Joseph Kanon - Los Alamos

His tone, soft and reasonable, seemed a reproach.

“Why tell me anything at all?” Connolly said.

“Why? Perhaps I want to explain myself. Perhaps I am curious.”

“Curious?”

“Yes. To see if the Oppenheimer Principle works. To see what you know.” He paused again, gathering his thoughts. “I like you, Mr. Connolly. Such a passion for truth. You want to know everything. But to understand? I’m not so sure. They’re not the same thing. So this time maybe it’s different. I’ll make you understand. My last student.”

Connolly looked at him, thinking of Emma at Bandelier, then turned to pace in the room, as if he had a pointer in his hand. “So let’s start at the beginning, wherever that is. Your wife, I think. She didn’t just walk down the street. There was fighting all right, but she was part of it. I assume she was a Communist too?”

Eisler nodded. “That is correct.”

“Possibly even before you were,” Connolly said, a question, but Eisler didn’t answer. “Possibly not. But afterward-you were committed then. You had to carry on the fight, or anyway carry on the memory.”

“Mr. Connolly, please. This is psychology, not facts. What is the point? Let us stay with what you know.”

“But you want me to understand it. What was she like?”

Eisler grimaced, looking straight ahead. “She was young. She believed. In what? A better world. In me. Everything. Does that sound foolish now? Yes, to me too. But then it seemed perfectly natural to believe in things. I loved her,” he said, then paused. “It’s too simple, Mr. Connolly, your psychology. She may have been the beginning, yes, but she was not the cause. For that you had to be alive in Germany then, to see the Nazis come. It was bad and then worse and worse. How was it possible that no one stopped them? Did you even know about those things here? What were you, a boy? Can you remember Nuremberg? There must have been newsreels. I remember it very well. The Cathedral of Light. Even the sky was full of them. So much power. They would kill everybody, I knew it even then. And no one to stop them, no one. What would you have done?”

“We’ve been over this before.”

“Yes,” Eisler said, stopping.

“So you worked for the Communists. That must have been lucky for them. A prominent scientist.”

“I was not so prominent then. But it was useful, yes. I knew many people. Heisenberg. Many.”

“So your bosses knew them too. Then you had to get out. And you kept doing the same thing in England.”

“In Manchester, yes.”

“How did it work there?”

“Mr. Connolly. Do you really expect me to tell you that? I made reports. I met with people, I don’t know who.”

“And you told them about Tube Alloys.”

“Yes, of course. Mr. Connolly, would you please sit down? You’re making me anxious, all this back and forth. You can smoke if you like.”

“Sorry.” Connolly sat down, feeling reprimanded, and lit a cigarette. “You don’t mind?”

“It’s Robert’s hospital,” Eisler said with a small smile.

“Then you came to the Hill early last fall,” Connolly continued. “Karl would have known right away. He’s probably the one who got your file-he took an interest in that. But there wasn’t anything there. It’s what isn’t there,” he said aloud to himself. “And Karl knew. You’d done some work together in the good old days. So he asked you about it-he couldn’t resist that-but he kept it to himself. Why, I wonder. Or was Karl still a Communist too? That Russian jail just another story?”

“You are too suspicious. The mirror in a mirror? No, the jail was real. You had only to see his hands. He was never the same after that-certainly not a Communist. He renounced everything. It was not so much—” He stopped, searching. “Not so much what they did to him there, as perhaps the feeling-how can I say it? — that they had renounced him.”

“And the pain didn’t help. A disillusioning experience all around.”

Eisler glanced up at his sarcasm, then looked away again. “Yes, it must have been.”

“So you made him think you felt the same way.”

“Yes, that was very easily done,” he said with a hint of pride. “A matter of the past. You know, Mr. Connolly, when you stop loving a woman you can’t imagine what anyone else might see in her.”

Connolly was jarred by his tone. In the lamp’s small circle he felt, absurdly, that they might be swapping stories around a fire.

“So you’d both seen the light. But nothing in the file-he wouldn’t like that. That’s the sort of thing that would worry Karl.”

“You forget there was nothing in his file either. He could understand not making a point of it here. In a place like this. People are not so understanding-they don’t know what it was like there. Would he have kept his job? It would be natural to let the sleeping dog lie. For both of us. I assure you, he was-sympathetic.”

“Sympathetic enough to put the bite on you.”

Eisler looked at him, puzzled.

“You gave him money, didn’t you? What was that for, old times’ sake?”

“Oh, I see. You think he threatened to expose me? No, no, it was not like that. Karl was an opportunist, but not a traitor. If he had really thought I was still-active, nothing would have stopped him. Certainly not a little money.”

“But you gave him money. Not a little. And he kept your secret. And it wasn’t blackmail.”

Eisler waved his hand. “You insist on this term. It’s not precise. What do you think he said to me? Thirty pieces of silver for my silence? This is a fantasy, Mr. Connolly. Be precise.”

“Well, why did you give it to him? Six hundred dollars, wasn’t it?”

Eisler looked up, pleased. “Very good. A little more, but that is close. How did you know?”

“What did he say it was for?” Connolly said, ignoring his question.

“He appealed to me. He had the chance to buy members of his family out. There are such cases, you know. How much for a life? And he had very little.”

“His family’s dead.”

“Yes, of course. It was much too late for such arrangements. That was all in the past, when they were letting people out. But that is what he said. I did not contradict. I knew it was-an opportunity for him.”

“Did he know you thought that?”

Eisler shrugged. “I can’t say. I didn’t question him. I was generous. Perhaps he felt our past was a bond between us, that he could approach me this way. Perhaps he enjoyed seeing how far he could go. A game. He could trust me not to say anything. It was very strange. I think, you know, he felt I was the only person he could trust.”

“Maybe the first time,” Connolly said, picking up the story. “But after-it was too easy. He asked for more money and you gave it to him. And then again. Why? He’d be suspicious. So he started following you-where you went. Especially off the Hill. He liked driving around. Were you aware that he was tailing you?”

“No.”

“So you never saw him at any of your meetings?”

“There was only one other. He wasn’t there.”

“How did you set them up?”

“The first had been arranged before I came. The second you know. I already had the date; I would be contacted about the place. The book arrived and I knew.”

“And this time Karl was there.”

“Yes.”

“And he saw that you were passing information. There were papers?”

“Yes.”

“But he was suspicious before that. He followed you down. You probably didn’t see him that time either-he’d be a good tail-but I imagine you drove around Santa Fe for a while, just to be sure. Standard procedure for meetings. Then out to San Isidro. But you wouldn’t want to stop there until your man was already in place, you wouldn’t want to risk being seen waiting in the alley. So you drove past, and then again, until the car was there, and by that time Karl knew something was going on. How many times did you go around?”