Harold Broom returned to the car with a pinched look on his face. He refolded the spiral notepad in which he had scribbled the vital phone numbers and slipped it into his pocket.
"I've got bad news, Pop," he grumbled. "Real bad news."
For nine hours Tom Stratton kept his place in the amphitheater. In throngs the tourists came and went, cameras dangling, children bounding up and down the marble steps. Twice an hour one audience replaced another, yet Stratton held his place, watching the lean young men in their dark blue uniforms. He glanced now and then down the gentle hill where Kevin Mitchell was supposed to be buried.
Eighteen times Stratton watched the guards change at the Tomb of the Unknowns.
The cameras clicked most often when the guards faced each other and presented arms. There were three or four different Marines, working in shifts. Despite the heat and humidity, each man looked crisp and fresh as he strode to the marble crypt. For Stratton, the drill was his clock. From the amphitheater he had a clear view of grave 445-H, third row, fourth from the end, a small white cross in a sea of crosses, geometrically perfect.
Perfect, Stratton mused. Perfect was always the way the military wanted its men, but in war that was impossible. In death it was easy; dead soldiers can march precisely as desired.
Stratton thought of Bobby Ho, and wondered morbidly what had become of his friend's body after the massacre at Man-ling. Had the Chinese buried it? Burned it? Displayed it as a trophy? Perhaps they had fed Bobby's flesh to the starving dogs and cats of the village.
Arlington was for heroes.
Bobby ought to have a place here, Stratton thought. If not his body, at least his name. Wouldn't take much space, and God knows he was more of a hero than most of the men planted in the sea of crosses that rolled toward the Potomac.
The last tram of the day sounded its horn, and the tourists thundered from the amphitheater. Stratton rose from his spot, as if to follow, but instead took a different path downhill, and melted into the trees to wait for nightfall. He sat down at the base of an old oak and took out a pair of small Nikon field glasses.
From his new vantage, Stratton could read the name on the cross:
Lt. Kevin P. Mitchell, USAF B.11-22-29 D. 6-22-83 A fighter pilot, World War II and Korea. Medal of Honor. After the wars Mitchell had joined Boeing as a test pilot and later became a captain with Pan Am. He'd died on a vacation to China-a heart attack, the U.S. Embassy had reported, while riding a bus to the Qin tombs at Xian. Death by duck.
Baltimore was where the family had wanted the coffin sent-a family plot, Stratton had learned, where one of Mitchell's brothers was buried.
Arlington had been an afterthought, Mrs. Mitchell's idea. A real honor, the family agreed. The Medal of Honor ought to count for something.
But Baltimore was where the embassy had sent the coffin, and Baltimore was where Broom and Wang Bin would go first, Stratton reasoned. He would wait for them at Arlington-days, weeks, whatever it took. How they could dream of ever trying it here…
Someone was walking among the graves.
Stratton panned with the binoculars along the crosses until he froze on the figure of a woman, dressed in black. Dusk was cheating him of the finer details.
She was tall and wore a veil. Chestnut hair spilled down her back. She walked slowly, elegantly, stopping every few steps to study the names on the crosses.
She was young, Stratton decided, younger than the soldiers who lay buried in Section H. Too young to be a widow.
The woman in black stopped walking when she came to grave 445. She stopped to read the inscription. Then she reached out and touched the cross with her right hand. It began as a light and sentimental gesture, and from a distance would seem nothing more than a sad moment. But through the field glasses Stratton could see that the woman was not merely touching Kevin Mitchell's cross, but testing it, pushing on it with discernible force. Then she stood up straight and with a quickened pace made her way out of the rows of graves to a footpath.
There was something familiar…
Stratton followed at a distance. He was careful to stay in the grass so his steps would not echo. Arlington was nearly empty now. The trams had stopped running and the tourists had gone back to the city. The woman in black walked alone, no longer in the gait of a mourner. Her heels clicked sharply on the pavement, and the sound dominoed along the tombstones.
"Hey there!" Stratton called.
Self-consciously she slowed, then turned as Stratton ran up. She looked at him and smiled. "So there you are!"
"Linda!" Stratton said.
"How'd I do?"
"I like the dress. Black becomes you. What are you doing here?"
It was a pointless question. She knew. He knew.
She kicked out of her high heels and said, "These things are killing me. Come on, walk me to the car."
"I can't."
She took his arm. "Come on, Tom, they won't come at night. They'll never find it at night."
"You're wrong, Linda. How did you know-"
"The same way you did. I had to play catch-up, that's all. I should've listened to you before, Tom, and I'm sorry. I didn't see what was happening-but even if I had, I'm not sure it would have made a difference."
"Nobody would have believed it, least of all your boss."
"Wang Bin was my case. The last couple of days I've had a lot of time to think about how I could have caught on sooner." She did not tell Stratton about the foreigners' morgue in Peking. She was afraid he had already figured it out.
"Are you here alone?" he asked.
"For now," she said.
"Me, too. And I'm staying."
He started back up the hill and she followed. "Tom!" she called. "I'm ruining my goddamn stockings. Slow down. Listen to me, they aren't coming tonight. They think the coffin is in Baltimore-"
"They've beaten me twice already. This is my last chance."
"Tom, be serious. I'll have some people here tomorrow. When the bad guys show up at the gate, we'll arrest them."
"What makes you so sure they'll use the gate?"
"Once they realize where the coffin is buried, they'll give up on it. They'll never try to dig this one up. Christ, it's Arlington, Tom. They can't possibly get away with it."
"This way," Stratton said, leaving the asphalt path and winding through a stand of tall trees. "I've got a good view from up here."
Linda Greer sat next to him under the oak, tugging the black dress down to cover her knees. She had hoped he would notice, but he didn't. He offered her a thermos of coffee.
"This is like summer camp," she teased. "Are you really going to stay here all night?"
"Why not?"
Linda edged closer until her cheek touched his shoulder.
"Might as well make the best of it," she whispered. "It's a soft night, isn't it?"
Stratton nodded but did not look at her.
"Tom, relax-it's like I'm snuggling up to one of those damn gravestones."
"I'm sorry."
Stratton trained his eyes on Kevin Mitchell's plot. A lemon moon, nearly full, was rising behind the capital across the river. The silent cemetery became a sprawling theater of shadows; the crosses turned into tiny soldiers with arms extended, whole battalions frozen on the hillsides in calisthenic precision.
"I stopped at the Kennedy grave this morning," Stratton said.
"Which one?"
"Both of them. That's where all the tourists go. I'd never seen them before, only pictures."
Linda said, "I took my little sister a couple of years ago. She cried."