“It sounds so predictable and pathetic. But I didn’t realize what I was getting into. I had known French intelligence officers since I first went to Vietnam in the mid-1960s. I spoke the language, I liked the culture, and I found them useful. They knew things about Vietnam the Americans didn’t understand. I used to see a man in the French embassy in Saigon regularly, and when visiting big shots came in from Paris, I would talk to them, too. There was one man named François Salan who became a special source. He was the guy you mentioned that night at the Athenian Club. He was a fabulous operator; that was what impressed me. He knew what he was doing.

“We stayed in touch after I left Indochina. He was a rising star in the French service, and he arranged for me to see his people when I traveled. They were very useful in the Middle East. The French were the only ones who really understood Lebanon. The Israelis thought they did, but they were seduced by their own agents, the Maronites. The French were too cynical for that. They knew that Lebanon was a sack of shit. Salan helped me in lots of ways: he gave me stories; he introduced me to people; once, when I got kidnapped by some crazy Alawites in Syria, Salan arranged my release. And when I could, I did Salan a good turn. Mostly little things: making sure the French got a chance to put their spin on events, playing up some of the themes that mattered to them. I didn’t tell the paper about my contacts with them, but let’s face it, there are lots of things a foreign correspondent doesn’t tell the home office. Right?”

“Right,” I said. We were coconspirators, members of the secret society who knew how to hide our bar bills as telex charges, who paid our hotel bills with cheap money we changed on the black market but got reimbursed at the inflated official rates of exchange. I understood all that. But taking money from a foreign intelligence service was different. I needed to comprehend that, too. Bowman was getting to it, in his own meandering way.