Treason in the Secret City
Page 17
THIRTY-THREE
My departure from Bedford before dawn the next morning was more emotional than I had anticipated. Not only did my aunt surprise me with the tears pooling in her eyes, but little Ernie insisted on coming with us to the train station where he broke down and sobbed. I promised to visit as soon as I could but he was inconsolable. It was odd considering that we’d been so disconnected for so long but I guess I was all he had left.
My internal tension wound tighter with every click of the track. I was anxious to arrive and dreading my destination at the same time. At every stop on the journey I studied each platform on the hunt for anyone who might be coming to take me away. I kept telling myself that I was over-reacting but I could not relax. When we finally chugged into Knoxville that evening, I was numb, exhausted and ready to accept any ending to the tense day.
Seeing Teddy and Joe both standing outside of the train station was a deep, emotional release that caused tears to dampen my cheeks. I brushed them away and waved like an excited child until they spotted me in the compartment window. When I came down the steps to the platform, two pairs of hands reached for my suitcase – I didn’t notice who won the battle. Regardless, it was sitting on the platform as if abandoned as we chattered and embraced one another in relief.
They wouldn’t let me drop them off at the dorm but insisted on accompanying me back to my house. Once there, they searched in every closet and cupboard and under the two twin beds. Before they left, Teddy and I made plans to visit Crenshaw before going to work in the morning. Joe made me promise to jamb a wooden chair under the doorknob before he left. I laughed at him but when I was all alone, fear tickled the back of my throat. I didn’t hesitate to implement his primitive security suggestion and hoped it was as laughable as I initially thought.
I walked out of my flattop before sunrise Saturday morning and found both Teddy and Joe waiting on the boardwalk in front of my house. I smiled at both of them. ‘Good morning, Teddy. Joe, I don’t think you want to expose your identity to Crenshaw unless you have no other recourse.’
‘I thought I’d make the offer,’ he said. ‘If you think it’s unwise, I’ll just go most of the way with you and stand by to make sure you get out of his place without an armed escort.’
‘Good thinking. But keep hidden. If we come out unfettered, we could use your help to get the rest of the group together. If not, you can raise the alarm about us, too.’
We talked for part of the way about our frustration with the investigation and then switched over to news from the European front. It still sounded very positive but we all three knew that the government had a tendency to share only the good news and keep the setbacks to themselves for as long as they possibly could. Joe stopped a block away at a treed lot and Teddy and I approached Crenshaw’s house and knocked on the front door.
Crenshaw answered and gave us a sour look. ‘What now?’
‘Another chemist in the Y-12 laboratories is missing. He never returned to his dorm room last night,’ I said.
‘Did you find his body?’ Crenshaw sneered.
‘No, sir. We are just concerned. After what happened to Marvin …’
‘We understand now why your little scientist friend died,’ Crenshaw said. ‘At least we know it was one of two reasons. Either he was involved in a spy ring and that got him killed or he decided to turn in his treasonous cousin and he was murdered for that reason. Are you two involved in this? Were you complicit in harboring a spy? Is Gregg Abbott one of your secret little group?’
‘Marvin was not a spy,’ Teddy said. ‘He was a hard worker and doing everything he could to contribute to winning this war. The man is dead. How dare you disparage him when he can’t be here to defend himself?’
I worried Teddy’s response was a bit too forceful, that his defensive reaction just might get us taken away, too. I jumped in trying to soft-pedal the message. ‘Sir, I think it is unlikely that Marvin is a spy. He was very lacking in self-confidence, he’s always been very reluctant to confront anyone, and he agonized over doing the right thing at all times.’
‘So, tell me, Miss Clark,’ Crenshaw said, ‘how do you know that those aren’t the ideal characteristics of a spy? I suppose next you’ll tell me that Frannie Snowden is an unimpeachable patriot, too.’
To buy a little time to think, I said the only thing that came to mind, ‘Who?’
‘You’re telling me you don’t know and never heard of Frannie Snowden, Marvin’s cousin?’
