We know that ATHENToR is a deliberate misspelling of athanor, complete with lowercase 'o', as cainam keenly observed. As with 'vail', I think the purpose is to draw our attention to it so that we will interpret it in some way with deeper and multiple meanings.
Quoth the wiki, with editorial boldface ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanor ):
We've got connections to The Tower (tarot card XVI, which this card most closely resembles) and Athens as the home town of Philostratus.In alchemy, an athanor is a furnace used to provide heat for alchemical digestion. An athanor is a self-feeding furnace, designed to maintain a uniform temperature.
The athanor was also called Piger Henricus, Slow Harry, because it was chiefly used in slower operations, and because when once filled with coals, it keeps burning a long time. For this reason the Greeks referred to it as "giving no trouble", as it did not need to be continually attended. It was also called the Philosophical furnace, Furnace of Arcana, or popularly, the Tower furnace. [1]
Other references
In the work Life of Apollonius by Philostratus the Athenian, an allegorical description is given of an occult hill. The author gives this hill the name "Athanor".
Part of me can't shake the feeling that ATHENToR is also an acronym, and the little 'o' stands for 'on' or 'of' or 'or'. At the same time, I'm now quite certain my anagram idea is not worth pursuing further.
The Tower tarot card is a symbol of hubris punished by humility (a la the Tower of Babel), which could certainly be the story of the research at Facility J.
"Two-faced" can mean deceitful. Not sure if this is part of the understanding of the card we're meant to acquire, but it would tie in with the hubris of The Tower.
I think there's more encoded in the numbering of the card as "XVI + I". The Tower is XVI, The Star is XVII ( = XVI + I), and The Magician is I. Here's a hypothesis: the story here is that The Magician is using an alchemical furnace, The Tower, to transmute The Star. So our new hydrophilic friend is the sum of the ingenuity of a scientist and the power of an attempt by humans to reach into heaven.
Sorry this is more than a bit disorganized. Hopefully something coherent managed to come through.
What I find toughest here is not knowing what sort of thing we're looking for. If it's a tinyurl, or a location, or a last name, there's some kind of guideline, but here it seems we're looking for an allegorical story that ties together all of these symbolic elements. I guess we'll know it when we see it.
