“No, not at all.”

“Does she have … plans, Nick?” Finn asked.

“Nothing I’ve been told.”

“Well, there’s continuity, and then there’s continuity,” Carey said.

And if she runs you’re still in the thick of it.

Addis guessed that was what Carey was thinking. Carey and Margaret rarely agreed on policy matters but they had worked well together. They both had been loyal to the same overriding principle: what would be best for Bob Hanover.

“That certainly was off-message,” Finn remarked. “How’d she look?”

“As purposeful as ever,” Carey replied. He was smirking.

“Well, I think we should find out what we fucking can,” McGreer said in a way that indicated the meeting was done.

About what? Addis thought.

On the way out, Finn placed his hand on Addis’s shoulder.

“Thanks for joining us, Nick,” he said. “Let us know if you learn anything … pertinent.”

M. T. O’Connor was not in her office. Her assistant told Addis she might be with Margaret in the East Wing. Addis headed that way. At the corridor that connected the two wings, he passed Kelly and Wenner. The CIA director stopped to say hello. Addis recalled their first meeting, in the early days of the administration, when Wenner had invited Addis to the CIA for lunch. In his personal dining room, he asked Addis to explain the Honduras business. Off the record. For curiosity’s sake.

Addis laid it out for Wenner. When Mumfries had chaired the Senate intelligence committee during the previous administration, he and his senior staff tacitly approved—with a nod and a wink, nothing on paper—a CIA operation that funneled funds to a band of drugged-up, thuggish generals in Honduras. The generals were using this money to supply arms to a rightist rebel insurgency next door. Per their understanding with Langley, they were keeping a percentage of the money for shipping and handling. Official policy was that Washington had no favorites in the civil war in the neighboring country; a majority of Congress was opposed to intervention. But the President and Mumfries—hardliners from opposing parties—agreed that public policy should not prevent them from proceeding with behind-the-scenes action. But after the CIA program had been initiated, a leak occurred, and the details reached the front pages. The source of the leak was never publicly identified. The best guesses traced the tip-off to Senator Palmer, who previously had blocked the administration’s attempts to openly assist the right-wing rebels. And since Palmer took no significant action without the input of his chief of staff, Nick Addis was blamed by the national security crowd and Mumfries’s staff—and that included Hamilton Kelly—for the scandal-causing leak. Hearings had to be held. Newspaper editorialists huffed about spies running amok. Mumfries claimed a miscommunication had transpired between his staff and certain CIA officers, and he survived the scandal with little political damage.