Hazard

by Gerald A. Browne

  Hazard squatted. He noticed the beach needed raking and thought he’d rather do that than anything else. “What if we hadn’t showed up today?”

  “Never occurred to me.”

  “Would you have been officially pissed?”

  “More like personally disappointed,” Kersh said, looking away to the rocky shore line so Hazard couldn’t read his eyes. “By the way,” Kersh told him, “your violence report came in the other day.”

  “How’d I do?”

  “You must have enjoyed it this time.”

  “I hated it.”

  “Maybe that’s why you did so well.”

  “I won’t have to go again, will I?”

  “Not for another six months.”

  Kersh extended his mug of coffee. Hazard was about to reach for it when Keven came out.

  She had on one of Hazard’s shirts and was carrying two steaming cups. “For openers,” she said brightly, handing a cup down to Hazard. It was rose hips tea. She sat beside Kersh, gave him a cheek kiss and glanced disapprovingly at his mug of coffee. “That stuff slows down the sex drive.”

  “Last time you said it was bad for the stomach,” Kersh said.

  She shrugged. “One thing bothers another.”

  Kersh ceremoniously poured out what coffee remained in his mug, as though it were poison.

  Hazard turned away and did the same with his cup of rose hips tea. Got away with it, he thought.

  But not really. Keven merely chose not to say anything about it. This time. She told Kersh, “I suppose you’ve heard I was robbed.”

  “I had your things moved up to the main house,” said Kersh.

  That set her back. “You didn’t.”

  “Had to.”

  “Why?”

  “A matter of morals.”

  Hazard heard Keven’s teeth on the rim of her cup. She seemed irritated enough to take a bite.

  Kersh was amused by her reaction. He let her fume awhile longer before explaining that the move was only temporary, to accommodate the two official visitors from Washington, who would be around that day inspecting.

  Keven almost concealed her relief.

  “They’d never accept love as an explanation for such behavior,” said Kersh.

  Keven jumped on the word. “Love?”

  “Is that such an overstatement?”

  “Over,” said Keven.

  “Way over,” Hazard put in.

  Kersh didn’t believe it. At every opportunity over the past six months he’d been obliquely promoting love between them, hoping they’d oblige by falling hard and deep. His motive was partly scientific. It would help substantiate a theory related to his current project. “Anyway,” he told Keven, “I’ll have your things brought back down as soon as our visitors leave.”

  “No hurry,” said Keven, blasé about it now.

  “All right,” said Kersh, “maybe in a day or two.”

  “By bedtime tonight,” she said quickly.

  At noon Hazard and Keven went up to the main house. Parked in the front drive was a new Chrysler with a federal eagle emblem bolted to its rear bumper. Hazard thought he should get such an emblem to beat the parking tickets. Merely out of curiosity he glanced into the car. There was a half roll of Certs breath mints on the front seat and two Schlitz empties on the floor.

  Keven had gone ahead into the house. Hazard caught up to her in the foyer, a large oval-shaped area with a brown-and-white marble floor and extensive boiserie on the walls and doors. The foyer was unfurnished except for a gray metal office desk, an incongruity that stood as an example of how the once elegant residence had given way to prosaic use. The place reminded Hazard of those British war movies in which an imposing estate was taken over to serve as division headquarters, but not once during the past two years had Hazard ever seen anyone actually seated behind that reception desk. He suspected it was there merely for show. A strategically placed desk, even an empty one, might be reassuring to the sort of people who worked for the government, thought Hazard.

  Such as the two men who now were following Kersh down the wide stairs.

  Introductions and handshakes.

  Mr. Richland and Mr. Whitley.

  Hazard sensed their disapproval of his hair and casual clothes. Smile, he told himself, be good for Kersh’s sake.

  Richland was a district director for the agency. A top man who reported to higher-ups. Whitley was a Southerner who’d been rewarded his spoils in the form of a prominent spot on a federal-appropriations committee.

