Groves used the funeral service as the excuse for his trip. The entire Hill closed down for the afternoon, eerie in the sudden stillness, like a forest in the absence of birds. Connolly had never realized before how noisy the place usually was, voices and motors and the clangs of the metallurgy unit vibrating in a constant hum. Now you could actually hear the wind blow across the mesa, a character in the creation myth. It was even quiet in the crowded theater, only a few whispers and scraping chairs until Professor Weber’s quartet filled the room with some mournful Bach. Afterward, Oppenheimer and Groves sat on the stage with the speakers, Groves in his tight, bullying uniform and Oppenheimer almost languid, the dark cloth of his suit hanging in folds over his gaunt frame. He had refused to speak, ceding his place to Weber as a gesture to the emigre community, and only Connolly was aware that it was a deft evasion, the maneuver of one practiced in compromise.
The speakers said the expected. Eisler’s contribution to science. His contribution to the project. His concern for humanity and the arts. His generosity. His ethical standards. Connolly looked around the room at the hundreds of people in varying stages of grief; Eisler had betrayed all of them. What if they knew? Weber broke down in the middle of his speech, weakened by genuine sentiment, and some people in the audience cried. Eisler was science at its best, the pure inquiry, the search for truth. He even-here Connolly, restless, almost rose to leave-died for it. Connolly thought that the hypocrisy of eulogies was a final mercy to the survivors. If people knew the truth, would there ever be kings? Tyrants were always praised for their love of the people, politicians for their vision, artists for their selflessness. Now Los Alamos had its own martyr, the one they needed, and he did them more honor than most. He had died for science. But Oppenheimer sat on the stage, his legs crossed, and did not speak.
Afterward Connolly walked with Oppenheimer and Groves out toward S Site, an inspection team of three.
“A little hot for a walk, isn’t it?” Groves said, wiping the back of his neck, his uniform already showing splotches of dampness.
“Connolly tells me people listen in my office. Bugs. I know you’d never allow that,” Oppenheimer said, mischievous, “but you know what the intelligence unit is like. Better to indulge them. Interfere with a delusional and they go stark raving. Or so I’m told. Why don’t you take off your jacket?”
Groves, choosing comfort over dignity, flung it over his shoulder and held it with his forefinger. Without the camouflage of the jacket, his stomach strained at his shirt buttons, spilling over his belt.
“You pick one heck of a time to make jokes. We’ve got a real mess on our hands here. I always said this would happen.”
“Yes, you did,” Oppenheimer replied.
“Foreigners and-”
“Would you feel any better if he came from Ohio?”
“All right,” Groves said. “Make your point.”
“These pesky foreigners are making your gadget, so don’t let’s start down that road again. It could have been anybody.”
“Well, you would think that,” he said, backing off but not mollified. “How’s the timetable? Still on track?”
Oppenheimer nodded. “Just. Five minutes’ leeway, give or take a minute. We can’t afford any time off,” he said, directly to Groves.
“That’s why I’m here,” Groves said. “So let’s get started. First, assess the damage. How bad is it? What do they know? Can they make a bomb?”
“No,” said Oppenheimer thoughtfully. “I don’t think so. Eisler was a theoretical physicist. He knew the plans for the implosion bomb. That’s a plus for them. But he can’t build their reactor for them. He didn’t know the purity requirements. He couldn’t alloy plutonium. It’s a complicated metallurgy-five different phases and five different densities. He had nothing to do with that. So, yes, they know, but they don’t know how. They will, though, you know. Sometime.”
“Not on my watch,” Groves said. “How about all those coffee klatches you like to have? Wouldn’t he hear about the alloy requirements there?”
“Yes.” Oppenheimer sighed. “I didn’t say he didn’t know about them. He just wouldn’t know in any meaningful detail.”
“He wouldn’t have to know if he just passed them plans.”
“No. He only had access to theoretical. His own papers.”
“He could steal them.”
“He didn’t. He told me. Yes,” he said, responding to Groves’s questioning look, “I believe him. He was a traitor, but he wasn’t a thief.”
“That’s some difference.”
