“Is ‘the Hill’ a code name?”

The soldier looked slightly puzzled. “I don’t think so. I never heard that, anyway. It’s just what everybody calls it around here.”

“I assume there is one-a hill, that is.”

“What they call a mesa. Spanish for table,” he said, a tour guide now. “That’s what they looked like, I guess-flat-topped hills. Anyway, there used to be a school there, kind of a dude ranch school for rich kids, I think. Sure doesn’t look like a school now.”

“What does it look like?”

The soldier grinned, breezy again. “Look like? Well, if you’ll pardon my French, like a fucking mess.”

Santa Fe, however, was pretty. The adobes, which Connolly had never seen, seemed to draw in the sun, holding its light and color like dull penumbras of a flame. The narrow streets leading to the plaza were filled with American stores-a Woolworth’s, a Rexall Drugs that had been dropped into a foreign city. The people too, dressed in cowboy hats and jeans, looked like visitors. Only the Mexican women, wrapped in shawls, and the Indians, nodding over their piles of tourist blankets, were really at home. The plaza itself was quiet, a piece of Spain drowsing in an endless siesta.

“That’s the Palace of the Governors,” the soldier said, pointing to the long adobe building that lined one side of the square. “Oldest government office in the country, or something like that. Project office is right around the corner.”

The sense of enchantment held. They walked through the quiet courtyard of a small adobe house where the only sound was the travelogue splash of a fountain. But America returned inside. A bright, cheerful woman, hair piled on top of her head, was busy on the phone as she arranged papers on the desk in front of her.

“I know space is tight, but he’s just got to have it.” She covered the mouthpiece and nodded to Connolly. “I’ll be with you in a sec.” Then, to the phone, “Edith, please see what you can do.