sit on that uranium for the next forty-one hours.”
“They’d better wrap it in lead before they roost, or they’ll – “ Finn stopped speaking suddenly.
“Excuse me, General. Are there any other questions?”
“You just thought of something. What?”
“Lead, sir. Whoever organized this theft must have known what he was stealing. His flunkies
bounced the pieces together enough that the uranium must be fairly hot by now. Whoever takes
delivery is going to need some lead to cool off the pieces. Since lead is on the restricted list of
war materials, all sales are recorded.”
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“Good idea, Finn. Get on it and call me when – “ Groves realized he was talking into an empty
line.
San Francisco
8 Hours 42 Minutes After Trinity
Vanessa made a right turn and entered Chinatown, looking for addresses or signs written in a
language she could understand. As she searched she tried not to think about the dangerous lie
she had sent to Beria. She had no “promising” salvage prospects. She had nothing but her wits,
her determination and a license plate number.
The streets seemed more narrow than those in the rest of the city, but were not. They simply
teemed. People spilled out in to the streets. Voices raised in dispute were nearly drowned out by
the honks of drivers who had crept around one obstruction only to be balked by another.
In the end, Vanessa found Ho’s laundry more because of the identically modest, unmarked cars
in front of it than because of its small English sign. The cars, as much as the curious crowd, told
Vanessa that Ho’s Good Luck Laundry had become a focus of police attention.
She had not really expected the FBI, although it was that possibility which had lured her into
Chinatown. If the Americans knew about the laundry truck, did that mean that they had
recovered the uranium? She had to know. To find out, she needed Hecht, the reporter.
Vanessa parked her own car down the block, well away from casual observation. After a
moment’s hesitation, she removed the pistol from her purse, tucked it well under the front seat,
locked the car and hurried to the laundry.
Ho’s laundry was closed. There were several men outside, trying to break up the crowd. Vanessa
stood across the street, growing more uneasy. The men in front of the laundry were FBI agents,
not local police. Only the FBI had men so carefully dressed.
Here in Chinatown, these well-trained agents stood out like popcorn in a bowl of peanuts.
And so did she.
She slipped into a crowded market and watched the laundry through a window that was all but
covered with ideographs. She spotted Hecht easily; his limp was pronounced as he brushed past
the cordon in front of the laundry. Immediately, he was challenged by an agent at the front door.
Hecht gestured angrily, then produced identification from his wallet. The papers were not
sufficient to gain him entry into the laundry. Arguing, gesturing and waving his ID, Hecht was
escorted back behind the cordon.
He turned and began looking around, clearly trying to spot Vanessa in the crowd. She had no
desire to be seen while the FBI was around.
Hecht looked for a minute longer, then limped back down the street toward his car. Vanessa
watched him approach, waited, then left the store to intercept him a block from the laundry.
“Did you get the license plate traced?” she demanded.
Hecht dug in his pocket and produced a slip of paper with an address on it. He handed the
paper to her.
“Detective Mullen got it for me, no problem,” he said. “Told me it’s out in what used to be
Little Tokyo. The license was issued to a truck owned by Julio Rincón. It’s a commercial vehicle
used for something called the Fragrant Petal. Sounds like some kind of Oriental flower shop, or
maybe a teahouse.”
“Did the police want to know why you needed the information?”
“No. Mullen was doing me a favor just like I’d do for him.” He smiled. “He’d have been hot if
he knew the license was somehow connected with the four murders. There’s a whole lot of cops
mad about being cut out of the action.”
“What do you mean?”
“Take a look.” Hecht gestured back toward the laundry. “Those are FBI agents, not local cops.
They don’t have jurisdiction in local crimes. That means the murders aren’t what they were said
to be – gang war over a few betting slips.”
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“Then there was that cold-eyed son of a bitch out at the crime scene this morning,” continued
Hecht. “He said he’d hamstring my other leg and dump me on a Japanese island if I printed
anything without clearing it first with the FBI.”
“Was he an FBI agent?”
“Huh-uh! He wore jeans and boots. Besides, he was too damned mean to be a G-man. Hoover
keeps those boys on their party manners in public.”
“Did you find out his name?”
“Oakland cops said it was Finn.”
“Finn – “ Vanessa realized she had almost expected to hear that name. Everytime something
went wrong with Russian plans to penetrate the Manhattan Project, Finn’s name cropped up.
