“It’s an important piece of evidence.”

Condley emanated a bland, cynical disgust. “Evidence for what? Do you think anybody in our government even wants to find out the answer to this question? Who’s going to pick off that scab, huh? If he were alive they’d have to face the truth of what he did, but the man is dead.”

“We could always convince the village chief to buy it back from us. A reimbursement of sorts, what do you think?”

“Now, there’s a laugh. First of all, I doubt the village got more than a hundred bucks out of the deal once everyone along the government food chain took their cuts. And second, I’d be surprised if the old man really cares one way or the other about Nguyen the Black American’s head. They’re great entrepreneurs, the Vietnamese. They’ll sell you anything. But they aren’t into buying things back.”

Muir held up his hands in mock surrender. “Just kidding, Brandon. But we will file a report on all of these findings, so don’t think the matter will be pasted over by the bureaucracy.” Muir now gave him an empathetic look. “You’ve already had a small revenge, don’t you think? I mean, you’re standing there looking at his skull. He’s not in the mountains, gloating over yours.”

Condley grunted, gazing absently at the skull and then over to the remains of the man killed by the elusive Deville. Despite himself he felt oddly attached to both sets of remains, as if he and they had been rubbed into the same earth so fiercely and so completely that the dirt inalterably connected them, however bitterly. Mud brothers, he thought. Sharers of a truth that could never be defined by the labels that had been created by outsiders. After all, what tiny fraction of America had ever even seen that nasty, vicious little corner of the war, that corridor of terror and sorrow that had so devoured the few who had?

“I’d like to know one thing about him, Professor. Only one thing.” He thought about that and reconsidered. “No, maybe two. The first is whether he really believed in what he was fighting for when he shot my Marines. Because if he did, whether I like it or not a part of me has to respect him. I mean, that makes him a soldier, doing his duty as he understood it.”

“And the second?”

“Did he use any information that he gained as a Marine in order to help the other side? Because if he didn’t, he was just accepting the risk of the battlefield. Taking it as he found it, just like we did.”

Muir pursed his lips, watching Condley’s face. His words now danced delicately, as if Condley’s emotions were like a balloon about to burst. “And what do you think about that, Brandon?”