"Linda!" Stratton said.

"How'd I do?"

"I like the dress. Black becomes you. What are you doing here?"

It was a pointless question. She knew. He knew.

She kicked out of her high heels and said, "These things are killing me. Come on, walk me to the car."

"I can't."

She took his arm. "Come on, Tom, they won't come at night. They'll never find it at night."

"You're wrong, Linda. How did you know-"

"The same way you did. I had to play catch-up, that's all. I should've listened to you before, Tom, and I'm sorry. I didn't see what was happening-but even if I had, I'm not sure it would have made a difference."

"Nobody would have believed it, least of all your boss."

"Wang Bin was my case. The last couple of days I've had a lot of time to think about how I could have caught on sooner." She did not tell Stratton about the foreigners' morgue in Peking. She was afraid he had already figured it out.

"Are you here alone?" he asked.

"For now," she said.

"Me, too. And I'm staying."

He started back up the hill and she followed. "Tom!" she called. "I'm ruining my goddamn stockings. Slow down. Listen to me, they aren't coming tonight. They think the coffin is in Baltimore-"

"They've beaten me twice already. This is my last chance."

"Tom, be serious. I'll have some people here tomorrow. When the bad guys show up at the gate, we'll arrest them."

"What makes you so sure they'll use the gate?"

"Once they realize where the coffin is buried, they'll give up on it. They'll never try to dig this one up. Christ, it's Arlington, Tom. They can't possibly get away with it."

"This way," Stratton said, leaving the asphalt path and winding through a stand of tall trees. "I've got a good view from up here."

Linda Greer sat next to him under the oak, tugging the black dress down to cover her knees. She had hoped he would notice, but he didn't. He offered her a thermos of coffee.

"This is like summer camp," she teased. "Are you really going to stay here all night?"

"Why not?"

Linda edged closer until her cheek touched his shoulder.

"Might as well make the best of it," she whispered. "It's a soft night, isn't it?"

Stratton nodded but did not look at her.

"Tom, relax-it's like I'm snuggling up to one of those damn gravestones."

"I'm sorry."

Stratton trained his eyes on Kevin Mitchell's plot. A lemon moon, nearly full, was rising behind the capital across the river. The silent cemetery became a sprawling theater of shadows; the crosses turned into tiny soldiers with arms extended, whole battalions frozen on the hillsides in calisthenic precision.

"I stopped at the Kennedy grave this morning," Stratton said.

"Which one?"

"Both of them. That's where all the tourists go. I'd never seen them before, only pictures."

Linda said, "I took my little sister a couple of years ago. She cried."

"Last year some guy fell into the flame and died," Stratton said. "He got drunk and pitched face down into the Eternal Flame. They found him the next day, burned to death. When I saw the story in the paper, I had to wonder about that guy. What was he thinking about that night? Why did he come here, of all places?

I could just see him standing there in front of the President's grave, after all the goddamn tourists were gone. I could see him crying. Sloppy drunk tears.

Staring at the flame and crying like a baby. Then it made sense: If you want to be sad, this is the place. Look out there, Linda. Look at them all. So many you can't even count them. I think this must be the saddest place of all. I think the guy knew exactly what he was doing."

Linda kissed him gently on the neck. Nothing. Stratton was loaded like a spring.

She wondered sadly if their night in Peking had left any tender echo. It would make her job so much easier if it had.

"Can I ask you something?" Stratton said softly. "Are you here to stop them-or me?"

Harold Broom had had about all he could take from the snotty Chinaman. Being cursed in Mandarin was not so bad, but now Wang Bin had begun to call him "fool" to his face, as if it were part of his name. Broom was not a violent fellow, but now he shook his fist at the man in the passenger seat and said, "Shut up before I punch you in the nose!"

Wang Bin merely grunted.

"It's not my fault," Broom said for the tenth time. How could he have foreseen that Mrs. Kevin Mitchell would change her mind about the funeral? How could Broom have known that her husband's coffin would wind up at Arlington instead of the old Mitchell family plot in Baltimore, which would have been just as lovely.

It would have been a cinch.

"Son of a turtle!" Wang Bin snapped.

"These things happen."

"How are we to find Mitchell's grave?"

"Simple," Broom said. "We aren't. There's acres of soldiers at Arlington and not all of them are dead, Pop. They've got crack Marines with very nasty rifles-not peashooters like yours. No way we're going to try to dig up that coffin."

"But this cannot be!"

"Oh, but it is. Your precious Chinese warrior can rest forever. He'll be right at home, believe me. I'm not risking a trip to jail."

The deputy minister snorted. "I must have the third soldier."

"Pop, don't be greedy. There is no way we can pull it off. You want to get shot in the back? Those Marines are genuine marksmen, Pop, and you're old and slow."

Wang Bin stared straight ahead at the highway. "It can be done," he said. "And if it cannot, at least I want to see for myself."

Broom surrendered. They stopped at a camera store in Crystal City and purchased a couple of cheap 35-mms. This way, the art broker explained, they'd look like everybody else on the blue-and-white trams that chugged through the cemetery.

Broom also bought a large canvas shoulder bag to conceal the collapsible shovel and two hand picks. "This is insane," he grumbled. "And if anything goes wrong, you're on your own."

"Meaning what?" Wang Bin asked.

"Meaning I never saw you before in my life."

It was mid-afternoon when Broom drove down the Jefferson Davis Highway toward the national cemetery. He turned left past Fort Myer, then right again on Arlington Ridge Road. He drove half a mile and pulled the car up on a curb. "Get out now," he ordered Wang Bin. "Try to be useful."

The deputy minister silently followed the art dealer on a long sidewalk up a slope, through the gates of Arlington and onto a motor tram. The Chinese and his canvas shoulder bag sat down with a conspicuous clatter. The tram wound slowly up the hills. Wang Bin gazed in wonderment at the burial markers that seemed to march on forever.

"All soldiers?" he whispered to Broom.

"Yes. The Fields of the Dead, they call it."

"How many?" Wang Bin asked.

"Thousands," Broom said. "I checked with a guide back at the office and our friend is supposed to be resting in Section H. Grave number four-four-five. I got a map, but I'm not sure it'll help."

"We have nothing like this in China," Wang Bin marveled. "There is no land for such a place. All our dead are cremated."

"You build temples, we make graveyards. Each to his own."

Wang Bin took a deep breath. "Like Xian, in a way. This is your Imperial Army, is it not, Mr. Broom?"

Stratton spotted them without the field glasses.

They emerged from a copse at the foot of a hill, perhaps one hundred meters from Lt. Kevin P. Mitchell's white cross. They found the footpath and walked side by side, Mutt-and-Jeff silhouettes. Once they stopped to confer, and Stratton noticed the beam of a small flashlight as they bent over together, pointing. A map, probably. They resumed walking, with Broom leading the way.

Stratton slipped away from the oak tree where Linda Greer slept, curled on a damp bed of leaves. He moved in a familiar half-crouch, using the trees and the dappled shadows to hide his advance. He stopped only to watch them, pace them, and anticipate their path up the hill to Section H.