It was a quiet drive into the city. I sat in back and read through all of my notes and checked all the exhibits I had with me. I wanted this to come off really well tonight. Everything seemed like a windfall to me all at once. Being the director of the project, having improved the capsule design, doing the super cooling processing, keeping the capsule on station for a longer duration, seeing the surface of the Moon and showing the "anomaly”, which is what I decided to call it for right now. All of this proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could handle the responsibilities these men had given me. There were a couple of things I wished were different, but as someone once said, nobody can have their cake and eat it too, whatever that means.
"You might want to listen to this. It’s a repeat of Kennedy’s speech today. ” Matt said from the front seat as he drove.
I was a little annoyed. I didn’t follow politics at all, but something had caught Matt’s attention, and I could just make out the soft droning of a Boston accent wafting up from the radio.
"Oh, is this that Kennedy guy? Joe’s kid? The senator from Massachusetts? ”
"Yeah, Ted. They elected him president. Y’know, of the United States? Last November? ”
I looked at the date on my watch. May 25th, 1961. Might as well have been Ground Hog’s Day for all the effect it had on me and the people I worked with.
"Huh. Alright, go ahead, turn it up. ” I still had papers on my lap. It came on and sounded like it was half way through but we seemed to have caught the good part.
"We don’t do this thing because it is easy... but because it is hard. But we will place a man on the moon by the end of this decade and bring him home safely again. ”
Matt turned down the volume and continued to weave through the traffic.
"They’re calling it the 'Space Race’ since they say the Russians are already ahead of us with Sputnik and all. Huh. Little does anyone know we’ve already been there and back. ”
"And they probably won’t either. Not for a long while. ” I finished everything I could and finally gave it a rest and looked out the window. We were in downtown Manhattan pulling into the garage under the Embassy Hotel. Matt parked the car, got out and helped me with the two bags I had filled with copies and data.
"Dr. Humphrey? ” A man was standing next to a service elevator in a black suit, white shirt and thin black tie, wearing sunglasses. Funny. Middle of the night. Underground garage. Steel frame mirrored sunglasses? Really?
"Yes. ”
"This is the one you will want to use. ” He opened the elevator door and motioned for us to enter. He stopped Matt and patted him down removing his Colt. 45 auto. "I will return this when you come back. ” It was neither a statement, a question or a comment, but just a flat intonation of words that took me a moment to understand. It was almost like he didn’t know the language, just the words.
Matt nodded and got in behind me. I looked for a panel of buttons on the inside and quickly figured out that somebody was making a fortune building elevators that didn’t have controls. As we started to move, I noticed we were traveling downward as opposed to going up like I thought we would.
"Feel that? ” Matt said.
"Yeah. ”
"We’re dropping fast. This thing is running on air pressure. ” Matt continued with stifled amazement. "It sure isn’t on cables or hydraulics. ” Matt touched the side of the car with his free hand. "Boy! We are down a ways, maybe a couple hundred feet. ”
I cleared my ears from the pressure change in the car as the door opened onto a wide room that had a reception area and single desk with one man in a pale blue sport coat sitting behind it. He was gray haired and tan. His eyes moved across both of us quickly and then he got up to greet us.
"Gentlemen, you are on time. Excellent. Please follow me. ” He walked over to a panel on the wall, hit a set of buttons that opened a pressure-operated door and showed us into another large room that looked like an ultramodern waiting room. Danish modern couches and chairs with matching coffee and end tables. The light was indirect and diffused. The floor had some kind of institutional carpeting that was both non-attractive and tough. He stepped out of our way as we walked in.
"Someone will call for you shortly and will show you where to go. If you need anything please use the intercom. ” He motioned to it and left, with the door sliding quietly into place.
"They must use this place a lot. Seems to me that they have other interests beside us. ” Matt walked around placing his hand here and there on the walls trying to sense movement, vibrations or surface structure.
"Notice? ” I raised my hand to the walls.
"No, what? ” Matt asked.
"No pictures. No clocks. No plants. ” I walked over to the coffee table and looked down. There was a single clean glass smokey brown ashtray. "No magazines. Not even old ones. Not like most waiting rooms, is it? ”
Matt just shook his head, finally realizing he wasn’t going to feel anything but the hard surface of the wall. He sat down and waited.
An hour and a half passed with very few words exchanged between us. I settled in to do some final tuning on the papers and he pulled out his own notebook and was writing down some of his thoughts. It seemed uncomfortable between us, but the surroundings were not conducive to a good old heart to heart discussion about anything. It gave us both the creeping paranoid feeling we were being watched.
Finally, a door slid open and another large framed man in dark sunglasses stepped out and motioned to me to come with him. Matt got up and started to cross the room, when the man stopped him with a gentle but firm set of fingertips on his chest. He reached down and took the bag Matt was holding and then politely but firmly motioned toward the couch again.
"It’s OK. If I need you I’ll have someone come and get you, Sergeant Reilly. Thank you. ” Matt nodded but I was sure not happy about this clown’s actions. It has been my observation that Marines are not really quick to warm up to people that try to manhandle them, no matter how gentle they may approach the subject. Matt was no different. This guy was not winning points with my friend and associate right now or with me. We walked down what seemed like an endless set of corridors all of which had doors with no signs. At the far end of one of them he stopped and turned. I looked around and waited for him to do something.
The door opened and another older man came out and took the bag from the large man and ushered me inside into a darkened room illuminated only by ceiling lights shining down on a huge table with people sitting around it. The man directed
me to the end of the table and the large comfortable leather swivel chair. The lights created small luminous pools on the table where I could see papers and the hands of the men that were sitting there as well. Each wore a dark suit and tie. They were older and seemed to be appraising me as I sat. The man at the far end of the table was rail thin with silver gray hair and had a slight problem with his eyes since he was wearing what looked like the bottoms of Coke bottles in a huge set of black hornrimmed frames. His body was constantly in motion shifting from side to side and stacking and re-stacking the papers in front of him.
I smiled and nodded to the other men, took a deep breath and braced myself for the sheer weight of the praise, adulation and accolades about to be heaped upon me.