“Yes, sir.” I was bailing out. I could feel the softness in my knees, hear it in my voice. “I’m sorry I brought it up. I thought you should know that somebody was putting this stuff out.”

“God damn right!” Weiss stared out the window for a long time, thinking. When he turned back toward me, he looked calmer. The storm had blown out to sea.

“You did the right thing coming to me. That’s the first thing I want to say. I’m not mad at you. What bothers me is that someone would be slinging this shit at a man like Arthur Bowman, and questioning his ethics as a journalist. If you knew all the times Arthur had risked his life for this newspaper, you would understand that he could never betray his profession. This was a man who fought to get into war zones—when all the other reporters were fighting to get out—because he wanted to do his job. Vietnam, Cambodia, Tehran, Beirut, Belfast, Bosnia. There is not one dangerous assignment Arthur hasn’t volunteered for eagerly, lovingly, for Christ’s sake.

“Now, I don’t doubt that over the years Arthur has made some enemies at the CIA. And I wouldn’t even be surprised if some of them talked about him in these famous corridors. Which is fine. Better than fine. Because if the CIA loved my diplomatic correspondent, I’d want to fire his ass! I don’t doubt that Arthur has made some friends, too, and some of his friends are undoubtedly named Jacques or Henri. And it’s conceivable that some of them even work for that goofball French intelligence service.

“But so what? If that convinces some paranoid at the CIA that Arthur Bowman is a foreign spy, then they’re in worse shape than I thought. Understand? They are fucked up. We are not in the business of character assassination. We don’t accept any wild accusation that comes our way. We have an obligation to be responsible. Do we understand each other, Eric?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So, end of story. I’m glad you came, I’m glad we talked, I’m glad we understand each other. And I’m especially glad that we’re going to keep this conversation to ourselves. I don’t intend to tell anyone else, and I trust you won’t, either. This sort of thing can hurt people. So you go ahead and chase the French intelligence service all you want—just like you did in those great stories from Paris—but leave Arthur out of it.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” I said.

“And one other thing, Eric. Don’t even think about working for another newspaper. Because if you do, I’ll kill you.”