A Hole in Texas, page 10
“As I say, briefly, on a detente mission.”
“What was she like? Still attractive?”
“Well, older. She’d tended pigs, dug irrigation ditches, hauled stones in a quarry, and so on, for six years. The Red Guards were hard on intellectuals. She didn’t talk much about that. She was making a fast comeback, she picked up the cyclotron technology in a flash and took complete charge. She had the machine up and running when I left.”
“And that was it?”
“That was it.”
“I’m relieved.”
“Relieved? Why? There’s nothing in the least secret about particle physics, Myra. It’s an open scientific field all over the world.”
Ray Luntz’s voice on the intercom: “Starting our descent to Dallas.”
“Ah, good.” Myra’s tone lightened. “Earle called to confirm the arrangements for Waxahachie. We’re booked into an old hotel right in town, and tomorrow the judge who assembled the real estate for the SSC will take us on a tour of the ruin.”
“Sounds good,” said the physicist.
Control-tower gabble from the open cockpit. Otherwise silence, while they both looked out at the starry night, a rising full moon, and the lights of Dallas ahead and far below. Abruptly he swiveled his armchair to face her. “Myra, what on earth made you say you were relieved?”
“Quentin Rossiter can’t use everything he gets from the CIA, Guy, but he knows a lot more than he writes. That post-office-box correspondence has a big red flag on it.”
13. THE SPILL
The moment Myra Kadane came into the somewhat musty Governor’s Suite, so-called, of the old hotel, she plugged in her laptop at the living-room desk and began clicking away, not even stopping to unpack.
Walter dearest:
I have tons to tell you, mainly about my meeting at Stanford today with your friend the great Herman Rocovsky. Dr. Carpenter brought me there —
She paused, fingers on the keys. So much to write to Walter! Such a jumble!
— and at last, my love, I’ve got a handle on the SSC crash.
I’m now here at the actual scene of the crime with Dr. Carpenter, in a Waxahachie hotel deep in the heart of Texas, as the song goes. And lower those raised bushy eyebrows, honey, the man is in a room on another floor, and anyway, I can hear his territorial tigress of a wife snarling from two thousand miles away. She and I had a nice chat over stingers at the Yorsite party, and she’s smart and sweet and a mite scary.
Okay. Now I’ll try to put down all Rocovsky said about Congress’s four-billion-dollar fiasco while it’s fresh in my mind, and I’ll take this letter with me into the hearings as a memorandum . . .
Myra Kadane had been writing these quirky letters to her departed husband for years. At first mere incoherent outpourings of grief and love, they had so eased her anguish that she had gone on writing them, and gradually they had become a recourse in low moods, and a sporadic quasi-diary of her changed existence. Her fifteen-year marriage to Walter Kadane had whisked by, leaving her in enviable financial shape. As for finding another man, no thanks, it was not on her agenda. Other men had loused up too many of her years. She had found one good true man, he was no more, and she had survived him. Going to Congress in his place seemed much the best way to get on with a half-lived life.
So she had accepted the nomination, made the run, and won the seat. The fresh milieu had wholly absorbed her. She had file drawers full of these dashed-off letters, computer pages in the hundreds, all about her political experiences. Maybe, she sometimes thought, she might even one day publish a book, Letters to Walter! In that case, the Super Collider affair and the whole Higgs boson uproar might prove quite a chapter, thanks no little to this oddly attractive Dr. Guy Carpenter, the obscure white-haired scientist she had unearthed, who had a tart sense of humor, a formidable wife, and a murky link to a Chinese woman physicist.
Well, to begin with, Rocovsky blames himself for the death of the Super Collider!
Amazing, but he’s dead serious. As he puts it, when the Navy sets out to build a nuclear carrier costing billions, it doesn’t rely on annual appropriations, it gets a special Authorization Bill for the entire budget, over as many years as the job requires. The SSC should have had one overall Authorization Bill like that, and at the outset, when President Bush was for it, and California, Illinois, and Texas were all red-hot after it, Rocovsky says he could have gotten such a bill passed. He was the political tactician among those top physicists, they trusted his leadership, and he thought the heavy lifting needed to put such a special bill through Congress was unnecessary . . .
