Flinn shrugged. "Not without a special effort, and I'm not going to make that effort unless I have to."
The physicist sighed and his tanned face relaxed a little. He looked at Flinn with a new respect. "I guess I'd better put you in the picture." He reopened the folder and extracted several newspaper clippings. "What I'm about to divulge is so unbelievable that—well, I'd best break it to you gradually. You know my job. That fact and this tan—" he pointed to his face—"should give you an inkling of what I've been up to the last few weeks."
Flinn thought, and nodded. "I'm to assume that you've been out in the Pacific, is that right?"
"Yes," Wilmer said. "Eniwetok. Have you been following our progress in the papers?"
"Not really. I've been a little too busy, I'm afraid."
"No matter." The physicist handed the clippings to Flinn. "Read these."
Flinn scanned the first clipping. It bore a recent date.
"'... Reliable sources,'" he read aloud, "'report that a civilian, believed to be a scientist, is being held incommunicado in the Pentagon. All efforts on the part of newsmen to gain additional information have been met with polite but firm rebuffs. Spokesmen from the AEC have refused to confirm or deny theories that the man's detention is in some way connected with the recent fiasco at Eniwetok Atoll ...'"
He read the second. It was date-lined Honolulu, a week before the other.
"'Beyond the terse comment that there were "no casualties," all official sources are silent today concerning the news leak of the failure of a nuclear device in our Pacific Test Area. It has been understood that this device, the third in a series of thermonuclear test shots, failed to detonate. Since this test was scheduled to have been a "tower shot," under rigid instrumental control, much speculation has arisen ...'"