completing his work. He had duplicated her flower arrangement, except that he substituted the
single white rose for her stalk of blood-colored gladiolus. The result, like Kestrel himself, was
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strong and poised.
Ana led Kestrel to the interior door that connected the flower shop with the Reyes Funeral
Home. As he put his hand on the door, he turned toward her.
“Memories can be as cruel as knives,” Kestrel said. “Do not cut yourself more than you must,
Ana. It was karma that brought you here. When it is time, karma will take you away again.”
He was gone before Ana could find her voice to answer.
Kestrel was in a room without windows, without air. In one corner was a shapeless, eerie blue
glow. Kestrel had never seen a blue so pure, no tint of purple, no tone of green, nothing but a
flawless blue blush emanating from… what?
His hand fumbled for the wall switch. Blue disappeared in a soundless explosion of white light
splintering off a porcelain table. In the center of the table were two white, oddly shaped chunks
of metal, one of which was three times larger than xhe other. The two pieces were less than a
hand’s width apart.
Swiftly, Kestrel’s fingers snapped off the light. Blue suffused the area where the white metal
pieces had been. Kestrel felt an instant of incredible elation. He stood motionless, his hand on
the light switch, transfixed by the eerie blue light. The binding power of the universe lay before
him, radiating energy as though alive. And it was alive, the embryo of a deadly cloud eight miles
tall. With that metal, he controlled the future of his country as surely as he controlled the light
switch on the wall.
But then a secondary realization drenched him like icy rain, making his skin contract in a reaction
as old as man. He was looking at the radioactive heart of an atomic bomb, and that heart was
deadly to human flesh.
“Pretty, yes?” said a low voice. “As blue as the eyes of God.”
Kestrel’s hand hit the switch again. Light flooded the room, revealing what he had overlooked
the first time – Refugio, lying motionless on a gurney a few feet beyond the radioactive glow.
It took every bit of Kestrel’s discipline not to scream at Refugio’s lethal stupidity. The Japanese
was a physicist before he was a spy; he knew that unshielded radioactive material could be as
deadly as curare.
“Yes,” he said, his voice ragged in spite of his control. “They’re very pretty. Where is their
box?”
“Box?”
“What they were packed in.”
“Oh,” Refugio’s voice was casual. “That was too heavy. Masarek told us to leave it.”
“Too heavy,” repeated Kestrel. “Was it big?”
Refugio was lying on his back, his hands on his abdomen as though to hold back cramps. The
bandage on his thigh was crimson. His face was the color of old ivory.
“Not very.” Refugio pulled himself upright with a motion that sent the gurney wheeling closer to
the embalming table. “About like this,” he said, sketching the canister with hands that shook.
“Lead? Was it lead that made it so heavy?”
Refugio shrugged. “Who knows? It was very heavy, Se?or Kestrel. Madonna! Even Salvador
could not lift it.”
At the mention of Salvador’s name, Refugio’s expression changed. “Salvador is dead. So is
Lopez.” He sighed. “Masarek, too. He was hard to kill, that one.”
“The woman,” said Kestrel. “Is she dead, too?”
“She killed Salvador. I don’t know if he hurt her first. I shot at her but it was foggy and my
leg…” Refugio shrugged again. “I think the whore is alive.”
Kestrel drew a breath, feeling elation slide away. Masarek was dead, but the blonde was still free.
She would be gathering other agents to her, planning a means of stealing back the uranium. The
Russian spy network had the regenerative power of a gifted, mythic snake: so long as the head
remained intact, new bodies could be grown.
All he had was Ana and Refugio.
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“You’ve been sick,” said Kestrel.
“It’s the water,” said Refugio, laughing feebly at his joke.
“It’s more than water. Can you walk?”
“Of course.”
“Prove it. Take the smaller piece of metal and put it over there.”
Refugio looked from the uranium to the table Kestrel had indicated on the far side of the room.
“But why?”
“Do it.”
Refugio eased himself off the gurney. Using the wheeled table as a rolling crutch, he approached
the embalming table.
Kestrel watched, knowing the Mexican was absorbing an enormous amount of radiation. But
Kestrel suspected that it mattered no more than shooting bullets into a corpse.
The uranium rang, bell-like, when Refugio dropped it on the metal table at the far end of the
room. Kestrel turned out the lights and stared intently.
“The pretty blue light,” said Refugio, “is gone.”
