He had one eye closed as he talked, as if he were sighting down the barrel of an invisible gun. I assumed he was still sparring with me, trying to find out how much I already knew. It was the kind of thing reporters did. To get anything from Rubino, I would have to tell him more.

“I have a source,” I said. It sounded so coy, like a flimsy veil half covering a face. “My source told me the CIA opened a counterintelligence investigation of Bowman in 1983. He said your people had a tip from an agent in the French intelligence service, code-named LV-something. My source said that after the investigation was opened, it was referred personally to the deputy director for operations, where it died.”

Rubino’s eyes had narrowed down to slits, like the firing holes in a bunker. He puckered his lips. It pained him that I knew details like these. “I’d say you have a pretty good source,” he said.

“So what happened? Was Bowman taking money from the French or not? Like I said, I need to know.”

“How are you going to use this? I could go to jail for sharing intelligence about a U.S. citizen. It’s illegal. Is this for publication?”

“No. It’s just for me.”

“All right. I’ll deny I ever said this, but the first part of what you heard is exactly right, even the cryptonym. We had a source in French intelligence we had been running for nearly twenty years. He was retiring; this was on his conscience. He said that for many years a prominent U.S. journalist named Bowman had been a French elicitational asset—which is a fancy name for a guy who tells you stuff over dinner. But during the early 1980s, the relationship had changed, and the American journalist had begun receiving money. It was obviously a very sensitive subject—a hot potato—and at that point the deputy director for operations took personal control of the case. But your source is wrong in thinking it was killed then. That was later. First we did some fieldwork. During one of Bowman’s European trips, we monitored a meeting between him and a man named Salan, who was deputy chief of the French service. We figured that Salan must be his case officer. Then our French agent steered us toward a particular banque privée in Geneva that handled their operational accounts, and we were able to monitor the numbered accounts into which the French were making payments. And then we just had to wait until Bowman withdrew money from the account.”

“You had him cold. Why was it killed, then?”