Body Farm: Bones Of Betrayal Part 12

She reached down, and without taking her eyes off my face, she slid the blurry photo off the magazine. I looked down and there it was, printed on the page. Set against a hillside was a simple, windowless wooden barn with a tall, thin silo at one end. I was not looking at a photograph; I was looking at an ill.u.s.tration, something like an architectural rendering. As I read the accompanying story, I heard myself saying "hmm" and "hmm" repeatedly. The "barn," I read, was not a barn at all, though it was carefully designed and built to look like one. It was the camouflaged entrance to an underground storage bunker for bomb-grade uranium-235, the precious product Beatrice had helped sift from tons of uranium-238. The entire quant.i.ty of U-235 Oak Ridge produced during World War II would have fit easily-lethally, but easily-into a couple of shoe boxes. But producing that U-235 had required hundreds of scientists, tens of thousands of laborers, and hundreds of millions of scarce wartime dollars. The nation-though only a handful of people knew it-had bet hugely on this roll of the scientific dice. Small wonder, then, that General Groves wanted to hide it well.

The silo beside the barn was actually a guard tower of reinforced concrete, the article explained. Looking closely at the ill.u.s.tration, I saw windows-bulletproof gla.s.s, the text noted-tucked beneath the silo's overhanging metal roof. Beneath the windows were small slits in panels of thick steel: firing ports for machine guns.

I picked up the scan of Novak's photo. The quality was terrible, but not so terrible as to keep me from seeing that the proportions of the building and the silo were the same as those of the uranium bunker. The perspective was different, to be sure-the ill.u.s.tration had been drawn from a ground-level perspective, while Novak's photo had been shot from somewhere above, looking down through a gap in the trees. But the similarity was unmistakable. Even the silo's roof-an odd, octagonal hat of a roof, rather than the round dome found atop most silos-was a dead-on match.

Our food arrived, so I scooped up the magazine and the print. The two aluminum platters filled the tabletop. The sauce was steaming, the cheese was molten, and the wedges of pizza were immense. After he'd set down the trays, our server handed us two plastic forks, flimsier than I'd ever seen before, and two tiny paper plates-saucers, really-for the ma.s.sive, messy slices of pizza. Big Ed, I thought, is up there somewhere, and he's laughing at us.

And that, too, was okay with me.

WE DEPARTED LADEN WITH LEFTOVERS, the boxes heavy and already beginning to sag from the grease as we crossed the street and walked into the parking lot adjoining the football field. I had rolled up the photo and the magazine, which she told me to keep, and tucked them in a hip pocket. I didn't feel authorized to tell her details, but I said there might be someone buried near the spot where the photo was taken.

"I knew it," she said.

"How?"

"Dead people are your thing," she said. "They're what you do. They're what you care about. If you're going to this much trouble, it's for a dead person." On their face, the words might have seemed like an insult or an accusation, but there was nothing in her tone to suggest she'd meant them that way. They were simply how she saw me, and the a.s.sessment was accurate, if un-sentimental.

"And what's your thing? Books?"

She shook her head. "Not exactly. I have a master's in history, actually; I did my thesis on the Manhattan Project and Oak Ridge."

"Did you grow up in Oak Ridge?"

She shook her head. "Louisiana," she said.

"What got you interested in Oak Ridge history?"

"A family connection," she said. "My father. And my grandmother."

"Was she one of the calutron girls separating uranium at Y-12?"

"No," she said. She hesitated. "She was involved with the plutonium part of the Manhattan Project. The work they did at the Graphite Reactor."

"Physicist? Chemist?"

She shook her head. "Nothing that fancy," she said. "Listen, I should go. Thanks for the pizza and the company."

"My pleasure," I said. "On both counts. Where are you parked?"

"I'm not," she said. "I live just up the hill. I'm walking."

"Let me drive you," I offered. She shook her head.

"There's a shortcut through the football field," she said. "It's close, and I like the walk."

"Then I'll walk you home. I'll carry your pizza, since you don't have any books."

"Thanks, but I'm fine," she said. "Oak Ridge is very safe. Well, except for the occasional bizarre murder."

I laughed. "At least let me walk you partway. Till we get past the dark place where the monsters lurk." I tugged gently at the pizza box.

