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dead.”
    â€œWhoever I’m going after now did not know who you were, or that you existed.”
    It was best to duck after directing that kind of cruelty at Dan. He knew how to transform it to his advantage, though not to get you to say you were sorry. How could that benefit him? He would target the vulnerability you had revealed and rub salve in the wound until you believed he just might be your savior.
    â€œThere’s nothing wrong with taking orders,”
he said.
    Salve in the wound. I did not say thank you. The mission was clearly defined: Find the puppet master; deliver him, if possible. Following orders was just part of life as a Marine no matter where you were.
    Dan said,
“It’s the fog at the beginning that makes you wonder. Just point yourself in the right direction.”
    He was right. Finding Dan, killing McColl and his men, tying them to General Remington, finding the money—all that was a personal mission. It was a compulsion. Nothing could stop me carrying it on to the end. It didn’t matter if I was good enough. This time I was not sure what I was getting into. I was not compelled. I was ordered. I was not sure I was good enough.
    I checked with Major Hensel about the Kurdish rebels, the PKK, sometimes called Kongra-Gel. “They’re led by a man named Diyar, we think. He might be real. He might be mythical. No one around here knows. Officially, we wouldn’t be having any contact with them.”
    â€œIf I worked for the government, you mean.”
    ______
    Dan used a lawyer named Jaman when we lived in Phoenix. I think his first name was John, and now I wonder if his real name might have been John J. Mann and my ears just turned it into Jaman, but either way, he was a dirty guy who was always exploring his nose or his ears or his crotch and I had to be careful not to sit across from him because he would load up on food before he started talking and some of it was always flying out. Dan said he was unpolished but smart and good-natured. He stared at Dan, followed his every gesture, would move his hands the way Dan did, hold his head the way Dan did, but he could not hold the pose; soon his hand would sneak, like some uncontrollable pet, down to his crotch and nudge it affectionately in one direction or another.
    Jaman wrote contracts for Dan, and letters demanding payment and promising payment. Sometimes Dan would let him negotiate for a few minutes, then interrupt and appear to give in to the other party over Jaman’s objections. Jaman always had his legal secretary, Betsy, by his side; she brought the laptop and typed everything. Betsy was pretty, though she, too, was unpolished. The heart tattoo on her smooth, milky thigh was seared into my eyeballs from intense hours of staring. Jaman would catch me longing and smile and point to his chest with pride and say something like “Someday you’ll get your own. This one is mine.” Then the same finger would be drawn, as if by invisible magnets, to his nose or ear.
    Betsy was Dan’s, too, of course. I could hear them from almost anywhere in the small house where we were living. I could never understand how Jaman did not know about Dan and Betsy. How could he think she would not prefer Dan? How could he think Dan would not seduce her? How could Jaman read my thoughts so easily and not have a clue about Dan’s? More than once I heard Betsy ask Dan when he thought Jaman would “pull the trigger” or “pull up his pants.” Once she said she was sure he had bought a ring. And Dan always reassured her that Jaman was on the verge of proposing.
    One day, Dan handed me an envelope and told me to deliver it to Jaman’s office, which was not far away. It was number 303, with no name on the door. I went into the waiting room and I could hear the argument going on in the inner office.
    Jaman said, “No, I don’t blame him. I blame you.”
    Betsy yelled, “You said you were