The Enemy

and Coomer had something to hide from him.”
    “All they did was eat dinner.”
    “But Marshall must have been right there at Kramer’s funeral with them. So they must have specifically told him
not
to drive them here. Like a positive order to get out of the car and stay home.”
    I nodded. Pictured the long line of black government sedans at Arlington National Cemetery, under a leaden January sky. Pictured the ceremony, the folding of the flag, the salute from the riflemen. The shuffling procession back to the cars, bareheaded men with their chins ducked into their collars against the cold, maybe snow in the air. I pictured Marshall holding the Mercury’s rear doors, for Vassell first, then for Coomer. He must have driven them back to the Pentagon lot and then gotten out and watched Coomer move up into the driver’s seat.
    “We should talk to him,” I said. “Find out exactly what they told him. What kind of reason they gave him. It must have been a slightly awkward moment. A blue-eyed boy like that must have felt a little excluded.”
    I picked up the phone and spoke to my sergeant. Asked her to get a number for Major Marshall. Told her he was a XII Corps staffer based at the Pentagon. She said she would get back to me. Summer and I sat quiet and waited. I gazed at the map on the wall. I figured we should take the pin out of Columbia. It distorted the picture. Brubaker hadn’t been killed there. He had been killed somewhere else. North, south, east, or west.
    “Are you going to call Willard?” Summer asked me.
    “Probably,” I said. “Tomorrow, maybe.”
    “Not before midnight?”
    “I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.”
    “That’s a risk.”
    “I’m protected,” I said.
    “Might not last forever.”
    “Doesn’t matter. I’ll have Delta Force coming after me soon. That’ll make everything else seem kind of academic.”
    “Call Willard tonight,” she said. “That would be my advice.”
    I looked at her.
    “As a friend,” she said. “AWOL is a big deal. No point making things worse.”
    “OK,” I said.
    “Do it now,” she said. “Why not?”
    “OK,” I said again. I reached out for the phone but before I could get my hand on it my sergeant put her head in the door. She told us Major Marshall was no longer based in the United States. His temporary detached duty had been prematurely terminated. He had been recalled to Germany. He had been flown out of Andrews Air Force Base late in the morning of the fifth of January.
    “Whose orders?” I asked her.
    “General Vassell’s,” she said.
    “OK,” I said.
    She closed the door.
    “The fifth of January,” Summer said.
    “The morning after Carbone and Brubaker died,” I said.
    “He knows something.”
    “He wasn’t even here.”
    “Why else would they hide him away afterward?”
    “It’s a coincidence.”
    “You don’t like coincidences.”
    I nodded.
    “OK,” I said. “Let’s go to Germany.”

eighteen
    No way was Willard about to authorize any foreign expeditions so I walked over to the Provost Marshal’s office and took a stack of travel vouchers out of the company clerk’s desk. I carried them back to my own office and signed them all with my name on the
CO
lines and respectable forgeries of Leon Garber’s signature on the
Authorized by
lines.
    “We’re breaking the law,” Summer said.
    “This is the Battle of Kursk,” I said. “We can’t stop now.”
    She hesitated.
    “Your choice,” I said. “In or out, no pressure from me.”
    She said nothing.
    “These vouchers won’t come back for a month or two,” I said. “By then either Willard will be gone, or we will. We’ve got nothing to lose.”
    “OK,” she said.
    “Go pack,” I said. “Three days.”
    She left and I asked my sergeant to figure out who was next in line for acting CO. She came back with a name I recognized as the female captain I had seen in the O Club dining room. The one with the busted arm. I wrote her a note explaining I would be out for three days. I told her she was in charge. Then I picked up the phone and called Joe.
    “I’m going to Germany,” I said.
    “OK,” he said. “Enjoy. Have a safe trip.”
    “I can’t go to Germany without stopping by Paris on the way back. You know, under the circumstances.”
    He paused.
    “No,” he said. “I guess you can’t.”
    “Wouldn’t be right not to,” I said. “But she shouldn’t think I care more than you do. That wouldn’t be right either. So you