She relented, and we ambled up a paved ramp to the level of the football field. At the far end of the field she angled upward onto a footpath that led to another large, gra.s.sy field. Like the football field, this one was also nestled in a natural bowl, but this bowl was surrounded by trees rather than grandstands. The lights of 1940s-vintage houses shone through the barren trees. "This is a practice field," she said. "The football team does workouts here; soccer leagues use it, too." At the far end of the practice field, the woods closed in tightly. "Watch your step," she said. "There's a deep hole there. A big storm sewer starts there. Runs under the fields and all the way down the hill to the Turnpike. You fall in there, we might not find you till the spring rains washed you out near the Federal Building."

I peered down into the darkness but I couldn't see much. "You been spelunking in there? Sounds like you know your way around."

"Only on paper," she said. "I have maps. Well, the Oak Ridge Room has maps-the old Manhattan Project drawings from when they first laid out the roads and sewers. I'm probably the only person alive who thinks a 1945 map of the storm-sewer system is interesting."

"Some of us like dead people, some of us like sewer maps," I said. "It takes all kinds. I find it interesting that you find those interesting."

She pointed to an opening in the treeline. "There's the sidewalk up to my street," she said. "Thanks again. It was lovely."

Before I knew it was happening, she made a quick move toward me and kissed my cheek. Then she darted away, through the gap in the trees, into the darkness.

"Wait," I called. "Your pizza."

I listened for footsteps, but all I heard was the winter wind soughing through the empty arms of the branches. The wind was chilly, but my cheek felt warm.

CHAPTER 27.

THE VEHICLES BEGAN GATHERING JUST INSIDE THE security checkpoint on Bethel Valley Road at 10 A.M., which was late enough to let the morning ORNL traffic die down and-mercifully-allow the sun to knock the frost off the morning. I'd called Thornton and Emert the night before, and-at their insistence-had phoned Arpad as well to see how quickly we could orchestrate a search near the old uranium bunker.

An ORNL security vehicle was already waiting, idling on the shoulder of the road, when Miranda and I cleared the checkpoint. I tucked in behind the white SUV and shut off the engine. Miranda fished a sheaf of folded pages from her pocket. "Here, read this," she said.

I unfolded the page. It appeared to be a printout off the Internet-a biography of George Kistiakowsky, the Los Alamos explosives expert who had triggered the blowup between Miranda and Thornton. A small photo of Kistiakowsky, at the top of the article, showed a balding man with deep-set eyes and a slightly sour expression, or maybe just a serious one. The photo was Kistiakowsky's ID badge photo from Los Alamos. I scanned the beginning of the article. "Hmm," I said. "Another Russian."

"What, you thought 'Kistiakowsky' sounded Irish?"

"I dunno; maybe Polish," I said. "I'm just saying, there sure were a lot of comrades running around Los Alamos."

"No way this guy was a Commie," she said. "He was an anti-Commie, see?" She pointed to a paragraph describing how Kistiakowsky had fought in the White Army against the Reds before escaping to the West. "But skip ahead, to page two," she directed. During the Cold War, page two informed me, President Eisenhower had asked Kistiakowsky to improve America's planning for nuclear war. Despite resistance from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Strategic Air Command, Kistiakowsky had overhauled the war plans and created the National Nuclear Target List-a coordinated list that a.s.signed specific Soviet and Chinese targets to specific U.S. bomber wings and nuclear-armed sub-marines.

I was puzzled by Miranda's excitement. "I don't get it," I said. "This guy's career seems to embody everything you're opposed to. The National Nuclear Target List? I'd think you would consider that a doomsday to-do list."

"It is," she said, "but look." She pointed triumphantly to the last paragraph of the bio. Kistiakowsky ended his career, the article said, by leading a group called the Council for a Livable World, opposing nuclear testing and campaigning to ban nuclear weapons. She'd highlighted the paragraph in pink-a fitting color, I thought-and added a note in the margin reading, "Great minds think alike!"

"Congratulations," I said. "That's some major ideological ammo you've got there-ten megatons, at least. You gonna drop that on Thornton today?"

She shook her head. "No need to," she said, smiling slightly. "It came in the mail the day after the flowers. He highlighted that part. He wrote that in the margin."

The age of miracles was not over after all, it seemed. Then, somewhere underneath my initial surprise and delight, I felt the stirrings of something unpleasant. Was it jealousy? Surely not. I shook it off.

Just then Arpad's Subaru wagon arrived from the opposite direction, making a tight U-turn to pull in behind the security SUV and my UT truck. A couple of minutes later Emert's Oak Ridge police car arrived, followed shortly by a white Ford F-150 pickup. The Ford had an extended cab, a sh.e.l.l over the bed, and an abundance of decals and b.u.mper stickers reading K-9 and SEARCH & RESCUE.

