Manhattan (2014) s01e05 Episode Script

Previously on Manhattan I want to talk about your colleagues in the tech area.
Why don't you ask Frank? You were the best student I ever had.
And you know that I would back you to the edge of the Earth.
- You are a biologist? -Botanist.
Here, I'm just a physicist's wife.
Too many great minds have been forced to abandon their work.
What a pity it would be to lose another.
It's an artificial hive.
I wanna study them.
Okay, suspicious words and phrases updated hourly.
You hear any of these words, you're gonna press this button and security will hop on the line.
There's something I need to tell you.
We're building a weapon.
No inglés.
You read a paper of mine.
"New Approach to Nuclear Cosmology.
" - Right.
- Your approach wasn't new.
You're a self-righteous old man on his professional deathbed.
Akley might not know what you really are, but I do.
It's KPS community radio.
On our first day of broadcast on the Hill, we take you to a distant land.
It can't be found in any atlas.
This is Memories of You.
- I know your secret.
- Mmm-hmm? Don't tell your girlfriends.
I don't want their husbands stealing my technique.
That's not what I'm talking about.
For the last few weeks, you've been home for dinner every night.
You've barely set foot in the tech area over the weekend.
We're going back to Brookline.
The project's winding down.
Niels Bohr helped you finish it, didn't he? We're not winding down, Abby.
We're just getting started.
Then what is it? You love your job.
It's complicated.
Yeah, I'm glad we're not going just yet.
My job's quite fun actually.
Not that they're gonna give a switchboard girl a Nobel Peace Prize, but Did she die? Looked like you might have been sputtering out back there.
The engine's fine.
I'm a bit of a shade tree mechanic.
You want me to take a gander under the hood? I should be on my way.
Something special for the old lady? Mine wants an electric blender for her birthday.
Like I'm Andrew Carnegie.
Anyway, you drive safe.
You double-checked the center of gravity on the alignment rod? I told you it's good.
You look a little out to lunch is all.
Better pull it together before the presentation.
Ante up.
A buck for the betting pool.
How many Krauts we're gonna vaporize.
I don't gamble.
Shh! Here it comes.
Auf Wiedersehen.
This is Frank Winter.
I need an outside line.
Indiana.
Is that Chanel No.
5? I thought they stopped shipping that.
Oh, my mother planned ahead.
Emptied the pantry and filled it with bottles.
The Nazi flag is flying over Paris, and the thing she fears most is running out of perfume.
How's that sweetheart of yours? Can't complain.
Pretty thing like her, I wouldn't either.
Big man on campus.
- Your classes good? - Same old.
World buys new shoes, academia digs in its heels.
Now, Frank, have you figured out what you're gonna do when you graduate? God bless you.
What, are you sick? It's just a cold.
Well, just get yourself a good winter coat.
Young men like you need a good coat and a sharp razor.
How's that sweetheart of yours? She's good.
She's good.
I'd better get going.
Happy birthday, Pop.
Gesundheit.
- Oh, old man's birthday, huh? - Eighty eight years.
He'll bury all of us.
Did you talk to him? He thinks I'm an undergrad at Columbia.
Silver lining is he doesn't remember what a son of a bitch he used to be.
Well, space-time is curved.
Maybe we're all living in the past, huh? Good to know at least one senior citizen has his faculties intact.
Ham on rye.
Want me to cut the crusts off for you, kiddo? Our task was to present a prototype with an ignition system that's not only functional but reliable.
We've incorporated redundant triggering mechanisms that must all agree before the propellant is fired.
This ensures that detonation occurs at the optimal altitude, maximizing blast radius and guaranteeing the Guaranteeing the most efficient destruction of targets both hard and soft.
It'll never fly.
The ignition system? The plane.
Too goddamn heavy.
Major, maybe you haven't accounted for the weight removed from the B-29's three gun posts.
You haven't accounted for fuel.
The weight and balance specs don't include petrol.
Gassed up, the B-29 tips 26 tons heavier than when it rolls off the assembly line.
Try to fly that thing, she'll wind up in the drink.
I wasn't informed.
That airplanes run on gas? Bottom line is you're no closer to a deliverable weapon than you were two weeks ago.
How the hell are we supposed to cut 800 pounds? It's a modified cannon.
Cannons are heavy.
They have to be, or they bust apart when you fire them.
Turns our Jesus can't walk on water after all.
Don't worry about it, Chuck.
We mortals have more fun anyway.
We're talking about 2,000 years of ballistic science.
