“And your health?”

“I’m fat!” He opened his coat to show her.

She laughed happily. He was not fat, but perhaps he was not as thin as he had been. “You’re wearing the sweater I sent you. I’m amazed it reached you.” It was the one Anna Murray had bought in Vienna. Tanya would now have to explain all that to him. She did not know where to start.

“I’ve hardly taken this off for four years. I don’t need it, in Moscow in May, but it’s hard to get used to the idea that the weather is not always freezing.”

“I can get you another sweater.”

“You must be making big money!”

“No, I’m not,” she said with a wide smile. “But you are.”

He frowned, puzzled. “How come?”

“Let’s go to a bar,” she said, taking his arm. “I’ve got such a lot to tell you.”

• • •

The front page of The Washington Post carried an odd story on the morning of Sunday, June 18. To most readers it was a bit baffling. To a handful it was utterly unnerving.

5 Held in Plot to Bug Democrats’ Office Here

By Alfred E. Lewis
Washington Post Staff Writer

Five men, one of whom said he is a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, were arrested at 2:30 A.M. yesterday in what authorities described as an elaborate plot to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee here.

Three of the men were native-born Cubans and another was said to have trained Cuban exiles for guerrilla activity after the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

They were surprised at gunpoint by three plain-clothes officers of the metropolitan police department in a sixth floor office at the plush Watergate, 2600 Virginia Ave., NW, where the Democratic National Committee occupies the entire floor.

There was no immediate explanation as to why the five suspects would want to bug the Democratic National Committee offices or whether or not they were working for any other individuals or organizations.

Cameron Dewar read the story and said: “Oh, shit.”

He pushed away his cornflakes, too tense now to eat. He knew exactly what this was about, and it presented a terrible threat to President Nixon. If people knew or believed that the law-and-order president had ordered a burglary, it could even derail his reelection.

Cam scanned the paragraphs until he came to the names of the accused men. He feared that Tim Tedder would be among them. To Cam’s relief, Tedder was not mentioned.

But most of the men named were Tedder’s friends and associates.

Tedder and a group of former FBI and CIA agents formed the White House Special Investigations Unit. They had a high-security office on the ground floor of the Executive Office Building, across the street from the White House. Taped to their door was a piece of paper marked: PLUMBERS. It was a joke: their job was to stop leaks.

Cam had not known they planned to bug the Democrats’ offices. However, he was not surprised: it was quite a good idea, and might lead to information about sources of leaks.