Who was this person in the mirror? What had happened to the famously cool Cynthia Lam? A wave of nausea griped her, and she fled to a stall and heaved futilely over the bowl, willing the attack to pass. After a quarter of an hour she felt calm enough to approach the mirror again, where she dried herself with paper towels, adjusted her hair and makeup, and realized that she was feeling this way because she had crossed a line for the first time in her life. Although she had no problem with dissimulation and the subtle lie, never before had she done anything frankly illegal. She had never shoplifted, cheated on exams, or inflated her résumé, nor had she ever even had a traffic ticket. She had been a good girl and had reserved a silent contempt for those who weren’t, who committed impulsive and stupid acts.

She practiced a disarming smile. She thought it looked ghastly but it might do for Ernie Lotz. He answered her knock, she applied the smile, and asked him if he’d found anything hot in the recent traffic.

“Funny you should ask, I’m just about to go through the translations. I’ve been in Satcom meetings all afternoon about moving another bird to cover South Asia. Now if al-Q starts a branch in Tegucigalpa we’ll never know. Hey, is something wrong? You look terrible.”

“I think I ate something salmonella-ish at lunch. I’m going home,” she said, and escaped.

Cynthia had a lively interior-dialogue generator, by means of which she could usually convince herself that some course of action beneficial to her was the right thing to do, and she exercised this in turbo mode on the drive home. She played that last intercept over and over again through the headset of her memory and found she had not been mistaken in her initial judgment. The thing was so obviously a fraud, and using the same guy they’d used to fake Jafar Qasir was the capper, an easy proof of fraudulence. So why hadn’t she immediately gone to Morgan with it? Because they wouldn’t see it, they’d explain away the voiceprint comparisons. Morgan was maddened, they all were maddened by their own swelling importance, because at last, after the fiasco of Iraq, the intelligence community was actually going to find weapons of mass destruction in the hot hairy hands of terrorists. It justified their whole existence-unless it was a scam devised by a rogue element.

Which it was, which it had to be. And so she was justified in opposing it, heroic in opposing it, the little Dutch girl with her finger in the dike, preventing another stupid war, another catastrophe for the United States, better than the FBI woman who had almost caught the 9/11 conspirators, because there would be no almost about it. Borden would find the SHOWBOAT files, and she’d put the whole thing together in a neat package, the voiceprint comparisons, the CIA plotters, everything, and take it triumphantly to Morgan; and if he didn’t buy it, she’d take it up the line, to the top of the agency. And the whole thing would wind down, the culprits would be exposed and canned, the intel world would breathe a great sigh, and everyone, right up to the director of national intelligence, would know that little Cynthia Lam had done it all by herself.

These thoughts relaxed her, and by the time she entered her apartment she was feeling as she normally did, which was a kind of irritable discontent. She changed into jeans and a T-shirt, made a salad of field greens with a squat cylinder of tuna from the can plopped in its center, drank a glass of white wine to wash this down, and watched cable news while she did so. Then some minutes at her computer, writing to distant strangers, checking e-mail, disposing of yet another request from a Swiss banker and yet another encrypted e-mail.

Her father called. She put his voice on the speaker while she cleaned her already clean apartment. He complained about his clients in terms that reflected the racism of a generation ago, complained about his health, asked when she was coming home, and asked for money. She listened and responded with meaningless sounds at appropriate intervals, promised a check, and got off as soon as she reasonably could. After that she watched two DVDs, one a steamy French one in which the couple rarely stopped having sexual intercourse and the other a frothy romantic comedy. She switched it off before the boy got the girl again, took a Xanax, and went to bed.

Before she fell asleep she thought about what Borden had said, about having fun. She thought he was right, in a way. After this was resolved she would ditch Morgan and find a suitable boyfriend. She would take some of the huge amount of leave she’d accumulated and go to the islands, a warm beach with palms, and have some.

As was her occasional practice when arriving at work, Cynthia bought a couple of coffees and sticky treats at the canteen and knocked on Ernie Lotz’s door. Ordinarily, she would hear a cheerful greeting, she’d enter, and the two of them would sit and have coffee and discuss the day’s upcoming problems, or Ernie’s personal problems if he had any that morning, and then she’d go back to her own office with a sugar-caffeine high adequate for the morning’s labor. This morning, however, there was silence behind the door.

Could he be out sick? No, he would have called in and the group secretary would have put a Post-it on his door to that effect. She knocked again and tried the doorknob. The door was locked; then came Ernie’s voice.

“I’m busy.”

“I have cinnamon buns.”

She heard movement within and the door opened just enough for Ernie’s face to appear. It was not his usual morning face. It looked like he’d recently been gut-punched.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing. I’m working on a rush thing for Morgan.”

“Can I help?”

“No.” He started to close the door and she said, “At least take your stuff!”

He hesitated for a second, then took the profferred breakfast and kicked the door shut. She heard the lock turning.

Very strange, she thought, Ernie was never like that in the morning. She was the grumpy one and he the ray of sunshine; it was a standing joke between them.

She shook off the feeling and turned to her work. People were still talking about wicked deeds in Urdu and Arabic and the great antennae were still sucking it in. She adjusted her headset and brought up the evening’s catch of sound files.

As usual, there was nothing of vital interest. More significant was what was missing. She did not get a single call all morning, or any e-mails, and no one came to her door. It was as if she were working at a neutron bomb site. At noon, she knocked again on Lotz’s door and asked him if he wanted to go for lunch in Laurel.

A muffled curt refusal through the door.

Something unpleasant was happening here and she felt the anxiety of the previous day return, stronger than before. She called Borden. He must be back from Langley by now and she was dying to learn what he’d found.

The phone rang twice and then she heard a strange voice say, “Dan Wilson.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I must have the wrong number.”

“What number were you calling?”

“Extension 3988.”

“This is 3988.”

“It is? Look, I’m trying to reach Walter Borden. This is his number.”

“Sorry, it’s my number.”

“Then what’s his new number?”

“I have no idea. Have you tried the directory?”

“Wait a minute. Are you in Internet surveillance?”

“That’s right. But there’s no Walter Borden here.”

“That’s impossible.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I can’t help you,” said the voice, and broke the connection.

Cynthia dashed out of her office, down the corridors, choosing the stairs over the elevators, and arrived panting at the door of Borden’s office. It was covered with Dilbert cartoons and the name Daniel G. Wilson was in the slot next to it. She threw the door open. A young man with thinning sandy hair and wire-rimmed glasses turned in his chair and looked at her. She stared at him and his office, which was filled with books and manuals and personal memorabilia, as if this Wilson had been occupying it for years.