I’m twenty-eight thousand feet above the Grand Canyon, spread out over two seats in the first-class cabin of a 767 working on my laptop. Undaunted by Collins’ warning, I got the address and phone number for Army Mortuary Affairs at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, from him before leaving the NPRC; and as soon as my flight was in the air, I began writing a letter requesting copies of all data filed under my name and serial number.
Due to the three-hour difference in time, it’s only 3:35 P.M. when I arrive in Los Angeles. Nancy picks me up from business trips whenever she can. It gives us a chance to talk before the clients, computers, and phones close in. Her Range Rover came with all the options, but she made sure a cellular phone wasn’t one of them. Today, her flight from Washington arrived just a few hours before mine, so I’ve arranged for one of the company drivers to meet me instead.
Minutes after touchdown, I’m tucked in the backseat of a Lincoln Town Car heading north on the 405. At the first interchange, we take the Santa Monica west to the tunnel that channels all traffic onto Pacific Coast Highway. I drive through it every day on the way home from work. It’s right out of Star Trek—a fleeting fifteen-second time warp that teleports me from a world of stress and urban sprawl to one of peace and natural beauty. The Lincoln is soon climbing Malibu Canyon Road into the mountains, where, I bathed in golden light as our architect planned, a cluster of angular white structures hugs the rugged terrain. Nancy said I needed to get home and she’s right.
I intend to go right to my den and print out the letter to Mortuary Affairs, but I don’t. Instead, I take a refreshing swim in the pool, then spend some time in the spa with Nancy, watching the sunset. But as the last amber rays streak skyward from beneath the horizon, I start feeling restless again.
“Better go do it now,” she says, knowingly.
“Do what, Nance?” I ask, as if I haven’t the slightest idea what she’s talking about.
“Whatever it is that’s making you fidget. You’ll be distracted all through dinner. Go.”
I get into some comfortable clothes and head downstairs to the den. It’s an electronics-packed sanctuary with a view guaranteed to make the most insecure executive feel invincible. I transfer the Mortuary Affairs letter from the laptop to my PC, which is tied in to the mainframe at the office, then print it out on the laser jet. I’m proofreading it when my mind wanders to the time/place discrepancy. I’m lost in thought when Nancy pokes her head in the doorway.
“You going to be much longer? Cal?”
“Oh, sorry, I was somewhere else.”
“I don’t need to ask where, do I?”
I smile and shake no. “I was thinking about helicopters.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about food. How does Geoffery’s sound?” she asks, referring to a trendy restaurant perched on a bluff above the Pacific.
“Sounds okay,” I reply halfheartedly. I turn off the computer, then come around the desk. “You know, according to the master casualty list, whoever died with my tags was killed three weeks after and four hundred miles north of where I was wounded.”
“That’s strange.”
“Yes, it’s been bugging me. I was just thinking the medevac chopper might account for it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they linked the fire bases to the hospitals and mortuaries. There’s a chance my ID got lost in the chopper that took me to the field hospital.”
“And you think it might’ve been reassigned to another area after that.”
“Uh-huh,” I reply as we start upstairs. “Weeks later the same chopper’s working this other province; goes into a hot LZ and hauls out a load of grunts: live, wounded, dead—happened all the time. My ID turns up, and some terrified kid figures it belongs to the pile of carnage next to him without tags.”
“That makes sense.”
“So what? No matter how I look at it, it still doesn’t give me a thing.”
“That’s because you haven’t eaten. You know how your brain refuses to function without fuel.”
“Without protein. Forget the angel hair and shitake mushrooms. Let’s go get some steaks.”
The next morning, Nancy is out of the house by 7:15. I spend a half hour on my rowing machine, working off a sixteen-ounce T-bone and sorting through the events in Washington and St. Louis. I have a feeling that something basic is wrong but can’t put my finger on it. I shower, dress, and head for the office—an effortless drive in a Mercedes 560 sedan that seems to know the route by heart.
Morgan Management Consulting is located in one of the aluminum-clad towers in Century City. It’s within striking distance of the corporate and financial center downtown, and the electronics and defense industry corridor on the west side.
