“Only if I have to use this.” He nodded down at the gun. “One more question?”
“Could I stop you?”
“Is there anything in the briefcase you wouldn’t want the Germans to see?”
Oppenheimer considered. “Yes.”
“But you brought it out anyway?”
“I doubt we’re going to be attacked by the Nazis on the road to Albuquerque. It’s a long drive, and I’ve got a lot of paperwork to do. It seemed worth the risk.”
“But strictly speaking, it’s against regulations? Do the other bodyguards know this?”
Oppenheimer smiled a checkmate grin. “Of course. Why do you think I requested you?”
They had lunch at Roy’s in Belen, a designated project stop, and Connolly found himself sweating under the punishing sun. After the cold air of Los Alamos, the desert here was a furnace, hot and almost empty all the way to Mexico. Even the stunted pinons of the rolling high plateau had now given way to cactus and scorpions. In his gray suit and porkpie hat, Oppenheimer seemed unnaturally cool, dabbing the back of his neck with a handkerchief while Connolly dripped large patches of sweat through his shirt. But afterward, as the dust blew through the windows on a constant wind, scratchy and irritating, he gave up too, abandoning his work and staring listlessly at the wavy glare that stretched for miles.
“Yes, Virginia, there is a hell and we’re in it,” he said to the air. “All this to win the war.” He pulled his hat to shield his eyes and slumped down in the seat, pretending to sleep but continuing to talk. “The Spaniards called it the Jornada del Muerto, and for once they weren’t exaggerating. If your wagon broke down here, there wasn’t much you could do but bring out the rosary beads.”
“Then let’s hope we don’t run out of gas. We’re pretty low.”
“That’s poor planning, I must say. There’s a station up ahead in San Antonio. Keep an eye out-if you blink, you’ll miss it. There’s a bar there too. We’re not supposed to stop, but everyone does, and you’ve already broken all the rules.”
Incredibly, the bar was crowded. Connolly wondered where, in all this barren emptiness, they could have come from. The room was dark-he had to squint when he walked through the door-and one wall at the end was entirely lined with bottles, a trophy wall to past conviviality. When his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw that at least part of the crowd had come from the Hill. They made an elaborate show of pretending not to notice Oppenheimer, as if one security violation could be redeemed by obeying another, but Oppenheimer ignored the charade and went over to talk to them. Connolly saw Eisler and Pawlowski, and he smiled to himself at the irony of discovering Pawlowski’s destination after all. It was a small world in the middle of the desert. While Emma sat alone, both the men who wanted her faced each other over beer in a Mexican bar. It was an irony Oppenheimer would appreciate, Connolly thought, absurd and elegant at the same time. A young Mexican bartender went busily back and forth, popping caps off beer bottles, his eyes shining at what must have been unexpected traffic. Eisler, his pale skin gleaming in the half-light, managed to look formal even with his short-sleeved cowboy shirt and Coca- Cola, like someone who had stepped into the wrong advertisement.
But Oppenheimer didn’t want to stay-they had miles to go-and his leaving broke up the party for all of them.
“So this is what you meant by off-site,” Connolly said to Pawlowski as they left together.
“We’re not supposed to say,” he said simply. He glanced at Connolly’s gun, confused, as if he were still trying to place him. “I didn’t know you were coming here.”
“I’m driving Oppenheimer. Is there someone with you?”
He smiled shyly. “No, I’m not that important. The only danger to me is from Friedrich’s driving.”
“We haven’t done so badly so far,” Eisler said pleasantly. Connolly noticed that one of his forearms was sunburned, bright pink against the short sleeve, and he imagined him driving with it hanging rakishly out the window, his fingers light on the wheel, an old schoolmaster free on the open road. He wondered what they talked about and knew instinctively it would be serious, the arcane mechanics of the gadget that Oppenheimer believed constituted its own security. “Shall we follow you? It’s a comfort to have another car. In case of a breakdown, you know.”
And so, with a third car Connolly hadn’t seen before, they set out in caravan across the flat desert. Oppenheimer resumed his slumped-down position, angling his hat to avoid the blazing afternoon sun.
“You could nap in the back,” Connolly offered.
“I could nap in the front if it were quiet,” Oppenheimer said. He sighed and took out a cigarette. “Which somehow I feel it won’t be. What else is on your mind?”
Connolly grinned. “Nothing. What’s Pawlowski like?”
“Don’t tell me you suspect him too?”
“No, idle curiosity. It passes the time.”
“Hmm. Like the radio.” He exhaled, thinking. “Hardworking-enjoys working. Bethe thinks the world of him. Determined, even stubborn,” he said, playing with it now, as if he were composing an applicant’s recommendation. “Wonderful mind, but interior. I’ve always thought that physics became a substitute world for him, but that’s just a guess. Actually, it’s not so unusual here-we’re all a little interior. No patience with showboating. He can be a little-what does Herr Goebbels call us? Stiff-necked. Thinks Teller’s an ass, for instance, and wouldn’t work for him. Not a homosexual either, by the way.”
“No. I’ve met his wife.”
“Emma? Yes. She’s quite a girl.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning she’s quite a girl. English. Most beautiful rider I’ve ever seen. You have to be brought up with it to ride that well.”
“Unusual marriage.”
“Is it? I wouldn’t know. I think all marriages are unusual unless you happen to be in them.”
“No, I mean coming from such different backgrounds.”
He laughed. “Don’t be such a snob. You obviously don’t know the English. Least conventional people in the world-once you get to the gentry level, anyway. She fought in Spain, you know, so there must be a wild streak somewhere. You should watch her ride. You can tell everything about an Englishwoman by the way she rides.” He took a drag on his cigarette. “On the other hand, what could it possibly matter to you?”
He dropped it lightly, like an ash on the seat, and for a minute Connolly didn’t know what to say.
“It doesn’t.”
“Just looking at everything,” Oppenheimer said. “I had no idea you were casting your net quite this wide.” He paused, waiting for Connolly to respond. “She’s an attractive woman.”
“Yes, she is,” Connolly said flatly. He felt, talking to Oppenheimer, that he was always moving a piece into place. But the game was unfair-it didn’t matter to Oppenheimer, so he didn’t have to play carefully. “I was wondering. The way science works? If you guess wrong, there won’t be any connections to make, will there?”
“No, not if you guess wrong.”
Connolly let it drop. Then, annoyed at himself for having somehow started it in the first place, he grew even more annoyed at not knowing whether Oppenheimer had meant anything or not. It was a reporter’s instinct to hide behind a one-way mirror, not revealing anything himself. Now he felt he was too close to the surface, unreliable, as if the slightest poke would show his hand.
“Dr. Eisler said something interesting the other night.”
“That’s unusual,” Oppenheimer said, bored. “Friedrich doesn’t usually say anything. Maybe you have a gift for drawing people out.”
“What if the Germans give up before you finish the project?”
“Friedrich said that?” Oppenheimer said, drawing his neck up, turtlelike.
“Not exactly. He said the Nazis, the fact of them, gave us permission to make the gadget, so what would we do without them?”
Oppenheimer took off his hat and rubbed his temple. Connolly saw that his face had grown taut with disapproval.
“We haven’t made it yet,” he said finally. “His qualms are premature. He may be premature about the Nazis as well.”
“But if he isn’t?”