“At any rate, he didn’t give them that. I don’t mean to minimize what’s happened here. He passed valuable information. We don’t know how valuable because we don’t know where they were starting from. But they need more than what Eisler gave them to actually make a bomb. It’s almost a certainty they don’t have one yet. Of course, the point is they know we do.”
“Wonderful,” Groves said.
“Yes, it’s awkward. Politically.”
“Awkward,” Groves said, almost snorting.
“Not telling them. Of course, if that’s the main concern, we could simply tell them now.”
Groves stared at him as if he had missed the point of a joke. “That’s the kind of thing you say that keeps me up at night.” Then he dropped it and kept walking, forcing them to flank him in a kind of brooding convoy. “What gets me is how easy it all was,” he said finally. “This place is like a sieve. A man walks out, hands over some papers, and that’s it. We wouldn’t even know about it now if they hadn’t killed someone. It shouldn’t be that easy. At least we can plug up a few holes. I want you to cancel all leaves. Nobody goes out anymore.”
“Isn’t it a little late for that? The horse is already out of the barn.”
“I think it’s a good idea,” Connolly said.
Oppenheimer looked at him in surprise. “You do?” he said, displeased.
“What’s on your mind?” Groves said. They both stopped and turned to him.
“It doesn’t end with him.”
“Go on,” Groves said.
“Eisler only had a piece. But what if he wasn’t the only one? What if there are others? The Russians must want all this pretty badly. Why stop at Eisler?”
“How many of us do you suspect?” Oppenheimer said. “Ten? All?”
Groves, who had paled even in the sun, shook his head. “He’s right. The Reds could have people planted all over the Hill. All over.”
“But we don’t know,” Connolly said. “And we’re not going to. Not this way. There’s no point looking on the Hill. We have to find out who Eisler met.”
“You said there was one here,” Groves said.
“Well, I think there is. It still doesn’t make sense, but somebody drove Karl’s car up here. Eisler’s contact? No. Why meet off the Hill in the first place? There has to be an outside guy. But somebody drove the car and then walked in through the west gate. Which means-”
“There were two,” Oppenheimer said quietly.
“Exactly. I don’t know how or why, but it’s the only way the logistics work.”
“Then find them,” Groves said.
“That’s not so easy. The trail really did die with Eisler. We’ve got to find the outside guy. If there’s someone else on the Hill, he’s the key.”
Oppenheimer stopped to light a cigarette. “What makes you say that?” he said thoughtfully, as if he were looking at a math problem. “Why would he know anyone else? If everyone was working in isolation?”
“I’m guessing,” Connolly said, “but the odds are good that the outside contact was the only mailman. The more people you have running around on the outside, the more chances you have of someone getting caught. Why spread the risk? He’s not essential, like the scientists. He’s just collecting the rent. You lose him, you replace him. But you don’t lose him, because he’s the pro. The tricky part is getting the stuff to him-you’ve got to rely on, well, people like Eisler. You don’t know what they’re going to do if they get excited. So you keep it simple and you keep them in the dark. But once you’ve got the information, you want someone who really knows what he’s doing.”
“And he’s not the one on the Hill?” Groves said.
“No, he couldn’t be. My guess is he’s nowhere near the Hill. Maybe Santa Fe or Albuquerque, but you’re always taking a chance with somebody in place. More likely he breezes into town-a businessman or a tourist, he met Eisler as a tourist-collects the rent, and then clears out till the next time.”
“All the way to Moscow,” Groves said.
Connolly shrugged. “Somewhere.”
“Well, that’s just fine,” Groves said. “Now what are we supposed to do?”
“Cancel the leaves,” Connolly said to Oppenheimer. “Make it difficult for him. You’ve got the test coming up-it’s a legitimate excuse. According to Eisler, there was no procedure for a missed meeting, they just rescheduled somehow. If other meetings are planned, at least we can make him sweat for them. Put a few people on the tourist spots,” he said to Groves, “if we can manage some surveillance without being obvious. I could get some of the local boys to help-Holliday’s a good guy and won’t ask any questions. See who turns up and whether they come back. It’s a long shot, but you never know. Somebody was waiting for Eisler at San Isidro. Maybe he’ll be waiting somewhere else now. The locals aren’t great, but they’re all we’ve got. We can’t use anyone from up here.”
