A Fierce Radiance (15 page)

How far he’d come. He’d been born and had grown up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on the wrong side of the river. If anyone asked, he said he was from nearby Allentown. He hinted that his people were in trade. They were actually immigrants from Croatia. He didn’t want to link himself with Bethlehem in the eyes of the world. Bethlehem meant steel. It meant hard factory labor and a way of life he’d turned his back on. Yes, his father had been a steelworker, and he’d died too young, in a mill accident. A cable slipped, snapped, and five men—five fathers—were dead. No compensation. In those days steel was a miserable, dangerous, low-paying immigrant job. Maybe it still was; he didn’t have anything to do with it, didn’t even want to know about it. He’d done well in school, and his teachers pushed him. Even when he was ten years old, he was always tinkering, taking apart pulleys and door handles, figuring out how things worked.

After graduating high school, he’d gotten himself out of Bethlehem. Shifted his immigrant name around to something more pronounceable. He went from Rugovac to Rutherford, from evocations of the Balkans to British country estates in one stroke of an official’s pen. He found the name
Rutherford
in the Allentown telephone directory. A common enough story. After he got rich, he sent his widowed mother money, bought her a house. Did the same for his ne’er-do-well brother. They were both gone now, but he hadn’t neglected them, even though he never went back.

In his new life, he watched, he listened, he learned. College had been out of the question: he didn’t have the tuition, and he didn’t want to waste the time. He got hold of books on engineering, chemistry, finance, even Shakespeare, and educated himself. His first real job was
with a company that manufactured locks. He could have made a career there, designing new and better locks, but after a few years he got restless. He wanted to do more, see more. He spent some time in West Virginia working for a coal mining company, trying to figure out better methods of ventilation. Went to Texas, trying to develop new ways of searching for crude. He had a gift for technical problems, a kind of special insight. When he was young, he thought everybody had that gift. When he got older, he realized that nobody else, at least nobody he knew, could do what he did.

He came to realize that inventors needed cash to do their work. They needed someone to say, I’ll back that new-fangled lock, I’ll support your research on that new chemical process, I’ll pay your room and board while you’re designing a revolutionary airplane engine. I’ll believe in you—for a share of the profits. A hefty share. He realized he could do even more if he brought in other investors. He wanted to be the guy making money from the tinkering instead of the guy doing the tinkering.

So he made himself into the kind of man he needed to be, to secure the trust of others. In those days, he was the only one doing this type of investing. Nowadays, others were in on it, giving him some competition, especially Laurance Rockefeller, the old man’s grandson. Sure, Rutherford drove a hard bargain with the people and the companies he supported. He was ruthless when necessary. Sure, he skirted the line of legality, but never so much as the big boys did, old man Rockefeller, Flagler, Carnegie, Frick, and the rest of them, lying, cheating, and exploiting their way to the top and then giving away millions (while keeping still more millions) and being hailed as heroes. He could never be as ruthless as they were, and so he’d never made himself as rich as they were.

He was already a millionaire, however, when he set himself up in New York. Once he’d married Claire’s mother, every New York door opened to him. He had to admit it, her position in society attracted
him. It was a sign that he’d arrived. What a rebel Anna was, to choose him instead of a man of her own background. They had a few happy years. Then her idealism began to get in the way. The very thing she’d professed to like about him—that he was a self-made striver—she turned against. She had a drive to rebel. As time passed, he became exactly what she was rebelling against. She objected that he devoted himself to making money instead of fighting for the poor—easy to say, when you’ve been born to wealth, when you’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy the Newport mansion of your childhood and the Fifth Avenue duplex penthouse of your marriage, all paid for by somebody else’s hard labor.

But maybe these were just excuses. His life and his love both were his work, and she was bored and lonely. She was tired of coming in second, with little Claire third. She rebelled again. When she left him for Lukins, moving to Greenwich Village, she was the one condemned by society. Her own mother called her reckless, selfish, and immoral. He was judged the wronged party, which opened even more doors to him. For several months Anna’s mother urged him to fight for Claire, but once the shock wore off, Anna and her mother reconciled, at least for Thanksgiving and Christmas. They became just another family, muddling along.

