The suburban streets were neat and clean. There were discreet stores with apartments above them. The store windows were full of shiny items. Street signs were black-on-white, written in an archaic script that made them hard to read. There were small U.S. Army road signs here and there too. You couldn’t go very far without seeing one. We followed the XII Corps arrows, getting closer all the time. We left the built-up area and drove through a couple of kilometers of farmland. It felt like a moat. Like insulation. The eastern sky ahead of us was dark.

XII Corps was based in a typical glory-days installation. Some Nazi industrialist had built a thousand-acre factory site out in the fields, back in the 1930s. It had featured an impressive home office building and ranks of low metal sheds stretching hundreds of meters behind it. The sheds had been bombed to twisted shards, over and over again. The home office building had been only partially damaged. Some weary U.S. Army armored division had set up camp in it in 1945. Thin Frankfurt women in headscarves and faded print dresses had been brought in to pile the rubble, in exchange for food. They worked with wheelbarrows and shovels. Then the Army Corps of Engineers had fixed up the office building and bulldozed the piles of rubble away. Successive huge waves of Pentagon spending had rolled in. By 1953 the place was a flagship installation. There was cleaned brick and shining white paint and a strong perimeter fence. There were flagpoles and sentry boxes and guard shacks. There were mess halls and a medical clinic and a PX. There were barracks and workshops and warehouses. Above all there were a thousand acres of flat land and by 1953 it was covered with American tanks. They were all lined up, facing east, ready to roll out and fight for the Fulda Gap.

When we got there thirty-seven years later it was too dark to see much. But I knew that nothing fundamental would have changed. The tanks would be different, but that would be all. The M4 Shermans that had won World War Two were long gone, except for two fine examples standing preserved outside the main gate, one on each side, like symbols. They were placed halfway up landscaped concrete ramps, noses high, tails low, like they were still in motion, breasting a rise. They were lit up theatrically. They were beautifully painted, glossy green, with bright white stars on their sides. They looked much better than they had originally. Behind them was a long driveway with white-painted curbs and the floodlit front of the office building, which was now the post headquarters. Behind that would be the tank lagers, with M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks lined up shoulder to shoulder, hundreds of them, at nearly four million bucks apiece.

We got out of the taxi and crossed the sidewalk and headed for the main gate guard shack. My special unit badge got us past it. It would get us past any U.S. Army checkpoint anywhere except the inner ring of the Pentagon. We carried our bags down the driveway.

“Been here before?” Summer asked me.

I shook my head as I walked.

“I’ve been in Heidelberg with the infantry,” I said. “Many times.”

“Is that near?”

“Not far,” I said.

There were broad stone steps leading up to the doors. The whole place looked like a capitol building in some small state back home. It was immaculately maintained. We went up the steps and inside. There was a soldier at a desk just behind the doors. Not an MP. Just a XII Corps office grunt. We showed him our IDs.

“Your VOQ got space for us?” I asked.

“Sir, no problem,” he said.

“Two rooms,” I said. “One night.”

“I’ll call ahead,” he said. “Just follow the signs.”

He pointed to the back of the hallway. There were more doors there that would lead out into the complex. I checked my watch. It said noon exactly. It was still set to East Coast time. Six in the evening, in West Germany. Already dark.

“I need to see your MP XO,” I said. “Is he still in his office?”

The guy used his phone and got an answer. Pointed us up a broad staircase to the second floor.

“On your right,” he said.

We went up the stairs and turned right. There was a long corridor with offices on both sides. They had hardwood doors with reeded glass windows. We found the one we wanted and went in. It was an outer chamber with a sergeant in it. It was pretty much identical to the one back at Bird. Same paint, same floor, same furniture, same temperature, same smell. Same coffee, in the same standard-issue machine. The sergeant was like plenty I had seen before too. Calm, efficient, stoic, ready to believe he ran the place all by himself, which he probably did. He was behind his desk and he looked up at us as we came in. Spent half a second deciding who we were and what we wanted.

“I guess you need the major,” he said.

I nodded. He picked up his phone and buzzed through to the inner office.

“Go straight through,” he said.

We went in through the inner door and I saw a desk with a guy called Swan behind it. I knew Swan pretty well. Last time I had seen him was in the Philippines, three months earlier, when he was starting a tour of duty that was scheduled to last a year.

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “You got here December twenty-ninth.”

“Froze my ass off,” he said. “All I had was Pacific gear. Took XII Corps three days to find me a winter uniform.”

I wasn’t surprised. Swan was short, and wide. Almost cubic. He probably owned a percentile all his own, on the quartermasters’ charts.

“Your Provost Marshal here?” I said.

He shook his head. “Temporarily reassigned.”

“Garber signed your orders?”

“Allegedly.”

“Figured it out yet?”

“Not even close.”

“Me either,” I said.

He shrugged, like he was saying, Hey, the army, what can you do?

“This is Lieutenant Summer,” I said.

“Special unit?” Swan said.

Summer shook her head.

“But she’s cool,” I said.

Swan stretched a short arm over his desk and they shook hands.

“I need to see a guy called Marshall,” I said. “A major. Some kind of a XII Corps staffer.”

“Is he in trouble?”

“Someone is. I’m hoping Marshall will help me figure out who. You know him?”

“Never heard of him,” Swan said. “I only just got here.”

“I know,” I said. “December twenty-ninth.”

He smiled and gave me the What can you do? shrug again and picked up his phone. I heard him ask his sergeant to find Marshall and tell him I wanted to see him at his convenience. I looked around while we waited for the response. Swan’s office looked borrowed and temporary, just like mine did back in North Carolina. It had the same kind of clock on the wall. Electric, no second hand. No tick. It said ten minutes past six.

“Anything happening here?” I said.

“Not much,” Swan said. “Some helicopter guy went shopping in Heidelberg and got run over. And Kramer died, of course. That’s shaken things up some.”

“Who’s next in line?”

“Vassell, I guess.”

“I met him,” I said. “Wasn’t impressed.”

“It’s a poisoned chalice. Things are changing. You should hear these guys talk. They’re real gloomy.”

“The status quo is not an option,” I said. “That’s what I’m hearing.”

His phone rang. He listened for a minute and put it down.

“Marshall’s not on-post,” he said. “He’s out on a night exercise in the countryside. Back in the morning.”

Summer glanced at me. I shrugged.

“Have dinner with me,” Swan said. “I’m lonely here with all these cavalry types. The O Club in an hour?”

We carried our bags over to the Visiting Officers’ Quarters and found our rooms. Mine looked pretty much the same as the one Kramer had died in, except it was cleaner. It was a standard American motel layout. Presumably some hotel chain had bid for the government contract, way back when. Then they had airfreighted all the fixtures and fittings, right down to the sinks and the towel rails and the toilet bowls.