Arturo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena had been fidgeting.
Suddenly, he interjected: “At some stage the idiots must have finally realised that the ground burst tests threw countless thousands of tons of heavily contaminated sand into the lower atmosphere likely to pollute the land downwind for many tens of miles!”
The other three men looked to him.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “This is all very… disturbing,” he apologised.
This, coming from the lips of the only man in the country who might, one day, qualify as one of the globe’s leading experimental physicists and was already, one of the brilliant minds beginning to explore the implications of the theoretical constructs of the latest quantum ‘Uncertainty Theories’ merging from British, German and French universities, was even more chilling than the stark descriptions in Rodrigo’s survey report.
Tellingly, anywhere else in the Catholic Americas, and assuredly in Cuba, Hispaniola or Santo Domingo, the Head of the University of Cuernavaca’s relatively new, still embryo Department of Nuclear Physics would have been arrested, imprisoned and almost certainly tortured by the Inquisition until he recanted his heretical notions. In México, while the more evangelistic and traditional adherents of the teachings of the Mother Church still frowned upon the black magic involved in the unravelling of the building blocks of God’s Divine Creation, nobody seriously demanded to have theoretical physicists burned at the stake.
Well, not for the last twenty years or so, leastways.
“My provisional analyses of a representative samples of the soil, rock and sand-fused-glass sent to my laboratory by Don Rodrigo is,” the physicist went on urgently, his brow deeply furrowed, “still very provisional, I must emphasise, very rushed work, most unsatisfactory… However, the initial results are most troubling…”
Chapter 24
Thursday 4th May
Royal Naval Air Station, Virginia Beach, New England
The call had come through to Albert Stanton’s Manhattan flat at a little after two o’clock that morning. As it happened, had the telephone not rung, very nearly off the hook, at a moment when he and Maud Daventry-Jones were in between coupling – in itself a very rare thing in recent days – the call would have gone unanswered.
He had listened, sweaty and breathless with Maud’s fingers tracing tingling lines across his back and walked tantalisingly down towards his groin as he propped himself on an elbow in the darkness, at first not really appreciating what was going on.
‘Abe’s alive?’ He muttered and then was suddenly awakened by a surge of undiluted, briefly intoxicating relief. ‘And…’
He had got up to speed after that, albeit a little distracted by his partner’s toying with his now again enthusiastically tumescent member.
‘That’s a tight timescale?’ He had queried when informed that Surgeon Lieutenant Lincoln and his fellow flier, Sub-Lieutenant Ted Forest would be landing back in Norfolk that afternoon.
‘Just get down to the Imperial Airways pier at Brooklyn by four o’clock and we’ll fly you straight down to Virginia…’
‘Okay… Okay… Look, I’ll be bringing a colleague.’
‘That’s fine. Just be there by four!’
He had collapsed onto his back, and started chuckling.
‘Abe and his friend, Ted Forest are alive. There’s going to be a big welcoming home ceremony. It sounds like the Navy is making a real party of it.’
Maud had swum on top of him, straddling his ever-hardening erection before gently raising herself to peer at him in the gloom, supported by her forearms resting on his chest. The press of her upon him, the sensation of her flesh touching his at every possible point was… sublime. His hands began to roam over her hips and buttocks., easing her down onto him.
He slid deep inside her in a moment.
‘Come with me to Norfolk,’ he had decided.
Maud had moaned dreamily; which he took for an affirmative.
They had made love again and consequently, very nearly missed the chartered Imperial Airways seaplane, the Centaur II, which had been about to cast off when they ran down the pier.
The boarding officer had raised an eyebrow when Albert introduced his fiancée as ‘my assistant’ but fortunately, Albert Stanton was such a well-known face in New York, not to mention much of New England that he and Maud were swiftly waved aboard without the normal document or accreditation checks, to join the unlikely crowd of dignitaries, journalists and ‘snappers’.
Seats had been reserved for the couple near the back of the passenger cabin.
Maud was hugely impressed by the way her lover seemed to know everybody, and they him; and soon, she realised, they would recognise her also. After her campaigning with Leonora last year she had happily backed out of the limelight; it was one thing to be photographed in handcuffs, or covered in the paint or dye one had tried to throw at a policeman or a member of the judiciary, another entirely to be recognised everywhere one went thereafter. Although, that said, she had no problem at all being photographed on Mister Albert Stanton’s arm!
Maud had clung to Albert’s hand all the way down to Norfolk, a flight of a little over two hours, touching down in Hampton Roads as dawn was breaking on a clear late spring morning. She had gazed in fascination at the great grey warships which seemed to fill the anchorage as the big seaplane’s course prescribed long, sweeping turns before with a final roar, swinging into the sheltered waters of Willoughby Bay.
Breakfast had been laid on for the ‘visitors’ flying in from all quarters in one of the hangars at the Royal Naval Air Station at Virginia Beach, about half-an-hour’s drive on Navy buses from the landing stage.
Maud felt like she was a girl again, sitting in the back of her parents’ car setting off on a summer holiday, or for a spring or autumn weekend in the country. Granted, today she was not bickering with her brother or pestering her poor mother and father for ice cream or chocolates. Today, she was far too preoccupied with the last few days… making up for lost time with her very own hero!
And, my oh my, how they had made up for that lost time!
Several times every night and at least once every daytime, too.
Maud had decided that she was going to be very happily married to Mister Albert Stanton!
The Royal Navy had thought of practically everything; apart, that was, for washrooms for the relatively small female contingent in the welcoming party. If ever a woman needed to be reminded that it was a man’s world; the provision of ‘public bathroom facilities’ for the female half of the population, always confirmed it. Nevertheless, she had quiescently queued with the others, sanguine for once because nothing was going to rain on her parade.
The day Albert had got back to Long Island they had headed straight for her plush West Side Apartment and fallen, literally, straight into bed. The next few days she had visited his flat, a much better potential love nest, collected some ‘things’ from her place and pretty much, moved in with her beau and quickly, lost track of time. Albert was already working on a book about his adventures in Spain, and being keenly courted by likely publishers.
Coincidentally, he had only spoken to Kate Lincoln yesterday. Maud had listened from the bedroom, realised that her husband-to-be was conversing not with a woman in the news, or a ‘contact’ but with a friend who had, incongruously, possibly been as worried as she had been when he was reported lost in Spain. Albert had proudly told Kate that he and Maud were to be married ‘as soon as possible.’