A Maidens Grave

let him preview stories.
    “That’s a prior restraint,” said Potter, fourth in his law school class.
    “There’ve already been a half-dozen reporters talking about crossing the barriers. That’ll stop if you agree to let a couple of us inside. They’ll listen to me.”
    “And you want to be one of those two.”
    Silbert grinned. “Of course I fucking want to be one of them. In fact I want to be one of the first two. I’ve got a deadline in an hour. Come on, what do you think?”
    What did he think? That half the problem at Waco had been press relations. That he was responsible not only for the lives of the hostages and troopers and fellow agents but for the integrity of the Bureau itself and its image, and that for all his negotiating skills he was an inept player of agency politics. He knew too that most of what Congress, senior Justice officials, and the White House learned about what happened here would be from CNN and the Washington Post.
    “All right,” Potter agreed. “You can set it up. You’ll coordinate with Captain Charlie Budd.”
    He looked at his watch. The food was due. He should be getting back. He drove to the command van, told Budd to set up a small press tent behind it and to meet with Joe Silbert about the pooling arrangement.
    “Will do. Where’s the food?” Budd asked, gazing anxiously up the road. “Time’s getting close.”
    “Oh,” Potter said, “we’ve got a little flexibility. Once a taker’s agreed to release a hostage you’re past the biggest hurdle. He’s already given Jocylyn up in his mind.”
    “You think?”
    “Go set up that press tent.”
    He started back to the command van and found himself thinking not of food or helicopters or Louis Handy but rather of Melanie Charrol. And not of how valuable she as a hostage might be to him as a negotiator nor of how much of a benefit or liability she might be in a tactical resolution of the barricade. No, he was mulling over soft information, dicta. Recalling the motion of her mouth asshe spoke to him from the dim window of the slaughterhouse.
    What could she have been saying?
    Speculating mostly about what it would be like to have a conversation with her. Here was a man who’d made his way in the world by listening to other people’s words, by talking. And here she was, a deaf-mute.
    Lips, teeth, lips.
    He mimicked her.
    Lips, teeth . . .
    Got it, he thought suddenly. And he heard in his mind: “Be forewarned.”
    He tried it out loud. “Be forewarned.”
    Yes, that was it. But why such an archaic expression? Of course: So he could lip-read it. The movement of the mouth was exaggerated with this phrase. It was obvious. Not “Be careful.” Or “Look out.” Or “He’s dangerous.”
    Be forewarned.
    Henry LeBow should know this.
    Potter started toward the van and was only twenty feet from his destination when the limousine appeared silently beside him. It seemed to the agent that as it eased past it turned slightly, as if cutting him off. The door opened and a large, swarthy man climbed out. “Look at all this,” he said boisterously. “It looks like D-Day, the troops have landed. You’ve got everything under control, Ike? Do you? Everything well in hand ?”
    Potter stopped and turned. The man walked up close and his smile, if a smile it had been, fell away. He said, “Agent Potter, we have to talk.”

2:20 P.M.
    But he didn’t talk just at that moment.
    He tugged his dark suit closed as a burst of chill wind shot through the gully and he strode to the rise, past Potter, and looked over the slaughterhouse.
    The agent noted the state license plate, unhappily speculating as to who the visitor might be, and continued on to the van. “I’d step back,” he said. “You’re well within rifle range.”
    The man’s large left hand reached out and gripped Potter’s arm as they shook. He introduced himself as Roland Marks, the state’s assistant attorney general.
    Oh, him. Potter recalled the phone conversation earlier. The dusky man gazed at the factory again, still a clear target. “I’d be careful there,” Potter repeated impatiently.
    “Hell. They have rifles, do they? With laser scopes? Maybe phasers and photon torpedoes. Like Star Trek, you know.”
    I don’t have time for this, Potter thought.
    The man was tall and large, with a Roman nose, and his presence here was like the blue glow of plutonium in a reactor. Potter said, “One moment please.” He stepped inside the command van,