“I’m glad I was lucky enough to get to know him. He’s a heck of a smart man. He’s got his head on tight, too, if you know what I mean.”

“I sure do.” She nodded.

Steve came out of his office while Jerry and Angela were nearing it. “Hey,” Jerry said as they shook hands. “Can I buy you some coffee over at the Penguin place?”

“Sure,” Steve said, and then, to Angela, “He’s mine from now on.”

“Okay, Doctor Dole.”

Jerry and Steve made small talk till they left the building. As soon as they were out in the open air, Jerry asked, “Did you see today’s Times?”

Steve had been grinning. Instantly, a wary mask fell over his face. “I’m afraid I did.”

“I’m afraid, too. How long till everything unravels?”

“I’m the wrong person to ask.” Steve spoke slowly, choosing his words with obvious care. “John P. would have a better idea of how many reporters know anything, and of how much they know. But I can keep an eye on The New York Times and The Washington Post here. Can you do the same?”

“Yeah, at least some of the time. The UCLA Research Library has a periodicals room where the out-of-town papers are only a day or two old. I’m not on campus every day, but I guess I can arrange to be.”

They walked into the Penguin Coffee Shop. It wasn’t crowded; the lunch rush was over, while the dinner rush hadn’t started yet. Jerry wondered if he’d sleep tonight after late-afternoon coffee. Then again, he also wondered if he’d sleep tonight any which way.

“One good thing, anyhow,” he remarked, after the waitress brought them their brew.

“Tell me. I could use some good news. When things like this start coming out in the open … Well, look what happened to Nixon.”

“It’s not all out. They didn’t say anything about you-know-what.” Jerry laughed sourly. “Of course, who would believe them if they did?”

“There is that. There certainly is,” Stephen Dole said. “No one who hasn’t been through some things believes them, no matter how true they may be.”

“What do we do if everything starts coming out?” Jerry asked: the question uppermost in his mind at the moment.

Steve paused to sip coffee. Then he said, “The best thing we can do is make sure those people understand it’s not coming out because of us. They wouldn’t be very happy if they thought it was.”