The woman, startled, dropped her small purse at the same moment the man came around the front of the truck, and for a long moment Lovelace stood rooted to his spot, his pistol wavering at a spot halfway between the couple. And then he could feel the bile rising up in his throat, and his hand shook as he lowered his gun.

  “Jesus Christ …” the CIC driver shouted from the van.

  Lovelace half turned and shouted over his shoulder. “Easy, it’s not them.”

  “Lovelace, for chrissake, shut up and listen,” the driver was shouting, an hysterical edge to his voice.

  The man and the woman by the pickup truck were staring across the lawn at Lovelace, who shrugged tiredly at them, but then he could hear the radio in the van blaring, and the bells ringing in town, and he turned around.

  The driver was standing by the open door of the van, looking across the street at Lovelace, tears streaming from his eyes.

  “What the hell …” Lovelace started to say, but the CIC officer waved him off.

  “He’s dead … Christ, he’s dead …”

  And then Lovelace began to hear what the radio announcer was saying, and his knees began to go weak.

  “ … had gone to his retreat at Warm Springs, Georgia, only thirteen days ago to recuperate from his recent conference at Yalta.

  “Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the thirty-second President of the United States, dead at sixty-three, on this Thursday, April the twelfth, 1945.”

  27

  ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO

  Badim felt like a cornered animal, and for the first time in his life he was seriously contemplating not obeying a direct order.

  His regular Tuesday night telephone contact, a man somewhere here in Albuquerque, had wanted his address. Christ, he had wanted to meet Badim face to face, and had damned near mentioned Runkov by name for his authority.

  Badim had agreed to think about it, and call the man back at two the next afternoon.

  It was nearly that time now, and as he limped along West Copper Avenue downtown, he was seriously considering not making the phone call after all.

  Soviet troops had completely encircled Berlin, according to the newspapers, and the war with Germany was virtually ended. It would only be a matter of days, or a couple of weeks at the most, before a peace treaty would be signed, and the Third Reich would no longer exist. Nor would his and Jada’s cover.

  He stopped in front of a shop window and stared at his reflection in the glass for a moment. His hair, streaked with gray, was long, almost completely covering his ears, and his thick, luxurious beard made him look the part he had been playing now for the past six weeks … that of a religious fanatic who sold Bibles.

  But such a disguise was only superficial at best. And if he actually made contact with his man today, and later the man was caught, he could give the authorities a fairly accurate description. A description that would lead them back to him and to Jada and to the child she was carrying.

  He looked at his watch, which showed it was a couple of minutes before two, and then glanced up, spotting a telephone booth across the street on the corner, but he did not immediately move away from the window.

  The reflection in the glass was that of an old man. And at this moment he felt, in many ways, old and used up. Confused. He did have a choice. He could turn away, return home to Jada, and they could completely forget about the assignment. When the war was finished he could go to engineering school, get his degree, and open a small firm of some kind. They had been supplied with plenty of American funds.

  Jada could have the baby, and their lives could continue normally. They would have more children. Eventually grandchildren. And in forty or fifty years, they would be dead and nothing would matter anyway.

  Just thinking along those lines, however, made Badim’s gut tighten. All his years in Germany would have been in vain. His work for the State, and the State’s protection of him, would be lost.

  He shook his head in irritation. Christ. It was all so senseless now. So damned useless.

  But did he have a choice? He looked up again at the telephone booth. He had known something like this was bound to happen. The information that had been passed on to them at Portsmouth in the Bibles had been sketchy at best. In order for him to carry out the assignment he would have to have a lot more information. He supposed now that that was what the contact had for him.

  But in the months they had been here in the States he had never been ordered into a face-to-face confrontation with someone from home. Nor, during his entire nine years in Germany, had he ever actually met one of his contacts. Information was passed back and forth through dead-letter drops, or by shortwave, or in some cases by telephone or the mails. Never face to face. It was simply too dangerous.

  But Runkov had apparently ordered this, which meant it had to be very important.

  He moved away from the shop window finally, and at the corner waited for a break in traffic before he crossed the street to the phone booth.

  Inside, he closed the door, dropped a nickel in the slot, and dialed the number he had been given in his general instructions with the Bibles. It was answered on the first ring.

  “It’s a nice day and it’s your nickel,” a man’s voice came over the line.

  “Uncle Wilbur?”

  “He’s not here. Thank God you called, Bradley. Why wouldn’t you talk to me last night?”

  “Is there trouble?” Badim asked, ignoring the man’s question.

  “No, but I have a package for you. It’s come from New York from a mutual friend who lives a long ways off.”

  The man was a messenger boy, nothing more. But worse than that, he was an amateur. “I’ll give you instructions where to leave it.”

  “No,” the man said, his voice rising in excitement. “I have to see you. We must talk.”

  “Impossible.”

  “This comes from S. R.”

  The man was even more dangerous than an amateur. He was a complete fool. Badim’s mind raced to a dozen different methods and solutions, finally coming up with one that would work. “Do you live alone?” he asked.