Arpad got out of the Subaru and came to my window. "That's Cherokee, the cadaver dog, in the white truck," he said.

"No kidding," I said. "He's a good driver."

"You want to come meet him?"

"Sure," I said. "Miranda? Want to meet the famous Cherokee?" We walked back toward the truck; as we pa.s.sed the Oak Ridge police car, Emert and his boss, Lieutenant Dewar, opened the front doors and fell in behind us. The ORNL guard leapt out and joined the procession.

The driver's window on the Ford whisked down. "Uh-oh," said a folksy voice from inside. "Looks like I'm in big trouble." The door opened and a man stepped out and raised his hands in the air, then laughed and shook hands all around. Cherokee's chauffeur-his trainer and handler, Roy Ferguson-stood a little over six feet tall. He looked about sixty; he wore bifocals and a scholarly look-not surprising, since he had a Ph.D. in education-but he talked and joked like a country boy. Roy and his wife Suzie owned a business, 20/20 Optical, in Sevierville, but it was hard to imagine how their volunteer activities left time to fit eyegla.s.ses. They raised guide dogs-"leader dogs"-for the blind, Arpad said, and held Lion's Club fund-raisers to save eyesight in developing countries. They also worked with a search-and-rescue team to find missing people, dead or alive. Normally Roy would have been accompanied by five or ten other team members, but in this case Arpad and Thornton and Emert preferred to keep the search as low-profile as possible.

Thornton's unmarked FBI sedan showed up ten minutes after everyone else. The agent pulled alongside the group chatting by the road and rolled down his pa.s.senger window. "Hey, guys," he called out. "Sorry I'm late. There was a wreck on I-40, and it took me a while to get past."

"You should ask Uncle Sam to give you a blue light," I said, though I was pretty sure he had one in the glove box, or a pair built into the grille of the car.

"Nah," he said, "that would just give me an exaggerated sense of self-importance." He flashed a crooked, self-deprecating grin that could have been lifted straight from the face of Indiana Jones, and I started to forgive him for keeping us all waiting. Then I noticed him reach down toward the console and hoist a big Starbucks cup to his lips. He tipped the cup only slightly, which meant that it was still nearly full. A wreck on I-40-yeah, right, I suddenly thought. That coffee's probably still piping hot. And he probably practices that grin in front of the mirror.

The rest of us returned to our vehicles, and with the Lab's security guard in the lead, our caravan headed west on Bethel Valley Road toward the main complex. Well before we got there, though, the white SUV turned right, up a gravel road marked WALKER BRANCH WATERSHED. The single lane of gravel meandered beside a small stream-Walker Branch, I guessed it to be. A few hundred yards later, we reached a small clearing tucked into the base of the ridge. Parked along a gravel pad were a handful of vehicles, including two government-green pickup trucks labeled TENNESSEE WILDLIFE RESOURCES AGENCY. Across the road from the miniature parking lot was a blue corrugated-metal building which could have pa.s.sed for a machine shop or farm building, except for the state seal and TWRA logo beside the windowless steel door. The security guard parked in front of the door, turned on his flashers-maybe out of habit, or maybe to tell the rest of us that he'd only be a moment-and ducked into the building. He emerged a minute or so later, accompanied by a uniformed TWRA officer, who glanced at our convoy, waved us on casually, and then disappeared back into the metal building.

As Miranda and I reached the end of the structure, I saw something that caused me to slam on the brakes. The truck slithered to a quick stop, and close behind me I heard another set of tires-Arpad's tires-rasping across the gravel as he, too, locked his wheels. "Look," I said to Miranda, pointing up and to our right. Just beyond the end of the shedlike building rose a tall, cylindrical structure-a concrete silo-capped with an octagonal metal roof. Tucked beneath the roof's overhang were grimy horizontal windows and rusting steel gunports. The state wildlife officers were housed in what had once been a top secret uranium storage bunker, although the charming wooden barn that had once disguised the bunker's entrance had been replaced with a boring blue box.

My adrenaline surged. In the blink of an eye, history had jumped off the page and become alive to me. This tiny speck of East Tennessee woods had once been a top-secret installation, heavily guarded and cleverly camouflaged. Oak Ridge's eighty thousand wartime workers-and the Manhattan Project's hundreds of millions of scarce dollars-had funneled into a small bunker tucked beneath this isolated hillside. I suddenly thought of an immense magnifying gla.s.s, focusing the rays of the sun into one tiny, intense point of light and heat and energy. The uranium-235 stored under the watchful eyes in this concrete tower had been such a focal point. It was here that the genie of atomic energy was squeezed into the smallest of bottles, so it could be unleashed later with devastating force.

