"That would be fine, Colonel. And there is no necessity for you to change uniforms. And if you have the time, please take supper with us."

"That's very kind," Lustrous said. "But I don't want to impose."

"Don't be silly. It is I who is imposing on your friendship with my father. I will expect you sometime before seven. And thank you."

There was a click as the line went dead.

Lustrous looked at Naylor.

"She said 'supper with us,' Colonel," Naylor said.

"Yeah, I heard," Lustrous said. Then he raised his voice: "Rupert!"

Sergeant Major Dieter put his head in the doorway.

"I heard," he said. "You want me to drive you?"

"No, I think we'll go in the Mercedes," Lustrous said. "Will you make sure Colonel Stevens knows he's minding the store?"

"Yes, sir," Dieter said. "Sir, if you want I can give the ladies a heads-up."

"Good idea. Thank you. Lie. Tell them we're already on the way. I'll bring you up to speed first thing in the morning."

"Sir, your call. Since I couldn't make lunch with Baker Troop today, I thought I might make breakfast tomorrow."

"Do it," Lustrous ordered. "I'll see you when you get here."

[SIX]

Haus im Wald

Near Bad Hersfeld

Kreis Hersfeld-Rotenburg

Hesse, West Germany

1845 7 March 1981

The first time Major Allan B. Naylor, Armor, saw Carlos Guillermo Castillo, he was standing beside his mother on the flagstone steps of das Haus im Wald as they drove up in Lustrous's Mercedes. The boy was wearing a nearly black suit with a white shirt and tie and his blond hair was neatly combed.

The Naylor's had two sons, a fourteen-year-old and a ten-year-old, and the first thing Allan Naylor thought was, There's not much fun in that kid's life.

That was closely followed by, Shit, and now this!

Colonel Lustrous had taken Frau Erika von und zu Gossinger at her word. He and Naylor were still wearing fatigues. Their wives were more formally dressed.

Mother and son waited on the steps for the Lustrouses and the Naylor's to get out of the Mercedes and walk up to them.

"How good it is to see you again, Colonel Lustrous," Frau Erika said, offering her hand. "Welcome."

"Thank you," Lustrous said. "May I introduce my good friend, Major Allan Naylor?"

"Of course, Elaine's husband. How do you, Major?"

Netty walked up to Frau Erika and kissed her on the cheek and then Elaine did.

"And this is my son," Frau Erika said. "Karl Wilhelm."

The boy put out his hand first to Netty, then Elaine, then Lustrous, and finally Naylor, and each time said, in English, "How do you do? I am pleased to meet you."

His English, while obviously not the American variety, was accentless, neither the nasal British variety taught by English teachers at Saint Johan's-which Allan B. Naylor III had brought home and earned him the nickname "Lord Fauntleroy"-or the to be expected German-accented English of a young German boy.

"My boy goes to Saint Johan's," Elaine said. "Allan? Do you know him?"

"He is two forms before me: ahead of me," Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger said. "I know who he is."

"Why don't we go in the house and have a cocktail?" Frau Erika said.

A maid in a white apron stood behind a bar set up on a table in the library. There were bottles of Gossingerbrau in dark bottles with ceramic and rubber stoppers, bottles of German and French white and red wine, French and German champagne, bourbon and scotch whiskey, gin, cognac, and an array of glasses to properly serve any of it.

Lustrous, Netty, and Allan Naylor asked for scotch; Elaine Naylor said she thought she would have a glass of Rumpoldskirchener, and Frau Erika poured a snifter heavily with cognac.

"Welcome, friends, all of you, to our home," Frau Erika said, raising her glass. "What is it you taught my father to say, Oberst Lustrous? 'Mud in your eye'? Mud in your eye!"

She took, everyone noticed, a healthy pull of her cognac.

"I don't know what that means," Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger said.

"Either do I, come to think of it, Karl," Lustrous said. "Is it all right if I call you Karl?"

"Yes, sir. Of course," the boy said.

"Would you mind, Karl, if we had a private word with your mother?" Lustrous said.

"Of course not, sir."

"Frau Erika?" Lustrous said.

"Of course," she said. "Karl, would you go into Grosspappa's office for a moment?"

Karl didn't like it all, but he nodded curtly and walked to the far end of the library. Lustrous saw there was an office of some kind in an adjoining room. There was a desk, a typewriter, a leather armchair, and several tables in a small room lined with bookcases.

"When my father was angry about something," Frau Erika said, "he used to go there to write the editorial. He said it was very difficult to stay angry in there."

"Then I have to presume most of the editorials I read were not written here," Lustrous said.

Frau Erika smiled at him.

"He also used to say losing your temper had to be a sin; it was so pleasurable," she said.

Lustrous smiled and turned to Netty.

"Can I have that, please, honey?" he asked.

Netty dug in her purse and came up with a plasticized Xerox copy of the newspaper photograph. Spec5 Sam Rowe, Sergeant Major Dieter's jack-of-all-trades, had spent several hours doing the best he could.

Netty handed it to her husband, who wordlessly handed it to Frau Erika.

She looked at it carefully and then at Lustrous.

"Yes, that's him. It must have been taken at the time. My God, he was so young! Only nineteen!"

"I'm afraid I have to tell you that he was killed in Vietnam," Lustrous said.

Erika met his eyes for a moment, then nodded.

"Somehow I knew that," she said. "He said: he said that I would probably not hear from him much, he wasn't much at writing letters. But that as soon as he came home from the war, he would come back. I was very young. I believed him. Even when there were no letters at all. It's easy to believe when you are young."

"For what it's worth, he died a hero," Lustrous said.

"It doesn't mean anything to me but it will to Karl," Erika said and raised her voice. " Karl, kumst du hier, bitte!"

She sounded almost gay. Lustrous saw the cognac snifter was just about empty and then looked at Netty and saw the pain in her eyes.

The boy came back from the small office.

"Yes, Mother?"

"Oberst Lustrous has brought a photograph, from a newspaper, of your father," Erika said.

The boy said nothing. Erika handed him the plastic-covered clipping.

He looked at it and then at his mother.

"He never came back to us, Karl, because he was killed in the war," Erika said.

"Your father was quite a hero, Karl," Lustrous said.

"Mother said he is dead," the boy said.

"He was killed while trying to rescue other helicopter pilots," Naylor said.

"So how, if I may ask, will that affect things?" the boy asked.

"Excuse me?" Lustrous said.

"If he is dead, I cannot go to him, can I?"

Naylor thought: That means, of course, he knows about his mother. His reaction is coldblooded; to learning that his father is dead and that he now will have no family at all.

"Karl," Netty said softly, "we've asked for his records; they will be sent here shortly. I can't promise this, but it's possible, even likely, that your father had a family:"

"And I would go to them? No. I will not. Pastor Dannberg says I can stay at Saint Johan's:"

"But if there is a family," Netty said, "they would love you:"

"Why would they love me? Mother says they don't know I exist."

That's true, Naylor thought. And the boy senses, or has figured out, that it would be one hell of a transition, from das Haus im Wald to Texas, even if he doesn't understand that with a name like Castillo it's highly probable that his life in Texas would be that of a Tex-Mex, and that's not at all like that of an upper-class German.