He'd tried, done everything a man could do, after it was too late, which was so often the way of things. It had just been too much. His wife, discovering a lump, still a pretty young woman in her thirty-seventh year, his best and closest friend. He'd supported her as best he could after the surgery, but then came another lump, another surgery, medical treatment, and the downhill slide, always having to be strong for her until the end. It would have been a crushing burden for any man, and then followed by another. His only son, David, drafted, sent to Vietnam, and killed two weeks later in some nameless valley. The support of his fellow workers, the way they had come to Davey's funeral, hadn't stopped him from crawling inside a bottle, desperately trying to cling to what he had left, but too tightly. Doris had borne her own grief, something Raymond hadn't fully understood or appreciated, and when she'd come home late, her clothing not quite right, the cruel and hateful things he'd said. He could remember every word, the hollow sound as the front door had slammed.
Only a day later he'd come to his senses, driving with tears in his eyes to the police station, abasing himself before men whose understanding and sympathy he never quite recognized, desperate again to get his little girl back, to beg from her the forgiveness that he could never give himself. But Doris had vanished. The police had done what they could, and that wasn't much. And so for two years he'd lived inside a bottle, until two fellow workers had taken him aside and talked as friends do once they have gathered the courage to invade the privacy of another man's life. His minister was a regular guest in the lonely house now. He was drying out - Raymond Brown still drank, but no longer to excess, and he was working to cut it down to zero. Man that he was, he had to face his loneliness that way, had to deal with it as best he could. He knew that solitary dignity was of little value. It was an empty thing to cling to, but it was all he had. Prayer also helped, some, and in the repeated words he often found sleep, though not the dreams of the family which had once shared the house with him. He was tossing and turning in his bed, sweating from the heat, when the phone rang.
'Hello?'
'Hello, is this Raymond Brown?'
'Yeah, who's this?' he asked with closed eyes.
'My name is Sarah Rosen. I'm a doctor in Baltimore, I work at Johns Hopkins Hospital.'
'Yes?' The tone of her voice opened his eyes. He stared at the ceiling, the blank white place that so closely matched the emptiness of his life. And there was sudden fear. Why would a doctor from Baltimore call him? His mind was spinning off towards a named dread when the voice went on quickly.
'I have somebody here who wants to talk to you, Mr Brown.'
'Huh?' He next heard muffled noises that might have been static from a bad line, but was not.
'I can't.'
'You have nothing to lose, dear,' Sarah said, handing over the phone. 'He's your father. Trust him.'
Doris took it, holding it in both hands close to her face, and her voice was a whisper.
'Daddy?'
From hundreds of miles away, the whispered word came through as clearly as a church bell. He had to breathe three times before answering, and that came out as a sob.
'Dor?'
'Yes - Daddy, I'm sorry.'
'Are you okay, baby?'
'Yes, Daddy, I'm fine.' And incongruous as the statement was, it was not a lie.
'Where are you?'
'Wait a minute.' Then the voice changed. 'Mr Brown, this is Doctor Rosen again'
'She's there?'
'Yes, Mr Brown, she is. We've been treating her for a week. She's a sick girl, but she's going to be okay. Do you understand? She's going to be okay.'
He was grasping his chest. Brown's heart was a steel fist, and his breathing came in painful gasps that a doctor might have taken for something they were not.
'She's okay?' he asked anxiously.
'She's going to be fine,' Sarah assured him. 'There's no doubt of that, Mr Brown. Please believe me, okay?'
'Oh, sweet Jesus! Where, where are you?'
'Mr Brown, you can't see her just yet. We will bring her to you just as soon as she's fully recovered. I worried about calling you before we could get you together, but - but we just couldn't not call you. I hope you understand.'
Sarah had to wait two minutes before she heard anything she could understand, but the sounds that came over the line touched her heart. In reaching into one grave, she had extracted two lives.
'She's really okay?'
'She's had a bad time, Mr Brown, but I promise you she will recover fully. I'm a good doc, okay? I wouldn't say that unless it were true.'
'Please, please let me talk to her again. Please!'
Sarah handed the phone over, and soon four people were weeping. Nurse and physician were the luckiest, sharing a hug and savoring their victory over the cruelties of the world.
Bob Ritter pulled his car into a slot in West Executive Drive, the closed-off former street that lay between the White House and the Executive Office Building. He walked towards the latter, perhaps the ugliest building in Washington - no mean accomplishment - which had once held much of the executive branch of government, the State, War, and Navy departments. It also held the Indian Treaty Room, designed for the purpose of overawing primitive visitors with the splendor of Victorian gingerbread architecture and the majesty of the government which had constructed this giant tipi. The wide corridors rang with the sound of his footsteps on marble as he searched for the right room. He found it on the second floor, the room of Roger MacKenzie, Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. 'Special,' perversely, made him a second-line official. The National Security Advisor had a corner office in the West Wing of the White House. Those who reported to him had offices elsewhere, and though distance from the Seat of Power defined influence, it didn't define arrogance of position. MacKenzie had to have a staff of his own in order to remind himself of his importance, real or illusory. Not really a bad man, and actually a fairly bright one, Ritter thought, MacKenzie was nonetheless jealous of his position, and in another age he would have been the clerk who advised the chancellor who advised the King. Except today the clerk had to have an executive secretary.
'Hi, Bob. How are things at Langley?' MacKenzie asked in front of his secretarial staff, just to be sure they would know that he was meeting with an up-and-coming CIA official, and was therefore still very important indeed to have such guests calling on him.
'The usual.' Ritter smiled back. Let's get on with it.
'Trouble with traffic?' he asked, letting Ritter know that he was almost, if not quite, late for the appointment.
'There's a little problem on the GW' Ritter gestured with his head towards MacKenzie's private office. His host nodded.
'Wally, we need someone to take notes.'
'Coming, sir.' His executive assistant rose from his desk in the secretarial area and brought a pad.
'Bob Ritter, this is Wally Hicks. I don't think you've met.'
'How do you do, sir?' Hicks extended his hand. Ritter took it, seeing yet one more eager White House aide. New England accent, bright-looking, polite, which was about all he was entitled to expect of such people. A minute later they were sitting in MacKenzie's office, the inner and outer doors closed in the cast-iron frames that gave the Executive Office Building the structural integrity of a warship. Hicks hurried himself about to get coffee for everyone, like a page at some medieval court, which was the way of things in the world's most powerful democracy.
'So what brings you in, Bob?' MacKenzie asked from behind his desk. Hicks flipped open his note pad and began his struggle to take down every word.
'Roger, a rather unique opportunity has presented itself over in Vietnam.' Eyes opened wider and ears perked up.
'What might that be?'
'We've identified a special prison camp southwest of Haiphong,' Ritter began, quickly outlining what they knew and what they suspected.