Here is my request: As I consider alternative areas of employment, I am drawn to your line of work. I think I am a good reporter. Gathering accurate information is, obviously, essential to what I do now—or would be doing, if I worked for a competent organization. I would like to get my foot in the journalistic door, but I don’t know how. Can I presume on you for advice?

Would it be possible for someone like me to be hired by a serious newspaper or magazine? Will my employment history present an insuperable obstacle to finding work with a news organization? Is there any news organization that would find my government service an asset? If a staff job is impossible, what about freelance writing?

I realize that it may be difficult for you to answer these questions. And a response by you in any way would be an indulgence, given that we have spent so little time together. Still, I hope you might be willing to offer some help. I would be greatly indebted for any advice given. I would also be eager to share with you in more detail my thoughts about the disintegration of the concern where I currently work.

I will be in Washington in late January. I will give you a call then, in the hope that we might meet for a drink.

Sincerely,

Rupert G. Cohen

I read the letter several times over, trying to see the man in the fuzzy sweater between the lines of type. He was back, eighteen months after his invisible baton pass—and he was looking for a job! I felt that I had gotten lucky again. Out of nowhere, a serving CIA officer was asking me for help, and offering to talk about the inner workings of the agency. Things like that don’t normally happen to reporters. And I was confident, as we always are at the beginning of an encounter with a source, that I was in control. Rupert Cohen might hope to use me to get a job, but I would use him to get a story. The letter promised something else. I would have a chance, at last, to resolve the question that had nibbled at me since the day I received the page of Special Intelligence: Had I been set up?

I folded the letter and put it back into the manila envelope. My new desk was neat and clean. The blank cards were waiting on my Rolodex like empty seats on a Ferris wheel; my new Federal Directory was still unmarked and ready for action. My whole world had been white. And then this spasm of color.