The Infiltrators (28 page)

“I drove up here with Roy a few times on weekends when I wasn’t working and he had short errands to run at the lab,” she said reminiscently. “We had a Mercedes, that’s how fancy we were. It was one of the things that had us pretty broke, but we’d told ourselves that he needed a good car for all the commuting. Of course I still had my beat-up little Fiat for popping around town. Whenever I came up here with him, I had to wait for him in the visitors’ lounge just inside the gate; that’s as far as anybody gets without the proper impressive clearance, unless they’ve changed the procedure. I think we turn left on a dirt road just ahead… God, they’ve got it all paved now! Ellershaw is years behind the times, as usual.”

We started climbing again, along the bottom of a narrow canyon, where a turbid creek ran beside the blacktop road. I wondered what made it so murky—up that high in the mountains, the streams usually run pretty clear—and why there was steam coming off it although the day was not cold. At this time of the afternoon, the rock walls shaded the road except when it twisted in exactly the right southwesterly direction and let a shaft of sunlight find its way to the bottom of the cleft.

Suddenly, a turn brought us out into a sizable mountain meadow—well, it had probably been quite a pretty, grassy, open place once. Maybe you could even have picked wildflowers there; but now it was all paved parking lots and blocky gray buildings, and tanks cylindrical and spherical, and some oddball structures I didn’t recognize and undoubtedly wasn’t supposed to. This was all crammed into the limited space between the high perpendicular cliffs. There was no visible creek running through the area, but a giant culvert emerged from the hillside to the left and dumped steaming, cloudy water into the old stream channel. Presumably it had been used for cooling some highly secret experiments. I didn’t particularly want to know about them. If I did find out, somebody would probably try to shoot me for such a dreadful breach of security; and my still-weak shoulder was evidence that I had enough hostiles to cope with already.

There was a tall chain-link fence topped by several strands of barbed wire on overhanging brackets. I could see no break in the fence except at the road ahead, where a small guardhouse flanked the opening and a red-and-white-striped lifting-type barrier blocked it. There were also a couple of uniformed gents armed with M16 assault rifles. There was a series of signs along the approach road graded from
STOP
1500
FEET AHEAD
to just plain
STOP
!

When Madeleine brought the Mazda to a halt at the last red sign, one of the guards stepped forward to look at her; then he bent down so he could see me in the right-hand seat.

I said, “We have an appointment with the Scientific Director, Dr. Johansen. My name is Helm. This is Mrs. Ellershaw.”

“Identification, please.”

I let him look at my pretty badge thing. Madeleine showed her driving license. The man walked over to the little building and checked a clipboard hanging from a nail beside the door and came back to us.

“You may proceed to Parking One, Mr. Helm. There’ll be somebody waiting to escort you to Building A, our administration building. However”—he gave Madeleine a quick, cold glance—“however, you’ll have to let the, er, lady out at the guest house just ahead. I think you’ll both understand why we can’t allow her beyond that point. She’ll have to wait for you there, Mr. Helm.” I regarded him for a moment. He was a big, red-faced character in a neat blue uniform. It wasn’t the uniform of any of the armed forces with which I was acquainted; but he’d certainly been there, probably in the Marines, and I’d have bet that he’d served as M.P., or I guess the Navy calls it S.P. for Shore Patrol.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“What?”

“You heard me,” I snapped. “Name. Rank, if you’ve got any in that monkey suit. Serial number or whatever they tattoo on your ass in your half-baked security outfit. Come on, amigo. These aren’t state secrets I’m asking for. Talk!”

“Look, mister…!”

I spoke to Madeleine. “Get us the hell out of here, Mrs. E. We’ll find a phone in Los Alamos. I’ll call Washington and find out who goofed… No, hold it just a minute, I still want this monkey’s name!”

He shifted a bit under my stare and said, “Look mister, I’m just following orders.”

“No, you aren’t. Do you want to bet me money that your standing orders or regulations or whatever the hell you call them give you the right to refuse to identify yourself to an agent of the United States government, or even a private citizen? That’s not classified information, buster, so give!”

“Wohlbrecht,” he said in a surly-voice.

“Wohlbrecht, what?”

“Wohlbrecht, Arthur.”

“Wohlbrecht, Arthur, what?”

