I CALLED MONNIE as soon as I could and told her what had happened. She got furious—as she should have. But then Monnie took hold of herself. “All right, so now you know—I’m not as controlled as I look,” she said. “Well, fuck them. I didn’t leak anything to the Washington press, Alex. That’s absurd. Who would I tell—our paperboy?”

“I know you didn’t,” I said. “Listen, I have to stop at Quantico, then how about I take you and your boys for a quick meal tonight? Cheap,” I added, and she managed to sniffle out a laugh.

“All right. I know a place. It’s called the Command Post Pub. We’ll meet you. The boys like it there a lot. You’ll see why.”

Monnie told me how to get to the pub, which was close to Quantico on Potomac Avenue. After I made a stop at my temporary office at Club Fed, I drove over to meet her and her two boys. Matt and Will were just eleven and twelve. They were big dogs, though, like their father. Both were already close to six feet.

“Mom says you’re okay,” said Matt as he shook hands with me.

“She said the same about you and Will,” I told him. Everybody at the table laughed. Then we ordered guilty pleasures—burgers, chicken wings, cheese fries, which Monnie figured she deserved after her ordeal. Her sons were well mannered and easy to be with, and that told me a lot about Monnie.

The pub was an interesting choice. It was cluttered with Marine Corps memorabilia, including officers’ flags, photos, and a couple of tables with machine gun rounds in them. Monnie said that Tom Clancy had mentioned the bar in Patriot Games, but in the novel he said there was a picture of George Patton on the wall, which upset the bar’s regulars, especially since Clancy had made a career out of being in the know. The Command Post was a Marines bar, not Army.

When we were leaving, Monnie took me aside. A few Marines were going in and out. They gawked a little at us. “Thank you, thank you, Alex. This means a lot to me,” she said. “I know denials don’t mean a damn thing, but I did not leak information to the Washington Post. Or to Rush Limbaugh. Or O’Reilly, either. Or anyone fucking else. Never happened, never will. I’m true-blue to the end, which apparently could be near.”

“That’s what I told them at the Hoover Building,” I said. “The true-blue part.”

Monnie rose on her toes and kissed me on the cheek. “I owe you big-time, mister. You should also know you’re impressing the hell out of me. Even Matt and Will seemed neutral to positive, and you’re one of the enemy to them—grown-ups.”

“Keep working the case,” I told her. “You have exactly the right attitude.”