“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.”
“What man doesn’t?”
Mercer gave a low chuckle. “True. I guess it’s just easier than admitting there’s something wrong. You pretend you can handle the pain, and usually you can, but sometimes…”
“Sometimes you need to talk.”
“Talk or just admit to yourself it’s okay to have feelings.”
“Women often complain about men shutting them out,” Cali said. “I’ve had my share of that, but I also came to realize that men’s silences can be just as cathartic as when women vent. The dangerous guys, the ones you have to look out for, are the ones that don’t even allow themselves the silence. I’ve never lost anyone close to me, so I can’t imagine how it feels. I will say that you seem to be handling it pretty well. I think we had a good time tonight. I know I did. Had you not been dealing with her death, you wouldn’t have allowed yourself even this.”
Cali let that sink in before setting her napkin on the table. They stood and made their way back to the elevator. “Why don’t we meet here at seven?”
“Okay. Sorry to end the night on a down note.”
Her smile was the most charming he’d ever seen on her. “You ended it perfectly.” When her elevator reached her floor, she gave his cheek a gentle kiss. “See you in the morning.”
Mercer held the elevator open until she was in her room. He thought he’d come off sounding like a morose dolt pining for an unrequited love, and she thought the night had ended perfectly. He repeated to himself something Harry was fond of saying: “The only thing you’ll ever truly understand about a woman is what she’ll let you understand.”
Atlantic City, New Jersey
Two minutes on the Internet would have saved Mercer and Cali about six hours but would have cost them a bucolic ride and a self-guided tour of Princeton’s campus. The Institute for Advanced Study wasn’t affiliated with the Ivy League school. It had been started in 1930 with money from Newark department store magnate Louis Bamberger as a place for theoretical mathematicians and physicists. The small institute did not archive any of their most famous thinker’s papers. In fact, Einstein’s home was merely another piece of property for faculty housing.