It took forty-five minutes for deCamp to find the $600,000 in the tree.

In the next couple of days, Matt, Jamal, and Moyer were isolated, pressed by the Criminal Investigation Command.When Matt would see guys from his unit, they'd say, "What's up, Clooney?" [See the movie Three Kings for reference.] Matt didn't see the humor in it. In the interim, there was close to $12 million missing and the rest of Matt's conspirators still moving about freely, unsur-veilled. And maybe another person. I heard someone outside the door that night, and he's never been identified. [The Novak tapes devolve often into wild conspiracy. There are men who took money home

I saw pictures of one guy who lives a block away on a bed with thousands of dollars…Captain Ahearn left the country with money. Most of the conspiracies have to do with what he sees as the wrongdoings of other people, as if there were a finite amount of guilt to go around and by giving some away it makes Matt less guilty. But he's probably right that there's a lot we don't know. Major Rideout believes that another $220 million could still be out there somewhere.]

Eventually, it was Matt who came forward and gave the fullest account of the events of April 18. Of the Eight, only Matt was kicked out of the army with a less-than-honorable discharge. Further evidence that the army exists on a parallel moral plane. Matt thinks it was because Captain Ahearn, his commander, didn't like him. [The way I heard it was that very few people liked Captain Ahearn, but Matt didn't keep his mouth shut about it.] Lieutenant Colonel deCamp says everyone got treated pretty equally, and if you look, several of the other Novak Eight are no longer in the army. [Still, only Matt was forced out.] Blanket immunity was granted, and no one got jail time. Major Rideout says,"My commanding general, General Blount, said,'This is going to be quieted; we're not going to let this get out.We're going to do a good investigation, but the last thing we need is a big black eye after what we just did, attacking into Baghdad and doing good stuff.' "

Over the next six months, during the protracted process that ended with Matt's removal from the military, he wasn't allowed to work. He would show up at his unit in Georgia and sit out front in his car, smoking cigarettes. Meanwhile, the rest of his life came unstitched. He discovered that his wife, Michell, had been seeing someone else. And now he's separated, on his way to being divorced, without access to his children, living in the Northwoods of Wisconsin with his parents, who believe that yoga is Satan worship.

I had everything when I left for the desert. I did. I left a beautiful wife and two beautiful children, had a beautiful husky puppy and two cats. I had two vehicles, a Camaro and a Mercury Tracer, 1995 vehicles. Not like a couple of beaters. I had a 1997 brick home, corner lot, quarter of an acre. Privacy fence. Now what do I have? The money was the downfall of my entire life.

[The last of our interviews takes place late at night in a bar called the Thirsty Whale, located on Lake Minocqua, now abandoned for the season. Outside, the wind is howling through the bleachers, where summer people watch waterskiing shows. On one portion of the tapes, Matt is trying to enlist some help in destroying his ex-wife's Durango. Come on! Let's push it in the lake! Or set it on fire in the woods out by my folks' house!

He keeps talking about how he got more resolutely fucked than anyone else who was involved. He confesses that part of the reason he wants to talk about this episode in his life is that he hopes that a letter-writing campaign will ensue. He wants his day in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee. I asked Sergeant Kenneth Buff, Matt's platoon sergeant and the first guy to find money that day, if victimhood was simply Matt's default identity. Buff said that Matt Novak was the kind of guy you wanted to hang out with. He was universally liked. Funny. Clever. It was only after all this that Matt had changed. "Matt sunk into a real depression," Buff said. "And I don't think he ever recovered."

Matt doesn't deny that he tried to steal money, but he is more interested in knowing: In the movie, is he the good guy or the bad guy? Maybe his guilt depends on the precise moment he made that crucial decision that his desires came before the greater good. As Rideout says:"A good supply sergeant, very few of them are probably legally correct. This guy was right on the edge of right and wrong." Was it the hypnotic power of seeing $200 million in cash, the golden ring in front of you? Or before that, when he kicked down that first door to take a sweet Sony television so his unit could watch porno movies in more dramatic fashion? Or earlier, when he got to Kuwait and was told he had to steal shit to do right? Or even earlier, when he was an infant, a fetus, a zygote that mutated imperceptibly? Or was it pre-Matt, in the primordial ooze, and it just so happens that anyone in Matthew Novak's position would take that money?

At the Thirsty Whale, Matt picks out a girl from across the room and takes a seat next to her at the bar. Her name is M. She works in customer service, and she recently had a nervous breakdown. She's medicated now. She and Matt hit it off almost immediately. She looks a little stiff, with her primly crossed legs and glossy new handbag. But Matt could smell the emotional injury on her, the fragility, the liability of having had a nervous breakdown.

M says,"Don't I recognize you? Are you from here?"What kind of line is that?

Well, you know the war in Iraq, right? The flush of false modesty rises.

"Yeah," M says.

Anything special you remember about it?

Everyone's silent, staring at him with vague smiles.They desperately want to go there with him, wherever it is he might be taking them, but they don't know what he's talking about. Earlier that night he said: Hopefully, this chapter in my life is almost over, or this novel in my life, because that's what it is. But it's not going to be over if it continues to be a more attractive identity for Matt than the one he's currently living.

You remember any stories?

"Like?" says M. "Stories?"

"Jennifer Lynch or whatever?" the bartender says.

You remember anything about money? Something about GIs finding two hundred million dollars and trying to steal twelve million of it? They all smile now and nod, though whether or not they know the story is anyone's guess. Yep, Matt says, that was me, no shit.]

Devin Friedman is thirty-four years old, works as a senior writer for GQ magazine, where this story was published, and has never been in the army. He believes he would have been tempted by finding two hundred million dollars in American currency in the middle of a war zone, but believes even more strongly that no one really knows what he or she would do unless they've been in those circumstances. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award for essay writing, and his work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and The Best American Travel Writing. He edited a book of photographs taken by soldiers who've served in Iraq called This is Our War, and believes that if he didn't mention Fred Woodward, GQ's very talented art director, and the photograph editor Greg Pond, he'd be screwing those two over for their work on the book.

If you've ever watched a trial you know the first rule of trying to re-create a crime: events start to break down upon scrutiny. Unless you have a videotape, and sometimes even when you do (Rodney King et al.), you're never really going to know what happened. And in my limited experience reporting crime stories, the more interviews you do the more it starts to feel like reality is coming unstitched. Even in this case, the case of (as they're referred to in this story) The Novak 8, when events were widely witnessed and the conspiracy lasted only a matter of hours, facts begin to lose their purchase. Did the lieutenant make off with a bunch of money as charged? Did the first sergeant? Was Matt Novak really the ringleader, as the army contends, or the fall guy? In any case, pretty much everyone involved in this incident feels they were singularly screwed. Matt Novak especially so.