“Because he wanted out,” said Condley. It all made perfect sense now. “He deserted because he wanted to avoid a court-martial. But he didn’t want to stay in Viet Nam no matter what the hell he was doing up there in the Que Son Mountains. And how do you get out of Viet Nam when you’re a deserter, when there’s a war on, and the American military controls all the flights? You can’t be Specialist Theodore Deville. You have to be somebody else.”

“Somebody they’re going to allow onto an airplane,” said Muir.

“He killed the guy, figuring the body would be so decomposed by the time they found it that they would assume it was him, and then stole the man’s identity,” said Condley.

For the first time in a long time Condley felt genuinely spooked as he looked down at the skeleton on the gurney. The dirt of Ninh Phuoc, crusting the sheets of a lab in Hawaii. The moldy old poncho, like a memento that had crossed a time warp. The sand-blanched, copper-colored bones. The skull without a face. The teeth that did not match. The leg that had never been broken. The hand that was not there. The name they did not know, stolen along with his life by a man who was nothing if not ruthlessly audacious.

“Who is he? Excuse me, Professor, I’m sounding like you. Who was he? And how the hell did Deville find him up in the Que Son Mountains, in the village of Ninh Phuoc?”

“Better yet,” said Muir, “where’s Deville?”

“Well, okay. Both.”

“Right,” said Muir. “Both.”

Condley could not help but notice that the normally emotional scientist had become coolly clinical, at the very moment that he himself was trembling with an anger that he found difficult to control. Deville’s treachery and savagery had awakened an animal inside him that he thought had died a quarter century before. A blood lust was rising in him that he knew would not be quenched unless he found Deville. He realized that, oddly, he was prepared to risk everything, and even to die, in order to bring Deville to justice. Not that he planned to die.

“He’s still alive, Professor. I can feel it.”