When Anna left with Claire, he felt—what? Some anger, of course. But truthfully, he hadn’t really noticed, at least not then. He was traveling constantly, looking ahead, not simply planning for the future but creating the future. This was his obsession, then and now: to create the future. Except in those days he was still on the trajectory upward. His life hadn’t yet plateaued. It had plateaued now, he knew, if only from the way he panted when he reached the top of the stairs.

He needed some coffee, had to get himself back on track with his reading. Couldn’t allow himself to waste time. He set himself an immediate goal to fulfill before bed:
Scientific American
,
American Scientist
, and the
Journal of the American Chemical Society
. He prided himself
on staying engaged, on thinking ahead. Couldn’t let himself wallow in the past, in might-have-been or should-have-done. Today and tomorrow were what counted. If he kept his eyes open as usual, he’d figure out what to do to gain Claire’s trust.

He pushed himself out of the chair and picked up his empty cognac glass (after all these years, he still wasn’t habituated to MaryLee cleaning up after him). As he made his way through the Gothic entryway toward the kitchen, he glanced into the parlor in admiration. In his business, surface impressions counted for a lot. That was the reason he bought this apartment and filled it with art. He made certain he projected an image of measured, self-assured, highly solvent discretion. This image helped get him through the bad times. He’d steeled himself to turn the Depression to his advantage. He’d made educated guesses and invested when everybody else was running the other way. He had an iron stomach, as the cliché went. Even so, he didn’t want to repeat the experience. He didn’t relish that walking-along-the-edge-of-a-cliff feeling.

In the kitchen, he turned on the table lamp rather than the overhead light. He could think better in the half-light. He made himself a pot of coffee in the percolator. While he waited for it to brew, he looked out the long kitchen windows toward the apartment building across the side street. He watched lights being turned on and off, and figures, silhouetted against the curtains, moving from room to room. He was fascinated by these hints of his neighbors’ lives.

When the coffee was ready, he went to the refrigerator to get the milk. This new business opportunity with the navy, improving refrigeration on ships heading to the Pacific Ocean—Lord, his job was fun. No matter what was going on in his private life, he had fun every day, just doing his job.

How would he describe his job, if ever some young guy looking for a career asked him about it? He’d describe it like this: imagine that every newspaper or magazine you saw at a newsstand, every radio pro
gram you happened to tune in to, every snippet of conversation overheard on an elevator or at the next table in a restaurant—every single one—had the potential to earn you a million bucks. That was his job, and there was no job on God’s good earth more exciting.

As he reached for the half-full milk bottle, he remembered what Claire had told him about scientists growing mold in milk bottles to make medicine. Searching the soil for cures for disease.

Incredible.

L
egs. Mack didn’t need to specify legs for Claire to know what he and Managing Editor Billings wanted. After all, virtually every issue of
Life
featured a starlet posing in her underwear. What they wanted was a line of legs clad in flesh-colored tights, seams straight, heels high, legs topped by well-endowed female torsos clad in identical, curve-hugging, red, white, and blue costumes. Thirty-six girls, seventy-two legs—a glittering, giggling gathering of Rockettes.

“Perfect!” Claire called to them. They were outside at Rockefeller Center, skyscrapers soaring around them. She’d arranged the Rockettes in the lower plaza, around the golden statue of Prometheus, pretty girls draped over the statue’s arms and shoulders, the poses outrageous and charming at once. The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree rose on the upper plaza behind them, lush and colorful. Claire was shooting both black and white and Kodachrome, with three Leicas around her neck. On one, she put a filter with a crisscross of thin white lines to make the Christmas tree lights sparkle in starbursts of blue and green, red and yellow. The scene was guaranteed to make
Life
readers in Indiana and Iowa smile despite the awful war news in the front sections of the magazine.

