We never did one on this guy Grummin.”
“His name is Masarek. He’s an NKVD agent.”
Everyone in the room came to attention at the mention of the Russian secret service.
“NKVD?” said Coughlan. “I should have figured it was the commies.” He turned to Riley. “Get
the guys from the Red Squad down here. I want every known commie agent, sympathizer or
plain fool in San Francisco and Berkeley under surveillance by noon.”
“Hold it.” Finn’s voice was like a pistol shot. “You can put a watch on known agents and idiots
– it will at least keep your men out of the way. But it won’t answer my question about where the
card came from.”
“It’s a fake. It has to be,” said Coughlan. “We never approved a security clearance for a
goddamn Russian spy called Grummin or Masarek or whatever the hell his name is.”
“Someone in that lab told Grummin-Masarek when the shipment arrived and where it was
stored. That same person could have stolen a blank Lawrence lab ID card and given it to
Masarek.”
Coughlan scowled, but nodded finally.
“Run another check on everybody at the lab,” said Finn. “Bear down on anyone who knew
about the shipment. And be a prick with the men who came here at midnight.”
Coughlan’s scowl deepened, but he nodded again.
“And before you do anything else,” continued Finn, “get a bulletin on Masarek out to the local
police.”
“An APB,” muttered Coughlan. “San Francisco or the whole damn Bay Area?”
“Statewide,” said Finn, trying to keep the bleak edge of hopelessness out of his voice. “Christ,
he could be halfway to Russia by now.”
With the discipline that had made him a survivor, Finn put away his feeling of futility. As long as
there was time, he would keep on trying… otherwise the sentry would be just the first of a
million casualties, death piled on death.
Finn stood and walked swiftly through the half-open storeroom door that was just beyond the
sentry’s body. Riley hesitated, then followed his new partner.
The first thing Finn saw was the open canister. His breath hissed out between his teeth as the
enormity of the thieves’ ignorance struck him for the first time.
“Sweet Jesus. The bastards don’t know what they stole!” Finn remembered the dying technician
in Los Alamos, the horror of his invisible, lethal injury. He turned toward the men waiting
outside the storeroom. “How many people have been in here?”
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Coughlan came up behind Finn and looked over his shoulder. “No one but me. Why?”
“Did you touch anything?”
“Uh, no,” said Coughlan uneasily. “We were told that the storeroom was off limits until
someone from Groves cleared it.”
Finn looked at Coughlan, sure that he was lying. It was an investigator’s nature to poke and pry,
and Coughlan was an investigator before he was anything else.
“Riley,” said Finn.
The young agent took Coughlan’s place behind Finn, looking over his shoulder into the
forbidden storeroom. Finn pulled a metal keyring from his pocket and flipped it to Riley.
“In the trunk of the black Ford coupe parked out front. A metal box. Bring it.”
In less than a minute, Riley returned with the radiation counter. Finn took the instrument,
snapped it on and adjusted the dial. He was rewarded with a slow, steady click, like a
metronome. Finn extended the probe in front of him like a snake stick and began quartering the
storeroom.
As he approached the canister, the radiation counter began clicking faster. When he was eight
feet from the empty canister the pulses quickened even more, sounding double time in a ghostly
march. At six feet, the sound slid into a blur.
Finn stopped and recalibrated. Although the radiation was still within the range of safety, Finn
felt as though the temperature of the room were increasing with each click. Sweat started on his
forehead. He remembered again the laboratory and the innocent looking, deadly pieces of
metal.
“What are you doing?” demanded Coughlan.
Finn ignored him. Four feet away from the cannister, Finn had to recalibrate again. He was
approaching the upper level of what he had been told was the safety range. The skin on his arms
prickled and contracted. He advanced another cautious step, feeling as though he were in the
jungle again, and the clicks of the counter a cloud of frightened birds crying frantic warnings.
Off to the side of the lid, on a patch of concrete that looked no different from any other, the
probe sensed ambush and screamed. Finn reset the counter twice, then retreated, still unable to
slow the scream into separate clicks. He would leave the rest of the investigating to radiation
experts. He knew enough for his own purposes. He knew that the U-235 was unshielded, and
that the two pieces had been brought together as they were stolen, irradiating the concrete floor
and probably at least one of the thieves.
