The crowd flooded forward before she could respond, and Mary got hurried down an aisle and across a row to make sure she sat in the front with DynCorp regional executives and the deputy ambassador. It wasn’t until the memorial service was over that she recalled how Holly Fitzsimmons had said, “This is so amazing,” and that she would “let him explain it.” As Mary got into one of the embassy Humvees—Rex’s friend had left to report for duty—she realized that this man from the Defense Department, this Will Holmes, hadn’t explained anything.

ROCK CREEK   MARCH

13.   NIGHT FIST, QUIET KNIGHT

Washington’s winter was snowless and mild, signifying mankind’s interference and indifference yoked, biblical scourge misinterpreted, glaring alarms unnoticed, and still Stanley hadn’t called Mabel. It was early March, too much like May, and still her cell-phone number on the stray piece of paper sat in his top desk drawer, numinous souvenir, dearest diamond, untouched.

He looked at it daily. It sat there in a nest of rubber bands. It winked at his bad nights. It teased on his worst afternoons. When the announcement came of Adam making Gordon Bray managing editor, it went neon. But Stanley couldn’t use it. The spirit in which it was offered seemed gone, gone utterly, when Martina quit. He hadn’t met Adam in church for months.

His sole link to hope was Vera. She was insensate with hardworking industry. He had never seen such a searcher. He wondered if ballet, that branch of dancing dedicated to body-deforming practice for perfection, had made her immune to dead ends. She tunneled to them and through them. All she needed was an ear to hear of her raging disappointment and she was back in shape for more. That part was easy. He enjoyed her stories of how, when she got to one version of events, or just before she thought she got it, it changed to something else.