Adam popped up before the echo ended. He hurried back to Stanley. “I’m glad you messaged,” he said. “Jesus.” He put a hand through his hair.

“Me too.”

Adam didn’t seem to hear that. He looked at the ceiling, then put his hand at the back of his neck, wincing.

“You can’t imagine what happened.”

“I have some … some news,” Stanley said.

“I really thought I’d nailed Don, I mean really proved it this time.”

“I think … just before we … Don? … Did you say Don?”

“Don. Yes, Don.” Adam was still standing up, and now he was pulling on a shirt cuff with the other hand.

“I … don’t …”

“You don’t, of course you don’t, because I’m …”

“Just sit. Sit a minute.”

“I can’t.”

Adam walked a little bit toward the pew in front of them, and then marched back as if he might forget what he wanted to say. “You remember, during the first Bush book, why, he had the National Intelligence Estimate and he never, he just never had the common courtesy to let me know. But that was—by no means … that was not the very worst. How many times over the years has he screwed us? How many? How many times have you and I sat here and just … just … been amazed …”

“That was terrible. It really was.”

“I should have gone to …”

“But you didn’t. And …”

“And I swore I would not let it happen again.”

“But I have something … If you could just …”

“And then I heard from Gordon, who’d heard from one of his diplomatic buddies, one of those Council on Foreign Relations types, or maybe, hell, maybe at one of Don’s damned dinners, that Don … all along … had the Sissy report. All the time we’ve been taking it on the chin … all the time the other paper had front-page news from that thing. And I said, Okay, okay, this is …”

“But, Adam …”

“… the way to get this nailed down, no wiggle room … because you know and I know how he can wiggle. I said, The way to get him is to call Mabel. So I do. So I get her. So we—why I don’t know, but we did—we set on this cemetery, you know, the one in Georgetown….”

It was no use. It was best to let Adam tell it all.