Traffic was terrible that morning and the frustrating drive down to Quantico took me almost an hour and a half. I imagined SSA Nooney standing at the front gates, waiting impatiently for me to arrive. At least the drive gave me time to think over my current situation. I decided the best course of action, for now, anyway, was to go to my classes. Keep my head down. If Director Burns wanted me on White Girl, he’d get word to me. If not, then fine.

That morning the class centered on what the Bureau called a “practical application exercise.” We had to investigate a fictitious bank robbery in Hogans Alley, including interviews with witnesses and tellers. The instructor was another very competent SSA named Marilyn May.

About half an hour into the exercise, Agent May notified the class of a fictitious automobile accident about a mile from the bank. We proceeded as a group to investigate the accident, and to see if it had any connection to the bank robbery. I was being conscientious, but I’d been involved in actual investigations like this for the past dozen years, and it was hard for me to take it too seriously, especially since some of my classmates conducted interviews according to the instructional manual. I thought maybe they’d watched cop shows on television too often. Agent May seemed amused at times herself.

As I stood around the accident scene with a new buddy who had been a captain in the army before going into the Bureau, I heard my name spoken. I turned to see Nooney’s administrative assistant. “Senior Agent Nooney wants to see you in his office,” he said.

Oh, Christ, what now? This guy is nuts! I was thinking as I walked quickly to Administration. I hurried upstairs to where Nooney was waiting.

“Shut the door, please,” he said. He was seated behind a scarred oak desk, looking as if someone close to him had died.

I was getting hot under the collar. “I’m in the middle of an exercise.”

“I know what you’re doing. I wrote the program and the schedule,” he said. “I want to talk to you about the front page of today’s Washington Post,” he went on. “You see it?”

“I saw it.”

“I spoke to your former chief of detectives this morning. He told me that you’ve used the Post before. He said you have friends there.”

I tried hard not to roll my eyes. “I used to have a good friend at the Post. He was murdered. I don’t have friends there anymore. Why would I leak information about the abductions? What would I gain?”