Later in the day, after the premortem, a number of old hands went out of their way to stop Ebby in the hallway and tell him that they shared some of his reservations on JMARC; they had gone along, they admitted, out of a kind of group-think that tended to confuse criticism with disloyalty. At one point Ebby ran across Tony Spink, his old boss from Frankfurt, in the men's room. Spink, who had been put in charge of air drops to anti-Castro guerrillas holed up in the mountains of Cuba, remarked that Bissell and the topsiders seemed so f.u.c.king sure of themselves, he'd begun to suspect there had to be an aspect of JMARC he didn't know about, something that would tilt the scales in favor of going ahead.

What are we talking about? Ebby wondered; what could tilt the scales, in your opinion? Maybe Kennedy has quietly signalled Bissell that he's ready to send in American forces if it looked as if Castro was getting the upper hand. Ebby thought about this for a moment. Bissell may be calculating that Kennedy, faced with defeat, will relent and send in the Skyhawks, Ebby said. But if this is what Bissell was thinking he was deluding himself; why would Kennedy go to all the trouble and expense of unleashing a covert operation if, in the end, he planned to bail it out with overt intervention? It just didn't make sense. You've got to be right, Spink said. It had to be something else, something such as... Spink, who was nearing retirement age and looking forward to returning to civilian life, screwed up his face. Didn't you work for Torriti in Berlin before you came to Frankfurt Station? he asked. Yes I did, Ebby acknowledged, I worked for him until something I said about his alcohol consumption got back to him. So what's the Sorcerer doing here in Washington? Spink asked. And he answered his own question: he's running something called Staff D, which is supposed to be dealing with communications intercepts. Ebby got his point. The Sorcerer wasn't a communications maven, he said. Spink nodded in agreement. He was liaising with the Mafia on Sicily at the end of the war, Spink remembered.

It dawned on Ebby what his friend was driving at. He smiled grimly. No he said. It's just not possible. Even Bissell wouldn't do that. Can you imagine the stink if it ever leaked. No.

Spink raised his eyebrows knowingly. Maybe. No. No.

But the idea was planted in Ebby's head and he couldn't dislodge it. Returning near midnight to the small house he and Elizabet rented in Arlington, Ebby found his wife sitting on the couch in the living room, one weak bulb burning in a lamp, her legs tucked under her, a Scotch in one hand, the half-empty bottle on the floor. "Elliott, my sweet love, you are not going to believe what happened to me today," Elizabet announced.

Ebby threw off his suit jacket and sank wearily onto the couch next to her; she stretched out with her head on his thigh. "Try me," he said.

"The school phoned me up at State late this afternoon," she began. "Nellie was at it again. She was caught fighting with a boy. This one was a year older and a head taller but that didn't faze her. I found her in the infirmary with wads of cotton stuffed in her nostrils to stop the bleeding. The princ.i.p.al warned me the next time she picked a fight they would treat her like a juvenile delinquent and call in the police. Parents were starting to complain, he said. My G.o.d, Elliott, the way he talked about her you would have thought Nellie was a hardened criminal." Elizabet laughed nervously. "She'll be the first eleven-year-old to make it onto the FBI's ten most wanted list. Naturally, Nellie s version of the fight was different from the princ.i.p.al's. She said the boy, whose name was William, had been teasing her because she spoke English with an accent. When she said she came from Hungary and spoke Hungarian to prove it, he announced to everyone within earshot that she was a dirty Communist. At which point Nellie socked him in the face. Which is when this William, bleeding from a cut lip, punched her in the nose. I have to admit, the first time this sort of thing happened I thought it was rather funny but I've stopped laughing, Elliott. What am I going to do with her? She can't go through life socking someone every time she gets p.i.s.sed at him, can she?"

Ebby said grimly, "I don't see why not. That's how our government operates."

The cold fury in his voice made Elizabet sit up. She scrutinized what she could see of his face in the shadows of the living room. "Elliott, my love, I'm sorry-something's very wrong, and here I've been carrying on about Nellie. What's happening? What's happened?"

Ebby let his fingers drift from her waist to the breast that had been injured in prison. She pressed her palm over the back of his hand, validating the complicity between them.

