“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.