Finisterre

Part One

1

On 19 September 1944, the day the French port city of Brest fell to the Allied armies, a German submarine was limping south across the Bay of Biscay. U-2553 had left Kiel nearly two weeks earlier, crossed the North Sea, rounded the Orkney Islands, then tracked south along the western edge of the minefields off the west coast of Scotland. A special voyage with a special significance, entrusted to one of the giants of the U-boat service.

Kapitän Stefan Portisch had been in submarines since the beginning of the war in 1939. He was tall, thin, blond, slightly stooped and looked much older than his twenty-four years. This was a new crew, the usual mix of seasoned veterans and young first-timers, but already Stefan had won their confidence.

They knew he’d had a hand in sinking hundreds of thousands of tons of enemy shipping. They admired the way he never boasted about the honours this combat record had brought him. And by watching him at the closest possible proximity, they sensed that command – the ability to coax the best out of men under conditions of extreme difficulty – was something he’d learned the hard way. In the game of war, as one of the veterans had put it, Kapitän Stefan Portisch was a lucky card to tuck in your pocket.

Stefan’s latest promotion had taken him to one of the new Elektro boats, equipped with a Schnorkel to recharge the batteries without having to surface. Underwater, it could sustain five knots for sixty hours on a single charge. It was bigger than the old workhorse, the Type VII, which gave the crew extra room for a shower and even a freezer for fresh food. So far, so good. But this was the first time since the war began that Stefan Portisch had sailed without torpedoes.

Only one of the five strangers who’d joined the boat an hour before sailing had deigned to introduce himself. This was a thin, mirthless SS Brigadeführer. According to the orders from Berlin lodged with Kapitän Portisch, his name was Johann Huber. He had the senior SS look: dead eyes and an icy disdain for the small courtesies of life at sea. He was clearly on board to safeguard the other four passengers, and the pile of wooden crates so carefully stored for’ard in the torpedo compartment. So far, like them, he’d shown no interest in conversation or even the odd game of chess. This little group took their meals apart, raiding their kitbags for bottles of Gewürztraminer and tins of foie gras doubtless acquired from some Party hoard in Berlin.

The voyage was not going well. Stefan sensed at once that his crew resented the presence of these strangers. Above and below the waves, seamen were deeply superstitious. They had to rely on each other with a degree of trust more absolute than most marriages. These interlopers in their borrowed fatigues and fancy food had brought with them a strong whiff of the decay and corruption that seemed to be eating at the heart of the Fatherland. Somehow, they’d acquired a passage out of the ruined Heimat. Money? Power? Influence? No one knew. Except that U-2553 was heading for Lisbon. And from Lisbon these men could be in South America in no time at all.

Two days into the voyage, Stefan’s second-in-command, a taciturn Oberleutnant from Bremerhaven three years older than himself, had put it best of all. These people are rats, he said. They’re abandoning the Reich. They’re spreading disease. They’re a health hazard. They have no place here.

Stefan made his way to the tiny cubby hole where he marked up his charts. With five extra bodies aboard, space was precious. True, these new boats had slightly bigger latrines but one of them was now crammed with the personal luggage these people were taking with them. Back in Kiel, Stefan had watched the heavy suitcases passing from hand to hand. The latrine full, Huber had told Stefan to lock it. Then he demanded the key and slipped it into his pocket. My boat, those eyes were saying. My rules. My voyage.

Stefan was as curious as the rest of the crew to know what was inside those suitcases, and why the wooden crates in the torpedo compartment were so important, but just now his finger was tracing the pencilled line that tracked the progress of U-2553 across the Bay of Biscay. A little over an hour ago they’d been five miles due north of Finisterre, the topmost corner of Spain jutting out into the Atlantic. Eight days earlier, hugging the continental shelf off the west coast of Ireland, they’d been located by an enemy destroyer and depth-charged.

The attack had lasted more than an hour, the crew at action stations braced for yet another volley of explosions as the thrum-thrum of the approaching destroyer grew and grew until you could taste nothing but fear in the dryness of your mouth. No matter how long you’d served, these terrifying moments tested the strongest nerves.

