Los Alamos

by Joseph Kanon

“Not that way. He hasn’t looked at you at all.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Fine. All the better. You’ll act naturally, which is what we want.”

  “Not now, I won’t,” she said, putting down her fork. “Why all the mystery, anyway? It’s ridiculous. Isn’t he one of yours?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Then why—”

  “Army Intelligence doesn’t like me very much. Somebody comes in from the outside, they have to think something’s going on. They hate being left out. So they watch. It’s what they do.”

  “But can’t you have him called off?”

  “Then they’d know something was going on. Right now I’m just a bad boy taking advantage of some privileges they wish they had. They have no idea what we’re doing.”

  “Except the obvious.”

  He smiled. “Except the obvious.”

  “Then why did you say you hoped it was them?”

  “Well, there’s another possibility. We still don’t know who’s on the Hill. Karl was in intelligence and he’s dead. This guy may be one of ours, but I don’t recognize him. So I hope it’s just somebody Lansdale’s brought in to play house detective. Otherwise, we could have a problem. Either way, I don’t want him around when you see Matthew. That could ruin everything.”

  Emma thought for a minute, stirring with her long iced tea spoon. “You’re right. I’m not enjoying this. Not anymore. It’s not much fun, is it, everybody lying to everybody. I wish you hadn’t told me. Why did you?”

  “You’d have to know sometime. We have to lose him. I can’t do that alone.”

  “Why bother? You’d just be looking for the next. At least he’s the devil you know.”

  “We can’t do this with an audience. Whoever he is. One of ours. One of theirs. Maybe both at the same time. We can’t take the chance. Matthew has to believe you, or this won’t work at all.”

  “And what if he’s just a man with a hat?”

  “Then he won’t mind. Look, nobody knows about Matthew. It’s the one chance we have of protecting him.”

  “Unless it works,” Emma said, turning her head to the window. “The rain’s stopped. Now it’s just steaming.”

  “I said I’d do what I could,” Connolly said. “Why don’t we take this one step at a time?”

  “Right. What do we do first? Push him off the train?”

  “It’s not a joke, Emma.”

  “Then stop enjoying it so much. It’s all a game to you. Spot him, lose him. See how good they are. See how good you are. My God, I wish we were done with this.”

  “We’re almost there,” he said evenly, calming her.

  “Can I ask you something? If no one knows we’re doing this, that means no one’s looking after us either, doesn’t it? If anything happens, I mean. There won’t be anyone. Not even the man with the hat.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that. Should I be frightened?”

  “Are you?”

  “No. Oddly enough. But then I’m a well-known fool.”

  “Nobody knows that here,” he said, smiling. “You’re just a ticket, remember?”

  “Your friend knows,” she said, moving her head slightly toward him.

  “He knows you’re here. He doesn’t know what you’re doing.”

  “What am I supposed to be doing?”

  “Having fun. Being bad.”

  He reached across the table to cover her hand.

  “I’m not,” she said.

  “Pretend. Smile back at me. Laugh a little, if you can manage it.”

  “I thought we were trying to lose him, not put on a show.”

  “Not yet. Later. First we have to establish you.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “Finish your tea. Then we’ll go back to the compartment and hang out a DO NOT DISTURB sign and make lots of noise.”

  “They listen at keyholes?” she said.

  “They bribe porters.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “About the noise, anyway.”

  “It’s hot.”

  “Steaming. We’ll take some ice.”

  She laughed at him now, a low murmur.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Just like that.”

  “How long does all this take? Before I’m established?”

  “We have all day. We can lose him in New Jersey. People are always getting lost in New Jersey.”

  They left the train in Newark, half hidden by a pool of servicemen greeting their families on the platform.

  “Go to the ladies’, then meet me at the buses,” he said as they walked.

  “Where?”

  “Out to the right. Follow the signs.”

  “While he follows you.”

  “No, he’ll assume we’re still on the train.”

