Stallion Gate

  "No, sir, but I understand it's called a Texas heart shot."

  Augustino laughed appreciatively.

  "Well, Mrs Augustino's father shot a Mexican in the ass once and chased him ten miles up the Bravo before he nailed him."

  "In Brownsville."

  "Outside Brownsville by the time he caught him. Maybe it was a New Mexican. You see, Sergeant, our attitude is that New Mexicans are basically Mexicans on the wrong side of the border. Also, it is an idea dear to our hearts that Indians are basically red niggers. That's why they lust so after white women, that's what proves the point. Anyway, I'm a much better shot that Mrs Augustino's father."

  Daybreak was when deer and elk were most active. They left the weapons carrier by the road and trudged up a sloping meadow. A pre-dawn blue filled the Valle, and in the distance the higher peaks of the Jemez were flagged with mist. Joe had the Winchester and a pocket of rounds; the captain had chosen the Marlin. In spite of himself, the crisp air and snow excited Joe; it was a perfect morning for a hunt. Ridiculous as it seemed, he saw an identical eagerness in Augustino. They moved quickly upwind to the black edge of the tree line and crouched. Elk would be more likely to cross the meadow; mule deer were louder moving through trees. Joe worked his way along the tree line, further upwind, and Augustino followed as naturally as if he'd hired Joe as a guide. They stopped where the trees formed a spit on the edge of the meadow, commanding 100 degrees of white slope and another tree line facing them only sixty yards away. Their disadvantage was that they'd be in sunlight before the opposite tree line was, but they couldn't have everything. The Winchester's sights were set for 150 yards. He'd aim low on deer coming out of the trees. He might hit nothing; he'd never fired the rifle before and didn't know whether it pulled right, left, up or down.

  Augustino pointed to faint dimples in the snow at their feet. Joe knelt and blew the loose flakes away, exposing impressions the shape of dragging double crescents.

  "Heifer?" Augustino mouthed.

  "Elk," Joe answered. No more than an hour before.

  Not more than an hour before. This was the best part of hunting, the passing of time. Joe had probably been in this same spit of spruce and pines, hunting, twenty years ago with his father.

  When solid forms were so faint, it was easy to see into memory. It was a quality of the hour, neither night nor day, that lent every second its weight. Eyes seemed to grow huge and adept even as they were fooled by the nod of a branch. An owl seesawed through the trees. Joe didn't care if deer or light never came. If ever someone was going to shoot him through the head, this was as good a time as any. The captain watched the meadow with the same concentration. Of course, mice, shrews and rats ran back and forth all night, and hunters only saw their snow tracks in the morning. At daybreak, a man could only see well enough to shoot something his own size. Shadows clung, half-born. When what was real and what was shadow was uncertain, a man could meet his opposite, Joe thought. Like this white racist officer from Brownsville, Texas. He and Joe could huddle under the same spruce bough.

  "Sergeant, tell me," the captain whispered, "have you ever thought of this as the Century of the Jew?"

  "No."

  "Marx was a Jew, you know. The worldwide communist movement started with Marx. The Russian Revolution was largely led by Jews, such as Trotsky. Every country on earth, even China, is fighting for its soul against Marx."

  "Even China?"

  "History unfolds like a wonderful and terrible adventure. There are great rhythms and cycles. Each century is different."

  "What was the last century?"

  "That was the Century of the White Man."

  Joe couldn't figure what this had to do with Mrs Augustino. "Sure wasn't the Century of the Red Man."

  "No. But now we're all in the same boat, Sergeant. First, Marx overthrows traditional authority and religion, then another Jew destroys every absolute in the laws of science."

  "Really?"

  "Science was built on absolute laws until Einstein's theories of relativity and quantum physics, Marx and Einstein. Now there's nothing an intelligent man can believe in, either in religion or science. The very word 'atom' in Greek means that which is indivisible, did you know that?"

  "No, sir."

  Captain Augustino stirred beside Joe. "Which does not mean that they haven't suffered. When I hear of the suffering of the Jews under Hitler, I wish I were a Jew myself. You see, in the Century of the Jew they've taken our hearts, when they already had our minds. You see how it's coming together, all of it, right here."

