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the highway, retracing my steps to Ramstein, fumbling with Masters’s report, holding it against the steering wheel as I read. Two miles beyond the Kaiserslautern city limit, the pager beeped. WHERE ARE YOU ? it said. I turned it off. A handful of seconds later, the cell began ringing. I was about to turn that off, too, but decided to see what was up.
    “Major, what are you doing?” said the voice on the other end.
    “Driving. Do they do it on the left side of the road here, or the right?”
    “What?”
    “I’m on the road to Ramstein, which I know sounds like a song title or an old Bob Hope movie, but—”
    “Special Agent Cooper, we agreed that you were going to meet me in the foyer.”
    “No, you agreed on that, but I’m not sure who with. Hey, I hired a Mercedes, like yours only newer. I think I prefer Chevrolet.” I can be infuriating, especially when I want to be, and this was one of those times. It was obvious that Masters didn’t want me here, probably because she thought she was more than capable. She was treating me like I was a pain in the ass, and I objected to that because she didn’t even know me. And, apart from these interpersonal observations, as far as I could see from her report, her investigation had gotten precisely nowhere. It was all typed out neat and tidy and all her verbs were conjugated correctly, but the whole was utterly devoid of any imagination or intuition. She didn’t get it. Scott had been killed, but the big question on everyone’s lips was whether someone had helped him along, even though no one was prepared to even voice that option, except for Gruyere, and her only admission on that point was the fact that she’d sent me here. Masters had asked questions and people had answered them, but she didn’t appear to have questioned the answers.
    “You’ve got a meeting with Lieutenant General von Koeppen in fifteen minutes,” Masters said.
    “But I haven’t had a shower or a shave and I’m still wearing yesterday’s nonthermal underwear.”
    Silence.
    I wondered whether she was the type who uses silence as a weapon to keep her partner in line. Not my kind of woman. “Okay, then,” I said, keeping it light and cheery. “I’ll catch up with you later.” I didn’t wait for an answer. I ended the call and turned off the cell. That was against the rules, of course. In this business, people get nervous if they can’t contact you 24/7. I opened the glove compartment and threw the phone in, closing the hatch after it.
    A short time later, I turned off the highway and into the security post. The guard scanned my CAC card with a portable gizmo and checked that I looked as handsome in real life as I did in the photo. Satisfied, he then said, “Thank you, sir,” and waved me through. Before moving off, I asked for directions to Hangar B3. Ramstein, as I said, is a huge facility, and the soldier had to go back inside and consult a map. He returned moments later with a photocopy of the base layout. A line drawn in blue ink meandered across the page to the hangar.
    Ten minutes later, I pulled up outside my destination. B3 was at least the size of two, possibly three, football fields. It was so big, it was impossible to tell how big. I walked to a side door feeling dwarfed by the structure. Huge overhead lights illuminated the interior. There were several C-5 Galaxies parked inside—transport planes roughly the size of 747s. I stopped an airman and asked for further directions. He pointed down the far corner of the hangar.
    I eventually found what I was looking for, an area sealed off by walls of plastic and tape. Signs warned that this was a restricted area and that access was for authorized personnel only. I did what any investigator worth his pay would do and figured the signs weren’t talking to me. I parted the plastic and looked inside. On the floor were the remains of what I assumed was General Scott’s glider—pretty much every little piece—laid out for