Stallion Gate
Martin Cruz Smith
Copyright
About
Dedication
Acknowledgments
NOVEMBER 1943
1
DECEMBER 1944
2
3
4
5
JUNE 1945
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
JULY 1945
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
FRIDAY, JULY 13
25
SATURDAY, JULY 14
26
SUNDAY, JULY 15
27
28
29
TRINITY, JULY 16
30
31
32
Copyright
This book was
copied right, in
the dark, by
Illuminati.
Aboutthe
e-Book
TITLE: Stallion Gate
AUTHOR: Smith, Martin Cruz
ABEB Version: 3.0
Hog Edition
Stallion Gate
Martin Cruz Smith
Dedication
For Nell, Luisa and Sam
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Dr. Norris Bradbury, Jon Else, Maj. Gen. Niles Fulwyler, Dr. John Manley and his wife, Kay, John Michnovich, Sir Rudolph and Lady Pierls, Alfonso Popolato, Bob Porton, Dr. Raemer Schrieber, Jack and Louise Smith.
Especial thanks are owed to Bob Krohn, R.C. and Harriett P. Smith, and to Francoise Ulam and her late husband, Stan.
A great debt is also owed to those friends who cannot be named.
While this book could not have been written without the generous aid of all the above, they should not be held responsible for what is, in fact, only fiction.
NOVEMBER 1943
1
The cell at Leavenworth was four feet by eight feet, barely large enough for Joe to sit at one end on an upended pail, but there was room in the dark for a circle of figures. Nearest Joe was a mountain lion, gray and white in color as a snowfall at night. The cat's spine was a rattlesnake and the snake's scaled head peeked over the lion's shoulder. There was a girl with the body of a bird, a swallow. She had a beautiful, triangular face and her eyes modestly avoided looking at Joe, who was only in dirty GI underpants. Across from her was a minotaur, a blue man with a shaggy buffalo head. At the far end was an officer who had brought his own chair to sit on. He had a long skull and sallow skin and ears pressed almost flat into close-cut, black hair. He wore the patient manner and tailored uniform of a career officer and didn't seem the least bothered by the overhead ring of golden sticks that beat against each other in subdued claps of light.
"You're from New Mexico, Sergeant Peña?" the captain asked.
"Yes, sir," Joe said.
The minotaur hummed softly and rocked from side to side. Joe tried to ignore it and the captain paid no attention at all.
"You know the JemezMountains, Sergeant?"
"Yes, sir."
"As I understand it, Sergeant Peña, you're in here for insubordination," the captain said. "But the real fact of the matter is, you were sleeping with an officer's wife."
"Not lately, sir. I've been in the brig for twenty days, the last ten in the hole on nothing but water."
"Which is what you deserve. There is nothing stupider in this man's Army than consorting with the wife of a superior, you'll admit."
"Yes, sir."
"Any ill effects?"
"Some hallucinations."
Joe had started seeing things after the fifth day in the hole. Guards banged on the door every time he lay down, so he hadn't slept, either. The cat had come first. Joe thought the stench of the cell would drive even a phantasm out, but after the cat came the woman on wings. It wasn't a religious experience, it was just crowded.
"You have the feeling you're never getting out of here, Sergeant?"
"It had occurred to me, sir. I'm sorry, sir, I didn't catch the name."
"Augustino."
"You're a defense lawyer?"
"They didn't want to admit you were even in the brig, Sergeant. They've as good as buried you. No, I'm not a lawyer. But I can get you out."
The snake twisted its head and regarded the captain with interest.
"Why don't you tell me how, sir?" Joe suggested.
"You haven't been back to New Mexico recently?"
"Not for years."
"Wasn't too interesting?"
"Not interesting enough."
While the snake watched the captain, the big cat turned its yellow eyes languidly to Joe.
The captain nodded. "I know what you mean, Sergeant. I'm from Texas, myself."
"Really, sir?"
"On my sixteenth birthday I applied for the Citadel."
