I ditched the bike around the bend from the guard's station, hoping against hope that another group of women might be making their way back from lunch, providing me with a cover in which to disappear. But I had no such luck this time. It was too early in the day.

Alexei's car was also nowhere to be seen from where I was standing near the entrance. In fact, there was nothing about the sunny, bright day to give any indication of the stakes that were riding on whether or not I could get on the grounds.

I cleared my throat, quickly checking my skin and dress for any signs of blood, which I rubbed off as discreetly as possible. Then I approached the guard.

"You're not gonna believe this," I began, and I was immediately relieved to see that the guard was a young man, handsome if a bit skinny, with the beginnings of what I'm sure he hoped would soon be a moustache tickling his upper lip.

"What's that, honey?"

"I left my ID at my station yesterday and I'm just going to be in a heap of trouble if I don't get to work on time."

The young man shook his head, a discouraging sign, but I couldn't help but notice that a slight smile never left his face. I was admittedly very inexperienced at flirting, but if there was ever a time to figure it out, it was now.

"Oh, please," I begged, leaning forward onto the little shelf of the half-door between us in a way that I hoped was sexy and not just klutzy, my eyes landing on his nametag. "Please, Edwin, I wouldn't even ask but my supervisor's been riding me lately, and this would just be the last straw."

Young Edwin turned the shade of a pomegranate when I said his name, so I decided to double down. "I don't know if I've even met you yet, have I? How long have you been here?"

"Two weeks," he answered, still shaking his head, unable to make eye contact with me.

"And I didn't even notice," I smiled.

He chuckled then, his face ripening to an even darker shade of red, and he started looking through what seemed to be a directory before him. "What's your name?"

My mind went completely blank for a moment, when suddenly, by the grace of whoever it is that supposed to be looking out for us up there, the name popped into my head clear as day: "Golda. Golda Wexler."

He found the name on his list somewhere, looked up at me, and blushed again. Then he nodded for me to go in, and I was so excited I actually leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek before I did so.

Once on the grounds, I didn't have a clear plan of what to do next, as there would be another guard stationed at any of the building entrances, and I couldn't expect to flirt my way past all of them. It wasn't until my eyes landed on a small building off to the side of the main road with two Mexican women coming out of it with cleaning carts that I knew what I had to do.

I approached the building tentatively, steadying my breath and praying silently that this would work. Knocking gently on the open door, I stepped inside the small structure—almost a shack, really—and squinted to adjust to the darkened room.

"¿Sí?, asked a short, squarely-built woman before me, and it took me a moment of focusing on her stern face and wrinkled forehead to realize she was the same woman I had met yesterday. "¿Qué quieres esta vez?"

What do you want this time? It was a good question, and one that I didn't quite know how to answer. But I knew this woman was my only hope.

"Por favor," I began, my hands trembling suddenly and my breath uneven. "Necesito ayuda."

Her eyes turned a bit softer when I asked for help, and her head tilted back so she could judge me with a bit more perspective. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she lowered her head and spoke. "¿Qué tipo de ayuda?"

I smiled at the question. She wouldn't want to know what kind of help I needed unless she was considering it. I took a step forward, gesturing to the extra pairs of work boots and overalls folded neatly on shelves against the wall. "Un trabajo," I said, and she nodded with a certain kind of acceptance that let me know I wasn't the first girl to walk in here looking for a job, and I probably wouldn't be the last.

*

I adjusted the overalls that had been at least three sizes too big when I first put them on, tightening the straps so that the waist actually fell somewhere in the vicinity of the middle of my body, and then leaned over to roll up the pant legs one more time.

For the first time in my life, my terrible Spanish had probably been my biggest asset with Lorena, which I now knew to be the name of the woman who had helped me, because it was just the tipping point to convince her that no one as incompetent as me could ever pose a threat to the fort.

I pushed my cleaning cart up and down the main road that ran the length of all those weirdly-named buildings two times before my eyes finally fell on what they'd been searching for: Alexei's red car. It was parked in front of Y12, a two-story building that was not attached to the main entrance, but I could see from its layout that one day it would be—it was the senior wing of East Township, the one with all my science and math classes.

Next door was a building called X10, directly over what would be a vacant lot in my day. But after tilting my head this way and that, and closing my eyes a moment to imagine the walk from the boiler room, through the twisting hallway, into the science lab—

I opened my eyes. X10 was over the portals. It had to be.

The question was: If X10 would have the portals one day, then why was Alexei in Y12?

