The Accidental Agent

by Andrew Rosenheim

  They shook hands and Nessheim started to head back to his apartment. He had liked Fermi, but could not help feeling that the man was often acting. The flash of resentment, the excitability – these stuck in Nessheim’s mind as much as the automatic smile. He sensed an unease in the scientist about something, but couldn’t even begin to guess its cause.

  He was being careful now. Crossing 57th Street, he turned around, trying to look like a man who’d suddenly discovered he’d left something behind. He stared ostentatiously back at the entrance to the Quadrangle Club, but let his eyes float, as if adjusting to the dark. He was very long-sighted; his father had always called him ‘my binoculars’ when as a boy Nessheim would accompany him hunting for deer. So he spotted the dark Chesterfield coat he’d seen on his way to Eckhart Hall that morning; its owner was moving east along 57th Street, only now he had removed his homburg.

  The kids from Ray School were outside now, throwing a football, and Nessheim walked halfway down Kimbark Avenue, then stopped and stood by the school fence. Again he looked back in the vaguest way, and then he saw the Chesterfield, waiting on the corner at 57th. Nessheim walked quickly now to try and draw the guy out. When he reached 56th he stopped by the first of the big oak trees lining the block; when he looked back he could still just make out the Chesterfield, standing there. The guy was good: too smart to come out in the open, but still making sure Nessheim was heading home. Damn, thought Nessheim, spy or no spy, something was going on.

  6

  HE STAYED IN for most of the weekend, only venturing out as far as the little grocery store on 55th. There was hard frost outside on the front courtyard, and the wind was picking up, so he turned the heat up and started revising for mid-terms. Nothing interrupted him, except for a phone call on Saturday afternoon from Winograd, inviting him to a party in International House, a vast tower on the edge of the Midway where foreign students lived. He begged off, and putting down the phone realised he had half-hoped, half-dreaded that it was Stacey calling. She could have done so easily enough – his number was in the phone book, part of the openness he could enjoy as a student.

  On Monday morning he left early for Torts at nine o’clock – on Wednesday and Friday it was held at eleven, but all the schedules were erratic now, thanks to the influx of so many military students and there being too few teachers. Conscious of having been followed once, he took a circuitous route, walking along 56th to Ellis, then cutting down and coming through the Quadrangle from the north-west. He was slightly late for class as a result and, coming in quietly through the back doors of the lecture hall, saw Winograd in their usual place, and next to him Stacey. He sat down in the back row, so as not to draw Fielding’s attention and a reprimand for tardiness. When class ended he tried to get out quickly, but somehow Stacey was quicker and caught up to him before he got out of the building.

  ‘What’s the rush, sailor?’ she asked. She wore a boxy, knee-length coat today that could have passed for a hand-me-down except for its grey fox collar. He could smell French perfume as she leaned towards him.

  ‘Places to go and things to see,’ he said lightly, and made to move off.

  ‘I thought maybe we could start my tuition this evening.’

  ‘Sorry, but I’ll be downtown. I’ve got to meet somebody.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘Sure. Where are you meeting … it?’

  ‘The Palmer House.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Six.’ He wanted to tell her to mind her own business. This pushiness was unlike the Stacey of old.

  ‘So meet me at seven. I’ll be on the steps of the Art Institute.’

  ‘It’ll be closed then.’

  ‘That’s why I’ll be on the steps, stupid.’

  Before he could protest, she walked away, heading for a place where he couldn’t follow her – the ladies’ powder room. He didn’t understand what she was doing. She’d never been the jealous type, far from it; Stacey had always acted as if the other women in Nessheim’s past were negligible – preliminary trials for her, the real thing.

  By now Winograd had emerged from the lecture hall. ‘So you met Lady Godiva, I see. All we need is the horse.’

  ‘And fewer clothes.’

  ‘I’d be happy to take care of that part of things.’

  Nessheim looked at him sharply, but Winograd was unabashed. ‘Well, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘See you later.’

  ‘Another dentist appointment?’

  ‘Never seems to end.’

