When we were out in the street, Cohen put his arm on my shoulder. “In my soon-to-be-former line of work, there comes a time in the recruitment of an agent when you finally pop the question. We like to joke that there are three possible answers: ‘Yes,’ ‘Fuck no!’ and ‘I’ll call you when I get to New York.’”

I laughed, but he still had his hand on my shoulder. He wasn’t smiling.

“I’m not kidding about wanting to be a journalist. I really mean it. So please don’t play games with me. If the answer at the Mirror is no, don’t say you’ll call me when you get to New York. That would piss me off. Just tell me no. Because one way or another, this is going to work out.”

12

12

The next morning I strolled up the Corridor of the Gods to Bob Marcus’s office. He was haranguing one of the copy aides about forgetting to put paper in the fax machine, and she looked as if she was about to cry. “We missed an hour’s worth of incoming faxes!” he roared. “God only knows what people tried to send us!” Marcus was a stickler for details like that. He made up for his problems on the big things by overdoing the little things.

“I’ll come back,” I said. This didn’t look like the right time, somehow.

“No,” he said, glowering one last time at the terrified copy aide. “We’re done. Come in, Eric. What’s on your mind?” His tone had suddenly brightened to its normal managerial shade of off-white.

“I hate to bother you,” I said, “but I have a question. Someone I know—a source, actually—asked me about getting a job in journalism. For the last ten years he has worked at the CIA. And he wonders if there’s any way that a newspaper like ours would ever hire him as a reporter.”

“What part of the CIA did he work in?”

“Operations.”

“And he wants to work for us? For the Mirror?”

“Yes, or a newspaper like us. I told him I thought it was a long shot. But I wanted to check with you.”

Marcus shook his head, as if he was disappointed I would even ask the question. “It’s a total nonstarter. You should know that.”

“Well, I thought so. But you never know.”

“Totally impossible. The two professions are like oil and water. They should never, ever, mix. Never. How did you meet this guy, anyway?”

“Oh, you know, overseas. You meet a lot of people. He helped me on something once. Anyway, I’ll tell him we’re not the answer to his job search.” I stood up to leave.

“You’re going to talk to him again?”

“Sure. I promised I would tell him whether he would have any shot at the Mirror.”