Richard picked up the phone on the fifth ring, just as the answering machine picked up. He had had the radio going full blast—and not a peep of Daryll Hall & John Oates today, thank you very much—had been trying to find some clean clothes to pack, and almost hadn’t heard it.
“Richard Mathers?” the voice asked. “Deborah Enos said I should call you. This is Robbie Deaton, with Capitol Brief.”
“Robbie!” Rich said, with a heartiness he was surprised to find was nearly sincere. “I’m sitting here packing, I’ve got my interviews set up—I left a message at your office and your house, but I was going to get started on the story even if I didn’t get in touch—”
“Debi told me you were excited,” Robbie Deaton said pleasantly. He sounded young to Rich, and a little effeminate. “I think that’s great. She also said you might have some good angles on the story.”
“Yeah, I think so. I’ve got two interviews with guys that work at Oak Ridge, and one of them was working directly with Donald Bernhard’s team. Also, I have a contact who may have had a fair amount of interaction with Bernhard outside of work—socially.”
“Really?” Deaton asked, sounding pleased at the prospect. “Wonderful. I’ve got a few contacts in Oak Ridge and over at the DOD you may want to talk to for story.”
“Great. The more the merrier. I’m not sure how long I’m going to stay down there—”
“You’ll stay as long as you need to get the story,” Deaton interjected. “If there are any expenses that need to be covered, let my office know and they’ll wire you the cash.”
Richard blinked. Cash? Like, an expense account? Even if it was money in advance, that was a luxury Richard had had little experience with. “You must think there’s a hell of a story here.”
“Mmmhmm,” Deaton said. “I do. I think Oak Ridge was working on equipping military satellites—nuclear powered satellites—with weapons-grade lasers. I think they already may have. This ‘Star Wars’ stuff from Reagan and his military buddies is a sham—asking for permission for something they’ve already done. And SDI may be how they handle wide scale deployment. But it’s not about ‘missile defense’, Richard, I guarantee you that it is not. We don’t have the technology to take out individual missiles when there are hundreds or thousands moving at six hundred or eight hundred miles an hour, and we probably never will. But we do have the technology to pinpoint an area of latitude and longitude exactly, and fire a laser back to earth from geosynchronous orbit and hit that point exactly.”
“You’ve got data on that?”
“I’ve got data. I’ve got reports out of Oak Ridge from a source that has gotten me a folder three inches thick on weapons grade laser technology and their active deployment on military satellites. Bernhard worked at Los Alamos for almost twenty years. He was no stranger to making weapons. From what I’ve seen, I don’t believe this was meant to be a system for defense or even for pin-point assassinations—although I do believe it could be used for that. I believe they were working on a system for taking out conventional armies, dozens and maybe hundreds at a time, from a position no one else can attack or defend against. And—and this is the kicker—they could use the lasers to detonate the nuclear warheads of unfired missiles in enemy countries. Bernhard was known to be working systems to detect even minute indications or radioactivity from space, and also look for common shielding patterns for silos and military bunkers—”
“And Bernhard was selling secrets to the Soviets?”
“He was doing something with somebody. They were running an internal investigation on him. I’ve had that confirmed by three sources. He disappears after two months of playing cat-and-mouse with the investigators, and three weeks later ends up dead in a mall in Los Angeles. There is some indication he had been in contact with some radical groups in Berkley. We do know that on the day before he ran, he visited the Soviet Embassy and stayed there for two hours. Another source tells me he had gone to the Soviet Embassy at least four times over the past year. He was up to something.”
“Yes, indeed,” Richard said. “I’m surprised the rest of the Washington press corps haven’t picked up on it—”
“They are,” Robbie Deaton said. “The Washington Post is probably going to run something next week. I want this article to be the most, not the first. I want it to be comprehensive and complete—that’s why I like hearing you have unique sources, that will really help—because I think there is an important story here. A very big story. A cover story.”
Richard blinked. A cover story. Capitol Brief wasn’t Time Magazine, but it wasn’t anything to sneeze at. A cover story in Capitol Brief by Richard Mathers. That was a whole hell of a lot for an unemployed reporter who could barely afford to pay his rent. Good money, sure. But great exposure. A great credit.
