“Then why all the hysteria?”

“Again: protocol. And an abundance of caution. Even if the radiation is minimal, we’ve got to follow the rules. After all, we don’t know where it came from.”

“Those rules didn’t get in the way of my taking ‘it’ to Santa Fe and irradiating the Institute!” Nora said, more hotly than she intended. She took a deep breath. “Sorry. My job … well, there’s some politics going on just this moment.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Corrie replied.

They walked a few moments in silence.

“I just don’t understand how this is possible,” Nora said.

“Ditto. All I know is that the bones of the mule, the pack, and everything associated with the body—along with the body itself—are radioactive.”

*

Following the men in monkey suits, they wended their way through the basement of the FBI building, passing through a warren of cinder-block corridors. At last they stopped before a door, and Morwood punched in a code. The door clicked open to reveal a vast storage room, shelves packed floor to ceiling with containers and strange items wrapped in plastic. Nora could see everything from an ancient car bumper and a section of sawed-up flooring to a window frame riddled with bullet holes. Next to the window frame was an old Tommy gun with a drum magazine.

“The evidence room,” Corrie said.

“It’s like a museum.”

“It is a museum,” Morwood said. “And, like in a museum, nothing ever gets thrown out.”

They passed through the room, eventually reaching a gleaming steel door at the far end covered with radiation hazard symbols.

“We have to wait here,” Morwood said.

The door opened with a hiss, and brilliant lights beyond blinked on automatically, revealing a clean, spare room. The two men went in, and the door slid shut behind them.

“After 9/11,” Morwood explained, “a few critical FBI offices got radiological evidence rooms such as this. We were one of them.” He cleared his throat. “Shall we head up to my office and discuss this, ah, development?”

*

Minutes later they were taking seats in his office. Morwood settled down behind the desk, clasped his hands together, and leaned forward. “So,” he said with a thin smile, looking at each of them in turn. “I guess everyone’s first reaction to this news can be summed up quite simply: What the hell is going on?”

A silence gathered.

“Do either of you have any idea how this fellow, Gower, got irradiated?”

Another silence. “The bones, clothing, the mule skeleton—it’s all radioactive?” Nora asked.

“Yes,” Corrie replied.

“The man disappeared seventy-five years ago,” said Nora. “So how is it even possible that his corpse is radioactive? Where on earth … ?”

And then, abruptly, she stopped and turned to Morwood. The seed of an idea had taken root in her head. “Might I ask why the Albuquerque office was one of the few to get a radiological evidence room?”

Morwood gave her a faint smile. “Los Alamos and Sandia National Labs, the nation’s two premier laboratories for nuclear weapons research, are within our jurisdiction.”

“Los Alamos,” Nora said. The idea that had begun to form in her head now blossomed into a revelation—one so powerful it almost took her breath away. She turned to Corrie. “What was the exact date Gower disappeared?”

“Let’s see.” Corrie paged through her tablet. “He was reported missing in July 1945.”

Now Nora’s heart was hammering. “In 1945, the first atomic bomb was detonated right here in New Mexico, the Trinity test—in the desert just south of High Lonesome. Corrie, look up the date on your iPad.”

Corrie brought up a web screen and began to read from Wikipedia. “Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear device. It was conducted by the United States Army at 5:29 AM on July 16, 1945.”

Corrie looked up. “The same month Gower was reported missing.”

“Keep reading,” Morwood said.

“The test was conducted in the Jornada del Muerto desert about thirty-five miles southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, on what was then the USAAF Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, now part of White Sands Missile Range.”

Corrie set down her tablet. An electric silence filled the room. And then Nora spoke. “So Gower got caught in the atomic blast.”

“Caught—and killed by it,” Corrie said. “That explains those strange forensic details—the fractured ribs and skull, the skin coming off in strips. And the clothes that looked almost as if they were singed.”

“Exactly,” said Nora. “Because they were burned.”

“And also the fractured ribs of the mule! They must have been hit pretty hard by the pressure wave of the blast. Probably knocked them down.”

“Right,” said Nora. “Gower couldn’t have been at ground zero, or he would have been vaporized. But he was close enough to be injured, yet survive—briefly. With a massive dose of radiation. He managed to get back to his camp in High Lonesome before he died.”

“And that’s why the mule was shot,” said Corrie. “Gower put it out of its misery before he died.”