  Hazard could see right off that both men were drinkers. Their complexions were the giveaway, especially the backs of their necks—blotchy red, as though the capillaries had exploded under alcoholic pressure. And the nearly ocher cast of their eyes was the sum of too many straight bourbons. They’d tied one on the night before, thought Hazard. Evidence was the morning beers to get them going and the breath mints to cover up.

  Kersh had just given them a tour of the place and was glad they’d hurried through it. Neither Richland nor Whitley was really interested and, realizing that, Kersh hadn’t bothered to explain the purpose of most of what he’d shown them. The special computer system, for example, located in a sealed subterranean area. It deserved more than indifferent glances and nods from Richland and Whitley. These computers were an accomplishment in electronic architecture, had actually been designed by other computers. Though extremely compact, they were insatiable. Their microprogramming allowed simultaneous feeding of unrelated information and rapid digestion to a simple, single response. This computer setup was not only analogous to a brain but to an entire nervous system. It had taken some of the best computer specialists several months to adapt it to the complex requirements of Kersh’s research.

  Impressive also was the experimental equipment Kersh had assembled for photography in a high-frequency field. The field was formed by two vertical, facing copper plates seven feet square. The plates were placed six feet apart, precisely parallel, and their rear edges were connected by an electrical Tesla coil. Initially Kersh’s high-frequency-field experiments had been limited to still photographs, using a positive-type sheet film with a unique emulsion. However, not satisfied with mere stills, Kersh had successfully incorporated a means of electronically recording movement in the field. It fed into the computer system and back to various monitors. It was not an insignificant breakthrough.

  In another laboratory area was the equipment used for X-ray crystallography, the photographing of defraction patterns on the micromolecular level. It was an XR–7 Polaroid system more advanced and less complicated than similar equipment used by Maurice Wilkens at Kings College, London, in his work that helped Crick and Watson come up with the double helix answer for DNA and RNA.

  On seeing the XR–7 Whitley asked, “What’s this contraption?” and walked on before Kersh could answer.

  Kersh was actually grateful for their indifference. Interest, he realized, might lead to involvement and involvement would undoubtedly bring some degree of interference. Kersh didn’t want that. Besides, having to patronize those who control the purse strings was something Kersh had learned early in his career when he’d applied to a private foundation for his first research grant. The fact that big money held such a vital rein on science rubbed Kersh the wrong way, but by now he was pretty much resigned to it.

  He led Richland and Whitley into his office. Hazard and Keven followed along.

  In former times it had served as a formal reception room. Now it resembled a badly managed bookstore. Every inch of wall was shelved and that still didn’t provide enough space to hold all Kersh’s books. Heavy technical volumes were everywhere, many just stacked in the middle of the room, creating something of a maze.

  Lunch was laid out on a low glass table. Sliced chicken sandwiches and coffee prepared by Kersh’s young wife, Julie, who was seven months pregnant. When Kersh introduced her, Hazard detected a trace of smirk behind Richland’s and Whitley’s politeness.

  Julie was a pr
etty, serious girl. Only three years before she’d been active in protest marches and Central Park demonstration. Then she’d found Kersh. She loved him devotedly, the way an honest searcher loves a discovery. In her present condition, a product of that love, she transmitted the serene confidence of a woman being fulfilled. Julie sat with them at the table only long enough to be courteous. Then she invented an excuse to leave, kissing Kersh a good-bye on his mouth.

  By then Richland and Whitley were on their second sandwiches.

  “Julie baked that bread,” Kersh told them proudly.

  “Delicious,” Whitley said with his mouth full.

  “Is there anything else I can get you?” Kersh asked.

  Richland and Whitley exchanged uncertain glances before saying no.

  Kersh got a fifth of Old Granddad from his desk drawer. He put it on the table along with some white styrofoam disposable cups. “I’ll get some ice,” he offered.

  “Not for me,” Whitley said. He uncorked the bottle with one hand and poured half a cup. Equivalent to a double.

  “This’ll do fine,” Richland said, helping himself.