“Why not?” Groves said.
“Why did you bring me here in the first place? Because we can’t trust anyone here.”
“I never said that.”
“You thought it. Karl was security, and you didn’t know whether that meant anything or not, but you sure as hell weren’t going to take the chance. Now we know we can’t. And we can’t let anyone know we suspect. Business as usual. They’ll wonder about Eisler. They’ll look for anything suspicious. But nobody bothered him. I was with him in the lab, so it made sense for me to be in the hospital too. You might want to spread the word that you’re still worried about my health,” he said to Oppenheimer.
“I am,” Oppenheimer said dryly. “What makes you think they even know he’s dead?”
“If they don’t, they will. You don’t need newspapers up here-it’ll get out. We have to assume they know everything. Except that we know. Karl gets killed and they pull down his pants and what do you know? The army gets squeamish and falls for it,” he said, shooting a glance at Groves. “And somebody else comes along and takes the rap. You don’t get luckier than that. Then Eisler dies. An accident? Remorse about Karl? But he’d never talk. And he didn’t. Nothing happens. No security. No sudden visits from Washington. Things just go on. They’re still lucky. Except now they’re missing a source. Maybe their only source, maybe not. Either way, they’ll be hungry. Which is just what we want.”
“And that’s it?” Groves said. “Say nothing and have the police watch the churches? That’s your plan of action?”
But Oppenheimer was studying Connolly, his eyes following the sequence of his thought. “What do you mean, they’ll be hungry?” he said quietly. “What are you planning to do?”
“I want to offer some rent to collect.”
Groves stopped and looked at him, his face squinting in appraisal. “What do you mean by that?”
But Oppenheimer, lighting a fresh cigarette, was already there. “I think Mr. Connolly means he wants to go into the spying business,” he said, smiling.
“Forget it,” Groves said quickly.
“We’re already in it,” Connolly said, smiling back at Oppenheimer.
But Groves had drawn in his breath, swelling his chest, so that involuntarily Connolly thought of the storybook pig, huffing and puffing.
“Hold on. Both of you,” he said. “The last time I listened to you,” he said to Oppenheimer, “Connolly here was going to pull the rabbit out of the hat. Leave him alone, you said. Eisler’ll talk to him. Well, he didn’t. And now he’s dead, and so is our last chance of getting anything out of him. You’re not FBI,” he said to Connolly. “You’re not even Army Intelligence. So it’s my own fault, I guess. I don’t know what I was thinking about. But I know enough not to make the same mistake twice.”
“G.G.-” Oppenheimer began, but Connolly interrupted.
“General, I’ve just spent two weeks watching a man die. There’s nothing anybody could have done to him-he’d already done it to himself. Maybe that’s why he did it, who knows? You can’t torture a man who’s already in that kind of pain. It wasn’t going to get any better. He knew that. If he didn’t want to say anything, nothing on God’s earth was going to make him.”
“Who said anything about torture?” Groves said.
“That’s right, I forgot. Only the enemy does that. Maybe Eisler couldn’t see the difference.”
“Mister, that’s out of line.”
“Let’s everyone calm down, shall we?” Oppenheimer said. “General, we’re all disappointed about Eisler. It’s a great pity. But that’s all very spilt milk now. The question is-”
“I know what the question is. We’ve spent billions of dollars to create a strategic advantage to end this war. Now the whole project’s being undermined and Connolly here wants to play cops and robbers.”
“General,” Oppenheimer said soberly, “you’ve still got your strategic advantage, unless the war ends before we can use it. Nothing’s been undermined. What exactly is your concern?”
“And afterward?”
“Well, afterward. That’s a very interesting question. But it’s not the question before us right now. Not yet.”
“I suppose it doesn’t bother you that somebody’s selling us out to the Russians right under your nose. Maybe you’d like to tell the President we’ve been handing this stuff to the enemy. I know I’m not looking forward to it.”
“You’re wrong. I mind very much,” Oppenheimer said slowly, almost to himself. Then he turned to Groves. “I didn’t realize we thought Russia was the enemy. Or are we just planning ahead?”