‘Oh, that Frannie,’ I said. ‘Yes, Marvin spoke of her but I don’t remember him mentioning her surname.’
‘And just what did he say about her?’
‘It wasn’t very flattering, sir. He said she was rather simple. Naïve and gullible.’
‘Like a persuasive person could readily convince her of the rightness of providing information to the enemy?’
Oh, dear. ‘No, sir, I didn’t say that at all.’
Crenshaw’s ice-cold blue eyes seemed to pierce the skin of my face with a sharp, unrelenting stare. He kept his eyes on me even as he directed his comments to both of us. ‘My advice to you, Miss Clark and Mr Mullins, that you steer clear of any involvement in the disappearance of Mr Abbott. I can assure you that he is very much alive. Put him out of your mind or pay the price. You are this close,’ he said holding his thumb and forefinger a quarter-inch apart, ‘to being charged as an accessory or with involvement in a treasonous conspiracy. Now leave my home before I change my mind and have you both arrested.’
Part of me wanted to yell at him and tell him how wrong he was. Teddy obviously sensed my escalating anger and placed a calming hand on my forearm. ‘Libby, we really need to get to work. We’re going to be late if we don’t leave now.’
I accepted the wisdom of Teddy’s unspoken words, spun around and left the residence without another word. I had to survive this encounter to fight another day. Now the stakes were higher, it wasn’t just Frannie in the crosshairs; Gregg’s life was on the line, too.
In Y-12 that day, Teddy and I contacted as many members of the group as we could locate to arrange a meeting that night at eight about Gregg and Frannie’s arrests. I blamed travel fatigue and left work at six to try to find Jessie before it was time to go to Joe’s.
I drove to the dorms to plead with Jessie to help me with Mabel. As I entered the lobby, I caught Jessie on her way out. ‘Can I walk with you wherever you’re going?’ I asked.
‘I was going out to find you,’ Jessie said. ‘Now you’re here, come on up to my room.’
‘I really wanted to speak to you in private.’
Jessie laughed. ‘The floor is not wild like it was the other night. And my roommate is out with some fella. Nobody will bother us. If they do, I’ll shoo ’em away.’
‘I wanted to ask you to go to dinner with me at Mabel’s place Sunday night.’
‘Mama would tan my hide, Libby. You know she would.’
‘You know how important this is.’ I updated her on Gregg and Frannie’s arrest to explain the current urgency.
Jessie sighed. ‘Okay, I will go with you to dinner at Mabel’s – just don’t you dare tell Mama.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it. Just follow my lead on turning the conversation in the right direction. I know you don’t want to believe Mabel is capable of helping a spy and if you’re right, maybe she’ll tell us something that will clear her of any complicity.’
Before I left her room, I answered all her questions about her mama and family, the local gossip back home and the new status of Ernie in her home. She was hoping for good news about my mother but there I had to disappoint her.
When it seemed all had arrived at Joe’s, grabbed a seat and satiated their thirst, I said, ‘In the absence of Gregg, I’ll call the meeting to order. Before I begin with my report, I’d like to know what you think of the document Jessie swiped from Hansrote.’
Joe said, ‘I think we all agree that it is a schematic for a portion of a gaseous diffusion set-up.’
‘The fact that you’re not going alone makes all of us feel a lot better, Libby,’ Dennis said. ‘But how are you going to find out anything with her along?’
‘I sketched out the bare bones to her because I needed her cooperation.’
‘You what?’ Tom said. ‘You should have talked to us about that first.’
‘There wasn’t time. I had to play it by ear. Just like Gregg and I gave Joe the go-ahead to be a bit more forthcoming with his sister. Sometimes action is required without prior consensus.’
‘I don’t like it,’ Tom said.
It struck me at that moment that Gary was not serving as Tom’s yes-man tonight. In fact, he wasn’t even there. ‘Where’s Gary?’ I asked.
Tom shrugged.
‘I talked to him myself,’ Joe said. ‘He told me he’d be here.’