The strangers from Kiel had gathered in the clutter of the for’ard sleeping compartment, their faces already the colour of death in the dim light. After the first attack, all five of them had struggled into the standard-issue life jackets. As the jaws of yet another blast closed around the hull, Stefan watched them trying to steady themselves. The boat bucked and groaned. Lights flickered and died. Steam blew from ruptured valves. Then, at last, the attack was over. The destroyer had either run out of depth charges or simply lost interest.

Minutes later, the Chief Engineer had reported serious damage to the port prop shaft. He said his men were doing their best to effect repairs but he wasn’t optimistic. With Lisbon more than a thousand miles away, U-2553 was down to just three knots.

Since then it had got worse. Everyone knew these new war-winning subs were shit. They’d been thrown together from huge prefabricated sections. Back home, with the shipyards short of proper expertise, much of the work had been done by forced labour from POWs and concentration camps. Berlin still boasted about war-winning technology and record-breaking construction times but the new Elektro boats were plagued by faults. Of the eight so far launched, just two had made it into active service.

Stefan had met a fellow Kapitän from one of these crews in Lorient. He’d just returned from a lone-wolf bid to ambush a huge Allied convoy inbound from North America. Everyone aboard knew that the assignment was suicidal – too many escorts, too many aircraft – but a failure in the main propulsion unit only hours out from Lorient had spared them an ugly death. Thank God for lousy engineering, the Kapitän had muttered. So much for the wonder boat.

A shadow fell over the chart. It was the Chief Engineer with more bad news. In a whispered conversation, he told Stefan that the drive-coupling in the starboard prop shaft had developed a problem. Worse still, an intermittent malfunction with the float that protected the Schnorkel was threatening to get worse.

Stefan raised an eyebrow. The Schnorkel was a mast-like tube that slid up from the conning tower and sucked in fresh air to feed the diesel engines. For some reason the float at the mouth of the tube was getting stuck, cutting off the air supply. Without fresh air, the diesels wouldn’t work, and without the diesels there was no way of recharging the batteries without surfacing.

‘You want us to surface?’

‘Yes, sir. And I’ll have to close down the prop shaft before we can make any kind of repair.’

Stefan’s eye had returned to the chart. On the surface, the diesels could recharge the batteries without turning the prop shaft. Already up top it was twilight. This close to the shore of a neutral country, the only real danger would be the odd fishing boat. Stefan glanced up at the engineer.

‘How much time will you need?’

‘Hard to say. Two hours? Three? Depends.’

Stefan nodded. The most recent weather forecast had warned of an approaching storm. Winds from the north-west gusting at eighty knots. Waves cresting at twenty metres. At normal cruise depth, the boat was immune from bad weather but the need to recharge the batteries through the Schnorkel had taken them to within touching distance of the surface. Already he could hear the hull beginning to groan as the boat wallowed along. Offering themselves to a storm of this magnitude would be suicidal.

‘You think we have a choice?’

‘No, sir.’ The engineer’s eyes had strayed to the chart. ‘We could lose the prop shaft completely. This close in, no engines, no power, no steerage way, would you really want that?’

Stefan gazed at him a moment. The law of diminishing options, he thought. This whole bloody war captured in a single question. Robbed of choice, he mustered a tired shrug.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Then we surface.’

*

Los Alamos is in New Mexico. The same morning found Hector Gómez sitting at his desk on the sprawling site the Americans dubbed the Hill. Gómez was a huge man, Hispanic in girth, Mexican by origin, impressively ugly. He’d joined US Army Intelligence after years of front-line service with the FBI and just now he was contemplating a drive to Santa Fe when his phone rang. It was a glorious morning up here on the mesa and after a leisurely breakfast in the commissary, Gómez had dropped into his office in the Admin Building to check on his mail before heading out. He hadn’t had a day off in weeks.

‘Gómez.’ He bent to the phone.

For a moment, he couldn’t place the woman’s voice. Foreign. German, maybe. Or one of those fussy, neurotic Hungarian women who seem standard issue if you happen to be a refugee genius in the field of nuclear physics. Either way, the lady at the end of the phone was seriously distressed.

