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unusual size of the order; the apparent involvement of Cecille Lagundi, an African intermediary: The whole thing smelled like a breaker. I thought I could see what Channon was thinking. If he left me at Haplon, and I nailed it, maybe he could use that triumph to restore himself to favor. He could present it as a peace offering to the wrathful demigods of the Pentagon, maybe place it in the balance against an Intelligence operation that had cratered and one dead U.S. Army officer.
    And me, what did I want? To discover the truth? To do my duty as a soldier and not leave a comrade and one-time friend lying dead and unavenged on the field of battle? I admit that was part of it. Revenge. It had to be. It was me who’d recruited Dimitri into the operation in the first place.
    “Alex.” I spread my hands. “I want to stay with it. And I think you owe me that.”
    He dropped the list on his desk, then clasped his hands together, turning it all over. The IRS involvement. Dimitri’s death. A breaker coming over the horizon.
    “If I don’t bring you in now, Ned—Christ, look what happened to Dimitri. What would I tell your wife? Or your kid?”
    “He’s twenty-three years old.”
    “That’s hardly the point.”
    “You have to let me stay with it.”
    “I don’t have to do anything.”
    “Look, I got Dimitri into Hawkeye. You can’t expect me to just walk.”
    Channon swiveled in his chair and faced the window. Outside, the current batch of cadet officers, immaculately turned out in the West Point uniform, were on their way to the mess. Bright as buttons. Laughing. Still at that stage when the famed Honor Code held them with the unshakable force of born-again revelation. Upright and keen, barely more than boys. Kids for whom war, like so much else of life, was still just a theory. Their faces fresh, engagingly open, and so incredibly, unbelievably, young.
    “You’re sure you want this,” Alex said, finally turning back to me.
    As I nodded, there was a knock at the door. Ernie Small, the Point’s head of Infantry, looked in. I stayed in my chair. Under Channon’s instructions I’d made a habit of dropping in at West Point at various times, touching base with old colleagues and generally showing my face around. Channon’s idea was that my presence at any time wouldn’t then be a matter for comment. He didn’t want our occasional meetings to be clandestine, he wanted them to simply blend with my life. The best cover, he told me, was no cover. Channon knew his business. The tactic had worked. Now Ernie Small simply winked at me, asked jokingly if I was chasing my old job, then reminded Channon that fifty cadets were over in the main lecture hall waiting for his pearls of wisdom. Channon made a face. Ernie smiled and withdrew.
    “You pull out now, no one’s gonna hold it against you,” Channon said when Ernie was gone.
    I didn’t reply.
    He studied me, then rose to his feet. “You phone in each day, every day. You give me a full brief. And next time you hear me tell you you’re coming in, that’s it.” He jabbed his finger onto the desk. “You are coming in. Clear?”
    I dipped my head. He let his look linger on me a moment, as if he still wasn’t quite sure about something. My response to Dimitri’s death? My insistence that I wanted to go on? At last he gave it up and glanced at his watch. He told me the hour he expected my first call.
    “What if there’s nothing to report?”
    He looked up slowly. “Just phone me,” he said simply. When he saw that I got it, he nodded. My call would be my report. Confirmation that Ned Rourke—unlike Dimitri Spandos—was still in the game.

CHAPTER 3
    Our family home was a brick-and-tile place on Ellis Street in Yonkers, lawns front and back, with tall hedges on both sides to screen us from the Walters and the Bidwells. The street was tree-lined and peaceful, the trash collection Mondays the sole point of drama in the week.
    We bought the house back when I was a