Joseph Kanon - Los Alamos

Oppenheimer had turned away. He had never quite recovered from the shock of that first day. Connolly had insisted they leave the office and walk over toward Ashley Pond. “What the devil is this all about?” Oppenheimer had protested, annoyed at the interruption, but when Connolly told him, he stopped still in the road. People, unnoticed, passed around them, and for a minute Connolly thought that something had happened-a heart attack, a stroke, as if the mind couldn’t absorb the blow alone and had passed it on to the body. “You’re sure?” Oppenheimer said finally, and Connolly, unnerved by his calm, was almost relieved when he noticed that Oppenheimer’s hands were shaking as he lit his cigarette. He didn’t know what reaction he had expected-a howl? a denial? — but when Oppenheimer began to talk, he didn’t mention Eisler at all. Instead, irritated, he said, “Was it really necessary to bring me out here?”

“We have to assume your office is wired.”

His eyes flashed for a moment in surprise. “Do we? Don’t you know?”

“They don’t tell me. I’m the one they brought in from outside, remember?”

“Vividly.”

“They check on me too.”

“Who? The general?” Then, as if he’d answered his own question, Oppenheimer started to walk. “My God, I suppose you’ll have to tell him.”

“I think it might be better coming from you. On a safe phone, if you can manage it.”

“According to you, there’s no such thing. Aren’t you letting your imagination run away with you? Anyway, I fail to see the difference. They’ll have to be told.”

“Groves has to be told. Not the others, not yet. He’ll want to run with it, but you’ll have to persuade him to keep it to himself.”

“How do you propose I do that?”

Connolly shrugged. “Call in a favor. He owes you.”

“That’s the city desk talking,” Oppenheimer said, almost sneering. He dropped his cigarette and rubbed it out, thinking. “May I ask why?”

“Have you stopped to think what will happen the minute Army Intelligence gets this? They won’t stop with Eisler.”

“If I remember correctly, that’s precisely what you were brought in to prevent.”

“I am preventing it. Look, it’s up to you. You’re the boss. My advice is to get the general to sit on it. You’ll never finish otherwise.”

“No,” Oppenheimer said, looking now over the pond. “The good of the project. I’m touched. I’d no idea you were so concerned with our work here.”

“They’d close me down too. I have an idea Eisler might talk to me. You think Lansdale or any of his goons would let that happen if they knew? Groves brought me in to sniff around some queer murder. They didn’t like that much either, but what the hell? But Reds? A spy case? They live for stuff like that.”

For a moment Oppenheimer looked almost amused. “Are you asking me to save your job?”

“And yours.”

“Ah. And mine. What a funny old world it’s become. Friedrich,” he said to himself, then turned to Connolly. “And what makes you think Groves will agree?”

“Because the only thing he cares more about than security is getting the damn thing done. And it won’t get done if he starts a Red scare now. He’ll believe you. He can’t finish this without you. He has to trust you.”

“And that’s why he spies on me. You really think he’s got the phone—”

“He’d have to,” Connolly said quietly. “You know that.”

Oppenheimer sighed. “You forget, though. After a while you get so used to the idea, you aren’t even aware of it anymore. I don’t know why I mind. I’ve never had anything to hide.”

“You do now.”

When Oppenheimer finally came to the infirmary, he almost broke down. He stood at the foot of Eisler’s bed, holding on to the frame as a barrier between them, his thin body rigid and unyielding. Then he took in the swollen skin, splotched now by intradermal bleeding, the thinning hair, and Connolly saw him let go, nearly folding.

“Robert,” Eisler said softly, the old affection, his first smile in days.

“Are you in pain?” Oppenheimer said.

“Not now. Have you seen the charts?”

Oppenheimer nodded. Connolly felt he should leave, but the silence held him, the air filled with emotion too fragile to disturb.

“It will take them years,” Oppenheimer said finally.

“Perhaps.”

“Years,” Oppenheimer repeated. “All this-for what? Why you? My friend.”

Eisler held his stare, then looked away. “Do you remember Roosevelt’s funeral? The Bhagavad Gita? What a man’s faith is, he is.”

Oppenheimer continued to stare at him. “And what are you?”

Eisler’s face fell, and he turned his head to the window. “I’m sorry about the boy,” he said finally.

“A Jew, Friedrich. A Jew.” Then he took his hands off the frame and moved away from the bed, his eyes hard again. “Were you the only one?” he said, his voice detached and composed.

But Eisler was quiet, and after a while Oppenheimer gave up. “Very well,” he said, brisk and matter-of-fact. “Shall we begin with the fuel? The purities? I assume they’re not familiar with the alloying process?”

So they began their interview, the first of several, while Connolly sat on the other side of the room and listened. Explosive lenses. The initiator. Tampers. None of it meant anything to him. Instead he watched Oppenheimer, cool and efficient, run through his checklist of questions. He never wavered again. Connolly marveled at his single-mindedness. There were no more reproaches, no more attempts at any human connection. My friend. Now there was just a flow of information. How much was lost? It was the project that had been betrayed; Oppenheimer’s own feelings had disappeared in some willed privacy. Perhaps he would take them out later, bruised, when the project was safe.

Eisler told him everything. Connolly felt at times that he was eavesdropping on some rarefied seminar. Question. Answer. Observation. They anticipated each other. With Connolly, Eisler sparred and evaded, but now his answers came freely, as if he were a foreigner relieved to find someone who spoke his native language. To him, science really was universal and open-it belonged to everyone who could know it. But mostly now it belonged to Oppenheimer. As Connolly watched them, he felt that Eisler’s eager cooperation had become a kind of sad last request for forgiveness. He would give Oppenheimer everything. They would talk as they always had, and Oppenheimer would feel the pleasure of it again and understand: what scientist could believe it must be secret?

But Oppenheimer was somewhere else now. Whenever he saw that Eisler, too sick to go on, needed medication, he would stop without complaint, almost relieved to go back to his real work. In the morning they would take up where they had left off, and Connolly would see Eisler’s eyes, strained and cloudy, clear for a minute in anticipation. It became a question of how long he could last. Connolly would watch for the signs-a few beads of sweat, the voice suddenly dry, the small movements of his hands on the sheets-and see him struggle with it, ignoring the pain just a few minutes longer to keep Oppenheimer there. Then, after a week, they were finished, and Oppenheimer stopped coming. Eisler would look at the door in the morning and then, resigned, turn his head toward the chair and smile weakly at Connolly, who was now all there was.

“Groves wants to come,” Oppenheimer told him one day, outside.

“Tell him to wait a few days. He’s dying. I’m still hoping he’ll talk to me.”

“How much longer, do you think?”

“I don’t know. A few days. It can’t go on much longer. He’s in pain all the time now.”

“Yes,” Oppenheimer said, and for a moment Connolly thought he saw something break in his eyes. Then he turned to go. “Why this way? There were a hundred easier ways to do it.”