‘It’s my husband,’ she kept saying. ‘Sol.’

‘Sol?’

‘He’s here. I’m looking at him. He’s shot dead.’

‘Dead? You’re serious?’

‘Ja. There’s blood everywhere. Please come. Please help.’

Gómez reached for a chair and settled behind the desk. He’d recalled the name at last. Sol Fiedler. Nice old man with thinning grey hair and a lovely smile, probably chasing fifty. Checking his watch, Gómez dallied briefly with passing the call on to the colleague who was supposed to be covering for him but then had second thoughts. Nothing seriously interesting had come his way for months. Just the endless daily chore of security checks and queries from the mail censor that fell to Army Intelligence. Santa Fe could wait.

‘I’m there,’ he said. ‘Don’t touch a thing.’

Marta Fiedler lived on the bottom floor of one of the Morgan two-storey duplexes on the outer fringes of the sprawling complex. Her front door was open and Gómez could hear the blare of a radio.

He stepped into the apartment from the blaze of sunshine and for a moment his world went inky black. He was wearing a light windcheater over his regulation shirt and tie and he drew his gun. In his FBI days he’d lost count of fellow agents maimed or worse for stepping into an ambush.

He called Mrs Fiedler’s name, heard nothing. He tried again and finally stirred a response, a small animal wail of acute distress. Making his way to one of the bedrooms at the back of the apartment, he found her curled beside her husband.

Sol Fiedler’s body lay diagonally across the bed. The embroidered counterpane was the colour of curd cheese except where blood and gobbets of brain had exploded through the side of his skull. His eyes were open, the lightest blue. Beside his outstretched hand was an Army-issue Browning automatic and the acrid stench of a recently expended shell hung in the chill of the air-conditioning.

Gómez reached down. Fiedler’s body was still warm but there was no sign of a pulse. The neatness of the entry wound was circled with powder burns and Gómez cursed himself for having left his camera in the office. He’d drive back to fetch it when he was through here but first he needed to know a great deal more.

Marta stared up at him. She and Gómez had met a couple of times before on cookouts and other social events. On the last occasion, less than a month ago, they’d talked about a bunch of ancient Indian ruins in the Bandelier National Monument, a favourite destination for weekend excursions among the Hill-folk. He remembered her telling him how hard it was to prise Sol away from his work. The Gadget, she’d said, had taken over both their lives.

‘He left a note.’ She nodded at a neatly folded sheet of paper on the carpet. Her years in America had done nothing to soften her accent.

Gómez picked it up. He’d remembered something else about this couple. They had no children. Quickly, he scanned the note.

Mein Liebling, it began. Ich kann nicht mehr. Die Arbeit ist übel. Vor mir ist Blut und noch mehr Blut. Ich will nichts mehr damit zu tun haben. Du weisst das. Ich liebe dich für immer und ewig. Nichts kann das ändern. Das ist die einzige Lösung. Your ever-loving Sol.

Everything typed, Hector thought. Nothing handwritten, not even the guy’s name at the end.

‘What does it say?’ He finally looked up.

‘It says…’ She fumbled for her glasses and then reached for the note. ‘My darling. I can’t take this any more. The work is evil. All I see ahead is blood and more blood. I can’t be part of this. You know that…’ She broke off for a moment, shaking her head. Then she swallowed hard and resumed. ‘… I’ll love you for ever. Nothing will ever change that. This is the only way. Your ever-loving Sol.’

Gómez said nothing. Then he asked for the note back and pressed her for more details. When exactly had she found him?

‘Just now. When I came back. I’d been up at the PX. There was a delivery of salt beef yesterday. Sol loves salt beef.’

She took her glasses off and began to cry again, hopelessly confused by what had happened. Gómez put the note carefully to one side. He found a handkerchief in a drawer and gave it to her. She wiped her eyes, then blew her nose. Gómez noticed an English/German dictionary on the bedside table and a copy of an Armed Forces paperback western. Cheap Indian rugs on the floor.

‘Was Sol here when you left?’

‘Nein. He was at work in the Tech Area.’

