was erratic, bunched up here and nearly splitting from tightness there, but it would have to do.
Refugio sat panting, his hands trembling.
“You did that very well,” said Kestrel, unlocking the gurney’s wheels. “Now, hold on to me.”
Kestrel pushed the table across the room to the other embalming table. The smaller piece of
uranium was there, along with another swath of lead foil. Refugio wove unsteadily as the gurney
bumped into the table’s porcelain rim. “Let me… lie down.”
“We’re almost done,” Kestrel answered. “Quickly, now!”
Refugio leaned toward the table, confused by the presence of another piece of uranium and
more foil. Had he not just done this? His hand slid off the gray-white lump. He overbalanced,
tried weakly to save himself, and would have fallen face down on the embalming table if Kestrel
had not caught him.
“Try again,” Kestrel urged.
With a great effort, Refugio herded the lopsided sphere onto the two-colored foil. The foil tore
beneath his clumsy fingers. Uranium showed through the tear like a gray-white tooth. Refugio
tried to cover it with more foil, but his hands would not respond. Retching convulsed him. He
was relieved when the black well leaped up, surrounding him once more.
Gently, Kestrel straightened Refugio’s unconscious body on the gurney. As he did, he sensed
someone coming through the doorway to help him. Ana. She reached for the half-covered metal
sphere, then cried out when Kestrel slapped away her hands.
“I told you to stay out of here!”
Tears grew in Ana’s eyes. “But you needed help,” she said, her voice breaking between reason
and emotion. “I saw Refugio – “
“Go back to the flower shop. Stay there. I’ll be through in a few minutes.”
Tears gathered in her lashes and slid down her cheeks.
“Please,” said Kestrel, kissing her eyelids. “It is best this way.” Reassured by Kestrel’s
gentleness. Ana left. She stopped just beyond the doorway. Kestrel did not notice. He had
already turned back to the embalming table. Beneath his strong hands, uranium and foil grew
into an ungainly scarlet jewel.
San Francisco
27 Hours 15 Minutes After Trinity
A knock sounded on the door.
“Who is it?” called Vanessa, reaching for the pistol concealed in her purse.
“A student of history,” answered a deep voice.
“I, too, am a student of history. Come in.”
The man was so thick and muscular that he almost had to turn sideways to enter the room. He
was young, nearly six feet tall. His head seemed to be joined directly to his huge shoulders. He
wore a merchant seaman’s rough clothing and a single small gold loop in his left ear.
He walked by Vanessa without speaking. She closed the door but did not look away from him.
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He saw her pistol, but acted as though it were no more unusual than a wedding ring.
“Good morning, comrade,” he said, smiling.
His voice was surprisingly gentle and unaccented, despite his olive skin and Mediterranean
appearance.
Vanessa returned the smile in spite of herself. After Hecht’s easily shocked innocence, this man
with the earring was reassuring. Certainly the sight of a gun did not make him blanch. A young
Masarek, perhaps. She lowered her gun.
“Welcome, comrade. What shall we call you today?”
“Slaven?” said the big man. He laughed and swept the watch cap off his shaved head. “Yes,
Slaven – a poor working man who helps the cause any way he can.”
Slaven’s formality had a mocking quality, but it was himself he laughed at, not her.
“Tell me, Slaven,” murmured Vanessa, “can you shoot?”
“Yes.”
“Good. What work do you do?”
“I’m a longshoreman,” he said. “Sometimes.”
“A trade unionist?”
“Sometimes.”
“And what do you do now?”
A sound came from the hallway, footsteps approaching. As Slaven moved toward the door, a
gun appeared in his huge fist. The footsteps passed without pausing. Slaven waited until they
could be heard no more. Then, before he replaced his gun, he flicked open its cylinder,
inspected the cartridges and then the barrel. He handled the pistol the way a cook would handle
a skillet – with utter familiarity. “Sometimes I’m a metal worker.”
“Metal? Steel and lead, no doubt.”
Slaven’s only answer was another smile.
San Francisco
27 Hours 21 Minutes After Trinity
“I followed the gringo down the street, to an apartment above Velasquez’s grocery store,” said
Julio Rincón.
“Were you able to learn anything more?” asked Kestrel. His eyes were patient, impenetrable.
Marco smiled. “I talked to Velasquez. He told me that he rented the apartment just yesterday
afternoon to a blond woman with a foreign accent.”
Kestrel glanced at Ana, who stood watching, concern growing on her face.
“Masarek’s woman,” said Ana. “It must be.”