Have another drink.
I've had plenty.
Well, your little oversight set us back two weeks.
What's one more night, huh? I didn't order that.
Heard you caught a bad beat with our friends over in ordnance today.
Got to put that cannon of yours on a diet, huh? Compartmentalization.
I can't really talk about it.
You know, I had a neighbor once.
Big beefcake of a guy.
Couldn't please his wife.
So he hatches a theory.
If he screws her more often, eventually, she'll whistle like a teakettle.
So he drives home from work for a nooner.
He wakes her up at 3:00 a.
m.
He runs in from mowing the lawn.
Bam! Zoom Nothing.
So, one day, the wife's home alone.
Ding-dong.
Salesman.
He's peddling ice boxes.
Now, I don't know how this slick shrimp does it, but five minutes later, they are making like a corkscrew.
And right out of the gate, she goes kaboom.
It turns out, all she needed was one good bang.
Son of a bitch.
Is he talking about my wife? Christ, you really are off your game.
"One good bang.
" He's talking about Thin Man.
Two thousand years of ballistic science only apply if your cannon needs to fire more than once.
We want our cannon to bust apart.
It only has to fire once.
So it can be thinner and lighter.
That old jalopy's still got some fuel in his tank.
He could teach you how to give the goods to your old lady.
Yeah, like I need sex tips from a Commie.
What did you say? - Just trying to help.
- Like you helped Richard Lavro? Good night, gentlemen.
Babbit's a Communist? - How do you know? - He's friends with Richard Lavro.
Glen Babbit has been part of this project since there was a project.
He slept in a tent for two weeks when we had no place else to put him, and he never complained.
Besides, he's a Jew.
This is not a man who's passing secrets to the Germans.
You're focused on today's problem.
I'm talking about tomorrow's.
You can't swing a dead animal up on this hill without hitting some genius who attended a Communist rally.
Including Robert Oppenheimer.
Yes, but Oppenheimer never knew Richard Lavro.
The physicist's physicist.
Made some of the key discoveries in quantum theory.
Tenured at Harvard until October, 1939 when he disappeared.
Sounds like you've been reading too many ghost stories.
Richard Lavro is not a ghost.
He's a defector.
In '39, he sailed from New York to London, then London to Moscow.
Now he directs a group in laboratory number two in the Academy of Sciences, the Soviet Manhattan Project.
What does any of this have to do with Glen Babbit? The USSR is a frozen cow pasture.
They barely have indoor plumbing.
Yet somehow, this country that has to import its elevators from Yonkers has a nuclear program that's riding up your ass.
And you think Babbit gave Lavro our nuclear research? Gave, is giving, will continue to give.
Last time you had a theory, I ended up with a dead mathematician and a 10-page bill for fencing.
And you want to disrupt the crucial work that's happening here because you're waging a war against a country that's technically our ally? Technically.
I expect your full cooperation.
And I expect the full cooperation of your staff.
Nobody thought to ask Babbit about any of this during his intake interview? He claimed he never spoke to Lavro.
I lied.
I met him at the Solvay Conference in '33.
We ran into each other at a couple of symposiums over the next few years, but that's all.
- He was a good physicist.
-And an active Communist.
Well, 10 years ago, so were half the scientists in America.
It wasn't an issue.
Well, it becomes an issue when you lie during your security interview.
Well, I got jittery.
Any connection to Lavro looks bad.
I didn't think anybody was gonna call me on it.
Maybe Isaacs was at one of those conferences.
Saw you two talking to each other.
A drunken kid says something stupid in a bar Yeah, and I hear about it from the security office.
Did you ever talk to Lavro about fission? Of course not.
Anybody comes to you with questions, you stonewall them.
Stick to your story.
- Jesus, Frank.
- You never met him.
I'm not as good a poker player as you.
Well, you lied to get in here.
You can certainly do it again.
I'll find out what the kid knows.
Leave it alone, Frank.
We got the plutonium.
We got real work to do.
- It'll all blow over.
- Just like Sid Liao? There's no breeze here, Glen.
Things don't blow over.
Liza.
So these are your pets everyone's buzzing about? Well, they won't bring you your paper, but they won't bite the postman either.
Here.
This was mixed in with ours.
I didn't peek.
So, you can see why the journal sent it back.
I mean, I know the censors have to be vigilant, but if you took even a cursory glance, you'd see that nothing and by subject matter is classified.
I study plants.
In this case, the pollination preferences of the Apis mellifera.
The European honey bee.
