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When she came out of the bathroom, she was in her slip and her face was still damp with water. She brushed back her hair with her fingers and sat down, crossing her legs with a theatrical calmness. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t bite. Do you have another one of those?”

He handed her a cigarette, not saying anything, so that the silence was an apology. The air in the room settled, all the bad words seeping out the window with the smoke.

“Is it important to you?” she said finally.

“Yes.”

“Yes, it would be, wouldn’t it?” Her lips curled in a kind of amused resignation, as if she were laughing at herself.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

“About my father,” she said, almost dreamily. “He got it right, didn’t he? Here’s the room-seedy, that would be his word for it. In the middle of some American desert. That’s about nowhere, or near enough. And I’m sitting here, smoking a cigarette in my slip, like a slut.”

“Emma.”

“No, like a slut. Some man’s sweat still all over me and a husband down the road and another somewhere else-my God. Quite a sight. And my lover. Well, my lover. All very much as he predicted.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I love you.”

“And that makes it all different. Whatever that means.”

“It means I won’t ask you again. I won’t ask anything. Forget it.”

“Could you? No, you may as well ask, now that we’ve started. What, exactly?”

“You mean you’ll do it?”

“I won’t do him any harm. Can you promise me he won’t be harmed? No, never mind. You can’t promise, but you would. You’d lie. You couldn’t help it.”

“I won’t lie to you. Nothing’s going to happen to him.”

“I won’t whore for you.”

“Do you really think I’d ask you to do that?”

“No.”

“Then what’s this all about?”

She turned away, facing the room. “I don’t know. Not wanting to rake up the past, I suppose. Can you understand that? You never know what you’re going to find. I don’t want to go back.”

“It’s just this once. You’d have to sometime.”

“To straighten things out, you mean? Oh, that’s good. Darling, do let’s get a friendly annulment. Meanwhile, here are some lovely secrets for your trouble. Is that the idea? My God, I don’t know if I can do it. I’m not that good a liar.”

“It’s not a lie. The papers are real.”

“I wouldn’t be. He’d spot it in a minute. Why him, of all people?”

“You didn’t have anywhere else to turn. You trust him.” He met her glance.

“Why now? How did I know where to find him?”

“You’ve known for some time. You just didn’t want to-rake up the past.”

“But now I’m ready for a bit of gardening.”

“This was important. You need his help. For your lover’s sake.”

“Well, at least that wouldn’t be lying.”

“Your lover, Corporal Waters. Box 1663, Santa Fe.”

“What’s he like, this one?”

“An idealist. Like the first one.”

“What a bastard you are.”

“He’ll believe you. These things run to type.”

“Until you,” she said, stubbing out the cigarette. But she was interested now, in spite of herself. “Why not Daniel?”

“He’s real. They could check.”

“What am I supposed to tell him, by the way? I’m off to New York for some shopping?”

“I don’t know yet. We’ll have to come up with something. Maybe Oppie’s asked you to help with some visiting Brits. It’s a chance to get away. Something.”

Emma got up and looked out the window. “I’ll have to tell him about us sometime, you know. Maybe it’s now.”

“Not yet.”

She turned to look at him. “Why? Out of curiosity.”

“It’s better to wait. We don’t know how he’ll react. Besides, he’s busy.”

“Useful, you mean. To the project. We wouldn’t want to risk any complications now, would we? Of a personal nature.”

“No, we wouldn’t.”

She looked at him for a minute, then began pacing across the room. “Right. So my new friend-I suppose you’ve got a whole history worked out for him?”

“We can do that on the train.”

“My new friend, the latest in that long line Daddy predicted-” She put her hand up before he could speak. “You want me to get into the spirit of things, don’t you? Anyway, he’s all in a bother. Conscience?”

Connolly ignored the tone. “We’re building a terrible weapon,” he said deliberately. “So terrible it will change everything. We thought the Nazis were building one too. But now they’re gone, so he doesn’t understand why it’s still secret. Some of the scientists don’t want it used at all. They want to get the word out, but there’s nothing they can do. The whole place is sealed up tight. The only hope they’ve got of controlling it is if everyone knows. If everyone gets scared. Otherwise the army can do anything it wants. Not just Japan. Russia, anywhere it likes. Why not tell our own allies, unless we want to keep it for ourselves? For afterward. As long as we own the secret, we’re a threat to everybody. We’ll be the Nazis.”

Emma stared at him, her face sober and quiet. She had stopped pacing and was crossing her arms and holding herself as if she were huddling against a chill. “Is that true?”

“It’s how Corporal Waters would see it.”

“The scientists, I mean. Do they really want everyone to know?”