Chapter 10

Oak Ridge, TN - Saturday, May 28th, 1983 – 6:06 AM

Richard was gasping for breath. Julie was jabbing her finger into his chest, yelling at him. Screaming at him. Spittle flew from her mouth as she screamed. It was the same stuff he had heard a million times before. They were never going to have enough money. Was he ever going to be able to provide for them? What the hell was he doing? What was he getting done? Why was he so worthless? Was he trying to make her miserable? And Richard, trying to talk, was choking on the words, unable to speak. Unable to breathe. Julie, her face red, tears running down her cheeks, opened her mouth again—opened it wide, lips peeling away from her nicotine- and coffee-stained teeth—and a phone rang. Then it rang again. Julie froze, the image of her inverting and fading to white as the ringing phone grew louder.

Richard opened his eyes. He had rolled off his mattress, and his face was on the floor. He sat up, stiff and creaky. His eyes were gummy and everything was blurry. The phone rang again, and the machine picked up.

“Hi,” Richard heard his own voice say. “This is Richard Mathers. I’m sorry I’m not available right now, please leave a message at the sound of the tone.” It beeped as Richard was actually going through the pain and difficulty of standing up, and he heard Deborah Enos speaking to him.
“Richard, come on,” she said. “Now I’m really worried. If you’re there, pick up. I want to know you’re all right. Come on. Richard? Look, I’m really sorry—”

“Y’here,” Richard mumbled picking up the receiver.

“Richard,” she responded, relief in her voice. She was really that worried? “Richard, oh, thank goodness.”

“Y’m fine,” he mumbled back. “Jus’ ist like six in the mornin’. And ist satday.” Richard yawned. “Man, I’m sore.”

“I’m sorry,” Debi replied, with a sincerity that would have sounded patronizing on almost anybody else. “I didn’t mean to wake you up so early, I was just so worried after yesterday. I barely slept last night. I was worried you’d gone out and done something or gotten drunk and tried to drive or—”

“Now, come on, I’m not like that,” Richard said, more clearly, though actually he could be entirely like that. He just hadn't had enough money to get anywhere near that drunk.

He rubbed his eyes, trying to wipe the sleep out. He glanced at his shaded windows. Damn, it looked bright out there. “It was just a job. I’ll get another one,” he said gamely enough, although he was not sure how true that was. “I hated that job, anyway,” he finished. That much, he knew was absolutely true.

“I know,” she said sympathetically. “You didn’t get along with Monk.”

“Deb, I just didn’t like that job. I didn’t get along with Monk because I did a crappy job. I did a crappy job because I hated the job I was doing. At least while Julie was with me there was a reason to keep doing something I hated. Or to try to talk myself out of hating it. After she was gone . . . what’s the point? I hated the damn thing. Not Monk’s fault, I just did.”

“So you’re okay?” Deb asked.

“Okay as I ever was,” which was to say, not okay at all, dear, but Richard thought he had burdened Deb with more than her share of his problems in the past. Dragging her down with him now wouldn’t help either of them.

“So, what are you going to do now?”

Richard shrugged at the telephone. “I don’t know, Deb. I really don’t. Maybe freelance. Maybe move out of D.C. Maybe get a job stocking groceries.”

“Uh huh,” she replied. “I hear there is a big future to being a thirty-eight year old stock clerk at a grocery store.”

“It’s something else,” Richard replied. “Something I could do.”

“What about freelancing? Got any ideas?”

“Yeah, maybe. I know people at some magazines. I think I’ve got an idea or two for articles I could write. I thought I might shop a few ideas around and see if I get any nibbles, and then take it from there. This is sort of uncharted territory for me. Alone and jobless in Washington, D.C. Hey, there’s an article.”

“You’re not alone,” Debi said, her voice warm and consoling. “I’m going to help you any way I can. I will be there for you all the way. That’s a promise. And, I know you were kidding, but there just might be an article in that.”

“Thanks,” Richard replied. That was Debi. Life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Hell, Debi was: life gives you lemons, make lemonade, open a lemonade stand, and become fabulously wealthy and famous selling Deborah Enos’s Old Fashioned Pot O’ Gold Lemonade. “Thank you, Deb. You are as good as they come.”

“Don’t suck up. Anyway, the thing is, I think I have a lead that might work out for you. I’ve got a guy at Capitol Brief who is looking for someone to write a story—a thousand bucks for 3000 words, probably. More space if you need it. No more money, though. Still, not too bad.”
“Uh huh. Go on.”

“The deal is, this guy who was in charge of some sort of hush-hush government project gets placed under investigation, then disappears. Then he turns up dead at a mall in L.A. Robbie—he’s the guy I know at Capitol Brief—thinks there’s a story there. He thinks the project is about something more than what they say it is. He thinks the guy in charge was on the run, and maybe for a good reason, or he might have been selling information to the Soviets—”

“Huh. What was the project he was working on?”

“Robbie explained it. Something to do with using lasers to find nuclear materials—like uranium and plutonium—and eventually being able to deploy them on satellites, so the military could image where nuclear materials are—”

“So the guy in charge—who was it?”

“Uh, hold on a second, he told me and I wrote it down . . .um, Dr. Donald Bernhard. He used to work at Los Alamos. Then he taught at Berkley for a while. Then he got recruited for the laser imaging project at Oak Ridge.”

“And somebody thinks he was selling information on the project to the Russians?”

“I don’t know. Robbie said they were speculating about that, but by ‘they’ he might have meant that he, personally, was speculating about it and wanted to give it more credibility by saying ‘they’.”