‘Have you phoned them? Talked to his supervisor?’

‘No. Only you.’

She stared at her husband’s body, shaking her head in disbelief, and Gómez extended a meaty hand, pulling her gently upright on the bed. He was thinking maybe a shot or two of bourbon but something told him that neither of them drank hard liquor. In the kitchen he killed the radio and put the kettle on the stove. Marta perched herself on a stool beside the window, bird-like, a small, fragile creature who’d just fallen out of the nest. She’d still got the handkerchief and turned her head away.

‘That note.’ She blew her nose again. ‘It’s just all wrong.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Sol always called me Spatzling when he wrote to me.’

‘Spatzling?’

‘It means little sparrow in German. Her never called me Liebling. Never. And something else.’ She nodded back towards the bedroom. ‘He never used a typewriter. He never knew how. My husband was a genius. But he couldn’t work a typewriter.’

‘Do you have a typewriter in the house?’

‘No.’

Gómez nodded, making a mental note. Check the typing against machines in Fiedler’s lab. Anyone can type if they have to.

‘What about the weapon? Do you recognise the gun?’

‘Never. Sol hated guns. Any kind of violence. In Germany you saw things all the time, horrible things. Guns were everywhere.’ She shook her head, emphatic now. ‘Never again. No guns.’

‘This country is full of guns,’ Gómez pointed out.

‘I know. But this country is different. You use guns to defend yourself.’ She was staring through the open door towards the bedroom. ‘Not for something like this.’

Sol loved America, she said, especially up here on the mesa. It gave him space. It gave him peace of mind. It gave him a chance to answer back. From the moment they’d got off the train at Santa Fe he couldn’t wait to get up to the Hill and join the other scientists on the Tamper Group. After the nightmare years in Germany, she said, he’d at last found a centre – a meaning – to his life. Now this.

Gómez nodded. A lot of this stuff would be on record in the Personnel Department. The small print could wait. While the body was still warm you stuck to the obvious.

‘Had he been depressed recently? Anything you might have noticed?’

‘Nothing. Sol was a child at heart. Kids don’t get depressed. Not Sol’s kind of kids.’

‘You’re sure about that? He wasn’t hiding anything?’

‘Never.’ She shook her head, a first hint of resentment. ‘I’d have known. I’d have sensed it. I knew that man inside out. I knew every particle of him, every nook, every cranny. He could hide nothing. Because there was nothing to hide.’

‘He ever upset anyone?’

‘No one. Everyone loved him. Just ask. Ask anyone.’

‘No …’ Gómez frowned, looking for the coffee, ‘… lady friends?’

‘I just told you.’

‘Tell me again.’

‘He was happy. We were happy. Why would he need anyone else?’

The coffee was in a cupboard over the sink. Gómez dropped a spoonful into a cup and added hot water.

‘You take sugar?’

Marta wasn’t listening. She wanted to know who’d do such a thing, who’d steal the man she’d loved.

‘You’re telling me someone killed him?’

‘I’m telling you he’d never do such a thing himself.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘Because we lived in a world without secrets.’ She was staring out of the window, her eyes still bright with tears. ‘Even here.’

*

It was dark by the time the storm hit. It came blasting out of the north-west, huge cresting waves, curtains of flying spume. The tiny huddle of men in the conning tower of the U-boat were wearing harnesses attached to the superstructure but even so they battled to keep their feet. All three of them were wearing layer after layer of wet-weather gear, hunched figures bent against the fury of the heaving sea. Stefan Portisch was one of them. He bent to the speaking tube as the bow reared up yet again and a wall of water came thundering out of the darkness.

Instinctively the men ducked. The Chief Engineer was still down aft in the engine room, supervising work on the failed coupling. In a couple of minutes, he said it might be worth slipping the prop shaft back into gear. Not before time, Stefan thought.

He grunted an acknowledgement and gestured for the other two men to go below. The wind was howling now but in tiny moments when the storm paused for breath he told himself he could hear the roar of surf away to port. In that direction lay the rocky foreshore of Galicia.

