“It’s antelope. Enlisted men have nothing to do down there except shoot rattlesnakes and antelope and roast them-the antelope, that is. They say it tastes like beef, but that’s only because they’ve had their brains bleached out in the sun. It tastes like antelope.”
“How far is this place, anyway?”
“About two hundred miles.”
“Christ, that’s all day.”
Mills grinned and handed him a test site pass stamped with a large T. “Don’t forget to ask about the money.”
In fact, it was the first thing they discussed.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Oppenheimer said as Connolly started down the switchback road in the morning sunlight. He was sitting in front, at his request, and was clearly expecting to talk. “This will give us a chance to catch up. Any progress? Suspects?”
“Only you.”
“I beg your pardon?” He twisted in the passenger seat, his eyebrows raised, anticipating a joke.
“Why did you withdraw a thousand dollars over three months this winter?”
Oppenheimer was quiet, then lit a cigarette. “None of your damned business.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
“Then I’ll take your word for it.”
Oppenheimer looked out the passenger window and smoked. Finally he said, “You needn’t do that. It’s personal, but not, I suppose, secret. I’m not allowed secrets anymore.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“No, you’re just doing your job,” Oppenheimer said. “Go ahead, do it.”
“What did you do with the money?”
“Put it into two postal orders and sent them to an old friend who needed it.”
“Why?”
“She’s been under psychiatric care, if you must know. She’s broke. We call it a loan.”
“No, I mean why a postal order?”
“How else? We don’t have checks up here. You know that.”
“Do you still have the receipts?”
“Yes.”
“Does your wife know?”
“Yes.” He was silent again. “You’ve got a hell of a nerve, you know that?”
“You authorized the search.”
Oppenheimer sighed. “So. No good deed goes unpunished. I never imagined you wanted to look at mine. More fool me. Of course you would. I’m the obvious person to beat someone up in the park. Do you ever feel embarrassed doing this?”
Connolly downshifted. “I don’t feel great now, if that’s what you mean.”
Oppenheimer sighed again. “No, of course you don’t. And now I should apologize for being rude, which somehow makes it all my fault, when you were the one asking the questions. Interesting how we tie ourselves up in knots, isn’t it?”
“Well, don’t do it on my account. Look, I’m eliminating any loose end I can. I didn’t mean to intrude on your personal life. Let’s just forget it.”
“But what did you think it meant? What are you looking for? What’s the point of it all?”
“Bruner came into some money before he died. He may have been blackmailing somebody. He may not. I want to find out where he got it.”
“And you thought he was blackmailing me? What on earth about? Do you think there’s a single thing about me the government doesn’t already know? Maybe you should see what it feels like to be on the other side of a security check. Your left-wing friends. Your right-wing friends-well, such as they are. Your old girlfriends. Your Jewish friends. Your students. An ambulance for Spain? Was that politically motivated? What did you study in Germany? How much do you drink? Do you ever feel conflicted loyalties? My God, does one ever not?”
“I said, let’s forget it.”
“Bruner didn’t know anything about the project.”
“I wasn’t thinking of that.”
“What, then?”
“He was homosexual. That gets to be a pretty sensitive issue.”
“Oh,” Oppenheimer said, then laughed. “Well, I have to hand it to you-that’s one question they never asked. Are you writing this up for my file? Am I supposed to formally deny it?”
“I’m not writing anything.”
“It would almost be worth it to see the look on G. G.’s face,” he said, still amused.
“I thought you might be sensitive on someone else’s behalf. A friend. Someone who needed the money.”
Oppenheimer looked over at him. “Only the once,” he said, ending it.
Connolly drove for a while in silence. The air was warmer down in the valley. They had passed through the slopes of pinon and juniper to the sage desert. Oppenheimer had lifted some papers from a briefcase and was working through them on his lap, tapping his cigarette out the open window. Ordinarily Connolly would have turned on the radio, but he was too interested in Oppenheimer to think of it. Everyone else got fifteen minutes, and he had hours to go.
“What did you mean when you said he didn’t know anything about the project?” he asked.
Oppenheimer looked up from the papers. “Anything that would put it in jeopardy,” he said deliberately. “He couldn’t. Only a scientist would know that.”
“The way I hear it, he liked to nose around. Maybe he knew more than you think.”
“He wouldn’t know how to separate what was important. The basic principles were perfectly clear before the war, you know-any physicist worth his salt understands the principles. Someone like Heisenberg would know a lot more than that. It’s the mechanics of it that matter now. A layman wouldn’t be able to differentiate. He simply wouldn’t know what to look for. In that sense, the complexity of the project is its own security.”
“If you don’t know what to look for, you look at everything.”
“Rather like you and your project.”
The quickness of the answer took Connolly by surprise. “That’s some connection.”
“That’s how science works. You guess, you make connections, then if it fits you prove what you guessed in the first place. Isn’t that what you’re doing?”
“I haven’t guessed yet.”
“But you’ve guessed where to look,” he said, his voice playful. “Where would you start looking to find out about the gadget?”
The question had the effect of a chess piece put into place. Connolly, alert to the game, moved his own. “Where would I start? Your briefcase.”
Oppenheimer looked at him appreciatively, then smiled. “You might be disappointed. The only thing you’d learn in here,” he said, casually holding up a sheaf of papers, “is how utterly fouled up our bureaucracy is.”
“Fucked up,” Connolly corrected him.
“As you say,” Oppenheimer said, enjoying himself. “Why bother with the euphemism? What would you make of this, for example?” He took up a sheet. “This one’s from Bainbridge-a good man, in charge of Trinity.”
“Which is?”
“Where we’re going. The test site. He wants it officially designated Project T. It turns out the business office calls it A and Mitchell over in procurement calls it T but ships to S-45 and last week it was made Project J, to prevent any confusion with Building T or Site T, but people call it T anyway since the passes are marked T, so he wants to go with T.”
“And do you?”
“Oh yes. Whatever Ken wants. Here’s another. Procurement wants to create a new series of ratings. We’ve got X, A, B, and C, X being priority. Now they want to break X out to XX, X1, and X2.”
“What’s XX? Special delivery?”
“Virtually. Goes right to the War Production Board to dispatch a cargo plane anywhere in the country.”
“And will you approve it?”
“Certainly. We can’t afford to wait for materiel while the services squabble over priority.” And there it was again, the unexpected steel, the arrogant willingness to override. “Of course, it’s easy to make fun of all this alphabet soup. The problem is, it’s important, really. Every detail. It’s all important to somebody.”
“How much materiel are we talking about?”
Oppenheimer sighed and lit another cigarette. “We handle about thirty-five tons a day at the warehouse. Maybe five of that is going down to the site.”
“Five tons a day?” Connolly was staggered.
“Yes,” Oppenheimer said, “more or less. Everything from beer to-well, everything.”
“But it must be huge. How do you hide something that big? I never heard of it before today.”