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letters. He knew that he had
     never had any choice about standing in front of Dengler’s name.
    Dengler had even liked the C-rations scorned by the others. He claimed the dogfood
     taste of army turkey loaf, canned in 1945, was better than anything his mother had
     ever made. Dengler had liked being on patrol.
(Hey, I was on patrol the whole time I was a kid.)
Heat, cold, and dampness had affected him very little. According to Dengler, rainbows
     froze to the ground during Milwaukee ice storms and kids ran out of their houses,
     chipped off pieces of their favorite colors, and licked them until they were white.
     As for violence and the fear of death, Dengler said that you saw at least as much
     violence outside the normal Milwaukee tavern as in the average firefight; inside,
     he claimed, you saw a bit more.
    In Dragon Valley, Dengler had fearlessly moved about underfire, dragging the wounded Trotman to Peters, the medic, keeping up a steady, calm,
     humorous stream of talk. Dengler had known that nothing there would kill him.
    Poole stepped forward, careful not to trample on a photograph or a wreath, and ran
     his fingers over the sharp edges of Dengler’s name, carved into the chill stone.
    He had a quick, unhappy, familiar vision of Spitalny and Dengler running together
     through billowing smoke toward the mouth of the cave at Ia Thuc.
    Poole turned away from the wall. His face felt too tight. The blonde woman gave him
     a sympathetic, wary half-smile and pulled her little girl backwards out of his way.
    Poole wanted to see
his
ex-warriors. Feelings of loneliness and isolation wrapped themselves tightly around
     him.

1
    Michael was so certain that a message from his friends would be waiting for him at
     the hotel that once he got there he marched straight from the revolving door to the
     desk. Harry Beevers had assured him that he and the others would arrive “sometime
     in the afternoon.” It was now just before ten minutes to five.
    Poole started to scan the wall behind the desk for his messages as soon as he could
     read the room numbers beneath the pigeonholes. When he was three-fourths of the way
     across the lobby, he saw one of the white hotel message forms inserted diagonally
     into his own rectangular box. He immediately felt much less tired. Beevers and the
     other two had arrived.
    Michael stepped up to the desk and caught the clerk’s eye. “There’s a message for
     me,” he said. “Poole, room 204.” He took the oversize key from his jacket pocket and
     showed it to the clerk, who began to inspect the wall behind him with an almost maddening
     lack of haste. At last the clerk found the correct slot andwithdrew the message. He glanced at the form as he handed it to Poole, then smiled.
    “Sir.”
    Michael took the form, looked first at the name, and turned his back on the clerk
     to read the message.
Tried to call back. Did you really hang up on me? Judy.
The time 3:55 was stamped on the form in purple ink—she had called just after Michael
     had left his room.
    He turned around and found the clerk looking at him blankly. “I’d like to know if
     some people who were supposed to be here by now have checked in yet.”
    Poole spelled the names.
    The clerk slowly pecked at buttons on a computer terminal, frowned, tilted his head,
     frowned again, and without changing his posture in any way looked sideways at Michael
     and said, “Mr. Beevers and Mr. Pumo have not arrived as yet. We have no booking for
     a Mr. Linklater.”
    Conor was probably saving money by sleeping in Pumo’s room.
    Poole turned away, folded Judy’s message into his jacket pocket, and for the first
     time since his return saw what had happened to the lobby.
    Men in dark suits and striped neckties now occupied the banquettes and tables. Most
     of them had no facial hair and wore white name tags crowded with print. They were
     talking quietly, consulting legal pads, punching numbers into pocket computers. During
     his first