  He found Fermi in his office in Eckhart Hall, working a slide rule and jotting down the results on a piece of paper. It was a remarkably tiny room, simply furnished with a small desk and a typewriter. On one wall, a blackboard was covered with a spider’s web of mathematical equations. Fermi could see what Nessheim was thinking: ‘You think I should have a palace then?’

  ‘No, just a room big enough for a visitor to breathe.’

  ‘I advise you then to hold your breath.’ Fermi smiled.

  They left the building and walked to Stagg Field, where Zinn was waiting in grey overalls. Fermi made introductions, and Zinn explained that the delivery was waiting around the corner on 58th Street. Fermi asked Nessheim to drop by Eckhart Hall when he was through, and left them to it – Nessheim went with Zinn to find the graphite.

  Outside there were about a dozen teenage boys waiting around, and Zinn instructed them to follow him. He explained to Nessheim that they’d been recruited to unload the heavy lengths of graphite (some were fifty inches long) from the trucks that would now be coming regularly, and then to shift them again once they’d been machined and smoothed into uniform-sized bricks. The boys were mainly Irish kids from the stockyards neighbourhood who were waiting to be drafted. Zinn said they were happy to work for peanuts in the meantime, since they had nothing else to do. They wore jeans and sweaters and sneakers, and some of them looked young enough to still be at school. With a jolt, Nessheim realised that in twelve months some of them would be dead.

  On 56th Street they found the dump truck, with a canvas cover tied firmly over the load, and a bewildered driver who was talking to the soldier meant to be guarding the second entrance. When Nessheim and Zinn joined them, the driver made it clear he had heard all about the disaster of the earlier delivery. At first he refused even to try to get his truck inside Stagg Field, but when Nessheim patiently explained what he had in mind he eventually relented.

  It took ten minutes to coax the truck through the archway, but it cleared by a good three inches, and no further bricks were dislodged. The driver parked close to the door of the racquets court, and the unloading began. Soon the Irish kids started to look like members of a minstrel troupe, their faces coated by graphite dust. When they were done, Nessheim asked Zinn to open the second racquets court, where sandbags lay stacked near the door. He had the boys take these out, each bag between two of them, and dump them on the back of the truck. After fifty or so, he reckoned the truck was as weighed down as when it came in. The driver seemed to have developed faith in Nessheim, however misplaced, for he shot out of the archway, clearing it by a heart-stopping inch or two. Having seen the effect of the sandbags, the stockyard boys didn’t object when told to unload them again and take them back to the second racquets court.

  With Zinn as tour guide, Nessheim saw the other rooms being put to use under the stands. In the visitors’ locker room, Zinn introduced him to Knuth, who turned out to be a master carpenter. Work would start going full blast that week, and Zinn added that they would be working two shifts – one under his supervision, the other under the physicist named Anderson.

  Nessheim said goodbye to Zinn and returned to Eckhart Hall. He found Fermi still working intently on a paper covered in figures and notations, and explained what he’d been doing. Fermi nodded, then asked mischievously, ‘No spies yet?’

  Nessheim laughed. ‘Not yet. But tell me something – if the Nazis did have an informa
nt inside this project, what exactly would they learn?’

  ‘Just that a controlled chain reaction is possible. Though we don’t know that yet.’

  ‘When will you know?’

  Fermi got up and walked over to a calendar on the wall. He pondered it for a moment, then lifted up the page for November, showing December. With his free hand, he spun a spiral in the air, then suddenly stuck out his finger and jabbed a date on the calendar page: December 10. ‘I’d say then,’ he declared. Coming back to sit in his chair, he said, ‘Maybe sooner.’

  ‘That’s quick.’

  ‘Yes and no. You see, we have been making prototypes for almost a year. The only thing that is changing is the scale of the experiment.’

  ‘I understand. To go back to the Nazis, if all goes well and they know about it, could they duplicate the result?’

  ‘Not easily. They would have trouble finding enough pure graphite – it has taken us many months to find a reliable source. And enough uranium. Besides, they have gone the path of heavy water.’ He peered at Nessheim. ‘You understand what I am saying?’ He sounded sceptical.

  ‘I do. It’s another moderator.’

  Fermi looked simultaneously pleased and alarmed that Nessheim knew this. ‘It is not, in my view, the right path.’

  ‘So what would be the value of having a spy here?’

  ‘I honestly cannot tell you. That is why I don’t believe there is one.’

  There was a formal knock on the door, and when it opened Kalvin stuck his head in. He nodded perfunctorily at Nessheim, then addressed Fermi. ‘Enrico, I will miss the tea dance, I’m afraid. I have an appointment for my dental work.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Nessheim spoke up. ‘Is your dentist okay?

  Kalvin looked as if he’d been asked if his wife was any good in bed. Nessheim added, ‘I’m having some gyp with a molar.’ He figured he’d better have a real dentist lined up in case Winograd kept asking questions.

  ‘Mine is rather specialised, and expensive. He works downtown in the Pittsfield building.’ Kalvin could have been describing a pedigree racehorse. ‘You’d do better with someone more local.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Nessheim, never having been snubbed about a dentist before.

  ‘See you in the morning,’ said Fermi, then as Kalvin retracted his head he turned back to Nessheim.

  ‘Tea dance?’ asked Nessheim.

  Fermi laughed. ‘We meet each week to review progress. Kalvin, Anderson, Zinn, Szilard when he’s in Chicago, Nadelhoffer and me. At first we were all so polite with each other that Szilard said it was like a thé dansant. But tell me, is everything all right at Stagg Field?’

  ‘Seems to be. I’m going to phone General Groves tomorrow. You may find security a bit tighter – the soldiers were kind of lax checking IDs.’

  Fermi opened and closed a hand to indicate that he took this on board, but wasn’t especially interested. ‘We will begin constructing the materials now into something we’re calling a “Pile”. This “Pile” will be enormous – it will take up half the court and rise almost to the ceiling. Once we start I will be very occupied, so please tell me now if there’s anything you want me to do.’

  ‘That’s easy. I just need to know who has keys to the courts, and the storeroom next door. And anything that happens which strikes you as unusual.’

  ‘I have the keys; so do Anderson, Kalvin, Nadelhoffer and Zinn.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Fermi was looking longingly at the calculations on his piece of paper, and Nessheim realised he was being politely dismissed.

  ‘No. I’d better be going.’ He made a show of looking at his watch.

  Outside Eckhart Hall he looked again at his watch, this time for real. He had plenty of time to kill before meeting Tatie, but decided he might as well spend it downtown. He could go and stare at the window displays in Marshall Fields or look at the French paintings in the Art Institute or even walk over to the marina at the Lake. Whichever, it would make a break from Hyde Park and the university, which was suddenly seeming claustrophobic.

  On University Avenue he turned right and walked across the opening to the main Quadrangle, heading for the Midway. He passed the President’s house, a big brick mansion that sat without pretension right on the street. The wind had picked up from the north-east and turning on 59th he buttoned his coat, and jammed his fedora firmly down on his head. It was then that he saw Kalvin, maybe half a block ahead of him, walking in the same direction. Heading for the Illinois Central train to take him downtown to see his dentist.

  He thought briefly of catching up to the man, then decided against it. He hadn’t taken to Kalvin any more than Kalvin had to him; it would be a strain if they travelled on the train downtown together. He crossed 59th Street and angled across the grass field, moving east along Midway Plaisance, the middle road of the three that ran in parallel, virtually from the Lake to Washington Park over a mile west. Two long rows of now-leafless elm trees lined this middle row, mature almost fifty years on from their original planting at the time of the World’s Fair.

  He kept an eye on Kalvin, slowing down so that the man was a block ahead of him. When Kalvin reached Dorchester, Nessheim moved over to 59th Street again at the Laboratory School, another grey limestone Gothic monster, this time a junior model housing the school for the faculty’s offspring. Thomas Dewey himself had helped found it, and Nessheim had heard it was a hotbed of precociousness – the kids were tested within an inch of their lives from first grade onwards.

