Martin Smith - Stallion Gate

Through the windows , the cocktail party had the quality of the pages of an illustrated book being idily turned. The Oppenheimers entertained infrequently and briefly, and when they did only the highest level of the Hill's scientific community was invited , so the guest list was basically European. Their faces were rosy with tension and drink. Joe saw Fermi and Foote arguing, the bemused Italian rocking impassivly on his heels while the Englishmen gesticulated with a highball. Fermi's wife and Tellers wife, two small dark women, leaned close for a conference on the sofa. The ensemble of faces changed from moment to moment, but everyone inside seemed to glow.

" Sargent you look lonley", Kitty Oppenheimer brought out a Scotch for Joe. With a smile she would have been a pretty woman. Her brown hair was a tangle. She managed to look blousy and sharp at the same time.

" Thanks" Joe took the glass.

"Shoot to kill."

"I will."

"Shit." She tripped over a boys scooter and landed on her back in a flower bed. "My zinnias. Nothings going right. Let me rest, for Gods sake." She waved away Joe's hand. They're singing "Marseillaise" again in there. Give me a smoke."

Joe set the drink in the grass, put a Lucky in her mouth, lit it.

He said," Your pissed as a skunk."

"Goddamn right I am Sargent, what I meant to say when I came out is you look lovely. You do. All dark and Byronic out here in the gloming. Shes pretty, isn't she, Joe. And young. He was engaged to her sister once did you know that?"

"Who?"

Kitty rambled on. "He was a real hero to AnnaI suppose. Men do that to little girls. Then when the girls grow into women, the men try to stay romantic figures.There are any number of phycologocal aspects. I have my breath back."

Kitty gave Joe her hand and he pulled her to her feet. The story was that she was part European nobility, related to Admiral Canaris of the Abwehr.

"Can you stand?

"I must return to my duties as hostess of the Royal Society of Prickless Physicists."

"Can you walk?"

"The funny thing is, at a certain point you don't worry about other women at all. If your smart you worry about girls."

"Take a deep breath. Today Germany , tomorrow the world." Joe picked a flower from her shoulder. "You can do it."

" I look like Ophelia" Kitty had a throaty, corroded laugh. "I always thought I'd be Lady McBeth."

After Kitty returned to the house Joe poured out the Scotch. The party would be over soon. He'd go to Santa Fe to deliver the gelignite waiting in his jeep and then he'd have his drink. Besides , some guests were wandering into the garden now to take advantage of the evening, the hour between the heat of the June day and the cold of the mountain night. The altitude of the Hill was 7,000 feet. Voices seemed to carry, or maybe voices were louder. In the last month since the defeat of Germany and the death of Hitler, all the emigres seemed wrapped in rubicund patriotism, as if their Americanism had been confirmed. They'd make Trinity work, no matter what. He saw Kitty inside with Oppy and the woman who had been in Oppy's car that morning. Joe didn't remember her name. Kitty sat on the hearth and the new arrival stood at the far end of the fireplace while between the two women Oppy leaned, almost contorted, at an angle acros the mantelpiece. The toe of his Wellington touched Kitty's knee and his long fingers stroked the glass that the younger woman had set on the corner of the mantelpiece. He looked like a poet dictating. Kitty, a toughened muse. The redhead both cool and facinated.

"One grenade here could change the history of physics, couldn't it, Sergeant?"

Captain Augustino had rolled up to the garden gate and stopped his jeep behind Joe's.

Joe saluted.

"Yes, sir."

"What in the world are they doing now?"

A radio was being handed out through a window. The sound of piano drifted across the garden to the cars. Joe hadn't realized until that second that the mesa crickets were chirping away. Beethoven. A sonata with insects luring the entire party outside, except for Oppy and the two women.

"I think that's the Hill station, sir. I think that's Teller playing."

Los Alamos transmitted a signal that died before it reached the valley. Teller was sloppy on technique, but his playing had a lot of momentum.

"Sergeant, what would you say if I told you that Mrs Augustino was dead? That she was shot by an intruder back in Texas and that the intruder had escaped?"

The Beethoven was coming to a crescendo. No one in the garden could hear what was said by a captain and sergeant at the gate.

"I'd say you were lying, sir. Why would you kill her when you can make her pay for the rest of her life?"

"Sergeant, you show real promise. Come closer."

In the garden the music was followed by light static. There was a hush of anticipation as people stood around the radio. The glow of cigarettes in the shadows.

"Sir?"

"Wait," Augustino said.

" Once upon a time in a dark wood there lived three little pigs ," a deep voice with a middle-European accent issued from the radio in the grass. Teller again, reading bedtime stories. " The first little pig was a poet. The second little pig was an artist. But the third little pig was a practical pig who enjoyed working with hammers and saws ."

"Go on," Augustino urged Joe.

"I didn't drive Oppy today. I have nothing to report."

"With Dr Oppenheimer, there's always something to report. He went all the way to the railroad station to pick up a Dr Weiss. They came by Santiago. You met them. What did they say?"

"Nothing. Their car went off the road and I helped them out, and that was it."

"Sergeant, it wasn't the grace of God that got you out of the stockade, it was me. I can send you back to that hole any time I want. We have a deal."

"But they didn't say anything, sir."

"The poet was a lazy pig and made himself a house out of nothing but straw. Straw walls, straw tables and chairs and a straw door he always left open —"

"I have an FBI report that a Soviet courier is on the way or already here. Suddenly, Dr Oppenheimer takes the time to meet this Dr Weiss and personally escort her here. It doesn't make sense. You've seen her?"

"It was dark this morning."

"She's in there with the Oppenheimers right now. It could be a regular communist cell meeting. Wouldn't it be interesting to know what they're saying right now, to know whatever they say when they think they're alone?" Augustino pondered the possibility. He looked up at Joe. "I want you to keep an eye on Dr Weiss. I want you to get close to her. Use your Indian charm. Next time we talk, have something for me."

The captain started his jeep, reversed and U-turned back towards the lodge. There were laughs in the garden.

" Or I'll huff ," Teller's voice rose dramatically. " And I'll puff. And I'll blow your house in -"

9

Santa Fe was an hour away, but it was the shopping and social center of the Hill. People went to Woolworth's or Sears during the day, and at night to the La Fonda hotel. On the plaza in the center of town, the La Fonda was a three-story mock-adobe fantasy with exposed beams and wooden balconies. The hotel had also become, thanks to the Hill, an outpost of the FBI.

It was the task of the Bureau to watch everyone from the Hill who came into Santa Fe. Since everyone went to the bar of the La Fonda, the agents comfortably stationed themselves in the hotel lobby. When Joe entered, half a dozen agents stirred, then recognized Oppy's bodyguard and settled back into rustic leather chairs. The agents called scientists from the Hill "long-hairs." Everyone from the Hill, who could spot them by their straw snap-brim hats, called the agents "creeps."

The bar was full. Santa Fe was the state capital and attracted a large number of alcoholics who were legislators or lobbyists, plus oilmen, cattlemen and tourists. The bartender was a strategically placed agent, and everyone had suffered while he learned to build a decent martini. For once, Joe didn't see Harvey or anyone else from the Hill. It had taken him two hours to get to Santa Fe because he'd had two flat tires on the Pojoaque Creek shortcut to the highway. Under his arm was a newspaper folded over wrapped strips of gelignite. All he wanted to do was deliver the high explosive and keep on going to Albuquerque and the Casa Mariana.