  “What about the porter?”

  “We left the tip—he won’t care. He’ll think we’re in the club car. Last call.”

  “And if he does follow you?”

  “Then you won’t see me at the bus station.”

  But he was waiting for her, fanning himself with a newspaper on one of the wooden benches. The air, heavy and sticky, smelled of cheap diesel.

  “What have you got in here, anyway?” he said, pointing to her suitcase.

  “My trousseau.” She sat down. “So are we alone?”

  “I think so.”

  “Now what?”

  “Bus in ten minutes. Then we find a hotel.”

  “You didn’t book?”

  “Yes,” he said smiling, “but if we go there, why did we bother to get off the train?”

  “I told you I wasn’t very good at this. I just want a bath. I don’t care where it is. What do you think that man’s doing now?”

  “Our friend? He’s running around Penn Station. Sweating.”

  Emma giggled. “Goodness, he must be angry. Unless you’re wrong, of course. Maybe he’s just a man heading for a long soak in the tub and we’re the ones running around sweating.”

  “Either way,” Connolly said.

  The bus was crowded and Connolly had to stand, resting against the arm of her seat and holding on to the luggage rack as they bounced through the New Jersey marshes. When they swept around the great curve to the tunnel, the city gleaming across the water, he felt for the first time the excitement of homecoming. Then the overbright bathroom tiles of the tunnel and they were in the crowded streets, turning down into the basement of the Hotel Dixie with its rows of storage lockers and shoeshine stands and people holding tickets on their way to somewhere. Out on the street, he felt overwhelmed, like a farm boy in the movies. Even in the heat, everything moved quickly, taxis and boys in navy whites and khaki and lights racing through neon tubes. No one had even heard of Los Alamos.

  They took a taxi to a hotel on Lexington, not far from Grand Central, where he managed to wangle a room facing the side street. When he opened the window, soot blew in with the sound of the Third Avenue el, but there was a fan and water gushed from the taps, a world away from the drought on the Hill.

  “Not exactly the Waldorf, is it?” Emma said.

  “We wouldn’t get into the Waldorf. Have a bath, you’ll feel better. It’s the same water.”

  “At half the price. Care to join me?” she said, undressing.

  “You go. I have to make some calls.”

  “Old girlfriends?”

  “No. About tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” she said, no longer smiling, then went to the bathroom and closed the door.

  He called Tony at Costello’s to arrange the next day’s meeting—“Yeah, two booths, I got it. What you got going, some skirt?”—then talked to a friend on the paper about the wire. He placed a call to Mills, smoking a cigarette by the window as he waited for the long-distance connection.

  “I thought you were at the Hotel Pennsylvania,” Mills said.

  “What makes you think I’m not?”

  There was a pause. “
Very funny,” Mills said finally.

  “I never made it. It’s hot back here. I decided to cool off in the country instead.”

  “Which is why the operator said the call was from New York.”

  “Must be a mistake.”

  “Yeah. How’d you manage the disappearing act?” Connolly was silent.

  “Okay, so I’m just wasting the government’s money. Why’d you call, anyway?”

  “To hear what you just told me.”

  Mills paused again. “You don’t want to annoy people, Mike, you really don’t. Now what am I supposed to tell him?”

  “Tell him there’s a good band on the Pennsylvania roof. He’ll enjoy it. I just want some privacy. Out here in the country.”

  “Yeah, privacy. Well, you’ve got it. Unless I can trace the call.”

  “Don’t even bother. I’m in a booth. But you probably figured that already.”

  “Shit,” Mills said, hanging up.

  When he went into the bathroom, she was lying back with her knees sticking out of the water like islands, staring ahead at nothing.

  “You going to stay in there all night?” he said, starting to undress.

  “Everything’s going to be all right, isn’t it?” she said, still preoccupied.

  “Yes.”

  “I mean, really all right,” she said, looking up at him.