She had been briefed about him, although she had never seen him in Juarez. He was reputed to
be smart, ruthless and very dangerous. Even Masarek had respected him.
“Stay away from the laundry,” she said. “Stay away from your newspaper. Don’t go to your
home. If Finn is organizing the search, he’ll learn you turned up here after he warned you off in
Oakland.”
Hecht started to protest, but Vanessa kept on talking.
“What’s the name of a respectable hotel?” she asked.
“Uh – the Mayfair. It’s off Union Square.”
“Good. Go there. Get a room in the name of John Brent. Stay there and do nothing until I call
you.”
“But what about my newspaper story?”
“What about the country that trained you in return for your help in a crisis like this?”
Hecht shifted uncomfortably. Vanessa knew that he had not expected to be called so soon, nor
to have to give up so much.
“Finn would only cripple you,” she said. “If you don’t obey me, I will kill you. But,” lied
Vanessa, “if you obey me, you will be a rich man and a hero of Russia. Which will it be, Hecht?
Finn or me?”
“I’ll be in the Mayfair.”
San Francisco
10 Hours After Trinity
The Fragrant Petal was in a section of San Francisco that had been called Little Tokyo until
1941. Since Pearl Harbor, Mexicans, Koreans, Chinese and a few whites had moved in, buying
homes and businesses from relocated Japanese at a price barely higher than outright
confiscation.
Even so, the area was less crowded than other parts of the city. Many businesses were boarded
up, and many signs offered rooms for rent, cheap. There were more Mexicans on the street than
Orientals, and enough fair skins so that Vanessa would not draw too much attention.
She drove slowly past the Fragrant Petal. It was a flower shop rather than teahouse, and in great
need of paint. Though the sign said CLOSED, she thought she saw someone moving behind the
grimy window.
Another pass by the shop did not reveal any further movement. Vanessa drove on slowly,
weighing and rejecting options.
Masarek was dead.
Refugio was hiding.
The FBI was searching Ho’s laundry, which meant that the uranium had not been in the van. She
must assume that the U-235 was with Refugio; she hoped that he was inside the Fragrant Petal.
Slowly, Vanessa drove by the flower shop. The door was closed. No one moved behind the
windows. The shop looked as deserted as the Reyes Funeral Home that was next door. She
drove down the block, watching the shop in the rearview mirror. No one appeared in the
window.
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She wished that Masarek were alive. Together they could have turned the shop and its occupants
inside out. To- gethcr they could have – but Masarek was dead and she dared not contact any
other Russian agents in the Bay Area for fear that they were under surveillance. She must protect
herself. She was Russia’s only lead to the uranium. She must be bold, yes, but also careful.
A sign, ROOM FOR RENT, FURNISHED, caught her eye. The room was on the second floor
of a Victorian building across and down the street from the Fragrant Petal. The window looked
like it would give a clear view of the shop.
The landlord was an old Mexican with a heavy accent, a light handshake and a pimp’s smile. The
room was dirty, furnished with once-elegant Oriental pieces, and looked as though it had been
decorated by a blind man. But the room’s view of the street was even better than Vanessa
expected.
“I’ll take it,” Vanessa said.
“When do you want to move in?”
“I’ll pay beginning today,” she said, “although I’ll only need the room occasionally.”
“Five dollars more for every man you bring to your room.”
Vanessa nearly laughed. “That’s far too much. One dollar.”
“Four.”
“Two.”
“Three-fifty,” said the old man, settling in for an enjoyable bargaining session.
“One-fifty.”
Startled by the unexpected turn of bargaining, the Mexican said in disbelief, “But that’s less than
your second offer!”
“Yes,” agreed Vanessa. She fanned two months’ rent in her hand. “And if you don’t take
one-fifty, my next offer will be even less.”
The landlord reached for the bills, but Vanessa hung on to them. “One-fifty?” she said, her blue
eyes wide and innocent.
“Yes,” grumbled the man, counting the money. He pulled two keys from his pocket and
slammed them on a table. “The telephone is downstairs.”
He shut the door behind him with the vigor of a man half his age. Vanessa slipped the deadbolt
and went to the bay window. It was covered by curtains that allowed her to look down at the
street without being seen. She dragged a chair over and began watching the front door of the
Fragrant Petal.
San Francisco
11 Hours 2 Minutes After Trinity
A green Plymouth cab pulled up a block away from the Fragrant Petal.