“I don’t know about that. And don’t go putting words in my mouth. I’m just doing a job here, and so are you. You can think about policy on your own time. But I’ll tell you this: whoever has this thing won’t have any enemies.”
Oppenheimer looked up at him, smoking. “That’s a comforting thought.”
Connolly had watched this exchange as if it were the volley of a tennis match. Now, looking at each other, they seemed stuck, or at least reluctant to press an advantage.
“Don’t tell him,” Connolly said, breaking the moment. Groves turned to him, puzzled.
“Who?”
“The President. Don’t tell him.”
They both looked at him, shocked. It was Oppenheimer, finally, who spoke. “He has to, Mr. Connolly,” he said, as if he were being patient with a child.
They now stood together in front of him, and Connolly saw in that instant a couple locked in some strange union that would always supersede quarrels and irritation, married, finally, to the project.
“Why?” Connolly said.
“I’m going to forget you said that, mister,” Groves said. “This is the army. Don’t you forget that.”
“I’m not suggesting anything-disloyal.”
“What do you call it?”
Connolly hesitated for a minute. “A strategic advantage.”
Groves glared at him, then backed down. “You’ve got two minutes. And keep it simple. I’m just a soldier.”
“Look,” Connolly began, speaking to Oppenheimer, “you asked me to think about what we should do here. I have thought about it. And every time I come back to where we started. Karl.” He turned to include Groves. “You sent me here to find out who killed Karl. Eisler didn’t kill him, any more than that kid they’ve got locked up down in Albuquerque did. We still don’t know who killed Karl. But now we know something else, something even more important, and it turns out the one leads to the other. The same guy. Get who killed Karl and we get the link outside. Agreed? Up until now, we’ve been looking for a murderer. Instead we found a spy. Karl led us to Eisler. And now we’re stuck. So we have to turn the thing around. It’s like a crossword, see? We’ve been doing the horizontal, and we’re out of clues. So we’ve got to work downward instead. Fill it in that way. Look for a spy to find a murderer.”
“This make any sense to you,” Groves said to Oppenheimer, “or am I the only one who still doesn’t know what he’s talking about?”
“Let him finish,” Oppenheimer said, interested.
“What exactly am I not supposed to tell the President?” Groves said.
“Well, what exactly do you tell him?” Connolly answered. “We can’t prove anything. I made a lucky guess and Eisler confessed. Maybe he was crazy. This is a guy who kills himself with radiation, so how reliable is he? Maybe I’m crazy. You’ve only got my word that he said anything.”
“He talked to me too,” Oppenheimer said, playing devil’s advocate.
“And maybe he was lying. For whatever reason. Who knows why? Maybe none of it happened. Can we prove it did?”
“He wasn’t lying,” Oppenheimer said.
“No. He wasn’t. But we’re the only ones who know that. Look around,” Connolly said, sweeping his hand toward the sunny mesa. “Anything seem wrong to you? Any reason to think-any proof- that something’s wrong? What do you believe, General? Do you believe me? Do you think I was taken in by a crazy man telling stories? Maybe I’m telling stories-that’s what I get paid to do. All you’ve got is my word. Do you trust me that much?”
“You’re wasting time,” Groves said. “I don’t have to trust you. If Dr. Oppenheimer says it’s true, then it is. We have to do something.”
“Then let me finish what I started. You know as well as I do that once they get hold of this, we’ll have a Chinese fire drill around here. Everybody’ll want to do something. I can hear them already. ‘Why didn’t you tighten security? How could it happen?’ You’ve got a new President. Do you know him? Is he going to back you up when everybody starts jumping up and down? He’d have to do something. Maybe he’d start at the top.”
Groves frowned, not saying anything.
“The point is, we don’t know. But the odds are they won’t be able to fix anything and they’ll make one hell of a mess trying.”
Oppenheimer looked over at Groves, waiting.
Groves stared at the ground, moving his foot in thought. “You’re a good talker,” he said to Connolly, “but you don’t know what you’re asking. I can’t do it. I have to tell him.”
