to Finn. Finn drank steaming coffee and studied the schematic of Manzanar on the guardhouse
wall. The camp was a warren of barracks laid out in military rows, functional living quarters for
several thousand men, women and children. Almost one-fifth of the inmates were U.S. citizens.
The rest were Japanese nationals. All had reason to resent the government he represented.
Even if Manzanar’s population remained neutral, the camp gave Kestrel thousands of Japanese
faces to lose himself among. Finn glanced at the clock on the guardhouse wall. Less than six
hours left. Six hours, thousands of Japanese and two lumps of uranium that could be buried
anywhere.
Finn turned back to the captain. “Every prison has informants.”
“There’s just no point, here. The Japanese aren’t going to riot. It’s not their way. The ones who
felt differently never came to Manzanar in the first place.”
“Would they tell you if one of Hirohito’s spies dropped in for a visit?”
“It would depend on what the spy wanted from them. They solve their own problems in there,
and they don’t make any waves while they do it. Oh, every once in a while Mr. Oshiga will ask
the colonel’s advice, but it’s just a polite gesture. They are very polite.”
“Oshiga? Takeo Oshiga?” asked Finn.
“No. Masataka. He’s Takeo’s uncle, I believe. Or grandfather. The Japanese in Manzanar may
bow to us, but they obey Masataka Oshiga.”
Finn turned back to the wall map for a moment, as though willing it to reveal the location of a
Japanese spy, the daughter of a San Francisco flower seller, and the uranium whose value was
measured in lives as well as dollars. Somewhere inside Manzanar a second sun waited to rise, a
sun that would kill thousands and thereby save hundreds of thousands from dying in an invasion
of Japan.
“Look,” said Captain Anderson, “why don’t I call out the troops and search the place one
apartment at a time?”
“No.” Finn’s tone was smooth, final, leaving no possibility of question. He faced the captain.
“All I need is one of your men for a few minutes. I’ll meet him by the front fence. Which
barracks does Takeo’s family live in?”
“Thirty-nine, apartment A. Back by the rear fence, first row, near the washhouse.”
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“Does Masataka live there too?”
“No.”
“Good. What’s the name of Masataka’s wife?”
“Kiku.”
Finn reached back under his jacket, snaked out his .45 and checked it. Anderson stared at the
gun.
“Jesus. You aren’t going to shoot her, are you?”
Finn returned the gun to its holster in the small of his back and picked up the radiation counter
again. “If you don’t hear from me in an hour, call General Groves. He’ll tell you what to do.”
He opened the guardhouse door and stood for a moment as though testing the wind. The door
closed behind him. He was alone in the desert night. As he faced the lights of Manzanar, he felt
the skin of his neck tighten and move; hidden among those lights was the power to change the
world.
He walked toward the camp with long strides.
Manzanar
42 Hours 19 Minutes After Trinity
The USO barracks was the only one fully lit. The wind blew through cracks, stirring the
American flags that were draped everywhere. Vanessa sat at a table just inside the front door,
smiling and talking with a young, slightly drunk lieutenant, an Isei, second-generation American.
He lacked the personal and cultural reserve of many who lived in Manzanar. She had led the
conversation to the subject of life in San Francisco before Pearl Harbor.
“Did you know the Oshigas?” she asked. “They had a flower shop in Little Tokyo. I heard he
was sent to Manzanar.”
“You bet,” said the lieutenant, finishing off his beer. “His son was with me when I got this.” He
thumped on the cast covering his right leg. “Hell of a fight. We were lucky to come out alive.”
Vanessa smiled, concealing the leap of her nerves. Finally, a Japanese who was not afraid to talk.
“Is the whole Oshiga family here?”
The lieutenant frowned. “Ana – his sister – went to Mexico. It nearly killed her father.”
A feral alertness swept over Vanessa. “Mexico?”
“Juarez, I think.” He shrugged. “It’s not a popular subject with the Oshigas.”
“I understand,” she murmured. “They are loyal Americans.” Fools. “Do they still live in
apartment 28B?”
“No, it’s 39A,” said the lieutenant, signaling for another beer.
Vanessa controlled the impulse to leap to her feet and run out of there. She must stay for a few
minutes more. The lieutenant must not suspect that she was going to the Oshigas’ apartment. She
smiled and pretended interest in what the lieutenant was saying about the Italian campaign.
Manzanar
42 Hours 29 Minutes After Trinity
“He must stay here!” said Ana fiercely, her voice hoarse from the long argument that had
followed her appearance with Kestrel in her father’s apartment. “You can see he’s ill! What harm
can one weak stranger do to any of you?”
“Tonight, the man you call Kestrel will stay,” said Takeo. “I wouldn’t dishonor our house by
refusing shelter to a sick man.”
Unconsciously, Ana looked around her father’s “house” – a 20’ by 25’ segment of barracks –
with a combination of contempt and sadness. Her father noticed her expression, but he said
nothing about her lack of respect.
“Tomorrow,” Takeo said, “we go to Masataka-san and ask the honor of his wisdom. He will
hear you, and the man Kestrel, and then Masataka-san will decide what to do.”
“But – “ began Ana.
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“Enough, daughter!” whispered Takeo. “Masataka-san is wise. He will tell us what is best for the
Japanese in Manzanar.”
“There are no Japanese in Manzanar,” hissed Ana, “just 2,000 faceless Americans!”
Ana turned and stalked past her mother to the apartment door. As she opened it and stepped
out, wind snatched the door out of her grasp. It slammed behind her, shaking the plywood and
tarpaper building.
“Ana! Ana!”
She pretended not to hear her father’s angry cry. Hunched against the wind, she walked to the
women’s latrine. It was crowded with women preparing for bed. She turned away and walked
around the building, waiting for it to empty of people.
Vanessa heard Ana’s name called above the wind, and saw her stalk out of 39A. Vanessa
hesitated, then followed, believing that Ana Oshiga, lately of Juarez, would lead her to the
Japanese man who had so shrewdly stolen the uranium.
Manzanar
42 Hours 41 Minutes After Trinity
The knock on the outer door was hurried, light, barely perceptible over the wind. Takeo reached
to, answer it, then remembered the uninvited guest in the sleeping cubicle.
“Who is knocking?” called Takeo softly in Japanese.
“Kiku sent me, Takeo,” answered a man’s voice in the same language. “Come quickly, please.
Masataka is very ill. Kiku asks that you and your wife come now.”
“Yes,” said Takeo quickly.
He turned to tell his wife, but she had heard. She gathered up jackets for both of them and
hurried to the door. As Takeo pulled the door shut behind him, a tall man stepped out of the
shadows. Behind him waited another man, a soldier.
“Go with the soldier,” Finn said in Japanese. “You won’t be hurt, but you must be quiet. Do you
understand?”
Wind blew, nearly drowning Takeo’s soft “Yes.”
“Is Ana inside?”
Takeo hesitated, then made a gesture of sadness or despair. “No.”
“Where is she?”
“We argued,” said Takeo, his face expressionless. “She left.”
“When?”
“A few minutes ago.”
Finn looked at the soldier and nodded. The soldier led Takeo and his wife away. When they
were gone, Finn turned and quietly opened the door. The wind gusted suddenly. The door
thumped shut despite Finn’s attempt to prevent it.
The sound penetrated Kestrel’s sleep. He stumbled to the surface of his fever dream, carrying a
tiny mountain in a silver pail. As he staggered, the mountain grew, a silent expansion that
consumed his strength. The pain crinkled, turned scarlet and peeled away, revealing the white
shine of the growing mountain. Too heavy for his arms, he had to carry the mountain on his
shoulders, his body bent and twisted and the mountain swelling as silently, as irrevocably, as the
dawn.
He was outside himself, watching himself struggle, straining to balance a mountain as big as
Japan on his back. The mountain continued to grow, snow-topped, conical, an immense volcano
wrapped in its own perfection, waiting for the annihilating instant of release. His body and the
mountain trembled. The world exploded into a column of brilliant white silence.
He screamed, and the column answered in a burst of rolling thunder that was also white, the
flawless white of death.
Kestrel awoke, feeling the last of his dream in the sweat that gathered on his flesh. He was very
thirsty. He rolled onto his side and looked around the tiny, bare corner divided from the rest of
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the apartment by two sheets. A small window with four panes of glass looked out onto the blank
wall of another barracks. The curtain had been washed so many times it was nearly transparent.
An origami bird and two pictures clipped out of a magazine were all that decorated the
plywood walls. Dust sifted through the ill-fitted window, coating a floor bleached by repeated
scrubbings. Near the bed, a pitcher of water and a glass made intersecting rings on the floor.
Kestrel lifted himself on one elbow and poured a glass of water. He drank slowly, despite his
hot thirst. His stomach and bowels accepted the water without rebellion. Feeling stronger, he lay
back and tried to sleep, but something kept intruding into his awareness.