Kestrel nodded absently, his mind examining the dimensions of the problem. The flower shop
had become a trap. He must escape it before the woman could recruit enough help to take back
the uranium. Refugio was no help to him now. He was dying. Once dead, the Rincón brothers
would want to strike a new deal with Kestrel; and the Rincón brothers were more American than
Mexican. He could not trust them.
“Where is the woman now?” asked Kestrel.
“Velasquez thinks she is still in the apartment. I have one of the children watching to see who
comes and goes.”
“Children? This isn’t a game for children!”
Julio shrugged. “He’s only watching. I told him to stay out of sight.”
“Did he see anything? Is she alone?”
“The man who bought the flowers stayed there. Another man came, too. He is very big, very
strong. A mean one, se?or.”
Kestrel dismissed Julio with a quick nod and turned away. The mourning room in which he
stood was small, draped ceiling to floor with dark velvet. The heavy folds of cloth absorbed
sound and light, leaving nothing. On one wall was a massively framed portrait of a languid
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Cristo, a pale effeminate face on a black velvet background.
Kestrel looked away from the picture, repelled by its shallowness. Even the dusty god’s eye in
the Mexicali whorehouse was more meaningful than this icon. He would be glad to be free of a
culture that pickled their dead in the name of a bland, androgynous god.
Frowning, Kestrel looked around the room, measuring choices he no longer had.
Refugio was dying; his useful family network would die with him.
Ana was nervous, frightened, fragile.
The Russian spy with the British accent had somehow traced the uranium to this place.
It was doubtful that he could convince Refugio’s cousins to kill the Englishwoman and her
friends. It was even more doubtful that the deaths would be kept secret. Attention would be
drawn to the neighborhood and to him – official attention, the one thing he could not tolerate.
He had a chance to secure Japan’s future so long as he and his trail were invisible. But one
misstep, one clear footprint revealing his presence, and his pursuers would fall upon him and
tear him apart.
“I must hide,” murmured Kestrel. “But where?”
Ana was watching him, sorrow in her eyes. He had never seen her so vulnerable.
“You’re going.” Ana’s voice was as empty as her eyes.
“We’re going,” corrected Kestrel.
“You’re going,” continued Ana as though he had not spoken. “You’re going and I am not.”
Kestrel was momentarily disoriented, as though they were speaking separate languages based on
separate assumptions. Then he understood what she did not want to put into words: he must flee
or die. Either way, she would be left alone in a hostile land. Even if he took her with him, he
would return eventually to Japan; then she would be alone.
“I won’t leave you, Ana,” Kestrel said, lying as he spoke, knowing he lied, and why. “How could
I? I don’t even know where to go. The submarine won’t be off the coast for five days.”
“Then we’ll go back to Mexicali and wait. Refugio and Takagura will protect us.”
Kestrel hesitated, deciding how much of the truth Ana could bear. “Refugio is dying. When his
men realize that, we will be at their mercy. We must have a place to go where we’ll be safe until
Takagura can make new arrangements to smuggle us south. And we must go very soon.”
“Dying? Refugio?” whispered Ana. Her eyes searched his face, and then she asked no more
questions. “A place where Japanese are safe in America!” Her lips hardened into a bitter smile.
“The prison camps are the only place in America where Japanese aren’t noticed.”
Kestrel was startled by Ana’s insight, and appalled. “What about the guards?”
“They are nothing. The fences keep them out rather than keeping us in. At least, my father said
it’s like that at Manzanar. And Masataka Oshiga is there. He is my father’s uncle and Takagura’s
friend.”
“Is he a loyal Japanese?”
Ana hesitated. “He believes in the Japanese people, no matter what country they live in. He
helped me when I refused to go to Manzanar; but he also helped my brother go to war in Italy.
He’s very powerful because he hasn’t taken sides.”
“Does he know Takagura is America’s enemy?”
“Yes. But Takagura still trusts him.”
Kestrel frowned. “Do you know how to get to Manzanar?”
Ana began to laugh, but the sound disturbed her so much she stopped. “Yes. It’s so easy. The
camp is on the dry side of the Sierras. A desert where only the wind is free.”
Kestrel waited for a moment, weighing all that she had said and implied. He was as still as a
stone at the bottom of a midnight pond. Then, “Bring Julio to me. I have orders for him from
Refugio.”
“You said Refugio was dying.”
“Yes, but his cousins won’t obey me. Whatever I say must seem to come from Refugio.”