The temperature hovered just below the freezing mark, but the girls chose not to notice. Today’s assignment was a major shoot, and Claire had two assistants to handle crowd control, another to deal with captions, and three more to maneuver lights to fill in the shadows and to position ladders for the girls to climb into position.

“How’s this?” asked Aurora, in the middle of the group, draping her arm around the statue’s shoulders. At least Claire assumed it was Aurora. After four days of shooting, Claire still had trouble recognizing her from a distance. With her dark hair pulled up, Aurora was lithe and lovely and looked like…a Rockette. Especially when they were in costume, the Rockettes looked alike. Variations in their hair and facial features retreated into the background. They were hired specifically to look alike. Winsome expressions, high cheekbones, long legs. Sweet kids, one and all—at least that was the impression they were required to create. No room for cynicism here. Each girl was the girl next door, having fun acting glamorous but never a glamour girl, never crossing the line from innocent-attractive to experienced-seductive.

“Wonderful!” Claire said, encouraging Aurora, keeping up her spirits in the cold. “Everyone else, move into line,” she directed. She motioned to her assistants for what she wanted, and they helped guide the group into place.

Rockefeller Center: twelve buildings on twelve acres, decorated with modern art, filled with shops, theaters, restaurants, cafés, gardens on skyscraper terraces. The complex was still new. John D. Rockefeller Jr. had driven in the final rivet only three years before. To Claire, the atmosphere was startling and exhilarating. This was the center of New York, and New York was the most glorious city in history. She felt the wind upon her, heard the conversations of tourists around her, the click of their cameras as they took their own photos of the Rockettes. She inhaled the scent of roasting chestnuts.

In the past four days, Claire had photographed Aurora and her fellow Rockettes being fitted in the wardrobe department, resting between shows in their dormitory, putting on makeup in the dressing rooms. She’d followed them home, in this case to the one-bedroom apartment Aurora shared with two other Rockettes. She’d photographed Aurora and her parents visiting the top of the Empire State
Building. Watching today’s shoot from the sidelines, Mr. and Mrs. Rasmussen took photos of Claire taking photos of Aurora.

“Okay, next, let’s try a kick line in front of the statue,” Claire called. The girls arranged themselves. They set the rhythm and began the dance they were best known for: legs kicking high, in perfect unison.

Claire thought, this story is pure showmanship. Mack was right, when he said she needed a change. This was fun, this was star-spangled glamour, and it did make a difference to daily life, it did cheer you up, especially after her stories about Edward Reese, and the army wives. A magazine required balance, so that it became a complete book of, well,
life
each week. No one could survive long dealing with gloom and doom every moment of the day. There had to be room for dancing girls, too. She knew it sounded hokey, but Claire’s faith in the magazine and her place in it was renewed.

The Rockettes gave several performances a day, and they needed to get back to the theater. Claire had to work fast. She saw that the two forklifts she’d ordered (
Life
had that kind of power and budget) were being moved into position: she wanted a shot of Aurora placing a crystal star, donated by Waterford, atop the Christmas tree.

At that moment, three young sailors approached the girls, their naval uniforms no doubt giving them courage. “Hey, ladies, what’re ya doin’?” one called. He was short and stocky. Claire couldn’t see his face.

In their own uniforms of red, white, and blue spangles, the girls had courage, too. “Hey, sailors, want your pictures in
Life
magazine?”

“You bet!” the man said. He pulled his buddies along. One was taller and so thin he looked unhealthy, the other was blond and looked lost, a farm boy dropped into Manhattan.

Three girls matched themselves to three sailors, climbing the ladders to join them on the balustrade of the upper plaza. The girls took the sailors’ hats and put them on their own heads, sexily covering one eye. Three and three, they posed themselves as couples across the balustrade, Claire working fast to capture the evolving scene. Finding
their own choreography, they moved from pose to pose. The scene came alive in front of the cameras. All six stretched out across the balustrade. The girls each lifted a leg into the air, and the three sailors followed their lead—lissome legs in tights contrasted with white Naval uniform trousers falling to reveal socks and a few inches of hairy shin. They all looked eighteen, nineteen at the most.

