Up the Alameda, Fuchs got into his Buick. He hadn’t come in the bus; he’d avoided the plaza completely. No more than two words could have been said on the bridge, Joe thought. Gold pondered the river, the branches overhead, and through the screen of poplars the faraway cupola on the state dome. He smiled at two girls on bikes. The tour bus rolled by, heads swiveling, leaving a trail of muffled facts and dates. Gold snapped a look over his shoulder in Joe’s direction, but out of fleeting caution and not because he’d seen Joe move. Then he relaxed, finished his cigarette, stifled a yawn that closed into a smile of relief, flipped the butt and left the bridge.

Gold walked down the Alameda, turned on Guadalupe and again on San Francisco, making a loop back toward the plaza. At the Lensic Theater he stopped to read a playbill for Here Come the Co-eds with Abbott and Costello. Seeing his reflection, he brushed the blueness of his cheek. Passing a moment later, Joe saw his own reflection, a sergeant in a rumpled uniform, hair lank, face ominous.

The plaza was busier now. Tourists spilled out of Woolworth’s to stop Indians and ask them to pose. Like a man breasting waves, Cleto, the necklace vendor from Santo Domingo, stood in the middle of the sidewalk, arms of turquoise necklaces outstretched. His gray braid had come undone, the belly of his shirt was spotted with chili, and still he maintained an expression of majestic contempt. Gold sidestepped the crowd around Cleto and then had to wait for Army trucks to pass. Across the street, at the La Fonda’s loading station, porters in mariachi vests shuffled suitcases.

Joe slipped by Cleto. Once in the hotel, Gold would be out of reach. Something had happened on the bridge, though Joe didn’t know what. Gold stepped up on the curb, newspaper tightly under his arm. It was the Albuquerque Journal. Gold had been carrying the New Mexican when he went to the bridge. In his mind, Joe watched again as Gold, cigarette stuck to his lips, feeling his pockets for a match, walked onto the center of the bridge and joined Klaus Fuchs, who handed his folded newspaper to Gold the better to find a match in his jacket, brusquely light a stranger’s cigarette, take back his newspaper and leave Gold to a solitary view of the Santa Fe river. Not his newspaper, though: Gold’s paper. They’d switched.

At the loading station, Joe grabbed Gold, who gave an involuntary hop of surprise.

“I was hoping I’d see you again,” Joe said.

“You were?”

More cars were parking; more suitcases were being unloaded. He encircled Gold with an arm and started to lead him out of the way.