“You see a lot of that in this town. You said the guy worked at Los Alamos–where was he working on the laser imaging stuff?”

“Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It’s in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, right outside of Knoxville . . .”

“Oak Ridge. Huh. Hang on a second.”

“What? You’ve got something? Do you know somebody?”

“Hang on.” Richard leaned into the kitchenette and grabbed his address book and start flipping pages. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do. Actually, I know two. I know a guy who works at Oak Ridge—Tsukishiro Yukito, he’s a research scientist. Apparently gets down to D.C. a lot. Met him last year, and I don’t think I made too much of an ass out of myself. But I think I might know somebody else.”

“Well, there you go, see? It was meant to be. And pretty good money. And better than covering city council meetings all the damn time.”

“What was the guy’s name? The guy in charge of the project? Bernhard?”

“Dr. Donald Bernhard.”

“And he lived in Oak Ridge, right?”

“Uh . . . I don’t know. I didn’t ask, I assume he did—”

“I don’t know for sure, but I think I know someone who knows Bernhard. Or her kid does, anyway.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. I don’t remember exactly, but I think she told me that she wasn’t sure if it was a good idea or not, her kid hanging out with some old codger . . . I don’t recall the whole conversation but I’m pretty sure the guy’s name was Bernhard and he was a scientist or a doctor or something.”

“Mmmm,” Deb hummed. “So, who is the mystery woman?”

“Hah,” Richard laughed, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat. “Darla—uh—” He looked back at his address book.

“Darla?” Deb asked incredulously. “Like Little Rascals? Or more like a stripper stage name?”

“No, no, nothing like that. Doreen. No mystery woman. I dated her for, like, a month back in . . . damn, it was like 1973. It was a long time ago.”

Deb giggled. “You must have left quite an impression. For her to still be calling you ten years later.”

Rich smiled. He knew what Debi was up to. Look, here’s a job opportunity. Now, you’ve heard about that, let’s talk about your past conquests as a man. Let’s joke and I’ll give you my best girlish giggle, to show you how entertained and impressed I am. Get your mind off it, guy. Deb was the best.

“I don’t know about that. It couldn’t have been a good impression. She just—she seemed really desperate. I was going to be moving. She had two little kids. I wanted to get a career going. It just wasn’t going to work out.” Richard sighed. “In retrospect, I don’t know how good my decision making actually was. But, yeah, she called me out of the blue three years later—tracked me down, I guess.”

Debi laughed. “No mere mortal man could satisfy her. She had to have you back!”

Richard shrugged at the phone. “I don’t know about all that. I think she was just lonely. There wasn’t much of a chance either of us were going to pick up and move. I had moved here, she had moved to Tennessee . . . she just wanted to talk.”

“Mmmhmmm,” Debi hummed into the phone knowingly. All a put on, sure, but Richard did appreciate it. She was just as sweet as she could be. The anti-Julie. “So her kid knew this Dr. Bernhard, you said. What, were they neighbors or did she date Bernhard or what?”

“I don’t know, we didn’t talk about that much. She was telling me about all the classes she was taking. She one of those running-in-a-million-directions-but-never-getting-things-done types. I don’t see how she has room to breathe. She said it was some old guy her kid hung around, and she was worried if it was all right. Apparently her kid is something of a geek, so she thought the math and science aspect with the old guy being a research scientist might be a good thing. But she was, you know, naturally worried about old men wanting to spend time with adolescent boys. So, no, I don’t think they were dating.”

“Maybe he was babysitting,” Deb suggest helpfully.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I’ll give her a call and see if I can find out some more.”

“You do that. Also, call Robbie Deaton at Capitol Brief and tell him you’re interested in doing the story. He can probably fill in some of the details I’m missing; he just gave me a rough sketch. I just thought you’d be interested in picking up some freelance work.”

“Yeah, I am. Thanks a lot of, Deb. You are absolutely the best.”

“You bet,” Deb said. “Are you going to be okay? You want me to come over for awhile?”

“No, thank you, I’ll be all right, Nurse Nightingale,” Richard replied. “But thank you. I do appreciate it.”

“Okay, if you’re sure. I could bring some breakfast?” she half-said, half-asked.

Richard looked at himself in the mirror—he looked like he’d been kicked by a mule and pissed on by a horse—and his crappy efficiency apartment. He didn’t guess there would be too much risk of Debi swooning over him and asking him to marry her, given the circumstances. And breakfast would be good.

“Okay, okay,” he relented. “Breakfast, and then you need get out and live your life. I don’t want you just hanging around me out of sympathy. Or charity.”

“Wouldn’t ever,” she said. “I promise, I’ll just eat my bagel and go.”

“Okay. Give me a chance to shower and shave and stuff. I look like crap and I smell.”

“You usually do. I don’t mind, I’m not dressing in my church clothes or anything, but you can pretty yourself up if you like.”

“Not trying to pretty it up. I just want to scrape off a layer of grime.”

“Well, when you put it that way, maybe it would be a good idea. I’ll grab Robbie’s business card for you.”

“Thanks. See you in, like, forty-five. Is that okay?”

“Fine with me. Bagel and coffee okay?”

“That sounds great. Bye.”

“Hang in there, guy,” she finished, and the line clicked and the dial tone sounded. Rich put the receiver down.

“Today is the first day of the rest of my life,” Richard told himself, trudging toward the bathroom. “Yay.”

Chapter 17

Washington, DC – Saturday, May 28th, 1983 – 5:45 PM

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.

“This is Rich,” he said.

“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—”

“So, whatever it was, you don’t think it was ideological—”

“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.