“I don’t know that,” she said in a resigned tone. “I wish I didn’t know any of it.”

“This has been discovered more times than there’s gray hairs on my head,” he said, giving his jaded expression all he could. “Maybe not this high up the food chain. Though I’d have to give it some thought.”

“But tykes? This isn’t just whores. It’s girls. Girls.”

“That’s not unusual,” Stanley said, but he was lying.

“It is illegal.” Vera, upright.

“’Course it is. This all was built on illegal.” Now he was sounding like an old head, bitter, cranky.

“They’re only fourteen,” Vera argued.

“At least they’re not twelve.” He was saying what he knew Adam would say. It sounded arch. It was baffling to Vera too. He saw her face blank into consternation.

“Don’t we have to do something? Report it?” She was giving up as she asked, he thought. Stanley, the giver of the career-saving Sissy report, had morphed into tooth-and-claw exponent, ugly cynic, Room defender.

“We could,” he said. He was acting like a dervish dolt today. He was all over the place. But he was through—he had decided in the church with Adam—with his ineffective decent ways. “We may yet. For now, I’ll handle this in my own way. Sometimes, Vera, you can make the world shine in the way you like it to shine.”

16.   MAID, ARISE

They were all there. It was a little less than a month since Vera had gotten the Sissy report from Stanley. It was around eleven in the morning. Adam sat behind his desk. Gordon Bray lolled on a leather armchair. Martina Welk’s replacement, a zaftig in a black skirt, sat on the tweed sofa. Anne, the newish Pentagon hire, kept one hip on an armless chair. Harriet, senior to Anne, just in from Berlin that morning, was immobile on an identical seat. The assistant National editor in charge of national security had a knee against the zaftig. The National projects editor had a knee against him. Stanley was sitting on a side table. Vera had left the one empty chair alone—it was for Don Grady, who hadn’t shown up yet. She chose a wall by the doorway. She leaned there, watching all heads bent to her story. Every so often one of them would turn the page. She saw a few staring at the five-column photograph of a slam-dunk at a Wizards game.

Gordon Bray laughed and whispered to Adam, “I was at that game. Killer shot.”

Vera felt him look at her. She wouldn’t look back. She’d come ready. She began the humility litany. O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, hear me.