Stallion Gate

"What time is General Groves coming?" Joe asked. "Our general is arriving with presidential advisers this evening. Our failure will be well attended. We'll even have a reporter from the New York Times watching from a hill twenty miles away." Oppy glanced at Joe. "Do you have any idea what intruders the MP was babbling about?"

"Mescaleros."

Joe braked to avoid running over a sunburnt figure lying on the ground. The man was threading coaxial cable into a garden hose. His back and legs were covered with vaseline and dirt, and pinned to his shorts was a badge that showed he, too, was an elite scientist of Trinity.

As he stuffed the hose, he muttered, "In a circle of hell, men are doing precisely this right now. We can thank Foote and those other fucking Brits for this, because all the cable they insisted on importing and using here has melted under the New Mexico sun and has to be insulated again with 30,000 feet of hose. Have you ever run a catheter up the ass of a 30,000-foot-long snake?"

Further on, they found more physicists digging up the cables they had buried the day before, because they'd buried them taut and, under the weight of the earth they'd thrown back on, the cables had snapped. Two other physicists stood mournfully at a silver barrage balloon. The helium balloon was designed to carry neutron counters aloft; however, Trinity's elevation was so high and the air was so thin that the balloon clung to the desert floor. On a gentle rise stippled with pinons, a radiologist had strung wires on the branches and was hanging white mice from the wires by their tails to determine the effect of the blast on living organisms. The first mice hung had already perished from the heat.

"He's been out in the sun too long himself," Joe said after Oppy had sent man and mice back to the Base Camp.

"It all looks so sane on paper. Do you have a drink, Joe?"

"Sorry."

"Since when don't you have a flask? You're looking fit all of a sudden, unlike me. Two days ago, I touched the plutonium. I told Harvey it was shaking. He said I was shaking." Oppy took a deep breath. "So, Mescaleros?"

"Just what Groves was afraid of, I guess. They still think this is Stallion Gate. They still chase horses out of the mountains and round them up here."

"I recall the mustangs we saw."

"The trackers come in around dusk and stay until dawn. They're bound to see the shot unless I cut them off."

"That means you wouldn't be getting back until morning. You may miss Trinity entirely."

"You don't want any roasted Apaches, do you?"

At the West-10,000 bunker, Oppy left the jeep to talk to meteorologists releasing weather balloons. The balloons bounced as they rose, as if they were rolling up an invisible hill.

Behind the bunker, Ray Stingo was riding on a Sherman tank, taking a practice spin, treads flattening cactus. The tank had been painted white, the cannon removed and the machine-guns replaced with automobile headlights. Air bottles for the crew were clamped to the side armour. Behind the turret was a rack of rockets.

Ray jumped from the tank.

"Isn't it amazing, Chief? Lead-lined, air-filtered, air-conditioned. This baby's the first thing in after the blast to collect samples. The way they do it, they're going to ride up to the crater and shoot rockets with scoops on one end and cables on the other. They just pull the rockets back. That's a garbage truck!"

"Sounds like a professional endorsement."

Joe studied the thin seam of black above the mountains. They were the clouds from last night. Patient clouds.

Ray got in the jeep.

"Christ, there are only eight hours to go to the fight. Turns out your old pal Hilario's insisting on a minimum $1,000 bet from every spectator just to hold down the traffic. That's a Texas crowd, Chief."

"That's good. It helps the odds. What are they now?"

"Still two to one. There's a lot of confidence in the boy. I don't like the crowd, Chief."

"We'll cover the bets. Don't worry about the crowd, we have the MPs."

Ray watched Oppy coming back through the brush.

"I'm so fucking nervous I could piss a marble."

"That tent over the picnic tables where they had church this morning," Joe said. "You think you can appropriate that for the fight?"

"Sure. Why?"

"It's going to rain."

As Oppy went by the tank, it made a ninety-degree turn, rolled over an ironwood tree and headed for him. Ray was gawking up at the sky. Joe was caught on the other side of the jeep by Ray. Oppy turned and watched in a defenceless stupor as the tank clattered, dipped, rose. Joe was prepared to save Oppy from nuclear mishap, not a de-fanged, albino Sherman tank. As it looked over Oppy, it stopped. A hatch popped open and a head wearing a white cotton cap and goggles peered out.

"From this crude lab that spawned a dud," the tanker declaimed with a heavy Italian accent, "their necks to Truman's axe uncurled. Lo, the embattled savants stood and fired the flop heard round the world."

The ditty of gloom was popular on the Hill. The tanker pulled his goggles and cap to reveal cheerful eyes and dark, receding hair. It was Fermi.

"Actually, I would estimate the chances of igniting the entire atmosphere at one in three thousand. Acceptable. The chances of incinerating New Mexico at thirty to one. The bomb will work." He tapped his bald spot. "The problem is suntan lotion.

Teller bought the last bottles so he wouldn't burn from watching the blast. Edward really thinks the bomb will work." Fermi pulled down his goggles and cap. "Now I play with my new toy."

The hatch closed. As the tank rolled into reverse, Ray ran to catch up.

At four in the afternoon, three hours before the fight and twelve hours before Trinity was scheduled, Oppy and Joe climbed the tower. Leads coiled round the gray sphere of the bomb to two detonator boxes. Extra wires, crates and pulley ropes crowded the shed. Joe slipped out on to the platform. A pair of artillery spotter's binoculars hung on the hoist and Joe used them to scan the test site.

Oppy followed Joe out.

"I feel as if we're two men mounting the gallows together," he said. "Everyone else is so confident. Did you see the standing orders for today? 'Look for four-leaf clovers.' "

Joe could see woolly patches of buffalo grass, rabbit brush and yucca spears. Also, manmade burrows where crusher gauges had been buried and standing pipes with crystal gauges and threaded stakes of electrical wire running from South-10,000 to the tower base. No clover.

Down at the ranch house where the core had been assembled, a man was swimming in the cistern. It was a concrete cistern with double tanks for the cattle that used to run on the ranch. The man swam back and forth tirelessly, disappearing under the brackish water and surfacing at the other end. He climbed out, dried himself and dressed in white coveralls, cap, short boots and gloves, then got into a Dodge coupe. Joe watched Harvey drive to the tarmac road and turn to South-10,000.

Everywhere Joe looked, vehicles and men on foot were quitting the six-mile radius of the tower. On the West road, a jeep with four flat tyres carried a full load of GIs. Further in that direction, darkening clouds rose over the tents of volcanic peaks. Against them and against the mist of the Oscura, Trinity was a last lit, golden strand. But dust devils were moving in, spinning around abandoned instruments, and thunder was becoming more regular.

"There's an invisible world out there. A new map, a cartology of Geiger counters, seismographs, radiosondes and gauges. Joe, I've been thinking about those Mescaleros. If you start chasing them, you might not come back for a day or two. You and I have been through so much, it would be tragic if we didn't share this climactic moment."

Joe wished the tower were higher, the glasses stronger, and he could see Hilario rolling down from Santa Fe. The lieutenant-governor probably had a state trooper driving. The crowd would be coming from the Texas line, cowmen with fist-sized wads of money. Pollack would just about be sliding into his Cadillac.

"I'll make sure I'm back on time."

Oppy leaned on the rail.

"The future is here, tonight. The world will revolve round us. You don't think the MPs will be able to watch for Apaches?"

"MPs don't know where to look."

Joe imagined Roberto and Ben hiding in a Model T. Maybe a pickup truck poking along the highway, with Felix at the wheel, a couple of cows in the back. Anna might be in Chicago already, among the concrete towers rising by the lake.

"That's their problem. I want you with me," Oppy said. "Until the test is over. Forget the Indians; you're staying with me."

Joe scanned the range. "I don't think so."

"What do you mean?" Oppy asked, as if he'd heard Joe wrong.

