“What are you doing, anyway?”
Usually her daughter wouldn’t notice unless it somehow involved her. Such was the mind of a twelve-year-old.
“I have some homework.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
She walked away shaking her head.
Ellie opened the folder again and pulled out one of the articles to read. In 1953 the army sprayed clouds of what they believed was a nontoxic material—zinc cadmium sulfide—in an effort to test how chemicals would disperse during biological warfare. Multiple cities were used as test sites, as were multiple areas within each city. In Minneapolis the material was sprayed sixty-one times in four parts of the city from generators in the rear of trucks or from rooftops.
One of the sites sprayed in Minneapolis was a public elementary school. Students were tested at various times with “special lights” to determine if the chemicals—zinc sulfide is a fluorescent phosphor—showed residual traces on their shoes, clothing, or bodies. And if it showed up, how long it stayed.
Ellie stopped. Took a deep breath. She was feeling a bit sick to her stomach and now the pepperoni on the pizza didn’t help matters.
The articles talked about demands for full disclosure from the army. Zinc cadmium sulfide was now believed to be toxic and could possibly cause cancer and some birth defects. Yet a committee of the National Research Council in 1997 determined that the amounts used in these studies were not harmful.
However, they admitted their research was “sparse” and relied on incomplete information supplied by the army and Fort Detrick about the “quantities dispersed” and the “exact composition of the fluorescent particles” used.
They did admit that more than a hundred biological warfare simulation tests such as these were conducted by the army in urban and rural areas between 1952 and 1969 without the public’s knowledge. Some used zinc cadmium sulfide. Others used Bacillus globigii or Serratia marcescens—both common bacillus found in water, food, and sewage.
Ellie placed the articles back in the folder. Carefully she slid the photographs into the envelope and noticed that there was another photograph, stuck to the inside. She pried it loose and pulled it out.
This one was stamped 1968. Another group of schoolchildren, but this time posing with three men who were all dressed in uniforms. They stood behind the children, smiling for the camera. She glanced at the photograph, then stared at the men, stunned to recognize two of them.
No, it wasn’t possible.
She held it up to the light, then flipped it over to find a label on the back. She read the caption identifying the men, and now she was certain. The man in the middle was a young Colonel Abraham Hess. To his left was an army doctor named Dr. Samuel Gunther. And the man standing on Colonel Hess’s right was Ellie’s father.
DAY 3
48.
Haywood County, North Carolina
Creed had awakened in the middle of the night to the battering sound of rain on the gymnasium roof, so he wasn’t surprised to find water running in the streets the next morning. By now he expected to trudge through mud. He didn’t, however, expect the cold.
Overnight the temperature had fallen. The chill in the air hit him in the face as soon as he stepped out the door. Both he and Maggie looked at each other and headed back inside to pull on extra layers.
Peter Logan and a National Guardsman named Ross picked up Creed, Maggie, and Bolo in a Land Rover. Mud covered every inch of the vehicle; the windows were splattered, making visibility difficult. The bumpy trek up the mountain and the two strange men in the front seat made Bolo nervous. Creed let the dog sit on the leather seat between him and Maggie, despite Logan’s disapproving look.
Thankfully, the rain had stopped. The fog had not returned, either, but the blue-gray clouds still looked swollen and ready to erupt without warning.
The Land Rover could go only so far. Then the foursome pulled on daypacks and followed Ross to the digging site.
Logan was subdued this morning. There were no wisecracks, no slaps on the back or inappropriate comments. Gone, too, was the leather jacket. He was dressed this time like he expected to get dirty. Creed wondered if Logan’s boss was getting impatient.