"Is that so, sir?"
"You get more dedicated officers out of the Citadel than you get from the Point."
"Interesting, sir. Can you get me out of this fucking hole or can't you?"
"Yes. I have the authority to get anyone I want. Sergeant, do you remember a J. Robert Oppenheimer?"
"No."
"Jewish boy from New York? He had tuberculosis? His family sent him to New Mexico?"
"Okay. I was a kid, too. That was a long time ago. We went riding."
"To Los Alamos?"
"All over, yeah."
"He's back."
"So?"
"Sergeant, the Army is setting up a project at Los Alamos. Oppenheimer is in charge and he will need a driver. You are, in almost every particular, the perfect man. Violent enough to be a bodyguard. Ignorant enough to hear classified information and not understand a word. Be liaison."
"Who with?"
"Indians, who else? Most of all, you might be a name Oppenheimer would recognize and trust. I put you on the list. We'll find out."
"If he doesn't?"
"You'll rot right here. If he does pick you, you'll return to your various scams, Sergeant— I expect that. You'll be in glory. But don't forget who found you in this hole. I want his man to be my man. Understood?"
"Yes, sir."
The captain rapped on the door to go. Waiting for the turnkey, he added, "I hear your mother is Dolores the Potter. I have some wonderful pieces by her. How is she?"
"Wouldn't know, sir. I haven't been in Santiago since the war started."
"You don't do pottery yourself?"
"No, sir."
"You're not that kind of Indian?"
"Never was, sir."
The captain took his chair with him when he went. Joe leaned back on the pail and shut his eyes on the figures who stayed in the cell with him. He could hear new apparitions arriving. Then he opened one lid and caught the girl with the swallow body lifting her dark eyes and through the murk giving him a wistful look. He laughed. He knew nothing about visions, but he knew women. He was getting out.
DECEMBER 1944
2
Staff Sergeant Joe Peña was playing the piano for the Christmas dance. He had a narrow face for a Pueblo Indian, a deep V of cheekbones, a broad mouth and wide-set eyes. Black-black hair and brows, one brow healed over an old split. His uniform was crisp, the chevron on his sleeve so bright it looked polished, his tie tucked in between the second and third buttons of his shirt. Picking out ballads on the parlor grand, he gave a first impression of a huge, attractive man. Also of damaged goods.
The lodge's walls and columns had the honeyed glow of varnished ponderosa pine. In keeping with the Christmas
theme, red and green crepe festooned wagon wheel candelabras and the open balconies of the second floor. Paper reindeer were pinned to the Navajo rugs on the walls. Atop the eight-foot-tall stone mantel of the fireplace, a porcelain St Nick stood between Indian pots.
"Everyone's here." Foote supported himself on the piano. Foote was a lean and horsey Englishman in a threadbare tuxedo.
"Not everyone," Joe answered while he played.
"You say. Who's not here?"
"Soldiers aren't here, MPs aren't here, WACs aren't here, machinists aren't here, Indians aren't here."
"Of course not, we don't want them here. It's not their bloody bomb. Bad enough that we have the military command. Especially that Captain Augustino creeping around like a Grand Inquisitor."
"I'm ready." Harvey Pillsbury brought Joe a bourbon. In his other hand he carried a clarinet. "I really appreciate this second chance, Joe."
"Just blow. Last time you were silent. It was like playing with a snowman."
Harvey had the contours of a snowman, and downy hair and the high, nasal accent of west Texas.
"Be prepared for quantum improvement."
"Whatever that means." Joe finished the drink in a swallow. He played "Machine-gun Butch" and everyone sang along. "/… was a rough and ready Yankee,/ He'll never let the old flag touch the ground./ And he always will remember the seventh of December,/ With his rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat, and he'll mow 'em down./" The Germans and Italians sang loudest, and the crazy thing was that Joe liked them, Foote included and Harvey especially. Most were Americans and most of the Americans were babies straight from college. The boys had loose ties and sweaty faces. The girls had short skirts and scrolls of hair around broad, polished foreheads. A rent party in Harlem it wasn't, but they were trying.
