Charlie raised his eyes. “Please tell the captain no apology is necessary, and I appreciate him sending this along.”
“Will do, sir.” The soldier put his hat on and hurried out.
“Poor fella seemed like he was scared of us civilian heathens,” Monroe said, ambling over. “It might be catching.”
“How does a newbie like that know my nickname?”
“Hill’s a small place,” Monroe said. “So what’d he bring?”
Charlie handed him the letter and sank down onto his bunk.
“Well dog my cats,” Monroe said. “Probably all through this war, guys write letters home, then get killed. Right? So the letter comes a month behind the news that he’s dead. This puts me in mind of that sort of thing.”
“Brenda is not dead,” Charlie said.
“Naw. Only you never talk about her or see her no more.” He tapped the envelope against his leg. “Coals outside are still hot, you know, and paper burns quick. I could solve this problem for you in about ten seconds. All clears.”
Charlie shook his head. “Thanks anyway.”
“Suit yourself. But you ain’t gonna read it now, are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“See, there’s the difference between us, Mister Charlie. I’d rip this thing open right quick, and rid myself of the worry.”
“What’s inside that envelope won’t change while I think about what it might say, and how that might affect me.”
Monroe shook his head. “Pure craziness, but what the hell. Enjoy.” He dropped the letter on the bed, and shuffled to his own bunk. Charlie gazed at the envelope, not touching it, till the barracks chief called lights out.
On the way into the debate, boys crowding in the Fuller Lodge doorway, a steady snow falling and no one taking much notice, Charlie felt a tug on his arm. Bronsky was there, as if he’d been lying in wait. He tilted his head to one side, then marched off in that direction. Charlie stepped out of the line to follow.
The detonation team leader strode through the hallway of offices and out the side door. He wore rubbers, Charlie noticed, so his shoes would remain unmarred by snow or mud. Charlie double-timed to catch up with him outside the building.
“Perhaps we take walk?” Bronsky said.
Charlie thought one was already under way. “Is there something you need, sir?”
“Place we can speak freely.”
Charlie glanced suspiciously over his shoulder. “Is there a spy on The Hill?”
Bronsky rolled his eyes. “Fishk, don’t be fool. There are twenty, if not more. I mean privacy from leadership, who is all attend debate.”
By then they had reached Ashley Pond, skirting its eastern shore and following a walkway toward the tech area. Snow fell past the lights, spiraling in the wind. Along the row of buildings, steam rose from their heating vents.
Bronsky pulled up short by a bench. “Here.” He indicated that Charlie should sit.
“I’ll stand, thank you, sir. Is something the matter?”
Instead of answering, the man removed a glove and swept snow from the bench. He sat in the place he’d cleared, then brushed the other side free. Charlie considered, then took a seat beside him.
“Fishk, what you do know about me?”
“Not much, sir. That you are Russian. That you’re in charge of the detonation team. That you picked me to build the Gadget’s trigger.”
“All Project Y information. Not Bronsky.”
“In that case, I don’t know anything, sir.”
He cleared his throat. “I am born Kiev, November 1900. When I am young, my family is involve in Russian civil war. My father is intellectual full of ideas: rights of individual, limited power of state, independence of Ukraine. Others agree, so they create White Army, which Lenin’s Red Army proceeds to slaughter. I am younger than you are when my family flees to Berlin. I am good student, attain PhD, become professor at excellent Harvard University.”
“I didn’t know that. I went to college there.”
“You never take my chemistry class.”
Charlie leaned forward and the man appeared to be smiling. But the shades closed quickly. “Lenin’s army kills perhaps seven million people, perhaps ten million. Soviet is formed, which now fights Nazis on Eastern Front.”
“That part I know about,” Charlie said. “The bloodiest part of the entire war.”
“Hitler retreats every day. But the land does not go to peace. It goes to Soviet.”
“Well.” Charlie peered back in the direction of Fuller Lodge, snow clouding the view, then ran his hands up and down his thighs to keep warm. “Not much we can do about that from The Hill, is there?”
“Exactly why I bring you here,” Bronsky cried. He swatted Charlie’s leg with his empty glove. “Exactly. What we can do.”
As usual when he did not understand, Charlie’s strategy was to say nothing.
“Outside observer would say: Fishk is smart boy, work hard, likes challenge.”
“Thank you, sir, I—”
“Inside observer? Fishk cannot finish job, is not spy or bad guy, but is not in hurry to see Gadget used.”
Charlie stared at his shoes. The toes were darkened from melting snow.
“You stick at eighteen detonators for months, until I say you need help. Then twenty-one, again for months, until I add detonator team. Now is twenty-three, for so far five weeks.”
“Are you implying that I am delaying the Gadget?”
“I am not imply. I am state as fact. So tomorrow, I add to detonator effort David Horn. He is my doctoral student at Harvard, very smart, I recruit him here.”
“You don’t trust me anymore.”
“Trust is peacetime luxury, Fishk. I am worry about Soviet. Seven million, they have kill. If they defeat Nazi, will they be our new foe? Will war extend? Or, we use Gadget, only country with Gadget, Hitler is gone, and Soviet goes home.”
“I’m incredibly close, sir.”
Bronsky pulled his glove back on. “Help from Horn will make faster.”
“Or get in my way.”
He stood. “Debate is in Fuller Lodge. Here is no debate. Here is decision, and courtesy of telling you directly.”
“Give me a bit more time,” Charlie insisted. “I’ve earned that request. Please.”
The team director paused, brushing snow from his coat. “Perhaps.”
Then he marched off into the technical area, vanishing in a cloud of steam. Charlie sat back on the bench, snow falling like feathers from a burst pillowcase, as only then he became aware that the air all around him was cold.
He snuck in along the wall. For a debate, the room was oddly silent. Also dark, thanks to the snowstorm, with lights on only at the front. The chemist James Wilson, an expert on isolating explosive uranium, stood between two desks, at each of which two men sat. But no one was speaking. Charlie squatted beside Giles and Monroe.
“What have I missed?”
“Anecdoche,” Giles said.
“Which means?”
“Everyone is talking and no one is listening.”
“But hell,” Monroe added, “you’re right on time for the fireworks.”