Masarek lit another cigaret, frowning around the smoke stinging his eyes. “If the comrade’s
information is good….”He shrugged. “One guard. Can we trust the information?”
“The comrade was sure. He said, ‘It’s a naval base\ What the hell do they need guards for?’ “
Masarek grunted. “Just like an intellectual. He thinks because they are at war and wear uniforms
they are soldiers. Fool.”
Vanessa took Masarek’s cigaret, drew a deep breath and returned the cigaret to him. “At least
he’s a well-briefed fool. Someone from the lab will inspect the?Bronx shipment at midnight. The
uranium will be stored in Delta warehouse on the southeastern side of the base. The shipment
will be inspected again at 0700 of the 16th, after it’s loaded aboard the Indianapolis. That gives
us seven hours to steal the uranium.”
“Why are they inspecting this shipment so often if they don’t want to call attention to it?” asked
Masarek.
The question surprised Vanessa. She understood that radioactive materials could be dangerous,
but she had seen no need to explain that to Masarek. So long as he followed her orders, there
was no need for him to worry.
“He didn’t say why.” Vanessa paused, then added, “If it were important, he would have told
us.”
Masarek cocked his head as though listening to what Vanessa had not said as well as what she
had. Then he shrugged, pulled hard on the cigaret, and muttered, “I don’t like depending on
intellectuals.”
“They don’t allow assassins or even ordinary communists at the Radiation Laboratory,” Vanessa
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remarked. “The Americans are narrow-minded about some things.”
“And stupid about others, it seems. But they did well enough against the Germans.”
“Only after one million Russians died at Stalingrad. Only then did the pig shit Americans think it
was safe to open the Second Front. Do they think that Russians died so that Americans could
rule the world?” Vanessa’s laugh was humorless. “Tokyo will be the Americans’ Stalingrad.
Stealing the Bronx shipment will be the same as killing one million American soldiers!”
Across the room, Refugio and two of his men began talking in Spanish. Masarek watched them
for a moment before he turned back to Vanessa.
“When do you want me to kill Refugio?”
“He’ll try to kill us in the tunnel,” said Vanessa, “or at least to hold us up for more money.”
“Of course. So when do you want him dead? I could kill him now, I suppose, since there is only
one guard.”
“No. Later. After we steal the uranium.”
Masarek nodded. “The transfer point would be best,” he said. “I’ll kill the Mexicans when we
change vehicles in Oakland. Then we’ll drive to the tunnel, cross back into Mexico and have the
uranium on the first ship to Russia. Very simple.”
“Refugio is not as simple as he looks.”
Masarek dropped his cigaret onto the rug, then ground out the ember with a casual twist of his
heel.
“I’ve killed many like him. Cunning, but they die just the same.” He saw Vanessa’s sideways look
at Refugio. The Mexican saw it also; his smile was as insulting as a hand beneath her skirt. “You
would like to kill him yourself?” suggested Masarek.
“I would like,” said Vanessa, “to put a bullet through his thick black peasant hair into the base
of his skull.”
Masarek smiled slightly. “I give him to you.”
“What about his men?”
Masarek yawned. “They’ll be dead before you pull the trigger.”
Vanessa smiled and put her hand on Masarek’s cheek where the curve of his jaw met his hairline.
“Be sure it’s Refugio who opens the car door in Oakland. I’d hate to kill you by mistake.”
West of Trinity
4 Hours 40 Minutes Before Trinity
Lightning raked the cloud tops and the desert below. Thunder belled so close that it
overpowered the sound made by the C-46’s laboring engines. Rain fell as though to make up for
a thousand years of drought; the drops made a continuous drumming sound. The plane bucked
and sideslipped in a pocket of treacherous air.
Finn braced himself in the fold-down seat behind the copilot. The pilot swore in a monotone
and fought to keep the plane under control. Lightning burst in a sheet of incandescence that
arched from horizon to horizon. In the instant before Finn’s eyes reflexively closed, he saw
separate drops of sweat stand out on the copilot’s forehead. Thunder exploded around the
plane, shaking them like dice in a cup.
“ – of a bitch!” The copilot’s yell emerged from the fading thunder. “You won’t be able to see
anything in this shit!”
The radio crackled loudly. Earlier, the copilot had turned the volume on full; it was the only way
of hearing an incoming message. Each time lightning split the night, the radio went wild with a
blast of sound that reminded Finn of the radiation counter stowed beneath his feet.