  Keven cringed as she watched the two men toss down the bourbon. Then, because she didn’t particularly like them, she decided they deserved the toxic consequences.

  “What are those supposed to be?” Richland asked, pointing at two photo enlargements that were scotchtaped to the edge of a shelf above Kersh’s desk. They were contrasting prints, nearly all black, except for an uneven luminescent outline around an indistinguishable shape, like a negative reproduction of greatly magnified skin and hairs backlighted and slightly out of focus.

  Keven told him, “The one on the left is my big toe. The other is the tip of my nose.” Then, working her eyelashes some, she added, “I think.”

  A grunt from Whitley.

  Kersh smiled. He decided not to explain that the two enlargements were high-frequency-field photographs and that the one on the right was not Keven’s nose but rather the tip of one of her breasts. Instead, Kersh started explaining the exercise that was planned for that afternoon.

  Richland got up to use the phone.

  Whitley obviously wasn’t listening. He took a yellow legal pad from his briefcase and used a ballpoint to make some notations. He interrupted Kersh. “How many have you got on staff?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Permanent?”

  “Two part time.”

  Whitley lifted the top sheet of the pad, evidently referring to something he’d written on the second sheet. “Going over your expenditures,” he said, sounding like a prosecutor, “I noticed a couple of items that seem out of line. One in particular is a trip to California last February. Somebody stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel for three days and really lived it up.”

  “That was a long-distance exercise,” Kersh said.

  “I’m expected to accept all this as a valid expense?”

  “Yes.”

  “Over a hundred fifty dollars for room service in one day?”

  Keven condemned Hazard with a look. They were his expenses. At Kersh’s request he’d made that trip alone, but evidently, thought Keven, he’d enjoyed some expensive company. “Seems rather extravagant to me,” she said.

  Hazard knew what she was thinking. He was tempted to come right out with the truth, tell them he’d hosted a crap game in his hotel room that day. Considering the number of Polo Lounge types that had been in and out of the game all day long, that room-service tab was low. To hell with it. He turned to Richland, who was still on the phone and having some trouble with whomever was on the other end. Hazard could hear only bits of Richland’s covered conversation, but he gathered he was talking to a woman, trying to arrange something for that night. “I realize your time is worth money,” was one bit Hazard overheard. With no sympathy, Hazard thought that would be the best Richland and Whitley could do—a couple of hurry-up hookers.

  Meanwhile, Whitley was still proving he had a mean eye for unnecessary or excessive spending. Now he was suggesting that Kersh cut back some on all operations’ costs. Kersh didn’t give in on that, and Hazard noticed Whitley didn’t press the point, just poured himself another double bourbon and folded.

  As soon as Richland was off the phone, Hazard took it over. First he dialed Carl’s number direct and got a busy signal. At least Carl was home. He dialed another number. After the third ring he heard it pick up. As usual the person on the other end said nothing. Hazard said his code letters. T–R–A–K, which alphabetically corresponded with the last four digits of his own New York number reversed. Deliberately loud enough to be heard by Richland and Whitley, he asked what the line was on the Mets that night at Shea. He listened and then said, “I’ll take the Mets for a nickel.” Betting five hundred, despite his better judgment that Gibson of the Cardinals would have the underdog Met batters striking, grounding, and popping out all night.

  After that he gave Carl’s number another try. Still busy.

  For the exercise it was decided that Richland would stay at the installation with Keven and Kersh. Whitley would go along with Hazard and Kersh’s first assistant, a young Ph.D. named Lowery. Lowery’s primary responsibility would be to see that certain controls were maintained. Also he would keep an exact chronological record of each image that was chosen. For this purpose he had an oversized clipboard holding a pad of special, printed forms. Attached to the upper part of the clipboard was a special, very accurate watch with a green signal light set in the center of its face. Lowery also would be in charge of the images, which were in a metal box. About a thousand of them.

