The 8:00 A.M. Monday USAir flight to Boston was nearly full with its normal cargo of lawyers, bankers and bureaucrats, all in their boxy business suits. I looked up and down the aisles wondering who the FBI agent in the crowd might be. In 1996 that was an impossible task. The cultural icons had become confused. Nearly everyone looked neat, had short hair, was toned from workouts at the gym. We were becoming a nation of FBI agents. It didn’t matter. I had brought along a magazine, one of the glossy new breed that alternated lefty articles about America’s cultural sickness with fawning articles about Hollywood movie stars. I was too nervous to read much of anything—even the article about Demi Moore’s new star power was heavy going—but the advertisements were nice.

We all like to maintain the illusion, when we’re in stressful situations, that we know what we’re doing. The problems arise when we have more than one answer. I was going to Boston to interview a corrupt international lawyer who had been involved in the death of my colleague, so that my newspaper could publish an exposé about him. I was going to Boston to help the CIA and the FBI arrest this same man and bring him to justice in the United States. The first explanation sat better with me than the second, but they were bound together with invisible but unbreakable knots. I wondered if I would ever get back across the line I had crossed in April, when I had agreed to deliver Rubino’s message to China. I wanted the clarity of being just a reporter again, but at that moment I didn’t know how to get there.

The flight was twenty-five minutes late arriving at Logan Airport because of air-traffic delays. That was a blessing; it meant less time on the ground to be nervous. After leaving the plane, I hunted for an uncrowded men’s room. I had brought the Kevlar vest along in a travel bag and needed somewhere to put it on. The first two lavatories near the gate were packed with travelers, but I eventually found a deserted one downstairs, near the car-rental desks. The vest still felt bulky, but with my raincoat buttoned, I looked almost normal. The Mont Blanc pen was in one pocket; the cigarette lighters were in another.