  "Here?"

  "I'm talking, Sergeant, of the Third Great Jew. Sergeant, what would you say if I told you that J. Robert Oppenheimer was the most brilliant man you or I or anyone here had ever met?"

  "Could be, sir."

  "Sergeant, what would you say if I told you that Oppenheimer was an agent of the Soviet Union, intent on developing an atomic weapon here only so that he can deliver the finished plans to his Soviet friends?"

  Joe didn't know what to say.

  "You'd say I was mad, wouldn't you, Sergeant?"

  "Have you," Joe picked his words carefully, "passed your opinion on to General Groves, sir?"

  "As did the FBI. But the general is in Oppenheimer's thrall. Everyone is. Nobel laureates are his lapdogs and the United States Army has been tied up and delivered as a gift to him. I have felt the allure myself."

  "Have you, sir?"

  "The most fascinating conversations in my life have been those with Oppenheimer on history. He read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on a single train trip from New York to Los Angeles, and Das Kapital on the way back. This is a physicist, I remind you."

  "True," Joe said. Oppy was always trying to launch turgid conversations.

  "Have you ever noticed something hypnotic about him, Sergeant? The way people will go into his office saying one thing and come out saying the opposite? The way everyone imitates him? The way he's made his own empire here? Here at this focal point of history?"

  "You're following orders from the FBI or someone in Washington, sir?"

  "I don't need orders from anyone. Everyone in Intelligence already sees the obvious connections. It's–"

  "Shh!" Joe saw three shapes emerging silently out of the opposite woods; they stopped at the trees' edge. Three large blurs watching and listening. Could be deer, elk or horses. Joe crouched lower. The Winchester had an open sight on a short barrel, one round in the breech and five in the magazine. He wondered how good Captain Augustino was with the Marlin.

  The first breath of day was a leaden gray light. Stars dulled and disappeared while the three blurs came into focus. Elk or deer, from their utter quiet, Joe was sure. They were waiting to make sure the meadow slope was safe, just as he was waiting to be certain of his shot. Gradually he saw them. Two bull elks and a pregnant elk cow. Strange a cow would be with bulls at this time of year, he thought. He aimed at the bull on his side, assuming the captain would take the other. The bucks were beautiful, dark heads and big antlers ahead of their soft, tan bodies. A heart shot, he decided. His own heart stood still, waiting, watching the lightening slope of meadow snow growing against the angle of pines. The three elk stood on shadows.

  Augustino shot and the elk cow dropped in a heap. The bucks bolted into the woods and crashed through the trees.

  "You didn't fire," Augustino said.

  "You shot the cow."

  "I gave you the bucks."

  Joe stood up. "You don't shoot a cow that's carrying. She was carrying, anyone could see that. You said you were a hunter. You're an asshole."

  "Sergeant, you missed your–"

  "You don't shoot a cow that's carrying. At least I thought you were a hunter. I listened to this garbage of yours about Jews, this fucking drivel, because you're an officer. But you don't shoot a cow that's carrying. You're fucking crazy, Augustino, you know that? This shit about Marx. I lived in New York. I marched for the Spanish Civil War vets. I had two co-eds screwing me for
a solid month to teach me about Marx, while you were still beating off in the sheets of Brownsville. And when I was ten I knew you don't shoot a cow that's carrying."

  "I'm warning–"

  "Don't warn me!" Joe ripped away the bough over Augustino's head and then swung the Winchester against the trunk.

  The rifle cracked in half. Barrel and breech flew away while the stock stayed in Joe's hand. He threw it aside. "Don't warn me."

  "Go on," Captain Augustino's tone changed. He hadn't budged when the rifle had sliced over his head, though the color went from his face, making the half-moons under his eyes even darker.

  Joe started across the snow for the elk cow. The top of her neck was blown off and her legs sprawled in every direction, but her eyes were still wet and alive. The pregnant belly rose distended and hard above the rest of her.

  "Let me tell you," Joe yelled. "Your wife says you have a prick the size of a wet inchworm. It's got to be twice the size of your brains."

