A Maidens Grave

me ask you another question.”
    “Shoot.”
    Should I push or not?
    Angie was watching him. Their eyes met and she mouthed, “Go for it.”
    “Lou, how about if you let her go? Melanie.”
    Okay. Art, I’m in a good mood. I’m going to Canada, so you just bought yourself one.
    Handy’s voice was like a cold razor blade. “Sometimes you ask for too fucking much, you asshole. I’m the one person in the fucking universe you don’t want to do that to.”
    The phone went dead.
    Potter raised his eyebrows at the outburst. But the room erupted into applause and laughter. Potter hung up the phone and joined in.
    Potter clapped LeBow on the back. “Excellent job.” He looked at Angie. “Both of you.”
    Budd said, “You deserve an Oscar for that. Yessir, I’d vote for you.”
    “M-4?” Potter said. “What’s an M-4 priority?”
    “Doris and I went to England last year,” LeBow explained. “That was a highway, I seem to recall. Did sound good, didn’t it?” He was very pleased with himself.
    “That radar missile tracking,” Budd said. “That sounded pretty cool.”
    “All made up.”
    “Oh, brother. He bought it all.”
    Then they went somber again as Potter gazed out the window at the place where six hostages still remained, safe for at least a couple of hours—if Handy kept his word. Then simultaneously the entire crowd in the van all laughed once more as Tobe Geller, maven of electronics and coldly rational science, whispered reverently, “Papal clearance,” and crossed himself expertly like the good Catholic that he apparently was.

7:15 P.M.
    “Well, Charlie, what’s the news from the front?”
    Budd stood outside the van in a gully. He held his cellular phone pressed hard into his ear—as if that would keep anyone from overhearing. Roland Marks’s voice tended to boom.
    The assistant attorney general was down at the rearstaging area. Budd said, “I’ll tell you, it’s been a real roller coaster here. Up and down, you know. He’s doing some real remarkable things—Agent Potter, I mean.”
    “Remarkable?” Marks asked sarcastically. “He’s brought that girl back to life, has he? A regular Lazarus situation, is it?”
    “He’s gotten a couple more out safe and he just bought us another couple of hours. He’s—”
    “Do you have that present for me?” Marks asked evenly.
    The door of the van opened and Angie Scapello stepped out.
    “Not yet,” Budd said, and decided the lie was credible. “Soon. I should go.”
    “I want that tape within the hour. My friend from the press’ll be here then.”
    “Yessir, that’s right,” he said. “I’ll talk to you later.”
    He pushed disconnect. And said to Angie, “Bosses. We could do without ’em.”
    She was carrying two cups of coffee and offered one to him.
    “Milk, no sugar. That’s how you like it?” she said.
    “Agent LeBow has my file too, huh?”
    “You live near here, Charlie?”
    “My wife and I bought a house about fifteen miles away.”
    That was good. Work in Meg again.
    “I have an apartment in Georgetown. I travel so much it doesn’t make sense for me to buy. And just being by myself.”
    “Never been married?”
    “Nope. I’m an old maid.”
    “Old, there you go again. You must be all of twenty-eight.”
    She laughed.
    “You like life out here in the country?” Angie asked him.
    “Sure do. The girls have good schools—I showed you the pictures of my family?”
    “You did, yes, Charlie. Twice.”
    “They have good schools and good teams to be on.They live for soccer. And it’s not expensive, really. I’m thirty-two and own my own house on four acres. You couldn’t do that on the East Coast, I don’t imagine. I went to New York once and what people pay for apartments there—”
    “You faithful to your wife, Charlie?” She turned her warm, brown eyes on him.
    He gulped down coffee he had absolutely no taste for. “Yes, I am. And as a matter of fact I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I think you’re an interesting person and what you’re doing to help us is real valuable. And I’d have to be a blind man not to see how pretty you are—”
    “Thank you, Charlie.”
    “But I’m not even unfaithful in my mind—like that president was, Jimmy Carter? Or somebody, I don’t remember.” This was all rehearsed and he wished he didn’t have to swallow so often. “Meg and I’ve had our problems, that’s for sure. But who hasn’t? Problems’re part of a relationship and you get