Harvey had stood through "String of Pearls", clarinet raised and trembling and utterly mute. During "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree", Harvey licked the reed, forced a squeak, two notes in a row, then three. Halfway into "This Joint Is Jumpin' ", Joe switched to a bass stride, forcing him to blow erratically through a riff like a butterfly flying for its life, and at the end Harvey beamed, red-cheeked and triumphant. "White Christmas?" he suggested.
Joe groaned. "A little knowledge is a gruesome thing."
There was a stir across the room as Oppy and Kitty arrived. Better than a stir, veneration. The Director of the Los Alamos project was a spindly six feet tall with a close-cropped skull and beak of a nose that emphasized tapered eyes of startling blue. Younger physicists followed him, copying the hunch of his shoulders, his air of distraction. Kitty Oppenheimer had a flat, pretty face, a frowsy dress and dark, thick hair. Her friends were European wives, who surrounded her like bodyguards. A fingertip slid down Joe's spine. There were people at the end of the piano, but they were watching dancers or the Oppenheimers. Harvey was concentrating on his clarinet. The fingertip turned to fingernail. Joe glanced up at Mrs Augustino, the captain's wife. She looked like a cover of Life magazine, maybe "Life goes to Magnolia Country" with her peroxide-blonde curls, blue eyes and polka-dot dress with ruffled shoulders, and she seemed to be intently watching the couples on the floor, but it was her finger, nonetheless.
"What is this secret project, Sergeant?" she asked in a voice soft enough for just him to hear. "What do you think they're making?"
"Why don't you ask your husband?"
"Captain Augustino took me to a nightclub in Albuquerque last week." Her nail continued like a little knife down the groove of his back. "You were playing. I was struck by how gently you played. Is that because your fingers are so big?"
"Not gently. Carefully. I stay out of trouble." By twisting on the bench to look at her, he managed to dislodge her nail. Sad: nineteen, twenty years old and already a bored Army wife. "What do you think they're doing here, Mrs Augustino? What's your opinion?"
She brushed curls from her face and surveyed the room. "I think the whole thing is a hoax. They're dodging the draft. All these so-called scientists got together and pulled the wool over the Army's eyes. They're smart enough to do it."
"Yeah," he had to agree, "they are."
During the break, Joe had to maneuver around some of the "so-called scientists" to get to the bar. The Hungarian, Teller, his eyebrows rising like fans, brayed over a joke by Fermi. A short man, Fermi was fit and balding and wore a rough double-breasted suit and thick-soled shoes that curled at the toe like an Italian peasant's. Physicists called him "the Pope".
Oppy was showing a circle of admirers how to build the perfect martini.
"Firm instructions should always be in German." He had the trick of lowering his voice so listeners leaned forward, and as they did so he poured gin to the brim of the glass. "Am wichtigsten, der Gin sollte gekühlt sein, kein Els." "Bourbon," Joe told Foote, who, drunk or not, was tending bar.
"Zwei Tropfeln Wermut, nicht mehr, nicht weniger, und eine Olive." Oppy added enough vermouth to cause an oily swirl in the gin, then he handed his concoction to a woman with red-orange hair. She would have been noticeable simply because she wore black coveralls that suggested she was a member of an army of Amazons, or labored in a factory of mourners, or had been dipped in ink. It was the sheer intellectual cast of her face that really set her apart. Black hair cut in severe bangs around eyes that were blue-gray with dark edges that dilated with dislike, like a cat's. Strong nose, full mouth and the sort of pale complexion that scorned the sun. She was exactly the sort of female that attracted Oppy and repelled Joe. "A double," Joe told Foote.
Oppy said, "Joe, meet Dr Anna Weiss. Anna, this is my oldest friend here, Joe Peña."
Drinks in hand, Anna Weiss and Joe dismissed each other with a nod.
