It was one of those clear February afternoons when the sky is a sharp, crystalline blue and the late-afternoon sun is so low it seems almost to light the bare branches of trees from below. You never see them that color any other time of year. I walked up Connecticut Avenue toward my apartment and stopped and sat on a bench in Dupont Circle with the winos and the bicycle messengers. The sun was glinting off the trees as if they were made of metal. The whole world, in fact, had the shiny, empty look of metal. Hard, brittle, dead as winter.

Annie opened the door of her house and it was like a balm. Fresh-cut flowers were in a vase on the mantel; a pot of tea was steeping on the coffee table; there was a hint of perfume on her cheek. I still had that shattered look, from lack of sleep the night before and my ruinous trip to New York. She gave me a kiss and lingered a moment to examine my face.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” It was the first time she had used that term with me in years. “You look like you got hit by a truck.”

“Bad day,” I said. I rambled for a while about my trip to New York, and how strange it felt to be there, and how Ed Weiss had asked me to become deputy foreign editor. I wasn’t going to tell her about Arthur Bowman, but Annie always seemed to know when I was holding something back. She took it as a provocation.

“What else happened in New York?” she asked. “There must have been something. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so upset.” She reached out and took my hand.

“I was a coward,” I said quietly. “I was going to tell Weiss something important, but I chickened out. As soon as I realized that telling him the truth might hurt me, I folded.”

“Why don’t you tell me?” she asked. “Then maybe you’ll feel better.” She said it so sweetly, as if she were offering to take a burden off my shoulders, that I had no sense that she was working me for information.

“It’s very private,” I said. “You can’t use it in any way. It’s just between you and me. It involves one of my colleagues in the Washington bureau. A CIA source told me the agency suspected this guy worked for a foreign intelligence service. I decided I had to tell Weiss about it, even though the man was one of his friends. But I backed down. When it was obvious Weiss didn’t want to hear it, I played it safe.”

“Who is it, Eric?” She held my hand more tightly. I shouldn’t have told her, but I needed to go the rest of the way.

“The man you were sitting next to at dinner the other night, Arthur Bowman.”