  He nodded. “Come on, finish up and we’ll go out somewhere.”

  “You’re joking. I can’t move.”

  “Okay,” he said, climbing into the tub and falling on her, splashing water over the side.

  “What are you doing?” she said, laughing.

  “Let’s stay here,” he said, kissing her.

  “Stop. Oh, look at the mess.”

  “It’s water. They expect that here.”

  “Oh, it’s that sort of hotel, is it?”

  “Sure.”

  “No, really, we can’t. Look at the floor.” She sat up, water sliding off her breasts.

  “I thought you couldn’t move,” he said, holding her by the waist. “Come on, lie down.”

  “You ought to cool off,” she said, rolling over on top of him and pushing him under. When he pulled his head up, sputtering, she was already out of the tub, grabbing a towel. He stood up, playing a sea monster, and reached out for her.

  “My God, you’re not going to chase me around the room,” she said, laughing. “You look ridiculous.”

  He lunged for her. She darted out of the room, and ran over to the fan, but he grabbed her by the waist, pulling her toward the bed.

  “We’re all wet,” she said, playing.

  “So what?” He lowered her to the bed.

  “The bed’ll be sopping.”

  “We’ll sleep in the tub,” he said, moving his hand up along her leg, soapy and slick. “Anything else?”

  “The curtain,” she said quickly, her breath shallow.

  He grinned at her, then got up and flicked off the light. He had thought she might move, but she lay still, the fan blowing over her body. He stood at the foot of the bed, looking at her white skin in the faint light that came from the bathroom, then moved his hands along her legs, passing over her belly until they rested under her breasts. When he bent over and kissed them, one after the other, she shivered.

  “It’s not right,” she said. “This isn’t supposed to be fun.”

  He moved his face from her breasts up to her neck, lowering his body onto hers so that their wet skins slid against each other.

  “Who says? Who made that up?”

  She took his head in her hands as he bent to kiss her. “Tell me you love me. Tell me it’s all right.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. And then, entering her, he felt her clutch him inside, as if her whole body were holding on to him.

  Afterward they showered separately, suddenly shy with each other. She toweled her hair by the fan, rubbing it with a tropical laziness.

  “Do you really want to go out?” she said. “Can’t we just have room service?”

  “I don’t think they have room service here. Maybe a bellboy with an ice bucket. Do you want a drink?”

  “I’d fall over.”

  “You’ll feel better after some food.”

  “Should I call him now?” she said unexpectedly.

  “No. In the morning. Don’t give him any time to think,” he said, a hunter’s voice. “I mean—”

  “I know what you mean,” she said dully, and got up to dress.

  They ate in a restaurant near Times Square, oysters wedged in a plate of crushed ice and tall glasses of beer whose coating of frost evaporated in the heat. Outside, the streets were crowded and steamy. Emma picked at her food, barely making conversation, and after a second beer Connolly began to wilt too, so that even the rattling noise of the restaurant became fuzzy.

  “Want to go hear some music?” he said.

  She smiled at him. “You always said we’d do that. And now that we’re here, I’m too tired to go. Maybe tomorrow. When it’s over.”

  “All right,” he said, not wanting to talk about it. “We could go to the top of the RCA Building. There’s always a breeze there.”

  “You don’t have to entertain me. I’d be happy with bed.”

  But it was too hot to go back to the hotel, so they went to an air-cooled movie instead, where the crisp refrigerated air reminded him of the Hill. The newsreel was still filled with clips of German atrocities and now the long lines of DPs shuffling sadly past the bomb sites. The feature, something called Pillow to Post, with Ida Lupino, was bright and shiny, oblivious to what had come before, and halfway through Connolly forgot what it was supposed to be about. Emma took his hand in the movie, holding it lightly, as if they were on a date.

