“We might be able to do that.” Goddard looked over at Henry. “I think we can spare you for a day or two. Want to take a crack at this?”
“Sure, why not?” Henry grinned. “At least it’ll get me out of the lab for a while.”
He avoided looking at Frank O’Connor, but everyone knew what he meant. Ever since the night they’d been caught sneaking out to a bar, their FBI escort hadn’t let the 390 Group out of his sight. The men went from their boardinghouse straight to the physics lab and back again. During the weekends, they were allowed to go out for dinner and a movie, but only under supervision and with any public discussion of Blue Horizon strictly prohibited. So the men eagerly took any opportunity to slip the leash, if only for an hour or two.
“Very well. I think that takes care of everything.” Bliss stepped away from the table. “Meeting adjourned. Lieutenant Jackson, may I speak with you a moment?”
Henry watched as Bliss and Jack Cube walked over to a corner of the room. They kept their voices low and their backs turned to everyone else, so he couldn’t hear what they were saying.
Lloyd slid up beside him. “What do you think that’s all about?” he murmured.
“Haven’t got a clue, and it’s probably none of our business anyway.” Henry walked over to the coat hooks and pulled down his overcoat and hat. “Well, it’s off to the campus library for me,” he said breezily, relishing Lloyd’s envious glare. “Can I bring you anything? A good book, maybe?”
“Screw the book. Bring me a coed.”
“If I meet any nice Jewish girls, you’ll be the first to know.” Putting on his hat, Henry headed for the door. “See you at dinner, Frank,” he said to the FBI agent, and got a cold stare in return.
The university library was located a short distance from the Science Building, about halfway across the Clark campus. Henry took his time getting there; spring was just a week away, and the last of the winter snow was melting beneath the red oaks and sugar maples of the commons. He opened his overcoat and whistled just under his breath, enjoying a rare moment when he was going somewhere without another team member or Agent O’Connor tagging along.
The library’s reference room was located on the ground floor. Students were hunched over books and notepads spread open upon long oak tables, intent on preparing for the upcoming midterms; the only sounds were the faint scratch of pencils on paper, the click of slide rules, and the occasional whispered conversation. Henry knew what he was looking for, so instead of approaching the reference desk, he went straight to the atlas collection and pulled out the largest one he could find.
Its maps were arranged by geographic area and were detailed enough for him to locate specific cities and towns. Unfortunately, what he needed was something else entirely: a map of Germany that would reveal topographical features as well, and also a global map that would show him precise lines of latitude and longitude between Europe and North America. He checked the other atlases, but they were no better than the one he already had. Clearly, he ought to find something better.
A young woman was seated at the reference desk. She had shoulder-length chestnut hair and a pretty face, and the mannish fisherman’s sweater she wore wasn’t baggy enough to hide some nice curves beneath it. She was reading a detective novel—Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler—when Henry approached her, but she didn’t look up until he pointedly cleared his throat. Then she peered over her tortoiseshell glasses, and Henry found himself being regarded by a pair of startling green eyes.
“Yes?” she said, her voice low and slightly annoyed at being interrupted from her reading. “May I help you?”
It took Henry a second or two to find his tongue. What came out of his mouth was a quiet croak. “Umm… ahh… well, yes, I’m… ah…”
“Not interested. Thanks anyway.” She returned her attention to her book.
Henry blinked. “Pardon me? I don’t understand…”
“Yes, you do.” She turned a page. “You were about to ask me if I’d like to have a drink with you, or maybe go out for dinner, or something like that, and I’ve given you my answer. No thanks, not interested.” Her fingers made a shooing motion. “Now go away.”
It was Henry’s turn to become annoyed. “If you want to catch up on your reading, then why are you sitting at the reference librarian’s desk?” He gazed past her; there was no one else behind the counter. “Where is she, anyway? I could use some help.”
The young woman looked up at him again. “I’m the librarian,” she said, a bit less dismissive. “May I help you?”
“Now that you ask, yes, you could. I need a good global map, with enough detail to show me major geographic features as well as cities and borders, and also exact lines of latitude and longitude.”
“Mercator or Lambert projection?”
“Umm…” To him, a map was a map; he was unaware of any differences. “I don’t know,” he admitted, and was surprised when she smiled at him. “I guess I’m looking for something I can use to figure out… ah, air travel routes between here and Germany.”
“Oh, really?” The green eyes became curious. “Then you’d need an Azimuthal projection.” Putting down the book, she gazed up at the ceiling for a moment, her lips pursing together and twitching back and forth in a pensive but very becoming way. “I believe we have one in the cartography collection. Follow me.”
She stood up and walked out from behind the desk, and, as she strolled across the room, Henry noticed two things. First, every guy in the room watched her go by. Second, she didn’t walk; she seemed instead to float across the floor, her low-heeled shoes barely touching the checkerboard tiles. No wonder she’d become accustomed to college boys’ trying to ask her out. She was an angel in glasses.
She led him to a large map case at the back of the room, and in the second drawer down she found what he was looking for: a world map that not only displayed political borders, major cities, and geographical features such as mountain ranges and rivers, but was also laid out so that the latitude and longitude lines were straightened, therefore showing how many miles lay between one point and another. The map was larger than normal, big enough that it had to be unfolded and spread out across the nearest table. There was a freshman sitting where they needed to be, but he grabbed his books and scurried out of the way before the librarian even had to ask him to move. One does not argue with angels.
“Yes… yes, I think this will do nicely,” Henry said once the map was laid out. “Thank you.” The librarian nodded and started to glide away. On impulse, he blurted out, “Oh… um, one more thing. Do you have a ruler I could borrow? Maybe even a yardstick?”
“A ruler. Or a yardstick.” She stopped and turned back to him; again, the curious gaze, this time with one eyebrow raised ever so slightly. He nodded, and she smiled. “Yes, I may have one. I’ll look.” And then she went away, once again drawing every male eye in the room.
Henry had taken off his overcoat and pulled out his pencil and pocket notepad by the time she returned. “Ruler and yardstick,” she said, laying them on the table beside the map, then her eyes widened in horror as he picked up the yardstick, laid it across the map, and bent toward it with pencil in hand. “Oh, no you don’t!” she hissed, reaching forward to snatch the pencil from him. “You are not going to draw on…!”
“Relax. I’m not going to do anything of the kind. Just plotting points, that’s all.” Henry removed the pencil from her hand, and she watched closely as he moved the yardstick until one end rested on Germany’s northwestern Baltic coast, and the other end extended across eastern Europe. Being careful not to touch the pencil tip to the map, he used it to carefully align the yardstick with Peenemünde, then he opened his notebook and jotted down the exact latitude and longitude.