“Chester Bowie was certifiable but he was also a genius.”
Mercer found himself immediately caught up in her enthusiasm. “What did you find?”
“Adamantine.”
“Huh?”
She threw him a teasing smile. “Not the geologist you thought you were?”
“Always suspected I wasn’t,” Mercer replied. “What’s adamantine?”
“In Greek stories of creation, after the gods had fashioned the earth,” she glanced at a note card, “Epimetheus and his brother were given the job of fashioning all the animals. Some were given wings, others claws, some got speed, some got strength. Unfortunately Epimetheus gave out all the best attributes, so when it came to man he had nothing left in his bag of tricks and he asked his brother for advice. The brother told him what would make an appropriate gift to man so Epimetheus went up to the heavens and lit a torch from the sun and bestowed fire to man, making him superior to all creatures. As you might imagine this wasn’t what Zeus, chief god of all the gods, had in mind. In anger-”
Mercer finished the story. “In anger Zeus had Epimetheus’s brother, Prometheus, chained to a mountain where birds ate his spleen.”
“Exactly.” Cali checked her card again. “It was Mount Caucasus and it was his liver, actually. The chains were reportedly made of unbreakable metal called adamantine that Jupiter himself had mined. Only Hercules’ strength was enough to break the links and free Prometheus.”
“So what does this have to do with Bowie?”
“Don’t you see? Through his research he thought he had found Jupiter’s secret adamantine mine. He went to Central Africa to prove that adamantine really existed, just one more step in proving that everything about ancient mythology was real. But instead of some legendary metal he discovered a vein of naturally enriched uranium.”
Mercer shook his head. “Hold it. He trekked into the most remote part of the world because he thought he’d found the mother lode of an imaginary metal.”
Cali grinned at his skepticism. “I’ll do you one better. He got a grant from Princeton in the fall of 1936 to go looking for his adamantine mine.”
“Princeton? Princeton backed this lunatic?”
“To the tune of two thousand dollars. Not large by today’s standards but in the 1930s that’s not chump change.” She handed him a memo on Princeton letterhead. The letter, from a Professor Swartz at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, stated that indeed Bowie had been given two thousand dollars to pursue his work on procuring ‘the elemental metal you outlined in your grant request.’ Mercer read the short note a second time, as if not believing his first reading. He looked up. Cali had a smug look on her face.
“Why the hell would someone fund this guy? He was off his rocker.”
“Apparently this Professor Swartz didn’t think so. Since I found our link, you’re buying dinner.”
Mercer didn’t acknowledge her. There was something about the date that struck a chord. Princeton in the 1930s. What was happening at Princeton in the 1930s?
“Did you hear me?” Cali noted the faraway look in Mercer’s eyes.
And then Mercer remembered. Not what was happening at Princeton in the 1930s. The question was who. Without thinking he reached across and drew Cali to him, kissing her hard. “You are a genius!”
Flustered, but not disturbed by the sudden kiss, she asked, “What? What did I do?”
“Do you know who happened to be at Princeton in the Institute for Advanced Study in the 1930s? Hell, he was there until he died in the fifties.” Mercer didn’t wait for an answer. “Albert Einstein, that’s who. And while he didn’t send that letter to President Roosevelt until just before the war detailing how his theories could create an atomic bomb, he must have suspected that Bowie was on to something and had this guy Swartz fund the expedition. Einstein knew Bowie hadn’t found adamantine, but believed that he might stumble on highly concentrated uranium, maybe a source with naturally occurring isotopes of U-235, which is usually refined from the more common U-238 in centrifuges. That’s what they needed to sustain a chain reaction.”
“Einstein sent Bowie to find the uranium?”
“That’s the only theory that fits the facts.” Mercer spoke faster and faster. “Somehow, God knows where, Bowie found something in his studies that mentions the location of Zeus’s adamantine mine. Maybe he made the connection to uranium or maybe it was someone else, but his idea eventually gets Einstein’s attention. Einstein knew that Fermi and a couple of others were working on creating a nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago. He believed that Bowie’s adamantine might just be the uranium isotopes the team needed for their experiment, so he gets Princeton to fund the expedition.”
“So what happened? The first sustained chain reaction didn’t occur until 1942.”
Mercer was surprised she knew the date but had to remind himself that Cali wasn’t a medical researcher, as she’d once claimed. Instead she was a trained nuclear specialist and would surely know the history of her chosen field. “The girl at Keeler told me he vanished. Chester Bowie never made it back from Africa with his samples, leaving Fermi’s group to enrich their own uranium.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We can’t be sure that he found a vein of U-235.”
“Come on, Cali, it was strong enough to kill dozens of people over the years from acute radiation sickness. I’ve never heard of a case of natural uranium doing that, especially since their village is a good half mile from the mine. You need proximity to radiation to feel its effects.”
She conceded the point with a nod. “So what happened to Bowie?”
“No clue. He could have been eaten by crocodiles on his way out. Eaten by a rival tribe for all I know. If he died out there, then he’s carrying a sample of whatever the Germans came back to take later on.”
“There’s no way we’re ever going to find his body after all these years.”
It was Mercer’s turn to admit his enthusiasm was getting the best of him, but he wasn’t going to admit defeat. “I won’t let the trail just die here. There must be something. Maybe there are archives at Princeton. Letters between Bowie and Einstein. I think I read someplace that he kept pretty complete records of his correspondence.”
“Should be easy enough to get,” Cali said. “Princeton’s not that far. If we leave early enough we can get there when they open tomorrow.”
“You’re on. I’ll book this room again for Harry. He and I can head back to D.C. the day after. We should finish reading Bowie’s notebooks first. There may be other clues.”
“Agreed, but not before you buy me dinner. It’s near enough eight now.” Cali suddenly became aware that her nipples were pressed against the silk of her sleeveless shell. She’d long ago admitted she didn’t have much in the way of breasts; she also knew men would look no matter the size. She gave Mercer high marks for not leering. “I’m just going to run down to my room for a minute. I’ll meet you at the elevators in the lobby.”
Cali finally came down from her room fifteen minutes later, and while the effects were subtle, she’d taken the time to apply some makeup and fix her hair. Mercer felt like a slob for not showering earlier. They dined at a restaurant in the hotel called Margeaux, and despite the urgency they’d felt up in Mercer’s room, they took their time over crocks of onion soup, Dover sole and Beef Wellington, and thick wedges of Black Forest cake. Mercer had left the wine selection to Cali since his only knowledge of the vintner’s art was to avoid anything that comes in a box. When they finished their meal, the bottle was empty and the restaurant was nearly deserted.
It wasn’t until their conversation drifted into a companionable silence and lingering glances that the guilt slammed into Mercer like a sledgehammer blow. He hadn’t known the exact moment their working dinner had become a date, his first since Tisa, but that’s how he felt about it now and the delicious meal turned sour in his stomach. He thought he’d given no outward sign but somehow Cali picked up on his distress.
“Are you okay?”
Lying is what he should have done, blamed eating too much, and moved on. It would have been easy and he could have kept Tisa’s memory locked away, barely reined, but still under control. But before he could open his mouth, the idea of lying faded. Tisa’s memory wasn’t under control. It was controlling him. It wasn’t reined; it rode free across his mind, and until he exorcised it, it would always be there.
“I lost someone very dear to me six months ago.” Cali had to lean across the candlelit table to hear him. “Tonight was the first time since then I’ve had dinner with a woman. This dinner wasn’t a date, but sitting here with you it was easy to imagine it was. I was overwhelmed by guilt.”
“Thank you for sharing that. I know it couldn’t have been easy.”
“I have a tendency to keep stuff locked away.”