“… me? Over.” The radio’s voice was thin, as though it had been pounded flat by thunder.
The copilot switched the radio to transmit. “This is Blue One,” he shouted into the mike.
“Repeat last message. Repeat last message. Over.”
“… is de… ceed… second… target… im-med… you… me?…”
The pilot and copilot looked at one another. The pilot shook his head. “One more time.”
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The copilot leaned over the mike and yelled, “Blue One to Blue Three. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Over.”
The radio crackled explosively, echoing nearby lightning.
“… test is delayed. Proceed to… immediately… read me? Over.”
The copilot yelled to Finn, “Did you get that? The test is delayed. We’re supposed to go on to
California.”
Finn looked at his watch. Almost one-thirty. The test had been delayed twice already; he would
be lucky to make it to Hunters Point on time.
“Let’s go!” yelled Finn, giving a thumb’s up gesture just as lightning turned the cockpit white.
The pilot banked steeply away from the test site, climbing for the relative calm between the
squall lines that had been sweeping across the desert from the Gulf. As the copilot yelled his
understanding of the new orders into the radio, Finn checked the black radiation counter
between his feet. It was intact.
Thunder rattled the plane, making his teeth ache. He settled himself in for a long, unpleasant
flight.
San Francisco, California
1 Hour 12 Minutes Before Trinity
Chill and wild, the wind off San Francisco Bay gusted down streets darkened by wartime,
rattling windows where shards of light glinted between blackout curtains. Some windows had
not been covered at all, showing light like great blind eyes. The seamless coastal midnight of
1941 had given way to complacency as people shed the inconveniences of a war they believed
they had already won.
Unnoticed by anyone, San Francisco had gradually returned to being a civilian city. Bakery
trucks, laundry trucks, cabs, meat trucks, garbage trucks, buses, pimps, whores, cops and thieves
competed for space on the city streets.
Among the delivery vehicles moving over streets glistening with a condensed fog was a pale
laundry truck with Chinese ideographs and a small number 7 on the door. The truck pulled up in
the alley behind a Cantonese restaurant. The driver stretched and slowly got out to make the last
civilian stop on his route, dropping off clean linen and picking up napkins smelling of ginger and
soy sauce.
Masarek moved his head just enough to watch the back of the restaurant. He was so close to the
parked truck that he could smell oil oozing out of a leak in the crankcase.
The driver’s heels grated on the broken surface of the alley. A rectangle of light bloomed at the
back of the restaurant.
Other than narrowing his eyes, Masarek did not move to evade the light. He had chosen his
clothes and his cover well; light did not separate him from the surrounding darkness.
The driver and dishwasher exchanged a few desultory Cantonese obscenities as clean laundry
was traded for dirty. Masarek waited, poised for the moment when the restaurant door would
close and the sound of deadbolts slamming home would be loud in the alley’s silence.
The rectangle of yellow light vanished. Deadbolts thumped into place. The driver began closing
the van’s rear doors.
Masarek flowed out of hiding with no more sound than the fog. His right hand covered the
driver’s mouth at the exact instant that his stiletto slid between the man’s ribs and pierced his
heart.
Death was immediate. There was no time for fear or surprise, escape or error. Masarek heaved
the body on top of tea-stained tablecloths, slammed the van’s doors, and climbed into the
driver’s seat. The laundryman’s death had taken less than three seconds.
Refugio was hidden where the alley met the street. At the sound of the driver’s door closing, he
gathered himself for a rush at the truck, certain that Masarek had somehow missed his quarry.
The truck stopped at the head of the alley. The door on the right opened soundlessly.
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“Get in!”
Masarek’s hissed command galvanized Refugio and the two men waiting with him.
“In the back!”
One of Refugio’s men tripped over the driver’s body.
“Madre de Dios! Salvador,” hissed Refugio. “You are as clumsy as a boy with his first woman!”
Salvador rolled off the body with a curse, checking his clothes for bloodstains. There were none.
The man had died before his heart could pump blood out of the single wound the stiletto had
made.
Refugio and Salvador helped the third Mexican, a man named Lopez, to strip the corpse of its
uniform shirt. The truck swayed as it turned onto the main street, making the men’s work more
difficult.
“You,” said Refugio, handing the shirt to Lopez, the smallest of the three men.