I looked at Miranda; I wanted to express everything that had just raced through my mind-the sense of awe and humility and excitement that had gripped me in an instant-but I wasn't sure I was capable of it. She studied my face for a moment, then looked again at the stained concrete with the filthy windows and rusting gunports. "Yeah," she said. "Pretty d.a.m.n amazing, huh?"

"Pretty d.a.m.n amazing," I agreed. Behind us, a car horn tooted briefly. I took my foot off the brake and made my way back to the present, back to the caravan of vehicles, and back to the task at hand: searching for an unknown and unreckoned casualty of the Manhattan Project.

CHAPTER 28.

THE GRAVEL ROAD CONTINUED ALONG THE STREAMBED for another hundred yards or so, then crossed a steel culvert and began snaking up the opposite hillside. As it climbed, the road narrowed; the gravel gradually gave way to dirt, and the dirt soon disappeared beneath a layer of leaves and branches. It appeared that the road had not been used in years.

We had negotiated several switchbacks and climbed well above the silo when the procession stopped. I heard a brief whoop from a siren, which I guessed might be a signal that we had reached our destination. I put the truck in park, set the brake, and got out to look. Up ahead a huge, mossy tree trunk blocked the rutted track.

Off to the right side, the hillside fell away sharply, almost vertically; looking down, I saw the roof of the TWRA building and, beside it, the octagonal roof of the fortified silo. From this angle, I could not see the windows at the top of the tower-and that meant the guards in the tower could not have seen anyone who was standing in this spot back in 1945. I felt another surge of adrenaline as I realized that I was standing near the place where a body had been hidden some sixty years before. Near the place where human bones might still lie hidden, awaiting discovery.

I walked back to my truck and opened the door. "We might be right where we need to be," I said. "Can you hand me the photograph?" Miranda reached into a manila folder tucked down beside the console. Without the barn as a visual reference, it was hard to be certain, but the angle of the silo-seen from above, from what appeared to be a ledge or shelf-looked remarkably similar to what I'd just glimpsed.

Emert and Dewar got out of the Oak Ridge police cruiser, each clutching a copy of the photo as well. Roy emerged from the F-150, eyeing the pictures with obvious interest, so I handed him the print I'd brought. His eyes widened as he took in the body, then his head swiveled and he scanned the valley down below. A broad smile spread across his face. "This is getting interesting," he said. "A lot more fun than asking, 'What's the smallest line you can read?' or 'Which is clearer, 1 or 2?'"

"Beats grading papers, too," I said.

Thornton was the last to join the group. Instead of the photograph, he was clutching the Starbucks cup in one hand. He tapped Miranda on the shoulder and, without a word, took her copy. "Make yourself at home," she said.

"Thanks," he said. He looked briefly at the silo, then at the photo, before handing it back to her. Then he looked back at the group. "Now what?"

I looked at Arpad. Arpad looked at Roy. "I was thinking maybe Roy and Cherokee could do a sweep through the area, see if the dog indicates any interest, to narrow down where we need to probe."

"Sure," said Roy. "He feels cheated if he doesn't get to hop out and sniff around." Roy bent down and picked up a dry leaf. Then, raising his arm to shoulder height and extending his hand, he crushed the leaf and sifted the fragments through his fingers, watching them drift in a breeze almost too slight to feel. "Looks like the air's moving downhill and downstream," he said. "Which means that the scent-if there is any-would be moving in that direction, too. Scent is like water-it tends to flow downhill, and tends to pool in low spots. Cool spots, too." He glanced at the steep hillside and the line of vehicles, frowning slightly. "I hate to be a bother," he said, "but could we maybe all back up a couple of hundred yards? I'd like to work him along the road, but the gas and oil fumes will pretty much overpower anything else that's here."

Roy ambled back to his truck, and the rest of us headed for our vehicles. After a few moments of tense, hesitant backing down the narrow pair of ruts, we all parked again. Roy opened the hatch of his camper sh.e.l.l and dropped the tailgate. I heard him talking in a low, soothing voice, and then a large German shepherd on a stout leather leash jumped down from the truck. Roy stood at least six feet tall and probably weighed somewhere around 200 pounds, but the dog was pulling him as if he were a child. "As you can see, he really gets into this," Roy said. As they pulled alongside the group, Roy gave a quick tug on the leash. "Cherokee, sit," he said firmly. The dog sat, but even sitting, he strained at the leash.