He glared at me and I glared right back. Although I had worn an officer’s uniform once, a long time ago, I never got much practice commanding troops—they used me for other purposes—but I’ve run a few operations since where instant obedience was necessary to the success of the mission, not to mention the survival of everybody involved including me. I can play bullyboy as well as the next guy; and this character had learned real discipline once. He was an easy mark. It came grudgingly, but it came.

“Wohlbrecht, Arthur, sir!”

I stared at him hard a moment longer; and he looked away at last. He knew damn well why I was doing it. He’d pushed a little and I’d pushed right back.

I relaxed and gave him a big friendly grin. “Okay, Art. I’m Matt. Now we’ve made faces at each other, let’s see if we can’t solve the problem sensibly. You see, I’m responsible for Mrs. Ellershaw’s safety. Totally responsible. That means I can’t leave her waiting in any lousy guest house, not even with one of your boys looking after her. Not even if you’ve got combat records like the Angel Gabriel and are armed like a bunch of Hollywood
bandidos.
Now, I could go back to square one and call Washington all over again and get things straightened out, but that would cause a lot of trouble for everybody. So what do you suggest? Like maybe having the Scientific Director come to the guest house to confer with both of us, along with the other gent we want to see? Or maybe you can arrange to get us special limited clearances of some kind, both of us, just as far as the building we want, if you send a man along with us to make sure Mrs. Ellershaw doesn’t slip a nuclear reactor into her jeans when nobody’s looking…”

That was the way it was eventually done. We had to make the ride in one of their jeeps, of course, since there wasn’t room in my jazzy two-seater for a chaperon. Wohlbrecht escorted us himself and turned us over, at the front door of Building A, to a young fellow in slacks and sports shirt, saying, not too grudgingly, that he’d be waiting in the parking lot to ferry us back to our car when we were through in there.

Our civilian escort took us upstairs and deposited us in an outer office where a pretty blond girl in a pink sweater was beating on an electric typewriter. She looked as if she might be a younger, and perhaps slightly less self-satisfied, sister of the elegant snow queen presiding over the reception desk at Baron and Walsh. She paused in her typing to use the phone, and said the Director would see us in a minute, please be seated. We sat down side by side on a rather hard little couch by the door.

“What was that all about?” Madeleine asked at last.

“What was what all about?”

She said, “You don’t usually push people around like that, Matt. Making him call you sir, for heaven’s sake.”

“It worked, didn’t it? We’re here, aren’t we?” Then, a little shamefaced, I said, “Besides, they’ve got to learn, Mrs. E. I let it pass when Chief Cordoba pulled it because we couldn’t afford to antagonize him, at least not yet; but we don’t have to take it from a lousy security jerk.”

She looked at me for a moment. “Take what, Matt?”

“I’m supposed to be protecting you. That makes it, I feel, my job to remind them that you’re a lady, ma’am. They’ve got to learn a little ordinary courtesy. They’ve got to understand that, no matter where you’ve been, you’re not to be referred to as an er-lady.”

Madeleine smiled slowly. “I suppose I should say it’s just something I’m going to have to get used to and it was stupid and childish of you to resent it, but… thank you, Matt.”

After a wait of fifteen minutes, we were admitted to the presence of Scientific Director Oscar Johansen, Ph.D.

The pompous look of the man awaiting us behind the big desk in the inner office came as no great surprise. Dr. Johansen had telegraphed his character very clearly when he’d shown himself willing to compromise his own security system rather than condescend to leave his office and go out to meet us in the guest house, so-called; and had then deliberately kept us waiting to demonstrate his resentment.

Well, the information that had been passed to me through Jackson indicated that Dr. Oscar Johansen hadn’t really been a topflight physicist who could play scientific ball in the same league with Dr. Roy Ellershaw and the second man we’d come here to meet, Dr. Kurt Grunewalt. Perhaps realizing this, Johansen had switched over to administrative duties some years ago—or perhaps he’d been switched over—and obviously he’d done pretty well in his new field of endeavor.

He was now in command here, in overall charge of the scientific projects in which he’d previously participated, and of the scientists who’d previously been his colleagues. Top dog—but he’d know they were laughing at him in the small back rooms of the Center where the real work got done: the little man who hadn’t really been able to make it in the laboratory so he’d got himself kicked upstairs to an office from which he got to tell other men to do the things he was incapable of doing himself.

