He sat at the edge of the bed taking off his shoes. She watched him, reading his face for signs.

"Just a little slip," he said.

"It sounded."

"Just an ordinary fool missing a step."

"You have a seminar tomorrow. Arts and Sciences Building. Ten a.m."

"I want you to be well," he said. "You have to be absolutely well. We can't have a situation where you're not completely yourself. I couldn't even begin to carry on if you somehow weren't well. I count on you for everything that matters."

The Agency forgives. There wasn't a man in the upper ranks of the four directorates who didn't understand the perils of clandestine work. They would be pleased by his willingness to cooperate. What's more, they would admire the complexity of his plan, incomplete as it was. It had art and memory. It had a sense of responsibility, of moral force. And it was a picture in the world of their own guilty wishes. He was never more surely an Agency man than in the first breathless days of dreaming up this plot.

He stood at the side of the bed in his pajamas. He'd forgotten to register the fact that the oven was off. He would have to go back downstairs to check the oven. Mary Frances lay in the dark, already sleep-breathing, deep and even. He has to see that the oven is off and he has to register the fact. This means they are safe for another night.

Mackey stood by the refrigerator drinking water from a pitcher. He wore a sweatsuit and baseball cap. He'd taken to running at night to keep his weight down.

He took off the cap and blew into it. Then he sat at the kitchen table and peeled an orange. The house was at the end of an unfinished street about half a mile from the heart of Little Havana.

Raymo walked in. He said, "When did you get back?"

"This afternoon."

"Did you hear there's word going around? Somebody in Chicago's planning the same thing."

"Banister called. He got a look at an FBI teletype. An attempt on the life."

"Four-man team. At least one of them might be Cuban. JFK's supposed to be in Chicago like November second."

"We have to wait our turn."

"If word leaks out there, same thing could happen to us."

"I'm counting on it," T-Jay said. "In fact I'm taking steps to make it happen. It's the only way we'll succeed. We're going in quick and tight. You keep it quiet. You don't tell Frank or Wayne."

"Forget Miami."

"That's right."

"Then we don't bring Leon here."

"That's right."

"Where is he?"

"He took a Transportes del Norte bus to Laredo. I'm betting he took a Greyhound from there to Dallas. Main thing is the Cubans didn't take him. No visa for Leon. It's beginning to take shape. Small, spur-of-the-moment, that's what we want. An everyday Texas homicide."

"JFK."

"Goes to Dallas next month. The man's a serious traveler. And wherever he goes, somebody wants a piece of him. Deep sweats of desire and rage. I don't know what it is. Maybe he's just too pretty to live."

He detached a couple of wedges from the orange and handed them to Raymo.

"Somebody keeps an eye on Leon."

"I think Leon will be hiding from us," T-Jay said. "He knows what we're up to and he doesn't necessarily approve. For the time being, we have our own model Oswald. Alpha is running people up and down the state. Eventually we'll have to pinpoint the original."

"When we took him to Houston he doesn't say ten words to me. He only talked to Frank."

"What did he say to Frank?"

"He got after Frank right away. He wanted some Spanish lessons. "

Suzanne sat up in bed in the dark. She knew they were asleep. Once the radio hum withdrew from the wall by her ear, all she had to do was count to a hundred. Both sound asleep. If she was going to move the Little Figures, now was the time. She needed a safer hiding place. The closet had so much junk they would clean it any day and the Little Figures were hidden in one of the pockets on the shoe bag that hung inside the door. Once they found the Little Figures, that was the end of Suzanne, She would have no protection left in the world.

Lucky she had a good new place to keep them safe.

She got out of bed and raised the shade halfway, letting in light from the streetlamp. Then she moved softly in her nightgown that touched the floor, She took the Little Figures out of the shoe bag and sat them down on the narrow ledge behind the old bureau that used to belong to Grandma. The ledge stuck out about an inch near the bottom of the bureau. Hers was the only hand that could fit between the bureau and the wall. That was the perfect place because the Figures were already seated so they balanced just right. They were a clay man and a clay woman that her best friend, Missy, had given her as a birthday present. They were Indians who dwelt in pueblos and their hair and their clothes were painted black, with little black dots for the eyes and mouth.

She got back into bed and pulled the covers up.

The Little Figures were not toys. She never played with them. The whole reason for the Figures was to hide them until the time when she might need them. She had to keep them near and safe in case the people who called themselves her mother and father were really somebody else.

In Dallas

Four women sat around the table in Mrs. Ed Roberts's kitchen, drinking coffee and passing the time of day. A basket of folded laundry rested on the counter. Ruth Paine gestured again, calling for a pause. They all waited. Then she spoke softly in her halting Russian to Marina Oswald, who listened and smiled, a finger curled through the handle of her cup. The talk was kids, husbands, doctors, the usual yakkety-yak, but Ruth found it interesting. A chance to speak Russian. Mrs. Bill Randle, sitting next to her, nodded periodically as she translated. And Dorothy Roberts studied Marina's face to see that she was getting it. They wanted her to feel she was part of things.

The kids made a racket in the next room. Ruth Paine told her two neighbors that Marina's husband was having no luck finding work. He was living in a rooming house in Oak Cliff until he could find a job and an apartment for his family. Marina was due any day, of course.

Dorothy Roberts mentioned Manor Bakeries. They had a home-delivery service. Then there was Texas Gypsum, where somebody said they were hiring.

Ruth Paine said Marina's husband didn't drive, so that cut down the prospects.

Mrs. Bill Randle, Linnie Mae, said maybe she would have a piece of that coffee cake after all. It looked real good.

Dorothy Roberts said, "Is it warm for October or is it just me?"

A van door slammed across the street.

Then Linnie Mae Randle mentioned her brother. How he was saying the other day he thought they needed another fellow at the book warehouse where he worked, on the edge of downtown Dallas.

Ruth translated for Marina.

One of the little girls came in, wetting her finger to pick crumbs off the tabletop.

Dorothy opened the door to the carport.

"Out on Elm Street," Linnie Mae said. "Near Stemmons Freeway."

Five minutes later Ruth and Marina and June Lee and Ruth's small children, Sylvia and Chris, cut across the lawn to the Paine residence next door, a modest ranch house with an attached garage. Ruth turned at the door and watched Marina coming along slowly, vast, wide, ferrying one more soul across the darkness and into the world, or into suburban Dallas. The Oswald family was catching up to the Paines. Not that Ruth minded. She didn't even mind having Lee come out to visit once a week. She was separated from her husband and it was nice, actually, having a man to do certain jobs around the house.

Inside, Marina asked Ruth if she would telephone. Ruth looked in the phone directory for Texas School Book Depository. She talked to a man named Roy Truly about a job for a young veteran of the armed forces whose wife is expecting a child, and they already have a little girl, and he has been out of work for a while, and is desirous of employment, and is willing to work part-time or full-time, and is there a possibility of an opening?