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up.”
    â€œSir,” Sergeant Sidney protested, “we were told we could have the night off, before going on the ship tomorrow.”
    â€œYou’ll be in Osaka tomorrow,” Parker said. “We’re going there tonight.”
    â€œI’ve got to say good-bye to my girl, Lieutenant,” Sergeant Sidney said.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Parker said. “There won’t be time for that. We have to go to Osaka, take delivery of the A3s, get them on ship board, and rejoin the rest of the regiment in Korea.”
    Sergeant Sidney said nothing. But there was a look on his face that annoyed, even angered Parker. But there was nothing he could do about it now.
    â€œWe’re going to turn our M24s over to the other two platoons,” Parker went on. “They’ll serve as spares. I’ll answer questions, but you’re warned that I don’t know much more than what I’ve told you.”
    Sergeant Sidney was not outside the barracks when the bus came, nor was he anywhere to be found.
    â€œTurn the sonofabitch in as AWOL to miss a movement, Lieutenant,” Sergeant Woodrow said. “Let him do six months in the stockade.”
    â€œI think Sergeant Sidney would much rather be doing pushups in the stockade than getting shot at in Korea,” Parker said. He was embarrassed that he hadn’t thought ahead and had Woodrow keep an eye on him.
    â€œWhat good would he do us in Korea?”
    â€œHe’s school-trained on the A3,” Parker said. “Can you find him, do you think, Sergeant Woodrow?”
    â€œYes, sir, I know just where to look.”
    â€œI would hate to see the career of a good soldier like Sergeant Sidney ruined by his having missed a shipment, Sergeant,” Parker said. “Do you think you could reason with him?”
    â€œHas the platoon sergeant the platoon commander’s permission to speak informally, sir?” Sergeant Woodrow asked.
    â€œYes,” Lieutenant Parker said.
    â€œI’ll have that nigger motherfucker on the boat if I have to break both his legs,” Sergeant Woodrow said.
    â€œCarry on, Sergeant,” Parker said.

III
    (One)
New York City, New York
10 July 1950
    Craig W. Lowell was not surprised to find Andre Pretier’s chauffeur waiting for him beyond the glass wall of customs at LaGuardia, but he was surprised when the chauffeur told him that Pretier was in the car.
    Andre Pretier was Lowell’s mother’s husband. Not his step-father. They had been married after Craig had been drafted into the army in early 1946, following his expulsion for academic unsuitability from Harvard. While the chauffeur collected his luggage, Lowell looked for and found the car.
    It was a Chrysler Imperial, with a limousine body by LeBaron, a long, glossy vehicle parked in a TOW AWAY zone. There was an official-looking placard resting against the windshield, bearing the seal of the State of New York and the words OFFICIAL . Craig had often wondered if Pretier had been provided with some sort of honorary official position by some obliging politician, or whether he or his chauffeur (who had been with him for twenty-five years) had just picked it up somewhere and used it without any authority, secure in the knowledge that airport and other police asked fewer questions of people in custom-bodied limousines than they did of other people.
    The first Pretier in America had come as a member of the staff of the Marquis de Lafayette during the American Revolution. He had stayed after the war and founded the shipping (and later import-export) company which was the foundation of the Pretier fortune. He had been at Harvard with Lowell’s father, and there, incredibly, become enamored of the woman who was to become Craig Lowell’s mother, an infatuation that was to last his lifetime. He had proposed marriage precisely one year and one day after Lowell’s father had been buried.
    Andre Pretier leaned across the velour