Pushing my cart with my head bowed down, I flashed my temporary work pass at the guard at Y12, who was thankfully distracted with the cigarette he was attempting to light in the soft breeze. He waved me in without any questions.

No one seemed to notice me as I pushed the cart down the unfamiliar hallway. Several people were marching with great purpose past the blandly painted walls, in and out of offices where the clacking of typewriters could be heard. I kept my head low, busying myself with some item in the cleaning cart whenever it seemed someone might be looking at me suspiciously.

I wasn't exactly sure what I was looking for, other than trying to ascertain where in the building Alexei may have gone off to. But my mind whirled endlessly as I walked, trying to piece together what I did know:

Jenny had stolen Alexei an ID, one that had let him come and go from this building whenever he pleased.

He'd had the ID for a while, probably months, or at least since Dave had died and Alexei had swooped in to take his place. That meant he'd had time to ingratiate himself to the workers here. They would trust him, think of him as one of their own.

And finally, Alexei was working for John, and whatever it was he was planning would ensure that the Russians got the bomb first. No, not the bomb—the fuel for the bomb. The enriched uranium. That must be what this building was for.

As I was turning these thoughts over in my mind, I became distracted by an incessant noise that started almost like a hum and continued to grow louder and louder the further I got down the hallway. It was a clicking sound, like the gurgle a car motor just before it runs out of gas.

Cherie had said that her mother monitored gauges, and that they would click and spin whenever they detected high levels of enriched uranium. Maybe that clicking could point me to the source of the uranium itself.

I entered the compact room, full of what appeared to be telephone operators—young women in practical dresses and pinned back hair—their fingers hovering over knobs with looks of great concentration on their faces. I took out a duster and began to lightly brush it over some of the unused equipment, grateful that nobody seemed to think this unusual.

"Esther?" a woman behind me asked an older woman, who had been sitting nearby on a stool and watching her own gauges.

"Yes?"

"There's something wrong with mine," the first woman said, sounding apologetic that she was being a nuisance.

"Let me see, Golda," Esther said as she left her station and approached the other woman's. My eyes couldn't help but dart up in curiosity. Golda looked exactly as I would have imagined—very much like Sage and Cherie, with dark blonde hair, a strong nose, and deep-set eyes. I was trying not to stare, but I couldn't help but steal another second to observe her, marveling at the odd sensation that the character from an almost mythological story was coming to life before my eyes.

Golda, and everyone else in this room for that matter, had no idea the significance of these little dials and knobs, nor did they have any way of knowing that a Russian traitor had been in their midst for months, sabotaging all their work.

But just as I was finishing this thought, mindlessly circling that duster over some machinery so as not to give myself away, something changed in the room.

At first, it was just that Golda's gauge wouldn't stop making the clicking sound. And it was growing louder, the needle itself starting to spin a bit more rapidly.

And then another woman's gauge started clicking too. "Esther?" she asked in a nervous, high-pitched voice that made her sound about twelve years old, though she was surely eighteen.

And another gauge. And then another.

Before Esther could do anything about it, all the dozen or so gauges in the room began to spin and click, whirring ever louder as they picked up speed. The clicking grew in volume until all of the young women were sitting back on their stools, looks of worry on their faces telling me that this was not a normal occurrence.

Even Esther seemed confused. "I'll..." she stuttered, "I'll get a supervisor."

I dropped the duster as Esther ran out of the room. There was no more time for charades. Approaching Golda, I leaned over by her stool and made eye contact.

"You don't know me," I began, whispering loudly over the cacophony of the gauges, "but I need your help."

Golda looked confused, searching for Esther or someone to save her.

"It's okay," I continued.

"What do you need?" she asked, worry knitting her brows together, still clearly thinking about her misfiring gauge and not about the strange cleaning lady suddenly bothering her.

"There's a room around here somewhere with a bunch of tubes in it. Pipes. Maybe shaped like an oval, a racetrack?"

She nodded, still not sure why I was asking about this. "And?"

"Where is it?"

She shook her head, looking around again for Esther or someone else to take over.

"Golda," I said, more forcefully this time, "please, just answer me. Where is the room?"

Golda only shrugged, her eyes darting to all the other girls who were staring in fear and disbelief at their clicking, clacking machinery, the din of it echoing off the metal panels that lined the little room. "It's in the basement," she finally answered, shaking her head in doubt.

And with the cleaning rag still gripped in my trembling hand, I turned and ran toward the stairwell. 

****

PS: I loved how many people last week wanted Marina to "kill John." LOL. Now what do you think she'll find in the basement??