Lopez looked over the shirt. There was a tiny stain on the back where capillaries had oozed in
the instant before the driver’s blood pressure had dropped to nothing. Lopez looked from the
stain to the man who had killed with such precision.
Refugio followed the glance. He knew what Lopez was thinking; but Salvador was also quick,
silent and deadly. And there would be three to Masarek’s one.
“Put it on,” said Masarek. “You’ll drive.”
Lopez pulled on the shirt. It still carried the dead driver’s warmth. Lopez traded places with
Masarek, who went to the back of the truck and crouched, gun in hand, watching everyone.
“Go!” said Masarek. “Quickly!”
Hunters Points, California
29 Minutes Before Trinity
Evans Avenue pointed like an arrow toward the gate at Hunters Point. Inside the mammoth
naval shipyard, most streetlights and buildings were properly hooded. Even so, there were
occasional islands of illumination. Churned by the wind, rain made ragged patterns in the light.
At the front gate, Shore Patrol sentries hunched inside their peacoats and cursed the wind, the
military and the bad luck that had given them duty on such a filthy night. They hardly interrupted
their cursing to wave through routine traffic – food and fuel and laundry. The vehicles shuttled
back and forth, weaving Hunters Point into the fabric of civilian San Francisco.
The cream-colored van with Chinese ideographs on the door was just one of many vehicles the
sentries had seen. Laundry trucks at Hunters Point were as common as Spam in field rations.
“You sure this is the right truck?” asked Lopez as he began to slow for the gate.
“It’s number seven,” said Refugio in a low voice. “Now be quiet, fool!”
Lopez puffed on his cigaret and tried to ease the strain of the too-small uniform across his
shoulders. His dark face was lit by the cigaret glued to his lower lip. There were premature lines
at the corners of his eyes from squinting against the perpetual upward curl of smoke. His
nervousness showed in the deep red glow as he sucked hard on the cigaret.
Masarek crouched in the back of the truck, watching. He did not expect to be challenged by the
guards – it was the right truck, the right guards, and the right night. No enlisted man would
search the truck that carried the punch-boards and betting slips for all the illegal gamblers in
Hunters Point. But there was always the chance of a mistake, a new guard or a greedy guard, or
an officer who had decided to inspect the gate….
The Shore Patrol waved through the laundry truck after a single look at the number 7. Masarek
relaxed slightly as the truck picked up speed. He would have had a difficult time explaining the
three men hidden in the back of the van, and the dead man who did not quite fit into a laundry
bag.
Once inside the base, Lopez killed the headlights and slid unobstrusively into the random
movements of trucks, staff cars and occasional Shore Patrol Jeeps. The van rolled unchallenged
through the darkness, its tires sucking moistly on the wet roadways.
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“Second right,” said Masarek from the rear of the van.
Refugio translated quickly, not wanting Masarek to know that Lopez understood English. The
three men in the back braced themselves as the van turned. Other than clipped directions and
translations, no one spoke. The only sound was Salvador’s fingernail slowly marking time on the
stock of a sawed-off, twin-barreled escopeta that lay across his knee. The shotgun looked small
in his thick hands. When he turned to look at Refugio, random light picked out the claw-shaped
scar on Salvador’s temple.
“Left.”
Refugio’s fingertips traced and retraced the lines of a silver-plated .45 caliber Army pistol that
rested on his knee.
“Right.”
Masarek’s voice was thin, soft and precise. His head was never still.
“Left.” Masarek’s head turned, listening.
The van swayed, then evened out as it negotiated the hard left turn. Now the vehicle was
threading its way through narrow alleys behind warehouses and armories, alleys piled high with
equipment. The supply line that had been created for the invasion of Japan had been filled
beyond its capacity. Hundreds of tons of clothing and food, vehicles and fuel drums spilled out
of warehouses. Field artillery pieces, self-propelled howitzers and other instruments of war
towered over the van. Like millions of men, the supplies waited for a Presidential decision.
“Slow down.”
Refugio’s translation was like a garbled echo. Lopez eased off the accelerator, guiding the van
along ever more cluttered roadways.
“Park on the right.”
Lopez backed into a spot behind a ten-foot-high pile of crated gasoline barrels. It was unlikely
that the van would be spotted there. Lopez shut off the engine and turned to speak to Refugio.