  The streets were as crowded as before, people pouring out of the theaters and flirting and eating ice cream cones. The lights were dazzling. Knickerbocker beer. A giant Pepsi in perpetual effervescence. Here, anyway, the war was over, but everything familiar seemed to him suspended. They had all come out to pass the time while they waited for the next thing, the feature after the newsreel. What could it be except brighter, worth the wait?

  He steered away from the theaters and they walked back on quieter streets, still holding hands, easy with each other, listening to the sound of her heels on the pavement. He’d thought of a drink in the Astor Bar, or now the Biltmore, but all that seemed curiously part of the past too, nothing to do with them. Now they were a couple, eager to get home. When she smeared her face with cold cream back in the room, it seemed to him more intimate than lovemaking, a new familiarity.

  He sat at the window while she drifted off to sleep, restless, and it occurred to him then, looking at her, that the trip wasn’t about tomorrow anymore. Tomorrow would take care of itself. But while he waited, his life had changed. This was what it meant to be married. Her help, so casually asked for, now bound him in some deep obligation. If they stopped now they could be as they were, idly suspended like the crowd, hidden away in this cocoon of humid air. Instead, he would compromise her, as determined and heedless as Oppenheimer to see his project through. But they weren’t going to stop—it was sleep talking, the nighttime jitters. This was the next thing. She had understood before he did, accepted it. She turned over in bed, no longer fitful, breathing deeply. He had always loved her fearlessness. Now she was offering it to him, a secret marriage. They could have something more than peace. He thought of her leaping up the trail at Chaco, eager, lending him a hand.

  16

  WHEN HE WOKE the next morning she was already up, sitting by the window in her slip, putting on red nail polish. A coffeepot and cups sat on the table.

  “At last,” she said. “Come and have your coffee. They do have room service, you see. You just have to ask.”

  He put on a robe. “What are you doing?”

  “You want me to look the part, don’t you?” She spread her nails in front of her. “A girl has to look her best for this sort of thing.”
r />   “It’s pretty red,” he said, pouring the coffee.

  “Meaning too red. Darling, a lot you know. On Johanna Weber it’s too red. On me, it’ll be smart. There, see? Now we’ll just wait for it to dry. Let’s hope to God this fan doesn’t give out—it’s been going all night.”

  He drank the coffee, shaking his head to wake up. “You always do that undressed?”

  “Of course. Until it dries. If it streaks, it’s hell to get out. How many women have you actually been with?” she said, smiling. “Or don’t you usually spend the night?”

  He lit a cigarette with the Zippo, then looked at her through the smoke. “Are you always this cheerful, or are you nervous?”

  She gave a half-laugh. “Don’t be so knowing. A little of both, I guess. Maybe a lot. I’ll be all right.”

  “Do you want to run through it again?”

  “No. I know what to say. At least roughly. It’s not exactly a script, is it? I mean, a lot depends on what he says.”

  “Okay. Let’s call him.”

  “No. Finish your coffee and go take a shower. Then I’ll call. I really don’t think I can do this with an audience.”

  He looked at her, surprised. She came over and took his cigarette in one of the nooks of her outstretched fingers, taking a drag, then holding it out for him to take back. “What’s the matter, don’t you think I can?”

  “I’ll be at the restaurant.”

  “I know. I can’t think why.”

  “Just to be around. In case you need me.”

  “Hovering, I suppose. All right. But not now, please. I mean it. Hurry up and clear out.”

  Connolly looked at his watch. “You think he’s already at work?”

  “You don’t know the comrades. Up with the sun, they are.”

  “Better watch the jokes. He may not like it.”

  She glanced up at him. “You know, I hate to point this out, but he is my husband. I already know what he likes.”

  Connolly looked away and put out the cigarette. “Right. I keep forgetting.”

  “I don’t mean what you think I mean. Oh, never mind. Come on, move. I’ve got a hair appointment.”

  “Does he like that?”

  “I like it. I don’t want to go looking like a ranch hand.”

  He looked at her, interested. “You want to impress him, don’t you?”