Joseph Kanon - Los Alamos

The building was still, saved from eeriness by a background murmur of voices down the hall. Working late. He stared at the map. He could see Karl’s car moving up the Cerrillos Road. What about the others? How many at the second X? He stared until even the background sounds faded away. Rain. Headlights. There must be a way to see.

The gasp from behind startled him. He turned around to see Friedrich Eisler put a hand to his heart, a European gesture of surprise.

“I am so sorry,” he said, flustered. “I didn’t mean-for a moment I thought-you looked so like Robert.”

“Robert?”

“Yes. Of course, you are much bigger. But the way you stood there, with the chalk. Forgive me, I didn’t mean to disturb you.” He turned to go.

“No, please, come in. I shouldn’t be here anyway. I was just doodling.”

Eisler smiled, “Yes, doodling.” He pronounced it as an exotic word. “It was very like. Of course, this was many years ago. Gottingen. He would stand there for hours, you know, just looking at the board. Thinking. But what kind of thinking? That I could never discover. Once I saw him in the morning and I came back later and he was still there. And then later. All day. Just holding the chalk, looking.”

“Did he find the answer?”

Eisler shrugged and smiled. “That I don’t remember.”

“He was your student?”

“A colleague. I am not so old, you know.”

“What was he like?”

Eisler smiled again. “So. You too. Everyone wants to know Robert. What was he like? The same. Of course, not so busy. In those days, there was more time. For thinking. Like you, with the chalk.”

Connolly had moved away from the board, and Eisler looked at it, puzzled. “This is not, I take it, a mathematical formula.”

“No.” Connolly laughed, embarrassed. “Just a map. I was trying to figure something out. I suppose I’d better clean up,” he said, taking the eraser.

But Eisler was looking thoughtfully at the map, his eyes darting from one X to the others.

“No, don’t bother,” he said absently. “No one comes here. Perhaps you’ll find your answer, like Robert.” He turned wearily from the board to face Connolly. “Then you must tell me how you did it. The process. I always wondered.”

“The Oppenheimer Principle,” Connolly said lightly.

“Yes. Well, I leave you to your problem.”

But Connolly was reluctant to see him go. “I was thinking about something you said to me.”

“Really? What is that?”

“About the Nazis giving us permission. To do what we do.”

“Yes.”

“Today I thought, they’re gone. Who’s going to give us permission now?”

Eisler looked at him, his gentle eyes suddenly approving, a teacher pleased with his pupil. “My friend, I don’t know. My war is finished. That is for you to decide.” He stretched his arm back toward the blackboard. “You must use the Oppenheimer Principle.”

“With me, it’s guesswork.”

“Only the answers. The questions are real. Keep asking the questions.”

“Maybe you have to be him to make it work.”

Eisler sighed. “It will work for you too, I think.”

“I’m not like him.”

“No? Perhaps not. Robert’s a very simple man, you know. He does not—” He searched for a word. “Dissemble. Yes, dissemble. He doesn’t know how. There is no mystery there.”

“He’s a mystery to me.”

Eisler moved toward the door. “Perhaps that’s because you do dissemble, Mr. Connolly. Good night.”

Connolly watched him go, his tired shoulders sloping as he went down the corridor. When he looked back at the blackboard, he saw nothing more than crude grade-school sketches, a child’s problem. No car was driving down the road, nervous about a body. No questions. He stared at it for a few minutes, then took up the black eraser and wiped the chalk away. Tomorrow there would be grown-up numbers there.

Outside, he put on his jacket against the night chill. The moon outlined the buildings with faint white lines. He felt that he was walking in one of his blackboard maps. This road went south from the Tech Area. The box canyon was in the far distance to his right. The longer he walked, the more the map filled in, until he could see the whole plateau, fingers stretching away from the Jemez toward Santa Fe. He kept walking, awake with coffee and the bright night sky. But it had been cloudy that night, perhaps already raining when the car pulled into the canyon. Dark. And suddenly he thought of a question and started walking faster, glancing at his watch as he headed away from the building toward the far west gate.

His luck held. The same soldier was on night duty, sitting inside the lighted post with a Thermos and a comic book. He looked up, surprised, when Connolly said hello.

“Mighty late,” he said, a question in his voice.

“I was just out taking a walk. It’s a nice night for it.”

“I guess,” he said, all Piedmont twang and suspicion.

“I have a question for you. You have any more of that coffee?”

“Well, sure. Nice to have some company. What’s on your mind?” He poured some coffee into the lid cup and handed it to Connolly.

“At night, when they close the entrance, what happens exactly?”

“Well, they close it. I don’t know what you mean.”

“They lower the crossing barrier to cars, right? But someone’s still here?”

He nodded. “Me, usually. I’ve been pulling night shift regular.”

“But if a car came by accident, you’d let him in?”

“They don’t. There’s two barriers. Road’s closed down at the turnoff, so a car don’t come up this far.”

“But you’re here anyway.”

The soldier smiled, a sly grin. “Well, that’s to keep people from going out. Ain’t nobody coming in that late.”

“But if they were-I mean, someone could walk in, couldn’t he?”

“Walk?” The vowel spread into syllables.

“Just for the sake of argument. Someone could walk in, right? There’s nothing to stop him.”

“Well, there’s me. I’d stop him.”

“If you heard him.”

The soldier looked at him guardedly, as if he were somehow in trouble and didn’t know why. “I’d hear him.”

“You didn’t hear me. Right now, while we’ve been talking here, someone could have slipped by outside, couldn’t he? Look, I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just trying to get a picture of how it works.”

“It works fine,” the soldier said defiantly, the vowel stretched again. Connolly stepped out of the box, sipping the coffee as he looked around, the soldier following him. “Ain’t nobody going to walk, you know,” he said, still worried. “Where they going to be walking from? Who’s going to walk?”

“I don’t know,” Connolly said, looking at the road, the wide space at the pole, the dark on the side. “Nobody, I guess. I was just wondering.” It would have been easy, no more difficult than a stroll. “You patrol out here or just stay in the post?”

“I got my rounds. If somebody’s complaining, they don’t know jackshit. I’m up and down here all night, even if it is cold.” But it had been raining, a comforting drum on the post roof. “What’s all this about, anyway? You got some kind of problem?”

“No. They’re just looking over all the security points.”

“What for?” he said, still suspicious.

“It’s the army. They don’t need a reason.”

The soldier grinned. “Yeah, I guess.”

Connolly looked up and down the dark road again. One car, not two. Hide it and walk in. A long walk, but safe enough. Worth the chance. And then home.

“How long you been on the Hill?” he asked casually.

“ ’Bout a year, I guess. I ain’t never had no trouble before.”