Long before he finished, it was clear to him that Levison’s conversations with King had nothing to do with Communism. They did not use a single one of George’s key words, from alienation to Zapata. They talked about a book King was writing; they discussed fund-raising; they planned the march on Washington. King admitted fears and doubts to his friend: even though he advocated nonviolence, was he to blame for riots and bombings provoked by peaceful demonstrations? They rarely touched on wider political issues, never on the Cold War conflicts that obsessed every Communist: Berlin, Cuba, Vietnam.

At four A.M. George put his head down on the desk and napped. At eight he took a clean shirt from his desk drawer, still in its laundry wrapper, and went to the men’s room to wash. Then he typed the note Bobby had requested, saying that in two years of phone calls Stanley Levison and Martin Luther King had never spoken about Communism or any subject remotely associated therewith. “If Levison is a Moscow propagandist, he must be the worst one in history,” George finished.

Later that day, Bobby went to see Hoover at the FBI. When he came back he said to George: “He agreed to withdraw the report. Tomorrow his liaison men will go to every recipient and retrieve all copies, saying it needs to be revised.”

“Good,” George said. “But it’s too late, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Bobby. “The damage is done.”

• • •

As if President Kennedy did not have enough to worry about in the autumn of 1963, the crisis in Vietnam boiled over on the first Saturday in November.

Encouraged by Kennedy, the South Vietnamese military deposed their unpopular president, Ngo Dinh Diem. In Washington, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy woke Kennedy at three A.M. to tell him the coup he had authorized had now taken place. Diem and his brother, Nhu, had been arrested. Kennedy ordered that Diem and his family be given safe passage to exile.

Bobby summoned George to go with him to a meeting in the Cabinet Room at ten A.M.

During the meeting an aide came in with a cable announcing that both Ngo Dinh brothers had committed suicide.

President Kennedy was more shocked than George had ever seen him. He looked stricken. He paled beneath his tan, jumped to his feet, and rushed from the room.

“They didn’t commit suicide,” Bobby said to George after the meeting. “They’re devout Catholics.”

George knew that Tim Tedder was in Saigon, liaising between the CIA and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the ARVN, pronounced “Arvin.” No one would be surprised if it turned out that Tedder had fouled up.

Around midday a CIA cable revealed that the Ngo Dinh brothers had been executed in the back of an army personnel carrier.

“We can’t control anything over there,” George said to Bobby in frustration. “We’re trying to help those people find their way to freedom and democracy, but nothing we do works.”