A Maidens Grave

walked with them—he was flanked—to their vehicle. He realized only when he was standing beside it that the wind was steady and ridiculously cold for July. He glanced at the grave and saw the green paper of the flowers roll in the steady breeze.
    “All right.” He stopped abruptly, deciding to walk no further.
    “We’re sorry to interrupt your vacation, sir. We tried to call the number where you’re staying. There was no answer.”
    “Did you send somebody over there?” Potter was worried that Linden would be upset if agents came calling.
    “Yessir, but when we found you we radioed them.”
    Potter nodded. He looked at his watch. They were going to have shepherd’s pie tonight. Green salad. He was supposed to pick up something to drink. Samuel Smith Nut Brown Ale for him, oatmeal stout for them. Then, after dinner, cards with the Holbergs next door. Hearts or spades.
    “How bad is it?” Potter asked.
    “A situation in Kansas,” McGovern said.
    “It’s bad, sir. He’s asked you to put together a threat management team. There’s a DomTran jet waiting for you at Glenview. Particulars are in here.”
    Potter took the sealed envelope from the young man, looking down, seeing to his surprise a dot of blood on his own thumb—from, he supposed, a latent thorn somewhere on the stem of a rose with petals like a woman’s floppy-brimmed summer hat.
    He opened the envelope and read through the fax. It bore the speedy signature of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
    “How long since he went barricade?”
    “First report was around eight forty-five.”
    “Any communication from him?”
    “None yet.”
    “Contained?”
    “Completely. Kansas state troopers and a half-dozen agents from our Wichita office. They’re not getting out.”
    Potter buttoned then unbuttoned his sports coat. He realized that the agents were looking at him with too much reverence and it set his teeth on edge. “I’ll want Henry LeBow as my intelligence officer and Tobe Geller for communications. Spelled with an e but you pronounce it Toby.”
    “Yessir. If they’re unavailable—”
    “Only them. Find them. Wherever they are. I want them at the barricade in a half-hour. And see if Angie Scapello is available. She’d be at headquarters or Quantico. Behavioral Science. Jet her out too.”
    “Yessir.”
    “What’s the status of HRT?”
    The Bureau’s Hostage Rescue Team, consisting of forty-eight agents, was the largest tactical barricade force in the country.
    Crowley let McGovern deliver the unfortunate news.
    “That’s a problem, sir. One team’s deployed to Miami. A DEA raid. Twenty-two agents there. And the second’s in Seattle. A bank robbery that went barricade last night. Nineteen there. We can scramble a third team but we’ll have to pull some agents off the other two. It’ll be a while before they’re assembled on site.”
    “Call Quantico, put it together. I’ll call Frank from the plane. Where is he?”
    “The Seattle incident,” the agent told him. “If you want us to meet you at the apartment so you can pack a bag, sir . . .”
    “No, I’ll go right to Glenview. Do you have a siren and light?”
    “Yessir. But your cousin’s apartment’s only fifteen minutes from here—”
    “Say, if one of you could take the paper off those flowers, there on that grave, I’d appreciate it. Maybe arrange them a little, make sure the wind doesn’t blow them away.”
    “Yessir, I’ll do that,” Crowley said quickly. So there was a difference between them; McGovern, Potter realized, was not a flower arranger.
    “Thank you so much.”
    Potter started down the path again, following McGovern. The one thing he’d have to stop for was chewing gum. Those military jets climbed so fast his ears filled up like pressurecookers if he didn’t chew a whole pack of Wrigley’s as soon as the wheels left the asphalt. How he hated to fly.
    Oh, I’m tired, he thought. So damn tired.
    “I’ll be back, Marian,” he whispered, not looking toward the grave. “I’ll be back.”

10:35 A.M.
    As always, an element of circus.
    Arthur Potter stood beside the FBI resident agency’s best car, a Ford Taurus, and surveyed the scene. Police cars drawn into a circle like pioneers’ wagons, press minivans, the reporters holding their chunky cameras like rocket launchers. There were fire trucks everywhere (Waco was on everyone’s mind).
    Three more government-issue sedans arrived in caravan, bringing the total