Black Balloon

Chapter 30

We drove for hours along winding mountain roads, climbing high into the Swiss Alps. The trip was breathtaking, for both its beauty and the terror of plummeting to one's death. I gripped the door handle with white knuckles as Gendelman careened around blind curves, nothing separating us from certain death except an old man's tenuous grip on the wheel and the divine grace of God. I'm pretty sure my butthole physically suctioned me to the car seat. The view was beautiful but I was too terrified to enjoy it. We turned onto an unremarkable looking side road and began ascending an adjacent valley. A few hundred yards later, we encountered a guard shack surrounded on both sides by a tall chain link fence. Gendelman was waved through. A mile or so beyond this was a huge concrete structure built into the side of the mountain, as tall as it was wide; big, ugly, and grey with absolutely no consideration put into aesthetics. It was hard not to picture the artillery batteries at Normandy. One half expected to see 150mm turrets jutting from its façade.

We pulled up to another guard station at the building's base where two men in uniform checked Gendelman's ID and asked him questions in German. Several times they looked at me as they said something. I smiled and waved, but they ignored me. Finally, we were allowed to pass. The car drove into a massive hole in the earth, 30 feet wide and almost as tall. As we entered, the classical music on the radio turned to static and Gendelman clicked it off. The road continued into the mountain, lit overhead by endless rows of fluorescent lighting and enclosed on all sides by block walls. The tunnel narrowed as it descended until becoming a single lane, not wide enough for two vehicles to pass. He accelerated to 50 kilometers per hour, careening recklessly through the narrow cement tube, WAY TOO FAST for such an enclosed space. The yellow lights on the walls blurred into a single streak of light. A few moments later, he locked up the brakes and we skidded to a halt a few inches from a concrete wall. I'm not sure how he didn't slam right into it.

"We're here," he declared joyfully.

"We're where?"

"The TRPD complex. Project Halcyon."

A much more serene title than his last endeavor, I thought, having been named after a planet destroying bomb.

The walls of the tunnel's terminus parted like elevator doors, sending blinding light pouring into the tunnel. We drove through the opening. As my eyes adjusted, I found myself in a room that looked like a hangar for commercial airplanes; a huge open space with a domed ceiling supported by trussed rafters atop a polished concrete floor. And buzzing all around were...Wonka men. These dudes wore the same white jumpsuits, hairnets, and booties that had been so ubiquitous at Station 12. There were also nerds in white shirts and narrow black ties, complete with pocket protectors and slide rules. The only archetype not present were the military dick-knuckles barking orders and brandishing rifles. Here, Gendelman (or technically Professor Schneider) was in charge. He answered to no man. The Swiss had, as a condition of his employment, given him near-total control over the project. You would think a person in exile from the U.S. Government and seeking asylum would not have the bargaining leverage to pull off that deal, but such was the power of Frank Gendelman.

I stepped out of the car and stared admiringly at the sophisticated laboratory and all its fancy gadgets, fancy by 1950's standards at least. If someone had told me it was a NASA engineering facility, I would have believed them. Wonkas and skinny-ties began filing over to greet their boss, all of them visibly dripping with admiration for the man. They addressed him in German. I don't know what he said in return, but he pointed at me as he said it. It was something like: "German word, German word, Saul Giancarlo, German word," and they each waved at me or reached out to shake my hand. They were young, these kids, ranging from their early thirties to their late teens, most of them probably students. Gendelman took off through the crowd instructing me to follow. The men parted and dispersed back towards their work stations. Out of the crowd's far end suddenly emerged someone that stood out sharply from the others, because she was a woman, and a beautiful woman at that. She wore a pleated skirt longer than knee length and a conservative button up shirt. I recognized her immediately. It was Mildred Ashcroft.