Excerpt from Trinity by Louisa Hall, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

In his position, another man would have been jumping out of his skin. He'd stepped out of the itinerary given to him by General Groves, carrying top secret nuclear information. He knew that we had evidence of espionage on the mesa. He knew that no matter how firmly General Groves was behind him, his former involvement with Communist groups meant he wasn't above our suspicion.

Another man would've checked for tails every two minutes. But Opp didn't look once. He must have known we were behind him. He just didn't want to admit it.

With one hand still clenched in his pocket, he stood peering up at the board as if he couldn't believe it. It took him a minute to accept the fact that his gate was really closed. Then he turned away and kept moving.

He headed for the café. He bought a newspaper and a small coffee. Then he left a tip on the counter and went to the window.

He drank standing up, without any apparent enjoyment. And he was still gazing blankly off into the distance, as if the scene in front of his eyes—the station, I mean, and the people coming and going, the shoe blacks and the women in heels and the GIs with their duffels—didn't exist. As if that station had been replaced by some other station, or some other, different version of this one.


WHILE HE FINISHED HIS COFFEE, I FOUND A PAY PHONE THAT KEPT him in my sight line.

What is it, Pash said when I'd reached him in the office.

Opp's flying the coop, I said.

What do you mean he's flying the coop? Pash said, after a moment.

He left the Rad Lab. We're at the station. I think he's heading into the city.

Jesus Christ, Pash said. Jesus Christ, the fucking Red bastard.

I could hear him breathing into the telephone.

Do you want me to stop him? I said.

Stop him? Pash said. What the fuck are you talking about? Why the fuck would you do that?

I didn't answer. Pash made several odd snorting noises.

No, he said. No, no. Don't intervene. Don't fucking intervene. I have to phone Washington first.

He paused, snorted again, then caught his breath.

Just don't fucking lose him, he said. Remember your fucking directives. I'll have Frank meet you out front in the De Soto.


AFTER THAT, AT A KIOSK BY THE PAY PHONE, I BOUGHT SOME CASHews and a Chronicle. While I waited for change, I opened the paper, then snuck out my camera. Over the rim of the front page, I photographed Opp a few times.

Then I glanced down again at the headlines. fortresses smash kiel, bremen, they said. 26 lost in big daylight battle.

I put a cashew in my mouth, but it was too salty to swallow. Then I focused again on Opp's face: dark eyebrows, high cheekbones, that beak of a nose.

Every so often, he brought his coffee up to his mouth. The longer I focused, the less human his face seemed. His jaw was like a grasshopper's jaw. Then after a while it wasn't a jaw, just an inhuman apparatus.

At 5:07, he brought his watch up to his face. Then he moved out of the frame. I folded up my paper and followed.


ON THE TRAIN INTO THE CITY, HE TOOK A SEAT BY THE WINDOW LIKE any other man on his way in to work. I watched him over the paper, trying not to get caught up in the headlines. I must have, though, because I remember them still. There were a lot of headlines that day. costs held "not too high for results," was one of the ones I remember. And u.s. fliers down 25 zeros of 50 in solomons battle.

That kind of thing. All the headlines you get during wartime, mathematical calculations of loss.

I tried not to let them distract me. I focused on the side of Opp's face, that strange apparatus. He was in possession, I thought to myself, of secrets that could potentially wipe out the planet.

Excerpted from Trinity by Louisa Hall. Copyright © 2018 by Louisa Hall. Excerpted by permission of Ecco. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.