other was older. I think that man was her pimp. A bad one. He brought Jaime to the whore’s
room.”
Finn turned back to Coughlan. “Did you pick up the whore?”
“No one home. She’s probably out drumming up trade.”
“Search her room. If she’s there, bring her to me.” Finn turned to Velasquez. “Anything else
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about her?”
“She paid for two months,” said Velasquez. “Cash. She had much money. That’s all, se?or. I
swear it on my mother’s grave!”
Finn looked impassively at Velasquez. “Let him go.”
Riley released Velasquez so quickly that the Mexican staggered. Coughlan started to berate
Riley, who turned his back on everyone and watched the two nearby agents shoveling out a
day-old grave. Their suitcoats had been put aside, folded neatly inside out to prevent grass
stains. Shoulder holsters were coiled on top of the coats like sleeping reptiles.
As Coughlan led Velasquez away, Finn stood quietly in the late morning sunlight, alternately
rubbing and stretching the muscles in his shoulder. From the open grave came the sound of a
shovel rasping along a coffin lid. With a sigh, Finn bent over and picked up his radiation
counter.
“Back to work, Riley.”
As Riley turned toward the grave, a movement up the hill caught his eye. A man was walking
over the crest of the hill carrying a bouquet of flowers. He threaded among the crowded
headstones without looking up, apparently unaware of the activity just down the hill. To all
appearances, he was simply a mourner who had come to lay flowers on a grave.
Riley looked away, then back suddenly. Something was wrong. The flowers in the man’s left
hand were old, petals falling like pastel rain, revealing a bright shine of metal in the right hand
hidden behind the bouquet.
“Finn!” yelled Riley.
Finn’s reflexes responded instantly. He threw himself to one side, rolling and drawing his gun.
Two closely spaced shots exploded through the graveyard silence. A bullet plowed up dirt
where Finn had been an instant before. Finn’s return fire blazed uphill, seeking a target in the
thicket of granite headstones. Lead screamed from stone to stone.
As he fired, Finn rolled into the shelter of the open grave. One agent flung himself out of the
grave, clawing for his gun. A shot picked up the agent and slammed him onto the grass a few
feet away, dead. The second agent crouched at the far end of the grave, out of Finn’s way.
Riley was down in front of the grave, clutching his left leg, his hand bright with blood. Thirty
yards above him, faded flowers lay in a fan, dropped by the man as he dove for cover from
Finn’s return fire. As Riley brought up his gun, the attacker took aim over a baroque angel.
“Stay down, Riley!” yelled Finn, firing as he spoke.
Granite chips scored the man’s cheek. He ducked back behind the thick stone marker.
Finn watched the marker over the sights of his pistol, waiting for any flicker of movement.
Whoever the attacker was, he was no amateur. He had the advantages of surprise, uphill position
and cover. It was the kind of assassination Masarek would have planned, but he was dead. The
killer was probably his replacement, trained by the NKVD.
Out of the corner of Finn’s eye, he saw that Riley was down. Blood welled from his thigh in
rhythmic spurts. He was behind the thin cover of a knee-high cross. He had his pistol in one
hand and was trying unsuccessfully to stop the flow of blood with the other. If he did not get
help fast, he would bleed to death.
Finn fired once, taking another notch out of the grave marker that concealed the attacker.
Immediately, the man fired from the other side of the marker, a shot that kicked dirt into the
grave. Finn ducked and heard another shot, followed by a sharp cry from Riley.
“Six,” said Finn, tearing off his jacket. “Come o?, Coughlan! Where the hell are you!” He flung
his jacket over the edge of the grave. When no bullets came, he leaped out, firing a shot to keep
the attacker off-balance.
As Finn dragged Riley to cover, the other agent swarmed out of the grave, snatched his gun and
dove back in. Bullets screamed around the grave again. The attacker had reloaded quickly.
Finn threw himself across Riley and fired two quick shots that sent the man scrambling back for
cover. By touch alone, Finn snatched a fresh clip from his belt and slapped it into his .45. His
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eyes scanned the close ranks of granite monuments, looking for a hint of movement.
From fifty yards to Finn’s right came three shots, Coughlan firing as he ran uphill. To be
protected from the new angle of attack, or to counter it, the man had to change position. Finn
raised his gun, waiting, his hand steady. The attacker gathered himself, took two long steps, and
dove for the cover of a blank-eyed, eight-foot-tall angel.
