174262.fb2 Los Alamos - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 14

Los Alamos - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 14

13

“Have you ever killed a man, Mr. Connolly? So quick. And then the responsibility, that goes on forever.” Eisler paused. “Well, as long as life. Not very long.”

The room was dim, the dark shadows broken only by the small reading lamp near his chair. Outside, the nurse was quiet, so that Connolly felt they wre lying side by side again, talking into the night. Eisler was rambling, as if in a fitful sleep, and Connolly let him lead, not knowing where to begin, afraid he would stop. “Have you come to arrest me?” he had said before, and Connolly hadn’t known how to answer. Now that he’d got what he wanted, he was dismayed. He’d imagined the scene so many times, his list of questions as orderly as a deposition, and now suddenly he felt powerless. What threat could possibly matter? He would hear what Eisler wanted to tell him, and that gentle voice came out of a depression so profound that each statement seemed a favor, one last tentative offering before it would stop altogether and stay silent. What punishment was left? So Connolly sat in the opposite chair, waiting, afraid to interrupt, as Eisler moved from Karl to Gottingen and back again, randomly stepping between remorse and cool reflection.

“I knew when I saw you at the board,” he was saying. “It was a relief. Do you understand that? But I thought I would have time-before you knew.”

“How much did you get out about the bomb?” Connolly said, trying to steer the conversation back.

Eisler paused, and for a moment Connolly thought he had lost him. Then he sighed. “Yes, the bomb. That’s the important thing, isn’t it? Not Karl, not even now. How did you know?”

“You said there was nothing to steal on the Hill. But there was always one thing to steal here.”

“Is that how you see it? Stealing?”

“Don’t you?”

“Prometheus stole the fire,” Eisler said quietly, “but not for himself. Scientific knowledge-do you think that belongs only to you?”

“It does for now. How much did you tell them?”

“I am familiar with all the principles involved in our work here,” he said formally. “Surely you already know that.”

“And now the Russians know them too.”

“My friend,” Eisler said, gentle again, “the Russians have known them for some time. These are not secrets. The mechanics, yes, but that is simply a matter of time. They will know them.”

“And now they’ll know just a little bit sooner.”

“Yes. Mr. Connolly, do you expect me to apologize for sharing this knowledge? About Karl-” He hesitated. “That was a great wrong. I accept the guilt. But the fire belongs to everybody. The bomb is only the beginning, you know. All this money-” He swept his hand to indicate the entire mesa. “It took the bomb to get this money. And since America is rich, it can afford to pay. But what we will have here, when we’re finished, is something new. Energy. Not just for bombs. Such a thing cannot be owned. Would you keep electricity to yourself? It’s not possible, even if it were right.”

“The fact remains, it wasn’t yours to give. The fact is, you took classified information and passed it on. That’s treason.”

“So many facts. I came with the Tube Alloys group. Was it treason to work with the English?”

“We’re not at war with England.”

“My friend, we are not at war with Russia either. Germany is at war with Russia. More than you can know. The real war. America is a factory and she is getting rich. England-” He waved his hand. “England is a dream. The war is Russia and Germany. It has always been. That is the great struggle. To the death. And what have you done to help? The second front? That had to wait. Tube Alloys committees for Russia? No, not for that ally. For them, the great secret. Not my knowledge to give? To defeat the Nazis, I would give anything.”

Connolly listened to his voice gathering speed, feeling the rhythm of a lecture, and looked at him in fascination: the kind face, the austere ideology. But why answer? The debate was old, and the war was over. He looked away.

“So you have,” he said quietly. “The Nazis. And who will give you permission now?”

Eisler’s cheek moved in a small tic, as if he’d been struck. “A good pupil, Mr. Connolly. You listen well.”

“Not that well. I didn’t know you were a Communist.”

“You weren’t supposed to know.”

“But Karl knew. Did you give the same speech at the meetings?”

“Meetings?”

“Where Karl saw you.”

Eisler smiled slightly. “What makes you think that?”

“Karl had a good memory. He recognized someone else from the meetings in Berlin. He recognized you too.”

“You interest me. I wonder whom he saw.” Connolly didn’t answer. “But for once your method has failed you. I never attended meetings. I was in a secret chapter. From the start.”

“Then where did you meet Karl?”

“He was a messenger. Just once, but he remembered.”

“A messenger? For you?”

“Yes, he did some work for us. A good Communist. He must have been sent to meetings to-well, to observe.”

Connolly looked at him in surprise. So Karl had had his secret too. “Karl was a Communist? I thought the Nazis had made a mistake.”

“The Nazis rarely made that kind of mistake, Mr. Connolly. I told you, it was always a war between us. That’s why many of us had to work in secret. Otherwise, they always knew. A mistake-is that what he told your people?” He seemed almost amused.

