“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.”

29

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.”