instead she was a trained nuclear specialist and would surely know the history of her chosen field. “The girl at Keeler told me he vanished. Chester Bowie never made it back from Africa with his samples, leaving Fermi’s group to enrich their own uranium.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We can’t be sure that he found a vein of U-235.”
“Come on, Cali, it was strong enough to kill dozens of people over the years from acute radiation sickness. I’ve never heard of a case of natural uranium doing that, especially since their village is a good half mile from the mine. You need proximity to radiation to feel its effects.”
She conceded the point with a nod. “So what happened to Bowie?”
“No clue. He could have been eaten by crocodiles on his way out. Eaten by a rival tribe for all I know. If he died out there, then he’s carrying a sample of whatever the Germans came back to take later on.”
“There’s no way we’re ever going to find his body after all these years.”
It was Mercer’s turn to admit his enthusiasm was getting the best of him, but he wasn’t going to admit defeat. “I won’t let the trail just die here. There must be something. Maybe there are archives at Princeton. Letters between Bowie and Einstein. I think I read someplace that he kept pretty complete records of his correspondence.”
“Should be easy enough to get,” Cali said. “Princeton’s not that far. If we leave early enough we can get there when they open tomorrow.”
“You’re on. I’ll book this room again for Harry. He and I can head back to D.C. the day after. We should finish reading Bowie’s notebooks first. There may be other clues.”
“Agreed, but not before you buy me dinner. It’s near enough eight now.” Cali suddenly became aware that her nipples were pressed against the silk of her sleeveless shell. She’d long ago admitted she didn’t have much in the way of breasts; she also knew men would look no matter the size. She gave Mercer high marks for not leering. “I’m just going to run down to my room for a minute. I’ll meet you at the elevators in the lobby.”
Cali finally came down from her room fifteen minutes later, and while the effects were subtle, she’d taken the time to apply some makeup and fix her hair. Mercer felt like a slob for not showering earlier. They dined at a restaurant in the hotel called Margeaux, and despite the urgency they’d felt up in Mercer’s room, they took their time over crocks of onion soup, Dover sole and Beef Wellington, and thick wedges of Black Forest cake. Mercer had left the wine selection to Cali since his only knowledge of the vintner’s art was to avoid anything that comes in a box. When they finished their meal, the bottle was empty and the restaurant was nearly deserted.
It wasn’t until their conversation drifted into a companionable silence and lingering glances that the guilt slammed into Mercer like a sledgehammer blow. He hadn’t known the exact moment their working dinner had become a date, his first since Tisa, but that’s how he felt about it now and the delicious meal turned sour in his stomach. He thought he’d given no outward sign but somehow Cali picked up on his distress.
“Are you okay?”
Lying is what he should have done, blamed eating too much, and moved on. It would have been easy and he could have kept Tisa’s memory locked away, barely reined, but still under control. But before he could open his mouth, the idea of lying faded. Tisa’s memory wasn’t under control. It was controlling him. It wasn’t reined; it rode free across his mind, and until he exorcised it, it would always be there.
“I lost someone very dear to me six months ago.” Cali had to lean across the candlelit table to hear him. “Tonight was the first time since then I’ve had dinner with a woman. This dinner wasn’t a date, but sitting here with you it was easy to imagine it was. I was overwhelmed by guilt.”
“Thank you for sharing that. I know it couldn’t have been easy.”
“I have a tendency to keep stuff locked away.”
“What man doesn’t?”
Mercer gave a low chuckle. “True. I guess it’s just easier than admitting there’s something wrong. You pretend you can handle the pain, and usually you can, but sometimes…”
“Sometimes you need to talk.”
“Talk or just admit to yourself it’s okay to have feelings.”
“Women often complain about men shutting them out,” Cali said. “I’ve had my share of that, but I also came to realize that men’s silences can be just as cathartic as when women vent. The dangerous guys, the ones you have to look out for, are the ones that don’t even allow themselves the silence. I’ve never lost anyone close to me, so I can’t imagine how it feels. I will say that you seem to be handling it pretty well. I think we had a good time tonight. I know I did. Had you not been dealing with her death, you wouldn’t have allowed yourself even this.”