  Hazard, Whitley, and Lowery went out and down the slope to the private landing and a twenty-meter power ketch that Kersh had hired for the day. The owner and his son had sailed the boat over from Westport.

  The three men went aboard, the mooring lines were unhitched, and immediately the idling gurgle of the ketch’s engine changed to a louder boil, getting under way.

  They headed straight out. It was a bright, nearly cloudless day. The wind was cool, but Hazard took off his sweater anyway to get the sun. For some protection he sat on the deck leeward of the rear cabin house.

  Hazard looked forward and noticed how out of place Whitley seemed there in his suit and tie, having trouble keeping his balance against the ship’s pitches and rolls. He watched Whitley take out a cigar and try to light it in the wind. Whitley didn’t give up, used almost a whole book of matches, and must have inhaled plenty of sulphur before he finally got the cigar going. He puffed hard and some of the tobacco’s aroma was carried backed to Hazard. Hazard wasn’t a cigar smoker but he knew an authentic Havana when he smelled one. Probably gets them via Canada, Hazard thought, suspecting that Whitley’s political hypocrisy wasn’t limited to such minor transgressions.

  At the installation, Keven was being made ready. She was seated in a contour chair in the center of a windowless room. The walls she faced, those on both sides and the ceiling, were blank and black, not painted but covered entirely with a felt fabric so that the black was softer and unmarred. Behind her was a partition of special, dark glass, something like a two-way mirror with reflection. It allowed unobtrusive observation from the adjoining laboratory area.

  Keven knew what to expect, having been through these procedures numerous times before, but it usually took her a while to get used to the room. The feeling of being enclosed alone caused an uneasiness that she called “the clausties.” She usually got over that soon enough, but then there were all the wires and terminals. Kersh had explained the purpose of each and reassured her that there was no danger. Still, she couldn’t help but feel edgy about them. Also, the possibility that she might not do well, might fail completely and disappoint Kersh and everyone was another source of her apprehension.

  It was expected that everything would come to her and, through her, be fed into the computers just below. The computers would record, process, and relay immediately whatever came to the monitors in the laboratory.

  In Keven’
s opinion it was awfully complicated. With the confidence she’d acquired over the past six months, she was sure she could do just as well without being all wired and connected up like some living instrument. She told Kersh that and he agreed with her. But, he explained, personal experience, no matter how valid it might be, was not scientifically acceptable. That was especially true, he said, in researching this subject, which was already handicapped by countless personal experiences over hundreds of years.

  Thirty-six electrodes were attached to Keven’s scalp.

  Kersh placed them himself and was very exact about it.

  In several ways the procedures differed from the usual electroencephalograph. Interpreting the results of a regular EEG always required guesswork because of the electrical activity between various areas of the brain. It was like trying to analyze the recording of a thousand-piece symphony orchestra, hoping to isolate a single instrument from the whole. For this very reason, neuroscientists had eagerly taken any opportunity to implant terminals deep within the brain itself.

  However, the electrodes being used by Kersh overcame the old EEG problem without having to resort to delicate surgery. They probed the brain with the same precision as implanted terminals but did so electronically. Each electrode was preset to record at a certain fixed depth. Those voltages, for example, that originated in the occipital lobe would be recorded independently from those that came from the adjacent cerebellum. The electrodes were color-keyed and numbered according to where they would be positioned on the scalp. Also, the electrodes themselves were much more efficient than those usually used. They were made up of an alloy of platinum and element 44, ruthenium, a very scarce and extremely hard metal more sensitive to electricity than any other known substance. Capable of picking up charges well beyond fifty millionths of a volt, the average potential of the human brain, which is actually much less than the electrostatic charges that occur when a person combs his hair.

  Methodically, precise to the centimeter, Kersh applied the tiny, silvery-white discs to Keven’s head. The contact surface of each electrode held three points that penetrated the skin. However, they were so sharp and fine that Keven hardly felt them go in. Anyway, she was brave about it, said it didn’t hurt nearly as much as the pain she inflicted on herself whenever she plucked her eyebrows.