Uncle Anton's Atomic Bomb

by Ian Woollen

  Peter was too busy in the laboratory. He had been recruited with a seductive lie. The diplomat promised him that the explosive device was meant for launching a moon rocket.

  The diplomat decided that he would gain prestige at the Ministry if he built a prototype of the sakhalinium bomb. It looked not unlike a modified telegraph machine attached to a series of electrified brass domes. The operator tapped out a short command that signaled a dynamo to begin generating a pulse of high voltage sparking inside the domes, while a one-ounce tray of sakhalinium, under intense heat from a row of gas jets, slowly moved from one dome to the next, receiving the equivalent of a hundred lightning strikes. The telegraph key feature was meant to complicate the detonation process, so that not just anyone could activate the device. It was necessary to know the initial command: dot-dot-dash-dot.

  Chapter 68

  Butterfly in Indianapolis

  A favorite tenet of chaos theory, popularized in the 1980s to explain everything from sunspots to business cycles, held that a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing could cause a snowstorm in New York.

  Likewise, as Ward and Mary observed, a silver-haired, late middle-aged woman on a piano bench revealing a long-held, personal secret in Indianapolis could cause reverberations all over the globe. The Soviet Union broke apart. The Berlin Wall fell. Velvet and Orange revolutions bloomed. And after decades of avid Americanization, Rusalka Jones went home to Russia.

  It was only supposed to be for a week. She and Ruby travelled to Russia on a sightseeing tour, administered by the Yale Alumni Association. Ward and Mary paid for the trip, as an effort to salvage their friendship.

  Rusalka unexpectedly went on the lam. Concocting an excuse about leaving her purse at the airport gate, Rusalka skipped the flight back from Moscow. She went missing for two days. As Ruby and Mary debated involving the police, Rusalka phoned her partner and her children and invited them to join her in emigrating to Russia.

  They refused, of course. Kayla elected to stay in Indianapolis with her radiation job at the hospital. Kayla also refused to meet with Mary and Ruby to discuss the situation, which they mistakenly interpreted as a step toward individuation. Vincent elected to crash in Ruby’s basement, as if somehow that would help bring his mother back. It was not a healthy arrangement.

  All attempts to establish regular contact with Rusalka failed. They knew she was living with a relative in a coastal town near Yalta and that she was starting a public relations business. Otherwise the jarring unknowns of Rusalka’s disappearance could only be explained by “psychic lacunae,” as Mary theorized. Ruby, desperate for a shoulder to cry on, reinstated Mary into the women’s group.

  After three months of Vincent and the discovery of his basement meth lab, Ruby sent him to live with Elbert near the Greene Weapons Base.

  Mary floated through it all with a supernatural calm. In every area of her life, she felt released from her shame and from the cloudy, omnipresent tension, the Cold War tension that had come to define ‘normalcy.’ It slowly oozed out of her pores. The Wangerts, like much of the country, enjoyed an illusory period of feel-good optimism, before things took a grimmer turn.

  As a therapist, Mary experimented with new techniques. She discovered that other therapists, some in far flung corners like Adelaide and Helsinki, were exploring vernacular conversation techniques that allowed clinicians to restore back-alley tools such as ‘stick-to-itiveness’ and ‘comebacks’ and ‘wherewithal.’ Professional meetings were held to explore the therapeutic value of ‘resilience’ and ‘mindfulness.’ Mary became a workshop junkie.

  She flew to Vancouver and L.A., taking advantage of another emerging phenomenon, frequent flyer miles. She used her thesis paper to develop a presentation on “The Secrets of Secrecy.”

  Ward often accompanied her. After the demolition of the Wangert Building, he felt less compelled to show up at Duncan’s twentieth-floor suite in the Bank One Tower. On their trips, Ward researched the hotels and restaurants and museums in the conference cities and strolled through galleries while Mary presented her workshop, then whisked her away to enjoy a fine meal and a concert.

  She used him as a sounding board for her presentation. “I’m still not sure what you mean by ‘top secrets suppress bottom secrets,’ ” Ward said. They were dangling their legs in the whirlpool at a Phoenix Hilton.