Which they probably were. They were just kids, playing around. Any
Life
reader looking at the photos would know that the three sailors would soon be on ships bound for the Pacific. They might never come home.

Claire turned and saw Mr. Luce, surrounded by a phalanx of dark-suited men, staring at the scene. The sailors and the girls were teasing one another now, laughing, relaxed, the girls refusing to give the sailors back their hats. Perhaps Luce was on his way to lunch in the private Rockefeller Center Club, part of the Rainbow Room complex in the RCA building across the plaza. Luce was a big man, clad in a warm, well-tailored overcoat, hat, and leather gloves. From his somber expression, Claire thought he caught the underlying sadness of the scene. He shifted his gaze to Claire, and their eyes met. Luce nodded, tersely, and he strode away before she could nod in return.

“All right, finished here,” Claire called. “Aurora, we’ll do the crystal star next. Everyone else, thank you very much. Let’s take five minutes.”

During the break, Aurora joined her parents on the side of the plaza. Mrs. Rasmussen reached up to wrap a blue coat over Aurora’s shoulders, holding the coat tightly closed in front to keep her daughter warm. Claire photographed them through the long lens. Mr. and Mrs. Rasmussen were both overweight, bundled up in thick wool coats and hats that made them look even rounder. In her high heels, Aurora was a foot taller at least than her mother and almost as tall as her father. She was a magical, otherworldly creature who’d somehow been bred by these two graying, ordinary-looking Americans.

Her lovely face filled with gratitude, Aurora leaned down to kiss her mother’s cheek.

A
nother smoke-filled room, this one with a clattering of coffee cups.

While Claire organized the Rockettes in the cold, Jamie began a fourth day of meetings in Washington, D.C. Today’s was a mass meeting with the heads of the pharmaceutical companies as well as noncommercial research groups from around the country. Merck, Pfizer, Lederle, Hanover, Wyeth, Squibb, Lilly, they were all here.

His friend Nick Catalano was also here. On Tuesday, Bush had decided that Jamie needed an associate coordinator. David Hoskins would have been the ideal choice in terms of knowledge, but he was a British citizen and this was an American project, so Dr. Bush declared Hoskins out of the running. Dr. Rivers recommended Nick, even though Nick had expressed doubts about the entire line of research. Rivers said this was an advantage: Nick would be objective.

Jamie didn’t care about the reason Nick was chosen; he was simply glad to be working with his friend, someone he could trust and share ideas with. He also appreciated that in this particular setup, Jamie was definitely the one in charge, since Nick had no penicillin experience. However, Nick had a Ph.D. in chemistry as well as a medical degree, so he understood those niceties. Furthermore, bureaucratic work didn’t drive Nick crazy. And Nick was always thinking ahead: he’d already picked out a bar for them to visit later, one where young government secretaries, filling the city en masse to serve the new bureaucracies of the war, were rumored to gather, on the lookout for naval officers. Nick and Jamie were naval officers, so they’d have the inside track with these young ladies, Nick said. Nick claimed he was looking for someone to fall in love with; he said the war had made him realize what was important in life. Picking women up in bars didn’t seem, to Jamie, the best way to go about finding someone to fall in love with,
but he was happy to accompany Nick on his escapades, if only for the pleasure of seeing him in action. Jamie could simultaneously relax with a drink. Jamie’s own, still private romantic thoughts were more focused on Claire Shipley than on twenty-year-old secretaries. He suspected, however, that Nick didn’t know any other way. Nick had become a victim of his own reputation.

