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Oppenheimer was as alert as he’d promised, and the coffee just as good. His office was not much bigger than Groves’s, but it was filled with the nesting memorabilia of someone who had come to stay. Connolly glanced around the room, taking in the ashtrays, the piece of Indian pottery, the files piled everywhere. He wanted to linger over the photographs on the walls-colleagues from Berkeley? student days in Gottingen? — but it was impossible to look at anything else while Oppenheimer was in the room. He sat there smoking, so animated and intense that the rest receded to the flatness of a still life.

“I suppose you’ll want to talk to the police first,” he said. “I’d appreciate your reporting back to me on that. All I know is what Lieutenant Mills tells me, so now I’ll have to rely on you.” He looked at Connolly mischievously. “He is not, I trust, under suspicion himself?”

“You haven’t talked to the police?” Connolly asked. Oppenheimer smiled. “You forget. Officially, I don’t exist. None of us do. You’re among ghosts now.” And with the smoke floating around his gaunt face, he did, for a minute, look like one.

“Right. My mistake.”

“Never mind. We forget it ourselves from time to time-it’s difficult, not existing. No doubt the good general has already given you his security speech, so I won’t bore you by repeating it. Nothing must compromise the security of the project. As far as that’s concerned, you’ll have our full cooperation. Having said that, I should also say that I don’t want this incident to compromise the work of the project.”

“That’s just what General Groves said.”

“You surprise me. I felt sure he’d use this as an excuse to turn the place inside out. The general’s a great one for looking under mattresses and peeking through keyholes and all the rest of it. He seems to feel safest when no one knows anything at all.”

“He said you’d say that too.”

Oppenheimer smiled again, thinly, and put out his cigarette.

“Well, the general and I have been down this road many times before. We walk a very fine line here. On the one hand, the project is secret-everyone understands that-but on the other hand, its success depends on the free exchange of ideas. G.G.’s original plan was to compartmentalize everything. The production centers would be scattered around the country, and even here the units would work on parallel but separate tracks. Impossible, of course. Scientists can’t work with blinders on-you’d never get anywhere. So we worked out one of our Solomonic compromises. The department heads meet once a week to discuss where we are and keep everyone in the picture.”

“And what did the general get in the bargain?”

He smiled again and took out another cigarette. “Oh, I suppose that we still don’t communicate outside. You remember, of course, that in the Solomon story they never did divide the baby.”

“But everyone saved face.”

Oppenheimer nodded. “Anyway, we do what we can to keep security the way the general likes it. Something like this, however-” He trailed off to light the cigarette. “I don’t want it used as an excuse. After all, the poor man wasn’t killed here. General Groves may not like the idea of homosexuals in his army-actually, I doubt very much that he believes they exist anywhere; the general’s an innocent in his own way. But that’s no reason to ignore the obvious and launch a full security investigation because you’d prefer it to be something else.”

“Is it obvious?”

“I was told it was,” Oppenheimer said, somewhat surprised. “Isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, and Connolly saw that behind the intensity he was already tired.

“Well, certainly it would be convenient. Embarrassing for your office-and to think, of all the departments-” He picked up the thought again. “But convenient. Not the end of the world.”

“It was the end for him,” Connolly said, thinking of the photograph back in his room.