Dick Nixon took it personally. He took everything personally. This morning he looked hurt, betrayed, outraged. He believed the world was full of people who had it in for him, and the leaks confirmed his paranoia.

Cam, too, was enraged. When he got the White House job he had hoped to be part of a group that would change America. But everything the Nixon administration tried to do was undermined by liberals in the media and their traitorous “sources” within the government. It was agonizingly frustrating.

“This Jasper Murray,” said Nixon.

Cam remembered Jasper. The man had been living at the Williams house in London a decade ago when the Dewar family visited. Now there was a nest of crypto-Communists.

Nixon said: “Is he a Jew?”

Cam felt impatient, and kept his face rigidly expressionless. Nixon had some crackpot ideas, and one was that Jews were natural spies.

Ehrlichman said: “I don’t think so.”

Cam said: “I met Murray years ago in London. His mother is half Jewish. His father is a British army officer.”

“Murray is British?”

“Yes, but we can’t use that against him because he served with the U.S. Army in Vietnam. Saw action, has the medals to prove it.”

“Well, find a way to stop these leaks. I don’t want to be told why it can’t be done. I don’t want excuses. I want results. I want it done, whatever the cost.”

This was the kind of fighting talk Cam liked to hear. He felt bucked.

Ehrlichman said: “Thank you, Mr. President,” and they went out.

“Well, that’s clear enough!” Cam said eagerly as soon as they were outside the Oval Office.

“We need surveillance on Murray,” Ehrlichman said decisively.

“I’ll get on it,” said Cam.

Ehrlichman headed for his office. Cam left the White House and walked along Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Department of Justice.

“Surveillance” meant a lot of things. It was not against the law to “bug” a room by placing a hidden recording device. However, getting into the room secretly to place the bug almost always involved the crime of breaking and entering, or burglary. And wiretapping, recording telephone conversations, was illegal—with exceptions. The Nixon administration believed wiretapping was legal if approved by the attorney general. In the last two years the White House had placed a total of seventeen wiretaps, all approved by the attorney general on grounds of national security and installed by the FBI. Cam was on his way to get authorization for number eighteen.

His memory of Jasper Murray as a youngster was vague, but he vividly recollected the beautiful Evie Williams, who had brutally spurned the advances of fifteen-year-old Cam. When he had told her that he was in love with her she had said: “Don’t be ridiculous.” And then, when he pressed her for a reason, she had said: “I’m in love with Jasper, you idiot.”

He told himself these were silly adolescent dramas. Evie was a movie star now, and a supporter of every Communist cause from civil rights to sex education. In a famous incident on her brother’s television show she had kissed Percy Marquand, scandalizing an audience who were not used to seeing whites even touch blacks. And she was certainly no longer in love with Jasper. She had dated pop star Hank Remington for a long time, though they were not together now.