  The railway tracks were elevated and just east of Harper Avenue, a hidden street tucked against the railway embankment and darkened by overhanging trees in the otherwise obvious grid of Hyde Park. The tracks themselves went over 59th Street, and beneath them the street ran through a dark tunnel with raised sidewalks for pedestrians on either side. The station entrance was on the near side of this tunnel, and Nessheim took his time, thinking that with luck Kalvin might catch a train before he got there himself – the service was frequent, with one downtown train every ten minutes.

  So he was surprised when he looked ahead to see a figure emerging into the light at the far end of the tunnel – tall, taking quick but itsy-bitsy steps. It could be no one but Kalvin. It seemed the man wasn’t going downtown to his highfalutin dentist, so why had he told Fermi he was? Intrigued, Nessheim walked through the tunnel, ignoring the station’s entrance. He hung back a little at the far end, waiting until Kalvin reached Stony Island before stepping out into the light.

  He assumed Kalvin was heading for Jackson Park, though it seemed odd, since it would be dark soon. Kalvin would be hard to follow, even though Nessheim knew the park well. He liked to walk there, especially on the Wooded Island, a hangover from the World’s Fair of 1893. It had a restored Japanese pavilion and a rose garden that sat nestled between two adjacent lagoons. At the southern end of the island there was never anyone around, except for an old Negro man fishing for carp, who would exchange a few remarks.

  When he got up to Stony Island, he saw that Kalvin had crossed the avenue and moved north on a diagonal. He was heading for the one building that remained from the World’s Fair, the Museum of Science and Industry. It was a massive Beaux-Arts building that stretched over fifteen acres on the edge of Jackson Park, tucked between the Lake and the rest of Hyde Park. Nessheim had been there several times, and had never seen a museum like it. It had a coal mine sunk deep in its foundations, where schoolchildren and adults alike could see how the fuel was extracted. There was a vast room-sized train set, and a mechanical game of noughts and crosses that no human had ever won. On the ground floor unhatched chick eggs sat behind glass in an enormous flat cabinet filled with straw. It had glass sides and a glass top, so the chicks could be seen from all angles. Every so often you would see a shell tremble, a crack appear, then another crack, until suddenly a tiny chick struggled and flapped its way ferociously out of its albumen cover into the great world outside.

  He couldn
’t see Kalvin anywhere in the main rotunda, which was filled with children on school outings. He wondered which way to go, and finally chose the first gallery to his right. Walking in, he found a room dedicated to the history of the American Indian, with large murals tracing the different tribes and little pictorial cameos of their daily life and mores. At one end of the room loomed a large wooden model of an Apache warrior, with warpaint on both cheeks and a headdress of feathers spread out like a hand of playing cards.

  He still couldn’t see Kalvin. Nessheim moved through the throng into the next gallery, which was so dark that it took several seconds for his eyes to adjust. The room was shaped like a stretched football, oval and elongated, and from his position he could see at either end a large disc of darkened glass. Each was placed on a low platform and faced its counterpart at the other end of the room.

  Two small schoolboys stood on one of the platforms, giggling and speaking in exaggerated whispers. Next to them, waiting impatiently, was Kalvin.

  Nessheim stepped back through the entrance, taking cover behind a standing placard that said ‘The Whispering Gallery’. He watched as the boys left their place in front of the large glass disc, and Kalvin quickly stepped up. He stood there, his back to Nessheim.

  What was he doing? Nessheim moved a little closer, until the angle of view improved and he could glimpse the side of Kalvin’s chin. It was moving up and down, almost as if the scientist were chewing gum; then Nessheim realised the man was talking to himself. Why? Kalvin’s jaw stopped, then resumed moving – it was as if he were talking to himself, since there was no one within earshot.

  This went on for another minute or two, to Nessheim’s increasing bafflement. Then Kalvin seemed to be done with whatever ritual he had been absorbed by, and he stepped down from the platform, his place taken immediately by another gang of kids. Nessheim retreated again behind the placard, but Kalvin went out of the far exit, heading into the depths of the museum and its famous coal mine. Nessheim remained mystified, until he glanced at the placard shielding him and understood what had transpired. It read: