Joseph Kanon - Los Alamos

“I know.”

“The minute you take those papers out of here you’re breaking the law.”

“Let’s see how good they are. It’ll be a test for them.”

“Test,” Groves said grumpily. “I don’t like any of this. Any of it. This place. It was easier building the Pentagon.”

But Oppenheimer was looking at Connolly with amusement. “Mr. Connolly has a flair for the clandestine. Have you done this before?”

Connolly thought of motel rooms and glances avoided in Fuller Lodge. “Just lately.”

“Are we finished here? Can we go back and cool off before I change my mind?” Groves said.

“We’re finished,” Connolly said. “I’m going over to the hospital to get Eisler’s things. I’ll go through his place one more time. You never know. When you get the address,” he said to Groves, “maybe you’d better send it through the telex line. The code’s safer.”

“One more thing,” Groves said, putting his damp jacket on. “You want me to go out on a limb for you. No questions. So just tell me one thing: what do you think the odds are this can actually work?”

Connolly shook his head. “The odds are always good when it’s the only hand you’ve got.”

His bravado evaporated as he walked toward the infirmary. How many times did a long shot come in? Except this time it wasn’t just the bet, it was what he’d have to use to make it. Everything would depend on her. It wasn’t right. But it had sat there, his only idea, and he’d had to pick it up. He wondered, in that moment, why he’d jumped at it, excited by something he knew was wrong, then caught in a tangle of inevitability, deaf now even to himself. Could he lose her? No, he’d stop if it came to that. He thought of Eisler in his lab, those desperate seconds lowering the cube before it went critical. The trick was to stop in time, before the dragon turned. But what if it took on a life of its own? What if simply starting the process demanded its only conclusion? He looked around the Hill-clothes near the McKee units flapping on lines in the bright, dry air; a repairman high up on one of the overhead transformers; soldiers in jeeps-and it seemed to him utterly ordinary. Everyone was just getting on with the day, making a bomb.

In the infirmary, someone was sitting on Eisler’s bed. He took in the bruised side of the face, the bandage over the forehead cut, before he recognized Corporal Batchelor.

“What happened to you?”

“I walked into a door,” Batchelor said, his voice flat. Next to the neat pile of Eisler’s effects, his battered face was jarring, the disorder of violence. “How did you hear?” he asked, embarrassed.

“I didn’t. I came for these. Are you all right?”

The boy nodded.

“That must have been some door,” Connolly said, moving toward Eisler’s things. “You going to let him get away with it?”

The soldier shrugged. “It was just a door. I’ll live.”

“The unfriendly kind.”

The boy smiled weakly, wincing a little from the cut at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, the big unfriendly kind. I’ll have to be more careful at the PX.”

“Maybe next time you should just stay away,” Connolly said. Then, hearing the tone of his voice, “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“It’s all right,” the soldier said, his face weary. “I had it coming.”

“Nobody has it coming,” Connolly said, suddenly angry for him, then aware that he didn’t know anything about it. What was it like living this way? Was every meeting a risk? He thought again of the ordinary world outside, so bright that it made any other invisible. And then it occurred to him that it might have been a different kind of misstep, the wrong question. Connolly’s fault.

“This didn’t have anything to do with-I mean, I hope you weren’t—”

“Snooping?” The boy shook his head. “No. Nothing like that. Just a door. I never heard a word, by the way. Since you ask.”

“I know. He wasn’t-we made a mistake.”

The boy looked at him. “So what was it?”

“We know it wasn’t that. Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to bother anybody.”

He nodded his head again. “Good. I’m glad about that, anyway.”

“So don’t go banging into any more doors. Not because of that.”

The soldier shrugged. “I’m just a bad judge of character, that’s all. I never was good at that. How about you?”

The question caught Connolly off-guard, as if it had come from another conversation. “Not very. Sometimes.” He moved to gather up Eisler’s things. “I still think you’ve got a lot of guts, though.”

The smile this time was fuller, a wry grimace. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“I also think you’re a damned fool to let him get away with it. You ought to turn the bastard in.”

When Batchelor looked up at him, his eyes seemed almost pleading. “I can’t. Don’t you know that? That’s the way it works. I can’t.”

Connolly thought about him as he walked toward Eisler’s apartment, carrying the valise. It shouldn’t be that easy to get hurt. He wondered what would happen to Batchelor after the war, when he would drift off the Hill to some other life, hidden from Connolly and everyone else until it showed up again on his face.

At least his mystery had its bits of visible evidence. Eisler’s had receded with him. Here were the clothes, the books, the old pictures. Connolly sat smoking for a while in Eisler’s living room, peering at the walls as if some idea lurked there, waiting to be found. Then he started going through the books. He took them down from the shelves, flipped through, then made piles on the floor. Nothing. He remembered that first night in Karl’s room, the presence in those few neat possessions, someone who was still living there and had been delayed on his way back. But Eisler was gone, perhaps had never been here at all. All these objects, rooms full of them, pared away until finally there was only one idea. Those last weeks with Connolly had been his one brief contact. And then he had gone back into hiding. What was it like to believe so completely, to let everything go but one thing? What was it like not to care who got hurt? Standing there with a meaningless German book in his hand, Connolly felt the room go empty. An entire life for a single idea. And it had been wrong.

“I won’t bloody do it,” she said, sitting up.

“You’ve got to.”

“I don’t.”

She had gathered the crumpled sheet around her as if she had been surprised by an intruder. The room was warm, closed against the afternoon light.

“You’re the only way it can work,” he said calmly.

She stared at him, then jumped out of bed and grabbed the clothes off the floor. She held them in front of her, then turned to the bathroom door, tripping in the dimness. “Bugger,” she said, stumbling toward the window. When she jerked the cord of the shade, the light of the room, amber and erotic, flashed harsh white. A cheap rug and Formica table, Connolly sitting up in the messy bed. He watched her try to pull on her slip, turning it around to find the opening, anxious to be covered.

“I’ll be with you. Every step,” he said.

She stopped, frustrated with the slip, and stood holding it.

“You’re lovely,” she said. “Lovely. Waiting till we’d done it before you’d ask. What did you think? A good slap and tickle and then a bit of spying on the side? There’s a good girl. You must be mad. I won’t.”

“Emma, please. I’ve explained it badly.”

“Have you?” she said, struggling with the slip again. “Cheat on one husband, then go and trap another. That’s roughly it, isn’t it? I won’t, thank you very much. He’s my husband. Or was. Is. Whatever he is, I’m not sending him to jail.”