After dinner we adjourned to the living room. The fire had burned down to red coals, and Bowman was putting another log on the grate. I approached him. Perhaps it was the good food and wine, and the disorientation of being among that company, but I was feeling light-headed and playful.

“I take it you don’t like the China communications deal,” I said.

“Not much,” he answered. He was down on one knee, poking at the fire with a brass rod. “I don’t like doing business with dictators.”

“Come on, Arthur! I’ll bet the French paid you to write that column.” I don’t know why I said it, it just came out.

He looked up at me suddenly and drew his head back, just a fraction of an inch, like an animal that had been startled. The light of the fire was dancing against one cheek, but his eyes were dark and wary. “What’s that supposed to mean, junior?”

“Nothing,” I mumbled. “Just making a joke.” A rush of heat came to my forehead. I’d said too much.

Bowman rose from the fireplace and studied me carefully, as if trying to make up his mind whether I had been serious or not, and then gave me a wink. He had concluded that I was, indeed, joking. The roguish, ex-foreign correspondent smile returned to his face.

“They don’t pay me enough, young Truell,” he said. “I should ask for more.”

I laughed, of course. It was the perfect response, and the tension of the moment vanished. He took my arm, in that conspiratorial way that seemed to be part of doing business in Washington, and whispered in my ear. “The problem with that crazy China deal is your friends at the CIA. They think they’ve got marching orders from the White House to deliver this little thirty-billion-dollar trophy, or else. But if those cowboys don’t watch out, they are going to step in some deep shit.”

I was going to ask what he meant by my friends at the CIA, but he was already moving away from me and taking Philip Sellinger by the arm to say something conspiratorial to him. He was a force of nature, Arthur Bowman. A protean character who could change shape and color in an instant. But what I remembered later was the way he had looked up at me from the fireplace. The emotion in his eyes could only have been fear.