Eady nodded. “In-house our people called it ‘Operation Aryan Error.’” He tapped the cover with his finger. “We said German scientists were engaged in a massive cover-up. They knew their Übermenschen theory was poppycock but feared revealing it. Denial played. The important thing was Hitler’s people had to eat crow one way or the other.

“Not a game changer, but a game influencer,” Eady continued, returning the magazine to its drawer. “And I can tell you, Tom, that over the years, over the decades, of reporting hard facts, we have made a difference.”

Eady placed a square of smoked Gouda on a cracker and offered it to Klay. “You’ll be able to do what I did. Get those stories no one in the world is able to get. Prizewinning, world-altering stories because you’ll have the Agency’s reach and resources.” Eady ticked off his long fingers: “Contacts. Intelligence. Access. Technology.”

Growing up in a funeral home, Klay had learned early and better than most how to read behind people’s eyes and words.

“Let me think about it, Vance,” he said, turning to wash his hands in Eady’s sink. He had a lot on his mind, he said. It wasn’t the slight off note he detected beneath Eady’s CIA sales pitch that caused him to pause. Nor was it journalistic ethics.

It was more personal. The FBI had worked its way into Klay Funeral Home, that undercover agent pretending to be an embalmer, standing shoulder to shoulder in the morgue with a teenaged Klay, building his case. “Uncle Patrick,” Klay had called him. Until his father’s criminal RICO trial when “Uncle Patrick” took the witness stand and announced his real name and occupation: “Patrick Mulvaney, Special Agent, Organized Crime Squad, Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Klay had a rule about law enforcement after that: fuck ’em. Didn’t matter the agency, or the country. The CIA might not technically be law enforcement, but it was pretty damn close.

•   •   •

He found his answer to Eady hidden under the carpet of his new home, the redbrick Edwardian townhouse in the Eastern Market section of Capitol Hill. Erin was out of town for the signing, so he left the Prudential office, walked two blocks north, opened the door, and got to work. They had chosen the house for its gourmet kitchen, but the rest of the house needed work. The first thing he and Erin intended to do was to get rid of the ugly brown wall-to-wall carpeting.