“This might be a coincidence, but I’m inclined to think it isn’t.” Muir sipped some coffee, looking around them and growing more intense. “I have another colleague who was sent out to investigate a reported sighting of an American a few years ago, up in the mountains near where we picked up the remains.”

“The Que Son Mountains?”

“Yes!” said Muir excitedly. “The Que Son Mountains. But you know how these things go. They had to file a request and then receive clearance from province and district authorities. And then once the clearance was given, it took a full day to get up to the actual place. All told, from the time he put in the request to the time he showed up in the village it was something like five days. Plenty of time for the locals to, as they say, police the crime scene. Needless to say, he didn’t find an American.”

Condley was almost finished with his omelette. He grunted. “You came all the way here to tell me that?”

“Brandon,” said Muir huffily. “I would not waste the government’s money in such a manner. What he did see were black children. It was an accident. As they started back toward Da Nang, a group of local children came out along the road, calling to them and waving to them. There were two half-black children. He estimated both were under the age of ten. He said they were trying to hide behind the trees at the rear of the other kids, as if it were all a game. But he’s certain they were half-black. Dark. Not as if they were the grandkids of someone who had been here during the war. This is a very remote village. Where there are half-black kids there is a black dad. And if there is a dad, why were they hiding him? I mean, clearly, if he’s having kids he’s hardly incarcerated.”

“Pepper,” said Condley.

Muir nodded. “I’d say from the location, which is not that far from the incident that happened to you and your Marines, and also not far from where we found our . . . victim, that there is a very good chance of it.”

“But we’ve got the same problem, only now it’s an order of magnitude worse,” said Condley, knowing he was stating the obvious. “They’ll never let us back there.”

“Unless Pham takes responsibility.”