Joseph Kanon - Los Alamos

“But what did you think it meant? What are you looking for? What’s the point of it all?”

“Bruner came into some money before he died. He may have been blackmailing somebody. He may not. I want to find out where he got it.”

“And you thought he was blackmailing me? What on earth about? Do you think there’s a single thing about me the government doesn’t already know? Maybe you should see what it feels like to be on the other side of a security check. Your left-wing friends. Your right-wing friends-well, such as they are. Your old girlfriends. Your Jewish friends. Your students. An ambulance for Spain? Was that politically motivated? What did you study in Germany? How much do you drink? Do you ever feel conflicted loyalties? My God, does one ever not?”

“I said, let’s forget it.”

“Bruner didn’t know anything about the project.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that.”

“What, then?”

“He was homosexual. That gets to be a pretty sensitive issue.”

“Oh,” Oppenheimer said, then laughed. “Well, I have to hand it to you-that’s one question they never asked. Are you writing this up for my file? Am I supposed to formally deny it?”

“I’m not writing anything.”

“It would almost be worth it to see the look on G. G.’s face,” he said, still amused.

“I thought you might be sensitive on someone else’s behalf. A friend. Someone who needed the money.”

Oppenheimer looked over at him. “Only the once,” he said, ending it.

Connolly drove for a while in silence. The air was warmer down in the valley. They had passed through the slopes of pinon and juniper to the sage desert. Oppenheimer had lifted some papers from a briefcase and was working through them on his lap, tapping his cigarette out the open window. Ordinarily Connolly would have turned on the radio, but he was too interested in Oppenheimer to think of it. Everyone else got fifteen minutes, and he had hours to go.

“What did you mean when you said he didn’t know anything about the project?” he asked.

Oppenheimer looked up from the papers. “Anything that would put it in jeopardy,” he said deliberately. “He couldn’t. Only a scientist would know that.”

“The way I hear it, he liked to nose around. Maybe he knew more than you think.”

“He wouldn’t know how to separate what was important. The basic principles were perfectly clear before the war, you know-any physicist worth his salt understands the principles. Someone like Heisenberg would know a lot more than that. It’s the mechanics of it that matter now. A layman wouldn’t be able to differentiate. He simply wouldn’t know what to look for. In that sense, the complexity of the project is its own security.”

“If you don’t know what to look for, you look at everything.”

“Rather like you and your project.”

The quickness of the answer took Connolly by surprise. “That’s some connection.”

“That’s how science works. You guess, you make connections, then if it fits you prove what you guessed in the first place. Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

“I haven’t guessed yet.”

“But you’ve guessed where to look,” he said, his voice playful. “Where would you start looking to find out about the gadget?”

The question had the effect of a chess piece put into place. Connolly, alert to the game, moved his own. “Where would I start? Your briefcase.”

Oppenheimer looked at him appreciatively, then smiled. “You might be disappointed. The only thing you’d learn in here,” he said, casually holding up a sheaf of papers, “is how utterly fouled up our bureaucracy is.”

“Fucked up,” Connolly corrected him.

“As you say,” Oppenheimer said, enjoying himself. “Why bother with the euphemism? What would you make of this, for example?” He took up a sheet. “This one’s from Bainbridge-a good man, in charge of Trinity.”

“Which is?”

“Where we’re going. The test site. He wants it officially designated Project T. It turns out the business office calls it A and Mitchell over in procurement calls it T but ships to S-45 and last week it was made Project J, to prevent any confusion with Building T or Site T, but people call it T anyway since the passes are marked T, so he wants to go with T.”

“And do you?”

“Oh yes. Whatever Ken wants. Here’s another. Procurement wants to create a new series of ratings. We’ve got X, A, B, and C, X being priority. Now they want to break X out to XX, X1, and X2.”

“What’s XX? Special delivery?”

“Virtually. Goes right to the War Production Board to dispatch a cargo plane anywhere in the country.”

“And will you approve it?”

“Certainly. We can’t afford to wait for materiel while the services squabble over priority.” And there it was again, the unexpected steel, the arrogant willingness to override. “Of course, it’s easy to make fun of all this alphabet soup. The problem is, it’s important, really. Every detail. It’s all important to somebody.”

“How much materiel are we talking about?”

Oppenheimer sighed and lit another cigarette. “We handle about thirty-five tons a day at the warehouse. Maybe five of that is going down to the site.”

“Five tons a day?” Connolly was staggered.

“Yes,” Oppenheimer said, “more or less. Everything from beer to-well, everything.”

“But it must be huge. How do you hide something that big? I never heard of it before today.”

“Yes,” Oppenheimer said, smiling, “and you’re in security. Special security, anyway. I often wonder myself. You know, when we set up the site we needed our own wavelength for the ground shortwave system, and what we got, by accident, was the one they use in the San Antonio freightyards. They could hear us, but I doubt they knew what we were talking about. We routed the phones through Albuquerque and Denver so nobody outside would make a connection to the Hill. Elaborate security precautions. But we still have to ship the stuff off the Hill-no way around that. So we send out trucks every night after it gets dark, ten of them sometimes, and you know, I don’t think anyone’s noticed? It’s as I said, you have to know what you’re looking for.” He smiled, as if he had just demonstrated the neatness of a formula.

“Maybe,” Connolly said. “On the other hand, sometimes you come up lucky. I’ve just collected information about the scale of the project, the code names, the exact telephone connections, and the personnel in charge, and I haven’t even been through your briefcase.”

“So you have,” Oppenheimer said quietly. “Maybe you’re more dangerous than I thought.”

“Only if I have to use this.” He nodded down at the gun. “One more question?”

“Could I stop you?”

“Is there anything in the briefcase you wouldn’t want the Germans to see?”

Oppenheimer considered. “Yes.”

“But you brought it out anyway?”

“I doubt we’re going to be attacked by the Nazis on the road to Albuquerque. It’s a long drive, and I’ve got a lot of paperwork to do. It seemed worth the risk.”

“But strictly speaking, it’s against regulations? Do the other bodyguards know this?”

Oppenheimer smiled a checkmate grin. “Of course. Why do you think I requested you?”

They had lunch at Roy’s in Belen, a designated project stop, and Connolly found himself sweating under the punishing sun. After the cold air of Los Alamos, the desert here was a furnace, hot and almost empty all the way to Mexico. Even the stunted pinons of the rolling high plateau had now given way to cactus and scorpions. In his gray suit and porkpie hat, Oppenheimer seemed unnaturally cool, dabbing the back of his neck with a handkerchief while Connolly dripped large patches of sweat through his shirt. But afterward, as the dust blew through the windows on a constant wind, scratchy and irritating, he gave up too, abandoning his work and staring listlessly at the wavy glare that stretched for miles.