Finn’s three shots echoed as one, a continuous roll of sound. The man twisted in midair, arms
flung out and legs limp, as bullets shattered his spine. His body slammed against the eroded
granite angel and slid down to the damp green grass.
From the grave, the agent poured bullets into the body. Ricochets whined among the
headstones. Finn did not even look up; he knew that the man was dead.
In a single movement, Finn rolled off Riley, pulled a knife out of his boot, and opened up Riley’s
bloodstained pantleg with a sweep of the blade.
Arterial blood leaped and ebbed, marking each quick beat of Riley’s heart. Finn’s thumb sank
into Riley’s thigh just below his crotch, squeezing down on the ruptured artery. The leap of
blood dwindled to a slow seep of scarlet a few inches below Finn’s hand.
Riley groaned and tried to sit up.
“Don’t move, hero,” said Finn. “A bullet nicked your artery.”
Riley looked at the bright patches of blood smeared across his legs and Finn’s hands. He stared
at F,inn, then at the open grave.
“At least you won’t have to carry me far,” Riley said, trying to smile.
“Shut up,” said Finn, but his voice was gentle. “And if you ever again yell a warning before you
hit the dirt, I’ll shoot you myself.”
Riley’s face twisted with pain. He closed his eyes and his breath sighed out.
Coughlan ran up, panting. He looked at the blood covering Riley and spilling over onto Finn.
“How bad is it?”
“The agent over there is dead. As long as I keep Riley under my thumb, he has a chance.”
Coughlan looked at Riley’s white face and the blood welling slowly beneath Finn’s hand. “So
you’re a goddamn doctor, too.”
“Use your mouth to get an ambulance. My hand is getting tired.”
Coughlan hesitated, reluctant to leave Riley. Finally he ran toward his car. The agent left in the
grave slowly climbed out and walked up the hill toward the man sprawled at the foot of the
blind gray angel.
Riley’s head moved as his eyes fluttered open.
“Finn…”
“Don’t talk.”
“Gotta know,” whispered Riley.
“You’re going to be fine.”
“Not that,” Riley said, his voice weak, his eyes trying to focus on Finn. “That Mexican… in the
winery. You didn’t really… cut off his…”
Riley went limp. Only the slow, bright welling of blood from the wound in his thigh told Finn
that the agent was still alive.
In the distance came the first thin wailings of sirens closing in on the graveyard’s green hills.
Northern California
31 Hours 3 Minutes After Trinity
Even in mid-July, Tioga Pass was a frigid spectacle of ice fields and granite peaks. The road was
a narrow gravel ribbon twisting across steep rocky ridges. Where avalanches or rockslidcs had
occurred, the road diminished to a rutted trail gouged out by road crews. The road had been all
but destroyed by winter. Potholes big enough to snap an axle were common.
Kestrel drove with singular concentration, sparing only a glance at the slate-gray turbulence of
clouds building around the nearby peaks. July blizzards were not unknown in the high Sierras;
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the wind was tipped with ice.
The black Chevrolet lunged from curve to curve, laboring under the demands of the road and
the altitude. Sudden lightning stalked the heights and thunder belled deafeningly. Hail came in a
brutal fall that drowned out even the thunder.
Ana stared at the unforgiving landscape as it turned pale beneath the onslaught of ice. The car
slid sickeningly, scraped along a cliff wall and lurched back to the center of the narrow road. A
rear wheel thumped into a pothole.
The car bounced wildly, slamming Ana first toward the windshield and then against the door.
Only Kestrel’s grip on the steering wheel kept him in his seat. The undercarriage banged and
squealed against rocks concealed by hail.
In the trunk, uranium danced.
Tuolumne Meadow was all but hidden by clouds and falling ice. Only the flattening of the road
told Kestrel that he had reached the upper limits of the pass. He peered out at the alpine
meadow. His shoulders and the long flat muscles of his upper back were knotted from wrestling
with the wheel. He had chosen this mountain road to avoid the possibility of a roadblock on the
heavily traveled Donner Pass. His greatest danger was being discovered before he could slide
into the anonymity of the Japanese faces in Manzanar. He would stay there until the first frantic
rush of American security slackened into acceptance that the uranium was gone. Only then
would he risk crossing into Mexico; and even then, he would avoid Refugio’s tunnel. If the
Americans did not discover it and set a trap there, Masarek’s woman would.
