I took Annie home. “What did you make of Bowman?” I asked as we drove across Wisconsin Avenue to her house on Twenty-ninth Street. Her eyes went blank for a moment. She searched for the right answer. “I think he’s a very complicated man. And I don’t think he has a happy marriage.” I told her I could understand why, after talking to Mara Bowman. She was the kind of socially ambitious woman who rode her husband like a racehorse. She had actually made me feel sorry for Bowman.

“Did you enjoy yourself tonight?” I asked. “You looked so relaxed.”

“I was working every minute, Eric. I always look relaxed when I’m working. And I learned some very juicy things from my dinner partners.”

“But were you happy?”

There was a faraway look in her eye, as if I had used a word that was unfamiliar. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose I was happy. Lovely company.”

The way she said it, I thought she meant me. When we reached her house, I asked if she felt like a nightcap.

“Not tonight,” she said gently, stroking my cheek with her hand. “I’ve been trying to act sexy all evening, and it’s worn me out.” She kissed me tenderly on the mouth. Her lips lingered there, moist and full, just apart from mine. “Maybe another time,” she said.

18

18

Arthur Bowman fired another shot a week after Mrs. Parsons’s party. His story was headlined SENATE INVESTIGATES CIA CHINA PAYOFF. It reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee was investigating whether a CIA officer in China had paid a $5 million bribe to a relative of one of the top officials of the Chinese Communist Party. But that was just the beginning. The story said that the CIA man’s cover job had been as a sales representative for American Telephone Corp. in Shanghai, and that the real purpose of the bribe had been to help ATC and its partners win the $30 billion communications contract.

It was, as George Dirk liked to say, a “bacon cooler”—a story so intriguing that you read it over breakfast with your mouth agape, the bacon going cold on the fork. The CIA spokesman was referring calls to the White House. The White House was refusing to comment, except to say that it was studying the allegations. In news bureaus around town, including ours, that was taken to be confirmation that the article was accurate. Bowman’s sources, whoever they were, had given him a loaded M-16. For the first time since this bizarre chain of events had started, I was certain that Rupert Cohen was right.