“We’ve got factories already under construction, preparing for mass production,” Vannevar Bush said from the head of the table. Bush was slim, and he wore a suit with a bow tie. His gray hair spiked upward. He cultivated a New England Yankee bluntness, which apparently he came by honestly: he’d grown up in Massachusetts and spent much of his career at MIT. “In Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri—away from the coasts, I’m sure you can figure out why.”

Jamie already knew. In case of bombing raids and invasion, the factories would be safer inland.

“Nothing to fill them with, however. Nothing yet, that is.”

They’d gathered at the opulent Hay-Adams Hotel, across from Lafayette Park and the White House. Not surprisingly, Bush had positioned himself so that the White House was visible through the long window behind him. In four days of working together, Jamie had learned that Vannevar Bush left little to chance.

“As you know,” Bush was saying, “we have two options here: mass production from chemical synthesis of the penicillin molecule, and mass production using the living mold. Let’s go around the table and you’ll tell me the progress you’re making. By the way, kindly remember that whatever we discuss here is top secret.”

Was that supposed to impress everyone? Jamie wondered. Within the scientific community, the push for penicillin production was no secret at all, judging from the number of old friends and acquaintances who’d contacted him about job opportunities in the past week. His own so-called security check had been cursory. Here at the Hay-Adams, secretaries and assistants entered and departed freely,
delivering whispered messages, offering carefully folded notes. Waiters circulated, refilling coffee cups, distributing platters of cookies, emptying ashtrays, and refolding the starched napkins of anyone who slipped out to the restroom.

“Chemical synthesis first.”

If penicillin could be synthesized in a laboratory, it would be simple to mass-produce and distribute. No one would have to deal with the notoriously uncooperative
Penicillium
mold.

“You start,” Bush nodded to the man on his left. The Squibb representative, according to the wooden plaque on the table before him.

The Squibb man was stoop-shouldered, balding, and nervous. His ashtray was overflowing. He looked everywhere around the room except at Dr. Bush. “We’ve got ten chemists on this problem. The difficulty is…” He slipped into chemistry terminology. Jamie couldn’t follow the details. But although he wasn’t a chemist, Jamie understood the problem. Penicillin had an unusual chemical structure, which, so far, no one had been able to replicate.

Somewhere in the hotel, bacon was being cooked. The scent had to be coming in through the air vents. If he were given the choice, Jamie would order a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich on dark toast for lunch. Probably he wouldn’t be given a choice. Dr. Bush held working lunches, and all week chicken salad sandwiches had been the only option.

The synthesis review made its way around the table, finishing with the Eli Lilly company representative on Bush’s right.

“Thank you,” Bush said to the table at large. He paused for a moment, sucking on his pipe. Then, “On to our second option: naturally occurring penicillin.”

Jamie reflected that because he was staying into next week, he was going to have to do laundry and locate some extra elements of his uniform. Trousers, jackets…was there a depot where naval lieutenants bought such things? Was he allotted a certain number for free? If so,
how many pairs of trousers? How many jackets? These questions were becoming crucial matters.

“Let’s start with Pfizer. Mr. Smith?”

John L. Smith, senior vice president of Pfizer, was big and bluff, the phrase “hale and hearty” made for him. “As you may know, Dr. Bush, Pfizer has been at the forefront of this research, helped by our vast experience in fermentation. We are the leader in American production of citric acid, and therefore reasonably expect to be the leader in penicillin production.” He made this bluster sound generous and gracious.

“Mr. Smith, your progress?” Dr. Bush pressed.

“None,” Mr. Smith said.

And so it went, along the table. Of course the pharmaceutical companies could be concealing their progress, protecting their discoveries in order to achieve commercial gain. This industry was ferociously competitive. The word
cutthroat
could have been invented for it. For example, Lederle could work on a new product for years, but if Squibb stole the product before Lederle had received a patent on it, Lederle was left with nothing. Even if Lederle had a patent, Squibb could change the product slightly, get its own patent, and undercut Lederle’s price in the marketplace. The companies operated on a basis of secrecy, and they weren’t about to change their approach now.