I was hiding out at George Dirk’s desk a dozen yards away, examining Bowman the way you might study a suspect in a police lineup. Could he really have done it? The night before, when Cohen first insinuated the idea that Arthur Bowman was a French agent, I had imagined the worst. We always do that with frightening news. If the doctor finds a lump somewhere on your body, you are instantly certain that it’s cancer. Only later does a rational calculus begin.

And I had imagined the worst about Bowman. What Cohen said was plausible; the elements were there. I remembered the tone of our conversation that night at Taillevent—his curiosity about my source for the Costa story, his scorn for the CIA’s new mission of economic intelligence. It was conceivable.

But now, as I watched Bowman prepare his column, the whole idea seemed impossible. Rupert Cohen was a crackpot; he was a disappointed job seeker and this was his revenge—trashing the most respected journalist at our newspaper. Arthur Bowman was our Saint Peter. If he was compromised, then so were we all.

After a few minutes Bowman emerged from his office to get a cup of coffee and noticed me, staring at him. “Young Truell,” he said in his theatrical voice, walking over to shake my hand. “How goes?”

“Not too bad. I guess you heard what happened with Abelard.”

“Weiss told me about it. It must have been painful, but you did the right thing. You had to report the story. Those are the rules now.”

“It was awful. He looked so disappointed when I told him we might publish something. I felt I had failed his test of character.”

“Part of the business,” he said, looking over the top of his glasses. “Don’t worry about it.”

I was still at George Dirk’s desk when he arrived at 10:15. He looked as if he had been drinking for the past forty-eight hours. His face had that fleshy pallor, and there were dark circles under his eyes. “Get away from my desk, you fucking snoop!” he said. “I’m still mad at you.”

He meant it. Dirk still hadn’t forgiven me for the way the Abelard project turned out. Part of it was his usual pettiness: I had come up with the damaging information, I had been the one to confront the senator; his own careful investigation of Abelard’s finances had gone for naught. But for once, Dirk seemed motivated by deeper concerns. He truly felt that we had done wrong. We had destroyed a candidate, without ever giving him a chance to defend himself. What was the difference between what we had done and blackmail, he wanted to know.

“Let’s drop it,” I said. “I’m sick of this subject.” It wasn’t that I disagreed with him. I just didn’t have any good answers.