“But later, in Russia-”

“Yes, that was unfortunate,” Eisler said seriously. “A terrible time. He was foolish to go.”

“As a good Communist?”

“As a Jew. Do you think it was only the Germans-” He stopped, his eyes moving away to the past. “The revolution doesn’t always move in a straight line. It moves and then there are dark times. It was madness then. Shootings. Thousands of people, maybe more. Friends. People informed on their own friends. Yes. You’re surprised I would tell you this?”

“Yet you did all this for them.”

“The idea is right. The country is sometimes flawed. Do you not feel this about your own country?”

“You’re not Russian.”

“The idea lives there now. It doesn’t matter where.”

“So you want them to have the bomb.”

“Don’t you? Have you thought what it will mean to be the only one? Do you trust yourself that much?” He paused. “But, I admit, that is in the future. A philosophical point. I was thinking of this war, nothing more.”

“The war’s over.”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “So, we were wrong? That’s for you to say. My work is over too.”

Connolly stood up, annoyed. “Your work,” he said heavily. “Murder. That’s what we’re talking about. My God, how can you live with yourself?”

Eisler looked up at him, not answering.

“Why?” Connolly said, his voice almost plaintive.

“Mr. Connolly,” Eisler said, “may I suggest we confine our discussion to what-how, if you prefer. The why is my concern. I make no apologies. I did what was asked of me. I could not do anything else. Not now. I was-useful. I don’t think you can know what that means. An obligation. No, even more than that. I would never have refused. But my motives are irrelevant now, so let’s speak of something else.”

His tone, soft and reasonable, seemed a reproach.

“Why tell me anything at all?” Connolly said.

“Why? Perhaps I want to explain myself. Perhaps I am curious.”

“Curious?”

“Yes. To see if the Oppenheimer Principle works. To see what you know.” He paused again, gathering his thoughts. “I like you, Mr. Connolly. Such a passion for truth. You want to know everything. But to understand? I’m not so sure. They’re not the same thing. So this time maybe it’s different. I’ll make you understand. My last student.”

Connolly looked at him, thinking of Emma at Bandelier, then turned to pace in the room, as if he had a pointer in his hand. “So let’s start at the beginning, wherever that is. Your wife, I think. She didn’t just walk down the street. There was fighting all right, but she was part of it. I assume she was a Communist too?”

Eisler nodded. “That is correct.”

“Possibly even before you were,” Connolly said, a question, but Eisler didn’t answer. “Possibly not. But afterward-you were committed then. You had to carry on the fight, or anyway carry on the memory.”

“Mr. Connolly, please. This is psychology, not facts. What is the point? Let us stay with what you know.”

“But you want me to understand it. What was she like?”

Eisler grimaced, looking straight ahead. “She was young. She believed. In what? A better world. In me. Everything. Does that sound foolish now? Yes, to me too. But then it seemed perfectly natural to believe in things. I loved her,” he said, then paused. “It’s too simple, Mr. Connolly, your psychology. She may have been the beginning, yes, but she was not the cause. For that you had to be alive in Germany then, to see the Nazis come. It was bad and then worse and worse. How was it possible that no one stopped them? Did you even know about those things here? What were you, a boy? Can you remember Nuremberg? There must have been newsreels. I remember it very well. The Cathedral of Light. Even the sky was full of them. So much power. They would kill everybody, I knew it even then. And no one to stop them, no one. What would you have done?”

“We’ve been over this before.”

“Yes,” Eisler said, stopping.

“So you worked for the Communists. That must have been lucky for them. A prominent scientist.”

“I was not so prominent then. But it was useful, yes. I knew many people. Heisenberg. Many.”

“So your bosses knew them too. Then you had to get out. And you kept doing the same thing in England.”

“In Manchester, yes.”

“How did it work there?”

“Mr. Connolly. Do you really expect me to tell you that? I made reports. I met with people, I don’t know who.”

“And you told them about Tube Alloys.”

“Yes, of course. Mr. Connolly, would you please sit down? You’re making me anxious, all this back and forth. You can smoke if you like.”

“Sorry.” Connolly sat down, feeling reprimanded, and lit a cigarette. “You don’t mind?”

“It’s Robert’s hospital,” Eisler said with a small smile.

“Then you came to the Hill early last fall,” Connolly continued. “Karl would have known right away. He’s probably the one who got your file-he took an interest in that. But there wasn’t anything there. It’s what isn’t there,” he said aloud to himself. “And Karl knew. You’d done some work together in the good old days. So he asked you about it-he couldn’t resist that-but he kept it to himself. Why, I wonder. Or was Karl still a Communist too? That Russian jail just another story?”