  He walked faster through the snow, unbuckling his coat away from the .45 that rode inside his belt. He felt Augustino raising the rifle behind him. Heart shot? Head shot? With the .45 free he took the last ten steps on the run. When Augustino shot, he was already diving.

  The cow kicked as the second bullet hit. He landed on the other side and rolled back against the elk. Captain Augustino stood, disdaining cover, and levered another round into the breech. Joe rested the .45 on the cow and put the captain in the square notch of the gun's sights, for all the good that would do considering the accuracy of an automatic. He squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked and a branch exploded five feet above Augustino's head. "Shit!" He squeezed off another. Bark blew off a tree next to the captain.

  Augustino slipped behind branches. All Joe could see of him was the vapor of his breath and the tip of the rifle. His own breath came like the steam of an engine. The cow was too small. If Augustino started to stalk and come from a different angle, Joe was dead.

  The rifle barrel leveled again, but aimed at where the bucks had vanished. Then Joe saw them coming out of pines, two men in blankets and snowshoes, their faces and hands blackened with paint, long hair upbraided and loose. The first was stooped with age, and he led the second with a long cord tied to the wrist, as if he were blind. The man being led shouldered a net stuffed with dead blue jays; the net looked like a brilliant, blue wing. There was one owl in the net, and one nighthawk, birds that could only be netted against a moon. The men must have heard the shots, probably saw them, but they crossed the meadow between the elk and the trees where Augustino hid, neither quickening nor stopping, slowly trudging down the snowy slope with the prizes of their own hunt. Though they seemed to be heading in the direction of Santiago, Joe didn't recognize them. They moved like an apparition, or a short parade from another world. Then they reached a line of aspen at the bottom of the slope and were gone.

  "Sergeant!" Augustino yelled. "I've changed my mind. I don't want to kill you. I do want to kill you, but I have more important things to do."

  "The hell you do."

  "I have duties to perform." Augustino stepped forward into the clearing, his rifle in his left hand, barrel up. "I can't allow myself to be distracted, to enjoy mere personal vindication, to sink to your level."

  "It was your idea to come here."

  "Shoot an officer and it's your life, Sergeant." Augustino dropped the rifle as he approached. "We came for an elk and we shot one, that's all that transpired. Nothing else really happened."

  "Because you missed."

  "You're not in a position to publicly accuse me of anything, not a sergeant fornicating with the wife of the officer he accuses. This is an experience to put behind us. A morning's hunt, is all." He stopped twenty feet short of Joe.

  "You don't shoot a cow that's carrying." Joe aimed. Head shot? At this range, a .45 could take off the captain's head from the brow up.

  "We have to get back to the Hill to pick up the Director and General Groves." Augustino looked at his watch. "Mrs Augustino will be going to Sunday service."

  "You want to get rid of me, Captain, why don't you just post me to the Pacific or Europe?"

  "No, you serve me better where you are."

  "Doing what? Driving? Opening doors? Screwing your wife?"

  "The information, Sergeant."

  "Useless." Joe got to his feet.

  "Not at all, Sergeant, It makes you an informer."

  "There's got to be something else."

  "Think of it this way. What we're building here is a secret weapon, right? You're my secret weapon. Your other choice is the stockade, if you want to go back there."

  "You're a lunatic, Captain."

  "What can you do about it?"

  Heart shot? At this range, a round would punch out the captain's heart, aorta, half a lung. Joe let the gun hang straight down. Fired. The elk's legs jerked once, like a spasm in a dream. It stretched its neck across his feet. Its eye faded and died.

  "I'll expect a report later on anything Oppenheimer says, conversations with Groves especially, anything political in particular." Augustino hadn't flinched. He took the deep, satisfied breath of a man turning home. "The usual."

  5

  The car was a blue Buick sedan with a V8 engine and gray plush interior. In the back were Brigadier General Leslie Groves and Oppy; in front, Klaus Fuchs, a field radio, and, at the wheel, Joe. The inside of the windows beaded with sweat. Outside, all of New Mexico seemed to tip from Los Alamos, mesa turning to foothills of black nut pines, piñons, on white snow.