Interesting critters.
I always thought they were only good for ruining picnics.
- Mrs.
Winter - Dr.
Winter.
Scientists are prohibited from publishing during their tenure in the Manhattan District.
I don't have a tenure here, and I'm not employed on the Project.
But you are a scientist.
Captain, I sacrificed my job to come here with my husband because his work is crucial to the war effort.
Mine is not, but it is crucial to me.
Says here you studied in France.
During college, yes.
Well, I was in France, too.
Not the Sorbonne, but the Argonne.
You know what I remember most? The food.
Because that's what you do in a war, make the best of it.
Before you go, Dr.
Winter, your bees There have been some complaints.
Strategic bombing.
Six thousand civilians on detonation.
Ours will be 50 times more powerful.
So suddenly you care about collateral damage? You didn't seem to at the PX last night.
I had a lot to drink.
Tell Dr.
Babbit I'm sorry.
Don't say another word to anyone.
Don't even think his name.
Jesus, relax.
I apologize.
You think I give a shit? G-2 shakes your tree, you make sure nothing falls.
You want me to lie to military intelligence? You saw two men who can think circles around you just talking shop at a conference.
There's no conspiracy.
Just a figment of your imagination.
I worked as the staff assistant at the Physics Department at Harvard.
Answered phones, ran the mimeo.
I'm sure your parents were very proud.
You just keep your mouth shut.
And I delivered mail.
One day, an envelope shows up for Dr.
Lavro.
It wasn't sealed.
Yeah? Sounds like you're the one G-2 should be interested in.
It was a ticket to London on the Cunard Line.
So what? He defected from London.
It wasn't for Lavro.
His had already arrived, same sort of envelope.
The ticket was in Babbit's name.
Fritz, let me borrow that French letter you keep in your drawer.
You can't borrow a condom.
- Anyway, I already used it.
- Rubbish.
I've seen you gaze wistfully at it every day since the Army handed it out.
Meeks got one too.
Take his.
Meeks is in Albuquerque with a chorus girl from The Wizard of Oz.
Tin Man's probably getting his joints oiled as we speak.
Meeks has a girlfriend? Only a true miser hides a resource he'll never need.
See you later.
Is everybody getting laid but me? It's just sex, Fritz.
Is it because I'm husky? Orson Welles is overweight.
The papers say he married Rita Hayworth.
How long's it been? - A little While.
- Fritz.
Twenty nine years, 11 months, 19 days.
Then let's call this an early birthday present.
Should we put on the radio or something? What? Oh, no.
- You're not gonna do it in my room.
Get over here.
Um Her, her, not her.
The one with the bob, she charges by the minute.
That's a good deal if you're a quick draw and you like short hair.
Wait.
You want me to sleep with a They're all whores? They're capitalists.
It's basic economics.
Supply and demand.
I took econ at Cornell.
This definitely wasn't on the syllabus.
These girls make five dollars a week at the lunch counter, but they're walking around with gold mines under their skirts.
I always thought it would be with someone special.
Jeannie's special.
She plays the bassoon.
Huh.
At least she cleans her sheets.
Why don't you tell me again? You met Richard Lavro in 1933.
You ran into him at a conference or two.
Maybe three.
Physics is a small pond.
But you didn't really know him? That's why you lied during your security interview, because the fact that you met him wasn't really relevant.
To our work here, it wasn't.
I met Charles Lindbergh once.
Doesn't make me a fascist or an airplane pilot.
You know how G-2 operates.
If they sniff blood in the water, if there's any whiff of impropriety But you lied to me, too.
You're lying right now.
What did Isaacs tell you? A ticket to London.
That's what he saw.
I'm not a Communist, Frank.
The ticket was in your name.
It was delivered to Lavro.
Jesus.
I've never even been to London.
So some travel agent made a clerical mistake? Isaacs has imagined this whole thing? They're gonna come after you.
You better get your story straight.
I didn't get on any boat.
But you were going to.
Did you help him defect? Are you passing him information now? No.
Then why was your name on that ticket? - Frank.
- Why? You know why.
You know.
He asked me to leave with him.
He thought the ticket would convince me.
He wanted to start a new life.
He was naive.
We both were.
But I have never betrayed my country.
You were married when I met you.
That was a long time ago.
From three major publications a year to zero.
It's like Agatha Christie.
One day, she vanished.
Don't you think those sons of bitches are gonna give my career a funeral with full honors? I'm sorry.
Well, I'm gonna keep on typing, and they can keep on redacting, and eventually, they'll run out of ink.