But it had been a long day, flying here and there since early morning, and what with martinis plus a meal with wine, she was feeling stupid. She unpacked, took a steaming shower and a long cold douse, then hurried back to the laptop.
Well, Rocovsky calls it the worst misjudgment of his life. Once Texas won the site, the support for the Collider kept weakening in each annual budget debate, and the project bled to death. The other reasons I’d heard for its demise were all secondary, so he said in reviewing them with me.
He also told me about your meeting with him that led you to reverse your votes on the Space Station and the SSC. It was a revelation, and I now can see —
The hotel phone rang on the desk. “Myra, it’s Guy. I hope you haven’t retired yet —”
“No, what’s up?”
“How about coming out for a nightcap?”
A peculiar invitation! What now? She stalled. “Guy, isn’t this a dry county? There’s no bar in the hotel —”
“Leave that to me. The thing is, that judge will be here for breakfast, we’ll go trudging around the ruins, and then you’ll be off to Washington. I have to talk to you.”
There was nothing casual or flirtatious in Dr. Carpenter’s tone, the man was really pleading. She would have to dress and put on a face of sorts. “Sure. Twenty minutes.”
A short taxi run past the outskirts of town, through moonlit fields where cows grazed or stared, brought them to an area of restaurants evidently built to bypass the dry laws. “Well, Verne’s Club hasn’t changed much,” Carpenter said, seeing on the walls the same buffalo heads and longhorns as of yore, and a few middle-aged couples sedately dancing as usual to the music of a foursome in cowboy garb.
“It’s a nice place,” said Myra Kadane.
They sat down in a booth. She ordered a pink lady, and the waiter went off scratching his head. “How come?” said Guy, who asked for bourbon. “That’s what you don’t drink, you said.”
“Right. Just a prop. I have some work to do yet tonight. Isn’t that the ‘Missouri Waltz’?” The musicians were starting a new set. “Harry Truman was Walter’s idol. Do you waltz? Let’s waltz.”
“Anything you say.”
She closed her eyes as they swung around and around the small dance floor, which crowded up for the waltzing. “I never dance anymore. Walter was a great dancer. Once we got married he forgot about it.” Opening her eyes, she saw a heavyset man in jeans and an oversize Texan hat goggling at her as he waltzed past with an equally hefty woman in an equally big hat. She twined her fingers in Carpenter’s and led him off the dance floor. The drinks were on their table. He tossed off half his bourbon at a gulp.
“Myra, about that correspondence with a red flag on it —” He paused, looking sheepish. “Well, to make a long story short, Mei and I have been writing to each other for years. Ever since I worked with her in China on the cyclotron. And the thing is”—the physicist paused, seeming to drag the words out of himself—“the truth is, Myra, that for those letters I’ve been using a post-office box.” He emptied his glass and went on. “I’m confiding in you because you’ve been kind enough to warn me about Rossiter and the CIA, so —”
“Pardon me, ma’am.” The heavyset man was at their booth, touching his big hat. “Aren’t you Congresswoman Myra Kadane?”
“I am.”
“Ma’am, I just want to tell you that Moira Strong was my favorite movie star. I have every video of your films that’s still around.”
“Why, thank you.”
He touched his hat again. “It’s all over town that you’re here, you know. We sure hope you’re looking into reviving the Super Collider.” He touched his hat to Guy Carpenter. “Evening, sir. Hope I’m not intruding. Fact is, that confounded Super Collider near ruined my life.”
“Really? Mine too,” said Guy. The interruption was a relief from tension. “How come? Sit down.”
“Well, just for a minute, thank you kindly.” He handed Guy a card, Benton J. Harvey, Harvey Roads and Earth Moving, Inc., and he poured out his tale of woe, raising his voice over the music. With firm SSC contracts in hand for building roads and hauling tunnel dirt, he had invested in new heavy equipment. The sudden shutdown had caught him short with huge debts. The markdown in the used market for such machines was murderous, the vultures had swarmed to Waxahachie offering ten cents on the dollar, and he had been unable to hold out. “State of Texas came along and helped fellows like me with a special fund, otherwise most of Ellis County would have been bankrupt, pretty near. And what happened to you, sir?”
