blanket of sand and left as quietly as he had come. By dawn he was back in Juarez, waiting for the
replacements that the Russians were sure to send.
In time, Masarek had appeared.
Finn’s own network of whores, informants and spies had told him that Masarek had been seen
with Refugio, heading north of the American border. Apparently their attempt on Los Alamos
had been fruitless, for they had returned very quickly. The same informant had told Finn that this
evening, Refugio was to meet with a newly arrived, very important foreigner in the Green
Parrot. As Masarek was the only important foreigner to arrive recently in Juarez, Finn assumed
that he was the one who would meet Refugio tonight. He assumed, but he was not certain. He
would not be certain until he saw Masarek here, tonight.
None of the people Finn saw matched his description of Masarek. Mexicans, Europeans and
Orientals occupied the cantina’s rough tables. Among them circulated Refugio’s whores,
including his favorite, Rubia. She was limber, blond, and perhaps fourteen. Despite her dyed
hair, Rubia was unusally pretty. She moved from table to table, dispensing drinks and sexual
invitation with equal ease.
The crowd around the cockfight humped up suddenly and roared like a breaking wave. Finn
knew without looking that one cock had been wounded. The birds varied from fight to fight, but
the crowd’s bay at first blood was always the same. The fight itself promised to be special,
though; one of the birds was Refugio’s favorite, a scarred survivor of many battles.
People screamed prayers and imprecations in most of the civilized languages of man. Bets flew
among the feathers as the cocks ripped each other with bloody spurs. Sweating, Refugio waved a
fistful of money, boasting and betting on the red cock’s prowess. The crowd heaved and
re-formed, blocking Finn’s view of Refugio.
The Indio woman’s hiss slid between the shrill sounds of the cantina. Without looking at her,
Finn glanced to his right. Several American servicemen were wandering toward him, obviously
looking for a table.
“Mind if we sit with you?” asked one of the men.
“Yes,” said Finn.
“Friendly type, huh.”
“No.”
“Are you an American?” demanded the man.
“Sometimes,” said Finn, completing the recognition sequence.
With a sound of disgust, the man herded his friends back into the cantina’s mainstream. They
wedged themselves along the bar and prepared to wait for a vacant table.
Finn did not look at them again. His mind was ticking off seconds with the precision of a
stopwatch. When the count reached three hundred, he finished his beer, tipped the cook
generously, and prepared to leave the Green Parrot as inconspicuously as he had arrived.
As he stood up, the crowd around the pit shrieked and moaned. The cockfight was approaching
its climax. The birds leaped and raked over each other, steel spurs ripping out feathers and
blood. He watched, realizing that the red cock had finally met his equal. The fighters were well
matched. Too well matched. Like the German army at Stalingrad and the U.S. Marines on
Japanese-held islands, the only winner was death.
The screams changed in pitch. One cock was down, disemboweled, its black-and-white feathers
sprayed with blood. The red cock began to crow triumphantly, then reeled sideways as its blood
pumped out of a slashed artery. Both cocks thrashed about in the dusty pit while Refugio yelled
for his favorite to stand up and be proven the winner.
Both cocks died, steel spurs raking the dust. Vicious arguments started over which cock had
died first.
Refugio shouldered into the pit, swearing at the bettors and handlers alike. At his command, the
Yaquis held the cocks aloft for his inspection. Guts slid down dusty arms, trailing ribbons of
blood. He prodded the big red bird while men shouted at him, shrill as roosters. The crowded
fragmented into fist- and knife-fights.
As Finn watched, three men clubbed their way to Refugio’s side. He did not need his
bodyguards to restore order, though. His own fists and boots were enough. Men went down
around him, and stayed down. Soon there was no one left fighting. He shouted over the angry
bettors, pointing out that the spotted cock had gone down first and stayed down until it died.
Men yelled back, saying that Refugio’s red cock had died first. Refugio began reciting the
superior points of the red cock.
Finn eased through the cantina, listening to the Mexican’s harangue on behalf of his favorite
cock. Several thousand dollars were at stake, but it was pride as much as money that goaded
Refugio, a man whose pride was legend.