  Mary replied, “My Anthony secret, for example. It wanted me to think that I had only two choices, top secrecy or exposure. It wanted me to forget my bottom-secret, that I’m essentially a peacemaker, which gets a bad rap these days as being a softie, an enabler. I got tricked into thinking the only way to keep the peace was by keeping Anthony’s parentage a top secret. Top secrecy blinded me to other possibilities of my bottom-secret—confession, forgiveness, dialogue, and the possibility that making peace with his birth story could strengthen us, rather than feed the rifts.”

  Ward reached over and rubbed her neck. “It does seem like the dust is settling. Duncan and Kathryn have settled into their new house. Rob claims that he quit smoking pot. I hope Rusalka is happy in Russia, although frankly, I don’t understand what motivated her. I am worried about what happens to Anthony when Trip dies.”

  Mary sipped her drink. “Yes, and that’s why I’ve been thinking that we should expand this process to include Anthony’s biological father.”

  “Wait, not so fast,” Ward croaked. “Talk to him? I doubt we would even rate an audience anymore. Some people are talking about him running for President, now that he’s basking in all the credit for the Soviet Union’s demise.”

  Mary eased down into the warm flowing water. She said, “Be not afraid.”

  Trip lasted a few more months, until one soft, five-knot spring day out on Chesapeake Bay. After years of grumbling about Anthony’s boat, Trip found comfort in sailing during his final weeks. He dozed in the front berth with the waves lapping at the hull beside his head. He claimed it was “womb-like,” that it was preparing him for his “sleep with the ancestors.” Trip took a Biblical turn toward the end. Anthony interpreted this as a sign of his Southern Baptist roots, indicating his desire for some connection, even if in fantasy, to his family. The Georgia Ames had been notified of Trip’s dire condition. Their only acknowledgment had come in the form of a note from a local funeral home saying the body would be accepted for burial in the family cemetery.

  Trip demanded Anthony perform a burial at sea—a private, unannounced burial. He did not want his family to claim his body, what little was left of it. Anthony hesitantly raised the question of legality. Trip turned it into a loyalty test. The burial at sea would be Anthony’s final proof of his love. Trip picked his “coffin suit.” The safari-style suit featured many pockets with button-able flaps that could be filled with stones. The outfit included a blue bandana tied around his head.

  At the tiller, Anthony wore a blue bandana too. From his position at the helm, Anthony could glance down through the cabin and the narrow passage between the head and the V-berth and make partial eye contact with Trip. He waved hello weakly. Anthony saluted back and set a course far out into the Chesapeake. Their final contact was a wave from Trip that Anthony, after a minute, recognized as a wave goodbye, because his lover’s arm slowly fell slack.

  It took Anthony several hours to investigate. Pointing up on a long starboard tack that took him out of sight of land, Anthony clutched the tiller and imagined himself ferrying Trip to the other side. He remembered as a child being rowed out to view the sinking of the old sloop. He used stones from Great Tusk to fill his dead lover’s pockets.

  At the coroner’s office, a headline-seeking hack refused to accept Anthony’s report of a man-overboard accident. Anthony, hardened by the anger of his grief, did not mind a few headlines either. Anthony quoted Trip on the rights of AIDS victims not to be buried in the hateful dirt of a land that rejected them. The story ended up on the AP wire.

  Mary and Ward experienced the shock of learning about Trip’s death and their son’s legal
difficulties from the Indianapolis Star.

  “Why didn’t you call us?” Ward asked, when they finally got Anthony on the phone. “I thought we had reached a point where we could talk about these things.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry,” Anthony said. “I should have called you. I’ve been busy.”

  “Do you want to come home,” Mary asked, “or do you want us to come there and take care of you for a while?”