“Well, I was a physicist —”
“A physicist? Oh, boy, say no more.” Harvey stood up, shaking his head. “You guys really bought the farm. Well, life goes on, don’t it? Been nice visiting with you all. Ma’am, you should still be in the movies, you don’t look no different in person than in the videos, just better.”
As he walked off, Myra said, “I like Texans. I’ve always liked them.”
“They’re beguiling,” said Carpenter, “sort of like the Chinese, in a very different style. You just have to resist the charm when substance is involved.”
“Guy, you were telling me you used a post-office box to correspond with Dr. Wen Mei Li. Why? For instance, why not e-mail?”
“Oh, she wouldn’t hear of e-mail. Not for this, handwriting and snail mail as in our old days, she wanted —” His heavy sigh came out almost a groan. “It’s very complicated. It all goes back to Cornell, when Mei and I first met, and —”
“Great balls of fire,” boomed a hoarse voice. “If it isn’t Guy Carpenter! I’ll be damned. All Ben Harvey said was that you were a physicist.” The speaker was fat, bald, and red bearded, approaching them with drink in hand. “Some physicist! Dr. Guy Carpenter, boss man of the Magnet Division! I’m Ernie Milson, Guy. Surely you remember me? You damn near fired me. Twice.”
“Hello, Ernie.” Guy recognized only the curly beard. The Milson he remembered had been bushy haired and thin.
“And here you are, back in Waxahachie! Excuse me, Congresswoman. I won’t intrude, I’ve just got to visit with my old boss for a minute.” Milson sat down without being asked.
“So, Ernie, you’ve stayed on in Waxahachie?”
“Guy, physicists are vegetating all over Texas, you know that. My card.” It read E. Milson, PhD, Super C Electric Supplier, Wholesale & Retail. “After the closedown I got myself a job in the Liquidation Section. Guy, the thievery was unbelievable! Did you know that the trustees spent a quarter of a million dollars a month on security alone”—he turned to Myra, gesturing with his drink—“quarter of a million a month, Congresswoman, just to keep off the looters, the jackals, the hyenas? Utterly futile, and I’ll tell you, Guy, I survived by joining the hyenas. I knew where the best stuff was, get it?” He broadly winked. “I did just fine. I had four kids, you know. Two are in college now.” He finished his drink, clearly not his first. “Congresswoman, out of respect to you I’ll not say what I think of the United States Congress. I just came over to shake the hand of my old boss, who damn near fired me, twice. No hard feelings, Guy, right?” He swept an arm across the table and knocked the pink lady into Myra Kadane’s lap.
“Oh Christ on a crutch, I’m sorry, sorry. Oh, Jesus, I apologize,” Dr. Milson stammered, whipping out a handkerchief and dabbing hard at Myra Kadane’s lap until she knocked his hand away. A waiter rushed up with a towel, and two women swooped in to help. One was Mrs. Harvey in the big hat, the other Mrs. Milson, identified by her remarking, “Ernie, you clumsy drunken bastard, just wait till we get home!” The ladies led Myra off, and they soon returned, Myra with an irregular pink circle on her blue skirt where her lap had been. “It’ll wash out,” she said to Carpenter with a good-sport laugh for the benefit of the women. “Thanks, my dears. Let’s go, Dr. Carpenter, shall we?”
Mrs. Milson put a hand on Guy’s arm. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Carpenter. Ernie’s not a happy man. He loved working on the magnets. He admires you. Oh, that chickenshit Congress! Pardon me, Myra.”
“I quite understand, dear.”
“Guy, was that the truth?” Myra asked as they taxied back to town. “Physicists like Milson, vegetating all over Texas? How awful.”
“There were two thousand of us, Myra, out of a total SSC payroll of ten thousand. We physicists just got canned like the rest. Relocating wasn’t easy, and —”
“Y’all really a physicist, mister?” the driver spoke up. “Well, listen, my daddy, he worked on that dang Super Collider. Master plumber, did right well.” He went on to say, or seemed to say—his Texas twang was heavy—that his father had bought seventy miles (possibly seventeen) of chrome-lined pipe dirt cheap, and had them warehoused in Louisiana. He had also done well in washbowls, thousands of washbowls, picked up for the cost of trucking them away from the Super Collider buildings, and sold off in job lots at a profit. “Good sellin’ item, washbowls. Pap’s holdin’ on to them dang pipes, though. Pap’s gonna be rich someday, or us kids will be, when they rebuild that dang thang.”
