Joseph Kanon - Los Alamos

“You thought they’d send him back?”

“No, not then,” she said, her voice trembling. “We weren’t exactly sending trains into Berlin. But what about now? If the marriage isn’t real, what happens to him? Is he supposed to go back to Poland? I can’t let that happen to him.”

“They wouldn’t do that.”

“How do you know? I didn’t. So logical. I couldn’t be, don’t you see? I couldn’t think straight. All I knew was that Daniel would have no legal status at all and it was my fault. I had to do something.”

“So you went with him.”

“Yes, I went with him,” she said, almost shouting. “It always comes back to that, doesn’t it? I needed time. I thought after the war I’d sort it out-I couldn’t do it here. Besides, no one knew.”

“Except Karl.”

“Yes, except Karl. And now you. Michael, I’m asking you—”

“Don’t. Don’t ask me.”

She bit her lip again, her face resigned. “At least Karl—”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I can’t help it. I saved him once-I won’t let anything happen to him. I thought it all died with Karl. Do I have to buy you too? Or have you already had everything you want?”

“Get in the car.”

They drove up the dirt canyon road in silence, Emma looking out the side window, her face blotchy but dry. Connolly stared at the road, as if he could quiet the jumble in him with a grip on the wheel.

“You can have the marriage annulled.”

“Yes,” she said absently.

“How did Karl find him?”

“No more. Please.”

“How?”

“He’s here.”

Connolly almost stopped the car in surprise. “Here? On the Hill?”

“No. In the States. For years. Karl used to keep tabs on aliens who were friendly to the comrades. It was his specialty, remember?”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. New York. He was, anyway. Karl lost track of him when he left Washington and all his precious files there. It shouldn’t be hard if you want to find him.”

“Do you?”

“No.”

“Did Karl tell him?”

“Karl didn’t know him. He was just a name in a file.”

“Does he know where you are?”

“Nobody knows where I am. I’m a post office number. Box 1663, Santa Fe. New name. New person.” She trembled again. “I got clean away, remember? A lovely new life.”

They were approaching the turnoff road for the west gate. “Let me off here. I’ll walk in.”

He looked at her. “Walk?”

“Yes, walk. Why not? I’m a great hiker, didn’t you know? I could do with a walk now. Besides, there’s my reputation to consider.” He stopped the car. “Well,” she said, not wanting to get out yet, “I’ll see you.”

“Emma, what you said before, about his not blackmailing you. There must have been someone else. There’s the money.”

She smiled sadly. “You never give up. What are you suggesting? That I gave him the idea? Is that my fault too? Once he saw how easy it was with me, he went on to better things? Maybe he did. You find out, Michael. I don’t care.” She opened the door, half getting out. “Will you put us in your report too?” When he opened his mouth, she put her fingers to his lips, barely touching them. “No, don’t say anything. I don’t want to hear it-it’s all in your face. Do what you have to do. I’ll just get out here.” She kept her hand on his face, a Braille touch, keeping him still. “I seem to have made a mess of things, haven’t I? You always want things to make sense. Sometimes they make sense and it’s still a mess.” She ran her fingers across his mouth as if she were kissing him. “It was nice for a while, though. Before it was such a mess. No, don’t say anything.” She dropped her hand and got out of the car, then leaned through the window. “You’d better go on first. It’ll look better.”

He sat there for a minute, not knowing what to say, and then it was too late. She had moved off to the side, starting to walk, and when he put the car in gear and saw her in the rearview mirror she was looking somewhere else.

He drove back to the office, random phrases darting through his mind so quickly he could not assemble them. They bounced off each other, uncontrollable, until all they lived for was their speed. Fission. He knew in some part of him that he had no reason to feel angry or betrayed or shamed at his own inability to know what to do, how he ought to feel, but the feelings bounced off each other too, like glandular surges that swept through his blood, drowning thought. He saw her with Karl, in some motel room like theirs, sweaty and half lit. She had felt sorry for him. And Karl? What had he felt? Surprise at his good luck? Or did he worry, wondering what it all meant? But he had kept quiet, cared enough to lie for her. Now she wanted him to lie, another Karl. For Daniel. Because she cared enough to protect him but not enough to be faithful.

But who was he to accuse her of that? He’d never even thought about Daniel before, betraying him again and again, because for them it had been different, as natural and carefree as a hike through the canyon. I didn’t know you then. But what if she had? Would it have been any different? It always comes back to that. She had walked in through the gate. I thought it died with him. But no, this was crazy. You’ve become as mad as the rest of them. And suddenly he felt for the first time what it had been like for Karl, this endless noisy suspicion ricocheting so loudly inside him that he couldn’t hear anything else. And when it stopped-and now it did-his mind blank-absolutely nothing. She disappeared in the rearview mirror. He felt as empty as Karl’s room.

When he parked and walked through the Tech Area fence, his mind was still cloudy and preoccupied, but it was Weber who didn’t see him, bumping so hard into his shoulder that he was stopped in midflight.

“Ouf. Pardon, pardon,” he said in the all-purpose French used in crowds at railway terminals. He looked up at Connolly dimly through his glasses, trying to focus his memory. “Ah, Mr. Connolly. The music. Yes, I’m so sorry. I’m late again, you see.”

“No, my fault. I was just thinking.”

Weber smiled. “Thinking,” he said, savoring the word. “For us now it’s only the work. So close.” He fluttered his hand in the air. “Every day a new deadline. But no matter. We’re almost there.” The w was a v.

“So I hear.”

Weber looked up at him sharply, a pinprick of alarm, then put it aside, too absorbed to pursue it. “We all work too hard-even thinking. You look like Robert. All the troubles of the world. No time even for music. Do you play?”

Connolly smiled to himself. “No, but I like to listen.”

“Good, good, come tomorrow. A small gathering. So many at Trinity now, of course.”

Before Connolly could answer, Weber started off, his mind busy again with formulas. Connolly watched him go, bustling toward the gate, encased in his private bubble. He seemed the very soul of the Hill, all distraction and yeast cakes and the determined icepick at the dance.

But the sudden jolt to Connolly’s shoulder had awakened him, like someone shaking him to get up for work. He knew that later he would sink back into his private obsession, the terrible feeling of having broken something he didn’t know how to fix. But what did any of it have to do with the case? At least there was still that. He thought of Weber peering up, trying to place him. Karl had known Emma right away. All she had had to do was walk into the office.

When he got to his desk, however, he simply sat there staring, not sure where to begin.

“What’s wrong?” Mills said.

“Nothing. Why?”

“I don’t know. You look funny. Everything all right?”