I park in the underground garage, using one of those card keys to activate the gate arm, and take the elevator to the twenty-fourth floor, half of which my company occupies. In keeping with the management philosophy we preach, the decor and furnishings are minimalist in design, the artwork contemporary. I drop the letter to Mortuary Affairs in the mail chute and head for my office. I’m settling at my desk when my secretary informs me that Washington is on the line.
My words didn’t fall on deaf ears. One of the senators’s aides, faced with revising the legislation to reflect my data, needs help. It’s too complex to cover over the phone, but could be handled in person by a subordinate. I assign it to a bright young woman who worked on my prepared testimony, then meet with one of our actuarial teams to review a troubled pension plan study.
It’s obvious a poll used to gather raw data was poorly designed. “Garbage in garbage out,” I lecture. “We ask the wrong questions, we don’t stand a chance in hell of getting the right answers. Now—” I pause. Something just clicked. I know what was bothering me at home this morning. I’ve been too driven by emotion and impulse. I haven’t really defined the problem and developed an approach to solving it. I clear my office and call the National Personnel Records Center.
“You have it figured out already?” Collins prompts when he comes on the line.
“Not the way I was going at it.”
“I’m not sure I follow you, Mr. Morgan.”
“I’ve been asking the wrong question,” I say, feeling a little guilty for chastising my staff. “I mean, the question I’m trying to answer is: Whose body was recovered with my dog tags? But when you really think about it, the one I should be asking is: How has the military accounted for this guy? John Doe’s body or part of it was identified as mine, right? When Mr. Doe didn’t turn up—dead or alive—what did they think happened to him? I may be wrong, but the way I see it, there are only two possibilities: They listed him as either missing in action or AWOL.”
“You might be on to something there.”
“Can you help me narrow the parameters?”
“Well, for openers, I’d say the chances that he’s listed as AWOL are pretty slim.”
“Why?”
“The circumstances. Bolikhamsai Province in Laos, or any battle zone for that matter, isn’t where GIs go AWOL. In most of the records I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot of them in my day, guys who went AWOL in Vietnam were usually last seen somewhere in one of the big cities, Saigon, Bangkok, Chiang Mai.”
“Heavily into women and drugs,” I hear myself adding, which makes me acutely aware of just how selective my memory has become. I knew guys who went AWOL: for days, for weeks, forever. “It’s been a long time, Mr. Collins, but that makes a lot of sense now that you mention it.”
“Yes, when you get right down to it, odds are he’s listed as MIA. Nothing else left.”
“There any way to find out for sure?”
“Not without his name.” He pauses briefly, then adds, “I don’t know what this’ll give us, but I’m kind of curious to see what the master list has under yours. Hold on.”
After a short silence, I hear a muffled thud followed by the rustle of pages turning. “Yes, here it is,” Collins says. “There’s a category called Body State; the entry is BNR; that means body not recovered.”
That’s the last thing I expected. It really throws me. “I don’t get it,” I say, thinking aloud. “I mean, I assumed a body somehow ended up with my tags by mistake; and my name ended up on the wall.”
“So did I. That’s why I didn’t check it the other day. Was your family notified?”
“No. That’s one of the first things I covered.”
“Well, that fits the pattern. A body had to be fully processed by one of the mortuaries before a notification was triggered. No body, no notice.”
“And no records,” I add, realizing this latest twist means the letter I sent to Mortuary Affairs is a waste of time. “In any event, assuming it’s not a data encoding error, chances are I’m looking for someone who’s listed as missing in action.”
“Yes, which narrows those parameters quite a bit. There are only about twenty-three hundred MIAs.”
“Twenty-three hundred,” I repeat, hearing pages turning again in the background.
“Twenty-two hundred and seventy-three at last count, to be exact,” Collins corrects.
I quickly calculate that out of a total of 58,176, I’ve eliminated 96.093 percent of the possibilities. “I guess that’s not exactly back to square one, but I haven’t the slightest idea where to go next.”
“I’d try the National League of Families,” he suggests. “They’re the authority on MIAs. If they can’t help you, they’ll know who can.”
“Where are they? Alaska?”
“Washington, D.C.,” he replies with an amused chuckle. “I warned you.”
After ending the call, I track down the staff member to whom I gave the Senate committee assignment and suggest she cancel her travel plans. She isn’t going to Washington next week. I am.