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meant life or death for anyone from one to one million people. Yes, he was impulsive. “In this case, I’d call it being certain of something,” he smiled. “I don’t get that a lot in my life.”
    “I see.”
    “Do you always trust strangers with your personal finance accounts?” he asked.
    “You just met my airstrip and you’re already trying it out. If that’s not a sign of loving this place, what is?”
    Kealey laughed at that. “I’m guessing you’ve damned a few torpedoes in your life, too,” he said.
    “Not as many as I wish I had,” she said. “But there’s still time left. Well, you’ve picked a good anchor for a new life.” She glanced behind her. “This home has been a rock for me.”
    They finished their coffee and watched the clouds. Within the hour they could hear a helicopter coming in low from the south. Kealey hugged Ellie good-bye as the Bell 429 set down among the tall, wheat-like grasses. He ran over, climbed aboard, and loved the house and grounds all over again as he lifted off.
    Like General MacArthur departing the Philippines, he found himself vowing that he would return . . . and soon.

CHAPTER THREE
    BAGHDAD, IRAQ
    “H e’s allowing me to sit in on one of his sessions?” Dina Westbrook asked incredulously as she walked down the hall with Lieutenant General Sutter.
    “Gave us permission in writing,” replied the compact, impeccably courteous officer. “After he made his decision, I think the psychologist felt she had no choice, so she agreed, too.”
    “Very helpful of him,” Dina mused. “Almost too helpful.”
    “As if he’s going out of his way to show he has nothing to hide?”
    “It would make sense if he’s been turned.”
    “I will say, over the past two weeks we confined him to barracks and the mess hall while we discussed what to do, and we did decide that he was a hero, not AWOL. The Pentagon notified me this morning.”
    “A hero and not AWOL, for sixteen years.”
    “Yes.”
    “I’m not sure what I can add to that decision, sir.” She was subtly chiding him for wasting her time, and she intended for him to know it.
    He picked up on it. “It was a strategic decision, ma’am. If he has been turned, we’re more likely to discover that in a man who’s being treated like a hero instead of a deserter. That’s why he’s been in evaluation for two weeks, and we’ll be shipping him stateside soon, where he can be monitored by the Warrior Transition Brigade.”
    “And you want my opinion?”
    “Your reputation for reading people is legendary, and I don’t use that word lightly.”
    “All right,” Dina said with a smile. He was trying so hard, after all. “Give me the thumbnail sketch.”
    “In March of 1998 Chaplain Major James Phair left his forward post with the Twenty-Fourth Infantry Division in the midst of a massive assault against an Iraqi Republican Guard tank division. According to what he has told our psychologist, he slipped away to minister to the spiritual needs of wounded Iraqis being carried into an abandoned government office. A bomb exploded on the building. We listed him as missing in action and presumed dead. Apparently, all this time he has been ministering to Iraqis of every stripe. He’s been working with Sunnis, Shiites, Yazidis, various Christian sects like the Nestorians. He’s learned their customs, faiths, and their languages.”
    “So if he hasn’t been turned, he’s a remarkably valuable asset,” Dina confirmed.
    “Like money can’t buy,” the lieutenant general said, then smiled at his lapse in military enamel. “Two weeks ago, an Irish Guardsman discovered the chaplain in Basra, where he was helping South Korean Christian missionaries feed orphaned children. There was a suicide bombing, and afterward a metal detector registered the dog tags he was wearing around his waist. They brought him to us.”
    “And you made him a hero.”
    “Personally, ma’am, I think he is one.”
    He had finally fallen for her