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“Clearly the desk clerk had sufficient motive,” I said. “So, this bush-league documentary guy—”
“Sapling,” said Emert.
“Sapling?”
“Bush-league’s a little harsh,” he said. “Clarkson had already done some other History Channel shows. Things about World War II aircraft carriers and fighter planes and bombers. Not bad. Some glitzy stuff for A&E, too. But as I was saying—”
“Before you were so rudely interrupted?”
“Before I was so rudely interrupted,” he echoed. “The afternoon of January tenth, he sends the fax and asks for illegal seconds on the cookies. And then nobody at the Doubletree ever sees him again.”
“They thought he’d skipped out?”
“They just thought he was weird, or reclusive. He’d said he’d be staying for several weeks. They had his credit card on file, and the DO NOT DISTURB sign was hanging on the door. They were leaving him alone.”
“January tenth,” I said. “That was right before East Tennessee turned into Antarctica, if I remember right.”
“It was,” he said. “It was also one day after Leonard Novak checked out those library books about the Venona Project.”
* * *
Emert headed to the Doubletree, to lead the search of Willard Clarkson’s room. I headed down the hill once more, to the library. I was hoping that perhaps Isabella was back by now, her father’s health improving, but the substitute at the Reference Desk dashed my hopes. She dashed my fallback hope as well: no, she didn’t have any further details about how he was doing, or where I might send a get-well card, or when Isabella might be back. I tried to mask the frustration and embarrassment I felt; I must look like either a stalker or a fool, I realized, to be pursuing a woman who didn’t consider me worth turning to in a crisis.
“I was hoping to do a bit of history research today,” I said. It wasn’t true — it was a flimsy excuse for my presence here — but she unlocked the Oak Ridge Room for me, and I found it soothing, somehow, to be there. I looked through the notebook of photos from ORNL, and saw the Graphite Reactor take shape on a hillside, against the backdrop of a wooded ridge. I saw the immense U-shaped structure of the K-25 plant, which separated a gaseous form of uranium. The K-25 plant was the last to be completed but the largest in capacity, like some lumbering uranium freight train finally gathering momentum. I saw the oval racetracks of Y-12, their D-shaped calutrons linked by thousands of tons of silver borrowed from the U.S. Treasury. And I saw Beatrice, perched on her stool, one hand forever poised on the controls, altering the trajectory of uranium atoms and human history.
Looking through a binder labeled “Life in Oak Ridge,” I saw men and women lined up for cigarettes, boys and girls decked out in Cub Scout and Brownie uniforms, football players in helmets and pads, baseball teams in caps. I saw two pretty young women — one white, one black — looking at a book together, the black woman pointing a finger at the page as the white woman read aloud. The white woman’s eyes looked glassy.
I saw musicians playing and couples dancing. And among the dancing couples, I spotted Beatrice yet again. She was a photogenic young woman; if I were a photographer in wartime Oak Ridge, I’d have taken her picture every chance I got, too. In this photo, she was dancing with a handsome, smiling young man — a man who was not Leonard Novak. I checked the date on the photo: August 1, 1945. The Trinity test had shaken New Mexico two weeks before; in five more days, the city of Hiroshima would be decimated, and in eight days Nagasaki would share its fate. And at some point in the days or weeks after the photo was taken, the smiling young man would be shot at point-blank range and buried in a shallow grave, along with hundreds of pages of typescript. Were the pages a manuscript for posterity, or secrets for the Soviets? Or were they both?
I dialed Emert’s number and the call rolled immediately to his voice mail. “I’m at the library,” I said, “and I’m looking at a picture of Beatrice dancing with Jonah Jamison on August 1, 1945.”
When I ended the call, my phone beeped to tell me I’d received a voice mail. While I’d been leaving the message for Emert, the detective had been leaving one for me. “Maybe our dead documentary guy was after a big fish after all,” his message said. “We’re in his hotel room, and he’s got a fat file of transcripts from the Venona Project.”
As soon as I hung up, my phone rang. It was Emert again, live and in person this time. “Clarkson made some interesting notes in the margins of these Venona cables,” Emert said. On July 22, 1945, someone whose code name was “Chekhov” had traveled from Oak Ridge to Hanford; the cable added that “Pavlov” had found the way to “Chekhov” and would soon submit a detailed account of the project. Clarkson had highlighted “Chekhov” and written “Novak?” in the margin. He’d also highlighted “Pavlov” and scrawled a pair of question marks.
