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'Twenty-three blasts,' he said. 'Between nineteen forty-six and nineteen fifty-eight. One hundred billion dollars' worth of tests. The first few were A-bombs- dropped on old fleets captured from the Japanese. Then they got confident and started detonating things underwater. The big one was Bravo in fifty- four. The world's first hydrogen bomb, but your average American has never heard of it. Isn't that amazing?'

I nodded, not amazed at all.

'It broke the dawn with a seventy-five-thousand-foot mushroom cloud, son. The dust blanketed several of the atolls- Kongerik and Utirik and Rongelap. The children thought it was great fun, a new kind of rain. They played with the dust, tasted it.'

He got up, walked to the window and braced himself on the sill.

'Shifting winds,' he said. 'I believed that, too- I was a loyal officer. It wasn't till years later that the truth came out. The winds had been blowing east steadily for days before the test. Steadily and predictably. There was no surprise. The Air Force warned its own personnel so they could evacuate, but not the islanders. Human guinea pigs.'

His hands were balled.

'It didn't take long for the problems to emerge. Leukemias, lymphomas, thyroid disorders, autoimmune diseases. And, of course, birth defects: retardation, anencephaly, limbless babies- we called them 'jellyfish.' '

He sat down and gave a terrible laugh. 'We compensated the poor devils. Twenty- five thousand dollars a victim. Some government accountant's appraisal of the value of a life. One hundred and forty-eight checks totaling one million two hundred and thirty-seven thousand dollars. One hundred-thousandth the cost of the blasts.'

He sat back down and placed his hands on bony knees. His high forehead was as white and moist as a freshly boiled egg.

'I took part in the compensation program. Someone upstairs thought it a good use of my training. We did it at night, going from island to island in small motorboats. Pulling up to the shore, calling the people out with bullhorns, then handing them their checks and sailing off.'

He shook his head. 'Twenty-five thousand dollars per life. An actuarial triumph.' Removing his glasses, he rubbed his eyes. 'After I figured out what the blast had done, I put in for extended stay and tried to do what I could for the people. Which wasn't much… Samuel was a nice man. A very fine carpenter.'

'How'd the people react to being paid?' I said.

'The more perceptive among them were angry, frightened. But many were grateful. The United States extending a helping hand.'

He put his glasses back on.

'Well, let's crack another box. Hopefully something a bit more routine.'

'At least you tried to help them,' I said.

'Sticking around helped me more than them, son. Till then I thought medicine boiled down to diagnosis, dosage, and incision. Encountering my own impotence taught me it was much more. And less. You worked in pediatric oncology; you understand.'

'By the time I got involved, cancer was no longer a death sentence. I saw enough cures to keep me from feeling like an undertaker.'

'Yes,' he said. 'That's wonderful. Still, you saw the misery, too. Your articles on pain control- scientific yet compassionate. I read them all. Read between the lines. It's one of the reasons I felt you were someone who would understand.'

'Understand what, Bill?'

'Why a crazy old man suddenly wants to organize his life.'

***

The other cases were routine and he seemed to tire. As I scanned the chart of a woman with diabetes, he said, 'I'll leave you alone. Don't try to do too much, enjoy the rest of the day.'

He stood and headed for the door.

'I wanted to ask you something, Bill.'

'Yes?'

'I met Tom Creedman in the village this morning. He mentioned something about a murder a half year ago and some social unrest that led to the blockade.'

He leaned against the jamb. 'What else did he have to say?'

'That was it. Ben told me he lived here, caused some problems.'

'Oh, indeed.'

I pointed to the rear storage room. 'Was that where Ben caught him snooping?'

'No,' he said. 'That was my office. Two bungalows down. Creedman claimed he'd wandered in and was on his way out when Ben found him. I might have let it pass, but he insulted Ben. That kind of thing isn't tolerated around here. I ordered him off the grounds. He delights in accentuating the negative about me and Aruk.'

'He called this place Knife Castle.'

'And probably told you that yarn about the slaves butchering every last Japanese.'

'It never happened?'

'Allied bombs killed the vast majority of the Japanese soldiers. Three days of constant bombardment. On the third night, the Americans radioed victory and some of the forced workers left the barracks and came up here to loot- understandable, after what they'd been put through. They encountered a few survivors and there was some hand-to-hand fighting. The Japanese were outnumbered. Mr. Creedman calls himself a journalist, but he seems attracted to fiction- not that there's that much difference, nowadays, I suppose.'

'He also said that you did the autopsy on the murder victim. Do you agree with the theory that it was a sailor?'

He sucked in breath. 'I'm growing a bit concerned, Alex.'

'About what?'

'Picker's accident, and now this. You certainly can't be faulted for seeing Aruk as a terrible place, but it's not. Yes, the murder was terrible, but it was the first we'd had in many years. And the only one of its type I remember in over three decades.'

'What type is that?'

He pressed his hands together, clapped them silently and looked up at the ceiling fan, as if counting rotations.

Suddenly, he opened the door and stepped out. 'I'll be right back.'

11

The folder he returned with was brown with a white paper label.

ARUK POLICE

INVEST: D. LAURENT.

CASE NO. 00345

The first four pages were a typed report composed by the police chief in slightly clearer-than-usual cop prose.

The body of a twenty-four-year-old woman named AnneMarie Valdos had been found at three A.M. on South Beach by two crab fishermen, wedged between rocks overlooking a tide pool. The amount of blood indicated violence at the site.

Other fishermen had been at that exact spot at nine P.M., allowing Laurent to narrow the time the corpse had lain there.