Miranda leaned slightly toward the dog. "Is he friendly? Can I pet him?"

"He's a sweetheart," said Roy, "but he's more interested in work than love."

Emert laughed. "Reminds me of my ex," he said.

"Reminds me that dogs are more useful than men," said Miranda. The rest of us-the six men she had just skewered-laughed briefly and changed the subject quickly.

Roy led the dog upslope to pee, then had him sit again, slightly apart from the group this time. "Okay, the smell from the vehicles has probably dispersed enough now," he said. "I'll start by letting him off leash for what's called a hasty search-pretty much what the name implies-and see if he picks up anything. If he doesn't, I'll work him through the area again on a grid pattern."

Thornton raised his hand, like a kid in elementary school. "Yes sir?" said Roy.

"The dog doesn't work on commission, does he?"

Roy looked puzzled, and so did everyone else. Everyone except Miranda, who snorted. "Like, ten percent of the bones?"

"Ten percent seems a little steep," the agent said with a grin. "Anything over five seems greedy."

"I wish you were running the IRS," Miranda said.

Just then Thornton's cell phone jangled loudly. "Sorry," he said, s.n.a.t.c.hing it from the holder clipped to his belt. He frowned at the display but answered anyway. "h.e.l.lo? Who?" His frown deepened. "Yes," he said. "Listen, I'm in the middle of something right now. Can I call you back?" He slumped-a dramatic gesture meant to telegraph his frustration to those of us watching him. It was the sort of gesture a man would make if his wife or girlfriend or teenager called him at an inopportune time. "You know, it really wasn't that big a deal," he said. "Anybody else would have done the same thing." He paused, listening, shaking his head. "You'd have done the same thing, too," he said, "in a heartbeat. Look, I really, really can't talk right now. Gotta go. Sorry. Bye." He snapped the phone shut with a wince, then looked apologetically at the group. "I am so sorry," he said, and flashed us that d.a.m.n Indiana Jones grin again.

"Okay," said Roy, "if y'all are ready, I'll go ahead and let Cherokee work the area." He looked around, and everyone nodded. "If everybody would just stay down in this area, that'll minimize the scents and the distractions for him."

"Would it be okay if I took a few pictures," I asked, "long as I stay back here?"

"Absolutely," Roy said. "Long as you promise to shoot only my good side." With that, he bent over and wiggled his b.u.t.t.

"You Ph.D.s," Emert grumbled. "Always showing off your brains."

Roy reached into a pocket of his coat and pulled out a plastic water bottle. When he did, the dog's demeanor changed instantly: his ears and tail stood up, and he began trotting back and forth almost like a Tennessee walking horse. "Cherokee, sit," said Roy, and the dog sat, almost quivering with eagerness. Roy gave the bottle a squeeze, and a small stream of water shot out, which Cherokee lapped noisily from midair. Capping the bottle and putting it back in his coat, Roy made eye contact with the shepherd. "Zook mort," he said, or at least that's what it sounded like. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that "mort"-related to "mortal" and "mortality"-was a dog-handler term for "dead guy." I remembered enough of my foreign-language studies to realize that "zook" was probably based on the German word for "seek." I smiled at the thought that Roy was speaking German so that the dog-a German shepherd-could understand him.

Roy set off up the narrow dirt road, walking slowly. The dog ranged slightly ahead, ambling back and forth across the ruts, pausing occasionally to sniff at a tree or patch of moss. He reached the mammoth fallen trunk and stopped, looked back at Roy, and whined once. As Roy drew close to the trunk, he turned to his left, walking parallel to the trunk, and said quietly, "Get back to work." The dog snuffled along the trunk toward the tree's ragged base.

There, as Roy rounded the end and made to rejoin the dirt road, Cherokee did an abrupt U-turn, doubling back to the place where the tree's roots had been ripped from the ground. Novak's photos showed a raw crater torn in the ground, but in the intervening decades a fair-sized tulip poplar had taken root in the hollow. The dog circled the area slowly, his nose low to the ground, then sniffed his way toward the tree at the center. Once there, he simply sat, staring at the base of the tulip poplar. I waited for the dog to bark or whine or lie down, as I'd seen other cadaver dogs do to show they'd found something, but Cherokee simply sat and stared.

"Well, this is gripping," muttered Emert. "I can't stand the suspense. Will he pee, or won't he?"

"Shh," said Miranda.