Ana returned almost immediately with Julio Rincón. The Mexican walked into the room, then
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stopped. Kestrel was standing beneath the Cristo with a handful of American money.
“Refugio is resting,” said Kestrel. “He asked me to give you the details.”
“Details?”
“Of his plan,” said Kestrel, as though Julio must surely know what plan was meant.
“What plan?”
“Didn’t Refugio tell you? He thought he had. The fever makes his dreams very real.”
Julio moved impatiently. As Kestrel had hoped, Julio’s attention was more on Kestrel’s money
than his words.
“How many cars and trucks do you have?” asked Kestrel, “including the ones owned by the
flower shop, the funeral home and all of your family?”
Julio squinted, thinking. “We have two hearses, four black cars for the chief mourners, three
flower trucks and seven or eight family cars.” He shrugged. “They don’t all run all of the time.”
“So many?”
“We’re a large family. I myself have four brothers and three sisters, and our wives also have
brothers and sisters, and they, too, are married.”
Kestrel smiled. “Refugio is a more generous man than I thought.”
Julio looked skeptical.
“He wanted to give you all a present,” said Kestrel. “A vacation. He has even picked out the
cities. Everywhere from here to Mexicali.”
“But our work –!”
Kestrel looked from the money in his hand to Julio. “He gave me $10,000. Surely that’s enough
for even such a large family as yours for three days.”
Julio opened and closed his mouth. Then, “Just what is it that my cousin wants done?”
“A vacation. Leave now. Take every vehicle but one car. And, if for some reason you attract the
attention of any police, a few days of silence will give Refugio a chance to get well before he goes
back to Mexico.”
“That’s all? Take every car but one, be gone for three days and say nothing?”
“That’s all.”
“Good. It is done.”
San Francisco
27 Hours 31 Minutes After Trinity
The door to the embalming room closed softly behind Kestrel. Even so, Refugio was startled.
His fever magnified and distorted sounds. He wanted desperately to sleep, but the conflicting
agonies in his guts and thigh made sleep impossible.
“Refugio.”
Kestrel’s voice was close, calm, cool, like water.
“Yes.”
Kestrel wrung out a rag and placed it on Refugio’s forehead. “The pain is very bad for you?”
Refugio did not answer for a moment, then sighed. “If it were not a sin to wish for death, I
would.”
“To me,” said Kestrel, “death is an interruption between lives, not a sin.”
Refugio would have smiled had the pain not been so cruel. “If I had to feel like this again, I
would spit on another life.”
His hot hand closed around Kestrel’s wrist as the Japanese moved the damp cloth from
forehead to basin and back again.
“But what is worse than the pain is the time when I’m falling and there’s nothing but hot black
sand around me, filling my mouth and nose, going down my throat and I’m choking, dying – “
Slowly, the Mexican’s fingers loosened. His head fell slackly onto the pillow. Kestrel dipped the
rag in water again, wrung it out and wiped Refugio’s face. Clumps of hair fell away as Kestrel
worked. Refugio began retching helplessly, too weak even to move his head. Blood gathered on
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his lips and he choked. Kestrel turned Refugio quickly, holding his head so that he would not
gag on his own blood.
“Madre de Dios,” moaned Refugio, twisting in agony. “That pigfucker poisoned his bullets. I
will die.”
“Yes,” Kestrel said, “you will die.”
Kestrel moved the rag again over Refugio’s face, blurring the distinction between sweat and
tears, then he lifted Refugio upright so that he could breathe without choking.
“How – long?” gasped Refugio.
“Two days. A week. Or now, Refugio. Would you prefer to die now?”
Refugio tried not to moan. Then, realizing what Kestrel had said, he stared into the slanted black
eyes so close to his own.
“Suicide is a mortal sin,” said Refugio, his voice shallow and hoarse.
“I’m not a Catholic,” said Kestrel, “and I’m not speaking of suicide.”
In the silence, Kestrel could hear Refugio’s fast, shallow breathing.
“Please understand me,” said Refugio, his tongue thick with pain. “I’m Catholic. I can’t ask for
death. Please – you must – understand. I can’t – ask.”
Kestrel nodded. As he lowered Refugio back onto the gurney, his head lolled back over
Kestrel’s arm. Kestrel’s right hand moved in a blur of speed and power. With a single clean
crack, its calloused edge broke Refugio’s neck.
There was silence, then came Ana’s thin, strangled cry.
Kestrel spun toward the door that opened into the flower shop. He saw Ana’s startlingly pale
face, her wide black eyes ringed by the hated blue makeup, her white teeth bruising her lower lip.
