“Very well. I will speak with Mr. Bézy and get back to you as soon as I can.”

Alessi called back thirty minutes later. He said that Bézy had agreed to my request for an interview. He would meet me in one week, on Monday, May 27. Alessi said he would call me the night before the meeting to propose the specific time and place. I wondered if that would give Rubino and the FBI enough time to get ready.

“Can I call you back?” I asked.

Alessi said no, his boss needed an immediate answer. Otherwise there would be no interview. I said the arrangement sounded fine. The train was coming through the station, and I wanted to be on it.

When I called Rubino’s private number that afternoon to tell him the news, he was formal, almost stiff, lacking his usual recruiter’s enthusiasm. At first I thought he was upset that I had agreed to the short timetable for meeting with Bézy, but that wasn’t it. The FBI had field offices in every major city in the country, he said, and he would let them worry about making arrangements. No, Rubino’s new tone reflected something more fundamental. I was his guy now. He didn’t have to be nice to me.

“You’re going to need some training,” he said. “You almost got killed in China, and we can’t expose you to those risks again. The agency will be in real trouble if anything happens to you.”

“But I don’t want any training. I’m a reporter. I’m going to interview the subject of a story. That’s it. No one needs to train me how to conduct an interview.”

“It’s not an option, Eric. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. It’s not my call. I am operating under orders. I need at least two days. That isn’t much, but we’ll be able to run through the basics of tradecraft.”

“One day,” I said. “Two days is too much, but I’ll give you one day.”

That’s how I was operating at that point—taking anything that made me uncomfortable and dividing it in half.

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