“Actually, he’s all right. This business with Bruner’s got him spooked, though, so give him a little room.”
“Generals are all alike.”
“Just like happy families.”
Connolly smiled. “You’ve been to school.”
“Here we are. Mind your head,” he said, opening the door.
Inside was a plain anteroom, barely big enough for the desk and the pink middle-aged woman who fluttered behind it.
“Mr. Connolly? Thank goodness you’re here. The general’s got a plane to catch, and he’s been asking for you all afternoon. I’ll just tell him—”
But there was no need, because the door behind her was opened by a big man in khaki who seemed to fill the entire doorframe, absorbing the space. He was not sloppy-he was tucked in as neatly as a hospital corner at inspection-but he had the pudgy flesh of an overweight businessman and his large stomach strained at his belt. There were damp patches under his arms, and Connolly imagined the Washington summers were torture for him. The overall effect was boyish, like someone who had ballooned out at puberty and couldn’t, even now, pass up a jelly doughnut. But the mustache in the middle of his round soft face was surprisingly trimmed and small, the borrowed look of a thin clerk.
“Good, you’re here. Connolly, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
He handed a sheaf of papers to the woman. “We haven’t got much time, so let’s not waste any. I’ve got to catch a plane in Albuquerque, and it’s a heck of a drive getting there. Betty, you’ll make sure the car’s ready? These are all okayed and ready to go. Be sure you get copies of the first two to Dr. Oppenheimer tomorrow-he’s been waiting. I’ll phone you from Washington about the plumbing contracts. Connolly?”
The office was simple, about the size of a large dormitory room, with a window looking out onto the busy main street and the Tech Area fence. There was nothing personal on the walls, just a photograph of Roosevelt and a map of the country, and the desk, piled with folders and contracts and a picture of a woman with two little girls, could have been that of any bureaucrat. Only the two black telephones, a wartime luxury, suggested any importance. Connolly knew instinctively that his real office in the Pentagon was probably no different-plain, pared down, as if he were determined to remove anything that could distract him from the job. In the wastepaper basket at the side of the desk Connolly saw the incongruous shiny brown of a Hershey bar wrapper.
“Sit down,” he said, gesturing to the only chair. “Please. I apologize for not seeing you in Washington, but I was out on the road, as usual. They say the war’s winding down, but I don’t see it. Now. You’ve been briefed?”
“On Karl Bruner’s death, yes.”
Even the sound of the name seemed to make him uncomfortable.
“Yes,” he said, throwing a folder on the pile and resting his hands on the back of his chair. “First time anything like this has happened on the project. Terrible thing, any way you look at it. The question is, how do we look at it?”
“Sir?”
“I mean, is there more here than meets the eye? Less? Do we have a problem?”
“Well, you’ve got a dead body.”
“Correction. The Santa Fe police have a dead body. What we’ve got is a missing security officer. That could be a heck of a lot more serious.”
“Any idea how serious?”
Groves glared for a minute, then sighed. “No. Maybe we don’t even have a problem. Maybe it was just- something that could happen to anyone. Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with the project or his being on the Hill. Maybe. But we need to be sure. And we’re going to be.” He stopped and looked straight at Connolly. “I’ve seen that look a million times before, so don’t waste it. Groves going off the deep end again. Spies under the bed. Paranoid. In fact,” he said, smiling a little, “I can almost guarantee you that’s what you’ll hear from my friend Dr. Oppenheimer. Says it to me all the time. But sometimes I think Robert’s too trusting for his own good, so where do we draw the line? I can’t change the way I feel-somebody’s got to worry about things. Right from the start people here treated security like a joke. They’re brilliant men, I’m the first to say it, but sometimes they’re like kids- irresponsible, you know, maybe even looking for a little trouble. Some of them used to play pranks with the mail-can you imagine that? Grown men? They used to cut holes in the fence just to see if they could get in and out without anybody noticing. Grown men. Brilliant men. So somebody’s got to play principal, and I guess that’s me. I don’t care what anyone says so long as the project’s safe.”
He stopped suddenly, looking a little surprised at himself for having run on.
“I’m not a policeman,” Connolly said, a question.
“I don’t want a policeman. Tommy McManus tells me you’re a good man and I can trust you. If Tommy says it, that’s it. He doesn’t know how you ended up at OWI in the first place. He also tells me you can snoop around without upsetting the horses.”
“That why you wanted a civilian?”
Groves smiled. “Partly. The scientists are allergic to uniforms. It’s very important to keep things running smoothly now. We’re coming to the end of the project. I’ve got a lot of nervous types up here-sometimes I think the smarter they are, the more nervous they are. You never know what’s going to set them off. I’m not going to stand for anyone running around digging up dirt that doesn’t mean a thing. We take care of ourselves. Do you know how many security incidents we’ve investigated since this project began? Over a thousand. Wives talking at cocktail parties about how brilliant their husbands are. Factory workers in Tennessee bragging about their paychecks. Newspapermen get curious, so we have to make sure they don’t get too curious.”
“General, I think you should know that McManus recommended me because I’ve spent the last two years in Washington keeping you out of the papers. That’s part of my beat-the blackout on the project. Scientific journals. Everything.”
“So you understand the science?” Groves asked, curious.
“Does anybody understand the science?”
Groves looked at him.
“A little,” Connolly said apologetically. “Enough to know what can’t be said. Which is just about everything. Right down to the word atom. Anyway, I’m familiar with the operation.”
“Good. Then I don’t have to tell you. Over a thousand incidents, and so far, not one leak and not one day of work lost. This isn’t going to be any different. You do your job right and the scientists aren’t even going to know you’re here. What’s the matter?” he said, catching the look on Connolly’s face.
“General, I’m just trying to figure out if I’m here because I don’t know anything or because you don’t want to. Are you trying to catch this guy or not?”
Groves raised his eyebrows. “That’s an interesting question,” he said finally. “I’m not sure. If somebody robbed Bruner and bopped him over the head, I hope the police catch him. But not if it means taking five minutes away from the project. It’s just not worth the time. Hate to put it like that, but it’s the truth. Do you have any idea how important this is, what we’re doing here? I know you keep it out of the papers, but do you know what it means? We could end the war.” He said this calmly, matter-of-factly, without the usual bond-drive fervor, so that Connolly took it as literal. “Right now you’ve got thousands of boys dying every week. You’ve got Curt LeMay running those B-29s over Japan like the wrath of God. We have no idea how many casualties. None. And the invasion will mean more and more. We can stop that if we finish the work here. So no, I don’t care if they catch one killer-we can catch millions. Unless it isn’t just a robbery. Unless it’s about the project. That’s what we’ve got to know.”
“Okay,” Connolly said, “so we want to find out if his being murdered had anything to do with the Hill, but we don’t want to bother anyone on the Hill finding out.”
Groves looked at him steadily. “Now you think you’re being funny. I allow one wisecrack, and now you’ve had yours.”
“Sorry. I just wonder if you’re giving the police a fair shake. Or me, for that matter.”
“Fair doesn’t apply to you,” he said evenly, “you’re working for me. The police? They took their own sweet time getting in touch, by which time the physical evidence-if there was physical evidence-didn’t amount to much and the papers already had the story. That’s the last thing we want. Luckily, it’s still a John Doe to them, no
