“Someone supposedly from the National Crime Bureau, the NCB.” Benton unlocks his phone, and the display is dimmed sufficiently so that it’s hard to see from a distance. “And this person said he’d e-mailed me a photograph, and sure enough he did.”

He holds his phone so I can see the picture, and I try to remember anyone acting oddly, perhaps loitering near us some ten days ago on Saturday night, August 27. I search my memory for someone who might have paid too much attention, staring or hovering, especially showing undue interest in General Briggs when we had dinner with his wife and him at the Palm in Washington, D.C., not even two weeks ago. The restaurant was packed with mostly a business crowd, and I remember it was loud.

“You weren’t aware of anybody taking photographs, and haven’t a clue who might have …?” I start to say as Benton shakes his head, no.

On the phone’s display, Briggs is all smiles but the picture has been Photoshopped to include a heavy black X over this face. His arm is around Ruthie as they sit across from Benton and me. We’re raising our glasses in a toast at our booth surrounded by cartoons of Dennis the Menace, Spider-Man, Nixon.

It was a festive evening with plenty of shoptalk mixed with pleasure, and Briggs and I discussed our talk. We enjoyed several Scotches as we fine-tuned logistics about tomorrow night’s event at the Kennedy School. As I look at the photograph I find it gut-wrenching and stunning that a happy moment captured in time would turn into something like this.

“Obviously someone was in the restaurant or near a window at some point while we were eating dinner,” I say to Benton. “Do you think it was Carrie Grethen?”

“Frankly yes. I think she or someone directed by her were nearby or passing through, depending on what technology was used. But someone obviously and deliberately took the picture of us and I was none the wiser either.”

“And the point?”

“Destablizing us is certainly a big part of it,” Benton says. “Keeping herself constantly at the center of our focus is important. She wants to remind us of her presence and that she’s smarter than we are, always one step ahead. Never forget this is a competition.”

But I do forget. I can’t possibly spend my waking moments thinking about something like that. I’ve never understood people, including my own sister, who devote most of their resources to besting someone, to winning a match that’s one-sided and imagined.

“She wants our attention and our fear,” Benton continues to tell me what Carrie craves, and I’ve been hearing it forever. “Most of all she has to overpower us, to get in the last word. Control and more control.”