Cali let that sink in before setting her napkin on the table. They stood and made their way back to the elevator. “Why don’t we meet here at seven?”
“Okay. Sorry to end the night on a down note.”
Her smile was the most charming he’d ever seen on her. “You ended it perfectly.” When her elevator reached her floor, she gave his cheek a gentle kiss. “See you in the morning.”
Mercer held the elevator open until she was in her room. He thought he’d come off sounding like a morose dolt pining for an unrequited love, and she thought the night had ended perfectly. He repeated to himself something Harry was fond of saying: “The only thing you’ll ever truly understand about a woman is what she’ll let you understand.”
Atlantic City, New Jersey
Two minutes on the Internet would have saved Mercer and Cali about six hours but would have cost them a bucolic ride and a self-guided tour of Princeton’s campus. The Institute for Advanced Study wasn’t affiliated with the Ivy League school. It had been started in 1930 with money from Newark department store magnate Louis Bamberger as a place for theoretical mathematicians and physicists. The small institute did not archive any of their most famous thinker’s papers. In fact, Einstein’s home was merely another piece of property for faculty housing.
A harried staff member, who had answered the same question for countless people, told them that all of Einstein’s papers had been bequeathed to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In conjunction with Caltech, they were making much of the material available online.
Back in Mercer’s room at the Deco Palace, he handed her a beer from the minibar and opened one for himself. The sun was setting and the hotel cast a long shadow over the boardwalk. Cali checked that she had a connection with the hotel’s Wi-Fi and quickly located the archive. They found that there was a document of some sort in the collection from a Ch. Bowie; however, that particular piece of writing couldn’t be accessed through the Internet.
“What time is it in Israel?” Cali asked, reaching for the phone. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter.” She dialed a long number from memory, and when it was answered she asked for Ari Gradstein.
“Who is Ari Gradstein?” Mercer asked.
“The deputy director for Israel’s Demona nuclear research facility. We’ve worked together a few times on responses to nuclear terrorism,” Cali replied, then picked up the conversation with the Israeli when he came on the line. “Ari, it’s Cali Stowe from NEST.” She paused, listening. “Good,
how are you?…Excellent. And Shoshana?…Great. Listen, Ari, I need an official favor. I’d like you to cut through the bureaucracy for me at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I can’t tell you what it’s about yet other than to say I highly doubt the state of Israel is at risk. I’m researching an American who wrote to Einstein, and all his papers are archived at the university…. Yeah, I know. It surprised me too. I wasted a couple of hours at Princeton thinking they were there.
“Could you call over there for me and clear the way? I’m going under the assumption that as soon as I identified myself as someone from the DOE, all sorts of red flags would go up and it would be weeks before I got an answer.” Cali rattled off her e-mail address and then the university’s reference number for the document authored by Ch. Bowie. “Thanks, Ari, I owe you one. Bye.”
Mercer was impressed. “Even if I had a contact in Israel, I never would have thought of that. You were brilliant.”
Cali smiled at the compliment. “And sometimes knowing your way around a bureaucracy isn’t a bad thing.”
Harry returned to the room while they waited for an e-mail from Israel. He was bleary-eyed and his cheeks were prickled with silver stubble. It was the first Mercer had seen of him in nearly twenty hours.
“Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. Have you been gambling this whole time?”
Harry lowered himself to the bed with an exaggerated groan. “God, no. I stopped for breakfast this morning.”
“And how’d you do?” Mercer asked, knowing the answer by Harry’s dejected look.
Harry propped himself against the pillows, his eyes closed. “Never ask a gambler that until he’s done.”
“That bad, eh?”
The old man suddenly leaned forward and pulled thick bundles of cash from both pockets of his windbreaker. He spoke mildly, as though it were no big deal. “Actually I think I did all right for myself.”
“Holy shit!” Mercer and Cali exclaimed at the same time. “How much?” Mercer asked.
