By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)

Dieter nodded.

“I stuck a piece of paper in it, sir,” he said.

Lustrous found the slip of paper and opened the book to that page.

“Jesus H. Christ!”

he said when he found himself looking at another photograph of Warrant Officer Jorge Alejandro Castillo, this one, he guessed, taken when Castillo had graduated from flight school. Castillo also looked like he was fifteen years old.

“I don’t think there’s too many guys who flew Hueys with a name like that,” Dieter said. “I think that’s your guy, Colonel.”

Colonel Lustrous started to read the citation: “ ‘On 4 and 5 April 1971, while flying HU-1D helicopters in support of Operation Lam Son 719 ...’ ” He stopped and looked at Dieter. “April ’71? We were out of Vietnam by then.”

“Not the aviators,” Dieter said. “Air Force and Army. We left a bunch of them—plus some heavy artillery—behind to support the South Vietnamese. I looked Operation Lam Son 719 up.”

“And?”

“The South Vietnamese went into Laos to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail,” Dieter said. “They got clobbered. And so did our choppers. We lost more than a hundred, and five times that many were shot up.”

Lustrous dropped his eyes to the book again and continued: "’... time and again, Warrant Officer Castillo flew his aircraft into extremely heavy fire to rescue the crews of downed American helicopters. In the process he was twice shot down himself, and suffered painful wounds, contusions and burns, for which he refused medical treatment, as a result thereof. Warrant Officer Castillo was on his fifty-second rescue mission, in the fifth helicopter he operated during this period, when his aircraft was struck by heavy antiaircraft fire and exploded ...’ ”

Lustrous looked at Dieter and repeated, “Fifty-second rescue mission?”

“That’s what it says, sir. We lost, I told you, more than a hundred choppers. They mean destroyed, by that; it doesn’t count the ones that got shot down. They really kicked our ass. A lot of chopper crews had to be either picked up or the VC would have gotten them.”

“Well, it says he was given the medal posthumously,” Lustrous said. “So it doesn’t look as if he will be able to assume his parental obligations, does it?”

“He’s buried in the Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, sir,” Dieter said. “They didn’t get his body back right away.”

“Sonofabitch,” Lustrous said. “I didn’t expect this.”

“We don’t know for sure it’s our guy, sir. For sure, I mean.”

“Oh, come on, Dieter!”

“You don’t think it’s possible, sir, that Frau Whatsername knew about this all along?”

“No, I don’t,” Lustrous said automatically, but then added, “Why would she do something like that?”

“Desperate women, shit, desperate people, do desperate things, Colonel. Things that don’t make a lot of sense.”

“I hate to agree with you, but I do,” Lustrous said. “This situation has just become something that cannot be dealt with by someone of my pay grade.”

“What are you going to do, sir?”

“I’m going to try to get General Towson to find a few minutes in his schedule for me,” Lustrous said. “Try to get him on the horn, Sergeant Major.”

“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Major Dieter said and picked up one of the telephones on Lustrous’s desk—there were two: one a local, commercial telephone, and the other connected to the Army network—and dialed a number from memory.

“Hey, Tony,” he said after a moment. “Rupert Dieter. How they hanging, Fat Guy?”

There was a pause.

“Tony, my boss wants to speak to your boss. Possible?”

There was another pause and then Dieter said, “Thanks, Tony,” and handed the phone to Colonel Lustrous. "The V Corps Commander will be with you shortly, sir,” he said.

“Thanks,” Lustrous said.