Neumann lived in Deepwater, a deserted, partially-irradiated island city a thousand miles northeast of Bermuda. The empty American consulate was the only place he could find decent cigarettes, which relieved the itching in his temples.
“Where’s the boat?” Neumann said to the air, gazing at the distant shipyards, wanting to go home. “Where’s my God-damned boat?”
It was the books here that upset him the most. They said the city was evacuated in 1959 after a fire in the pile. 40,000 people in Frankfurt died in 1946 when Warm Puppy blew its 11 kiloton yield. Nonsense.
The funny thing was that he’d worked near Frankfurt, in the 1980s, at the Biblis nuclear plant, and the worst thing that ever happened was a faceful of coolant. There was never any atom bomb in Frankfurt. The war ended in 1945, not 1947.
After a few weeks, Neumann decided to head to the dock anyway, and wait there for the boat. As always, he turned back after walking a few blocks.
“When will you be back, papa?” his son had asked as he left for work, the day the valve blew at Biblis. Such a strange memory now.
Now and again, he looked up and watched the piers stretch into silver waves. The city’s brick chimneys pointed toward the containment shroud, the sarcophagus, a tall shadow on the far side of the sound. The water seemed as far away as always, as if the space beyond the nearest mile were an ever-receding mirage, a painting made of smoke.