Stallion Gate by Martin Cruz Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

built the Pentagon,I calculated that in my career I had moved enough earth and laid enough cement to build the Pyramids of Cheops two hundred times over.”
    “This is a different kind of pyramid,” Oppy suggested. “It has different blocks—some steel, some gold, some of water, some so radioactive you can’t touch them or even come close to them—and the pyramid must be built according to a blueprint no one has ever seen.”
    “Let me tell you the kind of monument I want,” Groves said. “I’ve seen the estimates of the casualties we’re going to suffer in the invasion of Germany and Japan. I wouldn’t mind a monument of a million American lives saved.”
    Groves’ sincerity was ponderous and real and demanded silence. Embers slipped and rose.
    “The Hindus say that the final vision of Brahma will be mist, smoke and sun, lightning and a moon.” Oppy paced in front of the fire, too excited to be still. “Brahma would be a good name for the bomb.”
    Joe stood on the arc of the fire’s light. Outside the arc rattlesnakes were curled up, cold and asleep under the snow. There was a whole map of winter sleep: mice balled up in burrows, toads suspended in mud, poorwills tucked into the folds of the earth. Memory was out there, a map of women curled up in the dark. Japs.
    Actually, life was very nice when he got to Manila. Mostly what the Army wanted him to do was box: tour the airfields giving exhibitions against the local champions, fight in the annual boxing festival at Rizal Stadium,play piano at the officers club. When dependents were shipped out, the officers, like men freed from a domestic garden into paradise, came in with the most beautiful whores, coffee-colored Filipino girls and White Russians with paste jewels.
    When the invasion came, three days before Christmas, Joe had a platoon of Philippine scouts. The first night they made contact was in a banana plantation, and in the dark among the rustling fronds he heard, “Hey Joe! Over here, Joe.” Even after he’d figured out that Japs called all Americans “Joe,” that they hadn’t come all the way across the Pacific for him personally, the voices were unnerving, like the dark come to life.
    He wished he could listen to the car radio and hear some big band from Albuquerque or, if the ether gave the lucky bounce, a jazz station from Kansas City. Ellington, like a black Indian in an invisible canoe, paddling through the clouds. Paddle, Duke! Rescue me.
    Groves was down to his last candy. “The big picture is, no one else has the industrial base or the technology. Never forget the inherent inefficiency of the Soviet system. It will take them twenty years to develop an atom bomb, if ever.”
    There was something in the clouds, dim lights moving in and out, and the sound of distant thunder.
    “A world without war,” Oppy said.
    “A Pax Americana,” Groves agreed.
    Lights reappeared in the stars between the clouds. A more diffused glow grew in the snow below the lights. Nearer. The general’s final caramel dribbled betweenhis fingers. Oppy cocked his head limply in the manner of the most ethereal saints. Fuchs stared through the flames reflected in his glasses. Joe counted until he heard thunder again.
    “Bombers, about six miles off.”
    “Here?” Groves asked.
    “It’s a bombing range, sir. Night practice.”
    “What do they bomb, exactly?” Oppy asked.
    “At night,” Joe said and looked at the campfire, “illuminated targets.”
    He broke for the car, dove into the front seat and cranked up the field radio. Through the Buick’s windshield, he watched the three men kicking apart the fire. Groves was surprisingly nimble, Oppy disjointed as ever. Beyond, blooms of light moved laterally on the horizon. The radio gave off a roar of static untainted by any coherent transmission.
    By the time he returned, all that was left of the campfire was a circle of soot. Fuchs was on his knees, slapping the last embers. With the fire out, the party could