“Two-thousand for the story,” Robbie Deaton said, sounding quite chipper. Two-thousand? Richard thought Debi had told him three-thousand. Well, beggars can't be choosers. And they are covering expenses. “We own all the rights. I’ll get a contract over to you first thing Monday—you have to sign that before we cover any expenses. Three thousand words at least but you can make it eight thousand words if you need to, but no more money. We don’t pay by the word. Cover credit. You can have up to twenty-five copies of the issue you appear in. I want you to do a good job, but the sooner we can finish the story and get that issue to press, the better. I need the finished story in a week if it’s going to make the June 15th issue. But—if you need the time for a better story, then take it.”
“That’s novel,” Richard said with a chuckle. “I haven’t heard that too often.”
“Ah, well, you probably won’t, but a story like this has the potential to be a really big deal for us. Last year we did a story on Reagan’s witch hunt at Los Alamos—”
“I read that,” Richard said, folding up a pair of worn brown slacks and putting them in his suitcase. “I’d seen Capitol Brief once or twice before that, but there were at least six or seven copies of that issue making their way around the Tribune after you broke the story.”
“Uh huh. We weren’t the first with it—that was The Washington Post. But we had more data. We had four interviews with the research staff, and the Post had anonymous sources. We had detailed accounts of the sort of witch hunts that started out there the day Reagan took office. Except for the Post, nobody else was talking about it before we ran the article—in two weeks it got picked up in the Washington Trib and the Washington Post and the New York Times and we got a digest version out on the AP—it tripled our subscriptions. Two major distributors picked us up, one for the DC metro area and NYC. I got an actual office and more than one phone line and we started printing color on the inside.” There was a muffled noise as Deaton whispered something to somebody else.
“It was a hell of a story for you guys to break,” Richard said.
“Yes, yes,” Robbie Deaton said, and laughed. “A former paste-up guy at the Washington Times starts his own magazine with $500 and a friend at Kinko’s and in under two years broke a story that eventually got referenced in Time Magazine. They called us a local D.C. magazine, which is bullshit because we have subscribers in Winnipeg and down Key Largo and even in Guam, but, who knows . . . maybe they’re afraid of the competition.” Robbie laughed again. It was bad, but Richard couldn’t help thinking that Robbie laughed like a girl. “Anyway, this is a bigger story than the Los Alamos story. That was just about Reagan guys trying to bully agencies and departments and install their own cronies. This, Richard . . . this is closer to a conspiracy. And I don’t think there’s much doubt as to why the government is working to put military grade lasers in space. That’d certainly be one way to deal with Brezhnev, hmm?”
“Fry him from a satellite, huh? That’d heat up that cold war, huh?” Richard asked.
Robbie Deaton laughed. “No doubt! But, the tone of the article should be neutral, of course,” he said quickly. “If interviewees want to get into speculation or hyperbole, that’s one thing, but we do not—this is Capitol Brief, not Mother Jones or The Nation.”
“Or National Review,” Richard offered.
“Oh, good lord, definitely not. But you’re exactly right. No editorializing. Let the interviews tell the story and the facts speak for themselves. Don’t be afraid of asking good questions, though. Sometimes they give answers we may or may not use, but don’t be afraid of juicy questions—we control the tone in the editorial process.”
“I’m not afraid of juicy questions,” Richard assured him.
“Good. Good. Now, I’ve got a list of names and numbers for you—people Bernhard knew and had apparently been in contact with before—well, before his death, let’s say. He knew people in New Mexico from Los Alamos and California from teaching at Berkley, and was probably in contact with some of them. I’m guessing it was a smoke screen—Bernhard was a company man from the day he started working for the government, and was, from what I have heard, absolutely loathed at Berkley. Refused to go to the protests, he wrote in favor of nuclear testing, got into a shouting match at a public debate on arms control at the campus. The word was, he was up for Ronnie Reagan’s Presidential Medal of Freedom. So—”
“Or political,” Robbie finished. “I think it was probably about money, maybe a lot of it, but nothing more than speculation, there. Just, in the process, he may have let the cat out of the bag as to just what the government has been up to down in Oak Ridge these past three years.”
“But you said he had been in contact with some people in California—old friends, Berkley-types, or what?”
“I’ve confirmed he went to see Mike Howell at People For a Peaceful Future—Mike and Bernhard about traded blows, I’m told, during one of those campus debates ’78 or ‘79. I’ve talked to Mike briefly, and he seems to feel that Bernhard was just ‘burning time’. That he had hinted that he might have had a change of heart—at the late age of sixty-eight years old—but Mike didn’t think he seemed that serious about discussing it.”
“So he was just there to muddy the waters? Make it hard for people to figure out what he was really doing?”
