“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.”

“An operational person. A creative person. But this guy, from what I’ve picked up, he looks up to the graybeards—some people call them Knights of Malta.”

Purple bookers, iron majors, invisibles, operators, graybeards, Knights of Malta were pirouetting and skywalking across her smut and pearled brain. She’d wanted love, the engulfing kind. Instead, it was Ludlum and Paterson and airport Bantam books; she could see that spry little rooster on the spine.

“Anyway,” Strasser was saying. “I don’t know his name. The Sissy report doesn’t give it. Except there’s something, a little, small window. In one part of the updates, there’s a series of e-mails, and in one of them, no, it may be two—you have to check this—he’s called ‘the Chair.’”

“What does this have to do with the other paper?”

“They don’t care about this guy. But they should.”

“And Don didn’t either.” Now she was impatient. Her glass was empty.

She heard someone hit a nail into the wall. The bartender was gone. Waitress was too. Something banged again.

“You’ve been drinking Coke—and vodka,” he said. He looked amused. But maybe like one of her sons. She stared at him.

“I have,” she said, her expression uncharitable, maybe hostile. Yes, she felt mean. “So this guy—he screwed you over, didn’t he?” she said. She knew this tale. The origin of all leakage: wounded pride, the career sidelined.

“Never met him.”

“You don’t need to, not in this town.”

“Do you and Don talk? At all?” He murmured this—a little sadly, she thought.

Mabel, annoyed, said rather loudly, “What do you think?”