“That must’ve been when he went back to school,” Undean said. “The University of Pennsylvania.”
“Where we tried to recruit him just before graduation in nineteen fifty-five.”
“Tried?”
“They say he laughed at us. Well, smiled anyway. He told our recruiters that if he ever went into the hearts- and-minds business, it would be for money, not country. So he landed a job with one of the big New York ad agencies and made such an impression that three years later they transferred him to their Paris office.”
“This was when?” Undean asked.
“ ’Fifty-eight, I believe. In late ’fifty-nine, the ad agency’s Paris office was approached by representatives of the Belgian government. The Belgians were concerned that there might be something of a mess in the Congo after independence—nothing to fret about, you understand—but they still thought an American ad agency might be useful in putting the best face on it. The ad agency’s Paris office, for various reasons, said no thanks. So our friend Steady quit, made his own presentation to the Belgians in his quite serviceable French and landed the account. And that’s how he wound up in the Congo during the troubles of the early sixties.”
“And where he met Tinker Burns,” Undean said.
“Apparently. Had you ever run into Burns during your travels?”
“I’d heard the stories about him, but today’s the first time I ever met him.”
“And your immediate impression?”
“White hair. Stiff neck. Smart mouth.”
“Then he hasn’t really changed,” Keyes said. “Except for the hair.” His right palm made an exploratory pass over his own bald head. “Tinker’s used to be coal black.”
“He really at Dien Bien Phu like everybody says?” Undean asked. “Or is that just more bullshit?”
“There were four of them with the Legion there. Four Americans, I mean. Tinker was the only one to survive.”
“How long was he in?” Undean said.
“The Legion? Ten years. From ’forty-six to ’fifty-six. Before that he was a paratrooper with the Eighty-second Airborne. A battlefield commission made him a second lieutenant. When he left the Legion after ten years, he was a captain, which, for an American, I understand, is quite extraordinary.”
“Why the fuck would he join the Legion?”
Hamilton Keyes smiled. “If you’d accepted his invitation to lunch, Gilbert, you could’ve asked him. He might even have told you.” Keyes paused. “Like some coffee?”
“Yeah. I would. Thanks.”
Keyes picked up his telephone and asked for two coffees. They waited in silence until a young man brought them in on a tray. After the young man left without speaking, Undean took a sip, put his cup down and said, “If Steady wasn’t ever in any branch of the service, why bury him at Arlington?”
“The woman who was at the graveside services thought it would be nice if we did.”
“Isabelle Gelinet.”
“Pretty name, isn’t it?” said Keyes. “Mlle Gelinet quit her job at AF-P a few years ago and moved in with Steady at that place of his in Virginia.”
“The farm near Berryville?”
Keyes nodded.
“Heard it was part of his divorce settlement from that rich widow he married.”
“I see you’ve kept up with the gossip, Gilbert.”
“I’m retired, not deaf.”
“In any event, Gelinet moved in, ostensibly to help Steady write his memoirs.”
“I’ll buy a copy.”
Keyes chose to ignore the comment. “The day after Steady died, the day of the inauguration, in fact, Gelinet called us. Her call was finally routed to me at home because Steady, there at the very end, had been one of mine. She refused to identify herself, but I’m sure she didn’t care that I could easily guess who was calling.”
“What’d she want?”
“She wanted him buried at Arlington with a bugler blowing ‘Taps’ over his grave. That was the last forthright statement she made. The rest was all hints and verbal nudges, the gist of them being that unless we agreed to bury him at Arlington, the manuscript of his memoirs would be expressed that same day to a most reputable literary agent in New York. I hinted back that if this indeed were to happen, we might be forced to take legal remedies. She said we were more than welcome to try and hung up.”
The courtly man stopped talking, looked somewhere past Undean’s left shoulder and added, “So we buried him at Arlington.”
“And sent me to count the house.”
“You were the only one left who had the slightest reason to go—except for me.”
Undean frowned. “What happened to your legal remedies?”
Keyes shrugged.
