Charles Maitland sat alone in the dark hush of the bar at the Grande Bretagne, a midafternoon lull. He looked up when he saw me enter. A smile broke across his face, some kind of tigerish gleam in his eye."You wily bastard, James. Sit, sit.”"What are you drinking? I want something long and cool.”"Long and cool, is it? What a crafty piece of work.”"What are you talking about?”The bartender wasn't at the bar. I heard him talking to a waiter in a back room somewhere."I always thought George Rowser was a fool. I'm the bloody fool, aren't I?”"Why are you a fool, Charlie?”"Come on, come on.”"I don't know what you're getting at.”"You don't know, you don't know. In a pig's eye, Axton. You bastard, I never even suspected. I never imagined. You were damned good. I don't mind telling you I'm impressed, even a bit envious, you know. It's been a year, has it, since we've been making the rounds together? And you never slipped. You never gave me reason to wonder.”The waiter came out. Charles ordered me a drink and then simply looked at me, examining as if in retrospect, wondering what he might have missed that could have given him a clue. A clue to what? I pressed him to explain."I appreciate your stance," he said. "It's the only professional stance. But the channel's no longer current, is it? You're relaxing with a friend.”"What channel?”"Come on, come on.”He was glowing with admiration and delight, pink with it, shaking a match at the end of his cigarette. I decided to wait him out. I talked about his job in the Gulf, congratulated him, asked for details. When I was halfway through my drink, he approached the subject again, fearful of being deprived of it."Funny how I happened to see the report. I don't keep up the way I used to. I used to read every bloody word in those digests and surveys.”"What did it say exactly?”He smiled. "Only that the Northeast Group, an American firm selling political risk insurance, has maintained a connection with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency since its inception. Diplomatic sources et cetera.”I found it necessary to gaze across the room, to do some retrospective thinking of my own. I was aware that I'd narrowed my eyes, looking into the half light, like an illustration of someone studying an object or development. Two men entered speaking French."Of course you were aware in advance of this unraveling. You knew it was blown,”"Rowser knew.”"You learned it from him, did you?”"He's very deft for someone who sweats and twitches," I said. "Where exactly did you see the report?”Smiling, playing the game. "Has it appeared in more than one place? I doubt it. Too soon for that. The Middle East Security Survey. I used to read it all the time. Fallen off in recent years. But I still subscribe. Saw the current issue, as it happens, while I was in the Gulf. Just out. The minister of petroleum's personal copy.”"Is that what he's called-the minister of petroleum?”"The minister of petroleum and mineral resources.”"Nice.”"You were damned good, James. All this time engaged in a back-channel dialogue with CIA. I never thought George Rowser was capable of this. I must tell him someday I misjudged him.”"How was it put?”"The way they usually put things. You know as well as I.Better no doubt. 'Diplomatic sources arriving in London from Baghdad and Amman report that security officials in the Middle East have discovered a link et cetera, et cetera.' What I'm curious to know is whether your firm is a full-fledged proprietary or simply a convenient source of information. Not that I'm asking, you understand. They've exposed only the bare outline. I know there must be much more and it must be absolutely riveting and one day I hope to hear you tell it, James.”"Drink up. We'll have another.”"I haven't told Ann. It isn't likely this kind of special information in a confidential newsletter will filter through to the public at large. Those whose business it is to know will surely know. The rest will go on as they always have. If your past is no longer a total secret, there is still your future to consider. I thought it best to tell no one, not even Ann. No doubt your plans are well advanced by now. You'll need all possible room to maneuver.”What a joke-and no one to share it with. Rowser had taken me to that Moghul tomb to tell me in a roundabout way the same thing I'd just heard from Charles. I'd failed to listen, to understand. In his own way Rowser was intent on doing me a favor. He was resigning because the news was soon to appear and he wanted me to do the same. This is the trouble with dupes. You have to save their skin in the end. Assuming they know there's something they need to be saved from.I refrained from getting drunk. Charles gave me another of his newly respectful looks as we said goodbye outside the hotel. I went back to the office and telexed my resignation. It was not easy to feel righteous about this.Mrs. Helen was at her desk, getting ready to leave for the day. She'd taken to wearing high-necked blouses or silk scarves to conceal the ridges at her throat. I told her what I'd learned. The bluebird scarf around her neck gave this news a faint poignancy. I said I was leaving the firm without delay and suggested it might be a good idea for her to do the same. Someone might soon turn up, an official of the government, a journalist, a man with a quantity of explosives.She said to me, "Pĕ pĕ pĕ pĕ pĕ pĕ pĕ.”But the next day I was back in the office, drinking tea and swiveling slowly in my chair. A look at our files now and then. Maybe that's all it involved. Data for the analysts. All those finely tuned calculations of ours, the grids of virgin numbers. It seemed almost innocent, really, as I turned it in my mind. Rowser had let them see our facts and figures- figures we'd gathered openly, by and large. But I couldn't manage to extend the seeming meagerness of the crime to my own blind involvement. Those who engaged knowingly were less guilty than the people who carried out their designs. The unwitting would be left to ponder the consequences, to work out the precise distinctions involved, the edges of culpability and regret. What Rowser received in return for his benefactions I didn't know or care. Maybe he was an agency regular, maybe just an asset or higher type dupe.If America is the world's living myth, then the CIA is America's myth. All the themes are there, in tiers of silence, whole bureaucracies of silence, in conspiracies and doublings and brilliant betrayals. The agency takes on shapes and appearances, embodying whatever we need at a given time to know ourselves or unburden ourselves. It gives a classical tone to our commonly felt emotions. Drinking tea, spinning in the quiet room. I felt a dim ache, a pain that seemed to carry toward the past, disturbing a number of surfaces along the way. This mistake of mine, or whatever it was, this failure to concentrate, to occupy a serious center-it had the effect of justifying everything Kathryn had ever said about me. Every dissatisfaction, mild complaint, bitter grievance. They were all retroactively correct. It was that kind of error, unlimited in connection and extent, shining a second light on anything and everything. In the way I sometimes had of looking at things as she might look at them, I saw myself as the object of her compassion and remnant love. Yes, she'd decided to feel sorry for me, to forgive me for the current lapse if not the others. This cheered me up considerably.Sooner or later I would have to pick up the phone and undertake a delicate exchange with Ann Maitland. I called just before noon, a time she was likely to be home, Charles out walking. But there was no answer. They were in Mycenae, I realized, listening to the wind.In three or four weeks Tap would be out of school. I planned to meet him at my father's house in Ohio, then drive him back to Victoria, a journey of sufficient distance to test his predilection for riding in automobiles. There I would glimpse my wife, spend more time with Tap, decide what to do next. Some kind of higher typing, a return to the freelance life. But where would I live? What place?When the telex began to make its noise, I left the office and went walking in the National Gardens among the plantain lilies and perfect palms.