The hail stopped abruptly. Tuolumne Meadow was behind them. Before them, the road
dropped thousands of feet to the desert floor in a series of violent corkscrews. Trees vanished,
replaced by rocks in tones of gray and ocher and rust. The land was dry and unyielding.
Neither Ana nor Kestrel spoke as he drove the road, cliffs on one side and a void on the other.
The road was so narrow that a minor miscalculation would send the car end over end to smash
on the land a mile below.
Finally the mountains yielded to the high desert. With a feeling of relief, Kestrel headed for the
two-lane blacktop road that undulated along the dry side of the Sierras. Half a mile short of the
new road, he pulled over and shut off the engine.
“What’s wrong?” asked Ana.
“I want to check the trunk.”
Kestrel got out and stretched. Above him the sun was high and hot, the hailstorm no more than
an improbable memory. The air here reminded him of New Mexico, clear and pungent and dry.
He walked back to the trunk. In the instant that the dusty lid popped up, he saw that the two
pieces of uranium were touching.
Reflexively, Kestrel slammed shut the trunk, then realized that did little good. The car’s steel
body could not shield flesh against a critical mass of U-235. The only protection was to separate
the lumps of uranium.
Even knowing that, it took all of his discipline to open the trunk again. The uranium was at the
back of the trunk, jammed into a corner. A pale wash of blue showed even in the full outpouring
of desert noon.
Except for the suitcases, the pails and the uranium, the trunk was empty, not even a jack or a tire
iron to knock apart the nestled pieces. And while he hesitated, radiation grew. He would have to
separate the uranium as Refugio had, flesh against isotope, almost certain death.
But death was always certain, the sole door to new life.
“What’s the odd light?” asked Ana. She had come around the trunk to stand near Kestrel.
Kestrel did not answer. He leaned into the trunk and grabbed the smaller ruby parcel. It was
warm. In the instant he held it, he sensed, or perhaps only imagined, a subliminal current of
energy pouring through his hand. Immediately he tossed the uranium into a pail. The pail
wobbled, then was still. He put it along the right side of the trunk.
The pale blue glow flickered and died as silently as it had been born.
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Kestrel dumped the larger piece into the second pail, moved it away from the first, and wedged
both pails as securely as he could. As he worked, he noticed that the rough ride had abraded and
torn the foil on both pieces of uranium, revealing the shine of naked metal beneath.
Nausea coiled inside Kestrel. He controlled it swiftly, knowing it originated in his mind rather
than his body. Refugio, with far greater exposure, had not become incapacitated until several
hours after he was exposed.
For an instant Kestrel considered trying to flee to Mexico while he was well enough to travel.
Then he put aside the temptation. The tunnel was known to Vanessa; more ordinary routes
across the border were controlled by the Americans.
If Japan were to use stolen uranium to bargain for an honorable peace, it would have to do so
from an enemy prison camp called Manzanar.
San Francisco
36 Hours After Trinity
Exhaustion gnawed at Finn. The clock that had ticked in his mind since Hunters Point seemed to
accelerate as it approached Truman’s deadline. Twelve hours from now, just before dawn, time
would run out for him and for 2 million men. He wondered whether Groves at his desk in New
Mexico was feeling the first cold touch of despair. No time. Not enough time. But always plenty
of blood staining the green land.
Finn shook his head, banishing his bleak thoughts. He climbed the stairs two at a time, going to
the apartment above Velasquez’s grocery store. He had exhausted the leads and false trails from
the funeral home and flower shop. Now there was only the trail left by a blond woman with a
British accent.
The door to the apartment was guarded by a young FBI agent who reminded Finn of Riley,
whose blood had dried beneath Finn’s fingernails; Riley, who was still unconscious after surgery
to repair his femoral artery.
“Has anybody been inside?” asked Finn.
“No. We were told to wait for you.”
Finn shifted the radiation counter to his left hand and tried the door. Locked. He lifted his foot
and kicked the latch out of the jamb with one powerful blow.
The sitting room was empty, but the air had the coppery scent of blood. There were dark pools
of blood dried on the carpet. Finn looked around quickly and turned on the counter.
“Stay behind me,” he said.
He went into the small bedroom. It was empty. The counter remained quiet. He opened the
small bedroom closet. The body of a man and a child tumbled slowly into the room. He bent
over the man’s body, recognizing Hecht. He had died of two bullet wounds, one in the heart.
