“Tell me,” he said more gently. “Explain. I’d like to hear.”

“What I wrote wasn’t adequate.” She kept her face averted, but he could sense a sudden agitation. “What I saw there—I doubt I conveyed a thousandth part of it. Maybe that’s always true in that kind of situation. But, foolishly, it wasn’t something I’d foreseen. Words—I don’t trust words very much anymore. When did words ever change anything?”

“Maybe not often, and maybe not for long.” Rowland hesitated. He could sense that she would respect him not at all for a glib answer. “On the other hand,” he continued slowly, “what does silence achieve? The right words, the right newspaper stories, can effect change.”

“The pen is mightier than the sword?” She gave him a small glance. “My father used to quote that. I believed it once. I don’t believe it anymore.”

“I met your father once,” Rowland said. “In Washington. When I was posted there. I worked there for a couple of years.”

That caught her attention. She turned to look at him, her hands tightening in her lap. For an instant, glancing away from the road, he saw anxiety in her face.

“How long ago?”

“A while. About seven years. I spoke to him only briefly. It was in a bar called O’Brien’s—a lot of the Post journalists used to use it.”

“Yes. Well, it would have been a bar. If not that one, some other. He drinks. As you’ll certainly know.”

Her tone was sharply defensive; Rowland slowed.

“I did know that. Did he always drink?”

“He’s an alcoholic. Before he became an alcoholic he was a heavy drinker, the kind of heavy drinker who claims he can kick it anytime. I don’t know exactly when he crossed the boundary between the two, if there ever was a boundary.”

“Did he drink when you were a child?”

“I don’t remember. I’ve never really lived with my father. I’ve lived in England with my stepmother since I was five, six years old.”

Her manner was growing more incommunicative by the second; Rowland could sense the barriers rise. They drove on for several minutes in silence. After a while he saw her hands move in her lap. She said: “He’s in a clinic in Arizona now. In a twelve-step program. He’s been there before. It may work this time. Was he very drunk when you met him? I hope—I’d like to think he wasn’t. People forget. They have such short memories. Once upon a time—he was a fine journalist, once…”

Rowland could hear, and was touched by, the plea. He had a brief memory of a celebrated man, a Pulitzer Prize-winner who was now a florid, loud-voiced, overweight Harvard boor. He had been protected by a shrinking group of acolytes; shortly before Rowland had left, he had lurched to his feet, then slumped to the floor.

“Not that drunk,” he replied mildly. “Nothing that noticeable…”

“Was he talking about Vietnam?” She gave him a sharp, pained glance.

“Why?”