of loose soil, tipped the bucket on its side in the hole, and filled both bucket and hole until only
a half-inch of metal pail poked above the sand to mark the burial place. Thirty feet away, he
repeated the process with the smaller piece of uranium.
When Kestrel was finished, he selected three small branches from the litter at the base of the
sagebrush clump. He used the branches as guides pointing from one piece of uranium to the
other. The third branch he jammed into the lip of the rise. Then he stood motionless,
memorizing landmarks that stood out of the increasing gloom.
The lights of Manzanar glowed more brightly with each moment, so close Ana thought she
could touch them. It was an illusion fostered by clear air and her own anxiety; Manzanar’s outer
fence was a hundred yards away, the barracks several hundred yards beyond that.
“Come.”
Ana started at Kestrel’s voice so close to her ear. Silently she followed him. When they reached
the fence, Kestrel took a small pair of wire cutters from his pocket. The cutters were suited
more for florists wire than Army fencing, but Kestrel was both strong and patient. The wires
parted.
Kestrel guided Ana through, then pulled a tumbleweed over to conceal the break in the fence.
Ana waited, her heart beating so loudly that she could hear nothing else.
“This way,” breathed Kestrel.
He led her closer to the barracks lights. As they approached the buildings, they heard voices
raised, people calling back and forth across the barracks rows. The smell of a compost pile
replaced the astringent odor of sage. A garden’s orderly rows marched toward the first building
a few hundred feet away.
Kestrel stopped. Ana moved until she was so close that his breath warmed her lips.
“I’ll wait for you here,” said Kestrel. His hands framed her face. “If you aren’t alone, I must
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assume you are a prisoner. I will kill whoever is with you, Ana. Come alone if you can.”
Ana remembered Refugio’s swift death, but the memory had no impact. She realized suddenly
that she did not care who Kestrel had killed, or that he might kill again. She buried her face
against his neck.
“Just be here when I come back,” she whispered fiercely. “Nothing else matters.”
Kestrel smiled against the silky coolness of her hair. “You’re becoming more Japanese,” he
whispered. “Now if you could only learn obedience….”
Ana laughed softly. Her lips brushed his, then she slipped from his arms into the impersonal
embrace of night.
Manzanar
40 Hours After Trinity
Ana walked between rows of plywood and tarpaper barracks, looking for “apartment” number
39A. All around her, people hurried through the night, pushed by the wind that was as much a
part of Manzanar as the blowing sand. Several times she was frightened by the sight of uniforms,
only to realize that they were worn by Nisei soldiers on leave, visiting their families in Manzanar.
At first Ana kept her head down, avoiding direct glances. Then she realized that the camp was
too big for a strange Japanese to be noticed. What was one more among Manzanar’s thousands?
She found apartment 39A at the end of a long barracks row, facing the Sierras. The public
washrooms were nearby, and the fence was only a short distance.
Reluctantly, Ana faced the barracks where her father and mother lived. She hoped that her
brother was still in Italy. She did not want to argue about loyalty tonight. Nor did she want to
confront her sad, worn father. For a moment she considered going directly to Masataka Oshiga,
her father’s uncle. It was Masataka who had given her money and a letter of introduction to
Takagura Omi in Juarez. But it was also Masataka who had helped her brother enlist in the
American Army. Masataka was like a weaver, knotting up the disparate threads of the American
Japanese communities, carrying messages between families torn apart by war. Japanese loyalists
and Americans alike claimed Masataka as their own.
Ana did not know where the truth of Masataka’s loyalty was. All she knew was that he had
helped her, and Takagura trusted him in many things. But Masataka was traditional; he would
expect her to go to her father first. If she did not, Masataka would simply ignore her.
Cold wind rocked Ana, deciding her. She took the three stairs in a rush, opened the door and
stepped inside before she could change her mind. The wind snatched the door out of her fingers
and slammed it shut behind her.
Startled, an old man looked up from his chair. For a long moment he and Ana stared at each
other.
“Ana! Where did you come from? What are you doing here?”
He spoke the inelegant Japanese she still heard in her dreams. She looked at him with a familiar
mixture of anger and love. He was small, worn away to bones, hands knotted by a lifetime of
labor.
“Ana?” said her mother, rising from a floor cushion. “I was just writing to you! What –?”