“You sure you got it right this time, buddy?” asked the cabbie.
“Yes.”
Kestrel had made the cabbie drive around the block several times, pretending not to be sure of
the location. When he was convinced that the Fragrant Petal was not a trap, he told the cabbie to
pull over.
“It was hard,” said Kestrel. “So many changes since I went to war.”
“Yeah. Sure thing.”
Kestrel pulled out his suitcase, waited for the cab to disappear around the corner, then crossed
the street and walked briskly toward the peeling storefront called the Fragrant Petal. Like Ana,
he deplored the shallow translation. Unlike her, he did not denigrate the English language. It was
a fine language for scientific inquiry.
Inside the shop, Ana was standing at her father’s former worktable, fashioning sprays and
wreaths. Arranging flowers was the one part of her childhood that she remembered with
pleasure, the brilliant colors and petal textures shifting beneath her hands. The pungence of
stems and greenery had not changed, nor had the sweet essence of petals. Her fingers, however,
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had. They were slow where they once had been quick, awkward where they once had been
skilled.
“Damn!” she muttered, stabbing an errant spray of scarlet gladiolus into the pottery frog at the
bottom of the vase.
The thick stem bent; the flower canted out at an awkward angle.
“Damned useless thing!” said Ana beneath her breath, pulling out stems until the frog was bare
once more. “The flower stems are limp and there aren’t even any lead frogs. How can anyone
make anything?”
“It would require patience,” suggested Kestrel softly.
“Oh!” The pottery frog crashed to the floor. “Kestrel!” she cried. “I didn’t hear – how did you
– are you all right?”
Kestrel smiled swiftly and touched Ana’s cheek with his fingertips. She was so American,
impatient and transparent. “My name is Captain Ikedo. I’m your cousin and I’m fine,” said
Kestrel, speaking rapid Japanese. “But you call me Kestrel because as a boy I was obsessed with
sparrow hawks.”
His dark glance flicked around the back room of the shop. There was no one else nearby.
Kestrel removed his overseas cap and loosened the knot of his black uniform tie as if these were
things he did every day. He walked over and stood beside Ana, selected a new pottery frog and
began to rebuild the flower arrangement.
“Tell me what happened,” he said, his voice both calm and commanding.
Ana watched his fingers – deft, gentle, skilled – and remembered when he had touched her as he
now touched flowers. His hands paused. He was watching her.
“I don’t know all of it,” she said quickly. “I waited behind the curtain as you told me to do. I
couldn’t see the street. For a long time nothing happened. Then, after dawn, there were shots. I
looked out just as a car turned around and raced by me on the street. There was another shot,
maybe more, from the van.”
Ana took a long breath to ease the fear that rose in her when she remembered the silence and
fog, shots and fear and a van full of blood.
“I – I waited, but no one got out of the van.” She touched Kestrel’s arm in a silent bid for
understanding. “I know you told me to wait for Refugia, but I was afraid he was – dead.”
“You did well,” murmured Kestrel.
Some of Ana’s rigidity left her. She drew a ragged breath and began to speak more slowly. “The
van – inside the van there was so much blood.” She swallowed. “Dead men and blood
everywhere.”
Ana stared at the glowing red of the petals she had unconsciously crushed in her fist.
“Is Refugio dead?” asked Kestrel.
“No.” Ana turned her hand upside down, letting crushed petals fall to the floor. “His leg, here,”
she said, touching the top of Kestrel’s thigh. “Like a furrow plowed in raw meat.”
“Can he walk?”
“With help, yes. He says it’s nothing.” Ana smiled. “A long scab and a limp. Except it hasn’t
stopped bleeding yet and he’s been very sick, throwing up and – “ She handed Kestrel a frond
of pale green fern. “He’s been better in the last few hours, I think.”
Kestrel frowned. It did not sound like a superficial leg wound. “Is the bullet still in his leg?”
“No. It’s a furrow,” repeated Ana. She reached for the modeling clay used in complex flower
arrangements. With her thumbnail she gouged a shallow trough across the clay. “Like this.”
“Where is he?”
“I moved him next door, to his cousin’s funeral parlor. There wasn’t enough privacy here. Too
many people in and out. And you told us to keep the businesses open, to act normally.”
Kestrel’s fingers paused, then he selected a flawless white rose and anchored it in the frog,
