Hatcher shook his head. ‘Nothing yet. The files are pretty bleak.’
‘Yes, not much to go on. Sorry.’
‘There may be a few leads in there, Hatcher said. ‘You understand the need for discretion,’ Cody said, and it was a statement rather than a question. Hatcher nodded again. ‘Also,’ he went on, ‘there is some urgency in the matter.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Hatcher said.
‘You two were pretty close at the academy, as I recall.’ Hatcher nodded again. ‘We were on the boxing team together. He graduated a year ahead of me.’ He paused for a moment, and added, ‘He was okay, General. A stand- up guy.’
‘Good. I feel a little more comfortable knowing you knew him — and liked him.’
‘You and I met once before,’ Hatcher whispered suddenly, ‘at Murph’s wedding.’
The general peered hard at Hatcher, but there was no recognition in his bleak stare. ‘That was a long time ago. I’m afraid my memory isn’t what it used to be.’
‘Hell, mine isn’t anything to write home about, either.’ The general looked at Sloan for a moment, then back at Hatcher. ‘May I ask you a personal question?’
‘Sure,’ Hatcher said.
‘Why did you accept this mission?’
Hatcher wasn’t sure how to answer. He thought for a moment, then said, ‘A friend of mine once asked me if I was a patriot. At the time I said I wasn’t sure. Now maybe I can find out.’
‘There’s nothing patriotic about this job,’ the general said forlornly.
‘I’d like to think there is,’ Hatcher said.
Cody smiled — a fey, faraway memory of a smile tinged with sadness. ‘That’s a kind thing to say, Mr. Hatcher. Thank you.’
The old general focused his watery eyes on Hatcher and stared hard at the tall man for several seconds to make sure he phrased his next question properly. ‘I understand you left the brigade and returned to the private sector,’ the general said.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Too bad,’ he said. ‘You were a good soldier, Hatcher.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Mind telling me why you quit?’
Sloan cast a sideways glance at Hatcher, but the tall man ignored it.
‘I was losing my edge, General,’ Hatcher lied.
Cody stared at him for several seconds.
‘Well, let’s hope you have it back,’ Cody finally said with a wry smile.
‘Yes, sir.’
Cody turned to Sloan. ‘Looks like you found us a good man, Harry — as usual.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Sloan said, obviously pleased. ‘Then we’re on?’
Buffalo Bill Cody looked at Hatcher and repeated the question, ‘Well, sir, are we on?’
Hatcher nodded. ‘We’re on,’ his tortured voice answered.
FRAGMENTS
The place was like no other museum in the world. It was called MARS, an acronym for the Museum and Archaeological Regional Storage Facility, and it was in a plain one-story building forty miles south of Washington in a small village in Maryland. It took Hatcher an hour and a half to drive down there in his rented Chevy.
The curator was a young man, perhaps forty, although it was hard to tell, and he was jacketed in blue, like an intern. Sandy-haired, bearded and soft-spoken, he was a man whose task was reflected in an obvious sadness of spirit, for there was about the place a sense of longing and hurt and disquietude. He handed Hatcher a pair of white cotton gloves.
‘We wear these to prevent any further deterioration of the articles,’ he told Hatcher, pointing vaguely in the direction of a plastic bag that held two small identical seashells attached to a simple note: ‘I love you, Charley.’
‘They’re cataloged by position, the panel nearest where they were left,’ he said, leading Hatcher down a long row of gray metal floor-to-ceiling shelves.
Many of those who came to the Vietnam wall seemed compelled by heart or conscience to put something down, to leave a piece of themselves behind. These oddities of the heart, like relics of a history yet t be written, were gathered up each day and carried by rangers of the Park Service to the warehouse, where they were sorted, cataloged and stored. Like the fragments of the shattered lives it recorded, the collection was disparate: heartbreaking, humorous, touching, and determined entirely by emotion
— by the love of a child for the father she never knew, the anguish of a lonely parent, by a lover left alone at
