“I met him years ago, when he was a student journalist, pestering Verena for an interview with Martin Luther King. Then, six months ago, he approached me at a press conference given by one of my clients. Turns out he was at that motel in Memphis, talking to Verena, when they both saw Dr. King shot. He asked me what had become of her. I had to tell him I had no idea. I think he was kind of taken with her.”

“Most men are.”

“Including me.”

“Will you go see Murray?” Maria was tense, fearing that George would refuse, saying he did not want to get involved. “Will you tell him what I’ve told you?”

“So I would be, like, your cutout. There would be no direct connection between you and Jasper.”

“Yes.”

“It’s like a James Bond movie.”

“But will you do it?” She held her breath.

He grinned. “Absolutely,” he said.

• • •

President Nixon was mad as hell.

He stood behind his large two-pedestal desk in the Oval Office, framed by the gold window drapes. His back was hunched, his head down, his bushy eyebrows drawn together in a frown. His jowly face was dark, as always, with the shadow of a beard he could never quite shave off. His lower lip was thrust out in his most characteristic expression, defiance that always seemed on the point of turning into self-pity.

His voice was deep, grating, gravelly. “I don’t give a damn how it’s done,” he said. “Do whatever has to be done to stop these leaks and prevent further unauthorized disclosures.”

Cam Dewar and his boss, John Ehrlichman, stood listening. Cam was tall, like his father and grandfather, but Ehrlichman was taller. Ehrlichman was domestic affairs assistant to the president. His modest job title was misleading: he was one of Nixon’s closest advisers.

Cam knew why the president was angry. They had all watched This Day the evening before. Jasper Murray had turned the lens of his prying camera on Nixon’s financial backers. He claimed that Nixon had canceled antitrust investigations into three large corporations, all of which had made substantial donations to his campaign.

It was true.

Worse, Murray had implied that any company that needed to divert an investigation in this presidential election year only had to make a large enough contribution to the Committee to Re-elect the President, known as CREEP.

Cam guessed that was probably true, too.

Nixon used the power of the presidency to help his friends. He also attacked his enemies, directing tax audits and other investigations at corporations that donated to the Democrats.

Cam had found Murray’s report sickening in its hypocrisy. Everybody knew this was how politics worked. Where did they think the money for election campaigns would come from otherwise? The Kennedy brothers would have done the same, if they had not already had more money than God.

Leaks to the press had plagued Nixon’s presidency. The New York Times had exposed Nixon’s top secret bombing raids on Vietnam’s neighbor Cambodia, citing anonymous White House sources. Syndicated reporter Seymour Hersh had revealed that U.S. troops had murdered hundreds of innocent people at a Vietnamese village called My Lai—an atrocity the Pentagon had tried desperately to cover up. Now, in January 1972, Nixon’s popularity was at an all-time low.