  Anthony answered in a rock-steady tone, “No, thank you. I’m actually doing fine. I’m pissed, but it’s a good pissed. I’m working again. I’m onto a story that I’d started researching back before Trip got sick. I put it aside for years. It’s a story with legs. Remember the shooting down of Korean Airlines’ Flight 007, because it supposedly veered off course over Sakhalin Island? Several investigators have recently dug up a lot of questions about why the official explanations from both the U.S. and the Soviets are flawed. It appears there was an air battle, during which several Russian and American military aircraft were shot down. I think there’s more to discover, and with the fall of the Soviet Union, a lot of data is coming out. I think I can make some heads roll. You-know-who may finally have to answer for some of his swashbuckling madness.”

  “Oh, Anthony, honey. Please don’t make more trouble for yourself,” Mary said.

  Anthony continued, his voice rising, “With this new DNA testing, if I can somehow manage to obtain a sample from him, just a hair, or one of his cigar butts, I can prove paternity beyond a doubt and at least maybe force him to give me an interview.”

  Mary decided to interfere with some motherly peacemaking. She remembered that He Who Remains Classified had a weak point, the bestowing of personal favors to damsels in distress, but not too much distress. She wrote a note on her ‘From Our Island Cottage’ stationary. She described Anthony’s legal predicaments and hinted at an interest in donating to the exploratory campaign committee.

  Ward bet a hundred dollars that she would hear nothing back. He was forced to pay up when Mary received a prompt reply from an appointments secretary. They were given a slot on a Monday at 9:00 a.m. in a top-floor suite at the Hay-Adams Hotel.

  They flew in on Saturday. Mary wanted plenty of time beforehand with Anthony. Ward booked two rooms in the hotel, so Anthony could sleep in a real bed. They lounged in the lobby and played cards. To hide her own nervousness, Mary coached the others on breathing techniques and suggested that they each bring in an ‘anchoring’ object to hold. She explained that the sense of touch has a direct line into the brain, which is why tokens are handed out in AA. Touching the token in one’s pocket can forestall a relapse by reminding a person of their true intentions.

  “Thanks, Mom. Speaking of relapses,” Anthony said, “I hope you won’t be going gaga over your old flame.”

  “I’m worried about that too,” Ward added.

  “I’ll stick to our agenda,” Mary admonished.

  “Remind me about the agenda,” Ward said.

  “Don’t fire till you see the whites of his eyes,” Anthony said.

  He took his parents to see the Woodruff Mansion, an old favorite of Trip’s. Very good salads at the greenhouse café and an extremely outré collection of Russian crafts, including a collection of Soviet porcelain, featuring pictures of Stalin and Mao on little teacups.

  Anthony had his own agenda, which soon became apparent after He Who Remains Classified entered the hotel meeting room. They engaged in a round of polite nods. The similarity between Anthony’s long, squared-off jaw, beardless now except for a soul patch, and that of his biological father was striking.

  “Would you mind taking off your sunglasses?” Mary asked.

  He Who Remains Classified grunted, “For you, lady, okay.” His face revealed pale, deep-set sockets. He initiated some hearty handshaking, as if they were all best friends and the past thirty-five years apart a mere inconvenience.

  Ward stuffed three pieces of nicotine gum in his mouth. They sat in green leather chairs at a round, walnut-veneered table. The drapes at the window remained drawn. One bulb in the bright chandelier flickered. Anthony held a briefcase, his anchoring object, in his lap.

  “Mr. Ambassador, you remember my husband, Ward. And this is our son, Anthony. And well, I mean, your son too.”

  The ambassador blanched ever so slightly. “Understood. I believe we met once, on a drive from the Hartford Airport. You asked me a lot of questions for your school newspaper.”

  “Yes, and I have a few more,” Anthony announced, getting right down to business. He flung open the flap of his briefcase and pulled forth a sheaf of documents.

  “You’ve heard of the Freedom of Information Act?” he asked his parents. They nodded cautiously. Anthony handed Ward the thick sheaf. “Believe it or not, the government has maintained a large file on the Wangert family over several decades,” he said. “I finally received this last week. A lot has been redacted for unknown reasons. The gist of these weekly reports seems to be nothing more than the minutiae of our humdrum existence in Indianapolis, grocery shopping, sledding at Butler Hill, business parties for Wangert Public Relations, teas and tennis with the Literary Salon ladies. I’m curious to know why the government would want this information, which seems to have been collected regularly for a long time.”