Can you tell me what's wrong? I had a disagreement with Glen.
The sort that would ruin a perfectly good weekend in Cape May? No, this is different.
Glen lent us his car for our honeymoon.
And he sat in the waiting room at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital for 10 hours when I was in labor.
Whatever it is, apologize and be done with it.
I don't even know who I'd be apologizing to.
The man's not who you think he is.
He's been lying to me since the day I met him, since the day we met his wife.
Glen's never lied to me.
And everyone deserves a little privacy, Frank.
He told you? He didn't have to.
You know, in all these years, there's only ever really been one bone of contention between Glen and me.
You know what it is? No matter what you do, he refuses to judge you.
Under each arm, the sandman has an umbrella.
One of them is covered in colorful pictures, of all the wondrous things in the world.
And this umbrella, he puts on the headboards of the good children, so they will dream wonderful stories all the night through.
The other umbrella has no pictures.
It's black and frayed, and wires poke out.
The children who get this umbrella toss and turn all night long, for they are very bad.
And when they wake in the morning, they haven't dreamed anything.
They haven't dreamed anything at all.
Shall we begin? Some gentlemen from Washington paid Glen Babbit a visit last night.
- It wasn't a social call.
- What did Babbit tell them? That's not my business.
What matters now is that you tell them the truth.
They pulled your security file this morning.
Due diligence.
They're gonna put you on record.
Whatever you know about Babbit, you have to protect yourself.
And what if Babbit is not a Communist? You know, when I was a boy, my old man, first snow, he'd stick a Winchester in my hand.
He'd drag me out to the woods to shoot a whitetail.
We'd sit there all day freezing our stones off.
You see, my old man refused to go home without a kill.
I read Babbit's work in college.
He is an underappreciated scientist.
- He's one of the best around.
- And you want me to shoot him? Charlie, you're not the hunter here.
These men will not go back to Washington without a trophy.
And if they can't bag a deer, they will settle for a grouse.
You got a brilliant career ahead of you.
Don't throw it away by lying to protect the wrong man.
I need a word.
I'm submitting my resignation.
I'll talk to Oppenheimer.
They came by my house.
What did you tell them? The last four months, the Army's been trying to take us behind the woodshed.
I am not giving them any more ammunition.
What did you say? I stuck with my story, just like you told me to.
But it doesn't matter, because sooner or later, they're gonna talk to the kid.
It's better to resign now for the good of the group.
You are the group.
Frank, at some point, we all need to pay for the sins of the past.
- I am out of ration stamps.
-Not accepted.
It won't be up to you when Isaacs talks.
You let me worry about Isaacs.
The kid already said he's gonna sing.
Well, I'll try a new approach.
She fixed you up with a painted lady? Our Helen? I underestimated both of you.
And lo, Prometheus gave man the gift of fire.
Yep, it was hot.
So which one of them was it? Lucy? Peg? - I don't kiss and tell.
- Please.
Shall I just check the infirmary for young ladies with crush wounds? I'd look for the girl with the biggest smile on her face.
Whoever she is, her moans kept me up half the night.
Sorry if we made too much of a racket.
Cut the shit.
I'll tell you why I was up all night.
Comforting poor Jeannie.
She said you ran away before she could even get your trousers off.
No, that's not true.
You knocked over her lamp on the way out.
I heard the bulb break.
Look, Helen, the truth is I don't want to hear it, Fritz.
You just pay her the $2.
25.
But I didn't have sex with her! And we agreed on $2 flat.
Yeah, well, the extra quarter is for the light bulb.
You like it? The music on the radio.
- Music.
- Music.
You know, we could teach each other.
God knows I need your help with my Spanish.
Do you know what a post office is? There's one in the pueblo.
Post office? Um El correa? - El correo.
- Correo.
I'm sorry.
Do you think that you could post that for me? Do you understand? - Operator.
- I need an outside line.
Indiana.
Let there be light.
I'm sorry about the misunderstanding.
I brought your money, too.
Here.
I've had customers cross the finish line in 10 seconds flat.
You're the first guy who didn't make it to the starting gate.
I just remembered an equation I hadn't written down, and I didn't want to forget it.
You whiz kids.
Always in your heads.
You deserve some fun every once in a while.
You know, as long as you're paid up Uh Have you seen The Mummy's Tomb? It's playing at the PX.
How much does it cost to take you to the movies? Joey asleep? You didn't You didn't steal something, did you? I stole you away from the most eligible Jewish bachelors in Brookline.
