Condley leaned back in his chair, nodding toward Muir’s stack of papers. “No, you first.”

“All right,” said Muir. He brightened, grinning conspiratorially. “I’m talking about the young gentleman in the other room.”

“You have a visitor?”

“On the gurney. In the poncho, with his hand cut off by some poor sick psychotic. Our little friend from Ninh Phuoc.” Muir stroked his beard, appearing unusually professorial. “I decided to try a different theory. Rather than continuing to focus on the files of American servicemen who never came home, which was getting us exactly nowhere, I decided to go back into the news accounts of Viet Nam at the time our boy was murdered. Not only the battles, but everything that came out of the place. They put a researcher on it for us in Washington. She just spent her entire Christmas holiday split between the Pentagon and the Library of Congress, going through the archives of every newspaper we could think of, reading all the little items that never made it to the front page, anytime the word Viet Nam popped up. Suffice it to say, she’s become quite an expert on Viet Nam in the year 1971. Not to mention very bitter toward me for ruining her holiday.”

“So,” said Condley, moving his hands in circles to urge Muir forward. “After all that, you ended up in Australia?”

“Yes!” said Muir, his face animated with discovery. He held up a page, as if presenting evidence. “First she found a small item in the old Pacific Stars and Stripes.” Now he held up another. “That led her to The Bangkok Post, which had printed another little story.” And now he held up perhaps a dozen pages. “Which led us to a flurry of small stories in the Australian press that went on for a couple of weeks, before the issue finally died its own death, if you’ll forgive the pun. I think we have our man, Brandon.”

“Let me see what you’ve got.”