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.”