Troika | Page 8

hours
Hank was seated at his desk trying to catch up on his work and fight off sleep, when his secretary buzzed him.
"Director Miller is on the line, Dr. Wheatland," she said. In fifteen years as his secretary, she never called him anything but "Dr. Wheatland."
"Yes, Phil?"
Hank Wheatland sat silently listening to his boss. After several minutes he asked, "What the hell does all this have to do with us?"
"I'm not sure but there's a special NSPRG meeting tomorrow. The only point of contact seems to be one Farid Attiyeh. If he's mixed up in this thing, then we need to keep on top of it. Just in case, I want you in Philadelphia tomorrow. I have a hunch that we and Ivan may be up to our asses in alligators, and so possibly may the Israelis. Don't ask me to base my hunch on anything but gut feeling," Miller explained.
Hank patted his pockets searching for a pack of cigarettes, then remembered that he had given them up six months ago. Clearing his desk, he left his office. On the way out, he informed Regina Curtis that he had to leave for Philadelphia that evening and asked her to change his room reservations. She nodded and reached for her phone as he closed the outer office door.
Hank picked up his already packed bags, which were in his office and headed Union Station for the evening Amtrak shuttle to Philadelphia.
Philadelphia
1930 hours
In Philadelphia, he stayed at the Franklin Inn, where the rest of the Nuclear Testing Commission members were housed. For the next several days, Hank attended numerous briefing sessions at the Commission offices in Philadelphia. He also spent some time re-reading the reports and documents which had been in his non-sensitive in-basket, and ordered and read several basic texts on Atomic Physics. It would not have been appropriate for him to seem to be an absolute novice.
The sessions were long and arduous, but never boring. It was at these meetings that he learned how simple it was for materials simply to vanish. By the Commission's own figures, several kilograms were unaccounted for. The usual explanation given to the public was that there was some "attrition of matter" among various processes by which energy was distributed and decayed matter disposed of. While this satisfied the majority of Americans, scientists were less taken in and there was increased rumbling that there were real possibilities that some of the missing material might have gotten into the hands of terrorist groups at home and abroad.
These revelations left him decidedly uncomfortable. Hank felt slightly nauseated. He sat in his room in tried to imagine the extent of the horrific devestation which would result. He was not at all certain that the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the National Science Foundation had the real figures. If they did not, then the consequences were totally catastrophic.
Two days after he arrived, Mary Mallory came in from the inspection tour of the Latrobe, Pennsylvania facilities. She was more somber than she had been in California, but made no effort to tell him what was bothering her. After introducing him to the rest of the inspection party, Mary invited him to dinner at a restaurant she had frequented as a student at Swarthmore.
"C'mon," she said. "I want to prove to you that Philadelphia food is more than soft pretzels with mustard, cheese steak sandwiches and scrapple. Remember Old Original Bookbinder's? It's down near the river. The restaurant is over a hundred years old and so are most of the waiters."
"Of course, I remember it, but no graduate student could afford its prices, even then," he laughed.
She took his hand and led him down to the taxi stand. Once at Bookbinder's they ate in silence. When coffee was served, she leaned over and brushed his lips with hers. Quietly, he motioned the waiter for the check.
The night was damp and bone-chilling, but Mary wanted to walk for a while. Taking her arm, he followed her lead. After walking for several blocks, they stood in front of Independence Hall. Suddenly, she shivered.
"Take me back to the hotel, please. Then come up for a night-cap."
Without a word Hank hailed a cab and directed it to the Franklin Inn. As soon as they were underway, Mary snuggled close to him, and he took her in his arms.
Hank first met Mary decades before, at a dinner party in Manhattan, with his brother, David, and Mary's roommate, whose name he had long since forgotten,. Hank was a post-doctoral fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. His brother was a student at New York University Law School. David, the younger brother, pursued Mary almost from that day. Hank stepped aside at once. He felt that he could not compete with his sibling, even though he,