Kestrel stared silently, intently. Both spheres had been heavily irradiated. He could not guess at
the consequences. After a few minutes, he still could not be sure whether it was radioactivity or
his imagination that imbued the separate metal chunks with a vague flicker of blue life. He
blinked, then his hand swept up, bringing light back into the room. “I’ll need containers.”
“There are the sacks we brought them in.”
“What?”
“The canvas laundry bags.”
Kestrel made a dismissing motion with his hand. “I need something heavy, something that will
absorb atomic particles.”
“What?”
“Iron or steel,” said Kestrel. “Lead would be best.”
“Why not gold as well?” said Refugio sarcastically. “It’s heavy and it’s not so much more
difficult to get than lead.” The Mexican stared at Kestrel. “Or had the se?or forgotten that Los
Estados Unidos is at war with Japan and such things as lead arc so hard to get that my cousin
wanted me to smuggle it here from Mexico?”
“Did you?”
“Too heavy,” sighed Refugio. “Besides, my cousin soon discovered that not many Mexicans
here can afford a lead-lined coffin. My cousin Raul even sold his flower holders for scrap when
the price went high enough.”
Kestrel swore silently. “I must have lead!”
Refugio licked his dry lips. “I have other cousins, se?or. For a price, they will get you your
lead.”
“How? Where?”
“That’s their problem, se?or. Yours is to pay for it.”
Kestrel almost laughed. Money was the least of his problems. “Arrange it,” he said.
Sonoma County, California
19 Hours 15 Minutes After Trinity
It was dark, with only a thin moon-smile to aid the men creeping through the vineyard into the
Salerno Brothers winery.
“Chingón!” muttered Griego Rincón as he stumbled over a two-by-four abandoned in the
weeds in back of their winery.
“Shut up!” hissed Franco in Spanish. “Pick up your feet, cabrón! The house is not so far away
that you can curse at the moon!”
Griego looked at the house on a knoll more than a hundred meters away. There were several
lights still on in the second story of the old mansion. He walked with more care. His cousin
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Refugio would not bail incompetent thieves out of jail.
Franco Rincón stood very quietly, listening to the night. Other than a dog’s distant barking,
there was no sound. Apparently no one at the house had heard Griego stumble and swear.
“Come on,” breathed Franco, jerking Griego’s sleeve in silent command.
The two men slipped into the dense moon-shadow of an old fieldstone winery. They knew the
way; in daylight they worked at the winery. Franco pulled a tire iron from his belt. He put the
flattened end between the steel hasp and the heavy wooden door and yanked down hard. The
hasp gave way with a squeal.
Again, Franco waited with his head up, nostrils flared like a wolf trying to scent enemies. At the
house, a dog barked until there was a shout from the bedroom. Silence returned like another
shade of black. The heavy door opened soundlessly. Griego had oiled it earlier in the day when
he was sweeping out the winery. Inside, the sharp-sweet smell of fermentation settled around the
men. The building was windowless, the darkness complete.
Franco pulled out a flashlight that he had taped until only a pencil of light shone out. He swept
the light around, but there was no one and nothing he had not expected to see.
“Over there,” whispered Griego, pulling on Franco’s hand.
The flashlight wobbled, then fixed on an old wine-bottling machine. Empty bottles, metal
pincers and bottle holders gleamed dully in the light. A roll of scarlet foil and a roll of bright red
labels dangled overhead. A half-filled case of burgundy sat at the end of the conveyor belt.
Franco went quickly to the conveyor belt. With a muttered curse, he grabbed Griego by the
arm.
“Where’s the rest of it?” he snarled.
Griego cringed away from the fingers. He gestured at the cartons of burgundy that had been
filled in the last few days. “There! On the bottles!”
Griego’s gestures knocked the half-filled carton of wine off the conveyor belt. With a sound like
the end of the world, bottles exploded against the floor. The reek of green wine rose from
curved shards of glass.
On the hill, the dog barked again, urgently.
Franco grabbed what he had come for and headed out of the bottling room. Griego hesitated,
picked up a full case of burgundy and followed Franco’s flashlight.
The two men hurried awkwardly out of the winery, across the dirt farm-road and into the
concealment of chest-high rows of vines. At a clumsy trot, Franco crossed the sandy vineyard to
another dirt road where his car was parked beneath a tree.
The dog’s bark continued sporadically, then faded into a silence disturbed only by the faint
sound of a car receding into the distance, leaving a thin wake of dust beneath the moon.
