25

 

Pete Golding paced outside Niles Compton’s office. Alice watched him walk by her desk for the twentieth time. She shook her head, wondering when people would learn that you can wear the carpet down to fibers pacing and worrying, but that still couldn’t change the speed at which things happened. She had learned this after her ten-thousandth mile of doing exactly what Pete was doing now.

Pete stopped as the door finally opened. Niles was finished with his phone call to Scottsdale, Arizona.

“Well?” Pete asked.

Niles had spoken directly to the surviving member of the 1942 expedition to Brazil. Charles Kauffman, an associate professor under Enrico Fermi at the time, was still very cognizant of what they had achieved back in the war years. His mind was sharp and he remembered everything.

“The Army Corps of Engineers, along with the U.S. Navy and Army, removed one hundred and two pounds of enriched uranium from El Dorado.” Niles sat on the edge of Alice’s desk as he spoke. “They had discovered information from a spy in 1941 that the ore samples were indeed real and were stored in the archives, the same samples and cross Farbeaux got his hands on in just the last few years. Anyway, Mr. Kauffman explained to me that Fermi and the effort at the University of Chicago had yet to achieve that which they had been theorizing since Einstein had said it was possible—”

“A sustained chain reaction,” Pete said for him.

“That’s right. They needed something that they did not have, a source of enriched uranium. Well, we now know the source fell directly into their laps, thrown there by the U.S. military and Corps of Engineers when they confirmed the existence of Padilla’s lagoon and samples. It was never about the gold. It was always the uranium.”

“Let me guess from my memory of the dates,” Pete said. “By the time the expedition had met its ill-fated end, Fermi and his team had achieved their reaction in the States?”

“Yes.”

“And the material?”

“It was placed in storage in Utah by the Army Corps of Engineers, and forgotten about until just recently.”

“Is that it?” Pete asked.

It was Alice who guessed at it.

“The material has come up missing, hasn’t it?”

“Yes, it has. And you will never guess who the beneficiary of this unusual find was.”

“Well, who was it?” Pete asked when Niles didn’t say anything more.

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