Strasser was pleased, smiling for some reason. “Media Exploitation Component Services,” he said. “It’s called that. Exactly that. You can find it online.”

“But that’s ridiculous. They wouldn’t, not even now, they wouldn’t go that far.”

“They’re not exploiting your paper. Or any media outlet. ‘Media’ is military-speak for any kind of, well, media—DVDs, videotape, hard drives, photographs, government documents, legal records, I guess even newspapers. But that’s not what they’re picking up in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, basically wherever. Soldiers find hard drives, suicide videos, that type of thing. It has to go somewhere for analysis. Before, it was haphazard, went to whichever service found it—army, navy—and, like, you know, got lost and never used right. And the vice-president insisted on this centralized center, and the secretary of defense wanted it too, and Sissy—the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence—listened. They recommended it. They got a budget appropriation. It exists. It ‘exploits’ the stuff soldiers find.”

“Reasonable. Perfectly reasonable.”

“It is.”

The spiked cola had arrived. Mabel felt Strasser looking at her, not casually. She pushed the glass a few inches. She didn’t have to drink it.

“So,” she said.

“So.” He seemed undecided about something.

“What?” She would just ask.

“You’re not a reporter anymore.”

“Right.”

“A columnist.”

She took the cola now and drank it.

“The people who stay in it, the people who don’t become columnists,” Strasser began.

She drank another sip. Smiled at him. She’d been told she had a phenomenal mouth, and maybe even for this uxorious hare of a man she did.

“This guy, he’s one of the ones who stay in it,” he continued, not looking at her, moving his hand to the side of the table. He held it and said, “He becomes a manager. Not because he wants to, but because it works out that way.”

“A manager of videos? Analyzing videos?”

“No, no. That’s just his public job. This guy was an operator.”

Her mind went to pop music, Smooth operator, he’s a smooth operator. And down to Washington melodeon—mailbox drops, trench coats on a bench at the Lincoln, parking-garage meetings, one foxy assassin. People in love with unnecessary circumspection fostered it, and one of them was her husband. But had he encouraged it? Or been the one true one who fell into it? Maybe she was the skulking impostor, the derivative. She chose this dive.

“He’s an operator,” she said. “He works for—unclear. A novel could say he’s a spy.”

“He started as a soldier.”

“They often do. Does he have a name?”

“In the Sissy report? No.”

“He’s just information-technology director.”

“Of Media Exploitation Component Services,” Strasser said. He sipped his water.

“He’s an iron major—not a political appointee.”