by Joseph Kanon
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, no
t 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 Göttingen, 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.”