But you would never cheat, right? What are you talking about? I don't know.
I got Frank Winter an outside line today.
And on the call, he said that you took work from other scientists and published it as your own.
Well, that's bullshit, Abby.
Frank Winter's had it out for me ever since we got here, 'cause he's jealous, 'cause I've accomplished more in a few months than he has in almost a year.
Tell me exactly what he said.
He was talking to his father.
Mmm-hmm? But he said he might go to Oppenheimer.
He said one conversation, and your career would be finished.
And I was so upset I had to come home.
He wasn't talking to his father.
He was talking to you, trying to get in my head.
- So you would never - Plagiarize? How could you even ask me that? - Jesus, Abby.
-You're right.
I'm sorry.
- I've never even cheated on my taxes.
- No, you haven't.
- Now you don't trust me? - Of course I do.
Hey.
Was that supposed to scare me? Shut me up? You come into my house with your bullshit accusations.
You toy with my marriage? You don't know me.
You don't know where I'm from.
You ever talk to my wife again, I will kill you.
So classical four-dimensional general relativity combined with the nuclear forces can explain the relative abundances of all known elements in the universe? You finally looked at my paper.
Congratulations.
I looked at it when I rejected it from the Physics Review a year ago.
But that line wasn't a line from your paper.
It was a line from a 1932 graduate dissertation by a cosmologist named Pierre Brajeux.
It was sadly under-read, but I read it in the stacks of Widener Library at Harvard, and so did you.
Science is a conversation.
We all stand on the shoulders of giants.
The rest of us don't pretend to be 1,000 feet tall.
- It's one sentence.
- It was a paragraph.
Step by step, word for word.
So you've been sitting on this for a year waiting for what? Let me tell you what's gonna happen now.
You're gonna fall on your sword.
You're gonna tell G-2 that you don't know the first damn thing about Glen Babbit.
It was copied into my notebook.
I didn't even realize I'd taken concepts from Brajeux until the paper was published.
I would have gotten there on my own anyway.
- It was an honest mistake.
-That you could have easily corrected.
Imagine you wrote a paper that opened every door in academia.
And it wasn't a fluke.
You had the goods to back it up, but you accidentally borrowed a piece of it.
- I think the word is plagiarism.
-One paragraph, not the whole paper.
Not even the lion's share.
Just a building block.
Just a stepping stone.
And nobody noticed.
Would you come clean? Doesn't matter what I would do.
All that matters is what you do once you leave this office.
My wife wouldn't even look me in the eye last night.
God Excuse me.
How's your lunch, Captain? Making the best of it? Dr.
Winter, we're in the middle of a meeting.
- I'm afraid you - You are afraid, aren't you? Battle-scared warrior, and all it takes to scare you is a woman with half a brain.
If I could make an exception to the publication policy, I would.
But they're dead, all of them.
- But you know that, don't you? - What? Wasn't it enough for you to kill my career? - Who's dead? - My honey bees.
On.
This is the broad with the bees.
Is there anything here that you really care about, Captain? Maybe you have a scruffy little mutt who sleeps on your feet at the end of your bed over on Officers Row, and you leave him tied up out back when you come here to work.
Wouldn't it be a riot if some rat poison found its way into his cute little bowl, hmm? I don't have a dog, lady.
And I'm not the exterminator.
Get a hold of yourself.
You were at the PX.
Is that right? Drinking at the bar in the PX? That's correct.
And as the clerical assistant in the Physics Department at Harvard, did you ever work for Richard Lavro? I worked for all the professors.
And at the PX, you made mention that Dr.
Babbit had an acquaintance with Dr.
Lavro.
Is that right? Do you have knowledge that Dr.
Babbit knew Lavro? I never met Glen Babbit until I joined the project.
But you do have reason to believe that Dr.
Babbit had an association with Dr.
Lavro, that he may have shared sensitive information? I don't know what you did.
I'm not sure I want to.
But apparently, Isaacs barely remembers the name Richard Lavro or any connection to me.
We can't remember something that never happened.
You know the irony? In the Soviet Union, they actually enforce the laws against Against it.
Five years hard labor.
I heard he married some girl half his age.
He thought this country could be better.
We all did, but I swear, if I'd known he was gonna defect You don't have to explain yourself to me.
- Music.
- That's right, music.
After I got back from the war, I met a guy, let me crash in the back of his repair shop.
He didn't know anything about radios, so I fixed them all.
He's with her again.