Reyland watched Belinda slowly absorb this.

“Will we get a chance to see him?” Belinda finally said.

He glanced at the curve of her Swan Lake throat, perfect and smooth and pale between the stark black collar of her coat and the salon-perfect line of her dark hair. She was wearing a most-enchanting scent. A hint of peach over something mysterious and sumptuous that Reyland couldn’t quite name.

“At the base here? No. I’m so sorry,” Reyland finally said. “The civilian funeral home representatives need to take him straight from the plane in order to make the final preparations.”

Reyland glanced over to where the hearse waited. A marine honor guard was standing at attention in the doorway of the hangar beside it, starched white gloves and the black patent leather shining.

He certainly couldn’t complain about the optics, he thought. Even Dunning, who was a hard-ass stickler in just about everything, would have approved.

“C’mon, Mother,” Belinda said. “I can see the plane. Father’s coming in.”

“It’s perfectly fine if you need more time. We still have a few minutes,” Reyland said, bringing his hands together as if in prayer.

“Okay,” Catherine Dunning finally said. “Okay.”

The vice president’s retinue showed up as the plane made its taxiing turn. The president, still on his Asian trip, couldn’t make it, but he would be back just in time for the funeral. The VP came over and gave Belinda a hug and patted Catherine’s hand, whispering to her. He smiled at Reyland as they nodded at each other.

“Nice to see you again, Ron,” the VP said to him.

“You, too, sir,” Reyland said, not correcting him that they had never met before and that his name was actually Robert.

It didn’t matter. DC was a kinetic place. Factions were already making movements, readjustments.

He wouldn’t make that mistake twice, Reyland thought in the roar of the approaching plane.

The turboprops roared even louder in the cold as the big plane crawled over to where they stood. Its back ramp was already down as it finally stopped before them. The marines, on the march, entered and went up with robotic precision.

The casket they came out with was straight lined and much smaller than Reyland expected. Under the flag, it looked like the kind of cardboard box that ready-to-assemble Walmart furniture came in.

The pallbearers stopped before the widow, and two of the marines from the honor guard marched over, giving the flag the required thirteen folds. As they did this, Reyland looked at himself in the limo’s tinted glass and smoothed his black tie. When he glanced over at the photographers in the media pen set up beside the hangar, he could see that they were going stone-cold bat shit.

Roll ’em, boys, and don’t forget my good side, Reyland thought, raising his chin high.

And why not? It was a moving performance. Solemn, austere. All of it. A splendorous display of reticence. Emerson had suggested taps, but Reyland had nixed it. Better to save it for the burial.