again-goes through the place over and over.”
“Maybe he’s just trying to get away from his wife.”
“We’d all be better off. He’s serious, though. I’ve seen him deny clearance to scientists here and then call the university to get them fired. A real vindictive prick. And he’s got Lawrence running in every direction, scared shitless they’ll stop his funding. He’s got files on everyone. I know.”
“You know a lot,” Connolly said, thinking of that first night, Mills’s shiny head bobbing at the square dance. “Why doesn’t Oppenheimer put a stop to it?”
“Are you kidding? He’s the one they want most. They’ve all got the knives out for Oppenheimer. You should see the file they’ve got on him.”
“I have seen it.”
“Not all of it, you haven’t. Every meeting. Every check for the Spanish refugees. His brother. The girlfriend- she was a party member. His wife used to be married to one. His students-any kid that’s left of Roosevelt they blame on him. It just piles up. Van Drasek wouldn’t even clear him until Groves told him to fuck off and just pushed it through himself.”
“But why? What does he think Oppenheimer’s doing, working for the Russians?”
“Why. He’s crazy. He’d love it if Oppie were working for them-that would be perfect. Actually, what it is, Oppenheimer thinks it’s bullshit and they know he thinks it. Which means he thinks they’re bullshit. Which they are. But they can’t touch him as long as he’s building their damn bomb and Groves protects him. And the more he tries to get along with them, the more they hate him. They’re all obsessed with him-the crazies, anyway. I think that’s why Karl was following him. He was a little obsessed too.”
“What?”
“Well, if he was. I don’t know for sure. You’re the one who thought he was following somebody.”
“I never thought it was Oppenheimer.”
“I know, it doesn’t fit your story. But he’s the only one I can ever remember Karl talking about. He was interested in Oppie.”
“Why?”
“I think because they were. Karl was ambitious, you know? Maybe he thought if he could get something on Oppie, he’d angle himself a nice big promotion. Be one of the big boys. Of course, that’s where he was crazy, because they didn’t trust him either.”
They had begun the steep climb up the hill. Connolly was thinking again. “So if he had anything on somebody, he’d want to make sure.”
“Home at last,” Mills said as they approached the gate. And, oddly, it was. Connolly looked at the high wire fence, the MPs checking passes, the rough buildings dim in the moonlight, and felt at home, somewhere to screen out the rest of the world. Was this what the killer had felt-relief at being back, the canyon and the panic at the church behind him?
“Are you going to report our conversation tonight?” Connolly said.
“I have to write something,” Mills said apologetically.
“Try this. Say that I have evidence Karl was asked by Lansdale to do a check on Van Drasek. And accidentally get a copy to Van Drasek. We could have some fun with them.”
Mills shook his head and smiled. “You have the fun. I just want to get back to Winnetka in one piece.”
After they dropped the car at the motor pool, they walked back toward the Tech Area. The streets were quiet, the usual lights still shining in the labs. Not even victory in Europe interrupted the project.
“Just out of curiosity,” Connolly said, “what will you write?”
“I don’t know. Nothing much. You’re puzzled about the car. Can’t figure it out.” He paused. “He likes to hear you’re stumped. Makes Groves look like a jerk for putting you in. So I usually just say you’re not getting anywhere.”
“I’m not. And what if there was a genuine security breach? While I was getting nowhere and he was looking good?”
Mills shrugged. “What’s more important in the scheme of things, somebody else’s security or your own job? They’ve got a healthy sense of priorities in G-2. Nightcap?”
“No, but I’ll buy you a coffee if the lodge is still open.”
“Mike, about all this-I couldn’t help it. You know I would never say anything—”
Connolly looked at him, the pleasant, eager face that avoided waves. “Unless you had to.”
Mills looked as if he’d been slapped.
“Never mind,” Connolly said, not wanting to push him. “It’s just the way things are now.”
“It’s the war.”
“Yeah, the war.”
There were still people at the lodge, smoking over leftover dishes and coffee cups, the celebration dinners finished. A few men from the office hailed them and Mills joined them with something like relief, tired of intimacy. Connolly sat with them for a while, listening to the easy jokes, ignoring the rest of the room because Emma was three tables away. She had glanced up when he came in, then turned back to her table as if he weren’t there. He heard her laugh. The officers at his table were telling their own war stories-Feynman sending a letter cut into pieces to kid the censors; the physicist who sneaked out through a hole in the fence and kept coming back through the gate, a Marx Brothers trick. He looked at their faces and wondered if one of them checked on the others, an easy deceit. Was she aware of him? They were ten feet apart, no more. Did Daniel see her glance over, notice some nervous pitch to her voice? He moved restlessly in his seat, uncomfortable, afraid of giving himself away. But no one paid any attention.
He looked in the other direction, toward a large table of scientists who were laughing at something Teller was saying. Ulam, Metropolis, and a few of the others surrounded him like a court, and he was beaming with pleasure, the center of attention, the bushy eyebrows raised in arcs over the round, vain face. Oppenheimer’s problem child. And of course that was why he was happy: Oppenheimer wasn’t there; the table, its little world, was his. Connolly wondered for a moment what Oppenheimer meant to them, whether, like Mills’s boss, they were simply waiting for their moment. But it seemed absurd. The table was genial, the room itself filled with high spirits, a bright faculty lounge on Oppenheimer’s enchanted campus. How had he managed it? He listened, people said, he understood everything. He kept the army away. He defused the rivalries. Von Neumann’s mathematics. Fast neutrons. Diaper service. Everything. People wanted to be with him at parties. And, according to Mills, they were out to get him.
Was Oppenheimer aware of any of it? Did he notice the jealousy and suspicion, frosted over now in the consensus of getting the job done? Did he know that Karl had been following him? Just another in a long line of checks and clearances, too familiar to bother about. A nuisance. And was Connolly any better? Another one of Groves’s whims, blundering in on the scent of small scandal when there was important work to be done. Did Oppenheimer resent him too? Connolly felt suddenly like Mills, wanting to explain, to excuse himself. He meant no harm to the project, and he knew that one way or another-a crime revealed, a husband betrayed-he would do it damage. And his first impulse? He smiled to himself. Like everyone else with a problem at Los Alamos, he wanted to talk to Oppenheimer.
He wandered out to the Tech Area, nodding at Emma’s table as he left, surprised by the shiver of guilty pleasure he felt at getting away with something. It was easy to look at her now; she was someone else here, another person. The lights were still on in Main Tech. He showed his badge to the sentry MP at the inner fence and climbed the few wooden steps to the building. Inside, it was quiet. He turned left, toward Oppenheimer’s office, then stopped in the corridor. What, after all, had he come to say? A report on the car. A question about Karl. A complaint about Lansdale. Excuses, not worth his time. The fact was, he simply wanted to talk, like an eager graduate student working out a proof. When he saw that Oppenheimer’s office was dark, he felt relieved and foolish at the same time. Why had he expected him to be here so late? Yet it was part of the myth he was helping construct. In his mind, the brightly lit door was always open.
The door next to the office, however, was open, fluorescent light pouring out into the corridor. There was no one inside. Instinctively he reached in to snap out the light, then stopped. It had been years since he had been in a classroom, and he stood there for a minute taking in the familiar smell of chalk and dust and dry radiator heat. The room was small-a desk in one corner piled with books, a conference table with chairs, a blackboard, and two narrow windows that faced Ashley Pond. The blackboard had the chalk smears of a hasty eraser, and Connolly went over to
