“Vera,” Adam said, everyone mesmerized to see him address her head-on. “Where did you get the report?”

“I got it from Stanley, who got it from Mabel Cannon.”

Don almost stood up. “You what?”

Constance had listened carefully but was lost. Who was Mabel Cannon?

Stanley pushed himself forward, herky-jerky, toward Gordon.

“There are two young women in serious jeopardy here,” Stanley said. “One is fourteen. The other is a fighter pilot. We have forsaken them.”

From the fear of being despised. From the fear of suffering rebukes.

“You know my wife?” Don Grady looked at Stanley.

“They grow up fast these days,” Constance said in a tone both knowing and distressed. She leaned forward on the sofa and almost got up to referee.

“Is Mabel Cannon the whore? Or is that Patrice Edwards? I’m confused,” said the Pentagon rookie. Vera watched Harriet suppress a smile, then saw her catch Vera catching it.

“Can I just ask one small question? Who is this guy at the Wizards game?”

“That’s the guy they call the Chair.”

“Who the whore saw?”

“Who the whore saw at the crash.”

“Who she also saw at this Media Exploitation Component Services.”

“Who we got calls about on the desk,” said Constance, light dawning. “We actually brought a hooker to a government facility!? I said they had to be wrong! And I was wrong. I lied to those callers.”

“We should be kept in the loop,” said the assistant National editor for national security.

From the fear of being calumniated.

“You will not stop this story from running if I have anything to say about it,” Stanley told Gordon Bray. They were a foot apart now.

From the fear of being forgotten.

“You need to explain what they were trying to do to this pilot.”

“Is this like the Tuskegee Airmen?”

“No, you’re thinking of the Tuskegee experiments.”

“I think it’s a little of both.”

“Not treating for syphilis. First black fighter pilots. I mean—”

“Look, it’s right there in the fourth graph. Request For Proposal for avionics intercept, blah, blah … in an effort … blah. Oh, here. The government sought technology to bring down an aircraft without the pilot being able to stop it.”

“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.”