"I missed my first year at Harvard," Oppy persisted. "My family sent me to New Mexico for my health. They contracted with Joe's father, a renowned bootlegger."
"That so?" She had a low voice and a German accent and no interest.
"Tell her, Joe," Oppy said.
"My dad also rented packhorses and experienced guides for dude parties," Joe said. "I was the experienced guide. I was twelve. One of the first times I went out, I had a kid from New York. Sixteen and so tall and skinny that the first time I saw him in swimming trunks I thought he was going to die on the trail."
"I couldn't ride," Oppy said.
"He couldn't ride to save his life," Joe said, "but he liked to go out at night to see stars. He was so damned night blind I had to hold back every branch on the way. One night we got caught in a rainstorm and I got under my horse to stay dry. I heard this guy yelling in the rain."
"I thought he'd left me," Oppy said.
"I told him to come down under the horse with me. He came down, soaked, got under the horse and said, 'Gee!' Because he'd never thought of the possibility of getting under a horse in the rain. That loomed like a brilliant idea to him."
"It struck me as an offer of eternal friendship," Oppy said. "At the end of the rain he led me up to the RanchSchool here, to this very place, for some coffee and dry clothes. That was twenty years ago."
Her eyes moved from man to man as if they were describing a previous life as idiots.
"Better switch back to German," Joe told Oppy and took his drink out to the patio. There was a low moon over the mountains and a liquid coolness to the air. By the flagstones was a garden that was deep in the shadow of poplars. "Los Alamos" meant "The Poplars".
What are they doing here? An atomic bomb, a nuclear device, whatever those words signified. He couldn't help but know the terminology from being Oppy's driver and overhearing conversations in the back seat. As for understanding, it was all a different language to Joe. Chain reaction? Fast neutrons and slow neutrons? Incomprehensible, like Sanskrit. Of course, Oppy read Sanskrit.
Joe set his drink on a flagstone and lit his first Lucky of the day. He still had the habits of a fighter trying to stay in shape, although for what he didn't know.
As Teller came through the doors, he said: "Joe, you could take lessons and become a real pi
anist. You could play Beethoven."
"Ah, the big-band sound," Joe said. As soon as he could he picked up his drink and slipped away from an analysis of the American jitterbug. Teller had a wooden leg.
Joe was nearly at the doors when his way was blocked by Anna Weiss, the woman Oppy had been instructing in the manufacture of martinis. With her was another émigré. He had a bland and pasty face, straw-colored hair and rimless glasses. His name was Klaus Fuchs. Joe couldn't remember passing a single word with him. Apparently Fuchs has been giving Fraulein Weiss the usual Los Alamos tour: there are the mountains, there are the mesas, there is the Indian.
"So, you were the one who first brought Oppy here?" she said to Joe.
He nodded. "This was a private school then. A year at the RanchSchool cost more than Harvard. The war wiped it out."
"And led you back. That is irony?"
"No, that's pure Army."
The two Germans seemed to stare at Joe from the far end of a scale of intelligence.
"Teller is telling everyone you are musical," she said. "Klaus says you have no actual ability."
Fuchs shrugged. "It should be enough to be a war hero."
"You're kind," Joe said. "Of course, it's important to be on the right side of the war."
"They grow up with rifles here, Dr Fuchs," a voice said from the dark of the garden. "It's a simple thing to be a war hero if you can fire a rifle."
"I have never shot anything," Fuchs said.
"Of course not." Captain Augustino took a step towards the patio, just enough for them to see him. "In fact, we're in hunting season now. I wouldn't go wandering in the woods."
"Naturally," Fuchs said.
"A moon like this, maybe snow, every Indian is going to be out for his deer tonight. It could be dangerous."
"Yes, yes."
Fuchs seemed to regard Augustino the same way he did Joe. The captain was sallow-faced but his short hair was thick and glossy as fur, giving him a half-animal quality which also clung to Joe. A pair of predators, while Fuchs and his Anna Weiss had evolved to the next stage of human development.