I sat there wondering if Gary’s absence had anything to do with Gregg and Frannie’s arrest. It was such an awful accusation to make against one of our own that I couldn’t bear to voice it. An unsettling silence had spread through the room.
Tom broke the barrier. ‘It can’t be.’
‘So I guess everyone is thinking what I’m thinking,’ Dennis interjected.
‘Please tell me it’s not true,’ I added.
Rudy looked around the table with a furrowed brow. ‘What are you talking about? Let me in on it, please.’
‘I’m not sure I can speak for everyone else here, Rudy,’ Dennis said. ‘But I’ll stick my nose out and tell you what I’m thinking. I’m wondering if Gary’s not here because he squealed about Frannie’s hiding place.’
‘Gary’s never had an independent thought in his life,’ Tom said. ‘He follows my lead on everything. He even wants my opinion before he asks a girl out to the movies.’
‘Maybe he’s rebelling, Tom,’ I said. ‘Maybe he finally got tired of being controlled by you and this is his way of lashing out.’
‘Please!’ Tom said. ‘He’s not a girl. He doesn’t have little emotional snits at some perceived slight.’
‘Really, Tom? Why don’t you share a bit more from your vast store of wisdom about women and their motivations?’
‘Oh, jeepers. There you go again. Making a big deal out of nothing. See I told you – you females are all alike.’
Teddy shot to his feet. ‘You want to settle this outside, Tom.’
Long and lanky Dennis slowly rose from his chair. He was taller than any of the others and knew how to use his deep voice to the most intimidating effect when the situation required it. ‘Let’s all just take it down a peg. We don’t need to be scrapping among ourselves. We’ve got enough problems. Do I need to remind you that we have one member dead, one member arrested and a damsel in distress whom, thus far, we have failed to rescue? On top of all that, the two of us who are known to Crenshaw have been threatened and one more of our number is AWOL under suspicious circumstances. Tom, I see you getting ready to object but you really can’t deny the suspicious nature of his absence – could be harmless, but right now, we don’t know.’
‘Okay, okay,’ Tom said. ‘When I leave here, I’ll find him. No matter how long it takes, I will find him. And if he doesn’t have an acceptable answer, I’ll punch the taste right out of his mouth.’
‘Just don’t jump to premature conclusions,’ I urged him.
‘Don’t worry, Libby. I know him well. If he’s the rat, I’ll know by his reaction. There won’t be any doubt about it.’
I certainly didn’t want to condone any act of violence – there was enough of that going on overseas – but still I couldn’t bring myself to criticize Tom for his justifiable anger that one of our group may have betrayed us all.
THIRTY-FOUR
Sunday, my supposed day of rest, should have been a day to lay in bed and stare at the ceiling for a while. After getting up to start the coffee brewing, I usually jumped back under the covers and played with G.G. until he remembered it was breakfast time and demanded I fill his bowl. Not today.
I had barely turned the burner on before a never-ending stream of men started flowing through my front door. Tom was the first to arrive.
‘I looked everywhere I could think of last night and couldn’t find him anywhere. This morning, I went by his room. Stanley said that his roommate left for Joe’s Saturday evening and he hadn’t seen him since then.’
As Tom left, he passed Teddy and Joe coming up the steps to my flattop. The two of them told me that they retraced the path Gary most likely would have followed from the dorm to Joe’s and found no sign of him anywhere even though they’d looked into every nook and cranny they could find.
Dennis was the next to knock on the door. ‘I got a little lucky in the cafeteria,’ he said.
‘You found Gary?’ I asked.
‘No, not a lot lucky, just a little. I found a group of Calutron girls who knew him and we talked. One of them told me that she’d seen Gary the night before, heading in the direction of Joe’s. They chatted for a few minutes but she hasn’t seen or heard from him since. But surprisingly, I walked out of there with a date for the movies Wednesday night.’
‘You all are so outnumbered by women in this place, how could that possibly be a surprise?’
