Los Alamos (6 page)

“I doubt I’ll have the time.”

It might have been rude, but Oppenheimer caught it and chose to ignore it.

“No, none of us have that, do we? Less and less. But we must have some of this,” he said, gesturing with his cigarette to the dancing, “or we’d all get very dull. I expect you’ll be especially busy.” He looked directly at Connolly. “But we’ll discuss all that tomorrow. Have another drink?” He turned toward the table to find his colleague still standing there, waiting to continue the interrupted conversation. “Friedrich, I am so sorry. Let me introduce Mr. Connolly. Professor Eisler.”

Connolly looked up at the tall, graying man with soft, almost liquid eyes, but after a shy nod, Eisler ignored him. “We were discussing Planck’s lectures,” Oppenheimer said politely. “Hardly anybody reads them anymore, which is a pity.” But Eisler now had all his attention again, and Connolly saw how much of Oppenheimer’s charm lay in exclusion—you were so interesting there wasn’t room for anyone else. What could be more flattering than attention? Connolly wondered if the scientists fought for it like students, all of them eager for their private time with him. Even he had felt his spirit dim slightly when the light passed to someone else. And it was all done gently, with flawless courtesy. He had not been dismissed but released to drift.

He wandered slowly around the room, thinking he’d have one more drink before heading for bed. The altitude and his sudden letdown had made him lightheaded, and he worried that he had passed the point of making sense of what he saw. The whole party seemed improbable. The ordinary people stumbling out of time to country music had won Nobel prizes. The young American kid in cowboy boots might be an expert in quantum mechanics. The man in the boxy suit holding a brownie might be—what? A chemist, a metallurgist, a mathematician? The two nattily dressed gentlemen, refugees from a gossipy afternoon tea party, might be discussing critical-mass geometry or, for that matter, the real secrets of the universe. Nothing was farfetched here. People lived in air as rarefied as the altitude. And it must be just as exhilarating for them. Their ideas could leap from one mind to another, racing with the excitement of meeting none of the usual resistance of the ordinary world. The army had strung wires around them to keep the rest out, and it had worked. With all the bad water and dirt roads and inconvenience, they lived in a state of excitement. Everybody was intelligent; everything was possible. Something as ordinary as a murder victim seemed almost vulgar, an unfair intrusion.

The band played a few foxtrots and even one faltering lindy, but they were lining up another square dance when Connolly got his drink. Warm from the liquor, he stood against the wall not far from the punch bowl, trying to catch a breeze from the open doors at the end of the room. The vanished Mills had reappeared on the dance floor, linking arms with an attractive young girl and dancing with surprising ease. She was looking up at him as if, his prediction right, she wanted to marry him. Next to her a formally dressed, swarthy man with luxuriant eyebrows scowled in concentration. Connolly became fixated on the eyebrows; they arched over the man’s eyes like dormers, tufts spilling out on top and then running off in unexpected corkscrews on the side. His partner, a pleasant-looking woman in a print dress and sensible shoes, never looked at him but stared straight ahead, a smile fixed on her face. Connolly began making up stories for them. Given another drink, he could do this all night.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” she said. “Norman bloody Rockwell.”

The scorn in the voice seemed so strong it must have been designed to provoke. If she had been a man, he would have heard the scrappy challenge of someone looking to pick a fight, but she was looking straight ahead, not really talking to him at all. Her voice was English, throaty and full-bodied with drink. She was dressed in riding boots and jodhpurs topped with a white blouse, and he thought she was the first woman he’d ever seen who looked right in them. The trousers seemed to bend and follow the lines of her slim hips, not expand them. Her clothes were dusty, as if she had really come in from riding, not dressed up in costume for the party. Her hair was piled up on her head like a factory worker’s, minus the kerchief. She wore glasses and, as far as he could tell, no makeup at all, but her carelessness, her indifference to what anyone thought, had the effect of drawing him to the features that mattered—her luxurious skin, the tight lines of her body. And there was the voice. As he looked at her, she swayed slightly, and he guessed the sharp insolence had come from too much drink. But the voice, he sensed, would never slur. It would never flutter or pipe or somehow go wrong. It would get more and more controlled, not belligerent but impatient, as if things had become so clear she couldn’t understand why they weren’t clear to everyone else.

“You don’t like square dancing,” he said, not knowing what else to say.

She looked at him for the first time. “Do you?”

“Not much.”

“Well, then, have a drink and let’s start again. Not much of a line, was it? Square dancing. You might as well have Morris dancers bouncing up and down with their bloody bells.”

“You’re English,” he said.

“Christ, that’s not much better,” she said and laughed. “Of course I’m English. So what? And yes, I come here often. Too often, really. No, we haven’t met before. And yes, I like the pictures but I’m not sure I want to go sometime. And—well, what else? What else do you say to break the ice? I like to hear all the lines.”

“Is that what I’m doing? Breaking the ice?”

“Aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Well, perhaps you’re not,” she said, drinking. “Sorry. I get confused. So you’re not. Would you like to?”

“Yes.”

She smiled. “Thanks, but better not. I’m a happily married woman.”

“Well, that’s disappointing. And I was just getting to know you.”

“Better not do that either. I’m mad, bad, and the other thing—what was it? Ask anybody. You’re new. Who are you, anyway?”

“Michael Connolly,” he said, offering his hand. “And not dangerous to know.” He caught her expression. “The other thing,” he explained.

“Oh. Says you. Everybody’s dangerous, once you get to know them.” She looked at her glass, as if what she had said had just slipped out and she needed a minute to think it over.

“Not here,” he said, nodding to the dance. “Looks pretty wholesome to me.”

She laughed and stared at the dancers. “Yes, isn’t it just? Your typical all-American city. We ought to be in the bloody
Saturday Evening Post
. We’ve got everything you could possibly want. Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, chess club, baseball, Little Theater group—quite a little treat they are, by the way—and the victory garden ladies, and—” She stopped. “Sorry. I’m ranting again, aren’t I? I’m supposed to watch myself. Anyway, we’re a hive of activity here. Something for everyone, to help pass the time. Well, for the ladies, that is.”

“And what do you do?”

“You mean when I’m not running up quilts and making jam and not asking any questions? Not much. They encourage the wives to do some sort of job. Afraid we’ll go starkers, probably. A lot of us work in the admin offices or teach, but I’m not allowed to do that—no aliens, please. Americans only in the school.”

“But so many of the children must be—”

“Foreign. Yes, funny, isn’t it? I suppose it’s our
values
or something. Such as they are. Awfully corrupting, I don’t doubt. And so the days fly by. Actually, I don’t mind. I don’t want to teach in their bloody school anyway. What I do want, though, is another drink,” she said, pouring one from the punch bowl. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m not a lush. I’d hold it better if I were. You needn’t look like that, I know I’m tight. I’m not a bit proud of it, if that makes you feel any better.”

“I don’t care. It’s your head in the morning.”

“It’s my head now, if you want to know the truth. God, I hate getting tight. I knew I would, too. These little town hall meetings always bring out the worst.”

“You’re doing all right.”

“Oh, we’re all doing all right. Considering what we’re doing here. What do you do, anyway? Or am I not supposed to ask? My husband works with Bethe—I shouldn’t even say that, should I?—and that’s
all
I bloody know. You can imagine what it does for dinner conversation.”

“I’m with the security office.”

She looked up at him as if someone had shaken her by the shoulders. “Oh.” She put down her drink. “You might have told me. You’ll think I’m always like this.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m not on duty.”

“There’s no such thing. The enemy never sleeps. Or so they say.” But her voice had lost its bite.

“That’s just something we put around to keep you on your toes. Your secret’s safe with me. I don’t know Bethe and I can’t stand Little Theater either. I don’t even know your name. You keep not telling it to me, remember?”

“Oh God, he’s going to be nice. Please don’t do that. I particularly wanted not to be nice tonight. Emma Pawlowski.” She noted his surprise. “Née Harris, as they say in the
Tatler.”

“Why particularly tonight?”

“I don’t know. Bad day or something. Let’s just leave it at that. Oh, the hell with it,” she said, picking up the drink and tossing it back.

“Do you really dislike it here so much?”

“Actually, I love it here. The place, I mean. I just hate all the Andy Hardy business,” she said, pointing to the party.

“Why come, then?”

“Daniel wouldn’t miss it. I can’t think why. Maybe he thinks it’s part of the citizenship course. Like the bloody Founding Fathers.”

He smiled at her. “You’re feeling better again.”

“Actually, I feel like hell.” And in fact she looked pale, her skin shining with sweat. “Let me have a cigarette, will you, and I’ll just toddle along home before I say anything indiscreet. We’ll save that for next time.”

“I hope so,” he said, lighting her cigarette.

She coughed a little as she blew the smoke out. “I didn’t mean anything by that,” she said.

“I know.”

“I mean, it’s been swell, but as far as I’m concerned, if we never—” She stopped, looking shaky.

“You all right?”

“Oh God,” she said, stubbing out the cigarette and searching the room for the door. “I hate to drink and run. Do give my apologies to the rest of the guests.” She moved unsteadily away from the table.

“Are you all right?” he said, following her. But now she bolted for the door, and by the time he caught up with her, they were outside and she was doubled over by the side of the building, retching.

“Don’t watch, for God’s sake,” she said sharply, choking. He looked away, up toward the wonderful night sky, not knowing what to do. It seemed wrong to stay and impolite to walk away. He took out a handkerchief as he heard her heave. Finally, when it was quiet again, he turned and held the handkerchief out to her. She took it without looking up.

“God, how embarrassing,” she said, gulping now for air. “I’ve never been sick before. You didn’t have to
stay.”

“Sorry,” he said, moving away. “Sure you’re all right now?”

“Of course I’m not all right. Oh,” she said, clutching her stomach.

“It’s the altitude.”

“It’s not the altitude. It’s the bloody drink.” She held up her head and took in a deep breath. “Well, this is awfully intimate, isn’t it?” she said, laughing at herself. “Or is it just part of the security service?”

“Do you want me to find your husband?”

“No, let him dance. Wot larks. I’m perfectly capable of—” She started to move unsteadily, then stopped, swaying. “Christ. Look, as long as you’re here, do you have an arm that goes with that handkerchief? I’m just down that way.”

He took her arm and felt her lean against him as they walked slowly down the dirt road. Her body was warm, and it trembled slightly, either from the chill or from the aftereffects of being sick. She said nothing, as if she had to use all her concentration just to walk, and in the quiet he felt more aware of her than he had before. But why was everything confused up here? As she leaned into him, holding on to his arm, they might have been a couple walking home from a dance, eager to touch each other, slightly tipsy from drink and the promise of sex. But they weren’t that. She was someone else’s wife, and in the morning, with her headache, she wouldn’t even remember who he was.

“This is it. My Sundt palace. Thanks. I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be.”

She smiled wryly. “I’ve got a feeling I’m going to be even sorrier. Well. You’ve been a gentleman. Now if you’re really a gentleman, you’ll forget all about this. Mum’s the word, just like the loose-lips posters.” She was trying to rally, but her earlier high spirits had wilted with the evening. “Just forget you ever met me.”

“No, I don’t want to do that.”

She looked up at him. “Thanks. Do it, though, will you?”

“Do you have your key?”

“What?” she said, looking puzzled, then remembered the walking-home ritual. “Oh. No, it’s not locked. We never lock doors here.” She gestured around her to the isolated dark, implying the fences, the guards. “It’s the safest place in the world.”

3

O
PPENHEIMER WAS AS
alert as he’d promised, and the coffee just as good. His office was not much bigger than Groves’s, but it was filled with the nesting memorabilia of someone who had come to stay. Connolly glanced around the room, taking in the ashtrays, the piece of Indian pottery, the files piled everywhere. He wanted to linger over the photographs on the walls—colleagues from Berkeley? student days in Göttingen?—but it was impossible to look at anything else while Oppenheimer was in the room. He sat there smoking, so animated and intense that the rest receded to the flatness of a still life.

“I suppose you’ll want to talk to the police first,” he said. “I’d appreciate your reporting back to me on that. All I know is what Lieutenant Mills tells me, so now I’ll have to rely on you.” He looked at Connolly mischievously. “He is not, I trust, under suspicion himself?”

“You haven’t talked to the police?” Connolly asked. Oppenheimer smiled. “You forget. Officially, I don’t exist. None of us do. You’re among ghosts now.” And with the smoke floating around his gaunt face, he did, for a minute, look like one.

“Right. My mistake.”

“Never mind. We forget it ourselves from time to time—it’s difficult, not existing. No doubt the good general has already given you his security speech, so I won’t bore you by repeating it. Nothing must compromise the security of the project. As far as that’s concerned, you’ll have our full cooperation. Having said that, I should also say that I don’t want this incident to compromise the
work
of the project.”

“That’s just what General Groves said.”

“You surprise me. I felt sure he’d use this as an excuse to turn the place inside out. The general’s a great one for looking under mattresses and peeking through keyholes and all the rest of it. He seems to feel safest when no one knows anything at all.”

“He said you’d say that too.”

Oppenheimer smiled again, thinly, and put out his cigarette.

“Well, the general and I have been down this road many times before. We walk a very fine line here. On the one hand, the project is secret—everyone understands that—but on the other hand, its success depends on the free exchange of ideas. G.G.’s original plan was to compartmentalize everything. The production centers would be scattered around the country, and even here the units would work on parallel but separate tracks. Impossible, of course. Scientists can’t work with blinders on—you’d never get anywhere. So we worked out one of our Solomonic compromises. The department heads meet once a week to discuss where we are and keep everyone in the picture.”

“And what did the general get in the bargain?”

He smiled again and took out another cigarette. “Oh, I suppose that we still don’t communicate outside. You remember, of course, that in the Solomon story they never did divide the baby.”

“But everyone saved face.”

Oppenheimer nodded. “Anyway, we do what we can to keep security the way the general likes it. Something like this, however—” He trailed off to light the cigarette. “I don’t want it used as an excuse. After all, the poor man wasn’t killed here. General Groves may not like the idea of homosexuals in his army—actually, I doubt very much that he believes they exist anywhere; the general’s an innocent in his own way. But that’s no reason to ignore the obvious and launch a full security investigation because you’d prefer it to be something else.”

“Is it obvious?”

“I was told it was,” Oppenheimer said, somewhat surprised. “Isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, and Connolly saw that behind the intensity he was already tired.

“Well, certainly it would be convenient. Embarrassing for your office—and to think, of all the departments—” He picked up the thought again. “But convenient. Not the end of the world.”

“It was the end for him,” Connolly said, thinking of the photograph back in his room.

“Yes. It was that. You think me unsympathetic. I hope I’m not.” He continued rubbing the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes for a moment to ease the strain. “We keep losing the individual—it’s become so easy.” His talk drifted, almost to reverie, and Connolly was fascinated; it was like watching someone think. “You grow callous just to get through it.” He sat up, pointing to one of the piles on his desk. “How do you separate out what’s important? There’s algae in the water again—some of the women are complaining. Important? It is to them. Conant’s sending a delegation from Washington tomorrow and they’ll want a summary, which isn’t ready, and then a tour, which is disruptive, but it’s important to give them both somehow. Dr. Teller wants to see me and of course that’s always important, even when it isn’t, because if I don’t see him he’ll sulk and not work and
that
will be important. It’s all important, and sometimes you forget, just to get it all done. But a life—yes, you’re right, that’s something else again. I’d like to help you any way I can. I don’t want you to think otherwise. It’s just there’s so little time to go around.”

“I appreciate that, Dr. Oppenheimer. I don’t want to take any more than I have to.”

“Do you know how far along the Germans are with their gadget?”

“No,” Connolly said, unsure where he was heading.

“Neither do I. No idea. We do know they have Heisenberg and some of the finest scientific minds in the world. We have to assume they’re working on it. After all, the same information is available to everyone. Was, anyway, before the war—” He paused for effect. “Compartmentalized us all. Now we don’t know. But what if we’re running out of time?”

“Right now it looks like the Germans are running out of everything.”

“A year ago they said London wouldn’t be bombed again, and then the V-2s came. Nobody knows anything. You were briefed about the gadget in Washington, I know, but I wonder if you appreciate how very powerful it will be. If the Germans develop one first, they could take England out of the war.”

Connolly raised his eyebrows skeptically.

“You think not?” Oppenheimer said. “I think so. It’s a gamble we can’t afford to make. We have to get there first. So sometimes individual things—get lost. On the one hand, every little detail is important; on the other hand, nothing is important except the project. You have to bargain one against the other all the time. But a murder can’t get lost, can it? So. What sort of bargain do you want me to make with you?”

Connolly looked at him for a minute, surprised to be so abruptly brought back to business. Or was this where Oppenheimer had been going all along?

“I want unrestricted access to all security files. I want to be able to talk to anyone I think might be useful without having to clear it first. My being Bruner’s replacement makes this easy; it’s the most natural thing in the world to talk about. I want more background on the scientific details of the project—if there is a connection, I need to know where to look. And I want to be able to appropriate any personnel—all of G-2 if necessary—if I need them.”

“Done,” Oppenheimer said, looking at him thoughtfully. “But surely you already have all this from General Groves.”

“I’d like it from you.”

Oppenheimer nodded. “I see. All right. Anything else?”

“What’s the gossip? What have people been told—what story’s been given out and what do they think of it? You can’t have a murder in a small community without some sort of explanation.”

Oppenheimer brooded for a minute. “No, I don’t suppose so. But there’s been remarkably little talk, now that you ask. I’m not sure why. Possibly because he really wasn’t part of the community, not the work community anyway. They know that he was attacked and robbed. Shocking, especially in a town like Santa Fe, but then you have to move on. It’s not as if it were one of the scientists.” He paused. “Don’t disapprove, I’m just trying to be truthful. If it had been Kisty or Enrico—”

“Do they know why?”

“You mean, were they told he was homosexual? No, there was no reason for that. I’m sure it never occurred to them—it certainly never occurred to me. At the time, I think there was a feeling that it would be, well, disrespectful. The poor man was already dead—no need to rake his life over the coals. Hold him up to ridicule.”

“Or the army.”

Oppenheimer frowned. “I don’t think that entered into it. We may have our moral failings, but I hope we’re not hypocrites. It was my decision—I never even considered the army’s feelings in the matter. I don’t care what his sex life was, but some people do. Is it a sin? What’s a sin? But since Bruner never said anything, I felt we should respect that.”

“Maybe he never said anything because it would have meant dishonorable discharge.”

“That’s irrelevant,” Oppenheimer snapped. “He was dead.”

“But he may have had associates, just as vulnerable, just as—” A sharp rap was followed by the secretary’s head, disembodied, poking around the doorjamb.

“You’ve got an eight o’clock in five minutes,” she said.

“Right.” Oppenheimer glanced at his watch and stood.

“Where this time?”

“B Building. You’ll need the Critical Assemblies notes.”

“Walk with me, would you?” Oppenheimer said to Connolly, an apologetic command, putting the cigarette in his mouth to pick up a thick folder from the desk. And then he was out the door, leaving Connolly to trail after him.

“I don’t like where this is going,” Oppenheimer said as they walked through the Tech Area, nodding to people in a kind of civilian salute. “And I suggest you leave the poor man in peace. And his friends—if he had any, which I doubt. You keep forgetting he was forty miles away when this happened. That’s not exactly slipping out behind the bushes here for a little refreshment. Maybe he felt he needed the distance. Maybe there
were
no opportunities here. I don’t know.”

“But you admit that it would be useful to find someone who does, who
could
tell us about his life.”

“Yes,” he said reluctantly, “Of course I see that. But how do you propose to do that? Go through the library cards to see who checks out André Gide?”

Connolly smiled involuntarly at the Berkeley view of the world. In B Building they stopped in front of an open door. Over Oppenheimer’s shoulder, Connolly could see the scientists already assembled, canvas director’s chairs forming an impromptu circle around a portable blackboard. Half the board was filled with a chalk diagram, a ring of pointed arches surrounding a core, like a flower folded inward. A short man in a rumpled double-breasted jacket was filling the other half with the hieroglyphics of higher mathematics, numbers and squiggles as meaningless to Connolly as a lost language. No one turned around. Most of the men were wearing jackets and ties, but a few in open-necked shirts sat back in the chairs, legs draped casually over the arm, chins resting on pointed fingers in concentration. The rowdy hospitality of the dance was gone, replaced by an intense quiet, as if they were straining to hear, not read, the chalk scratching across the board. Connolly didn’t know what he had expected—lab coats and Bunsen burners and tubes—but instead he felt himself back at Fordham, eager and attentive, waiting for Father Healy to begin the day’s assignment. They were making war in a classroom. But what were they actually saying inside? The room seemed as closed to him as Karl’s life.

“I found some prophylactics in his room. He must have been having sex with someone.”

Oppenheimer sighed. “Oh, how I wish this had never happened. Well, do what you have to. Could I simply ask that you start at the scene of the crime, as they say, before you leap to conclusions and start interviewing everyone on the Hill? The work
has
to come first,” he said, indicating the sounds of the room behind him.

“I intend to. The likelihood is he was so afraid of his secret that he went as far away as he could go before he could trust anyone with it.”

“Yes, that’s possible. Except for his being afraid. Bruner was never afraid of anything.” He drew on his cigarette, thinking. “It was probably the deviousness of it that appealed to him. Not a very trusting sort, Bruner. Well, what did he have to be trusting about? Of course, I suppose that came in handy in his job.”

“You found him devious?”

“I hardly knew him,” he said. “Devious may be unfair. He was a survivor. Quite literally. I think we’re always a bit surprised to find survivors often aren’t very nice. Goes against the grain, doesn’t it? We’d like to think it’s the noble spirit that pulls us through, when so often—Well. I sometimes think there isn’t any moral quality to it at all. A purely neutral act. Like the insects. But then, who are we to say? Don’t you often wonder what you would do to survive? I don’t know how Bruner got through it, all those terrible things, but it didn’t make him any nicer. I know it’s unkind of me, after all that suffering, but he always struck me as something of a shit.”

The drive down from the mesa was spectacular. The morning was beautiful, and under the cloudless blue sky the land stretched out for miles, waves of pink and brown earth dotted with clumps of piñons rolling all the way to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the far distance. After the busy claustrophobia of the base, the country felt even larger, and Connolly’s spirits rose to meet it the minute he passed through the gate. The fences and sentry boxes were behind, ahead only the bright freedom of the high desert. Mills had told him that Oppenheimer had selected the site—he’d had a vacation ranch in the area, about sixty miles away—and Connolly wondered if this was another of those paradoxes he relished, working with the smallest particles of matter in one of the most open landscapes in the world.

The Rio Grande was swollen and brown, muddy with spring runoff, and Connolly could see in its long valley the cottonwood groves and new green fields that had drawn the first settlers in from the desert. He had never been to the West before, and the sheer size of it overwhelmed him. But it was exhilarating, not lonely—you expanded to its scale. His mind had been cluttered with a hundred questions, but the sight of the country emptied it. There was no brooding in this clearheaded sky.