Stefan had never been to northern Spain but a year or so back he’d had a brief encounter with a French woman in Lorient. She knew the area well. She’d talked of the impact the cliffs had made on her – their sheer size, their sheer scale – and she’d described the emptiness of the beaches. This was a landscape, she’d said, that didn’t need people. It felt prehistoric, unforgiving, majestic, pitiless. Over a carafe or two of thin red wine, Stefan had been impressed. Now he wasn’t so sure. If the prop shaft held out they might be able to submerge and claw their way seawards. Otherwise, the game was probably up.

Down below, the storm had turned everything upside down. In the glimmer of the emergency lighting, sodden clothing and personal belongings had spilled from bunks. The deck plates were a mess of cables, ducts and broken glass. Tins of food were rolling around as the boat pitched. Crewmen, tight-lipped in the roar of the storm, were ankle-deep in water. For two weeks, as ever, these men had lived with nothing but the stench of diesel oil, rotting food, sweat and excrement, a fug that was the price of staying alive. Now, Stefan thought he could detect a new odour: fear.

The Chief Engineer struggled forward from the diesel compartment. He hadn’t slept for days and it showed. A single upturned thumb spared Stefan the effort of asking the obvious question. The prop shaft was ready. Let’s give it a shot.

‘And the Schnorkel?’

The Chief shrugged, then crossed two pairs of fingers. The broken teeth of nearby Spain might yet tear them to pieces. Que sera sera.

Stefan ordered the hatch on the conning tower to be closed. The engineer wedged himself at the controls and fired up the prop shaft. Stefan heard a low whine as the recharged electric motor engaged then felt the boat shake itself like a dog. Anything to get away from the feral monster that called itself a storm. Anything for the comforts of deeper water.

‘Flood buoyancy tanks two and three. Prepare to dive.’

The Chief reached for the big valves and the boat nosed down. Stefan stole a glance at the strangers in the for’ard compartment. Like the rest of the crew, they’d scented danger and they were back in their life jackets. As Stefan watched, Huber muttered something to the SS colleague at his side and then stepped across to the locked latrine. He fumbled for the key and opened the door. The jigsaw of carefully stowed suitcases had shifted during the voyage and three of them tumbled out. Huber bent quickly to the smallest and snapped the catches.

By now the boat was at thirty metres with the seabed rapidly approaching. The fury of the storm had given way to an eerie silence, punctuated by the rumble of the prop shaft and the steady drip-drip of dozens of leaks. Then, abruptly, came a harsh, metallic jolt, followed by the stripping of a million gears.

The Chief was staring at the control panel.

‘It’s gone,’ he said bitterly. ‘It’s finished.’

Stefan turned back to him. Huber was rummaging for something in the suitcase.

‘What about the other prop shaft?’

The Chief looked round. There was something crazy in his eyes.

‘Why not?’ He extended a weary arm. ‘Heil Hitler.’

He tripped a couple of switches then reached for a lever recessed into the control desk. The other prop shaft, already damaged, began to turn. Then he stiffened, his attention caught by another gauge. A key component on the batteries was already overheating. Carrying on would risk a fire or even an explosion. Only diesel power could carry the boat to safety.

Stefan nodded. In six years at sea, he told himself, he’d encountered far worse crises than this. Staring death in the face had become an occupational hazard. Rule one? Never lose your nerve.

He ordered the boat to surface again. The Chief blew the buoyancy tanks, watching the tiny gestures Stefan was making in the half-darkness to slow the climb before breaking surface. Stefan’s hands lifted and fell, lifted and fell, orchestrating the ascent. He’d become the conductor of this mad symphony that threatened, at any moment, to become a full-blown requiem. Compressed air was still emptying the tanks. At a depth of four metres, Stefan levelled out. Fresh air sucked in through the Schnorkel had given him one last option.

‘Go to diesels,’ he said.

The Chief was ahead of him. The big diesels coughed into action and the damaged prop shaft began to turn again. Crew close to the command consoles were staring at the gauges. The one on the right recorded forward speed. The compass lay beneath it. Five knots on a bearing of 345. Enough to take them back to the open sea. Just.