The mental vision of shadowy men limned in the blue light of atomic radiation possessed Finn’s
mind for a moment, and then, like an echo, the face of the experimenter who had found the
front lines of war in a New Mexico lab. If the thief – or more likely, thieves – were badly injured
by radiation, they might crawl away and die like poisoned rats in some hidden hole. How would
he find them if they went to ground? How could anyone find them?
Less than two days.
Sweat gathered on Finn’s ribs in spite of the cool morning. The canister yawned vacantly at him,
its black cavity big enough to swallow a world.
As Finn backed away from the canister, the counter’s buzz diminished rapidly. He clicked
downward through the scale, watching the needle drop. With a feeling of relief, he reached for
the cutoff switch. But the counter buzzed suddenly and the needle slapped against its peg.
Finn stood absolutely still. Just when he thought he understood the capabilities of radiation, it
ambushed him with no warning at all. Silence, then screams.
Sweating, Finn reset the counter. Coughlan, standing behind Finn near the door, walked toward
the shrill-voiced box. The counter screamed as Coughlan approached the probe.
“What the hell?”
Coughlan’s question was cut short by the counter’s scream as he neared the probe. Finn quickly
shifted the dial, diminishing the counter’s sensitivity until the clicks were crisp and separate
again. He looked speculatively at Coughlan, then pointed the probe toward him.
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The clicks sped up.
“Hey!” said Coughlan. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Stand still.”
Coughlan responded to the authority in Finn’s voice. The probe clicked faster as it approached
Coughlan, then slowed as Finn pulled it back.
“How are you making it do that? What are those clicks?”
“I’m not making it do anything,” said Finn. “You are.” Finn moved the probe again, advancing
and retreating from Coughlan. The clicks rose and fell in a ripple of sound.
“Whaddya mean?” said Coughlan. “Get that damn thing away from me!”
“You handled the canister,” said Finn. Before Coughlan could deny it, Finn pointed the probe at
the agent’s right hand. “You picked up the cover, most likely.”
Color drained from Coughlan’s face as the counter screamed the answer to Finn’s accusation.
Red splotches along the line of the agent’s jaw stood out against the paleness of fear.
“The thieves,” said Finn, pointing the probe as though it were a flashlight illuminating a dark
room, “opened the can, pulled out the first piece and set it down near the lid. Then they pulled
out that,” the wand pointed at the dark, solid damper that had separated the two pieces of
U-235, “and – “ He stopped talking abruptly. He knew the thieves had taken out the second
piece of uranium and set it down next to the first, causing a storm of radiation. But he could not
say that to men who were not even cleared to know that they were looking for uranium.
He turned off the radiation counter. “Riley, I saw a hose out front. Drag it in here. Coughlan,
start peeling. When you get to your skin, wish you could zip out of it, too. But you can’t, so
Riley will wash you down.”
“You’re kidding,” said Coughlan, but he could see that Finn was not. “For Chrissake, why?”
said Coughlan, loosening his tie and belt even as he protested.
“I can’t tell you.”
Coughlan’s hands hovered over his fly. “So help me, Finn, if you’re jerking me off – “
“Peel,” said Finn.
Coughlan peeled.
Oakland
3 Hours 16 Minutes After Trinity
Refugio wallowed in a sea of pain until the tide ebbed, stranding him in a dry reality. He was
facedown on the front seat of the laundry van. Then he remembered the instant that the world
had exploded as Masarek shot him. He sat and looked down at himself. Blood. A lapful of it.
Afraid of what he would find, he explored his lap with his left hand.
The relief of finding himself intact was so great that Refugio nearly fainted again. Then came
fiery pain as he brushed his hand across his left thigh.
“Refugio?” asked Salvador anxiously.
“It’s all right,” said Refugio, his eyes closed. “The cabrón shot me in the leg, nothing more. How
long was I out?”
“Only a moment.”
Refugio opened his eyes and wiped the sweat away, leaving bloody streaks everywhere his hand
had been. He looked into the back of the truck. Neither Masarek nor Lopez was recognizable,
but it was obvious that both men were dead.
“The blonde,” said Refugio, his voice hoarse. “You’ll have to get her.”
“How?”
“Go to the car in back of the van. The car with a red serape in the back window. The woman
who came with Masarek is hiding there. But be careful. Don’t trust her.”
