Charlie kept all this stress from Margaret, said nothing about the fire that burned inside him that only booze could quell. But now, before he could even step off the curb and cross Canal for that breakfast bourbon, a black Chrysler Imperial pulled up. On the passenger side, a man with white hair and a bullfrog neck that swallowed his chin rolled down his window and flashed his ID.

“Addington White, Department of Justice,” he said. “Hop in.”

Charlie hesitated, looking longingly at the entrance to the bar, then ruefully did as he was told. He guessed that the driver and the man in the back seat were also with the Justice Department. Based on their washed-out faces and similar builds, he assumed they were once-trim veterans now growing soft due to too much time behind their desks.

Charlie focused on his breathing, which sometimes helped him overcome the agitation in his soul until he was able to get his hands on the means to drown it. Back in France, fighting the Krauts, he’d learned to jam his anxieties and emotions into some faraway corner of his mind. He tried to do this now; he needed to channel all his energy toward figuring out a way to extricate his father.

The agents were quiet. Then White said, “We’ll be there in a few short minutes, Congressman.”

“There?” Charlie said. “Am I under arrest?”

“No, no,” White said. “Nothing like that.”

“And you’re taking me…” Charlie said.

“To a meeting,” White said.

“Do I need to call my lawyer?” Charlie asked. “My wife?” He looked at his watch; at this hour Margaret would have dropped Lucy, seven, off at elementary school and would likely be at a playground with Dwight, five. He probably wouldn’t be able to reach her on the phone until after lunch. He and his wife had moved back to his Manhattan congressional district after an insanely crazed first year in Congress, during which both he and Margaret had been enveloped in a vast conspiracy. Charlie now spent his weeks in DC and traveled home from the capital on the weekends and during congressional breaks, as was the case now.

“No,” said White. “The attorney general wants to see you.”

“Well, great.” Charlie wasn’t sure which made him angrier, being shanghaied by the Feds or missing his morning appointment with Jack Daniel’s. The sight of his father—stooped in his prison grays, undereye bags so big they could hide contraband, hands shaking—had hollowed him.

“Find out what Bobby wants,” his father had said, “and give it to him.” What Attorney General Kennedy wanted, Charlie could not yet fathom.

Winston Marder hated Ambassador Joseph Kennedy and, by association, his sons Jack and Bobby with the intensity of the hellfire that the Allies had unleashed on Dresden. Charlie, for his part, had gotten along with the Democratic princes, an attitude born of both hope and necessity.