“You are too suspicious. The mirror in a mirror? No, the jail was real. You had only to see his hands. He was never the same after that-certainly not a Communist. He renounced everything. It was not so much-” He stopped, searching. “Not so much what they did to him there, as perhaps the feeling-how can I say it? — that they had renounced him.”

“And the pain didn’t help. A disillusioning experience all around.”

Eisler glanced up at his sarcasm, then looked away again. “Yes, it must have been.”

“So you made him think you felt the same way.”

“Yes, that was very easily done,” he said with a hint of pride. “A matter of the past. You know, Mr. Connolly, when you stop loving a woman you can’t imagine what anyone else might see in her.”

Connolly was jarred by his tone. In the lamp’s small circle he felt, absurdly, that they might be swapping stories around a fire.

“So you’d both seen the light. But nothing in the file-he wouldn’t like that. That’s the sort of thing that would worry Karl.”

“You forget there was nothing in his file either. He could understand not making a point of it here. In a place like this. People are not so understanding-they don’t know what it was like there. Would he have kept his job? It would be natural to let the sleeping dog lie. For both of us. I assure you, he was-sympathetic.”

“Sympathetic enough to put the bite on you.”

Eisler looked at him, puzzled.

“You gave him money, didn’t you? What was that for, old times’ sake?”

“Oh, I see. You think he threatened to expose me? No, no, it was not like that. Karl was an opportunist, but not a traitor. If he had really thought I was still-active, nothing would have stopped him. Certainly not a little money.”

“But you gave him money. Not a little. And he kept your secret. And it wasn’t blackmail.”

Eisler waved his hand. “You insist on this term. It’s not precise. What do you think he said to me? Thirty pieces of silver for my silence? This is a fantasy, Mr. Connolly. Be precise.”

“Well, why did you give it to him? Six hundred dollars, wasn’t it?”

Eisler looked up, pleased. “Very good. A little more, but that is close. How did you know?”

“What did he say it was for?” Connolly said, ignoring his question.

“He appealed to me. He had the chance to buy members of his family out. There are such cases, you know. How much for a life? And he had very little.”

“His family’s dead.”

“Yes, of course. It was much too late for such arrangements. That was all in the past, when they were letting people out. But that is what he said. I did not contradict. I knew it was-an opportunity for him.”

“Did he know you thought that?”

Eisler shrugged. “I can’t say. I didn’t question him. I was generous. Perhaps he felt our past was a bond between us, that he could approach me this way. Perhaps he enjoyed seeing how far he could go. A game. He could trust me not to say anything. It was very strange. I think, you know, he felt I was the only person he could trust.”

“Maybe the first time,” Connolly said, picking up the story. “But after-it was too easy. He asked for more money and you gave it to him. And then again. Why? He’d be suspicious. So he started following you-where you went. Especially off the Hill. He liked driving around. Were you aware that he was tailing you?”

“No.”

“So you never saw him at any of your meetings?”

“There was only one other. He wasn’t there.”

“How did you set them up?”

“The first had been arranged before I came. The second you know. I already had the date; I would be contacted about the place. The book arrived and I knew.”

“And this time Karl was there.”

“Yes.”

“And he saw that you were passing information. There were papers?”

“Yes.”

“But he was suspicious before that. He followed you down. You probably didn’t see him that time either-he’d be a good tail-but I imagine you drove around Santa Fe for a while, just to be sure. Standard procedure for meetings. Then out to San Isidro. But you wouldn’t want to stop there until your man was already in place, you wouldn’t want to risk being seen waiting in the alley. So you drove past, and then again, until the car was there, and by that time Karl knew something was going on. How many times did you go around?”

“Is that important?” Eisler said. “A few. It was as you say. You seem to know everything.”

“Except who you were meeting.”

“I don’t know the name. I couldn’t help you even if I wanted to.”

“And you don’t want to.”

“No. But it’s useless to pursue this. I do not know.”

“What if you couldn’t make it or had to postpone the meeting? How could you contact him?”

“I couldn’t. Another meeting would be arranged.”

“How?”

“That I don’t know either. That was not my affair. But it’s of no importance. I was there. And Karl-Karl was there too. Foolish, foolish boy,” he said, shaking his head. “It was impossible. We could not allow-” He stopped. “So. He was there. And now I am here. I think I’m a little tired now, if you don’t mind. Is there anything else you want to know?”

“Who killed him.”

Eisler looked up. “I killed him, Mr. Connolly.”

“No, you didn’t.”

Eisler looked at him quizzically.

“It’s a popular murder,” Connolly said. “Everybody wants to confess to it. We’ve got one guy in prison, and I don’t believe him either. You bashed Karl’s head in, then dumped him in the park and drove on home? I don’t think so.”

