ScienceDirect - Technol Rep Tohoku Univ ... - Garryck Osborne

252 The Hunt for Zero Point
science, America's technological lead over the rest of the world accelerated
exponentially after the Second World War. But the black world
was a low-grade reflection of the system that had been employed to
protect the secrets of the Kammlerstab within the confines of the Skoda
Works.
The state within a state had been transported four thousand miles to
the west and somehow, I just knew, Kammler had come with it.
The intuitive feeling I'd experienced all these years in obscure corners
of the U.S. aerospace and defense industry had suddenly acquired a face.
Throughout the next interview, I felt the presence of the info-minders
like a low-intensity headache. After the near-informality of my time with
Bob Widmer, the proximity of three company caretakers in the room
gnawed away at my concentration. They were here to watch over the man
who could levitate paper clips on his desk.
But now that the interview was over, the minders were looking the
other way. They'd done their job and I'd done mine. Boyd Bushman had
spilled no secrets either on or off the record and that was what mattered.
Nor had he in any way tarnished the reputation of the Lockheed Martin
company.
That I had learned nothing of value must have shown on my face, for
without warning, Bushman leaned forward and put his hand on my
shoulder.
He asked me what was wrong and I told him.
"It's a lonely walk, but a rewarding one," he said, so quietly that I
almost missed it. I looked into his eyes, which were quite blue but for that
superficial milkiness that sometimes denotes the onset of old age.
He smiled at me. "Keep traveling the road and you might just find
what you're looking for."
"What do you mean?" I asked cautiously.
"In all my years with this company, no one has asked me the questions
you came here with today." He paused a moment, then said: "Here, I
want to show you something."
He produced a vidéocassette from the folds of his loose-hanging suit
and gave me the same smile that had crossed his face a number of times
during the interview; usually, I noticed, when he needed a moment or
two to think about a particularly awkward question I'd thrown at him. He
looked not unlike Walter Matthau, the Hollywood actor, with a kindly,
hangdog expression and thick straight hair to match. Instinctively, I'd
liked him. But more to the point, I knew that I could trust him.
Unusually for someone who toiled in the heart of the U.S. defense-