He thought a moment. “Yes, I think I do. So long as it’s discreet. It’s far too late for me to go to the FBI. And I would die rather than let Sellinger know. I mean that. I would rather die.”

I thought about his options, and mine. There might be a way we could do each other a favor. “I’m not sure how much it would help,” I answered, “but you could take me with you to China. I could go along to report on the conference, and try to keep you out of trouble.”

I watched his face. The reaction would tell me everything—whether he really wanted to escape, or whether he was bound up in his explanations and rationalizations and cursed to sink with them, like a deadweight. He looked blankly at me, and then smiled—and then frowned.

“I would love you to come, Eric. Truly I would. It would be a great relief to have an ally who knows a bit of what I’ve been struggling with. I think I could probably get you credentials for the conference. But even assuming that, I don’t think the paper would approve it. The financial situation is so bad right now. Weiss isn’t letting people travel to Chicago, let alone Beijing.”

“The paper will send me,” I answered, “if you talk to Sellinger and get his blessing.”

“I’ll call Phil,” he said very softly. And then he began to shake his head, dreamily. He had come such a long way in that short evening. Something very heavy had begun to slip from his back.

25

25

Tom Rubino lived on a cul-de-sac street in a suburban housing tract in Maryland, just outside the Beltway. The development was shielded on the eastern side by a rock quarry, so that a visitor had to contend with swirls of dust and a queue of heavily laden dump trucks to reach it. Just across the river was the CIA. On a good day Rubino and his neighbors (many of whom also worked at the agency) could zip across the bridge and be at work in fifteen minutes. Once, during a visit to Moscow, I had glimpsed one of the suburban compounds where many KGB officers lived. It had its own playground, with swings, a teeter-totter, a carousel, a soccer field. The apartments were spacious, with broad balconies overlooking the countryside. The only odd thing was the enormously high fence that surrounded the place. I had wondered then whether it was to keep the KGB families in or the rest of the world out. Now, that KGB haven was undoubtedly in ruins. But the lawns in Tom Rubino’s neighborhood were turning green and the first daffodils of spring were poking through the ground.