In the gloomy hotel lobby, a place of old carpets, heavy sofas, and potted palms, Guy Carpenter said, “Well, this is good night, I guess. We’ll talk some other time. Thanks, anyway —”
“Oh, listen, Guy, if it’s important, why don’t you drop in to my suite in say, half an hour?” She brushed her hand at the pink splotch.
“Great! Bless you, Myra.”
14. THE EXPLANATION
Guy Carpenter was up a tree, and he was hoping Myra Kadane could talk him down out of it.
The CIA after him, because of his correspondence with Wen Mei Li! Their letters red flagged! Had they also been read? To the eyes of an ignorant spook, the occasional equations might well have looked like a code rampant with high treason. And how would his actual reason for using a post-office box register with a CIA interrogator, or with a bloodhound like Quentin Rossiter? How would it sound—nightmare of nightmares—at a televised Congressional hearing?
Penny had a way of slicing through such quandaries with her razor-honed common sense. No consulting her! He desperately needed friendly feminine advice. The Congresswoman liked him, he knew that now, and far from being a dumb bunny, she had a good level head. Verne’s Club had been a bad idea, and he was trying again.
“Come in, the door’s not locked.” She was at the computer, flicking furiously away. “Five minutes, and I’ll be with you.”
He sat down on an overstuffed old sofa. “May I ask what you’re working on, this time of night?”
“A letter to Walter.” She paused in her rapid clicks to glance over her shoulder. He was peering at her with a shocked expression. “What’s the matter, Guy? That’s what I’m doing. Call it therapy, or morbid sentiment, or whatever you like. I still love him, and I write these letters to him. Do you think I’m kidding, or crazy?”
“No, actually it’s that robe, Myra. Weren’t you wearing it in Georgetown?”
“That’s right, it’s silk, takes no room, so I packed it. What about it?”
“You really write letters to your husband?”
“Now and then. I’ve never told a soul about it before. Confidence for confidence, or something —”
“I haven’t confided anything to you yet —”
“Oh, no? A surreptitious correspondence with a gorgeous Chinese physicist? Have you told that to anyone else?”
“Mei isn’t gorgeous, never was. And it wasn’t surreptitious exactly —”
Myra Kadane closed the computer lid and sat down in a dusty gray armchair opposite him. “Then why a post-office box?”
“What on earth is that letter about, Myra? What can you write to a dead man?”
“Anything and everything. At the moment, what Rocovsky told us today.” She folded her arms and looked hard at him. “You wanted to talk to me? Well, talk, or go away and let me finish my letter.”
“I do want to talk to you. I haven’t been frank with you about Wen Mei Li. The truth is, she was my first love, and I was hers.” He searched her face for a reaction. No surprise, not even a raised eyebrow, the same straight hard look. “Here’s the whole story, Myra. It’ll require some telling, it’s not simple —”
“Take your time.”
And so Guy Carpenter launched into his pent-up confession.
Of all the fellows who had dangled after Wen Mei Li, she had fixed on him, and he never knew quite why. Once it happened, the romance had blazed up into incandescence. All the other men in the seminar, including Rocovsky himself, had envied him when it became obvious that he and Mei Li were mad for each other. But their beautiful passion had gone nowhere, doomed by her adamant “Chineseness,” as she called it. She had always held back, and infatuated as he was, he had been happy with things as they were. In the end she had transferred to Stanford, he had remained at Cornell, and they had exchanged many amorous and wistful letters. After returning to China she had written less often. With the Cultural Revolution the letters had stopped. For many years he had not known whether Mei was alive or dead. Meantime he had met and married Penny, and was living happily ever after. “Penny’s a darling, she’s almost perfect, and she’s given up a lot for me. Bear in mind one thing, and don’t judge me too harshly, Myra. When Mei and I were at Cornell, Penny was a gawky schoolkid, and I didn’t know she existed, okay?”