“You do not have any choice in the matter.”

“I still want to know. Karl was killed in that alley all right. We have the blood samples to prove it. And you were there-I don’t doubt it for a minute. You might even say it was all your fault. You’re so eager for blame, fine, take some. But you never killed him. Your contact did that. Right there. Were you shocked? All that blood. What did it sound like when his skull cracked? That’s not in your line at all. You must have had a disillusioning experience yourself. Which is why you’re here. What I don’t know is why you still want to protect him.”

Eisler bowed his head, staring at his hands. “We were alone, Karl and I,” he said quietly. “The other was only a messenger-already gone.”

“No. He was there. Did you help clean up and shove Karl in the car, or did you just leave right away? That must have been some trip back. Lots of time to think.” He paused. “I know he’s here.”

“Here?” Eisler said, looking up, confused.

“What did you do with the car?”

“The car?” he said, thrown by the question.

“Karl’s car. You didn’t leave it there.”

“No, no. On the streets,” he said, improvising. “Not far. Perhaps it was stolen.”

“No. We found it. It’s in a canyon, just down the road from the west gate.”

Eisler fumbled, his hands nervously picking at his trousers. “I don’t understand.”

“Somebody drove it there. Your friend. You didn’t know? You had to hightail it back here, get away from San Isidro as soon as possible. The usual way, I would guess, through the east gate. It’s closer. Shall we go back to the map? Your friend has to dump the body. He was seen, it turns out. Just him, one man, not you, so I figure he was on his own. You were probably safe and sound back home by then. No risks, just in case. Then he drove Karl’s car up the back way and stashed it close enough so he could walk in. Unless you waited around to give him a lift, but I don’t think so. Why chance it? But you see what this means. You see why I can’t let it go? He’s here.”

“I’m tired,” Eisler said again. “It’s enough.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s not possible.”

Eisler sighed wearily. “It is possible, Mr. Connolly. It’s necessary. Surely you see that. To us it’s just a contact, not a person. We aren’t supposed to know. In case-well, of something like this.”

“An interrogation, you mean.”

“Yes. If you are forced. I could not tell you even if you tortured me.”

“We don’t go in for pliers here. That’s your people,” Connolly said.

Eisler looked away. “Please go now. It’s not enough for you, all this? You have your answers. I compromised the project, yes-it’s done. And Karl, that too. You don’t believe in my guilt? It was enough for God. He has already punished me.”

“You were the one playing God. I was there, remember? That’s suicide, not punishment.”

“So,” he said quietly, “you know that too. Maybe I was just helping him.”

“The way you helped the Russians.”

“If you like. I make no apologies. It’s done now.”

Connolly stood up to go. “No apologies. You want to be guilty for everything? That’s just playing God again. Wipe the whole thing away in some-what? Sacrifice? You’re right, it’s not enough for me. You want me to understand. What? How everything was justified? But what was actually done? ‘Compromise’ the project? What is that? Betraying Oppenheimer, an old friend. Betraying your colleagues, all the work they’ve done. Do you know what hell this is going to make for them? Do you think it ends here with you? Prometheus, for Christ’s sake. They’ll have to live with all this shit, the secrecy-the war will never end for them. And Karl? A conniver, a snoop. ‘So unfortunate. We couldn’t allow-’ So you know how they found him?” He saw Eisler wincing now, almost cringing in his chair, but he couldn’t stop. “His head cracked-you knew that. Did you also see him get his face smashed in? Or did your friend do that later, a little goodbye gesture? A kick-several kicks. The poor bastard. They couldn’t recognize his face. But I guess that was the point. Pulp and blood. And his pants yanked down, with his dick sticking out so that everybody would think-So that’s how Karl ended. That’s the way it goes down in the books, one kind of disgrace he had no right to expect. Let’s not even think about the future, all the bombs and God knows what. I just want to know, did you see his face? And for what? Some cause? Your big idea? Your wife? All this. Was it worth it to you?”

Eisler raised his head, his tired eyes filled with tears, as if he were being beaten.

But Connolly couldn’t stop. “Was it worth it?” he said, his voice hoarse. “Was it?”

“I don’t know,” Eisler said, a whisper.

It was the only outburst. He saw Eisler’s face in the night, floating through his sleep like a plea, old and uncertain, and felt ashamed. In the morning they went on as before, a couple who’d had a spat, careful and polite, eager to put things behind them. Connolly couldn’t let go. The radiation poisoning had created a deadline, firm and immediate, so that he felt himself in a race, like the men at Trinity, who worked too fast, with no time for consequences. When had he left the Hill that day. Were they alone at San Isidro before Karl arrived. Describe the contact. Had Karl mentioned anyone else from the early days. How had it been left. Was another meeting scheduled. Were there people in place at Hanford, at Oak Ridge. Describe the contact. But Eisler deteriorated with the meetings, the pain coming swiftly, knotting his face, and Connolly found himself fighting the drugs now as well as time. The lucid periods, fencing with remembered details, became a kind of martyrdom, some final struggle for Eisler’s soul.