“Or protecting his real partners. I’ve read too much of Bernhard’s stuff over the past three days—he may have been covering up something for the government. He was not the type to turn traitor lightly. He’s had also gone to the Russian Embassy in D.C. three times in the past three months—”
“But you don’t think—”
“He had already been put under investigation. He would have known that it was likely he was being watched. Now, I haven’t been able to get anybody to return my calls yet, but I’ll lay odds, whatever he was talking about, it wasn’t about much.”
“Damn. That’s something else.”
Robbie giggled. Like a schoolgirl. “Yes, isn’t it, though? I had already been looking at doing something on the Oak Ridge research since the first rumblings that Reagan was going to announce this idiotic Strategic Defense Initiative. But the lead scientist, potentially working on the technology most critical to something like SDI, ending up dead at a mall in L.A., after having been noshing with Berkley radicals and the Soviet Ambassador for the past few months–that’s the hook. That’s the story. The technical details are important, and, like I said, I’ll make room for anything you find out about the logistics of the program itself, but I think Bernhard is the hook. Just the lead in: ‘After wining and dining with Berkley radicals and Soviet dignitaries, top military research scientist ends up dead in L.A. mall’ sucks you in. Doesn’t it just suck you in?”
“It does. There’s a hell of a story here,” Richard said. And there was. A lot more than he had thought before talking to Robbie. Maybe Doreen had had better reasons to be worried about her son than Richard had been thinking.
“Uh-huh,” Robbie affirmed, his voice cracking. He was excited. “It’s a career maker. For Capitol Brief and maybe for you, too.”
“I’m leaving in the morning,” Richard said. “I’ll touch base with you Tuesday or Wednesday—”
“That’s fine. I’ve got no doubt you can do the job. Debi assures me you’ve got the chops, and I’d trust Debi more than I’d trust any other human being on the planet, except maybe me. I wouldn’t risk this story on somebody I didn’t know—I was actually calling Debi hoping she’d think about it, but she insisted on you. Bent my ear. I figure, you must be something to get that kind of recommendation from her.”
Richard blinked. Of course, he knew he had Debi to thank for this opportunity but the reverse—that he was now responsible to Debi not to let down her friend—was suddenly crystallized in his mind. And he was surprised to find that it didn’t worry him. For the first time in a long time he knew he could do a good job on this. That he would be as good as or better than anyone else Robbie Deaton could find. For the first time in a long time, he was actually excited about what he was going to be doing.
“You may want to drop by my apartment to pick up the paperwork,” Robbie said. “You can start without it but the office won’t wire you money for a stamp unless we’ve got a signed contract and your Social Security number. Or Federal Tax ID, if you're incorporated.”
“Not a problem,” Rich agreed. “Can I come over tonight? I want to get an early start in the morning—”
“Then come over in the morning. I’m going to be a little busy tonight, but I’ll be up by five—I’ve got to go running before it gets oppressively hot. I usually leave about five-fifteen and get back a little after six. Before or after, your pick.”
“Uh, after. How about six-thirty or so?”
“Sounds good. I look forward to reading your stuff.”
Rich smiled. “So do I. I really have to thank you for this opportunity—”
“Thank Debi,” Robbie insisted. “Now, I’ve got two chicken breasts brazing and I don’t want to burn them. If you think of any questions between now and tomorrow, just ask them when you come by to pick up the paper work.”
“Will do,” Richard agreed. “Talk to you tomorrow.”
“Bright and early,” Robbie Deaton affirmed, and hung up.
Richard put down the receiver. It was amazing how quickly life could change. On Friday, he had been fired from a job he had hated since—well, since he had started working there. Not yet Sunday, and the only good thing about working there—Deborah Enos—had not only stuck with him, but had managed to get him a freelance gig that was both good money and the most interesting story he had had to work on since he had moved to D.C.
Although the radio had been off an on all day, he hadn’t heard “Maneater” once. He turned the radio on, just to check, and it was Dexy’s Midnight Runners singing “Come On, Eileen”.
“Ha!” Richard laughed, and turned back around to his suitcase, zipping it up. He knew he wasn’t free, but the radio, playing a generic song that had no relevance to his life, right after he had gotten a great opportunity for a great article—that had to be a good sign, right? Right.
Richard finished packing, and then sat down to review the material he had collected so far on Dr. Donald Bernhard, Oak Ridge, and the best route to take to Knoxville.
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