"I'll tell you what I see here. I see dirt, brush, rats, snakes. In the real world, in New York, the future is already happening. A warm blue evening. Someone noodling on the keyboard, scratching on sheet music. The horn section is spitting. Ever hear a horn section spit? Mezzo forte. The bass man is tightening his pegs. Same in Philly, Kansas City. Even Albuquerque. Everywhere but here… I see Groves."

Through the binoculars, Joe had found Harvey's Dodge again. Coming the other way was a convoy of jeeps. The lead vehicle had a flag with a single star. Brigadier General Leslie Groves had arrived at Trinity and Joe and Oppy had to climb down immediately to greet him at Ground Zero.

"You think the crackpots have finally pulled it together, Sergeant?" Groves answered Joe's salute.

"Yes, sir."

Groves had the familiar leaden voice, the same slow, stoop-shouldered walk, but he had become sleek since winter. There was more silver in his wavy hair and moustache, a more certain angle to his gray eyes. He hadn't been to the test site since he chose it and he was too heavy to scale the steps and inspect the bomb in its shed, but he led Oppy and Joe and a dozen colonels and majors round the tower base with the confidence of an engineer whose blueprints had merely been followed.

"Looks like a privy." Groves eyed an eight-foot wooden crate that stood on end at the tower base.

"That's what the men call it." Oppy pointed to the cable running into the top of the "privy". "It protects the firing switch. We wanted to keep dust out. There -"

"You mean rain," Groves said. "The weathermen have let us down. I brought VIPs from Washington, that reporter from the Times. I hope they can see something."

"They will."

"My other concern is tower security."

"At this hour people are staying away from the tower," Oppy said.

"Obviously, you're a scientist, not a security officer. This is exactly the opportunity a trained saboteur would be waiting for. I want a light on the tower and some men down here with submachine-guns. Security and secrecy are our first priorities from here on." Groves turned to his aides. "Can you think of anything else?"

"Mescaleros, sir," Joe said. "The local Apaches."

"I remember. We saw some when we came in December. I thought you were going to take care of that, Sergeant."

"Yes, sir. If I could be detailed a couple of men of my choosing, sir, I think I could keep the site secure from at least that threat. Mescaleros like to come down from the hills around dusk. I should get started now, sir."

"Then get moving. I'll assign someone else to the Director." Oppy caught up with Joe at the jeep. He spoke in a low voice, his back to the officers. "What are you up to?" Joe started the engine.

"I almost got the chance once to tell Harvey that if he wanted to walk away from you, he shouldn't talk, he should just go."

"This is it, this is what we all worked for."

"You worked for. This is your bomb, not mine." Joe swung away from Oppy and the tower and aimed for the North road. He only went twenty feet when he hit the brakes and stopped. "Oppy!"

Oppy was heading back to Groves. He turned at the sound of his name. Suddenly he seemed pathetically out of place against the tower, the desert, the men in uniform.

"Good luck!" Joe shouted and stepped on the accelerator again. He'd pick up Shapiro and Gruber at the guard station. Ray should already be in Antonio. Joe could see the first lightning over the Oscura, but he was finally in the clear.

28

Joe couldn't get away from the right-hand jab. He circled to his right, the way he'd shown Shapiro, and walked into a hook. Heard a hoarse grunt and recognized his own lungs, lungs ten years older than the kid's, ten years of cigarette fumes encased in ten years of beer fat, the sort of fat that showed only when a 195 Ib kid hooked to the ribs. He liked the way the kid kept his eyes and shoulders level, jab high and cocked. The eyes intense and watery, pale in the headlights and black water in the dark. Feinted the jab.

The next thing he knew, Joe was sitting on his ass. He didn't know whether he'd been hit with a right or a left. All he remembered was seeing a fist coming and being too slow to get out of the way. Being down brought a new perspective, closer to his leaden feet and the pounding sac of his heart. The wet tarmac had a diamond glitter. Ray had appropriated the mess tent from the Base Camp and the cars were parked under it in a ring of light. Canvas drummed in the rain. Joe rolled away from a rabbit punch and up to his feet. Who's here? Everybody's here. Texans, New Mexicans, soldiers. No scientists, but it wasn't their fight.

"Time!" Hilario shouted.

Ray sat Joe on the bumper of a jeep and pressed a towel against Joe's ear. The ear stung, so it was cut. Fists were taped, but no gloves. There was going to be a lot of cutting.

"Ought to be a real ring, ought to be a referee. This is like a fucking dogfight."

"Dogfights are very popular here."

Hilario's perch was a patrol car, befitting his official status. He looked like a white lizard on a black stone. Though there were some familiar faces from Santa Fe, the crowd was mainly cattlemen from Amarillo and El Paso. Creased faces, hats of doe felt and big thumbs on rolls of cash. Faces more comfortable in a country fair tent than any arena. Sporting men who expected some blood for their money, made from wartime contracts. Hilario was the perfect timekeeper for them because he only stopped a round when he thought the time was right to bet again. He had no shred of fairness, but he had an instinct for drama. Across from Hilario, Pollack watched from inside his white Cadillac. The MPs hung back, as Joe had told them to.

"Time," Hilario advised.

The kid came out popping the right jab again. He had a bullet head of close-cut dirty hair, more dirty curls on wide shoulders and down the back of a thick neck. Small nose and round brow designed for a fighter. Narrow chin with a sandy stubble. Thin lips with a broad smile. Nineteen years old, maybe twenty. He had a stomach of snake-white muscle and, in the middle of it, a pink root of glossy scar tissue that spread up from his belt. Either an accident or an operation by a butcher. Joe slipped the jab, hooked, crossed, threw another looping hook without hitting the boy once. The boy jabbed in return and found the fault line in Joe's eyebrow. It was a seam full of promise and the kid found it twice more before Joe covered up. He attacked the ribs, trying to get Joe's guard down so he could pound the brow again.

There were different philosophical levels to a fight. Joe felt it was important to understand where an opponent's strength came from. Some boxers just had arm strength, some had to come forward off their legs. The kid had speed and balance, but Joe suspected madness, more even than the typical washed-out, brainless Texan madness. It would take time to locate the source, but a fight between big men should have the pace of a long and penetrating conversation. The kid backed Joe against the grille of a truck. When Joe clinched, clamping the kid's fists under his arms, the kid snapped his blunt head forward and butted Joe in the temple. Joe dropped to a knee, but there was no rush of red on the ground, so the brow was okay. He rose, backpedlled, jabbed until Hilario called time.

As Joe sat down, Ray swabbed his forehead with petroleum jelly.

"He's trying to cut you."

"Tell me something I don't know." Joe ran his tongue round his mouth and counted teeth.

"Captain Augustine's here, sitting over in the bar."

Shouts and hands indicated the changing odds. Three fingers. Hilario wrote a chit for a sombre Navajo in a velvet shirt. Shapiro had moved closer, and looked like he was sucking a cyanide pill or had bet on the wrong fighter. Across the court, the kid didn't want to sit and rest. He bounced on his toes and stared at Joe.

The kid had madness and speed. Joe sidestepped and the kid was there. When he stepped back, the kid was ahead of him. The scar on the stomach had turned a dull red as if alive all by itself and it occurred to Joe that it might be the mainspring, the potent source of that insanity. It looked like the sort of a tear a steer horn would make. No matter how good the kid got, and he was better than good, he'd never have a career fighting with a split stomach, he couldn't even get drafted. How would an over-the-hill professional, a fake Indian chief, look to a kid like that? No wonder his lips twisted in an effort as he wound up for the hook, chest cords popping and driving off the back leg, bringing his weight through without lunging or losing his balance, merely delivering as much hate as his fist could carry to the old damage above Joe's left eye. Fighting was a subtle matter, sooner or later a case of one man dominating first the centre of the ring and then, corner by corner, the rest of it. Even under a tent in the rain, there was a centrifugal pattern to the steps, the feints, the mental concentration. Hate was a good thing to bring to a fight. Then Joe's brow popped under nothing harder than a touch. One moment he could see and the next moment his eye was a well of blood. The kid was all over Joe, ignoring Hilario, who was shouting for time so he could get one more round of bets down, until Joe made the kid step back with a jab. "What time is it?"

