“He asked you to report on me, didn’t he?” Connolly said, his voice low. Mills still said nothing. “Didn’t he?”
“I’m sorry, Mike.”
“Jesus Christ.” He felt disgust mingled with irrational fear, the way he had felt the time his apartment had been burgled. There was nothing to steal. It was just the fact of someone’s having been there at all. But now there was something. He imagined Emma’s name sitting in a Washington file. “Tell him anything interesting?”
“No, nothing like that,” Mills said. “It’s just the case, Mike. He wants to know what’s going on. He thinks Groves should have put him in charge.”
“So your boss tells you to spy on me so he can spy on his boss. All in the family. Nice.”
“I was ordered, Mike,” he said quietly.
“What a fucking waste of time. And who’s checking up on you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you. That’s what it’s like. Maybe Karl was.”
Connolly thought for a minute. “Is that possible? Would he be asked to do something like that? Unofficially?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t think they trusted him that way.”
“The way they trust you. Why not?”
“He was foreign.”
“Everybody here’s foreign.”
“That’s what makes them crazy. They can’t trust anyone. Mike, look, I have to ask. Anything I tell you—”
“You can trust me,” Connolly said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.
They were driving around the bottom of the mesa, away from the canyon where the car had been hidden, back toward the east gate. Connolly looked out the window, again imagining the drive that night.
“I don’t want any trouble,” Mills said.
But Connolly was lost in his own thoughts. “You have to admit, he’d be ideal from their point of view.”
“No. You don’t know them. He was too smart for them.”
“You weren’t.”
“They didn’t have much choice. I’m the only one you’re working with. Anyway, I’m not a Communist. Karl might have been. For a while, anyway. That makes them crazier than anything.”
“I thought he was tortured by them. Or was that a lie too?”
“No, there’s no question about that. He hated them. But there it was in his file. They’re not going to use anybody with that in his file. I know. They had me on the clearance files the first few months I was here. Lansdale’s like a maniac with that stuff. Van Drasek’s worse. You met him yet? He’s a real cutie. Crazy.”
Connolly smiled. “Pretty high opinion of your colleagues.”
“They’re just following orders too. But look who’s giving them. Van Drasek’s specialty is Reds, so he keeps busy. You know what it’s like here. Half the Berkeley crowd were parlor pinks. The unions, the Negroes-the usual. It doesn’t amount to a damn thing, but try to tell old Van Drasek that. He’s on a mission. He’s out at Lawrence’s lab again-goes through the place over and over.”
“Maybe he’s just trying to get away from his wife.”
“We’d all be better off. He’s serious, though. I’ve seen him deny clearance to scientists here and then call the university to get them fired. A real vindictive prick. And he’s got Lawrence running in every direction, scared shitless they’ll stop his funding. He’s got files on everyone. I know.”
“You know a lot,” Connolly said, thinking of that first night, Mills’s shiny head bobbing at the square dance. “Why doesn’t Oppenheimer put a stop to it?”
“Are you kidding? He’s the one they want most. They’ve all got the knives out for Oppenheimer. You should see the file they’ve got on him.”
“I have seen it.”
“Not all of it, you haven’t. Every meeting. Every check for the Spanish refugees. His brother. The girlfriend-she was a party member. His wife used to be married to one. His students-any kid that’s left of Roosevelt they blame on him. It just piles up. Van Drasek wouldn’t even clear him until Groves told him to fuck off and just pushed it through himself.”
“But why? What does he think Oppenheimer’s doing, working for the Russians?”
“Why. He’s crazy. He’d love it if Oppie were working for them-that would be perfect. Actually, what it is, Oppenheimer thinks it’s bullshit and they know he thinks it. Which means he thinks they’re bullshit. Which they are. But they can’t touch him as long as he’s building their damn bomb and Groves protects him. And the more he tries to get along with them, the more they hate him. They’re all obsessed with him-the crazies, anyway. I think that’s why Karl was following him. He was a little obsessed too.”
“What?”
“Well, if he was. I don’t know for sure. You’re the one who thought he was following somebody.”
“I never thought it was Oppenheimer.”
“I know, it doesn’t fit your story. But he’s the only one I can ever remember Karl talking about. He was interested in Oppie.”
“Why?”
“I think because they were. Karl was ambitious, you know? Maybe he thought if he could get something on Oppie, he’d angle himself a nice big promotion. Be one of the big boys. Of course, that’s where he was crazy, because they didn’t trust him either.”
They had begun the steep climb up the hill. Connolly was thinking again. “So if he had anything on somebody, he’d want to make sure.”
“Home at last,” Mills said as they approached the gate. And, oddly, it was. Connolly looked at the high wire fence, the MPs checking passes, the rough buildings dim in the moonlight, and felt at home, somewhere to screen out the rest of the world. Was this what the killer had felt-relief at being back, the canyon and the panic at the church behind him?
“Are you going to report our conversation tonight?” Connolly said.
“I have to write something,” Mills said apologetically.
“Try this. Say that I have evidence Karl was asked by Lansdale to do a check on Van Drasek. And accidentally get a copy to Van Drasek. We could have some fun with them.”
Mills shook his head and smiled. “You have the fun. I just want to get back to Winnetka in one piece.”
After they dropped the car at the motor pool, they walked back toward the Tech Area. The streets were quiet, the usual lights still shining in the labs. Not even victory in Europe interrupted the project.
“Just out of curiosity,” Connolly said, “what will you write?”
“I don’t know. Nothing much. You’re puzzled about the car. Can’t figure it out.” He paused. “He likes to hear you’re stumped. Makes Groves look like a jerk for putting you in. So I usually just say you’re not getting anywhere.”
“I’m not. And what if there was a genuine security breach? While I was getting nowhere and he was looking good?”
Mills shrugged. “What’s more important in the scheme of things, somebody else’s security or your own job? They’ve got a healthy sense of priorities in G-2. Nightcap?”
“No, but I’ll buy you a coffee if the lodge is still open.”
“Mike, about all this-I couldn’t help it. You know I would never say anything—”
Connolly looked at him, the pleasant, eager face that avoided waves. “Unless you had to.”
Mills looked as if he’d been slapped.
“Never mind,” Connolly said, not wanting to push him. “It’s just the way things are now.”
“It’s the war.”
“Yeah, the war.”
There were still people at the lodge, smoking over leftover dishes and coffee cups, the celebration dinners finished. A few men from the office hailed them and Mills joined them with something like relief, tired of intimacy. Connolly sat with them for a while, listening to the easy jokes, ignoring the rest of the room because Emma was three tables away. She had glanced up when he came in, then turned back to her table as if he weren’t there. He heard her laugh. The officers at his table were telling their own war stories-Feynman sending a letter cut into pieces to kid the censors; the physicist who sneaked out through a hole in the fence and kept coming back through the gate, a Marx Brothers trick. He looked at their faces and wondered if one of them checked on the others, an easy deceit. Was she aware of him? They were ten feet apart, no more. Did Daniel see her glance over, notice some nervous pitch to her voice? He moved restlessly in his seat, uncomfortable, afraid of giving himself away. But no one paid any attention.