“Maybe. But not quite yet. All I’ve raised is a suspicion. You’d have to investigate to find out if there’s anything to it. You’re not putting the project itself in danger. This isn’t about sabotage. And you don’t want to send out any false alarms. If there’s the possibility of a security leak, you’d have to try and plug it. It’s your project-you’d have to decide the best way to go about that.”
“And that’s you.”
“It’s not them. It’s a chance, I know. But we’ll never get it if this goes beyond the three of us. I could delay telling you,” he said, looking directly at Groves. “I’m independent. Maybe I didn’t want to come to you until I had more to go on. I should have, but-”
“It would be your head,” Groves said.
“Yes.”
“I wouldn’t have any choice.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“You’d do that?”
“I’m not in the army. It’s easier for me. I just-wanted to close the case.”
Groves looked around, glancing over toward the Jemez Mountains. “But you weren’t the only one there. That leaves you, Robert.”
Oppenheimer took a drag on his cigarette, then looked at Groves. “We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Connolly. We wouldn’t know any of it. Under the circumstances-” He paused. “I think he might be given a little more rope.”
Groves was silent. “You hang yourself with it,” he said finally. “Dr. Oppenheimer’s out of it. That understood?”
Connolly nodded. “You’ll have everything you need for the record. If you need it. I just delayed telling you. Both of you.”
“I don’t like this,” Oppenheimer said.
“No, he’s right,” Connolly said. “You can’t have anything to do with this. You know, it could have happened this way,” he said, turning to Groves. “You wouldn’t know anything about it if I hadn’t told you.”
“Why did you?” Groves said.
“I need your help.”
He had been looking at Groves, but it was Oppenheimer who said, “What do you have in mind?”
“First, some classified papers, something to hook him. Something Eisler’s already handed over, so they know it’s real, but that somebody else might have access to. Bait. Could you do that?”
Oppenheimer nodded.
“Wait a minute,” Groves said. “You want to pass classified documents?”
“Something they already have,” Connolly said. “Or Eisler said they have. If we believe him. But we do believe him, don’t we?”
“I can’t allow this. Do you know what it means if-”
“Yes, but I won’t get caught. I’m not planning to go to jail.”
“How about first telling me what in God’s name is going on?” Groves said irritably, wiping his forehead. “And do we have to stand out here in the sun?”
Connolly nodded and began leading them toward the shade of the water tower. “There’s only one way to do this. We have to give him another Eisler. We don’t know how they put people here. Maybe there isn’t anybody else. But either way, they’re going to need a new source. It’s late. They’re hungry.”
“Just who did you have in mind?” Oppenheimer said.
“I’ve been thinking about that. Ideally, a scientist, of course, but it’s too tricky and there isn’t enough time. We have to assume they’ve got a list of the scientists working on the project-that would be the first thing they’d ask for.”
Groves groaned out loud.
“So it’s too easy to check,” Connolly continued. “They’d spot a marker right away, just from the list. Who’s the new guy? Never heard of him. And of course if they do have somebody else up here, he’d spot it as a ghost. Then there’s the background. We say our man’s from Berkeley, they check Berkeley. It’s a fairly small community, isn’t it? It’s unlikely you’d have a spare physicist up here nobody’s ever heard of.”
“Quite,” Oppenheimer said. “Are you proposing to use a real person?”
“No. You’ve got four thousand people up here. Technical support comes and goes. We make up a dummy file in one of these areas. Maybe the Special Engineering Detachment. There are always new SEDs coming in. But someone who could put his hands on the papers. An idealist,” he said to Groves, who was watching him with growing discomfort. “You could set up some army records, couldn’t you? I’ll make up a project folder-bio, clearance, the usual. Just put it in the files. If we’ve got a leak up here, he’ll know where to go and we’ll have it all ready for him.” He looked up at the giant tower, crisscrossed wooden slats rising to support the broad tank, Los Alamos’s Empire State Building. “Maybe we’ll call him Waterman.”
“There’s a Waterman in metallurgy,” Oppenheimer said.
“Okay, Waters, then. Steve, I think. That sounds about right. Corporal Steve Waters, SED. The rat.”
