“So this pilot was a guinea pig.”

“Almost died too.”

“But, shit, she didn’t die.”

“And there’s just one of them. It’s not like they snuffed a battalion.”

“Aviators do not belong to battalions,” Harriet said. “Squadrons, groups, wings. No battalions.”

“She calls it a battalion here.”

“No, she does not.”

“You have paid for sex with a fourteen-year-old,” Stanley said. Did he have tears in his eyes? Vera started across the room for him.

“This Chair—almost maybe wasting a pilot, I don’t know. Now, if he’s hiring just one shortie with government lucre on Uncle Sam’s time—that’s a story.”

From the fear of being ridiculed.

“The point, I take it, is that this Chair runs things unchecked.”

“That’s right.”

“He could be experimenting with the pilot some more.”

“Pilot may not even know it.”

“But nobody died here!”

“So the pilot—was it a he or a she?—okay, she. She. She never signed off on the program?”

“So what does this prove about covert operations?”

“In all honesty, my wife has never had anything leaked to her.”

“Vera hasn’t either. She got it from her editor.”

“I did not give her the report,” said Vera’s new editor. “I had nothing to do with that.”

“Stanley,” Vera said, taking his arm. From the fear of being wronged.

“Stanley?” Gordon asked.

“This is not the time or place,” Adam was saying to Stanley.

Gordon Bray studied Vera. She studied him too.

“They’re just girls,” Stanley said. Until this moment he’d forgotten Winnow’s peanut-butter kisses, how she spooned Jiffy on top of Hershey’s and lined them up like frosted brown hats on his back-porch window.

“They’re teenagers,” Adam said. “I mean, really, Stanley. I—”

“They’re fourteen at most,” Stanley said. “They say they’re fourteen. That means they’re probably thirteen, or twelve.”

Vera knew Winnow was fourteen. Baby—she was twelve. Vera had ordered her Maryland birth certificate. It was sitting on Vera’s desk.

“There was a misunderstanding,” Adam was saying. Vera couldn’t tell if he was talking to Don or to Gordon.

“Baby.”

“Baby what? Does she have a last name?”

“This other one, the one who saw the Virginia plate. How old is she?”

“Stanley, these are streetwise, worldly-wise—”

From the fear of being suspected.

“How old is your youngest?”

“My daughter Rebecca?” Adam said. “She’s thirteen.”

“Okay,” Stanley said.

“You know how old I was when I lost my virginity? The ripe old age of fourteen. Now, that really isn’t the point. The point is, these are street-smart, calculating individuals. They have seen it all and then some. This is not anyone corrupting some tender blossoms.”