  The general's whole body looked tucked, badly, into his uniform. Groves was a tall man, his gray hair was vigorous and wavy, his moustache bristled and his eyes were bright as steel, but below the collar, starched khaki and overcoat bulged everywhere under the pressure of soft fat. General Groves was fond of Los Alamos. His domain extended from the giant production plants of Hanford, Washington, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to the original labs in Chicago, but they were run by Union Carbide and DuPont or the pain-in-the-ass Europeans in Chicago, whereas Los Alamos was his personal duchy and run by his inspired choice, Oppenheimer, and was the real heart and soul of the project, the greatest scientific effort in the history of mankind. The Buick, the best car in the motor pool, was always set aside for him when he came and he was always driven by Joe. Other brass and VIPs who had come from Washington with the general referred to Joe as "Groves' Indian". The story got around that even the President had asked Groves about his "Indian companion".

  Oppy wore an old Army greatcoat that could have been wrapped round him twice and a pork pie hat that emphasized the narrowness of his skull. His hands fidgeted because the general allowed no smoking in the car. Klaus Fuchs sat practically at attention in an overcoat and fedora, rimless glasses that seemed to flatten his eyes.

  Groves hadn't wanted anyone from the British Mission –they thought Los Alamos was Oxford– but as Oppy said when he picked up the general, Fuchs wasn't really British.

  "I'm going to see the President tomorrow," Groves said. "He's going to ask me why we need a test. We have barely enough uranium for a single bomb, and hardly any plutonium at the moment. Why should we waste any of it on a test, he'll ask."

  "There are two separate devices," Oppy said slowly and patiently, not because Groves was stupid but because the general was not naturally articulate and these were the simple words Oppy wanted passed to Roosevelt. "There is the uranium device, which has basically a gun-barrel design. We don't expect to have enough refined uranium until July and a little thereafter, but we're confident the device will work. Then there is the plutonium device, which has a complicated 'implosion' design. By July, we expect to have enough plutonium for two bombs, and by August enough plutonium for two more bombs, and by September plutonium for two more, but we have no certainty the design will work. It's the plutonium device we have to test, and it's the armory of plutonium devices that will end the war, not the single detonation of our uranium device. You can tell the President that
choosing a test site is a sign of confidence."

  "We're depending heavily on this site being right," the general said. "The alternative test sites are some islands off California, sand bars off Texas, some dunes in Colorado. The last place I want to hide an atomic blast in is California."

  "That depends on how big it is, of course," Oppy said.

  "Well, how big will it be?" Groves demanded,

  "Five hundred tons of TNT is the current estimate of the yield," Fuchs answered. He was part of the Theoretical Group estimating the blast.

  "Couldn't it be much larger?"

  "Theoretically, it could be five thousand tons, fifty thousand tons. Almost no limit."

  "Five hundred is a start." Groves was mollified. "I'm going to tell the President we're going to set it off on the Fourth of July."

  "Wonderful," Oppy said.

  Too bad we missed Christmas, Joe thought. Maybe this was the time to tell the general that the head of security on the Hill was of the considered opinion that Joe Stalin's special agent was Robert Oppenheimer and they ought to pull off the road and get the whole thing sorted out. Even if there was nobody capable of taking Oppy's place and even if test, bomb and ultimate victory had to be scuttled.

  Maybe this wasn't the time. Perhaps this was the best time to be a dumb sergeant, the "Indian companion".

  As soon as they hit the highway at Esperanza, Joe put his foot down. The wartime speed limit was 35 mph, but the general always preferred to cruise at 85. Petrol rationing had largely emptied the roads and the prow of the Buick could roll on two-lane tarmac, sometimes narrowing to one lane, with wide shoulders for slow-moving donkey trains, carts, wagons.

  Santa Fe passed as an electric glow under an ash-colored sky. An Army hospital was pumping money into the town. Signs offered drinks, boots, curios.

  As Oppy and Groves droned on about problems of the isolation of isotopes and allotropic states of plutonium, Joe wondered why he had gone to bed with Mrs Augustino. Was it her he wanted? Some other woman? Any woman?