Stallion Gate (30 page)

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

“I’ve got to go.” It was 9:00. 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 maître 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?”

“Remember, if anyone asks, say I was off to hunt Apaches.”

“You’re serious about me?”

“People are going to be lining up to grease the palm of Ray
mond
the maître 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 when it does,” Ray insisted.

The tent stood in the 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 toward Trinity. The only vehicle left in the court was Joe’s jeep, its top up to the rain. Raiding parties of lightning and thunder moved under a half-moon. There was no sign of any jalopy or pickup truck, and it occurred to Joe that Ben and Roberto might not show. No. It was Joe Peña’s night, he thought, and as if in answer, the rain briefly let up.
Joe Peña’s Casa Mañana
. As he walked across the courtyard to the jeep, the drops seemed to part like a curtain, as if the world were opening up just for him.

Joe dropped 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 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?”

“No. I 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. The match flame made the wands glow from the seat; otherwise, the flame cast a soft, confidential light 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. He 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.”

It was amazing that 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. She was back. The realization kept spreading through him like a breath, as if he’d been dead since she’d left and now he was alive again.

“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 still on that kick?”

“You know Harry Gold, also known as Heinrich Go-lodnitsky?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve never seen him with our Dr. Oppenheimer?”

“No.”

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

“I think I’ve earned another question, Sergeant. Have you ever seen Harry Gold with Dr. Weiss?”

Joe sat back and wondered where the photographer could have been that day in Santa Fe. The captain dropped a second picture. It was of Joe and Harry Gold and Anna 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 American 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-out sound on the macadam. 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.”

The windshield fogged before Anna’s 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 a 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 at 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 a 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 coconspirator. 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 Oppen-heimer 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’s last sight was the car’s taillights, a red blur fading. After ten seconds an Army sedan with its lights out rolled from behind a motel cabin and across the courtyard and followed. It was half a mile to the highway.

For the first time, now that she was gone, Augustino paid attention to Anna.

“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.” Onto the picture Augustino dropped a white business card that said in raised letters, “Harry Gold.” “I want this card in Oppenheimer’s pocket—pants 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 Gold out at the Casa Mañana, you weren’t just searching him. You were taking his 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 could almost feel her turn south to Mexico.

The card was cheap pasteboard, frayed at the corners. It fit 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.”

By 10:00
P.M.
, an antisabotage 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 cigarette in his mouth, his porkpie hat wet through. The door of an army sedan opened as Joe and Augustino drove up in the jeep.

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

“Yes, sir.”

“Looks like you found some.” Groves glanced at the tape on Joe’s brow as Joe slipped onto the rear seat. The car was small and steamy, and the general’s uniform seemed to be turning into toweling.

“Yes, sir.”

“The problem isn’t wild Indians.” Groves rubbed condensation off the window to watch the three men at
the box. “Dr. Oppenheimer is, you understand, a highstrung 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 a Red spy?” No. Augustino’s whole plan depended on a test. There wasn’t a chance in hell of a test being held in this weather. All he had to do tonight was stall. Tomorrow, when people were sane and dry, he would nail the captain’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 world, 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 to chalk-white. It faded, and two seconds later, thunder rocked the valley floor. Close.

“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 unraveled 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 it 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 it and rose up the runs toward 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.