"Could be, sir."

"Sergeant, what would you say if I told you that Oppenheimer was an agent of the Soviet Union, intent on developing an atomic weapon here only so that he can deliver the finished plans to his Soviet friends?"

Joe didn't know what to say.

"You'd say I was mad, wouldn't you, Sergeant?"

"Have you," Joe picked his words carefully, "passed your opinion on to General Groves, sir?"

"As did the FBI. But the general is in Oppenheimer's thrall. Everyone is. Nobel laureates are his lapdogs and the United States Army has been tied up and delivered as a gift to him. I have felt the allure myself."

"Have you, sir?"

"The most fascinating conversations in my life have been those with Oppenheimer on history. He read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on a single train trip from New York to Los Angeles, and Das Kapital on the way back. This is a physicist, I remind you."

"True," Joe said. Oppy was always trying to launch turgid conversations.

"Have you ever noticed something hypnotic about him, Sergeant? The way people will go into his office saying one thing and come out saying the opposite? The way everyone imitates him? The way he's made his own empire here? Here at this focal point of history?"

"You're following orders from the FBI or someone in Washington, sir?"

"I don't need orders from anyone. Everyone in Intelligence already sees the obvious connections. It's -"

"Shh!" Joe saw three shapes emerging silently out of the opposite woods; they stopped at the trees' edge. Three large blurs watching and listening. Could be deer, elk or horses. Joe crouched lower. The Winchester had an open sight on a short barrel, one round in the breech and five in the magazine. He wondered how good Captain Augustino was with the Marlin.

The first breath of day was a leaden gray light. Stars dulled and disappeared while the three blurs came into focus. Elk or deer, from their utter quiet, Joe was sure. They were waiting to make sure the meadow slope was safe, just as he was waiting to be certain of his shot. Gradually he saw them. Two bull elks and a pregnant elk cow. Strange a cow would be with bulls at this time of year, he thought. He aimed at the bull on his side, assuming the captain would take the other. The bucks were beautiful, dark heads and big antlers ahead of their soft, tan bodies. A heart shot, he decided. His own heart stood still, waiting, watching the lightening slope of meadow snow growing against the angle of pines. The three elk stood on shadows.

Augustino shot and the elk cow dropped in a heap. The bucks bolted into the woods and crashed through the trees.

"You didn't fire," Augustino said.

"You shot the cow."

"I gave you the bucks."

Joe stood up. "You don't shoot a cow that's carrying. She was carrying, anyone could see that. You said you were a hunter. You're an asshole."

"Sergeant, you missed your -"

"You don't shoot a cow that's carrying. At least I thought you were a hunter. I listened to this garbage of yours about Jews, this fucking drivel, because you're an officer. But you don't shoot a cow that's carrying. You're fucking crazy, Augustino, you know that? This shit about Marx. I lived in New York. I marched for the Spanish Civil War vets. I had two co-eds screwing me for a solid month to teach me about Marx, while you were still beating off in the sheets of Brownsville. And when I was ten I knew you don't shoot a cow that's carrying."

"I'm warning -"

"Don't warn me!" Joe ripped away the bough over Augustino's head and then swung the Winchester against the trunk.

The rifle cracked in half. Barrel and breech flew away while the stock stayed in Joe's hand. He threw it aside. "Don't warn me."

"Go on," Captain Augustino's tone changed. He hadn't budged when the rifle had sliced over his head, though the colour went from his face, making the half-moons under his eyes even darker.

Joe started across the snow for the elk cow. The top of her neck was blown off and her legs sprawled in every direction, but her eyes were still wet and alive. The pregnant belly rose distended and hard above the rest of her.

"Let me tell you," Joe yelled. "Your wife says you have a prick the size of a wet inchworm. It's got to be twice the size of your brains."

He walked faster through the snow, unbuckling his coat away from the .45 that rode inside his belt. He felt Augustino raising the rifle behind him. Heart shot? Head shot? With the .45 free he took the last ten steps on the run. When Augustino shot, he was already diving.

The cow kicked as the second bullet hit. He landed on the other side and rolled back against the elk. Captain Augustino stood, disdaining cover, and levered another round into the breech. Joe rested the .45 on the cow and put the captain in the square notch of the gun's sights, for all the good that would do considering the accuracy of an automatic. He squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked and a branch exploded five feet above Augustino's head. "Shit!" He squeezed off another. Bark blew off a tree next to the captain.

Augustino slipped behind branches. All Joe could see of him was the vapour of his breath and the tip of the rifle. His own breath came like the steam of an engine. The cow was too small. If Augustino started to stalk and come from a different angle, Joe was dead.

The rifle barrel levelled again, but aimed at where the bucks had vanished. Then Joe saw them coming out of pines, two men in blankets and snowshoes, their faces and hands blackened with paint, long hair upbraided and loose. The first was stooped with age, and he led the second with a long cord tied to the wrist, as if he were blind. The man being led shouldered a net stuffed with dead blue jays; the net looked like a brilliant, blue wing. There was one owl in the net, and one nighthawk, birds that could only be netted against a moon. The men must have heard the shots, probably saw them, but they crossed the meadow between the elk and the trees where Augustino hid, neither quickening nor stopping, slowly trudging down the snowy slope with the prizes of their own hunt. Though they seemed to be heading in the direction of Santiago, Joe didn't recognize them. They moved like an apparition, or a short parade from another world. Then they reached a line of aspen at the bottom of the slope and were gone.

"Sergeant!" Augustino yelled. "I've changed my mind. I don't want to kill you. I do want to kill you, but I have more important things to do."

"The hell you do."

"I have duties to perform." Augustino stepped forward into the clearing, his rifle in his left hand, barrel up. "I can't allow myself to be distracted, to enjoy mere personal vindication, to sink to your level."

"It was your idea to come here."

"Shoot an officer and it's your life, Sergeant." Augustino dropped the rifle as he approached. "We came for an elk and we shot one, that's all that transpired. Nothing else really happened."

"Because you missed."

"You're not in a position to publicly accuse me of anything, not a sergeant fornicating with the wife of the officer he accuses. This is an experience to put behind us. A morning's hunt, is all." He stopped twenty feet short of Joe.

"You don't shoot a cow that's carrying." Joe aimed. Head shot? At this range, a .45 could take off the captain's head from the brow up.

"We have to get back to the Hill to pick up the Director and General Groves." Augustino looked at his watch. "Mrs Augustino will be going to Sunday service."

"You want to get rid of me, Captain, why don't you just post me to the Pacific or Europe?"

"No, you serve me better where you are."

"Doing what? Driving? Opening doors? Screwing your wife?"

"The information, Sergeant."

"Useless." Joe got to his feet.

"Not at all, Sergeant, It makes you an informer."