Ray pinched Joe's brow closed, taped it, daubed it with jelly, then wiped Joe's face.

"Eight twenty, eight thirty. You don't need a clock, you need a zipper."

"The last money. Bet it, spread it around."

"With you bleeding to death, we can get pretty good odds."

"Bet it."

Joe stood alone. Headlights merged in the centre of the courtyard and insects spun over the white haze as if it were a pool. Across it, the kid stood and squinted back. Had that jab been the first tap of knowledge? There was a lot of sound from such a small crowd. He'd always had the sense that towards the end of a fight the paying public wanted to climb into the ring to deliver the last decisive blows. He remembered how once on the mesa a horse broke its legs and he and some other kids had had to stone the animal to death. It took a long time to kill a horse with stones.

The kid went right at the cut. In the middle of the court, Joe backpedalled and jabbed. Against the cars, he covered up, locking his fists against his cheeks, his elbows over the solar plexus, accepting the punishment on the ribs until he could escape. The kid winged combinations and then single shots. An effusion, an undiminishing supply of rage, a hook to the kidney, to the ear, then the cross to the cut. Like a busy sculptor working on a statue he passionately hated. Joe staggered, ducked, clinched, backpedalled until Hilario called time again.

On the hood of the patrol car, Hilario's pockets were misshapen from the money he'd stuffed into them. He watched Joe thoughtfully. Looked at the kid. Ray rubbed Joe's back, massaged his arms.

"Drop the fucker."

The kid came out with another rush of punches, each punch a complaint from a small, withered soul. Joe answered with a fluid jab twice as fast as any other he'd thrown, but soft, just enough to tell the boy, I understand. Understanding was contagious. The kid circled instead of wading in. Good as he was, the kid had never fought more than three rounds before. This was the fourth. He still hit hard, but he leaned on the jab and wound up for the hook. Joe slipped the hook and countered to the heart, a probe, a gesture of rising interest in the boy's condition, also an announcement: we are at a new level. The kid jabbed for time, for an opportunity to rethink the changing context. His jabs were short. Joe snapped a jab off the kid's nose and for a moment the little eyes were glass.

The kid answered with a jab-and-cross, tearing the tape from Joe's cut. Joe's eye filled with blood that sprayed as he ducked. The kid came in to finish the cut. Left-handers when they punch tend to slide to the right. A matter of physics. One of Newton's Laws. The more they tire, the more they slide out of control. Moving low for a big man, Joe slipped a hook and rose, driving arm and fist of the bluntest curiosity into the boy's unguarded stomach and red cicatrix. The kid arched, half of him still following the parabola of his swing while the other half tried to bend away from Joe, who hit the coralroot scar again and continued to move in, staying low, pursuing the softening, collapsing midsection. In the air, the kid had no place to go. Joe hooked from the ground up, his own body rising.

Inevitability came in grunts and the sound, when Joe hit, of a stake being driven into sodden earth. When Joe stopped, the boy went from weightless to gravity-bound and sprawled in the headlights like a figure under water. The suddenness of the end brought a quiet to the tent. Joe pressed the back of his hand to the pulsing blood of his cut. Ray and the MPs started collecting money. Hilario was collecting, too.

Joe had left his clothes in the cafe" kitchen. He washed, taped and dressed himself by the sink while Ray cleared the table of cans of peaches, lard and beans and counted the money by denominations. The long kitchen table was covered with stacks of notes.

"Chief, you should've seen Shapiro and Gruber. They went through those cowboys like Gestapos, took everything but their watches. Done." Ray took a step back from the table like a man getting a better view of a big Rembrandt. "My God, I've never seen this much money before. $66,000 for you. That's as good as a title fight. You should open a bank."

"I had something else in mind." Joe tucked his tie into his shirt and gingerly touched the tape on his brow.

"Well, here's to Chief Joe Pena." Ray found two glasses in the sink and filled them with Black Label. "The greatest heavyweight in the Army. Your night, Chief."

Pollack slipped through the kitchen door. His hair was freshly straightened and looked combed with a razor. He wore a canary jacket and a diamond ring on each hand. Dressed like a man about to travel at his ease, he made a slow, respectful circuit of the table. Then he laid down three folded papers.

"Deed. Receipt. Liquor licence." Pollack touched a stack of green notes briefly, to establish the fact of them. "Congratulations, you own a nightclub. I wish I could stay to show you the ropes."

"You're leaving tonight?"

"I said I was going to be on the dock when Eddie Jr came in. That's a three-day drive. Kansas City, Pittsburgh, New York. If he can come back from Italy, I can be there on the dock." Pollack counted out $50,000 and stuffed the bills in a money belt while Joe checked the papers. They were already signed.

"I never thought I'd say goodbye to the Casa Mariana or New Mexico, Joe. Something else happening here tonight? Lots of Army trucks sort of hidden off the road."

"It's a bombing range, you know."

"Thought I recognized some soldiers from the Hill."

"Maybe." Joe tucked the papers into his shirt.

Pollack draped the money belt over his arm. He'd never put the belt on in front of anyone else, he had too much dignity for that. Just like he didn't go cross-country in a train because he never wanted to be mistaken for a porter.

"You're going to be okay, Joe. From now on, everyone's going to be okay."

"Thanks for everything." Joe shook hands gently because his fist hurt so much.

At the door, Pollack hesitated.

"That was the last fight for Big Chief Joe Pena?"

"Yeah."

"Good. I thought this time he cut it a little close."

"Son of a bitch," Ray said when Pollack was gone. "You own the Casa Manana? You son of a bitch, you pulled off a deal like that?"

"I've got to go." It was nine o'clock. Joe counted out $1,000 and pushed the rest of his money with Ray's. "Hold this for me for a couple of days. Forget about the garbage business. I'm going to turn you into a maitre d'. After the test you're driving people back to the Albuquerque Hilton? Go to the Casa and stick by the cash register until I show up."

"Serious?"

"If anyone here asks tonight, say I was off to hunt Apaches."

"You're serious about me?"

"People are going to be lining up to grease the palm of Raymond the maitre d'."

"In a tux?"

"You better be."

"That's better than garbage."

"Sometimes it happens that way, Ray. Some things actually work out."

"But it's a surprise," Ray insisted.

"Yeah."

The tent stood in an empty courtyard. The motel cabins were dark because their occupants were the MPs who were on the highway monitoring traffic, chasing the losers back to Texas, ushering fresh truckloads of GIs towards Trinity. The only vehicle left in the court was Joe's jeep, its top up to the rain.

Squalls were raiding parties of lightning and thunder that moved under a half-moon across the valley. There was no sign of any jalopy or pickup truck and it occurred to him that Ben and Roberto might not show. No. It was Joe Pena's night, he thought, and, as if in answer, the rain briefly let up. Joe Pena's Casa Mariana. He walked across the courtyard to the jeep and the drops seemed to part before him like a curtain, as if the world were opening up for him.

Joe got into the jeep. In the dark, on the seat next to him, was a muted yellow glitter with the shape of snakes. Two lightning wands.

"The boy didn't have a chance, Sergeant," Captain Augustino said from the rear seat. "You suckered him. That boy didn't know who he was fighting."

"You saw the fight, Captain?" they looked to Joe like Roberto's wands.

"I didn't need to."

"Lost some money?"

"No, I bet on you."

"You found the medicine men you were looking for?"