‘Because of the girl. This is not another Calutron girl with a chopped-off bob, this is a real woman with long, long, beautiful hair. She works in the administration building so she doesn’t have to worry about hair pins being pulled out of her head by magnets. You don’t find heads of hair like that around here very often.’
‘I’m so happy for you, Dennis,’ I said trying to keep the sarcasm out of my tone of voice. ‘Where are you going now?’
‘Gary’s got a buddy in the army here. I’ll go talk to him.’
Another rap on the door sent Dennis on his way as Rudy walked inside. ‘I’ve been standing outside the Chapel on the Hill for a few hours watching people come and go as services cycled through the denominations at the sanctuary but never saw Gary at any of them so far. The Episcopal service is underway now. I’ll go back up there and keep watching.’
After a short pause in the traffic, Tom returned to my place. ‘I walked through every public room in the dormitory building and then I walked all of the halls. Anytime I saw any residents up and about, I asked them if they’d seen Gary. No one I talked to has seen him after he left for Joe’s last night. Has anyone been to the hospital or to the police asking about him?’
‘Not to my knowledge, Tom. I think the hospital is an excellent idea but the police? I’m not so sure if we want to get them involved yet.’
‘You’re probably right. I’ll go see if he’s sick or injured at the hospital. We can save the police as a last resort.’
I watched Tom bounce down the steps to the boardwalk, hoping he would find Gary totally incapacitated for medical reasons. I really didn’t want something to be seriously wrong with Gary but it was preferable to other possibilities – either that he was picked up by the men who got Frannie and Gregg or that he had committed an infraction against our increasingly paranoid little band of Walking Molecules.
I ate a peaceful lunch amazed that I hadn’t been interrupted with my mouth full. I cleaned up the kitchen but before I could sit back down, the influx began anew. Every one of them arrived separately or in groups of two within the space of ten minutes. Before I knew it multiple conversations were in full swing and I could barely hear myself think.
When the uproar settled down we came to a general consensus that I needed to talk to Crenshaw about yet another missing scientist. All agreed, though, that I should
put off going to see him until I’d had dinner at Mabel’s. It was possible that I could get information there to help prove our suspicions of Hansrote and I should not risk being detained by Crenshaw until I did that. Teddy, Joe and I planned another early-morning rendezvous.
I shooed them all out, got changed and at five that evening picked up Jessie for the ride into Knoxville. Before we went into Mabel’s apartment, I reminded her to try not to sound judgmental or act shocked at anything Mabel did or said.
‘Oh, Libby, I might be an old-fashioned country girl but I did get that lesson on flies, honey and vinegar.’
I could only hope that would be enough to do the trick. I felt the rising tide of desperation, worried that every minute in Crenshaw’s hands the situation for Gregg and Frannie grew direr. At the same time, I was anxious about that situation back home. I needed to find the time to call Aunt Dorothy.
When Jessie and I arrived at Mabel’s, our hostess could not have been more gracious. She was clearly excited about seeing me again but her reaction to Jessie’s presence at her apartment was more exuberant than I had anticipated. Fresh flowers adorned the dining table which was set with fine china, heavy silverware and crystal goblets. The meal was fit for a queen. The main course was a standing rib roast – I hadn’t seen one of those since before the war – served with asparagus, mashed potatoes and a smooth, rich brown gravy. ‘I had no idea you were such a good cook,’ Jessie said as the three of us cleared the table.
‘A lot of a girl’s talents go to waste on the reservation,’ Mabel said. ‘How is anyone supposed to land a husband without being able to prepare a good home-cooked meal?’
‘Is that what you want, Mabel?’ I asked.
‘Doesn’t everyone?’
‘How does Dr Hansrote figure into that equation?’ I pressed.
‘He said, he’s leaving his wife,’ Mabel replied. ‘But when he added it might not be until after the war, I reminded him that after the war, there would be a lot of eligible young men around and I might be pickier then than I am now. That’s when he promised me that it would be soon.’