“You think this is funny?” Groves said impatiently. “I fail to see anything funny about it. I don’t know what we’re playing at here. This isn’t some petty crime anymore.”
Connolly reddened at the schoolboy reprimand. “What makes a crime petty-the amount you steal?”
“Don’t start with me.”
“It’s the same,” Connolly said. “Same people who knock over a liquor store. Calling them agents doesn’t make them smarter. Who do you think does this, anyway? Masterminds? I’m not trying to break up the rackets, I’m just looking for a guy who got jumpy with a tire iron.”
Groves snorted and looked away, his eyes following a coal delivery truck rumbling toward Boiler No. 1.
“There’s only one thing I don’t understand,” Oppenheimer said, as if nothing had happened. “Your phantom Corporal Waters has some valuable papers to offer. How do you let them know? Put an ad in the papers?”
“I assume there’s a network. Our rent collector may be only one link, but no one works alone on that end. You know, like the numbers,” he said, looking at Groves. “I need to get access to the network, someone to pass on the invitation. If they’re as efficient as we think they are, they’ll come calling.”
“You know someone like that?” Groves said. “Why don’t we just haul him in?”
“Anyone can pass a message. I thought of your brother,” he said to Oppenheimer, then turned to Groves. “But I suspect you’re already having him watched. That would complicate things.”
No one said a word. Groves, already red and sweating, flushed and looked away.
“Frank left the party,” Oppenheimer said quietly. “Some time ago.”
“And they’d probably think it was all a little too good to be true,” Connolly continued. “They’d want to be very careful with anyone close to you, and we don’t have time for that. There’s someone else. I don’t know if he’s involved in the party’s extracurricular activities or not. I doubt it. But he’d know someone who is, or someone who knows someone. We just need to get the ball started and hope they pick it up and run with it. It may not work. It’s only a chance.”
“He’d be taking a chance too, your friend,” Oppenheimer said thoughtfully. “He’d have to trust you. Would he?”
Connolly met his gaze. “Yes, he would.”
“He’s here?” Oppenheimer said tentatively.
“No. That’s where I need your help, General,” Connolly said, drawing the still sulking Groves back to the conversation. “I assume you could get a Section 1042 file without raising any eyebrows? That’s alien registration.”
“I know what it is.”
“I need an address. Current.”
“Name?”
Connolly looked at him. “Are we on with this or not?”
Groves hesitated for another minute, then sighed. “Name?”
“Matthew Lawson,” Connolly said. “Brit. Here since before the war. New York, maybe. Can you get it?”
Groves nodded. “If they’ve got him on file, I can get it. Who is he?”
“You don’t want to know that. In fact, from now on you don’t want to know anything. You don’t want to know what I’m doing. You’d need to be able to say that. Honestly. I’m just-late telling you about Eisler. That’s all.”
Groves nodded again, then folded his arms across his chest. “One thing. If I don’t know, I won’t be able to say anything to Army Intelligence. If they should get the idea to put you under surveillance. I can’t call them off.”
“I know.”
“The minute you take those papers out of here you’re breaking the law.”
“Let’s see how good they are. It’ll be a test for them.”
“Test,” Groves said grumpily. “I don’t like any of this. Any of it. This place. It was easier building the Pentagon.”
But Oppenheimer was looking at Connolly with amusement. “Mr. Connolly has a flair for the clandestine. Have you done this before?”
Connolly thought of motel rooms and glances avoided in Fuller Lodge. “Just lately.”
“Are we finished here? Can we go back and cool off before I change my mind?” Groves said.
“We’re finished,” Connolly said. “I’m going over to the hospital to get Eisler’s things. I’ll go through his place one more time. You never know. When you get the address,” he said to Groves, “maybe you’d better send it through the telex line. The code’s safer.”
“One more thing,” Groves said, putting his damp jacket on. “You want me to go out on a limb for you. No questions. So just tell me one thing: what do you think the odds are this can actually work?”
Connolly shook his head. “The odds are always good when it’s the only hand you’ve got.”
His bravado evaporated as he walked toward the infirmary. How many times did a long shot come in? Except this time it wasn’t just the bet, it was what he’d have to use to make it. Everything would depend on her. It wasn’t right. But it had sat there, his only idea, and he’d had to pick it up. He wondered, in that moment, why he’d jumped at it, excited by something he knew was wrong, then caught in a tangle of inevitability, deaf now even to himself. Could he lose her? No, he’d stop if it came to that. He thought of Eisler in his lab, those desperate seconds lowering the cube before it went critical. The trick was to stop in time, before the dragon turned. But what if it took on a life of its own? What if simply starting the process demanded its only conclusion? He looked around the Hill-clothes near the McKee units flapping on lines in the bright, dry air; a repairman high up on one of the overhead transformers; soldiers in jeeps-and it seemed to him utterly ordinary. Everyone was just getting on with the day, making a bomb.
In the infirmary, someone was sitting on Eisler’s bed. He took in the bruised side of the face, the bandage over the forehead cut, before he recognized Corporal Batchelor.
“What happened to you?”
“I walked into a door,” Batchelor said, his voice flat. Next to the neat pile of Eisler’s effects, his battered face was jarring, the disorder of violence. “How did you hear?” he asked, embarrassed.
“I didn’t. I came for these. Are you all right?”
The boy nodded.
“That must have been some door,” Connolly said, moving toward Eisler’s things. “You going to let him get away with it?”
The soldier shrugged. “It was just a door. I’ll live.”
“The unfriendly kind.”
The boy smiled weakly, wincing a little from the cut at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, the big unfriendly kind. I’ll have to be more careful at the PX.”
“Maybe next time you should just stay away,” Connolly said. Then, hearing the tone of his voice, “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“It’s all right,” the soldier said, his face weary. “I had it coming.”
“Nobody has it coming,” Connolly said, suddenly angry for him, then aware that he didn’t know anything about it. What was it like living this way? Was every meeting a risk? He thought again of the ordinary world outside, so bright that it made any other invisible. And then it occurred to him that it might have been a different kind of misstep, the wrong question. Connolly’s fault.
“This didn’t have anything to do with-I mean, I hope you weren’t-”
“Snooping?” The boy shook his head. “No. Nothing like that. Just a door. I never heard a word, by the way. Since you ask.”
“I know. He wasn’t-we made a mistake.”
The boy looked at him. “So what was it?”
“We know it wasn’t that. Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to bother anybody.”
He nodded his head again. “Good. I’m glad about that, anyway.”
“So don’t go banging into any more doors. Not because of that.”
The soldier shrugged. “I’m just a bad judge of character, that’s all. I never was good at that. How about you?”
The question caught Connolly off-guard, as if it had come from another conversation. “Not very. Sometimes.” He moved to gather up Eisler’s things. “I still think you’ve got a lot of guts, though.”
The smile this time was fuller, a wry grimace. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“I also think you’re a damned fool to let him get away with it. You ought to turn the bastard in.”
When Batchelor looked up at him, his eyes seemed almost pleading. “I can’t. Don’t you know that? That’s the way it works. I can’t.”
Connolly thought about him as he walked toward Eisler’s apartment, carrying the valise. It shouldn’t be that easy to get hurt. He wondered what would happen to Batchelor after the war, when he would drift off the Hill to some other life, hidden from Connolly and everyone else until it showed up again on his face.
At least his mystery had its bits of visible evidence. Eisler’s had receded with him. Here were the clothes, the books, the old pictures. Connolly sat smoking for a while in Eisler’s living room, peering at the walls as if some idea lurked there, waiting to be found. Then he started going through the books. He took them down from the shelves, flipped through, then made piles on the floor. Nothing. He remembered that first night in Karl’s room, the presence in those few neat possessions, someone who was still living there and had been delayed on his way back. But Eisler was gone, perhaps had never been here at all. All these objects, rooms full of them, pared away until finally there was only one idea. Those last weeks with Connolly had been his one brief contact. And then he had gone back into hiding. What was it like to believe so completely, to let everything go but one thing? What was it like not to care who got hurt? Standing there with a meaningless German book in his hand, Connolly felt the room go empty. An entire life for a single idea. And it had been wrong.