Suddenly, Refugio’s voice dropped. Finn turned back, wondering what had happened to silence
the arrogant smuggler. One of Refugio’s bodyguards stood close to him, talking quietly,
gesturing with a sawed-off shotgun. Refugio’s eyebrows swept together in a thick frown. He
turned to the Yaquis who stood impassively, death dangling from their hands. At his curt gesture
they lowered the limp birds. While he spoke, the handlers reached into covered baskets, pulled
out two fresh cocks and fastened on sets of razor spurs.
“A tie!” shouted Refugio, glaring at the crowd. Men groaned and cursed. Refugio shoved
through them shouting, “A tie! No bets won or lost on a tie!”
The two new cocks saw each other and screamed challenges. The crowd looked away from
Refugio, focusing once more on the cockpit where eager, violent birds were barely restrained by
their handlers.
As Finn turned back toward the side door, his glance automatically searched the crowd. He
found himself staring across the room into slanted Japanese eyes. Without seeming to, Finn
memorized the man as he did all strangers, trying to judge height and age and weight, looking
for distinguishing marks. There was nothing. The Japanese was dressed neither well nor badly,
his posture was neither timid nor aggressive, his hair neither too short nor too long, his clothes
neither too new nor too old. He appeared as unremarkable as Finn himself – except for Rubia,
Refugio’s premiere whore, clinging to the man’s arm. And then Refugio himself appeared at the
Japanese man’s side, smiling expansively as he greeted the stranger.
Smoothly, Finn’s glance moved on. There was nothing to show his intense interest in the
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Japanese. He turned away and went out the cantina’s side door, silently swearing at the necessity
that pulled him away from the cockfight. In the alley Finn hurried; Refugio and the stranger had
cost him forty-three seconds.
As he walked quickly toward the emergency rendezvous point, he wondered what was so hot
that it could not be sent through regular channels, and so urgent that it required making contact
in so public a place as the Green Parrot. Most of all, he wondered about the Japanese man who
had been more important to Refugio than his pride.
Finn felt the first hot touch of adrenaline sliding into his veins. The same instincts that had saved
his life so many times in Burma told him that what he had seen tonight was important. There was
a new player in the deadly game whose prize was a secret known only in Los Alamos.
Juarez
106 Hours Before Trinity
Vanessa Lyons waited just outside one of the public phone booths in the Hotel Mariscal. She
glanced once at her watch; two minutes remained. The tension she felt was not reflected by her
appearance. Her face was as smooth as her pastel linen suit, her expression as correct as the hat
that shielded her pale blond beauty from the sun.
Self-control had been taught to her by a Russian spy, a man whose intelligence was exceeded
only by his cruelty. She had not found his equal until Beria had introduced her to Masarek. They
had worked together very well, she and Masarek, combing the ruins of war. She and Masarek
had raced American agents to Peenemunde after Germany fell, seeking scientists.
Despite the influx of German atomic physicists into Russia, it was America who had won the
race to engineer an atomic bomb. America, whose land and people were untouched by the war.
America, who had callously watched Russians die by the hundreds of thousands in Stalingrad,
waiting for a Second Front that never seemed to come. American soldiers drank wine and
screwed English whores while in Stalingrad Russians sucked on the bones of rats and died.
Eventually the Germans had been crushed, but Russia had paid an enormous price for victory.
She needed time to gather her armies and secure herself against enemies new and old. Given
time, the opportunities were huge. China was a vacuum waiting to be filled; Europe was chaos
waiting to be ordered; and Russia was a nation whose destiny was to rule the world. All that
stood between Russia and her rightful place was America – or more specifically, Los Alamos. A
successful atomic bomb would shorten the war disastrously, forcing Japan to surrender before
an American invasion was launched. But if America did not founder in Japan as the Germans
had foundered in Stalingrad, Russia would have traded millions of lives for a few worthless
Middle European countries.
Lavrenti Beria had seen the danger before anyone else. He had sent teams of Russian saboteurs
to Oak Ridge and Los Alamos. The Oak Ridge team was captured. The Los Alamos team
simply vanished. There was no more time to mount another assault on Los Alamos before the
bomb was shipped out to Japan. The only alternative was to steal the uranium core of the bomb
when it left Los Alamos.
That was proving to be no easier than sabotage had been.
