Conspiracy

aging shot to show what he might look like, but you know how that goes.”

According to the computer rendering, Phuc Dinh was a bald man, roughly Charlie’s age, with a dagger-shaped scar on his cheek and a scowl on his face. The outline of his face was fuzzy, as if the computer wanted to emphasize the image was guesswork rather than reality.

“Do you have more information on them?” Dean asked.

“A little. You can click on those tabs and bring up their entire dossiers. There are files from the war. As you’d imagine, they’re pretty sparse.”

Dean put his finger on the touch pad at the base of the keyboard, paging back to Tre Cam Luc. The CIA’s war time dossier consisted of a physical description, some notes about his position and the reliability of his information — three on a scale of five — and a very old photo. When he was finished reading, Dean slid his finger down on the touch pad, hesitated for a moment before selecting the next panel.

Phuc Dinh. DOB 12/4/45. Born, Quang Nam Province.

Communist Party member since at least 1960.

??Leader/lieut of VC cell in Quang nam-Da Nong province, near Laos border.

Ht. 5–3 wt. 114 pnds…

brn, brn

Identifying marks — scar right cheek

Contact lost Feb 23, 1971

A small black-and-white photo accompanied the half page of text.

Dean had seen the photo before — more than thirty years before, when he had been assigned to kill Phuc Dinh.

An assignment Dean had successfully completed.

“You OK, Charlie?” asked Telach. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’m fine,” said Dean. “When’s my plane?”

27

The fact that Forester had a girlfriend erased some of the sympathy Lia had felt for him, even as it added more evidence to her suspicion that he hadn’t committed suicide.

“Very possibly, this woman will have additional information,” Rubens told Lia as he briefed her in his office. “Or some insight into the situation. I’d like you to speak to her and—”

“I know the drill,” she said. “You don’t have to connect the dots.”

Rubens frowned and began lecturing her on the “need for decorum” when dealing with “sister agencies.”

“Ambassador Jackson will assist you in speaking to Ms.

Rauci, and then deal with the Washington people,” said Rubens. “I’d like you to work in the field, see what you can find. If Forester was murdered, his killer may lead us back to the conspirators.”

“Peachy.”

“We want you to look for computers Forester might have used to send e-mail when he went to Pine Plains. Check the hotel where he was found. There is a business center there.” Lia found her thoughts wandering, first to the Forester family, then to Charlie Dean and what he had said about kids, then to Rubens himself.

Rubens was, by all accounts, independently wealthy. He was also consumed by his job, often working around the clock and sometimes spending several days in a row at the NSA complex. Overseeing Desk Three was just a small part of his duties. It was no wonder then that while fortyish — she had no idea what his actual age was, though she guessed he was younger than he seemed — he appeared to have no life outside of the Agency. No wife, no child.

Lia didn’t really know that, did she? He didn’t wear a wedding ring, but many men didn’t. She didn’t see any family photos on his walls, only fancy paintings.

“Excuse me a second,” she interrupted. “Do you have a child?”

Rubens, though undoubtedly used to her impertinence by now, blinked twice.

“Because I’m wondering,” continued Lia, “if you were

fighting for custody, and you didn’t get it, would it be enough to kill yourself?”

“Assuredly not. But I hardly think I am a representative sample, Lia. Keep an open mind — draw no conclusions.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know all that.”

Rubens frowned, then resumed his lecture on how to behave.

28

There were several reasons Dean remembered the mission to kill Phuc Dinh. The first was the oddness of the first name — though it was common enough in Vietnam, the ob-scenity it sounded like in English was not easily forgotten.

The second was the comparative uniqueness of the mission. “Hunter-kills”—assignments to kill a specific person—

while not rare for scout snipers in Vietnam, were relatively infrequent; even though Dean was considered good at them, he racked up only a handful during a year’s tour. Most often, he and other snipers worked with Marine units during patrols or sweeps, striking North Vietnamese Army units operating in the area.

Even as a hunter-kill, the assignment was unique. It was on the Laos border, and the man giving the assignment went out of his way to specify that Phuc Dinh was a priority target “to the exclusion of all others.” Which meant don’t waste your time shooting anybody else until this SOB is toast.

But for Dean, the assignment stood out for one reason far beyond all the others: it was on this mission that he had lost his best friend in the world, John Longbow.

Dean had met Corporal John Longbow in Scout Sniper School. Unlike Dean, who’d gotten the assignment directly out of boot camp, Longbow had already been to Vietnam before volunteering to become a sniper. Everyone in Scout Sniper School was a standout Marine. Longbow was a standout among the standouts.

At first, the instructors tried to push Longbow harder because he was the oldest, but it quickly became clear that he pushed himself harder than even the toughest taskmaster could. By the end of the first week, the sergeant in charge of the unit was relying on Longbow as a fourth instructor.

Despite all this — or maybe because of it — the other trainees in the unit shied away from him, especially in the few hours they had “off duty” following training. The corporal never said much, and many interpreted his silence as a kind of arrogance. And working with him on the range could be a little demoralizing — he was so precise, so controlled, so perfect, that anyone who mea sured himself against Longbow inevitably came up short.

Force Recon shared the camp with Scout Sniper School, and there was occasionally some bad blood between the two units. From the snipers’ point of view, the Force Recon trainees were always looking for a fight, trying to prove that they were the real Marines and that everyone else in the service was an embarrassment. They called snipers’ rifle boxes diaper bags; the put-downs increased exponentially in vulgarity from there.

One night Longbow had just made the chow line when four or five Force Recon show-offs began making fun of him, calling him Tonto and asking if he’d gotten his red face from lipstick. Longbow, who was somewhat touchy about his Indian heritage, ignored them at first, but this only egged them on more. Dean walked into the mess hall to find Longbow surrounded. Not knowing exactly what was going on — but already disliking the other unit for its habit of bragging and abusing the snipers — Dean double-timed to Longbow’s side. The corporal glanced over his