He didn’t rise to greet us when we entered, but remained seated behind his desk: a heavy, florid, blond man with thinning fine hair carefully brushed to cover the places where there wasn’t much left. Small, pale-blue eyes. White shirt, blue tie, crisp white laboratory coat presumably worn to indicate that his impulses were still soundly scientific. Big meaty hands with a big ring on one, presumably indicating graduation from an educational institution of which he was proud. Enough aftershave to be noticeable.

I won’t say I never trust a man who goes in heavily for deodorant and cologne and professional manicures. Never is a long time, and I’ve known some very dainty male characters who turned out to be as tough and competent and likable as anybody. But a guy who’s all that bothered about how he looks and smells is starting from behind as far as I’m concerned, and I could tell at a glance that Dr. Johansen wasn’t ever going to catch up to a point where I’d find him even tolerable.

The office was strictly business, however, a point in his favor—one of the few points in his favor—with gray government furniture and gray government filing cabinets; and a window with a view of a gray government structure of complicated design, involving a lot of large twisted pipes with unnerving little plumes of steam leaking from them here and there. You kind of expected the whole crazy sci-fi thing to blow when the pressure rose just a little higher, taking you with it. I brought a chair forward and seated Madeleine, and then did the same for myself, without invitation.

“I wish to make it perfectly clear,” Dr. Johansen said, “that the responsibility for bringing a known security risk onto these premises is entirely yours, Mr. Helm, and that of your superior who forced this meeting. I have put my protest on record, in writing.”

I ignored this nonsense and asked, “Where’s Dr. Grunewalt?”

“Oh, yes.” Acting as if it were a minor detail that had slipped his mind momentarily, he picked up the telephone. “Linda, tell Kurt we’re ready for him now, please.” He put the phone down and said, “This is a busy installation, Mr. Helm. You can hardly expect the personnel to stand around awaiting your pleasure.”

I said, “Tell me about this busy installation. As Scientific Director, are you responsible for the operation of the entire plant?”

He said, “Well, of course, construction and maintenance are outside my jurisdiction except in a very general way. Naturally. Also finance and purchasing. And security; although of course we’re all responsible for security in a sense. But basically these functions come under the Administrative Director, Mr. Snelling. I organize and correlate the actual scientific work of the Center. May I ask where these questions are leading?”

“Questions? I’ve only asked one so far.” That was childish, I suppose, but I found the man hard to take. I went on: “I’m trying to get a picture of the place at the time Dr. Ellershaw worked here.”

“It’s grown considerably since then. There are two new laboratories since Ellershaw’s time. Unfortunately, all we can find room for in the limited area available to us here.”

“When you say laboratories, do you mean new buildings?”

He nodded. “For security’s sake; each project is housed in a separate facility. Personnel cleared for Lab Beta, for instance, have no access to Lab Epsilon.” He threw a malicious glance in Madeleine’s direction. “I mention Beta because that’s where Project LS used to be located—the research program that Ellershaw attempted to betray to our country’s enemies in such a callous and mercenary fashion.”

“That’s a lie!”

Madeleine was on her feet. I rose hastily and put my hand on her arm to restrain her. As she glared at Johansen and stated to speak angrily, she was interrupted by a light knock oh the door. A small dark man entered. He stopped just inside the room, sensing a crisis. “Perhaps I should go back out and knock again.”

“No, no, Kurt.” Johansen was obviously relieved at the interruption. “Find yourself a chair. This is Mr. Helm from Washington. Dr. Kurt Grunewalt. And no doubt you remember Ellershaw’s wife.”

It was a contemptuous introduction that was supposed to remind everyone of what Roy Ellershaw had done, and of where his wife had been spending her time recently, but Grunewalt stepped forward quickly to take Madeleine’s hand. He was no taller than she was: a wiry little black-haired gent—although he was well into his fifties, there was no visible gray in his hair—with a big nose and sharp brown eyes in a dark, narrow, inquisitive face. Unlike the administrator in the room, who was dressed like a TV scientist, the true scientist present was wearing baggy gray flannel slacks, a rather limp blue sports shirt, and an old gray sleeveless sweater with some snagged places in it. He bowed over the hand he held, in a formal European way.