As it happened, Sol Lasner was also on the train. Ben spied him first on the red carpet at Grand Central posing for photographers, like one of his stars. Shorter than Ben remembered, his barrel chest wobbling on thin legs, storklike, but with the same tailored look, natty. He gave a quick, obligatory smile to the flashbulbs, then herded a group of men in suits onto the train, back to business. At Croton, where they switched over to the steam engine, most of the suits got off for the ride back to the city, but two stayed on through dinner, so Ben didn’t have a chance to talk to him until they were past Albany, when the landscape had already turned dark and there was nothing to observe from the observation car but blurs of street lamps and platform lights streaking past.

He’d been sitting near the rounded back of the car, smoking and staring out at nothing, when Lasner came in, holding a cigar. He nodded to Ben, not recognizing him, and for a moment Ben was tempted to let it wait, talk later on the Army’s time. The next few days were supposed to be his, little shrouds of time to wrap himself up in, prepare for the funeral, stare out windows, get used to it.

The long-distance call to Danny’s wife has taken hours to put through, her voice scratchy with bad connections, or grief. What kind of accident? “A fall. It’s in the papers as an accident. You know, anyone can fall. So they put it in that way.” But it wasn’t? Ben had asked, disconcerted, feeling his way, listening to the precious seconds tick by. “Look,” she’d said finally, “you should know. You’re his only family,” but then went quiet again. You mean he tried to take his life? “Take his life?” she’d said, confusing him until he realized that it was a translation problem, an idiom she hadn’t picked up. Hans Ostermann’s daughter. Tried to kill himself, he said. “Yes,” she said reluctantly, then drew a breath, moving past it. “But they didn’t want to say. You know what it’s like here. Everything for the good name. Nothing bad ever happens. It’s better if it’s an accident, in the papers. So I said it, too.” There was a snort of air, like a shrug over the phone. “But his brother- you have a right.”