Vanessa looked at her watch again. She stepped into the booth and secured the door. This time
“Jack” had better have more for her than guesses.
The phone was warmer than her skin. She put in a coin, spoke with the operator and waited for
the connection to go through to another public phone booth in Socorro, New Mexico. She
suspected the American telephone operator was listening in, but was unconcerned; the few
American spies who spoke Russian were in Europe, not Mexico.
“Jill?” asked a man’s voice. The accent, like hers, was British.
“Hello, Jack,” she said, then switched immediately to Russian.
“What have you confirmed about the Bronx shipments?”
“Speak more slowly,” said the man in hesitant Russian.
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Vanessa repeated her question.
“The Bronx shipments arrived at Hunters Point between,” he paused, translating English to
Russian numerals, “18 and 2400 on the… 15th.”
Neither Vanessa’s voice nor her expression showed her triumph; now she held the lever with
which she hoped to move a world. “When will the uranium leave Los Alamos?”
“Manhattan has some secrets left,” he said, his voice brittle, the voice of a man under pressure.
“The route is one of them.”
“We must have the Bronx shipment!”
“Look, it can’t be done from here! I’m not a bloody miracle worker!” shouted the man in
English. Then he switched back to halting Russian. “I’ve confirmed from two other sources that
the shipment weighs about ten kilos. There are two pieces. White metal. They aren’t…” he
searched for the correct Russian word, “… explosive by themselves.”
“How is the uranium handled in the labs?”
“Like ten kilos of lead. It’s not… explosive without the bomb…” he swore and switched to
English, “… casing, you understand? And that’s being shipped separately.”
“How is it guarded? What are the passwords?”
“Few guards,” he said in Russian. “No excitement. Very, very secret, you understand? No
passwords yet. At Hunters Point, a Lawrence Radiation lab team will check it.” He switched to
English. “Do we have anyone there?”
Vanessa’s answer was in Russian. “That’s not your concern. Is there anything else?”
“Good luck.”
“If you’ve done your job, I won’t need luck.”
Los Alamos, New Mexico
100 Hours Before Trinity
Finn dozed in a hallway on a steel chair as he waited for General Groves to see him and explain
why he had called Finn out of Juarez. Neither asleep nor awake, sweating, his mind in a jungle
half a world away, Finn shifted uneasily in the chair. He was caught again in the nightmare that
had budded in Burma and bloomed in Okinawa, and each petal was a separate horror.
There was no mistaking the sodden heat, the feral odor of decay, the world that was every shade
of green, sunlight strained through a billion leaves until everything was tints and tones of green,
even the smell of death. Burma, green on green.
He was on his first patrol, leading nine men along a narrow jungle trail to a forward observation
post. When he arrived at the post he was alone. He had heard no sound, not one, nothing to
mark the killing of nine men one by one, his men gone as though they have never lived. But he
lived, ambusher and ambushed by turns, learning each time until he was a part of the jungle,
silent and quick, a deadly green shadow.
There were other times when he was the only man to survive. That was his special gift, survival.
Yet each time he felt guilt as well as triumph. Most of all he felt confusion – why had God or
Satan or fate left him alive and other men dead? But such questions were luxuries in a place
where necessity conducted a reign of terror. Questions slowed reflexes, and reflexes were all that
separated him from his dead friends and enemies, green on green.
The idea of fighting against women, of killing them, had sickened him. Then he had learned that
bullets and bayonets had no sex. Men died just as finally when they were killed by a woman, or
even a child. The jungle made only one distinction, that between life and death.
In Burma he learned that death, like the jungle, had neither sex nor age, only a color. He learned
that whatever the question, survival was the only answer that mattered. People lived and people
died. There was little to gain and too much to lose in agonizing over one death or one life, evil
or good. He was no more cruel than he had to be to survive, and he did survive.
Yet it was Okinawa, not Burma, where he learned the deepest meaning of horror. Okinawa,
where waves broke green and white against cliffs, drowning the screams of children hurtling
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down. Okinawa, where babies were thrown to the sea.
Finn woke, cold and sweating, the way he always woke when Okinawa bloomed silently in his
dreams. Yet the images did not stop when he woke up. They never did.
Every aspect of Okinawa was unfaded, indelible, from General Groves’ curt instructions before
