“What do you mean?”

“He was struck by a hit-and-run driver last night while jogging in Rock Creek Park. Can you believe it? Some creep must have been drunk out of his mind. He ran his car right up on the jogging path. Traynor’s body was thrown over forty feet. He may not make it.”

Robert replaced the receiver. His mind was spinning. What the hell was going on? Monte Banks, the blue-eyed all-American boy, was being protected. From what? By whom? Jesus, Robert thought, what is Susan getting herself into?

He went to visit her that afternoon.

She was in her new apartment, a beautiful duplex on “M” Street. He wondered whether Moneybags had paid for it. It had been weeks since he had seen Susan, and the sight of her took his breath away.

“Forgive me for barging in like this, Susan. I know I promised not to.”

“You said it was something serious.”

“It is.” Now that he was here, he didn’t know how to begin. Susan, I came here to save you? She would laugh in his face.

“What’s happened?”

“It’s about Monte.”

She frowned. “What about him?”

This was the difficult part. How could he tell her what he himself didn’t know? All he knew was that something was terribly wrong. Monte Banks was in the FBI computer all right, with a tickler: No information to be given out without proper authorization. And the inquiry had been kicked right back to ONI. Why?

“I don’t think he’s … he’s not what he seems to be.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Susan – where does he get his money?”

She looked surprised at the question. “Monte has a very successful import-export business.”

The oldest cover in the world.

He should have known better than to have come charging in with his half-baked theory. He felt like a fool. Susan was waiting for an answer and he had none.

“Why are you asking?”

“I was … I just wanted to make sure he’s right for you,” Robert said lamely.

“Oh, Robert.” Her voice was filled with disappointment.

“I guess I shouldn’t have come.” You got that right, buddy. “I’m sorry.”

Susan walked up to him and gave him a hug. “I understand,” she said softly.

But she didn’t understand. She didn’t understand that an innocent inquiry about Monte Banks had been stonewalled, referred to the Office of Naval Intelligence, and that the man who had tried to get that information had been transferred to the boondocks.

There were other ways of obtaining information, and Robert went about them circumspectly. He telephoned a friend who worked for Forbes Magazine.

“Robert! Long time no see. What can I do for you?”

Robert told him.

“Monte Banks? Interesting you should mention him. We think he should be on our Forbes Four Hundred wealthiest list, but we can’t get any hard information on him. Do you have anything for us?”

A zero.

Robert went to the public library and looked up Monte Banks in Who’s Who. He was not listed.

He turned to the microfiche, and looked up back issues of the Washington Post around the time that Monte Banks had had his plane accident. There was a brief item about the plane crash. It mentioned Banks as an entrepreneur.

It all sounded innocent enough. Maybe I’m wrong, Robert thought. Maybe Monte Banks is a guy in a white hat. Our government wouldn’t have protected him if he was a spy, a criminal, into drugs … The truth is that I’m still trying to hold onto Susan.

Being a bachelor again was a loneliness, an emptiness, a round of busy days and sleepless nights. A tide of despair would sweep over him without warning, and he would weep. He wept for himself and for Susan and for everything that they had lost. Susan’s presence was everywhere. The apartment was alive with reminders of her. Robert was cursed with total recall, and each room tormented him with memories of Susan’s voice, her laughter, her warmth. He remembered the soft hills and valleys of her body as she lay in bed naked, waiting for him, and the ache inside him was unbearable.

His friends were concerned.

“You shouldn’t be alone, Robert.”

And their rallying cry became, “Have I got a girl for you!”

They were tall and beautiful, and small and sexy. They were models and secretaries and advertising executives and divorcees and lawyers. But none of them was Susan. He had nothing in common with any of them, and trying to make small talk with strangers in whom he had no interest only made him feel more lonely. Robert had no desire to go to bed with any of them. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to rewind the film back to the beginning, to rewrite the script. With hindsight, it was so easy to see his mistakes, to see how the scene with Admiral Whittaker should have played.

The CIA has been infiltrated by a man called The Fox. The Deputy Director has asked for you to track him down.

No, Admiral. Sorry. I’m taking my wife on a second honeymoon.

He wanted to re-edit his life, to give it a happy ending. Too late. Life did not give second chances. He was alone.

He did his own shopping, cooked his meals for himself and went to the neighbourhood laundromat once a week when he was home.

It was a lonely, miserable time in Robert’s life. But the worst was yet to come. A beautiful designer he had met in Washington telephoned him several times to invite him to dinner. Robert had been reluctant, but he had finally accepted. She prepared a delicious candlelight dinner for the two of them.

“You’re a very good cook,” Robert said.

“I’m very good at everything.” And there was no mistaking her meaning. She moved closer to him. “Let me prove it to you.” She put her hands on his thighs and ran her tongue around his lips.

It’s been a long time, Robert thought. Maybe too long.

They went to bed, and to Robert’s consternation, it was a disaster. For the first time in his life, Robert was impotent. He was humiliated.

“Don’t worry, darling,” she said. “It will be all right.”

She was wrong.

Robert went home feeling embarrassed, crippled. He knew that in some crazy, convoluted way, he had felt that making love to another woman was a betrayal of Susan. How stupid can I get?

He tried to make love again, several weeks later, with a bright secretary at ONI. She had been wildly passionate in bed, stroking his body and taking him inside her hot mouth. But it was no use. He wanted only Susan. After that, he stopped trying. He thought of consulting a doctor, but he was too ashamed. He knew the answer to his problem, and there was no solution. He poured all his energy into work.

Susan called him at least once a week. “Don’t forget to pick up your shirts at the laundry,” she would say. Or: “I’m sending over a maid to clean up the apartment. I’ll bet it’s a mess.”

Each call made the loneliness more intolerable.

She had called him the night before her wedding.

“Robert, I want you to know I’m getting married tomorrow.”

It was difficult for him to breathe. He began to hyperventilate.

“Susan …”

“I love Monte,” she said, “but I love you, too. I’ll love you until the day I die. I don’t want you ever to forget that.”

What was there to say to that?

“Robert, are you all right?”

Sure. I’m great. Except that I’m a fucking eunuch. Scratch the adjective.

“Robert?”

He could not bear to punish her with his problem. “I’m fine. Just do me a favour, will you, baby?”

“Anything I can.”

“Don’t … don’t let him take you on your honeymoon to any of the places we went to.”

He hung up and went out and got drunk again.

That had been a year earlier. That was the past. He had been forced to face the reality that Susan now belonged to someone else. He had to live in the present. He had work to do. It was time to have a chat with Leslie Mothershed, the photographer who had the photographs and names of the witnesses Robert had been assigned to track down on what was going to be his last assignment.