Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: Eddie by Riley Frank Orban Paul Illustrator
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page
Ebook has 347 lines and 10986 words, and 7 pages
EDDIE
BY FRANK RILEY
It began at approximately 7:15 P.M., August 11, 1955, when Dr. John O'Hara Smith returned with a bag of groceries to his house trailer in the Mira Mar Trailer Park, overlooking a long blue reach of the Pacific Ocean, some twelve miles south of Los Angeles. He put the groceries on the drainboard beside his spotless two-burner butane stove, carefully flicked away a speck of dust and then stepped eagerly toward the rear of his trailer, where an intricate assembly of tubes and wires occupied what normally would have been the dining area.
Dr. Smith flipped on a switch, and then received what he later called, in his precise, pedantic way, a split-second premonition of danger.
The Go-NoGo panel light flashed and went out; the transistor looked grey instead of red; the wires to the binary-coded digitizer were crossed; the extra module in the basic assembly had not been there that morning....
Dr. Smith methodically catalogued these details, and he stepped backward, just a breath of a moment before the low hum sharpened to a whine. He tripped, and in falling his left shoulder knocked open the door to the small toilet closet. Instinctively, he writhed the upper part of his body through the narrow doorway. His thick-lensed glasses fell underneath him, leaving him practically blind.
His elbows and knees were still making frenzied, primordial crawling movements when the detonation brought a wave of oblivion that almost, but not quite, preceded the pain.
A squad car from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department turned in the first report:
Two days later, the Sheriffs Department apparently closed the case with a one-line addition to its original report:
But, in the interval, other agencies had entered the case.
The first was the Industrial Security Office attached to the Western Division of the Air Force's Research and Development Command in the once suburban community of Inglewood, California.
When Chief Security Officer Amos Busch received a call at 11:32 the morning after the explosion, he automatically noted the time on his desk pad. The call was from Pacific Electronics, Inc., a subcontracting firm in nearby El Segundo.
The president and owner of Pacific Electronics was on the phone. In a tone that betrayed considerable agitation, he identified himself as Wesley Browne.
"One of my research engineers--my best engineer, dammit--was nearly killed last night in an explosion ... maybe he's dead now," reported Browne, his words breathlessly treading on each other. "There's something damn funny about this...."
Amos Busch wrote: Research engineer ... explosion ... nearly killed. Then he asked judicially:
"What do you mean by 'damn funny', Mr. Browne?"
"This engineer was working on our vernier actuating cylinder for the Atlas guided missile.... Just two days ago, he--he said he wanted me to know where his files were ... in case anything happened to him...."
Amos Busch was a jowly, greying man who gave the appearance of being slow moving. But before the president of Pacific Electronics, Inc., hung up, Busch had already used another phone and the intercom to put in motion a chain reaction that would deliver to his desk the security report on Dr. John O'Hara Smith.
There was nothing out of order in the report. There couldn't have been, or Dr. Smith wouldn't have been cleared for the ballistic missile program. According to the report, he had lived aloofly for all of his adult years. Even as a boy, his sole interest had been to tinker with mechanical projects. His grades and IQ were high above the norm, and his attitude towards his classmates varied between impatience and out-right sarcasm. "I always thought John was a lonely boy," a former teacher had recalled to an FBI officer during the security check. "He never had anything in common with other youngsters." After obtaining his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin, he had worked for Allis-Chalmers Research Division in Milwaukee and lived with his mother until her death in 1951, when he bought a house trailer and moved to the coast. He had no close friends, no record of even a remote connection with any communist or communist-front group.
Security Officer Busch decided to visit the trailer, or what remained of it. He was not an electronics man, or even a normally incompetent do-it-yourself mechanic, but when he saw the shattered tangle of wires and tubes, along with the obvious remnant of a short-wave receiver, Amos Busch promptly called Major General David Sanders, commander of the USAF's Western Development Division.
General Sanders scratched his tanned bald head, and said,
"We'd better get the FBI in on this, Amos."
The FBI went to work with a thoroughness that made John O'Hara Smith's previous security investigation look like the processing of an application to join the Kiwanis. While agents sifted every detail of his life since the day of his birth, he was moved to a private room at General Hospital and three nurses cleared for security were assigned to care for him.
For eight days, Smith was in a coma. On the morning of the ninth day, he groaned, turned to one side and rolled back again. The nurse on duty put down her magazine and moved quickly to his bedside. She moistened a cloth and wiped the perspiration from his high forehead, brushing back the thinning tangle of fine, brown hair.
His eyes blinked open, stared at her. He whispered:
"Eddie ... what happened ... to Eddie?"
Remembering her instructions from the FBI, the nurse turned to make certain the door was closed.
"Was Eddie in the trailer with you?" she asked, bending closer to catch his reply.
He gave her a look of utter disgust, and tried to moisten his cracked lips with the tip of his tongue. But he drifted off again without replying.
This incident was duly recorded in the FBI's growing dossier, along with another conversation that took place in the office of Wesley Browne at Pacific Electronics, Inc. After carefully reviewing John O'Hara Smith's work record, FBI agent Frank Cowles inquired:
"Is there anything--anything at all, Mr. Browne--that you would consider out of the ordinary about Smith's recent actions?"
There was a trace of uneasiness in Browne's manner, but he tried to cover it by looking annoyed.
"I don't know why in the devil you fellows are spending so much time on Smith!... He sure as hell didn't blow himself up!"
"Of course not," Cowles said, placatingly. "But we never know where a lead will come from...."
He repeated the question.
Browne hesitated.
"I suppose," he began, shifting his big bulk uncomfortably, "this will sound kind of odd ... but you know we've got the subcontract to produce this actuating cylinder for the Atlas...."
The agent nodded.
"Well, six months before we were asked to submit specs and bids on such a cylinder, Smith came to me and said he had an idea for something the Air Force might soon be needing...."
Agent Cowles maintained his air of polite attention, but his cool grey eyes narrowed. Browne shifted again, and continued:
"I told him to go ahead--you never can tell what these research guys will come up with...."
"And what did he come up with, Mr. Browne?"
"You won't believe this, maybe--but he came up with the design for the complete vernier hydraulic actuating cylinder--including the drive sector gear--at least three months before we had the faintest idea such an item would even be needed!"
The FBI man's ball-point pen moved swiftly.
"Anything else?"
Browne instinctively lowered his voice:
"Smith even suggested that the cylinder would help to offset the roll and yaw in an intercontinental ballistic missile!"
A brittle edge came into the agent's courteous tone:
"Did you report this to security?"
In spite of the air-conditioning unit in the window, the president and owner of Pacific Electronics, Inc., seemed to feel that the room was getting very warm. He ran a fat forefinger under his white collar.
"No," he admitted. "We got the contract, of course--it was a cinch!--and I just wrote it off as a lucky break.... You can see how I'd feel, can't you?"
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page