I was impatient to hear what had motivated his calling me, and equally eager not to show it. On the phone he had said he was passing through Denver on business. He had something to tell me—“something pivotal that you might find interesting”—that was the way he put it. There was in his tone a hint of mystery, of promise; it could only have had something to do with Val.

Now we sat facing each other across an aspirin-size table, next to a window, raising our second martinis. “Usually,” he said, impressed by my performance, “you have to acquire a taste for them.”

“I like ’em already,” I told him. “Particularly the olives.”

“Waiter!” he called. “A plate of olives.” Grady sipped from the long-stemmed glass. “Now,” his great bald dome reflected the pallid burnish of the underlit room, “I hope we can agree on what I have in mind.”

I leaned forward slightly. There was about him a certain discomforting steeliness, the solemn intractability of a man willing to break faces to achieve a consensus. “You took off,” he said accusingly, “faster than a rumor.”

“I would have said good-bye, but…”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, “but remind me—what were you in civilian life, before you signed on with Chatterton?”

“A graduate student in English.”

“And what are you seeking out here…” he looked pained, “in God’s own graveyard?”

What could I tell him? A shelter for my fears, a comfort for my disappointment, an antidote to sorrow? “My mother lives here,” I said.

“That’s it?”

I shrugged.

“That’s a terrible reason. That’s a reason to be anywhere else.” He raised an authoritative arm and ordered a couple more knocks, wearing all the while an expression of deep interest. “You don’t look particularly happy,” he observed. “Maybe you’re not programmed for it.”

“Happiness?”

“Your life in the forest primeval.” Almost casually he asked, “How’d you like to work for me?”

“Back at Chatterton’s?”

“God, no. Until I retired, I was a roving vice president—a trouble-shooter, with Resource Analysis and Technology. RAT is an offshoot of Ultra Global Husbandry, for which I serve as a sort of flack-master and talent scout, recruiting young people of promise.” He took an embossed card from a leather case and flipped it to me.

“To do what?”

“The field is unlimited, depending on what interests the recruit. UGH is the parent corporation of a number of American firms—a packing plant in Des Moines, sports equipment in Newark, the Calvary Construction Company in Oklahoma City, coal mines in West Virginia, a printing press in Chicago (specializing in the publication of church periodicals), as well as plantations—rubber in Southeast Asia, coconuts in Melanesia—latifundia in Hungary (a consortium with the Russians), ranches in Argentina, to name a few.”

“Nothing for an English major.”

“Let’s not jump to negative conclusions.”

“What did you have in mind?”