London, l500 GMT

Stuart left the embassy by the side entry after a dreary lunch of the dry bread and cheese disasters the English took for sandwiches. John Harris had told him to go home and sleep and to come back to the embassy at 7:00 p.m., when the London group for the whole operation would be convened, and task groups formed.

Stuart unlocked his flat and opened a window to let in a bit of the cool, damp air. Alison always insisted on keeping the windows tightly shut, and the flat was dry and stuffy from the ancient, noisy steam radiators. He took off his clothes and lay naked on top of the rumpled bed. He had a sharp pain behind his eyes from studying the detailed photographs and a duller, throbbing ache at the back of his head, which, together with his slight fever and deep feeling of fatigue, told him to expect a visit from his old Vietnamese malaria.

Stuart had left the Navy in 1973 when it became apparent that the war in Vietnam was going to be abandoned by the United States and never won. His mind traveled back to the images and feelings of the time, raced along by the familiar buzz of the malaria.

Stuart had come from a family with a long military tradition and had grown up in the serene and genteel countryside of Virginia. He had been commissioned after graduating from college and been assigned to an amphibious assault ship, the old Valley Forge, operating off Vietnam. When he returned with the ship, he married and prepared to settle down and forget the boredom and the terror of his war. After six months in the States, he had received orders back to Nam as officer-in-charge of an ANGLICO (Air and Naval Gunfire Liaison Company) team, spotting air and naval gunfire for the Army and marines, working in the jungle and along the rivers and, during the Tet Offensive of 1968, even in the cities that were temporarily occupied by the Viet Cong and the NVA. It seemed so long ago.

Against all reason, he had extended his commitment after serving nine months in Washington with Naval Intelligence and returned to the jungle once more. He knew as he lay in his bed in London, the fever rolling through his body in waves and the pain seeping from his bones into his flesh, that he could never have explained why he went back, not then, and not now. But he had gone, and he had crept through the choked jungle streams and across dewy, moon-silvered paddies in North Vietnam and Laos, following rumors of imprisoned American flyers. Twice, out of the many times, he had found skeletal men, alive but unseeing, and he had quietly led his team through the camps, killing the guards, every one, and then leading the poor, weeping, frightened men out of hell and back to their homes.

Stuart got up and went to the bathroom and swallowed three aspirins with a whole tumbler of water. I hope the malaria just takes a bite and leaves, he thought. I want to go back to the embassy in a few hours. He took his temperature, watching in the mirror as sweat coursed down his face and chest. He looked at the thermometer, 39 degrees Celsius. About 102 Fahrenheit, he figured, and already sweating freely. The attack is almost over.

He returned to bed and pulled the sheet and blanket over him as he shivered with alternating waves of hot and cold. His mind slid away from him, and he thought about returning home from Vietnam each time he had done so, and how each time it had been worse. Stuart’s wife had left him in 1968, cursing him for leaving her alone while he returned to the war the nation had rejected. By 1973, absolutely everybody hated the war, although the vociferous demonstrations of the late sixties had ended abruptly once the threat of the draft was removed. Stuart had felt alienated even from people who had been close friends. It seemed that people, American people, hated him and rejected him because he felt too attached to the war and the men who had died there to denounce it and them and wear flowers in his hair.

The first job offer he had received after he resigned his commission had been from Western Petroleum, with the promise of posting overseas, and he had taken it, glad for the sands of Kuwait and then the offshore rigs of Indonesia. In the last ten years, he had spent eight months in the United States, and although he had seen people soften, he still felt denied and alone and angry every time he went home.

Stuart tossed underneath the blanket. He pushed the sheet away as it became soaked and tangled and cold against his skin. Now, I’m going to help plan a desperate raid into a heavily fortified base in Libya, an operation that looks close to impossible on paper and would be worse if actually tried. And I feel good about it. I’ve missed feeling American, and patriotic, and proud.

The fever folded through his brain in viscous waves, and the pain increased. He shivered and wrapped the woolen blanket more tightly around him. The dream began, haunting and lovely, painful and familiar. Flames circled him and engulfed him, and he was in the jungle near the DMZ once again, and he was dying again, but he wasn’t afraid. The dream had different endings, and now as the flames died he could see the silhouette of a slender, long-legged woman, her image distorted in the shimmering heat. He couldn’t see her hair, but he knew it was thick and blond, and he couldn’t see her face, but he knew it was the beautiful face of the woman who had been his wife.

Stuart rolled to the dry side of the bed and fell into a dreamless sleep.