"They're very elusive. Found the wands where they were hiding. Magic." Augustino tapped a cigarette on a silver case. It looked like the same case the captain's wife had had and he tapped on it the same way his wife had. Couples did do things the same way, Joe thought. The match flame made the wands start from the seat; otherwise, the flame cast a soft, confidential glow within the jeep, an illusion of golden warmth against the water that laced the windshield. Augustino leaned forward, his sallow face lit by a smile of mutual understanding, his eyes full of something close to admiration. "I'm not going to put the Army in the position of saying that a medicine man can call fire down from the sky. Even if it is attempted sabotage, a medicine man doesn't know any better."

"I have to go look for Mescaleros. Groves' orders." A car with its lights out turned into the courtyard and stopped by the cafe on the other side of the tent. A Plymouth two-door.

"Sergeant, I find amusing something so puny as a boxing match on a night like this, but I suspect the general would call it a dereliction of duty."

Augustino saw the car as well as Joe. Augustino knew the cars from the Hill as well as Joe, and this was Teller's car. There seemed to be only one person inside. Her white hands held the steering wheel.

"You'd have to arrest half the MPs on the site. You're not going to do that."

"True, I do have other matters in mind."

Amazing he could recognize her even by her hands. In the dark, he could see her gray eyes look around the courtyard and stare at the jeep.

"Since these aren't my sticks," Joe said and nodded to the wands, "and since you aren't going to do anything about the fight, I better start looking for those Apaches."

"Good hunting, Sergeant."

Joe started the jeep's engine. He'd leave the courtyard and wait on the highway for her to catch up.

"Just one question," Augustino said, "and then you can go. One question, fair enough?"

"Ask."

"Have you ever seen Harry Gold and Oppenheimer together?"

"You're back on that kick?"

"You know Harry Gold, also known as Heinrich Golodnitsky?"

"Yes."

"And you've never seen him with our Dr Oppenheimer?"

"No."

Something dropped on the wands. Augustino produced a flashlight and shone it on a photograph of Oppy and Joe and Harry Gold. The three of them were standing on the corner outside La Fonda.

"I think I've earned another question, Sergeant. Have you ever seen Harry Gold with Dr Anna Weiss?"

Joe sat back and wondered where a photographer was that day in Santa Fe. The captain dropped a second picture. It was of Joe and Harry Gold and Anna Weiss on the same corner. She wore the silver hairpin she'd bought on the portal. "The tour bus," Joe said. "The dudes with the cameras."

"Yes. We had a pair of buses following him. Considering the fact they couldn't stay near him all the time, we were lucky." A third picture slipped to the seat. In this one, Joe and Gold were alone and Joe's hand was on the newspaper under Gold's arm. "You see, a Soviet courier doesn't just coincidentally bump into Julius Robert Oppenheimer, the Director of a secret US Army project, or Anna Weiss, a member of the project. That's why you said 'No' to me. That's why you lied to me."

"I was talking to Gold. Dr Weiss joined us to talk to me."

"That's all you have to say. You witnessed a meeting between Anna Weiss and a Soviet courier. You did the right thing in telling me."

Joe cut the engine. The rain had a steadier hiss now, a long-drawn, patient sound on the tarmac. Even at a distance and in the dark, he could see two heads rise from hiding in the back of the Plymouth.

"You missed Fuchs," he told Augustino. "Gold met Fuchs at a bridge a few blocks from the plaza. They switched newspapers. I was trying to get the newspaper from Gold, to see what Fuchs gave him."

"I'm not interested in Fuchs."

"He's the man Gold came to see. I saw them meet."

"I'm not interested in Fuchs."

"When you saw Gold on the portal, he was carrying a copy of the Santa Fe newspaper. At the bridge -"

"I'm not interested in Fuchs."

How often does a man see an example of love? A chance taken for him? Even if the danger was so much greater than she knew.

"Leave Dr Weiss alone," he said to Augustino. "That's up to you. It's her or Oppenheimer. You choose."

"I need some time."

As she waited, the windshield fogged before her face. Beads of rain idly coalesced and ran.

Go, Joe thought. Thank you, now go.

Augustino said, "Tonight. You know all the tests on the Hill for the last two days point to an ignominious failure here. We are on the eve of an historic debacle, Sergeant. Billions of dollars wasted. A chance to end the war lost. That's why Julius Oppenheimer is coming apart now, because he knows the bomb won't work. He knows the first question General Groves is going to ask is, who's to blame? Oppenheimer is a master of escaping blame. His wife is a communist, his brother is a communist, his friends and students are communists, but he says he's not a communist and here he is running our most important project. I didn't make up Harry Gold, Sergeant. Harry Gold came here with a message. If Trinity fails, it won't be a failure of American science; it will be the result of Soviet orders. When it fails, as it will tonight, I will do my part. My men are in Santa Fe, waiting to arrest Gold. I will arrest his co-conspirator. That's been my mission all along."

Run, Joe pleaded in his mind. Go!

"No one is going to believe any charge against Anna Weiss."

"No one will defend her. A refugee from a Nazi mental home? A scandal? The wives on the Hill will rise as one to burn her at the stake and Kitty Oppenheimer will throw the first torch. Sergeant, I have some small experience in security, and I can promise you that in the atmosphere following the failure, everyone will be relieved that someone was blamed."

"On what proof?"

"Gold, Weiss, you. Courier, contact, witness. The evidence does point to this sordid triangle."

Finally the Plymouth slipped forward, lights still out, a shadow reluctantly turning in the cafe driveway, the sound of its motion covered by the rain. Joe watched the car's tail-lights, a red blur fading. After ten seconds, an Army sedan with its lights out rolled from behind a motel cabin across the courtyard and followed. It was half a mile to the highway. For the first time, Augustino paid attention to Anna, now that she was gone.

"We assume she is taking those two fugitive medicine men to the border. I've told the officers not to arrest her without my direct order, but you certainly have incriminated her. And you will incriminate her more. You will incriminate her as only a lover can. How did she escape from Germany? While here, did she ever work to impede the development of the bomb, or prevent its application, or influence others to do so?"

"What do you want?"

"Gold, Oppenheimer, you. That would be perfect." Joe took a deep breath. "Let me see the picture again." Augustino picked up the top photographs and played the flashlight on the picture of Oppy standing with Gold and Joe in front of the hotel in Santa Fe. In glossy black and white, Oppy was angry, Gold wistful. With Joe cropped, the two men might have been holding an animated conversation. "It seemed like a chance meeting," Joe said. "I need more than a chance meeting." On to the picture Augustino dropped a white business card that said in raised letters, "Harry Gold". "I want this card in Oppenheimer's pocket - trouser pocket, jacket pocket, it doesn't matter. See, I have proof enough for myself. What I need for others is some minute piece of evidence, some concrete fulcrum of incrimination."

"When you knocked out Gold at the Casa Mariana, you weren't just searching him. You were taking out the card."

"Yes. When I took you out of the stockade, I told you you had a mission. That morning of the hunt when I let you live so you could bring Oppenheimer and General Groves down here, it was so you could carry out that same mission. To deliver that card. Or a card like it. Or evidence like it."

"What about the information you were always asking about?"

"Sergeant, you're much too truculent to be a reliable informer. You do the important things well, though. Oppenheimer and Dr Weiss. So, what is your choice?"

The rain came harder, more at an angle. He thought he could feel her turn south to Mexico.

The card was cheap pasteboard. Frayed at the corners. It fitted neatly into Joe's palm, slipped easily into his pocket. He started the engine again.

"Back to the tower?" he asked Augustino.

"To our patriotic duty."

29

At 10 pm an anti-sabotage light was hung on the first landing of the tower for spotlights six miles away to train on. The weak beams that penetrated the rain lit an open jeep in which Eberly sat, drenched, a submachine-gun across his knees. Jaworski and Foote, in soaked clothes and dripping hats, had opened the door to the standing crate called the "privy" at the tower base. Oppy watched them, a damp, dead cigarette in his mouth, his porkpie hat wet through. The door of an Army sedan opened as Joe and Augustine drove up in the jeep.

"Get in here, Sergeant," Groves shouted. "Finished with the Apaches?"

"Yes, sir."

"Looks like you found them." Groves glanced at the tape on his brow as Joe slipped on to the rear seat with him. The car was small and steamy. The general's uniform seemed to be turning into towelling. "Yes, sir."

"The problem isn't wild Indians." Groves rubbed condensation off the window to see the three men at the box. "Dr Oppenheimer is, you understand, a highly-strung individual. Anything can set him off now. He has to decide whether to call off the test or not and all the crackpots at the base camp want him to. That's why I brought him here, so he could make a calm, rational decision."

Joe looked through the window at Captain Augustino, who had stayed in the jeep. Was this the moment to say, "General, your head of security wants to arrest your project director as Joe Stalin's secret agent?" No. Joe had figured it out. Augustine's whole plan depended on the test. There wasn't a chance in hell of the test being held in this weather. All he had to do tonight was stall. Tomorrow, when people were sane and dry, Joe would nail the captains's ass to a board.

"It is raining, sir."

"It will clear. Dr Oppenheimer doesn't need any more scientific cross-chatter, he needs some sensible advice. Fermi was talking about the end of the earth and we have GIs running all the way to Tularosa. Talk to him, he listens to you. Calm him down. Keep him away from pessimists."

As Joe left the car, the steel tower turned chalk white. Faded. Two seconds later, thunder rocked the valley floor. Close, he thought.

"All summer and all spring it hasn't rained." Oppy raised his face to the drops. "Here we are, four hours from Zero Hour, and it's pouring."

Inside the "privy", wet electrical tape unravelled in black curlicues from coaxial cable. While Jaworski cut loose strands, Foote wound the cable with fresh tape.

"Snakes and sunstroke we anticipated in the desert," Foote said. "Humidity took us by surprise."

"How about lightning?" Joe asked.

"I told you how lightning knocked out a rehearsal." Jaworski snipped away. "A power surge from lightning certainly could set off the high explosive."

"Nonsense." Foote wiped the tape with Kleenex. "The tower is grounded."

"Shut up!" Oppy said. "The bomb is a dud. You know and I know it, everybody knows it but the general. How can I think with you two nits picking at each other?"

The ladder leaned against the first landing of the tower. Oppy climbed the ladder and rose up the tower rungs towards the shed. Once past the second landing and the faint beams of the spotlights, he vanished into the dark. Foote silently finished the taping and checked that the cable firing switch was in the open position before shutting the "privy" door and padlocking it. Groves worked his way from the sedan while Augustino sauntered over from the jeep.

"Follow him," Groves told Joe.

"Sir, if I might suggest," the captain said, "why don't I assign Sergeant Pena to the security of the bomb itself. That will give the sergeant a plausible reason to be with Dr Oppenheimer."

"Whatever, get up there," Groves ordered.

Rain pulled at Joe and the cold steps swayed with him. At 100 feet, the tower seemed to be on a fixed tilt. The shed's sixty-watt bulb illuminated a floor of pulleys, cables and ropes, striped walls of corrugated steel and the bomb in its cradle. Since he had seen it last, the bomb had lost its lunar smoothness because two exterior detonator boxes had been bolted on. Cables connected the sphere's sixty-four detonator ports to the boxes, and out of the boxes' switchboard backs an equal number of cables hung down to the firing unit, a padlocked aluminium case between the cradle's feet. Out on the open platform, Oppy clung to the hoist with one hand and to his hat with the other. "You look like fucking Ahab in the rigging." Joe stepped out with him.

From the platform it appeared that lightning was striking everywhere, as if the low clouds, black as smoke from a fire, were launching a climactic attack. In every arc of the horizon a bolt was hitting. One report of thunder overlapped and muffled another. A mile off, the silver barrage balloon that had been earthbound before was now lifted by winds. The balloon was anchored to a jeep, which dangled below, only its rear wheels touching the ground. The two men were trying to save the jeep, but the lightning built static charges that ran down the steel cable and exploded like cannon under the bouncing wheels.

"General Groves has dismissed the meteorologists." Oppy wiped the rain from his face and grinned. "The general is the new weatherman of the Trinity shot."

"It's your decision, though, isn't it?"

"That's what the general tells me." Oppy twisted his eyes away from Joe. He bent his head and fumbled, and it wasn't until Joe saw the small flare that he realized Oppy was lighting a cigarette. "Thanks for coming back."

"Call it off," Joe watched the two men running from the jeep.

"It's not as if we could just do it tomorrow. To get to the same pitch, to ready the men and the equipment again would take a week at least."

"You said this bomb was a dud. You said you wanted an extra week, anyway."

"Like Ahab?" Oppy laughed.

"That's what you looked like."

"I did sail when I was a boy, you know. I had my own sloop and sailed all around Long Island." Oppy stared at the clouds. "This was the sort of weather I liked most, in fact. I'd run with the wind and go out on the tide race just to fight my way back in, one reach after another. There was one inlet in particular you had to clear. The riptide would curl around and try to take you into the breakers. It was the first time I knew I had courage. First time I proved it." Oppy cupped his cigarette from the rain. "It would take hours to clear the inlet and reach the bay. You see, it was the struggle that was important, the patience and the strength to find the right angle, Joe, the right piece of water and the right wind. As we're doing right now. Struggling."

A low, unbroken belly of clouds stretched from one end of the valley to the other, and the clouds seemed to be descending by their very weight, bringing a second, thicker night. Joe could see pinpoints of light on the ground where another party had abandoned another jeep and were running with flashlights.

"Did I ever tell you how I got out of Bataan?" Joe asked.

"No. You never told anyone. I thought it was a point of honour."

"No honour involved. It's a sailing story."

"On Bataan?"

"I got shot in the ass and in the back, then I caught some kind of jungle crud and a fever." Joe lit a cigarette from Oppy's.

"I had five Filipino scouts and we had a field piece we moved from hill to hill, holding the line though there wasn't any line to hold any more. When I got the fever and went off my head, the Filipinos ditched the piece to carry me. Problem was, there wasn't any place to take me. The last barges were gone to Corregidor and we were too far from the depots at Mariveles or Manila. They said the Japs would shoot me because I was too big. I knew the Japs would shoot me because I couldn't walk. So the scouts took me down to the water; there was no place left to go. They stole a fishing boat and put me in. I could just sit up and I was still trying to give orders. Like an officer, you know. It was low tide. I could see the shark net sticking out of the water, so I knew there were mines right below the surface of the water. There were mines off all the beaches." Joe let his voice drop the way Oppy did to make a listener lean forward. Oppy hunched closer. "As soon as it was dark, the Filipinos pushed me and the boat out. No motor, no oars. I couldn't believe my own scouts wanted to kill me, but that's what they seemed to be doing. I mean, if they wanted to kill me, I couldn't stop them. They could have brought my head in to the Japs and made some money. I tried to paddle back to shore because I could see ammo dumps going up in Mariveles, fuel dumps going up in Manila, and Long Toms, the 155mms, answering from Corregidor, the whole thing reflected in the water like the end of the world and I wanted to get back into it. Have you ever had dysentery? You pass out and you shit blood. I couldn't sit up any longer, no matter what was happening. I laid back in my own shit and piss in a drifting boat under the fireworks. There were holes in the shark net from when the Japs landed. We'd caught the Japs in the water when they first came and the sharks followed them and finished them off. Once the sharks were in, they didn't leave. They'd bump into the boat, give it a spin. It was a leaky boat. Sharks have an amazing sense of smell. I raised my head and there must have been fifty sharks around the boat, slowly swimming in a big circle. I did see the humour in the situation. I mean, how many New Mexico Indians get eaten by sharks? I kept thinking, if only I had a paddle, if only I had a gun, if only I had wings. If only I could kill myself, I thought, but I didn't have the strength to hold my breath. The main thing was to keep thinking, I told myself. Keep struggling. The problem was, every time I stirred so did the sharks. Those fucking Filipinos, they should have told me."

Joe stopped talking to watch the beam of a searchlight swing above the West-10,000 bunker. The beam no sooner found the erratic, diagonal ascent of a weather balloon than the target vanished into clouds.

"Told you what?" Oppy asked.

"To stop struggling. During the night, the tide came in and lifted the boat over the shark nets and when the tide went out I went with it into the bay. A gunboat picked me up and put me on a sub and that's how I escaped heroically from Bataan, by finding out that fighting the tide may not be a test of courage so much as a sign of stupidity, and that's the last time I went sailing." Joe held up a damp butt. "Son of a bitch went out."

"You're suggesting that fighting the rain is like fighting the tide? You're suggesting I'm stupid?"

"Was I?"

"I just can't decide how subtle you are."

"Well." Joe flipped the butt and watched the rain snatch it into the dark. "If the dud works, I think you got the right angle and the right wind now to carry radiation all the way to Amarillo."

Oppy turned away to lean on the rail. His clothes snapped around him like a sheet. At first, Joe thought Oppy was having a pneumonic spasm, but when Oppy turned back to Joe, he was laughing. Either tears or rain were running down his cheeks.

"You're right. I'll call it off." He wiped his face with his sleeve. "Let's go down together."

"My orders are to babysit the beast. You go."

After Oppy climbed down and drove away with Groves towards South-10,000, Joe went into the shed, made a seat for himself out of the ropes on the floor and lit a dry cigarette.

Half the shed was taken up by the bomb, its loops of cables, its cradle. The bomb that was dropped on Japan would be stuffed into a teardrop casing with tail fins just narrow enough to slip through the bay of a B-29. Otherwise, it would be the twin of this one. Same dull gray shell. Interlocking, inward-aiming lenses of explosive. Warm and silvery Dragon's heart. From the firing unit emerged the single coaxial cable that dropped through the floor and down the tower to the open switch in the "privy", a switch that wouldn't be closed for a week now if Oppy's estimate was correct. The FM receiver still mixed shelter communications with the Voice of America; Paul Robeson intoned "The Volga Boatmen" while someone read a checklist of gamma meters. A week until another test, Joe thought. He'd have Augustine's ass in a sling before then. He'd drive Groves back to the Albuquerque Hilton himself tomorrow and fill him in on the captain. Augustino could deny everything but the captain would be nailed by the same item he wanted to nail Oppy with.

At midnight, the word came over the radio receiver.

"Zero Hour has been postponed. Due to weather conditions, Zero Hour has been postponed from 0200 to 0400. Zero Hour is now 0400."

Two hours? Joe asked himself. Oppy only postponed the shot from 2 am to 4 am?

Well, fuck, the weather wasn't going to improve, Joe thought. Wind hit the tower broadside. The lamp swayed and the bomb in its cradle seemed to shuffle like a man on short legs.

30

TRINITY

While the rainstorm continued, the shot was postponed another hour, from 0400 to 0500. Through the platform binoculars Joe watched a heavy man in uniform and a gaunt man in civvies pacing in the headlights of a sedan outside the South-10,000 shelter. Not only was the rain as bad as before, winds had built. Joe knew Groves didn't take Oppy inside because everyone else wanted the test scrubbed. They made an interesting couple, Joe thought, out in the rain by themselves, circling a golden pool of water, almost male and female the way Groves patiently tended Oppy's nervousness.

At 0400, a bolt exploded by the tower. Joe held on to the platform hoist and remembered what Jaworski had said about the 5,000 lbs of high explosive in the shed, but the lightning blew nothing except the target light on the first landing of the tower. Joe climbed down the steps with another bulb. The searchlights trained on the target light half-blinded him and it took him a moment to notice that Eberly had climbed up the ladder from the ground. Beads of water ran from his poncho, nose and Adam's apple and from the barrel of his submachine-gun.

"I thought you ought to know, Chief. There's a regular field radio by the 'privy'. Captain Augustino called and told me to go to your jeep and make sure there were a couple of yellow sticks in there. And he told me to shoot you if you tried to leave the tower. I don't get it. If he thinks you're a saboteur, why are you guarding the bomb? If you're the guard, why should I guard you? This is the Army system?"

"The Augustino system." If Joe was dead, he was an arsonist, by the lightning wands in the jeep. A spy, by Harry Gold's card in his pocket. "Don't shoot, I'll be right back."

Joe descended the ladder and ran to the jeep. The photos were gone, but the wands still lay on the front seat. He grabbed them and returned to the ladder.

Eberly had seen everything. As Joe reached the landing, Eberly said, "I hate the Army."

From the platform, Joe saw what he expected. Oppy and Groves were no longer outside South-10,000. Headlights approached on the tarmac road. In the shed the radio said the shot had been postponed again to 0530. Joe hid the wands behind loose ropes.

"Five thirty in the morning is the best possible time." Oppy's jacket hung like a sopping rag, but he strutted within the confines of the shed and around the bomb with a new, jaunty confidence.

"Captain Augustino return with you?" Joe asked.

"He's down with Groves, yes. See, at 5.30 we have the dark that's necessary to photograph the blast accurately and then quickly we have the daylight to bring in the tank and perform the rest of the recovery process."

"You mean, 5.30 is the last possible moment you can run your goddamn test if the weather clears."

"Also, the best moment. We should have thought of it before."

Oppy stopped to cough as if he were emptying his lungs. A paperback book stuck out of his jacket pocket, a collection of poems, Les Fleurs du Mai. If Joe wanted to plant Gold's card, that was the pocket.

"That's your pose for the countdown, a carefree appreciator of poetry?" Joe asked.

"You know your Baudelaire? It's perfect." Oppy opened the door to the platform. "I am like the king of a rainy country, wealthy but helpless, young and ripe with death." "It's pouring. Your cables are going to short, your cameras won't see shit and the observer plane won't even find the tower."

"That's what everyone else says."

"Then call it off."

"The general says the weather will clear. The general wants optimum conditions -"

"The general needs Trinity. The general needs Trinity because he's never seen combat and the Army is going to dump him back to colonel if he doesn't produce a bomb."

"I say it will clear."

"You say it will clear? Now you're the weatherman?"

"I'm a scientist. We should hold out until the last -"

"You're going to tell me about your fucking sailboat again? We're a hundred feet up with a bomb in the rain, we're not reliving your happy childhood."

Oppy leaned against the door and turned to Joe.

"The dude from Riverside Drive? Do you remember him?"

"Yeah."

"The one you turned from Jewboy into cowboy? But the world demands success on a somewhat grander scale, Joe. I need Trinity. I need to end the war before it ends without me. That's why we'll try tonight."

"Augustino wants you to try tonight."

"The captain was the one who suggested we return to the tower. Groves wanted to get me away from the crowd." Oppy crossed the shed and rested his hand on the bomb. "I wanted to see it again."

"Augustino says it's a dud and you're Stalin's master spy. He's taking you straight from Trinity to jail. Call the shot off and I'll take care of Augustino for you."

Oppy began pacing again.

"If it works, he can't touch me."

"You don't have to take the chance."

Oppy stumbled over ropes. Two yellow wands shot across the floor, glittering on the oak planks. Their appearance was so startling they might have been a pair of golden serpents that had climbed from the tower.

"These are from that crazy medicine man. Augustino said you were involved."

"Augustino brought them."

Slowly, as if he were approaching something alive, Oppy stooped and picked up the wands. "The captain hasn't even been up here to the shed. I can't believe it was you."

"You don't understand. And if you weren't so damned clumsy -"

"There is something rich and laughable about you working with me and Harvey and Fermi at the same time you were working with a medicine man." The wands sparkled and twisted in the light of the bulb as he raised them. "Chief Joe Pena. What an incredibly stupid time for you to turn into an Indian."

"Give them back."

"Do you really think I'm going to let the effort of all these good men be endangered by a… tribe?"

"It's not just you, it's Anna, too. Augustino knows she quit the Hill."