For minutes on end the crew stood motionless. You could hear the storm again and the boat was heaving beneath their feet. Then the steady clatter of the diesels suddenly died and – throughout the boat – men were gasping for air, their chests tight, their eyes bulging. Stefan could feel it himself, a terrifying pressure in the throat and lungs, and he knew at once what had happened. The bloody float in the Schnorkel had got stuck again, cutting off the air supply. The diesels had sucked what remained of the good air from the hull and now there was nothing left but a vacuum. In minutes, everyone aboard would suffocate.

The Chief was already expelling the last of the water from the buoyancy tanks. As the boat surfaced, men were thrown everywhere by the violence of the storm. Stefan fought his way across the control space, struggled up the ladder into the conning tower and released the hatch. A torrent of water flooded into the hull.

Men crowded forward, desperate for the sweetness of fresh air blasting in through the open hatch. Among them was SS Brigadeführer Huber. He was clutching a small leather wallet. He was trying to scale the ladder , determined to be the first to get out. Stefan met him at the foot of the ladder and shoved him roughly back. The moment he lost control of this situation, the moment the crew panicked, would be the moment they’d all die.

Huber drew a handgun, a standard-issue Luger. Stefan stared at it. The dull gleam of the barrel was inches from his forehead. The boat was wallowing savagely, out of control, broadside on to the storm. Stefan tried to steady himself, still blocking the way to the steel ladder that led up to the conning tower. Huber’s finger had tightened on the trigger. Why not now, Stefan thought. Why not here? Why not spare yourself the miseries of the minutes and maybe hours to come?

Then the hull shuddered beneath a huge wave, more water pouring in through the open hatch, and for the first time he heard the hollow metallic clang as the helpless submarine hit something solid. Rocks, Stefan thought. Then came another clang, a second death knell, as the granite reefs tore into the fragile hull.

Huber knew exactly what was happening. There was fear in his eyes. He pushed hard against Stefan, reaching for the ladder, but Stefan caught him off balance and managed to knock the gun aside. At the same time, the Chief stepped out of the shadows. He had a heavy spanner and he brought it crashing down on the side of Huber’s skull. The man crumpled with a soft gasp – partly surprise, partly pain – and joined the rest of the debris swilling across the deck plates.

The watching crewmen raised a cheer as Stefan bent to retrieve the pistol and the leather wallet. In the roar of the storm, fresh blood was already pinking the water at his feet. One of the other SS men stepped forward. He had a gun in his hand.

Stefan studied him for a moment.

‘You want to kill me? Like your Brigadeführer wanted to kill me?’

The SS man was staring at the inert body at Stefan’s feet. The submarine steadied itself. Then, from nowhere, came a collective roar from the rest of the crew. They wanted these men gone. They wanted them out of the submarine. Or they wanted them dead before the storm claimed them.

A young radio operator from Kiel got to the gunman first. He had him by the throat, pinned against the bulkhead. The pistol had disappeared. More crew lunged forward, fighting the submarine’s next wild lurch, then threw themselves at the other SS men. Stefan took a tiny step back. These men were brothers, Kameraden. They were also out of control but it was hard not to be proud of them, impossible not to sympathise with years of bottled up-anger: how they’d been lied to, manipulated, offered up as a sacrifice as the prospects of victory disappeared.

Two weeks earlier they’d put to sea in the dying embers of a war they sensed they couldn’t possibly win. Cherbourg had gone. St Malo had gone. And now Brest, home to countless of their Kameraden, was in the hands of the Americans. And so what was left? Would Lorient be next, with its huge U-boat pens? And then St Nazaire? Of course they would. And so all that remained was this pitiful bid to spirit a handful of dead-eyed Untermensch to a bright new future their crippled homeland could only dream about. That made no sense. That made the crew of U-2553 accomplices in the shoddiest of exits.

Worse, in the face of an ugly death, it was an insult. After two weeks of quiet speculation about the contents of the torpedo compartment, about the grotesque fantasy of a Thousand Year Reich, the time had come for a reckoning.

This was civil war, and Stefan knew it. The SS men had gone down under the sheer weight of numbers. Stefan pointed Huber’s pistol into nowhere and pulled the trigger. The fighting stopped.