They were alone. At first Oppenheimer refused to see Eisler at all, devastated by the betrayal, but Connolly couldn’t ask about the science and there was no one else. But his visits were erratic, stolen time. It was Connolly who kept the vigil. He welcomed the isolation, away from the others’ questions, sealed off from the rest of the Hill. Holliday, Mills, even Emma had to be content with promissory notes. Not now, not yet. He couldn’t leave. One evening, when the pain was very bad, Eisler gripped his hand, and he was startled at the touch, bony, desperate to make any contact, and he felt, oddly, that he had become Eisler’s protector. In the close, sour-smelling room, he was tormentor and guardian, Eisler’s last thread.

Oppenheimer had turned away. He had never quite recovered from the shock of that first day. Connolly had insisted they leave the office and walk over toward Ashley Pond. “What the devil is this all about?” Oppenheimer had protested, annoyed at the interruption, but when Connolly told him, he stopped still in the road. People, unnoticed, passed around them, and for a minute Connolly thought that something had happened-a heart attack, a stroke, as if the mind couldn’t absorb the blow alone and had passed it on to the body. “You’re sure?” Oppenheimer said finally, and Connolly, unnerved by his calm, was almost relieved when he noticed that Oppenheimer’s hands were shaking as he lit his cigarette. He didn’t know what reaction he had expected-a howl? a denial? — but when Oppenheimer began to talk, he didn’t mention Eisler at all. Instead, irritated, he said, “Was it really necessary to bring me out here?”

“We have to assume your office is wired.”

His eyes flashed for a moment in surprise. “Do we? Don’t you know?”

“They don’t tell me. I’m the one they brought in from outside, remember?”

“Vividly.”

“They check on me too.”

“Who? The general?” Then, as if he’d answered his own question, Oppenheimer started to walk. “My God, I suppose you’ll have to tell him.”

“I think it might be better coming from you. On a safe phone, if you can manage it.”

“According to you, there’s no such thing. Aren’t you letting your imagination run away with you? Anyway, I fail to see the difference. They’ll have to be told.”

“Groves has to be told. Not the others, not yet. He’ll want to run with it, but you’ll have to persuade him to keep it to himself.”

“How do you propose I do that?”

Connolly shrugged. “Call in a favor. He owes you.”

“That’s the city desk talking,” Oppenheimer said, almost sneering. He dropped his cigarette and rubbed it out, thinking. “May I ask why?”

“Have you stopped to think what will happen the minute Army Intelligence gets this? They won’t stop with Eisler.”

“If I remember correctly, that’s precisely what you were brought in to prevent.”

“I am preventing it. Look, it’s up to you. You’re the boss. My advice is to get the general to sit on it. You’ll never finish otherwise.”

“No,” Oppenheimer said, looking now over the pond. “The good of the project. I’m touched. I’d no idea you were so concerned with our work here.”

“They’d close me down too. I have an idea Eisler might talk to me. You think Lansdale or any of his goons would let that happen if they knew? Groves brought me in to sniff around some queer murder. They didn’t like that much either, but what the hell? But Reds? A spy case? They live for stuff like that.”

For a moment Oppenheimer looked almost amused. “Are you asking me to save your job?”

“And yours.”

“Ah. And mine. What a funny old world it’s become. Friedrich,” he said to himself, then turned to Connolly. “And what makes you think Groves will agree?”

“Because the only thing he cares more about than security is getting the damn thing done. And it won’t get done if he starts a Red scare now. He’ll believe you. He can’t finish this without you. He has to trust you.”

“And that’s why he spies on me. You really think he’s got the phone-”

“He’d have to,” Connolly said quietly. “You know that.”

Oppenheimer sighed. “You forget, though. After a while you get so used to the idea, you aren’t even aware of it anymore. I don’t know why I mind. I’ve never had anything to hide.”

“You do now.”

When Oppenheimer finally came to the infirmary, he almost broke down. He stood at the foot of Eisler’s bed, holding on to the frame as a barrier between them, his thin body rigid and unyielding. Then he took in the swollen skin, splotched now by intradermal bleeding, the thinning hair, and Connolly saw him let go, nearly folding.

“Robert,” Eisler said softly, the old affection, his first smile in days.

“Are you in pain?” Oppenheimer said.

“Not now. Have you seen the charts?”