"Of course. I told him. The last thing I needed was a certified lunatic threatening the success of the project and whoring with a soldier."

As Oppy tried to slip by, Joe hit him backhanded. It was like slapping a fly. Oppy landed, bent double, on the ropes. The wands flew on to cables, his hat and paperback under the bomb cradle.

"I'm sorry," Joe said.

Oppy clutched his chest and gasped rheumatically for air. Some men go through their lifetimes without being hit, it occurred to Joe. They say anything, do anything, and never expect a fist. But they're willing to blow up the world. "I'm really sorry," Joe said.

He checked the wands. The yellow, micaceous skin was not even chipped. He retrieved Oppy's hat and book from under the bomb cradle, then knelt by Oppy and gently placed the book back in Oppy's jacket.

"You bastard." Oppy looked at the .45 on Joe's belt. "What are you going to do next, shoot me?"

"Listen," Joe said. "Forget the wands. You don't want to tell Groves there is some crazy Indian up here or he'll send up Eberly with a submachine-gun and what'll happen to your precious bomb then?" He pulled Oppy to his feet. He put the hat on Oppy's head and steered him through the door. "Most of all, don't say anything to Augustino. In an hour, the test will be called off and I'll explain everything then."

"I thought you were my friend. Captain Augustino warned me, but I trusted you."

Lightning hit a nearby bunker. Oppy rocked unsteadily on his feet.

"It's Fuchs," Joe said. Through the thunder he doubted that Oppy had heard him. It didn't matter.

As Joe helped Oppy get started down the steps, he could see Groves standing anxiously at the base of the tower. When Oppy reached the ground, he shook off whatever the general was saying and shuffled towards the sedan. As soon as the two men were in the back, the car set off towards South-10,000. The only figure Joe saw among the two jeeps left was Eberly, trudging miserably in the mud, keeping his vigil. Joe returned to the shed and opened his palm. "Harry Gold" said black letters. Putting the book in Oppy's jacket pocket, he'd considered, just for a moment, planting the card. Such moments were short. He laid it on the FM receiver because his trousers were damp from the rain. Another bolt hit close by. The bulb in the shed flashed blue and died.

Rain increased to triple time. Waltz time, Joe thought. Inside the shed it was dark, but all around the tower lightning glowed like the stems of flowers in a black garden. Joe used spare rope from the floor to tie the yellow wands, serpent heads up, to the detonator boxes. The Voice of America had briefly signed off and for the first time the site radio could communicate on a clear frequency. Base Camp asked if anyone had any information about a missing mess tent. Early breakfast was being served and the French toast and powdered eggs were getting wet. Joe felt unexpected pleasure seeing the wands stand on their makeshift altar. As lightning closed in on the tower, the shed seemed to rise and plunge into each crash. The fierce, brief glow at the door made the sphere levitate and the wands jump, bright as gold, to life. The shadow on the wall was a head of coiled hair wearing a crown of wands. A dancer's shadow, kicking up thunder.

Everyone insisted he was Indian. So, why not? Put some finery on the atom, a brace of electric snakes, and let it dance on 100-foot legs. Dance in the desert and shake the earth. He wished he knew the right prayer or song. There had to be some music for this, or something he could improvise. Good music and good religion, he assumed, were both born in times of stress. Too bad Roberto didn't make it up the tower.

It was about seven hours to the Mexican border, staying under the speed limit. Traffic between El Paso and Juarez was an all-night affair. Anna would be putting Ben and Roberto on the trolley for Juarez about now. Or driving them across. It would be safer for her to stay over the border herself. He could picture her in a scrape.

"Thirty minutes to zero hours," the receiver said. He strapped on his belt and .45 and decided, orders or no orders, it was time to go. "This desert's jumpin'," he hummed. Lightning hit east of the tower, but the flash at the door was blocked by a man in a poncho.

"I didn't hear you come up," Joe shouted over the thunder. "Not in this storm, Sergeant." Captain Augustino squeezed into the shed as it went black again. "I thought you went with Oppy and General Groves."

"Private Eberly drove them." Water dripped as Augustino pulled the poncho's cowl from his head. "You gave Oppenheimer the card, Sergeant?"

The captain hadn't brought the submachine-gun, Joe thought. He would have a regular issue .45 under the poncho. "There's not going to be any Trinity, sir."

"Dr Oppenheimer thinks there is. General Groves thinks there is. I think there is. You didn't give him the card?"

"In his jacket." Joe shifted to block the captain's view of the receiver and the card lying on it even though the shed was dark. "The pocket with the book."

White light flooded through the open door, filling the shed like a well, touching bomb, cradle, wands, cable with a dizzying clarity, and in that shaft of light outside Joe saw not a drop. It wasn't raining any more. As the light faded into sound, the wings of Augustino's poncho spread. Joe drew his .45 but all Augustino held was a cigarette lighter. The captain brought the lighter to the bomb so that the flame reflected dully in the steel sphere and glittered on the wands. He pulled the wands free of the ropes to examine them.

"Magic, Sergeant?"

"I'm down to that, sir."

"We're all down to that. I have just seen scientists literally on their knees in the bunkers praying to this tower. Magic is in the air tonight." He snapped the wands in half. "Why take chances? See, Sergeant, I'm willing to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Medicine men, physicists, they're all the same to me. I think that as a race we only move from cave to bigger cave, from fire to bigger fire. And, outside, always something to frighten us. By the way, you may not have noticed, but the weather has changed."

Thunder became a receding tide. The last bolts were perfunctory and muffled. On the floor, the broken wands looked dark, dead. "You never gave him Harry Gold's card," Augustino said.

"I saw it."

"That's right, sir." Joe took the damp card from the receiver. He prodded the captain out on to the platform. "Thirty minutes to go. We'll just drive about six miles out and hide behind a camera bunker until the test is over, sir."

Rain had stopped and the wind had shifted. A half-moon sailed from cloud to cloud, and the cloud shadows flowered across the valley. A searchlight reached six miles from West-10,000, but the target light was out again, so the beam was wide of the tower. Suddenly, the receiver in the shed sang, "Oh, say, can you see?" The question echoed from every direction because the Voice of America was signing back on "… by the dawn's early light" reverberated over cactus and staked cables, to volcanic cones on one side, to the foothills of the Oscura and back, echoes overlapping in the night "… what so proudly we hail." Joe laughed. At the top of the steps, Augustino smiled and shouted to be heard.

"We can still put the card on Oppenheimer." He pocketed his lighter and jumped down a few rungs. "You can still save Anna Weiss. Last chance."

"Keep your hands in sight, sir."

Augustino lifted his hand to show a nickel-plated .22, just the sort of shiny little item an officer would carry, Joe thought.

"While you were boxing, Sergeant, I found your uniform and firearm and I emptied your clip."

Joe aimed at the captain's eyes and squeezed the trigger. The .45's hammer slapped an empty breach.

Augustino went on, undisturbed, "Anna Weiss is at the border right now. A phone call can still catch her. You never should have touched Mrs Augustino."

Augustino fired. A head shot. Joe's hair whipped to one side, spewing blood. A heart shot. Joe turned, as if he'd thought to dodge, and dropped.

The first shot had dug across the cranium and mass of hair. The second penetrated the heavy muscle of the chest and scored the ribs. As he fell to the platform, Joe reached and took Augustino by the throat, and Augustino fired wide.

"Oh, say does that star…" swelled across the flat as headlights arrived at the base of the tower. It was the arming party jeep. Engine and headlights stayed on while the men jumped out. There was a hurried rattle of a lock, a creak of door hinges. As Augustino pressed the bright muzzle of the .22 against Joe's forehead, Joe pushed the captain off the steps so that he hung straight out from the platform in Joe's grip, 100 feet above the ground.

"Arming lead connected." Jaworski spoke into the field radio at the "privy". From the speakers in the dark flowered a tremulous"… home of the brave. Good morning and buenos dias."

