The least you can do now is face Sharon half-sober.
After a bit of searching, he found Sharon where he’d first seen her when he landed his plane. At the edge of the airfield, staring out to sea. All that had changed in the hours since, while Jesse had radioed an immediate short account and then forced himself to write what needed to be written, was that Sharon was now sitting on the ground instead of standing up.
It was after sundown, but there was still enough light in the western sky to allow him to see her face clearly. The tears had dried. He thought she had none left to weep.
Awkwardly, he sat down next to her. “Sharon, I’m sorry—”
“Don’t apologize, Jesse,” she said softly, not moving her eyes from the same spot on the now-invisible horizon where, hours earlier, columns of smoke had marked the funeral pyres of her fiancé and two of his closest friends. “You owe Hans that much, at least. The world owes him that much.”
Her dark eyes were shadowed, but Jesse was relieved to see the composure in them. Grief-stricken Sharon Nichols might be, but she was not struck down by it. In that moment, Jesse could see the lines of her father’s face in the daughter. Not the roughness and near ugliness of his features, simply the strength in them.
“Hans was not a complicated man, Jesse. Bright, yes. But not complicated. I think that was the reason I fell in love with him, even though part of me thought the whole idea was nuts. I just . . . couldn’t resist that simple, uncomplicated adoration.” The last word ended with something of a gasp. She covered her mouth, holding in the sorrow.
Jesse took a long, deep breath, fighting off his own tears. “No, he wasn’t complicated. Paladins never are. I guess, anyway. Not sure. Hans is the only paladin I think I ever met.”
A half-sob, half-laugh came from behind Sharon’s fingers. “Paladin!” She lowered her hand, exposing a sad little smile. “Not a bad word, actually. If we ignore the ‘chaste’ part of the business. That he wasn’t, I can tell you. He threw himself into lovemaking with the same enthusiasm he did everything else.”
After a bit, the smile faded away. “Oh God, Jesse, I’m going to miss him. So much.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
She shook her head. “But—promise me. No apologies. That would detract from his sacrifice. From his whole life. He was no boy, led astray. Never think it, just because he wasn’t complicated. Never think it.”
Jesse started to weep. Sharon put her arm around his shoulders and hugged him close. Her own eyes were moist, but no tears came.
She lifted her head a bit. The stars were coming out, with all the clarity of a sky not polluted by a later century’s flood of lights.
“The only reason they seem to twinkle,” she murmured, “is because the air gets in the way. The stars themselves are pure and bright and simple. Don’t confuse what you see with what there is, Jesse. Hans Richter was our bright shining star. And that’s all there is to say. Now, and forever more.”
* * *
That night, Mike found Veronica Dreeson at the Simpsons’ house. Hans’ grandmother had been staying there since she arrived in Magdeburg.
Admiral Simpson was still at his office in the shipyard. Mary Simpson, who had left the naval base an hour earlier, let him in the door.
“I haven’t had the heart to tell her yet, Mr. President,” she whispered as he came through. “I should have, I suppose, but . . .”
“Not your job, Mrs. Simpson. Mine.” He saw that Veronica was preoccupied with reading something, and was seated far enough away not to hear them. “God damn it all to hell,” he muttered wearily. “How do you tell someone that the nation which saved half her family just shattered it again?”
But he didn’t have to tell her. Once he stepped forward into the room and Veronica looked at him, something in his face did the job.
“Which one?” she asked.
Mike looked away.
“How many?” she asked.