Oppenheimer nodded. Connolly felt he should leave, but the silence held him, the air filled with emotion too fragile to disturb.

“It will take them years,” Oppenheimer said finally.

“Perhaps.”

“Years,” Oppenheimer repeated. “All this-for what? Why you? My friend.”

Eisler held his stare, then looked away. “Do you remember Roosevelt’s funeral? The Bhagavad Gita? What a man’s faith is, he is.”

Oppenheimer continued to stare at him. “And what are you?”

Eisler’s face fell, and he turned his head to the window. “I’m sorry about the boy,” he said finally.

“A Jew, Friedrich. A Jew.” Then he took his hands off the frame and moved away from the bed, his eyes hard again. “Were you the only one?” he said, his voice detached and composed.

But Eisler was quiet, and after a while Oppenheimer gave up. “Very well,” he said, brisk and matter-of-fact. “Shall we begin with the fuel? The purities? I assume they’re not familiar with the alloying process?”

So they began their interview, the first of several, while Connolly sat on the other side of the room and listened. Explosive lenses. The initiator. Tampers. None of it meant anything to him. Instead he watched Oppenheimer, cool and efficient, run through his checklist of questions. He never wavered again. Connolly marveled at his single-mindedness. There were no more reproaches, no more attempts at any human connection. My friend. Now there was just a flow of information. How much was lost? It was the project that had been betrayed; Oppenheimer’s own feelings had disappeared in some willed privacy. Perhaps he would take them out later, bruised, when the project was safe.

Eisler told him everything. Connolly felt at times that he was eavesdropping on some rarefied seminar. Question. Answer. Observation. They anticipated each other. With Connolly, Eisler sparred and evaded, but now his answers came freely, as if he were a foreigner relieved to find someone who spoke his native language. To him, science really was universal and open-it belonged to everyone who could know it. But mostly now it belonged to Oppenheimer. As Connolly watched them, he felt that Eisler’s eager cooperation had become a kind of sad last request for forgiveness. He would give Oppenheimer everything. They would talk as they always had, and Oppenheimer would feel the pleasure of it again and understand: what scientist could believe it must be secret?

But Oppenheimer was somewhere else now. Whenever he saw that Eisler, too sick to go on, needed medication, he would stop without complaint, almost relieved to go back to his real work. In the morning they would take up where they had left off, and Connolly would see Eisler’s eyes, strained and cloudy, clear for a minute in anticipation. It became a question of how long he could last. Connolly would watch for the signs-a few beads of sweat, the voice suddenly dry, the small movements of his hands on the sheets-and see him struggle with it, ignoring the pain just a few minutes longer to keep Oppenheimer there. Then, after a week, they were finished, and Oppenheimer stopped coming. Eisler would look at the door in the morning and then, resigned, turn his head toward the chair and smile weakly at Connolly, who was now all there was.

“Groves wants to come,” Oppenheimer told him one day, outside.

“Tell him to wait a few days. He’s dying. I’m still hoping he’ll talk to me.”

“How much longer, do you think?”

“I don’t know. A few days. It can’t go on much longer. He’s in pain all the time now.”

“Yes,” Oppenheimer said, and for a moment Connolly thought he saw something break in his eyes. Then he turned to go. “Why this way? There were a hundred easier ways to do it.”

“I don’t know. Fit the punishment to the crime. Maybe something like that.”

Oppenheimer looked at him, a question.

“No, not Karl,” Connolly said. “I think it’s about the bomb.”

But Oppenheimer didn’t want to hear it. “Nonsense.”

“He’s a scientist,” Connolly said. “Maybe for him it’s the elegant solution.”

Oppenheimer started at the words. “No,” he said wearily. “It’s an atonement. My God, what a waste. Does he think anybody’s watching?”

“He asks for you.”

Oppenheimer ignored him. “Groves wants to come,” he said again. Then he anticipated Connolly’s reaction. “I told him you were doing everything possible.”

“He doesn’t trust me?”

“He’ll have to. We’ll all have to, Mr. Connolly. Interesting how things work out, isn’t it? Do you think he’ll talk?”

“If he doesn’t, we’re at a dead end. Literally. It dies with him. Keep Groves away, will you? And no goons either.”

“I’ll do what I can. He has to come sometime, you know. We have to decide what to do.”

“Like what? There’s nothing to be done.”

“You don’t know G.G. There’s always something to be done. In fact, I suggest you start thinking about what- he’ll want ideas. I’d better go now. We’ve still got a gadget to build.”

“You don’t want to see Eisler?”

“I’ve seen him,” he said, and walked away.

So Eisler talked to Connolly. Some days he would lie staring at the ceiling, his eyes half-closed in a daze, and then there would be a rush of talk. Hamburg. A back garden. The damp rooms after the first war, when there was no coal. He talked pictures for Connolly, gabled roofs and tramlines and a summer lake. Then, as if a cloud had passed in front of the sun in his mind, block-long factories and slate skies and his father, the hacking cough of damaged lungs. A last attempt, even now, at precision. Connolly didn’t interrupt, hoping instead for a revealing moment. Sometimes he drifted into German, a secret testimony that left Connolly helpless. He had long since stopped answering questions. If Connolly drew him back to the alley at San Isidro, he would grow quiet, then speak of something else. He no longer enjoyed the verbal fencing. There wasn’t time to go over it again. He was talking out his life. Now Berlin. Trude. A hiking trip in the mountains. Connolly sat in the dim room day after day, listening for clues.

He saw Emma only once, on a Saturday when they drove up to Taos Pueblo for an outing, past Hannah’s ranch and along the high mountain road where the villages reminded her of Spain. After days with Eisler, the sun was too bright, glaring off the whitewashed walls, and after a while Connolly wished he hadn’t come. What if Eisler said something and there was no one to hear? He missed the puzzle of the stories. Eisler had wanted him to understand, but all he had learned so far was that his life was inexplicable. It couldn’t end in the alleyway. He had to leave a name, a description.

The pueblo itself was poor and dusty, filled with scratching chickens and occasional pickup trucks and quiet, resentful Indians selling blankets. The mud apartment blocks, windows outlined in bright blue, seemed like tenements, all clotheslines and old tin cans and rickety ladders leading to roofs. Maybe it had always been like this, he thought, the splendor of the Anasazi ruins no more than a leap of imagination. They sat near the fast, high stream that divided the two sides of the settlement, watching children crossing on the railless wooden bridge.

“Are you really all right?” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“People are talking. They say you’ve got it too. That’s why you’re the only one allowed. They’re afraid to let anyone else in.”

“No. I’m fine. I just talk to him, that’s all.”

“You mean you’re questioning him. I thought he was dying.”

“He is.”

“What about? Karl? You think he killed Karl? I don’t believe it.”

“Neither do I. But I think he knows who did.”

“Why would he?” she said, and then, when he didn’t answer, “Oh, I see. Don’t ask. Run along, Emma. Is it something terrible?”

“Yes.”

She shivered. “Then don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I like him.”

“I like him too.”

“Then why do this to him? What do you actually do, anyway? Give him shots to make him talk? Keep at him till he breaks down? Like the films? God, Michael. Sitting there like a vulture waiting for him to die. Everybody deserves a little peace.”

Connolly was quiet for a minute. “He doesn’t want peace. He wants to talk. We just-talk.”

“About what?”

“His life. Germany. Everything. He’s dying, Emma. He wants somebody to talk to.”

“And you volunteered.”

“It just worked out that way. I can’t explain it now. I don’t like it either, you know. It’s a lousy way to die. It’s not fun to watch.”

Emma stood, picking up a stone and throwing it at the water. “I hate what you do.”

“I didn’t ask to do it.”

“You didn’t say no, either. And now you’ll never give up. Sometimes I wonder how far you’d go. Would you do anything?”

“No.”

“What’s your limit, then? Do you know?” She came back from the stream.

“I’m not a cop.”

“No, something else. God, I wish he would tell you. Put an end to all this. We could just be ourselves. What’s the difference, anyway? We could go away somewhere together.”

Connolly stared ahead. A dog was barking on the bridge, herding the children across.

“Is that what we’re going to do?” he said.

“I don’t know. Is it?”

He got up and took her arm. “If that’s what you want, yes. We’ll do whatever you want.”

She looked up at him and nodded. “But not now.”

“No. When it’s finished.”

Eisler got worse that night. The morphine had made him itch, and, unconscious, he had scratched himself over and over, so that in the morning his arms were covered in jagged red lines. Connolly found him tethered to the bed with narrow strips of gauze, and when he reprimanded the nurse and gently untied the arms, thin as sticks, he felt Eisler look up at him, momentarily coherent and grateful. “Robert,” he said, his voice little more than a croak. “Is Robert coming?”

“Later,” Connolly said.

Eisler nodded. “He’s very busy,” he said, then drifted off again.

Later that afternoon they talked a little, but Eisler’s mind wandered. He no longer cared about his charts or his own disintegration. He lived now entirely in memory, sustained by an IV dripping into his arm. When Connolly asked once about Karl, he seemed to have forgotten who he was. He went back to Gottingen, a lecture about the instability of negative charges. Connolly fed him small pieces of ice, and when the ice began to melt it ran down his chin, his cracked lips too dry to absorb the moisture. The gold crown on one of his molars had become radioactive, causing the tongue to swell on one side. When they capped it with a piece of lead foil, a last tamper, his gums bled. Warm June air blew in through the window, but the smell, resistant, hung over everything. Connolly no longer noticed. He watched Eisler’s face, waiting. When Eisler gasped, involuntarily wincing in agony, Connolly knew it was time to ask for another injection, and then he would lose him again until the pain had soaked up the drug and brought him back.

“You’ve got to see him,” he said to Oppenheimer. “He asks for you.” And when Oppenheimer didn’t reply, “He won’t last the week. It would be a mercy.”

“A mercy,” Oppenheimer said, examining the word. “Have you learned anything?”

“It’s too late for that.”

“Then why do you stay?”

Connolly didn’t know what to answer. “It won’t be much longer,” he said.

Oppenheimer did come, in the morning, with the sun cutting through the slats in the blinds. He took off his hat and stood for a minute at the door, appalled, then forced himself to cross to the bed. Eisler’s eyes were closed, his face immobile, stretched taut as a death mask.

“Is he awake?” he said in a low voice to Connolly.

“Try,” Connolly said.

Oppenheimer took Eisler’s hand. “Friedrich.” He held it, waiting, while Eisler’s eyes opened.

“Yes,” Eisler said, a whisper.

“Friedrich, I’ve come.”

Eisler looked at him, his eyes confused. “Yes. Who is it, please?”

Oppenheimer’s face twitched in surprise. Then, slowly, he let the hand go and stood up. “Yes?” Eisler said again vaguely, but his eyes had closed, and Oppenheimer turned away. He faced Connolly, about to speak, but instead his eyes filled with tears.

“Don’t go,” Connolly said.

“He doesn’t know me,” Oppenheimer said dully, and turned toward the door.

Connolly went over to the bed to wake Eisler, but when he looked back again Oppenheimer had gone, so he dropped his hand to his side.

“Yes?” Eisler said faintly, returning.

“It was Robert,” Connolly said, but Eisler seemed not to have heard.

“Robert,” Eisler said, as if the word meant nothing. Then his eyes widened a little and he felt for Connolly’s hand. “Yes, Robert,” he said, holding him.

There were two more days, as bad as before, and now no one else came at all. Connolly sat for hours by the bed, listening for breathing. Once Eisler came back, his voice clearer and his eyes steady, not moving as they usually did to avoid the pain.

“What is troubling you, Robert?” Eisler said, for Connolly was always Robert now.

“Nothing. Get some sleep.”

“No more questions? What happened to the questions? Ask me.”

“It’s all right.”

“Ask me. Can’t I help you?”

“You remember Karl?”

“Yes,” he said vaguely. “The boy.”

“The man you met-he was wearing workboots.”

“Workboots? I don’t understand.”

“Workboots. On the Hill. It doesn’t fit.”

“I don’t understand, Robert. Why are you asking me these things? What about the test? Trinity. Be careful of the weather. The wind-the particles. The wind will spread everything-”

“We’ll be careful,” Connolly said.

“Good,” he said, closing his eyes again. “Good.”

In a minute Connolly tried again. “Friedrich,” he said. “Please. Tell me. Who was driving the car?”

Eisler lay quietly, his eyes fluttering. “They stopped at the river, Robert,” he said, opening them. He looked at Connolly, troubled and confused, and Connolly leaned forward to hear him. But it was another river. “The Russians. They stopped at the river. Until the fighting was over. They wouldn’t cross. They waited till everyone was dead.”

Connolly knew then that the Hill had slipped away for good. He had lost. “In Warsaw,” he said, giving in.

“In Warsaw, yes. They waited. Till everybody was dead.”

Connolly watched his eyes fill with tears, a spontaneous sorrow. He wondered if everyone ended this way, overwhelmed with regret.

“Can you imagine such a thing?” he said. “The Russians.” Then, his eyes moving irrationally, he grabbed Connolly’s hand. “Don’t tell Trude.”

Connolly patted him soothingly. “No. I won’t.”

Eisler lay back, his eyes closed again, but he kept Connolly’s hand. Connolly, helpless to remove it, sat there feeling Eisler’s fingers pulse faintly, then clutch and relax, as if he were touching what was left of his life. Of all the strange things that had happened to him since he had come to Los Alamos, this seemed to him the strangest. The sour room. The swollen hand holding on to someone else he thought was there. The unexpected intimacy of death, confiding in an imposter. When Eisler clutched him tightly toward the end and said, “Was it so terrible what I did? Was it so terrible?” he knew he meant not this last betrayal but the ruined faith of a lifetime.

“No, not so terrible,” he lied, giving comfort to the enemy.