With his free hand, Augustino held on to Joe's wrist to keep from being strangled. I could break the captain's neck, Joe thought.

"… Latin American broadcast from Station KCBA in Delano, Call -" vanished in a squawk of dials. Over the loudspeakers and from the receiver in the shed, Harvey answered, "Understand arming lead connected. Check." "Firing switch closed and ready," Jaworski said. "Firing switch closed and ready," Harvey answered from the receiver and speakers. Both Joe and Augustino were quiet. It was a strange pause on the edge of the platform, Joe thought, like two murderers hushing themselves for midwives in the next room.

"There's another jeep here," Jaworski said.

"Everyone's accounted for," Harvey answered.

"Joe?" Jaworski asked.

"Augustino called in ten minutes ago and said he took him out," Harvey said.

"Then why is there a jeep here?" Jaworski demanded.

"There's no one there." A new voice came on the receiver. Oppy spoke more in a wheeze. " the firing switch is closed, leave as fast as you can. If you have a breakdown, you're goingto have to run.

"Then we'll take the other jeep, too," Jaworski said. "No." Oppy took a moment to decide, "Leave the jeep. Lock up and leave."

A door swung shut. A hasp snapped closed. An engine revved, reversed and spun in the dirt back to the road and, as if holding one communal breath, strained and gained speed towards South-10,000.

Alone, alone, now all alone, Joe thought, the two of us. "Give me the card," Augustino said. "The gun." Joe reached with his other hand. Augustino swung himself in to the steps. As the captain fired, Joe knocked the barrel up. Both shots went high and into the night. Augustino forced the barrel down to Joe's head again, but the gun clicked when he tried to fire. It was a small automatic and only carried five rounds. It was like ending a long dialogue with a stutter.

Augustino dropped the gun and clawed at Joe's hand, breaking free and twisting himself not towards, but away from the tower. He stared at Joe with eyes like lamps. The captain hung in the air so long without support, Joe thought that he might fly. Then he fell, turning over once, twice, before he hit the ground.

While Joe climbed down with one numb arm, the Voice of America played "The Nutcracker Suite". The jeep was where Jaworski had left it. He still had time to drive clear, but as soon as anyone saw new headlights at the tower, the test would stop. Joe worked on what he'd say to General Groves. More searchlights burned from West-10,000. Excuse me, sir, for the set back to the war effort, the loss of millions of dollars, the death of the captain. It was hard to believe no one saw him decending the tower,and by way of explanation the pilot of a B-29 observer plane broke into the Tchaikovsky to say he couldn't find Trinity at all. Conversations about guages and counters went back and forth in the dark across the valley, like the runinations of a god. Anna had to be safely in Juarez, accepting the fact that safety in Juarez was a relative matter. On the final landing of the tower, Joe stopped and felt inside his shirt for the papers from Pollack. The Casa Mariana was there, folded, tucked away. He was more in shock than pain. The head wound had stopped bleeding and became a mat of damp hair. He could imagine the reaction he'd get when arrived at the bunker. Going down the wooden ladder to the ground, Joe heard a new sound, like a finger stroking the teeth of a comb. Not the lost B-29. Once a year, rains brought a generation of toads. Waking in their desert burrows, gathering around temporary pools, the amphibians sang and mated and spent their whole conscious lives in a single night. This was the night.

Joe slipped painfully behind the steering wheel of the jeep and with his left hand reached for the key. It wasn't there. It couldn't be gone; orders were for keys to be in the ignition at all times. He felt around the floor. Under the seat. Joe got out of the jeep and felt on the ground. No key.

Joe had been the last man to drive the jeep. Augustino had been the last man in it. The captain lay, arms and legs outspread, face tightly pressed against the ground, as if turning from the glow of lights. He pulled out the dead man's pockets. No key.

The field radio. Joe went to the "privy", the heavy crate that held the firing switch. The radio was gone. Of course. Jaworski was an old soldier, he knew to take the radio with him, just in case.

The crate's door was padlocked. In the shadows of the tower legs, Joe found no loose bars or hammers. Coaxial cable ran out of the top of the eight-foot crate and up the tower, and from the bottom as a buried conduit. In either case, out of reach. Leaning on the crate and trying to push it over, Joe was surprised to learn how weak he was.

How big the valley is, he thought, as he staggered back from the tower. Mountains stooping to the plain. Far-off electric echoes over the music of toads. He started to run.

32

The wide excavation road ran straight to South-10,000. Yucca lined the shoulders.

There was a perfume to the air, the scent of cactus flowers, the stir of moths and bats.

The bullets must have been .22 shorts, he thought. Running had started the bleeding again; he was aware because of the cold. Loudspeakers barked. Mainly, he heard his heart and lungs and the sound of his shoes on tarmac.

He was better than a mile from the tower now.

A Very light hung like a new star. There was a short siren. Five minutes.

He tried to remember what Jaworski had said about hiding, about depressions and the flash. But he was too close and he could see nothing through the brush except baked, flat earth. And toads, a soft, resolute migration of them, everywhere he looked.

It was unfair. A whole year encased in hard dirt, waiting for it to be mud, to squirm freely to the surface, to see the moon and sing in passionate chorus at the rim of a brief, desert pool, only to be fried by General Groves.

The Voice of America wandered in and out, like a spectator that really couldn't keep its mind on the event at hand. Now it was playing "Sentimental Journey".

A hare darted in front of Joe, looked back in alarm and dashed off at an angle.

There was a long warning siren for everyone to go to the trenches behind the shelters and the base camp. Only a few men, including Harvey and Oppy, would actually stay in South-10,000. Three minutes.

Never knew my heart could be so yearny, Joe confessed. More and more the toads were underfoot, singly and in groups crossing the roads, stopping to sing. Sometimes the whole ground seemed to move. One hopped before Joe and he saw Groves plopping on his belly, toes to the tower. The final warning rocket sputtered overhead. In fact, the song of the toads was a powerful, sonorous trembling. Cello and flute at the same time.

"Do not look at the blast," Harvey warned. "When you do look, use your red goggles or a welder's glass." A last warning gong beat frantically.

The Voice of America slipped into classical strings, rousing sleepy Latins everywhere. Mexicans, Peruvians, Tierra del Fuegans lifted their Polaroid all-purpose red goggles and looked north. "Ten." Cirrus and stratocirrus fluttered in the dark. Rattlers stiffened to attention. "Nine." He glanced back and the tower floated in a cloud, with impatient, circling beads of light.

"Eight."

He felt Oppy sway, eyes on a door that would safely catch the image from a periscope. Breath held, a burnt, unravelling string through the heart. Fuchs watching from a hill twenty miles away, the only man there standing for the blast. Harry Gold strolling on the Alameda, patiently looking south.

"Seven."

Dolores had left pots in the fire. A gust worked between cedar coals and clay, shooting sparks around Rudy. There was a bootlegger's truck in the corral, and rabbits packed like snow in the hutch.

"Six."

Billy and Al put their hats on their hearts, not noticing that from dark kivas everywhere, figures stole to the surface.

"Five."

The car crashed the gate and the band rushed for the parade ground, striped clowns with trombones, saxophones, clarinets. In Harlem's Palais des Sport, the French heavyweight swooped to the rafters, his satin shorts as bright as a macaw.

"Four."

A piano toured the Rio Grande, its lid raised as a black sail.

"Three."

Thinking Woman wore an embroidered Mexican dress with her turquoise necklace and silver pin, finally enough colour, Anna said, for her.

"Two."

It was a slit trench for coaxial cable that had never been filled in. Maddened by the nearness of their destination, a thousand toads scaled the high shoulder of earth and abandoned stakes, and at the crest sang with pulsing throats. Those on the other side slid deliriously into the miracle of water.

"One."

Last step. Last heartbeat. Last breath.

"NOW!"

From the eye of the new sun, a man diving.