Quiet. It was too quiet. He had gone to sleep with the murmur of Ana’s family in his ears, but
now there was nothing. Even if everyone was asleep, there should be a multitude of small noises,
breathing and the rustle of sheets, the random sounds of people in the grip of dreams.
But there was only the wind.
Beyond the sheet dividers, footsteps suddenly sounded, crossing the floor, coming closer. One
sheet was pulled aside. A man stepped into Kestrel’s small room. In one hand the man carried a
black box set with dials. In the other was a gun.
Kestrel recognized Finn immediately, not from his height or race, but from the way he moved –
like a hunting cat, utterly controlled.
Finn tore down the sheet dividers with two hard jerks. He cataloged the area in a glance, from
the thin curtains and the fresh water-rings on the floor, to the calm, powerful man lying on the
bed, watching him with the opaque black eyes he had last seen across a cockfighting pit in Juarez.
“Kestrel.”
Finn’s statement was barely louder than the wind. Kestrel knew he could deny the name, and
knew that denial would be futile. There had been no doubt in Finn’s tone.
Cautiously Finn approached the bed. He stopped just beyond arm’s reach. The Japanese smiled
and opened his hands on top of the Army blanket.
“You have nothing to fear from me,” said Kestrel in Japanese. “I am ill, a scabbard without a
sword, harmless.”
“You are samurai,” answered Finn in the same language. “Like fire, you are always armed,
always dangerous.”
“Ana was right to fear you,” murmured Kestrel. With subtle movements, he gathered himself
for the fight that must come.
Finn glanced quickly around the room, missing nothing. If the uranium was here, it was hidden
beneath the floor. With his left hand he set down the radiation counter and switched it on. The
counter clicked excitedly. He pointed the probe toward Kestrel. A sound like cloth ripping
filled the room.
“Get out of bed, slowly.”
Finn spoke in English, but Kestrel responded immediately. He sat up in stages, feigning more
weakness than he felt. Fever had dulled his reflexes; until he knew the extent of his weakness, he
would not attack. Nor would he acknowledge despair. That would drain his strength as surely as
fever.
“Lie down on your stomach,” said Finn, pointing toward the opposite corner of the room.
“Turn your face to the wall and put your hands behind your head.”
Kestrel looked at the perfect, circular eye of the gun that followed each of his movements. He
stretched out on the cold floor as Finn had ordered.
“Lie very still.”
With quick, wary glances back at Kestrel, Finn shook out the bedclothes. When he was sure
there were no hidden weapons, he swept the probe over the bed Kestrel had occupied. There
was radiation, but not as much. Kestrel, not hidden uranium, was the source of the counter’s
excitement. Finn controlled his disappointment with an effort. To be so close and not to find it
“Where is the uranium?”
Kestrel did not answer.
He measured Kestrel with pale eyes. The Japanese was ill, but hardly incapacitated. Kestrel
would be more difficult to break than the Mexican at the winery. Finn did not have enough
hours to try Kestrel’s threshold of pain, and then to separate lies from half-truths and misleading
truths.
“Where is Ana?”
Kestrel said nothing, merely watched Finn and waited for an instant of carelessness. Finn swept
the probe over Kestrel as he lay on the floor. The counter shrieked. He stepped back, set down
the counter, and turned it off. In the drafty corner, Kestrel shivered and tried to suppress the
metallic taste of defeat.
“You can get back in bed.”
Kestrel went to the bed. He pulled the thin Army blanket around his shoulders and sat, watching
his enemy, waiting for the chance to win or die.
“How much do you know about what you stole?” asked Finn.
“I’m a physicist.”
“I see.” Finn’s voice was almost gentle; Kestrel must know he had absorbed too much radiation.
Finn’s eyes measured the Japanese spy, wondering what was the quickest way to break him. How
do you threaten a man who might already be dying? Kestrel stared back, measuring Finn in turn.
With a quickness that was not lost on Kestrel, Finn holstered his .45 and faced the Japanese with
empty hands.
“You could trade the uranium for a hospital bed or safe-passage home.”
“No.”
Finn accepted it. He had expected no less.
“What do you think you can do with the uranium? Japan doesn’t have the ability to turn it into a
bomb.”
For a long moment Kestrel said nothing. Then, “The uranium will be returned to America when
Japan is offered something less degrading than unconditional surrender.”
“That won’t happen.”
Kestrel became very still, his expression as opaque as his eyes.