For a moment there was nothing but the roar of the storm. Gouts of water were still cascading in through the open hatch. The SS gunman was the first to struggle to his feet. The other three, ignoring the body of their Brigadeführer, formed a protective barrier against the press of the crew. The smallest of them, an infant from Bavaria, was the only one with whom Stefan had formed any kind of relationship. He was bleeding from a gash on his lip. He looked pale and frightened.

‘What now, Herr Kapitän?’

Stefan nodded at the ladder. ‘You go first,’ he said. ‘All of you. When you get to the top, you jump.’

‘What about the Brigadeführer?’

Stefan shot a glance at the body at his feet. His eyes were open and he appeared to be breathing. Then Stefan’s gaze returned to the SS men.

‘If he’s not dead, he soon will be. There’s no way we can get him out. You either take the ladder or my men will kill you.’ Stefan braced against a savage roll to starboard. ‘Your choice.’

*

Hector Gómez reported to a full colonel in the Los Alamos security organisation, a career soldier called Arthur Whyte. Gómez had been uneasy about the relationship for the year and a half he’d been down in New Mexico. Los Alamos was run by the Army. Whyte was a manager, not an investigator, and it showed. His loyalty was to the Project. The program had to stay on schedule, had to deliver the Gadget to the tightest of deadlines. The fact that no one except a tiny handful in Washington knew what the deadline was simply added to the pressure. You did your job. You asked no questions. As far as the rest of the world was concerned you’d become part of an army of busy ghosts: scientists, engineers and support staff who’d quietly shipped in from labs and institutions across Europe and the States. Up here on the mesa even the site itself didn’t have a proper name. PO Box 1663, Santa Fe.

Whyte had an office in the same dull green Army-issue building as Gómez: top floor, better view, blessed with a water cooler that never broke down. He was a lean man, watchful. He had buffed nails and a complexion he was careful to hide from the sun. Before coming to the Hill, he’d run security at a big Army base in the Midwest. For a career soldier the Los Alamos posting was the chance of a lifetime, and Whyte knew it. There were twenty-eight men in Army Intel under his command plus seven civilians. Word on the Hill had Whyte eyeballing a promotion to a one-star brigadier.

‘So where are we going with this thing?’ he asked. ‘The guy shoots himself. He’s pissed with himself. It happens. It ain’t gonna make anyone’s day, least of all his, but we move on. Am I missing something here?’

Gómez didn’t bother to go through it all again. Whyte was an intelligent guy. He’d understood the significance of the typed note, of the gun that had come from nowhere, of the lack – in Marta Fiedler’s view – of any reason for her husband to put a bullet through his head. But that wasn’t the point. It was Whyte’s job to protect the racing heartbeat of the Los Alamos machine. He was the most loyal of soldiers. Absolutely nothing, in his view, should interrupt the heads-down dash to turn the Gadget into the biggest bang the world had ever seen. Least of all the suicide of just one of the thousand-plus scientists on site.

‘And if it’s not suicide?’

‘You can’t prove that.’

‘Not now, I can’t. You know I can’t. But that’s not how investigation works.’

Gómez went no further but he knew he didn’t have to. This wasn’t a conversation about a crime scene but a brisk reminder that life on the Hill was governed by a different set of priorities. Nonetheless, Whyte had a nose for trouble. Gómez knew his trade. And Gómez, irked, could be trouble of the worst sort.

‘How much time would you need?’

‘To do a proper job? A coupla weeks. Minimum. With more on the back end if the story develops.’

Impassive as ever, Whyte consulted his calendar. Today was Tuesday.

‘You’ve got until the end of the week.’ He looked up. ‘Keep me briefed, yeah?’

Back in his own office, Gómez settled briefly behind his desk. He’d already established that the apartment above the Fiedlers’ place had been empty for nearly a week, awaiting the arrival of new tenants. Neighbouring apartments housed single men sharing accommodation, all of whom had been in the Technical Area at the time of the incident. In terms of witnesses, Sol Fiedler had therefore died alone. Unless, of