always scare them. You’re everything they’re not.”
Oppenheimer was quiet for a minute, then smiled faintly, a tic. “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“A small one.”
“You want me to vouch for you, then.”
“Groves vouched for you.”
“You forget I have a certain amount of responsibility to keep this project secure.”
“So did Groves.”
Oppenheimer paused. “So he did,” he said, taking the paper and letting it flutter to the wastebasket. “Now will you do something for me? Keep your indiscretions discreet, will you? This particular husband is too valuable right now to be worrying about his wife.”
“I don’t think he knows. He’s at Trinity most of the time.”
Oppenheimer started and then jotted something down. “Thank you for reminding me. I almost forgot about the cables.”
“Cables?”
“Coaxial cables. The rats are chewing the wires at the site. We have to patrol the whole damn desert floor now, night and day. Miles of wire. It’s got everybody jumpy.” He caught Connolly’s look. “Sorry, what were we saying?”
“Nothing. I was going to be more discreet.”
“Yes, that’s right.” Oppenheimer paused. “Be careful. They usually do know.”
“Who?”
“Kitty was married when we met. We thought her husband didn’t know, but he did.”
Connolly looked up at him, surprised, then let it go. “You ought to get some sleep,” he said.
“Everybody says that, but nobody tells me how.”
The whole mesa seemed on edge, like some extension of Oppenheimer’s nervous system. Connolly had come back west with a sense of relief-the high, dry air was the air he breathed now-but the Hill had changed. It was curiously deserted, with hundreds gone to the test site and the usual traffic at the gates slowed by travel restrictions. Los Alamos was left to bake in the arid July air. The grass had long since dried up, the little patch gardens scraggly and cracked. Children, out of school, played ball in a swirl of dust. Mothers spread blankets over bare dirt for impromptu picnics or sat in the shade of the hutments and prefab houses, fanning themselves. Without being told, they knew something was about to happen. Lab windows were bright all night. With so many gone, the summer should have been quiet and lethargic. Instead, it was anxious, wide awake, as if everyone were waiting for forest fires to break out.
Connolly checked the mail, went for walks, wandered in and out of the Tech Area looking for something to do. Eisler’s books were sold to raise money for the school, his personal effects doled out by Johanna Weber to friends in the emigre community. Connolly had asked her for a picture-the theoretical team on an outing in the Jemez Mountains-and, surprised, she had given it to him with sentimental tears in her eyes. He placed it on the bureau next to the photograph of Karl, two pieces in the puzzle. He saw Emma at the movies, but they stayed away from each other, afraid to divert their attention from the waiting. Finally, after a week, claustrophobic in all the wide space of the mesa, he drove into Santa Fe to see Holliday.
“I’d just about given up on you,” Holliday said pleasantly. “Coffee?”
“In this heat?”
“Old Indian trick. Just pay it no attention and after a while you don’t know it’s there.”
“It’s there,” Connolly said, wiping his neck.
They sat out behind the office where a table had been set up in the shade of a giant cottonwood tree.
“Sorry I haven’t been around. I just haven’t had anything to tell you.”
“That you can tell me, you mean. That’s all right. I figure it’s Hill business now. I don’t ask. Looks like we’ll all know pretty soon.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, not much traffic into town these days. Real quiet. But you got these explosions going off in the canyons every night now. Folks don’t even complain anymore-no point. Meantime, you got every hotel room in town booked for next week. That nice Mrs. McKibben’s onto the boarding houses now, so you must have a crowd coming in. So I figure you’re about to do whatever it is you’re going to do up there.”
Connolly smiled at him. “You’re a good cop.”
“That’s not hard in a small town. Nothing happens. Until you came along, anyway.”
“I guess you’ll be relieved when I go.”
Holliday sipped his coffee, looking at him. “You might be here quite a spell. One thing you learn in police work is how to wait. Now you, you hate to wait. You’d make coffee nervous.”
Connolly smiled again. “So what do you do while you’re waiting?”
“Mostly you turn things over in your mind.”
Connolly looked at him with interest. “Such as?”
“Well, such as that car. Anybody bother it yet? No. But now you’ve got all these explosions going off nearby. You’d think somebody’d want to move it, wouldn’t you?”
“Why should he? Nobody’s found it yet. It’s been months.”
“True. But it’s funny about that car. Easiest thing in the world to drive it somewhere else, then get a bus or something back to the Hill. That way nobody’d connect it at all.”
“Nobody has connected it. As far as he knows, it’s still hidden.”
“Maybe. But that was before they started blowing those canyons all to hell. If it was me, I’d move it.”
“So what are you thinking?”
“Well, the way it makes sense is if he isn’t on the Hill anymore.”
“No, he’s there.”
“You’re sure.”
“He has to be.”
“Has to be isn’t evidence.”
“He’s there,” Connolly said firmly. “I know it.”
Holliday paused. “Well, if you know it. ‘Course, there’s one other way it makes sense.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, I’d move it, but maybe he’s not as smart as I am. That’s another thing you learn in police work-they’re not the brightest bunch of guys. We just like to think so ‘cause it makes us look good.”
Connolly smiled. “What else do you get when you turn things over?”
“Not much. The funny thing about this one is that we’ve got the when and the where and it sounds like you’ve got the why but you’re not telling.” He looked at Connolly, who nodded. “Well, in my experience, at least one of these ought to lead us to who. But not this time.”
“We have to come at it a different way.”
“That why you’ve got my boys watching those churches?”
Connolly nodded. “It might be a waste of time.”
“Well, it won’t do them any harm. Good way to get to know your own town. You take me-I’ve never been to the Governors’ Palace. Pass it every day, but never been inside. But that’s usually the way, isn’t it?”
“You’re leading up to something.”
“No, I’m just teaching you how to wait,” Holliday said, his eyes enjoying a private joke. “I’ve been thinking and thinking about it, and damned if I can come up with anything. ‘Course, I don’t know the why.”
Connolly placed his coffee on the table and looked away. “Somebody was passing military secrets and Karl surprised them at the drop. At San Isidro. But you didn’t hear that, okay?”
Holliday looked at him closely, then nodded. “Well, I figured that much.”
“How’s that?”
“Everything top secret and MPs walking around the place and people dropping in from Washington. What the hell else could it be? Still,” he said, smiling, “it’s nice to know. I appreciate that.”
Connolly didn’t say anything.
“And now you’re arranging another drop?” Holliday said quietly.
Connolly got up and paced toward the tree, ignoring him. “When did you figure all this out?”
