I suppose I could have said no. I could simply have crumpled Rubino’s message into a ball and tossed it into a trash can outside the church. And, in theory, I could have walked away from the whole mess, kept the secrets to myself and prayed that nobody would find out. It might even have worked, for someone who was more self-contained than I and better at keeping secrets. But I was a walking example of one of Bowman’s laws of journalism: I needed to talk, I needed to share my experiences with someone who knew what I had been through. Unfortunately, the only person who fit that description—the only one—was a senior officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. As the day of the meeting approached I found that I was actually looking forward to it.

The address Rubino had given me was the apartment building in Shirlington. It was the same safe house that had made me so uncomfortable during my earlier visit, but this time it seemed natural and appropriate. I would have been upset if we had met anywhere else. Even the silly recognition codes were welcome.

When Rubino opened the apartment door, he was beaming. I remember a similar look of pride on my father’s face the day I graduated from Stanford. Rubino embraced me, then sat me down in that cheesy living room, poured me a cup of supermarket coffee, offered me a glazed doughnut. He couldn’t stop smiling.

“You did it, Eric,” he said.

“Did what?” All I could think of was the mayhem I had left behind in Beijing.

“Roger Navarre made it to America. He arrived yesterday. We got him out in a shipping crate, through Guangzhou. You saved his life, my friend.”

“He made it?” I shook my head. The scientist had escaped his prison at Qinghua. It was a thrill, the idea that I had helped save his life. “That’s fantastic! I was sure the Chinese would get him.”

“They tried. They shut our embassy down tight. But the operation at the hotel worked. We had him on his way within an hour after he showed up at the Gloria Plaza. He was upset when you weren’t there. He thought you’d be the one to take him out. At first he didn’t trust our guys. You’re his hero. Other people’s, too.”

Rubino reached into the briefcase beside his chair. He pulled out an envelope with my name on it. “Read it,” he said. Inside, on thick bond paper, was a letter on the embossed stationery of the director of Central Intelligence. Rubino asked me to read it out loud, so he could hear.

“Dear Mr. Truell: