“Don’t be so serious, Eric,” she said finally. “You sound like the national security adviser. Now that you’re back home, you need to have fun. Live a little. Tell me something delicious and unserious.”

“Like what?” I wanted to please her.

“I don’t know.” She gave me coy look. “Like who you’re sleeping with. Not one of the copy aides, I hope. They’re not worthy of you.”

“No copy aides,” I said. That wasn’t quite true. I had asked one of the copy aides out the first week I was home, but that was purely recreational. “How about you?”

“Nobody in particular,” she said. She gave me a kiss and wandered off to talk to a cabinet member. I wasn’t offended that she had asked about my sex life, or that she had admonished me to have more fun. It seemed possible that she was suggesting I have fun with her, which remained an attractive idea, even after so many years and so much scar tissue.

I thought about Annie often after that first encounter, but I didn’t call her. It was too complicated. You don’t put a relationship like that back together by choice. It has to be a compulsion, forced on both of you by circumstances you can’t control.

10

10

I had been back in the bureau for about five months when I received a letter from Rupert Cohen. We had not communicated in any way since our brief contact in Paris. His letter was peculiar: very formal, carefully phrased, with no return address. It read as follows:

January 8, 1996

Dear Mr. Truell:

As you may recall, we met in May 1994 in Paris. You were seeking information, and I attempted to be helpful. While that puts you under no obligation to me, I hope you will consider this request for help.

I have served the U.S. government for more than a decade. What prompts this letter is that I have finally answered a question I was mulling over at the time we met, but did not share with you; namely, should one stay in government service when one is convinced that the ship is sinking? I have now answered that question in the negative. My organization, not in good shape when I joined, is in the process of imploding, collapsing due to its mediocrity.

Simply put, we have ceased to exist as a serious organization. We actually died, I think, quite a long time ago, but the enemy behind the Berlin Wall kept us going. It excused and camouflaged our gross inadequacies.