Revelation

Around ten o'clock a big car, all whitewall tyres and tail fins and with an out-of-town number, gurgled slowly past Lev's house. Two men inside, clearly unfamiliar with the area, were scanning the street. A couple of minutes later the car returned, turned into Lev's driveway, and disgorged the two. One had short, neat hair and was incongruously dressed in a dark suit and tie. The other could hardly have been a greater contrast: he was unkempt and casually dressed, with a creased open-necked shirt and a jacket draped over his arm.

'Doctor Petrosian?'

'You look like FBI,' Petrosian said.

'Lieutenant Mercier, sir, Army Intelligence.' A badge was briefly flashed in the half-dark. 'And this is Mister Smith. Can we talk?'

'Sure.'

In the living room, hospitality was politely declined. The three men sat round a small circular table. The longhaired Mister Smith gave Petrosian a calculated smile. His affiliation, Lev noticed, was going unannounced.

Petrosian tried a shot in the dark. 'You look like an academic,' he said to Smith.

Smith kept smiling.

Petrosian finished his beer and leaned back, puzzled. 'Okay, I give up. Who are you?'

The army man said, 'This meeting is not taking place. We're not here.'

'Okay,' Petrosian said cautiously.

'And nothing said here is to be repeated outside this room.'

'There's a problem with that. I'm a card-carrying communist. Anything you say to me goes straight to Moscow.'

Mercier looked as if he was taking the comment seriously. 'We know all about the College enquiry, and we know exactly what was said at it today.'

Petrosian shook his head, mystified. 'I'll be out of work and on a blacklist within a week. What could the army possibly want with me?'

Mercier said, 'The army wouldn't touch you with a barge pole.'

'So why are you here?' Petrosian asked, baffled.

The army man reached down for his briefcase and pulled out an envelope. Petrosian's visitors watched him closely as he put down his empty beer glass and tore it open. He read the letter twice, and looked at his guests with surprise.

'Look at it from this point of view, Doctor Petrosian,' said Smith. 'As you say, you'll be out of a job within days. And once you're on that blacklist you'll never work in America again, except maybe emptying trash cans. Try to leave America and you'll find that the State Department denies you a passport.'

'And you turn up waving this letter under my nose. Your timing is supernatural.'

Smith still had the calculated grin. 'All you need worry about are the address and the signature.' The sharp, crabbed scrawl of Norris Bradbury — Oppenheimer's successor at Los Alamos — had leapt out at Petrosian the instant he had unfolded the letter.

'And my loyalty?'

Petrosian's visitors didn't react. Lev assessed their blank stares. Then he continued, 'I think I can guess what you people are up to.'

Now Mercier raised a finger to his lips, shaking his head urgently. He mouthed the word: Bugs.

Petrosian looked astonished. 'Are you serious?'

'Why not? You're a suspected commie.'

'They surely have no legal right.'

The army man finally grinned. 'Oh my. You really do come from Saturn,' he said, and Petrosian wondered how on earth they had managed to bug the Sweet and Tart's busy kitchen.

* * *

Smith sat with Petrosian in the back of the car, the better to brief him as they drove through the hot night. 'By the way, my name is Griggs. Ken Griggs.'

Mercier, at the wheel of the car, glanced back. 'And I'm Mercier.'

'So we're going for the Super?'

In the half-dark, Petrosian saw Griggs give a nod. 'We're in a race, Lev.'

'I don't know if a hydrogen bomb is even feasible.'

'If the Soviets get one before us…'

'Somewhere in Russia there are guys talking exactly the same way.'

Mercier said, 'Pravda regularly accuse us of planning an atomic war.'

'Are we?'

'The President doesn't confide in me. Still, if we built a couple of dozen H-bombs we could rule the world.'

'Or end it in an hour,' Griggs added playfully.

'Hey, maybe I'd rather empty trash cans,' Petrosian said.

Mercier was slowing to avoid a pothole. 'What gives with the angst? It's a simple matter of national security. The Russians are doing it, so we have to.'

Griggs said, 'The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, if you want peace prepare for war, and those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. That'll be fifteen bucks. I charge five dollars a cliche.'

'Hey, watch your tone,' complained Mercier.

'I asked you about my loyalty,' Petrosian said.

Mercier spoke over his shoulder, 'If it was up to me you wouldn't get within a hundred miles of Los Alamos.'

Griggs said, 'The AEC operates a security clearance procedure.'

'In which case I'm back to trash cans.'

'If somebody, say like Mercier here, queries your loyalty you've had it. Doubt is all it takes and the onus is on you to dispel that doubt. You can forget about questioning evidence, the right to cross-examine witnesses and stuff like that. The procedure stands Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence on its head.'

'I don't understand.'

'But at least we have due process. You could, for example, appeal to the Personnel Security Review Board. The real purpose of the procedure is to keep HUAC at bay. Now if these monsters got their claws into you…'

Mercier's tone was jarring. 'These monsters just happen to be our best line of defence against internal subversion. Everyone knows the reds take their orders from Moscow. We're rooting out traitors.'

'You see what you're up against, Lev.'

Petrosian said, 'From what you guys are telling me I haven't a hope of getting into the project.'

'I'm lost.' Mercier was peering along a tunnel of light which showed only an endless, ruler-straight road. Moonlight revealed them to be insects crawling over an infinite, flat, desolate surface.

'Turn left two miles ahead. That'll take us back into town.'

'The fancy footwork is this,' Griggs said. 'The final decision on security is made by the AEC commissioners themselves. They don't have to take anyone's advice. But it's not a trick they dare to pull off more than once. I guess Bradbury sees your talents as vital to the project.'

'I'm flattered. But I might start giving secrets away to the Russians.' Sweat was trickling down Petrosian's back and his thighs were wet against the plastic upholstery.

Griggs said, 'I have to say that Bradbury wants you over the dead bodies of some of the others, Strauss especially. Still, it's like this, Lev. Our success in this project depends on our ability to attract men of talent and vision into it. These men will have all sorts of backgrounds and all sorts of viewpoints. Paranoia is a luxury we can't afford.'

'Army Intelligence are against you,' Mercier said. It wasn't clear whether he was talking to Griggs or Petrosian.

'Listen to the man, Lev, and be aware. You have no guarantee of protection. All this soft-headed liberal thinking the scientists do, exchanging information with colleagues abroad and stuff like that. It's disloyal, and it proves we're under communist influence. Therefore HUAC wants the army to take over the hydrogen bomb project. So does the army.'

'So where do I stand in this?'

'In this struggle, Lev, you're a very small fish. Take my advice and stay that way. Stick to science and keep your mouth shut on policy matters. The guy they're really after, the big whale, is Oppenheimer.'

* * *

Four weeks later Petrosian turned up at Los Alamos, having effectively vanished from Greers Ferry. After an absence of seven years, the diaries revealed no sentiment, no sense of homecoming, of loss or gain. Rather, they gave the impression of a man who had been away for a long weekend. Kitty Cronin's name was painfully absent. The pages were filled with the hydrogen bomb. Over the course of the year they became increasingly technical and Findhorn could scarcely understand the entries. Romella began to stumble over many of the technical words. Some of them had been written in English, probably, she thought, because there was no precise equivalent in the Armenian.