us when we came in. The admiral said to a woman at a primitive cashier’s table: “Nueva York Board of Health, senora.” “Ah!” she muttered angrily. “For favor, no aqui! In back, understand? Come.” She beckoned a pretty waitress to take over at the cash drawer and led us into the steamy little kitchen. It was crowded with us, an old cook, and a young dishwasher. The admiral and the woman began a rapid exchange of Spanish. He played his part well. I myself couldn’t keep my eyes off the kid dishwasher who somehow or other had got hold of one of America’s top atomic secrets. Gomez was seventeen, but he looked fifteen. He was small-boned and lean, with skin the color of bright Virginia tobacco in an English cigarette. His hair was straight and glossy-black and a little long. Every so often he wiped his hands on his apron and brushed it back from his damp forehead. He was working like hell, dipping and swabbing and rinsing and drying like a machine, but he didn’t look pushed or angry. He wore a half-smile that I later found out was his normal, relaxed expression and his eyes were far away from the kitchen of the Porto Bello Lunchroom. The elderly cook was making it clear by the exaggerated violence of his gesture and a savage frown that he resented these people invading his territory. I don’t think Gomez even knew we were there. A sudden, crazy idea came into my head. The admiral had turned to him. “Como se llama, chico?” He started and put down the dish he was wiping. “Julio Gomez, senor. Porque, par favor? Que pasa?” He wasn’t the least bit scared. “Nueva York Board of Health,” said the admiral. “Con su per-miso-” He took Gomez’s hands in his and looked at them gravely, front and back, making tsk-tsk noises. Then, decisively: “Vamanos, Julio. Siento mucho. Usted esta muy enjermo.” Everybody started talking at once, the woman doubtless objecting to the slur on her restaurant and the cook to losing his dishwasher and Gomez to losing time from the job. The admiral gave them broadside for broadside and outlasted them. In five minutes we were leading Gomez silently from the restaurant. “La loteria!” a woman customer said in a loud whisper. “O las mutas,” somebody said back. Arrested for policy or marihuana, they thought. The pretty waitress at the cashier’s table looked stricken and said nervously: “Julio?” as we passed, but he didn’t notice.
Gomez sat in the car with the half-smile on his lips and his eyes a million miles away as we rolled downtown to Foley Square. The admiral didn’t look as though he’d approve of any questions from me. We got out at the Federal Building and Gomez spoke at last. He said in surprise: “This, it is not the hospital!” Nobody answered. We marched him up the steps and surrounded him in the elevator. It would have made anybody nervous-it would, have made me nervous-to be herded like that; everybody’s got something on his conscience. But the kid didn’t even seem to notice. I decided that he must be a half-wit or-there came that crazy notion again. The glass door said “U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, Office of Security and Intelligence.” The people behind it were flabbergasted when the admiral and party walked in. He turned the head man out of his office and sat at his desk, with Gomez getting the caller’s chair. The rest of us stationed ourselves uncomfortably around the room. It started. The admiral produced the letter and asked in English: “Have you ever seen this before?” He made it clear from the way he held it that Gomez wasn’t going to get his hands on it. “Si, seguro. I write it last week. This is funny business. I am not really sick like you say, no?” He seemed relieved. “No. Where did you get these equations?” Gomez said proudly: “I work them out.” The admiral gave a disgusted little laugh. “Don’t waste my time, boy. Where did you get these equations?” Gomez was beginning to get upset. “You got no right to call me liar,” he said. “I not so smart as the big physicists, seguro, and maybe I make mistakes. Maybe I waste the profesor Soo-har-man his time but he got no right to have me arrest. I tell him right in letter he don’t have to answer if he don’t want. I make no crime and you got no right!” The admiral looked bored. “Tell me how you worked the equations out,” he said. “Okay,” said Gomez sulkily. “You know the random paths of neutron is expressed in matrix mechanics by profesor Oppenheim five years ago, all okay. I transform his equations from path-prediction domain to cross-section domain and integrate over absorption areas. This gives u series and v series. And from there, the u-v relationship is obvious, no?”