  “Yes,” the man said hesitantly.

  “Then listen to me,” Badim said. “Do you know where the National Trust and Savings Bank is located?”

  “On Central Avenue, I think.”

  “Central and Second Street. How soon can you get there?”

  “Five minutes,” the man said, after a brief hesitation.

  “All right,” Badim said. “I want you to go there right now. In your right hand you will carry two books, and in your left, a newspaper.”

  “Two books right, newspaper left.”

  “Right. Just walk past the bank, and if it’s safe for me to contact you, I will. Otherwise I want you to go directly home, and we’ll try again tomorrow at 2 P.M. Is that clear?”

  “I’ll be there in five minutes …” the man said, and Badim hung up, left the phone booth, and quickly headed for the bank, which was one block away.

  Badim got to Central and Second with one minute to spare, and he started down the avenue away from the bank at a leisurely pace, as if he was having difficulty walking because of his limp.

  He spotted his contact halfway down the block, head bent down, the books in his right hand and a rolled-up newspaper in his left. The man was short, somewhat on the thin side, and from across the street he looked to Badim to be no more than twenty-four or twenty-five. He wore a brightly checked sport coat.

  At the corner, Badim crossed the street and headed back toward the bank, which was a one-and-a-half-story brownstone building with tall arched windows and a large clock at the corner.

  The man in the bright coat hesitated several moments at the corner, setting his watch from the overhead clock, then looked around before he finally crossed the street, and headed slowly back the way he had come.

  Before he had reached the corner at First Street, by the railroad tracks, he had looked back toward the bank three times, making it perfectly obvious that he suspected he was being followed.

  Badim was across the street and slightly ahead of the man, and as he walked he scanned the passersby for any sign of a tail, but so far as he could tell his contact was clean. It was a wonder, though, Badim thought. The man’s actions, and his dress, made him stick out like a sore thumb.

  The man turned north on First Street, walked three blocks up to Grand, and then turned into a nondescript hotel. Badim had to run to catch up with him, and entered the hotel just as the elevator doors were closing, giving him a brief glimpse of the bright sport coat.

  Two old men sat in a broken-down couch in one corner of the small lobby, talking and smoking, and the clerk had his back to Badim, who ducked around the corner, found the stairwell, and raced up to the second floor.

  In the corridor he watched the elevator indicator stop at the third floor, then went back into the stairwell and raced up to the next floor, just as the man with the sport coat was entering a room halfway down the corridor.

  The hotel smelled of age and dirt, but Badim was aware of none of that now, intent on his immediate task. He pushed open the stairwell door, limped past the elevator to the door his contact had entered, and knocked.

  He could hear someone moving around inside, and then the man was at the door.

  “Who is it?”

  “Bradley,” Badim said softly, looking both ways down the corridor. No one had seen him so far.

  The door opened, and Badim pushed his way past the man into the room, shoving the door closed.

  “What the hell?” the man was saying, as Badim turned around to face him.

  “It’s a nice day and it’s your nickel. Uncle Wilbur? He’s not here,” Badim said.

  For a moment the man just stood there, his mouth hanging open, but then relief spread across his face. “Christ, you gave me a scare,” he said.

  “Who’d you expect, the FBI?”

  “Don’t even joke about it,” the man said. He turned and put the chain lock on the door, then crossed the room to a small radio set atop a bureau and turned it on, fiddling with the dial until he got a station that was playing music.

  Badim watched all this with amusement. His first assessment of the man had been correct. He was indeed a rank amateur, which made him very dangerous.

  “I didn’t know what to expect,” the man said, kneeling down beside the bed, and pulling a thick manila envelope out from between the mattress and the springs. He got to his feet and turned to stare at Badim, a smile on his lips. “But I can tell you that I sure as hell didn’t expect anyone like you, in a getup like that. What the hell are you supposed to be, anyway … a holy roller?”

  The term was unfamiliar to Badim, but he suspected it held some sort of religious connotation, and he nodded. “Something like that.”

  “Is it real?”

  Badim’s eyes narrowed.

  “The beard, I mean.”

  “Yes. Is that for me?” Badim asked softly, indicating the envelope in the man’s hands.

  “Down to business right away, huh? I like that. Real professional. John told me you’d be that way.”

  “John?”

  The man nodded effusively. “Right. He’s your contact up in New York. Real name is …”

  Badim held up his hand, and the man fell silent, for a moment.

  “Sorry,” he said finally. “I guess I shouldn’t go spouting off like that. It’s just that you Reds have got a good thing going for you and I think you’ve been screwed over. I aim to help change it.”

  This was all wrong. Badim could feel it in his gut. “Were you ordered to come here and see me personally?”

  The man nodded. “Yes, sir. John gave me this package, and told me to make sure I put it into your hands. It’s very important, I gather.” He stepped forward and held out the envelope. Badim took it.

  “Anything else?”

  “I’m to stay in case you need any help.”

  “What about my regular Tuesday night contact here in Albuquerque?”

  “He’s been sent away.”