“A rattlesnake’s mate is no less poisonous for being female,” said Salvador, leaning over the seat
and scooping up his knife and shotgun.
“Take her – “ Refugio bit off a sound of pain. With great care, he straightened slowly, so that
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the waves of pain did not make him dizzy. He pressed his face against the cold glass on the
driver’s side, then rolled down the window and peered out. The cream-colored flower truck was
across the street, nearly a block to the rear. Between the flower truck and the laundry truck was a
car with a red blanket in the rear window.
“The green car. Take her from it. Go to the white van with the red rose on the side. See it?”
Salvador leaned over the seat and looked. “Yes.”
“A Japanese is in the truck. A friend. Knock out the blonde, tie her and drive the van up here.
Just knock her out, don’t kill her. Understand?”
“Yes.”
Salvador turned and picked his way past the bodies to the rear of the truck. His foot hit a canvas
bag containing the smaller piece of uranium and sent it skating aside until it thumped up against
the bag with the larger piece of U-235. Radiation bloomed in a soundless, subtle rush of blue, so
faint he did not see it.
Salvador opened the rear door and got out. After a quick look around, he walked toward the
dark green car. Mist swirled capriciously, but the red blanket was like a beacon. Even so, he
hesitated before he opened the car door. The car looked empty and cold, its windows un-fogged
as though nothing warm breathed inside. Then he saw that the windows were rolled down just
enough to let out any telltale warmth. He peered inside, but saw only a back seat heaped with
more rumpled blankets. Knife in hand, he opened the back door.
“Se?orita?” whispered Salvador.
Beneath the blankets, Vanessa smiled, thinking it was Refugio’s voice whispering to her, Refugio
delivered to her by Masarek, as promised. The muffling blankets were no impediment to her
silenced .38. She aimed as she had practiced, at the exact center of the open door, regretting
only that she could not see Refugio’s leer dissolve into horror as he felt death tearing at his
body.
Vanessa pulled the trigger again and again. Only the twitching blankets marked the silent passage
of bullets. Salvador reeled backward, fell, and felt the cold surface of the street engulf him. He
reached toward the blankets as though to warm himself. Then he felt nothing at all.
Vanessa waited beneath the blankets, holding her breath and counting silently. Nothing moved
in or outside the car. When she reached thirty, she threw aside the blankets and gulped air
untainted by cordite and smoldering wool. All she could see of the man who had whispered to
her was a broad, blunt hand clenched around a trailing edge of blanket.
She yanked off her dark scarf with her left hand and snapped the cloth across the fingers clinging
to the blanket. There was no flicker of response. Deliberately, she raised her gun and fired a shot
through the hand. It twitched from the bullet’s impact, but did not bleed. Dead. She kicked
aside the hand and squirmed out of the back seat.
The man slumped against the pavement was too big, too broad, too thick. Refugio was smaller.
She turned over the corpse with her foot and looked into dead eyes that were not Refugio’s.
Then she looked up the street at the pale van parked neatly along the curb.
Had something gone wrong? Had Masarek been forced to kill Refugio himself? Or was it
Masarek who was dead and Refugio alive?
Vanessa shook herself impatiently. Masarek was no child to be killed by Mexican smugglers.
Nonetheless, she would take care to keep a car between herself and the van as she approached it.
Refugio swore softly as the woman’s gold-white hair slipped from cover to cover like a ghost.
He had been watching in the sideview mirror when Salvador fell backward out of the car.
Refugio could not tell precisely what had gone wrong, but he could see that Salvador was
certainly hurt and probably dead. Refugio also knew that Kestrel wanted the woman alive.
Silently, Refugio rolled down the window on the passenger side of the car. The barrel of his .45
scraped on metal as he aimed back along the body of the truck. Kestrel wanted the blonde alive,
yes; but he wanted the metal even more. Refugio knew he was too weak to take a live prisoner
who had dispatched Salvador as coolly as a campesina grinding corn. He would have to kill
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Vanessa.
Vanessa darted along the curb to the cover of another car. Sweating, Refugio took aim carefully,
knowing that if he waited any longer, she would be behind his van in a blind spot. His finger,
slippery with sweat and blood, took slack out of the trigger. He exhaled until there was no air
left in his lungs, then held very still, waiting for Vanessa’s blond head to appear over the trunk of
