Why did I even consider it? These guys had been on a twenty-year losing streak. They were so mired in failure that a whole generation of them had done nothing but spin their wheels. They were collapsing of their own weight, in Washington and around the world. Most of what they did nowadays was make-believe. They pretended to recruit people, wrote phony cables dressing up lunchroom gossip as secret intelligence. They were losers. They couldn’t even protect themselves or their agents. How were they going to help me exact revenge? But Rubino wanted it so badly. The ferocity was in his eyes. He was playing on a losing team and he needed a win. My problem was more complicated: I needed to keep faith with myself.

I took the paper with Bézy’s bank account number and told Rubino I would let him know. I asked him to destroy the letter from the director of Central Intelligence.

33

33

I still had Arthur Bowman’s laptop computer at home. I had brought it back with me from Beijing and meant to return it to the office, but there had been so many things going on in that first week I had simply forgotten about it. One night while I was paying some bills, I noticed it propped against the wall of my study, and I admitted to myself that I was curious about what it might contain. Bowman had kept so many secrets while he was alive. Now that he was gone, whatever he had left behind in the computer constituted a kind of electronic afterlife. I plugged the machine in and turned it on. The screen glowed up at me, listing the files that were the last remnants of Arthur’s life.

Most of the files were junk: drafts of stories, notes from interviews, lists of phone numbers. But there were several items that roused my curiosity. There was something called PHIL.DOC. It turned out to be a memo Bowman had written to the publisher, Philip Sellinger, in early March, a few weeks before that month’s decisive board meeting. Headed “Possible Investors,” it made clear that the Mirror’s financial situation had been far shakier than most members of the staff had realized:

Dear Phil:

Here’s an update on my conversations with international investment groups that might be able to provide the quick infusion of capital the board of directors thinks the Mirror needs. Unfortunately, I don’t have any breakthroughs for you:

*The Jamil Group in Riyadh is prepared to invest at least $100 million and maybe more. They publish a newspaper in Saudi and some magazines in London, and have a very profitable advertising business throughout the Middle East. They’d love to have a vanity showcase in the U.S. But they’re not right for us. Despite their claims of independence, they are ultimately a captive of the royal family. We don’t need these headaches.