“Listen. Both of you. No one knows I’m here. I’ve brought a – friend. He’s sick. He needs a
place to stay for a few days.”
“The hospital will – “ began her mother.
“No! No one must know he’s here. It will just be for a few days, until he’s better.” And, added
Ana silently, until Takagura can arrange a safe passage south for Kestrel and the odd, heavy
metal he guarded so carefully. She looked at her father. “He’s weak. Surely you can give shelter
to a weak friend?”
“Is he Takagura Omi’s friend?”
Ana hesitated, then decided on the truth. “Yes. He is a samurai. A true Japanese!”
Her father’s expression became closed. She watched, wanting to scream at him as she had done
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years ago, when the relocation orders had been signed and he had obeyed without even arguing.
“Then he is America’s enemy,” said her father.
“He’s too sick to be anyone’s enemy.” Ana turned toward her mother, but she looked away,
waiting for her husband’s decision. “Just a few days,” Ana said. “No one will know. Please! He’s
outside and it’s cold. He needs help!”
“All right.” Her father’s voice was rough. “Bring him in out of the wind. But no promises,
daughter. We have much to talk about.”
Manzanar
40 Hours 20 Minutes After Trinity
The black desert night was crisscrossed by golden rectangles of light from barracks windows.
After 9:00 A.M. most of the inhabitants of Manzanur stayed inside.
Vanessa buttoned her dark jacket against the wind and set off between two rows of barracks.
Conversations among the people still outside gusted with the wind, words in Japanese and
English, but nothing that had any meaning to her. By the time conversation reached her, it had
been shredded by the wind. Each time she tracked the sounds to a group of people, the
conversation died.
“Good evening,” said Vanessa, coming up to a group of two men and a woman. “I’m Vanessa
Lyons, from the British Broadcasting Company. I believe Colonel Mahan made an
announcement to the camp about me earlier this evening.”
The three people bowed politely. There was a murmur of low-voiced greetings.
“Have you been in Manzanar since it was built?”
No one answered. The three people bowed again, but said nothing. If they understood English,
they did not reveal it.
“Where did you live before?”
The Japanese bowed to Vanessa and silently walked away.
The next group she approached did not speak English either. They listened to her, bowed
politely and melted into the darkness with more bows and apologies. Vanessa tried several other
groups with no better luck. The Japanese had built their own society in Manzanar, closed and
circumspect, all but impenetrable. It would take time and luck to find an inmate who would help
her.
Impatience and anxiety tightened the lines of her mouth. If anyone should decide to do more
than a cursory check on her BBC credentials, she would have a lot of explanations to make. She
had to find the Oshiga apartment before that happened.
Finally she tried a group of four boys, all in their early teens, all with the casual mannerisms of
Americans.
“Good evening,” said Vanessa, smiling brilliantly. “I’m Miss Lyons of the British Broadcasting
Company. I’m supposed to interview the Oshiga family, but I’ve lost my way.”
“Which Oshiga family?” asked one of the boys.
“The one from San Francisco. He owned a flower shop called the Fragrant Petal.”
The boy smiled apologetically.
“Sorry, Miss Lyons. Perhaps Mrs. Tamamura can help you. She’s from San Francisco. She went
down to the washhouse just a while ago. Perhaps she is still there.”
The boy pointed down the row of barracks. Vanessa saw a well-lit building. When she turned
back, the last boy was closing the barracks door behind him.
Vanessa strode down the dirt path to the washhouse. There were five women inside, all past
middle age. They looked up from their laundry, bowed and waited for her to speak.
“Good evening,” Vanessa said. “Is one of you Mrs. Tamamura?”
The women looked at Vanessa for a moment, then bowed gain.
“Ta-ma-mu-ra,” said Vanessa slowly.
There was no response.
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“Oshiga?” said Vanessa. “Ana O-shi-ga?”
The women blinked, folded their hands, and bowed politely.
“No Eng-lish,” said one of the women with soft finality.
Vanessa’s smile was brittle. She turned on her heel and left without another word.
After the human warmth of the washroom, the night seemed even colder, filled with wind that
tasted of sand. She started up another row, toward the USO barracks on the far side of camp.
Lights and music streamed out of the building. BBC credentials in hand, she entered the
barracks and began asking about a family called Oshiga that had once lived in San Francisco.
Above the Sierras, California
41 Hours 47 Minutes After Trinity
The Piper Super Cub bounced and sideslipped, caught by the edge of a storm massed over the
high Sierras. Finn braced himself and stared down at the land below, straining to catch a glimpse
of Manzanar’s distant lights between filaments of cloud. But except for an occasional explosion
of lightning, he could see nothing.
He wedged himself against the window and closed his eyes, fighting the tension that was making
his nerves leap. He breathed slowly, deeply, letting tension drain out of his body until he was
poised without being tight, alert without being jumpy. It required all of his discipline to remain
that way. An hour into the flight, Coughlan had radioed that a blond woman with a British
accent and BBC credentials had entered Manzanar. She had come alone. She was using the name
Vanessa Lyons. She said she was working on a story about Japanese-Americans in relocation
camps.
Finn remembered the dead Mexican boy with the maimed hand. She must have tortured the
name Manzanar out of the boy. She was almost certainly responsible for the assassination
attempt at the cemetery. She was ruthless, intelligent and had the nerves of a tightrope walker.
The only good news Coughlan had passed on was that Riley was off the critical list.
Lightning burned across the night, followed by enormous thunder. Finn did not open his eyes.
“Not much bothers you, does it?” said the pilot.
Finn looked at the middle-aged Army major who had volunteered to fly a stranger over the
Sierras on a stormy night. “I’m glad it doesn’t show.”
The pilot laughed, then cursed as an updraft hurled the little Piper toward the stars. “At least
you’re not puking all over the place.”
Finn stretched as much as he could in the small cockpit and wished for coffee. Suddenly he
leaned to the right, staring out his window between the last streamers of storm. “Lights at three
o’clock!”
The pilot checked his gauges. “Manzanar. Where do we land?”
“On the highway. There are roadblocks five miles on either side of the camp. Pick one and set
me down as close to it as you can.”
The pilot gave Finn a speculative look, but asked no questions.
The roadblocks were lit by flares and headlights shining along the black surface of the highway.
The pilot brought the plane in low, tracing the road with his landing light. In the beam, smoke
from the flares bent across the highway in a diagonal line. The plane jerked and shuddered in the
grip of the wind.
“Hang on,” said the pilot. “This could be a bitch.”
The pilot was good; the plane bounced only once. Even on the ground, the wind jerked at the
Piper as it taxied toward the Army Jeeps parked in the traffic lanes, blocking and at the same
time illuminating the highway. The plane stopped six feet from the Jeeps.
Finn looked over at the pilot and nodded appreciatively. “Nice work.”
The pilot sighed. “I’m damn glad I don’t have to do it again.”
With no wasted motions, Finn unbuckled himself, grabbed the radiation counter, and climbed
out of the plane. The night shuddered with wind.
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The guardhouse showed as a black blot in the middle of the road. The private stopped the Jeep
next to the field-stone building. As Finn climbed out, the guardhouse door opened, illuminating
him with a wash of light. The Jeep turned and gunned back toward the highway, leaving Finn
alone with the man who was emerging from the small stone house.
“Captain Anderson?”
“Yes.” The captain looked oddly at Finn. “I was told to expect you – and to stay out of your
way.”
“Any trouble?” Finn asked, following Anderson back into the guardhouse.
“Not yet. The Englishwoman was trying to interview people, but she didn’t have much luck. The
Japanese are very polite, but they don’t say much.”
“They lived in paper houses for centuries,” said Finn. “They’ve raised civility to an art – and
turned it into armor.”
Anderson smiled sardonically. “Last I heard, she was in the USO canteen. Not many people are
out at this hour. A few gamblers going back to angry wives, or some kids sneaking off to be
alone. She’ll probably give up and go to bed soon.”
Finn disagreed, but said only, “Is there any rumor of new Japanese in the camp?”
Captain Anderson paused as though listening to. the wind. “Agent Coughlan asked the same
thing. I’ve done what I could to find out, but – have you ever been around a prison?” Without
waiting for an answer, the captain continued. “The inmates run them. Any prison – every prison.
But especially this one. We don’t know any more about these people than we did the day they
arrived. Less, really. We thought they were enemies, then. Now – who knows?”
Anderson poured coffee out of a vacuum flask into two cups as he talked. He handed one cup
