Black Diamond

the fire and eased a pigeon onto each of the warming plates. From the stove he took the reduction of red wine and stock that he had made and poured it into a saucepan of cabbage and bacon he had prepared. Bruno never ceased to be amazed at how these cooking tasks were done almost automatically, the legacy of dozens of hunters’ dinners such as this and feasts for family and neighbors after the annual slaughter of a pig.
    At last all was ready, and they headed into the baron’s adjoining dining room, where more logs were crackling in the stone fireplace. Reflections of the flickering lights of the candles on the long table of chestnut, darkened with age and decades of polishing, danced on the array of carafes, each with its cork beside it to identify the wine within. Bruno brought in his soup, and the baron took his place at the head of the table. The foot of the table was left empty, reserved for their absent friend. In his place stood a framed photograph of Hercule taken the previous year, standing beside a deer he had shot. The baron gestured J-J to sit at his left and Bruno at his right, and the others arranged themselves along each side.
    The table, which the baron claimed had been in the same place since the
chartreuse
was built three centuries earlier, was more than three feet wide and could easily have sat half adozen more. At a sign from the baron, Hubert served the first of the wines as they all remained standing, waiting for the customary toast. Hubert poured the last of the carafe of the Château Angélus into the glass that stood beside Hercule’s place.
    “To our lost friend and companion of many a memorable day, and a devoted son of France,” the baron announced.
    “Hercule,” they chorused, raised the glasses to his photograph and drank and settled to their meal of truffle soup made of Hercule’s stock, pâté that he had helped to make, roast pigeon that had been one of his favorite dishes and Bruno’s venison stew from a deer that he had shot.
    “This meal,” the baron said, “is our friend’s parting gift to us.”

15
    The next morning, Bruno was not at his best. He seldom suffered hangovers. He always drank mineral water along with his wine, and after heavy drinking forced himself to swallow a bottle of water before bed. But the morning after the feast for Hercule he felt dreadful. He wasn’t the only one. The baron’s kitchen had been full of morose men, all waiting for the coffee to be ready and gulping down the baron’s sovereign remedy of a raw egg mixed with orange juice and
harissa
, the red chili paste from Morocco. Bruno took his medicine and left J-J nursing his second cup of coffee and waiting his turn in the baron’s bathroom. Driving home to shower and change and walk his dog, he stopped briefly in his office to send a fax to his contact in the military archives for the details of Hercule’s army record.
    And that triggered a memory of perhaps the only other Vietnamese contact that he knew. Tran had been a colleague in the combat engineers unit with which Bruno had served in Bosnia, on what was supposed to have been a peacekeeping mission where there had been no peace to keep. He kept in touch with Tran as with other old comrades-in-arms throughChristmas cards and occasional letters to announce a marriage or the birth of a new child. He had Tran’s address in Bordeaux, where he and his French wife ran a Vietnamese restaurant that Bruno kept promising to visit. He tracked down a phone number and called.
    “I’ve heard of Vinh, but I don’t know him personally. And I’ve heard about the troubles people have had—we’ve had some here in Bordeaux. It’s a bad time,” Tran had said when Bruno explained his reason for phoning. “I’ll make some calls and get back to you.”
    Feeling better after a brisk jog in the morning woods with Gigi, Bruno ironed the uniform shirts he had left drying the previous day and headed for L’Auberge des Verts. Bill Pons had announced what he called a Green Fair, an exhibition of energy-saving products offered by local companies. When Bruno arrived, Pamela was already there, wrapped in a heavy black cloak and wearing a Russian-style fur hat and boots and chatting to Alphonse. It was even colder up here on the ridge than it had been in the shelter of Bruno’s woods, and Bruno could see their breath steaming out in plumes in the chill air as they spoke.
    Bruno stopped to observe Pamela from a distance, almost completely draped in