  “There is no one here now who knows of my existence?”

  The man shook his head. “Nope. Just me.”

  Badim thought a moment. “And if I don’t require your services, what are you supposed to do?”

  An odd expression crossed the man’s face. “Why … I don’t know. John didn’t tell me.”

  Badim stuffed the envelope into his jacket pocket, finally understanding what was happening here, and what was required of him. The mission was apparently even more important, more critical now than it had been before. “Tell me something, how did you come to know John’s real name?”

  “It’s me and my snoopy nose,” the man said sheepishly. “I saw it on some papers in his apartment.”

  Badim looked around the small room, understanding exactly what John had done to this man, and now, why. He nodded toward a narrow door. “What’s in there?” he asked.

  The man glanced that way. “The bathroom.”

  “Has it got a tub?”

  “Yes,” the man said hesitantly.

  Slowly, Badim told himself. “Good. I want you to start filling it with water.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Badim forced a smile. “I have something very important to tell you. It is a message you must bring back to John.”

  The man nodded.

  “Your radio here playing while we talk is all right—I’m happy you thought about it. But it’s not perfect. Running water in a tub, combined with a radio playing, makes it totally impossible for us to be heard.”

  Understanding and pleasure crossed the man’s features. “I see. Of course,” he said. “I’ll get it ready.”

  While the man was running the water in the tiny bathroom Badim went to the bureau, unplugged the radio, and brought it over. “Is there someplace in here to plug it in?” he asked in the doorway.

  The man was bent over the tub and he looked over his shoulder. “Sure, by the sink,” he said.

  Badim found the wall socket, plugged the radio in, and set it on the edge of the sink over the tub.

  “How long have you worked for us?” he asked conversationally. The man straightened up and turned around.

  “Just a short time,” he said.

  Badim nodded toward the edge of the tub. “Have a seat,” he said, and he leaned back against the sink.

  The man perched on the edge of the rapidly filling tub, crossed his arms over his chest, and looked expectantly at Badim. “I’ve got a pretty good memory,” he said. “So don’t worry if it’s a long message. I can handle it.”

  For a moment Badim wondered at what his life had become, and what it could have been had he and Jada been born here in America, gotten married, and had a family. But at the thought of her, and the child she was carrying, he realized just how vulnerable this fool had made them.

  He made as if to shift his weight against the sink, but instead shoved the unsuspecting man backward into the tub, and in the next instant tipped the radio off the sink into the water, then stepped back.

  Sparks flew for just a second, the man shrieked and then his body convulsed as the electric charge coursing through him caused his muscles to contract his knees and elbows banging against the side of the tub.

  Badim went out of the bathroom, and at the corridor door listened a moment before he eased it open. The dingy hallway was still deserted, and within two minutes he had made his way down to the ground floor, and had let himself out the back way.

  28

  TRINITY

  “I think you’ve lost touch with reality, Michael,” General Groves was saying.

  Lovelace, sitting in the passenger seat of the general’s car, looked over at him more surprised by the use of his first name than the content of Groves’ statement.

  “I didn’t know you cared,” he said.

  Groves glanced at him, a scowl on his heavy features. “Don’t be flippant with me, captain,” he snapped. “I’m trying to save your ass so you can retire with an honorable discharge.”

  Lovelace started to smile, but then thought better of it, and shrugged tiredly. He took a deep drag on his cigarette and tossed the butt out the window.

  It was a pleasant early spring afternoon, and the drive down from Los Alamos had been at least relaxing, if not enjoyable. Lovelace found himself glad now that the general had ordered him to come along. Los Alamos had been getting on his nerves.

  “Can you tell me one thing?” Groves asked, the anger that had suddenly come to his voice gone again.

  “You’re the boss.”

  “What have you accomplished since the Springer incident?”

  How like an officer’s mentality, Lovelace thought. The Springer incident. He closed his eyes and once again he could see the man hanging onto the side of the train. Christ, if he hadn’t frozen up, he could have had him. Yet he had blown it.

  “Besides pissing off the Santa Fe and Albuquerque police departments, and half the people at the site, you mean?” he asked.

  “I think you’ve got the drift of what I’m asking.”

  Lovelace just looked at the general. “Is everything so clear to you, general?” he said, and Groves glanced sharply at him, the scowl back on his features. “No, I didn’t mean that as a smart-ass comment. Honestly. I meant it exactly as it sounded. Is everything so clear to you that you never find yourself worried about what the next step is going to be?”

  The general seemed to consider his question for a moment. They had passed through Albuquerque a couple of hours ago, and from time to time they caught glimpses of the Rio Grande out the left side of the car as nothing more than a wide band of green in the valley against the pale, yellow-brown of the desert, the blue mountains surrounding them in the hazy distance. The country here, except for a couple hundred yards on either side of the river, was barren, bleak, and forbidding.

  “To tell the truth, Lovelace, I’m worried all the time. Have been ever since the President gave me this assignment.”

  “Do you ever discuss those feelings with your wife?”

 

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