San Francisco
25 Hours 31 Minutes After Trinity
The restaurant on Market Street catered to the all-night crowd from the Tenderloin district.
Riley toyed with the limp strands of pasta coated with tomato sauce and olive oil. He took a
tentative bite. Finn ate hungrily. Riley put down his fork.
“How the hell did I let you talk me into this?” said Riley.
“There was nothing else left to do. The FBI is watching every known or suspected communist
agent; one of them has been approached by a blond woman with a British accent. We put out
grab notices on Refugio and a Jap spy, and what did we get?”
“Eight Mexicans, three Chinese and a Korean. Drunks.”
“We put four bodies through a FBI sieve. What did we find out?”
“We found out they’re dead,” said Riley.
“The weapons and the laundry van and the laundry and – “
“Nothing!”
“As for the lead,” said Finn, ‘‘we now know that in the Bay Area, no new orders for lead have
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been processed in the last twenty-four hours. Nobody has bought a pile of toy soldiers, religious
statues, frogs – “
“Frogs?” yelped Riley. “What the hell do frogs have to do with this?”
“Flower holders,” explained Finn, then continued with his list. “Old batteries, scrap, new
batteries – I forgot something.”
“Coffins,” said Riley after a moment.
“Yeah. Coffins. All the lead-lined luxury models sold recently are wrapped around dead
customers.” Finn stopped abruptly. “In short, we seem to be fishing in the dark with a broken
hook.” He returned his attention to his food.
“The problem with fishing in the dark,” said Riley, “is that the damned hooks have a way of
ending up in the wrong places. A man could hurt himself fishing in the dark.”
Frowning, Finn, picked up the empty wine bottle. He turned it around in his hands, staring at it
as though the answer to his problem were concealed in the green glass curves. He liked Riley.
Even worse, he felt responsible for the young agent. Finn did not want to be responsible for any
life except his own. But there Riley sat, too young, too kind. Green on green, like the glass
turning between his hands. Abruptly, Finn’s fingers closed around the neck of the bottle. “You
ever take any physics in college?”
Riley’s face showed his surprise. He nodded his head and waited.
“You know about radioactivity?”
“Some.”
“What we’re looking for is two pieces of white, radioactive metal. Alone, each piece is hot, but
not dangerously so. If you get the pieces too close, they can get hot enough to kill.”
Riley stared at the empty green bottle that was again rolling between Finn’s lean hands. “What
exactly does that mean?”
“It means that the thieves really fucked up when they left behind the lead shipping canister.
They’re playing with fire. Problem is, they can’t see the flames or feel the heat. And neither can
we.”
Riley sighed. “At least I understand now why you have a hundred agents scouring the Bay Area
for lead. You figure the thieves will have to use it as a shield or wrapper to absorb the radiation
from the stolen stuff – whatever that is.”
“Uranium,” said Finn. “Pure uranium-235.”
“How many micrograms were stolen?”
“Try kilograms. Close to ten.”
Riley’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. He licked his lips and tried again. “I didn’t know
there was that much U-235 on the whole planet. How did we ever get that much all in one
place?”
“I don’t know. It cost around one billion bucks, if that gives you a clue.”
Riley sat without moving, chewing on the information like under-cooked sphagetti. “Well,” he
said at last, “thank God all the lead in northern California is accounted for.”
“Wrong,” said Finn flatly. “All the lead in all the places we’ve thought to look is accounted for.”
Finn paused, staring at the wine bottle rolling between his palms. Then he put down the bottle
and fingered the thick metal foil that covered the neck. The foil peeled off easily. He rolled a
long strip of it between his fingers. It made a hard, heavy ball the size of a pea. “Lead,” breathed
Riley. “By God, lead!”
“How many wineries are there in northern California?”
“Can’t be more than fifty,” said Riley. Then, hastily, “Pray to God no more than fifty.”
“That’s twenty-five apiece,” said Finn, standing up
and throwing money on the table. “Any more than that and they’re all yours, Riley.”
San Francisco
26 Hours 38 Minutes After Trinity
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Vanessa twitched aside the white curtain, a gesture that had become almost automatic. The long
night had given her too much time to think, and her thoughts had been as gloomy as San
Francisco’s fog.
Failure was a death sentence for her. At some unknown, but not far distant moment, Beria
would decide that the chance that Vanessa would recover the uranium was smaller than the
