Joseph Kanon - Los Alamos

“Emma, you’ve got to tell me. He was killed. You were the only one who knew him.”

“I didn’t know him,” she said, her back still to him. “I just slept with him. They don’t always go together. I thought I knew you.”

“Karl was blackmailing someone,” he began again. “He was getting money. If it wasn’t you, it was somebody else. Don’t you see what I’m saying? There’s somebody else. I’ve got to find out who. You’re the only one who can help me.”

She turned to face him, her eyes moist. “I can’t. Please.”

“But I will find out. You know that, don’t you? I’ve got to.”

“Why? Why you?”

“Because there’s been a crime and this isn’t just anyplace. It isn’t New York, it’s not even Santa Fe. It’s a weapons lab. That’s what they’re doing here. Not science. They’re making weapons. Secret ones. So everything’s different. Why do people get killed? Money? There isn’t any money here. Sex? Maybe. That would have been convenient for everybody. But what if it’s about the weapons? They can’t stop until they know. So they won’t. If it’s not me, it’ll be somebody else. Is there really anything so terrible you couldn’t tell me? You’ve got to trust me that much.”

“Do I?” she said, her face creased in a sarcastic smile. “I wonder why.”

“Because I’m going to find out anyway.”

She looked away, letting her shoulders slope wearily. “Yes, I suppose you will,” she said coolly. “For the good of the country or something. Nothing to do with you. A patriot. That was one lovely thing about Karl, he wasn’t a patriot. You can trust someone who doesn’t believe in anything. The rest of you—”

She walked back to where the remains of the picnic lay and lit another cigarette.

“Where do you want me to start? My first husband? He believed in everything. Mostly himself, it turned out.”

“You were married before?”

“Yes. Matthew. I seem to have a run of Ms. All great believers, too. Anyway, we were young-I suppose that’s no excuse, but we were-and he was a great rebel and so I adored him. He was fun. I don’t think you know how boring England can be. Sunday roast and all the eligibles in the Tatler and Matthew wasn’t having any of it. The people’s revolution was his line. God, all those treks to Highgate to see old Marx’s grave. My parents loathed him. So when he went off to Spain to fight the Fascists, naturally I went with him. My father always said I’d end up in Gretna Green-that’s where the wild girls elope to-but it turned out to be Madrid instead. That dreary registrar’s office. Not even a clergyman-you know how the comrades are about that. Actually, they weren’t very keen on marriage either, but free love in the trenches-well, it wasn’t madly me, was it? You can only take the country out of the girl so far. So there I was, Senora Matthew Lawson, International Brigade.”

“You were a Communist?”

She hesitated, as if his question had interrupted a reverie. “He was,” she said more seriously, drawing on her cigarette. “Party membership, the lot. You had to be, really, in the brigade. I was just-what? In love, maybe. Away. On my adventure. Not that I didn’t admire him for it. I did, tremendously. He believed in something. No one else seemed to. You know, the world is always coming to an end at that age and no one’s doing anything about it. Except then-well, it really was, wasn’t it? I thought he was right. Anyone could see the Germans were up to no good, and of course all the people one despised most didn’t seem to mind at all. Uncle Arthur. He actually went to the Olympics and said how inspiring it all was, the fool. That was typical. But Matthew, he knew, he actually did something. And then he was wounded. Nothing serious, a flesh wound it turned out, but I didn’t know that then. I thought he was going to die. You can see how romantic it was, me all weepy next to the cot in that awful field hospital and the comrades crashing around in Spanish, shooting anything that flew over, and my brave Matthew stopping the Fascists with his body while everyone back home was just out in the garden and being mean about the miners-oh, I was having my adventure. Sounds rather pathetic now, doesn’t it? It wasn’t, though. It was romantic. Exciting.”

She stopped, looking toward the creek as if it were the past, then shook her head. “Well, never mind. You don’t want to hear all that. You want to know about Karl. That was Berlin. We went to Berlin-I never knew whether it was Matthew’s idea or the party’s. The party’s, I suppose. I don’t know if he had any ideas by then. He liked being a soldier. It suited him. Which is odd when you think of it, since he’d never obeyed an order in his life. But now he did. I suppose he thought they were moving him back from the front lines to some other unit. Anyway, we went. Not so romantic this time, though. It was useful to them to have an Englishman there. The Huns always gave us a wide berth-I suppose they thought we were all like Uncle Arthur. The German comrades couldn’t do much. I think they were paralyzed with fear. I know I was. But Matthew-well, naturally he was up for anything. I’d no idea what he was actually doing-he kept telling me it was better my not knowing, but of course that only meant I imagined the worst. I hated it. Terrible little flats. Not that I minded that, really. I was doing a course at the university, that was our cover, and students weren’t expected to live high. And God knows it was better than Spain. Berlin was pretty. If you weren’t being thrown into jail, you could have a good time there. But I hadn’t come for any of that. I was just-isn’t it awful? I suppose I was actually a camp follower, just like those women they used to drag along. Except my soldier was never there. He was always out fighting the good fight. And of course it was the good fight, so you couldn’t complain. I’d go to the meetings just to be with him. You can’t imagine the dreariness of it, all secret and squalid and-endless. Hours of it. Matthew would natter on and I’d just drift off. I doubt he even noticed I was there. But Karl did. At least, he said he did. I don’t remember him being there, but I wasn’t seeing much of anything then except Matthew and how miserable I was. But Karl remembered me. Evidently I made a striking impression. So.”

She got up and began to walk, absently kicking small stones as she paced.

“So you went to bed with him because he saw you at a few meetings?”

She snorted, a pretend laugh. “I said I’d tell you what happened. I didn’t say it would make sense.”

His stare followed her as she paced, waiting. “When was all this?”

“Just after he got here. I was getting a pass and he recognized me. And then later he asked me about it. Wondered why it wasn’t in my file.”

“And why wasn’t it?”

“Nobody ever asked. I was just a wife. Daniel was vetted in London. They knew I’d been in Spain. So had lots of people. It was the thing to do. Maybe no one there thought anything of it. But you know what it’s like here.” She turned to face him. “Look, I was scared. Is that so hard for you to understand? Being here is all Daniel ever cared about. You know what happens if they pull your security clearance. I couldn’t do that to him. Just because his wife went to some silly meetings? They didn’t mean anything anyway. I don’t even remember what they talked about. It was all-innocent. But would your lot believe that? ‘Why didn’t you tell us before? Who else was there?’ You know what it’s like. They’d never trust him after that.”

“Is that where you met him? At the meetings?”

“No,” she said dismissively, “he didn’t know anything about that. We met at the university.”