“Well, what about them?” replied the general. “I’ve thought about that. Is it going to do their memories any good by announcing all these years later that they were killed by American deserters? At least now their families can have a clean picture of what it was like for them to die. Fighting the enemy is heroic. Getting shot by a turncoat is sickening. And think of the negative way so many Americans look at the guys who fought in Viet Nam anyway. Great story, huh? Americans shooting other Americans in Viet Nam, as if it wasn’t enough that Americans were rubbing their own soldiers’ faces in shit when they got home.”

Finally Duncan threw his hands up in the air, leaning back against his chair. “Look, I’m not trying to put this all back in a box. If I were, I wouldn’t have asked for the file in the first place. I want to do the right thing. But I just don’t know what the right thing is. We need to think this through. That’s why I had them run you down and bring you here to my house.”

“So what do you want me to do, Skipper?”

“Take that asshole back to Ninh Phuoc and bury him again.” The general slowly smiled. “Just kidding.”

Duncan stood and began pacing, his hands clasped behind his back and his face lowered in thought. “You’re a shit magnet, you know that, Condley? It was the same in combat. Some other platoon commanders could take your same patrol route and come back without a shot being fired. But you, no. You’ve got to go find the assholes, even if it means digging them out of bunkers, rooting them out from whatever rice paddy dike they’ve decided to hide behind, shaking them out of the fucking trees. You find shit, and shit finds you.”

Condley grinned, deciding to take Duncan’s blustering as a compliment. “Actually, sir, I’ve always sort of looked upon myself as the ultimate agent of truth. Kind of like Don Quixote. I was blessed with a natural curiosity. I like to think that I find shit because it’s supposed to be found. If you want to find it, send me in. If you don’t want to find it, send somebody else.”

“Life’s that fucking simple, huh?” said General Duncan, still pacing. “That’s easy for you to say, because you don’t have to make the hard decisions.”

“What’s so hard about this?”

“I doubt you even see the problem.”

“Actually, I don’t see the problem,” said Condley. “We shot the fucker in 1969 but he got away. Somebody else shot him in 1971 and hit the bull’s-eye. A nice, happy ending. All the rest is somebody’s mill drill, except now you’re a fucking general and you’ve had your lobotomy, so you’re thinking like a politician.”