  “That’s impossible,” the ambassador snorted, “I personally shredded the file myself.” His neck reddened and the bags shook under his eyes.

  Anthony smiled at this inadvertent confession. He said, “Somebody made a copy.”

  The ambassador scratched furiously at his forehead. “I’m sure we can work out an understanding.”

  Ward thumbed through the reports. Trying to maintain his composure, he growled slowly, “Excuse me, but what is the meaning of this? Were you spying on Mary? Did you really think that she’d become a Red?”

  Mary peered at a page describing her standing weekly order from Clem’s Sausages. She forced several deep breaths, which did very little to settle her. “This is very disturbing. We’re ordinary people, law-abiding citizens, raising our children and paying our taxes and trying to make it through the ups and downs. And to discover that you’ve been watching us all along! This is not supposed to happen in this country.”

  Anthony gestured for Mary to focus on the balled-up handkerchief in her fist. He said, “Welcome to the twentieth century, mother. I think a more important question is who gathered the information, who would have been in a position to know about the canapés served at the Literary Salon?”

  Ward sighed, “Oh, my word … Rusalka! Rusalka Jones was on your payroll. I always wondered.”

  Anthony nodded. “She must have made copies of her reports. And after Duncan forced her out of Wangert Public Relations, she felt threatened. She mailed it all to our congressman, just before leaving the country.”

  “So that’s why she ran away finally, once she could go back to Russia without being arrested,” Mary chimed in.

  Mary tilted her head to the ceiling, a technique to staunch the flow of tears.

  The ambassador leaned back in his chair and plucked a comb from his suit jacket. He ran it pointlessly through his thin white hair.

  Anthony continued with his plan of attack. He said, “Let us come back to the question of motivation. Why would a high government official with access to intelligence sources do this? Why would he use a Soviet refugee to write monthly reports on the Wangert family? For Rusalka, it must have been in exchange for sanctuary or a green card, but what did you get out of it?”

  The ambassador produced a cigar from a different pocket and gummed it, unlit. His pale eyes fluttered. “Speaking hypothetically, of course,” he began, “one could imagine a lonely, unmarried government bureaucrat using this method to receive faint glimmers, as if from a distant galaxy, faint glimmers of the regular life being experienced by a woman he once loved and a man he once admired and a son who he thought was his own.”

  Mary unballed her handkerchief. “Mr. Ambassador, thank you for honestly b
ringing us back to the purpose of our meeting.”

  Ward shook his head, and snapping his gum, said, “Just a goddamn minute. I want to get this straight. For decades, for your own personal reasons, you used the apparatus of the State’s intelligence gathering system and a cast-off Soviet flunkey to keep tabs on a pretty coed that you’d knocked up, just because you don’t have any kind of personal life otherwise?”

  “Ward, welcome to our nation’s capitol,” Anthony interjected.

  Ward forged ahead, “What the hell actually happened back there in Moscow?”

  “I was young too,” the ambassador said.

  “And you knew if her dog died, she would have to go home.”

  “I panicked,” the ambassador said.

  Mary began to sniffle. Ward harrumphed and snapped, “Sir, we could use this information to blow your political aspirations right out of the water!”

  “But you won’t,” said the ambassador, stonily. “You have too much to lose. Your family. Your business. This is not a threat. It’s a reality, and not because I would personally order retaliation. It’s all bigger than me now. I could not control the consequences of such an imprudent act on your part.”

  Anthony concurred, “Yeah, let’s face it, why fight him? If he’s elected to high office, he couldn’t fuck things up any worse than his predecessors.”

  “Uh, thank you, Anthony,” the ambassador said.

  “Now that we’ve got that established,” Anthony continued, “I was wondering if we could move on to a few questions about what really happened to Korean Air Flight 007?”

  Mary turned to her son, and recovering slightly, said, “What are you doing? How can you be so mercenary? This man just gave us something sincere to reflect on.”