“I think we should go see your friend Beatrice together,” he said, “and ask her some more questions about her husband and her boyfriend.”
CHAPTER 38
Beatrice studied the copy of the photograph I’d duplicated at the library. She looked from my face to Emert’s and back again.
“Jonah was a handsome man, wasn’t he? Yes,” she said, “I had an affair with him.” She turned to me. “That’s why I had to have the abortion. How could I have a baby whose father had shot himself because of me?”
The casual way she said it stunned me, but Emert just shook his head. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “Why would he shoot himself over you? Why didn’t you call the MPs when it happened? How’d you get the body way the hell out by that uranium bunker?” The man did like to fire off multiple questions.
Now it was Beatrice shaking her head. “Don’t you see, if I’d reported it, the scandal would have ruined Leonard’s career, and that would have destroyed Leonard. Leonard buried the body. To protect us both.”
I felt ten steps behind, struggling to catch up. “But Leonard was deeply conflicted about working on the atomic bomb anyhow,” I said. “It might have been a relief to be forced off the project.”
“No, you’re wrong,” she said. “Leonard’s moral pangs about the bomb were his own private pain. Public humiliation would have been intolerable to a sensitive man like Leonard.”
“So let me see if I understand this,” said Emert. “You’re saying he was too sensitive to face embarrassment, but not too sensitive to bury a body in the woods?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Leonard was used to keeping secrets, and he was used to self-recrimination. He had a streak of martyrdom in him — but he wanted to be the one to nail himself to the cross, rather than be nailed there by anyone else. There was an edge of arrogance on his finely honed sense of guilt.”
Something was nagging at me. Something written in four words on a small piece of paper. “Beatrice, did you talk to Novak after you heard from the man making the documentary about atomic secrets?” She looked startled.
“I…I don’t think so,” she said. “I really can’t remember.”
“The phone company’s computer can tell us if you two talked by telephone recently,” said Emert.
“I might have,” she said. “Wait, yes, I did. Briefly. Leonard called and asked if I had said anything to that dreadful television man about…anything. I told him no. I told him not to worry — that the man was just a TV muckraker. But Leonard was very upset. He said the man had all but accused him of giving the Russians information about the bomb during World War II.”
Emert leaned forward. “And did Leonard give the Russians information about the bomb?”
“Leonard? Heavens no,” she said. “But it wouldn’t surprise me if Jonah did. I wasn’t his only girlfriend, you know. He spent far too much money on women and whiskey. I don’t see how he could afford his vices on a corporal’s salary.”
Emert stared at her stonily. “Lady, I think you
’re lying to me. I want you to come down to the police station tomorrow afternoon and give me a statement. I’ll be asking you to take a poly-graph test, too, unless you’re afraid it will incriminate you.”
What she did next startled both Emert and me. Beatrice laughed. “Afraid? Detective, I believe every word I’ve said. Why on earth would I be afraid of a lie detector.” Suddenly her head nodded forward, then jerked upright again. “Oh my, this has all been quite exhausting,” she said. Her voice quavered a bit. “Would you gentlemen mind if an old woman goes to bed now? It sounds like I have a grueling afternoon in store for me tomorrow.”
Emert scowled, but he rose from the chair, so I stood up as well. “One o’clock,” he said. “Bring an attorney if you need one.”
“What I need is a time machine, detective,” she said, struggling to her feet and shuffling to the door with us.
CHAPTER 39
The phone rang a dozen times or more before she answered. “Hello?” She sounded old and tired. Not quavery, like last night; I was pretty sure the quaver had been for effect, to hurry Emert and me on our way. This sounded like the real deal. It was the same exhausted, defeated tone I’d heard an hour before in Eddie Garcia’s voice, when he’d told me that the national registry contained no matching bone-marrow donor, and that Carmen’s mother was coming up from Bogotá to help take care of the baby for a while.
“Beatrice, it’s Bill Brockton,” I said. “I’m sorry to call so early. I’m wondering if I could come see you this morning?”
