There were eighteen people around the table, but the conversation was immediately dominated by one person. She was Suzy Cannon, a vituperative gossip reporter. Half of what she wrote turned out to be untrue, but she had a jackal’s nose for weakness. She was conservative, but more interested in scandal than politics. Nothing was private to her. Cam prayed that Lidka would keep her mouth shut. Anything said tonight might appear in tomorrow’s newspaper.

But Suzy turned her gimlet eyes on Cam, to his surprise. “I believe you and Jasper know each other,” she said.

“Not really,” said Cam. “We met in London many years ago.”

“But I hear that you both fell in love with the same girl.”

How the hell did she know that? “I was fifteen, Suzy,” Cam said. “I probably fell in love with half the girls in London.”

Suzy turned to Jasper. “How about you? Do you remember this rivalry?”

Jasper had been deep in conversation with Verena Marquand, sitting next to him. Now he looked irritated. “If you’re planning to write an article about teenage romances that took place more than twenty years ago, and call it news, Suzy, all I can say is you must be sleeping with your editor.”

Everyone laughed: Suzy was in fact married to the news editor of her paper.

Cam noticed that Suzy’s laugh was forced, and her eyes glared hatred at Jasper. He recalled that Suzy as a young journalist had been fired from This Day after a series of wildly inaccurate reports.

Now she said: “You must have been interested to watch Jasper’s show on TV last night, Cam.”

Cam said: “Not interested so much as dismayed. The president and the CIA are trying to support the anti-Communist government in El Salvador.”

Suzy said: “And Jasper seems to be on the other side, doesn’t he?”

Jasper said: “I’m on the side of truth, Suzy. I know this is hard for you to grasp.” Cam noticed that no trace of his British accent remained.

Cam said: “I was sorry to see such propaganda on a major network.”

Jasper snapped: “How would you report on a government that murders thirty thousand of its own citizens?”

“We don’t accept that figure.”

“Then how many citizens of El Salvador do you think have been murdered by their government? Give us the CIA estimate.”

“You should have asked that before broadcasting your show.”

“Oh, I did. I got no answer.”

“No Central American government is perfect. You focus on the ones we support. I think you’re simply anti-American.”

Suzy smiled. “You’re British, aren’t you, Jasper?” she said with poisonous sweetness.

Jasper looked riled. “I became a U.S. citizen more than a decade ago. I’m so pro-American that I risked my damn life for this country. I spent two years in the United States Army—one of those in Vietnam. And I wasn’t sitting on my ass behind a desk in Saigon, either. I saw action, and I killed people. You’ve never done that, Suzy. And how about you, Cam? What did you do in Vietnam?”