Walking K

A mid-level foreign service officer uncovers a 25-year White House cover-up in this overwrought, unbelievable political thriller. Jacob Slaughter is sent to Hanoi to help negotiate a trade agreement that will confer most-favored-nation status on Vietnam. As a former POW in Vietnam, Slaughter has only recently ceased to be tormented by nightmares; but in Hanoi, the enlightened Vietnamese negotiators earn his trust and lead him to his old comrade-in-arms, Chuck Wooten--whose alleged remains are buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Moved by the sight of the frail Wooten, who many years ago volunteered heroically to stay behind in order that Slaughter might go free, Slaughter exacts a promise to return all remaining POWs as a condition of the trade deal. Back in the States, however, Slaughter is astonished when the slick secretary of state and the president try to prevent that return and even cast doubt on Slaughter's sightings of Wooten. As Slaughter tries to take his struggle public, he is fired from his job, stalked by representatives of a shadowy corporate entity called Dynet and able to trust no one but his psychiatrist girlfriend. While DeMott, a former FBI agent, writes movingly of ex-POWs' struggle with wartime horrors, the conspiracy Slaughter uncovers is far too byzantine and far-reaching to seem credible. (Jan.)