across even the Iron Curtain. But in reality, a secret government department, an initiative to research technologies “acquired” from the Empire State, with the aim of building a defense against… well, Nimrod wasn’t entirely clear on that point and neither, it seemed, was Eisenhower. Granting Atoms for Peace carte blanche had only turned the new organization into the blackest of secret government agencies.
That they were tasked with handling research related to the Fissure and beyond was what bothered Nimrod. The Fissure was, well, it was his. He knew more about it than anyone else, in this dimension anyway.
He didn’t like Atoms for Peace, and he knew the feeling was mutual.
From the offices of Tisiphone Realty, Nimrod could see the Chrysler Building. He stood at the window often, watching. He wondered if the Director of Atoms for Peace, the remarkable Ms Evelyn McHale, did the same from the Cloud Club, the former cocktail lounge at the top of the Chrysler Building that Atoms for Peace had co-opted into their headquarters. He didn’t really think she did; from what he’d heard, Ms McHale had something of a phobia when it came to the Empire State Building. Perhaps that was part of the problem she had with him, and the Department.
Nimrod glanced at the men around him. There were five agents – two standing behind, one posted on his left and one on his right, and one in front. They each wore a black suit; each had a narrow black tie against a starched white shirt. Each wore a hat, black, of course. They were not Secret Service, but they did a fairly good impression. They were certainly better dressed than his own agents, but then his own agents had to melt into the general populace. Atoms for Peace were different. Their agents rarely made public appearances.
Nimrod wondered what his escort was for, exactly. The agents certainly weren’t for his protection (not inside their own headquarters) and they certainly weren’t for hers. The agents who stood around him in the elevator – and Nimrod, too – were nothing but insects to her, as was every other human who inhabited the city, inhabited the whole country.
Nimrod stroked his mustache in thought and the elevator glided to a halt, a bell announcing their arrival.
The doors slid apart, revealing an elegant lobby swathed in maroon carpet, the walls heavy with more of the walnut paneling. The lead agent stepped forward, Nimrod following and finding himself ankle-deep in the carpet pile. He heard the other agents’ feet swoosh as they walked behind him.
Opposite the elevator, across the lobby, was a large set of double doors, the bottom third of which were more of the beautiful walnut. The upper two thirds were frosted glass panels, acid-etched with sunburst rays and other geometric shapes. To a casual eye, they looked like just more of the Art Deco theme that filled the entire building. To Nimrod, the designs were a little off, a modern copy somehow altered.
Captain Nimrod glanced to the agent on his right, and saw the man was sweating inside his elegant suit. Nimrod smiled to himself. They were afraid. Nimrod was too – how could you not be, when you were about to have an audience with the ghost of a woman who had appeared as a glowing blue terror after the Fissure had almost been destroyed eighteen months ago, her phantom somehow expelled from the shadowlands between dimensions, granted with the appalling power to see and to interfere with the universe on a subatomic level.
Nimrod tapped his foot in the absurdly deep carpet as they waited. Finally, one of the double doors opened, and another man in a black suit nodded to the lead agent. He glanced at the party, and then looked Nimrod in the eye.
“The Director will see you now.”
The Cloud Club had been among the city’s finest, most exclusive establishments. In the early days, Nimrod himself had received numerous invitations to attend functions there, but he was never comfortable in social engagements, and besides, he preferred to drink his scotch at ground level. Over the years, as he worked at the Empire State Building just a few blocks away, probing the mystery of the Fissure and what lay beyond, the fortunes of the Cloud Club declined as the Great Depression and then the Second World War took their toll. The top of the Chrysler Building had been closed for several years by the time Atoms for Peace were brought into existence.