After a moment she said, very softly, "Want to tell me about it?"

" Cant."

"Another of your G.o.dd.a.m.ned secrets?"

He didn't say anything.

"How serious is it?"

"The people I work for are involved in something that's going to blow up in their faces. I don't want to be part of it. I've decided to resign from the Company. I've already written the letter. I would have given it to Dulles today but he'd gone by the time I got over to his office. I'm going to put the letter in his hands tomorrow morning."

"You ought to sleep on it, Elliott."

"Sleeping on it isn't going to change anything. I have to resign in protest against what they're doing. When the word gets around maybe others will do the same thing. Maybe, just maybe, we can head Bissell off-"

"So it's Bissell?"

"I shouldn't have said that."

"As usual, I don't have a need to know."

"You're a Company wife, Elizabet. You know the rules."

Elizabet was not put off. "If it's Bissell, that means we're talking about Cuba. Those Cubans who have been training in Guatemala are going to be turned loose. Oh my G.o.d, they're going to invade Cuba!" Elizabet immediately thought of the Hungarian revolution. "Is Kennedy going to order American planes to protect them?"

"Bissell's probably counting on it. He thinks he can force Kennedy's hand."

"What do you think?"

"I think... I think it's liable to be Hungary all over again. People are going to climb out on a limb, then the limb will be cut off and they will be obliged to fend for themselves, and a lot of them are going to wind up very dead."

Elizabet folded herself into his arms and buried her lips in his neck.

"Surely you can make them see the light-"

"They've told themselves over and over that it's going to work. If y0u repeat something often enough, it sounds possible. Repeat it some more and it begins to sound like a sure thing."

"You should still sleep on it, my love. Remember what you told Arpad Kilian the day you voted in favor of surrendering to the Russians? You belong to the live-to-fight-another-day school. Who will speak out against things like this if you're not around?"

"What's the good of speaking out if n.o.body listens?"

"There's always somebody listening to the voice of sanity," Elizabet said. "If we don't hold on to that, we're really lost."

Sleeping on it, however, only reinforced Ebby's determination to resign in protest; he had lived to fight another day, and fought-and nothing seemed to change. The CIA was still sending friendly nationals off to fight its wars, and watching from the safety of Fortress America to see how many would survive. At ten in the morning Ebby strode past two secretaries and a security guard and pushed through a partly open door into Dulles's s.p.a.cious corner office. The Director, looking more drawn than Ebby remembered, sat hunched over his desk, studying a profile on him that was going to appear in the New York Times Magazine. "Ebbitt," he said, looking up, making no effort to hide his irritation; only the several Deputy Directors and the head of counter-intelligence, Jim Angleton, had no-knock access to the DCI's sacristy. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Director, I wanted to deliver this to you personally," Ebby said, and he dropped an envelope on the DCI's blotter.

"What is it?"

"My resignation."

Dulles pulled the paper from the envelope and read through it quickly. He folded the letter back into the envelope and tapped it on the desk impatiently. "You serve at the pleasure of the DCI," Dulles said with a scowl. "I refuse to accept your resignation. And I don't appreciate people abandoning ship just when we're going into battle."

"I don't deserve that-" Ebby started to say.

The red phone on Dulles s desk rang. He picked it up and listened for a moment before exploding, "He wants to what?" He listened again. "Tell Hunt that's out of the question," he said gruffly. "The Provisional Government will hold a press conference when we tell them to, and not a minute sooner. Until then we'll stick to the scenario we worked out... That's correct. Hunt will release bulletins in their name."

Dulles dropped the phone back on the hook and looked up at his uninvited visitor. "There are two possibilities, Ebbitt. Possibility number one: This thing is going to succeed, in which case your resignation will look awfully stupid. Possibility number two: This thing is going to fail. If it fails, Kennedy's not going to blame Eisenhower for starting JMARC up, or himself for switching the landing site to the Bay of Pigs because Trinidad seemed too noisy. Kennedy is going to blame the CIA, and that's as it should be. When things go wrong someone has to take the fall. And that someone cannot be the President or the inst.i.tution of the Presidency. So I'll be washed up, which is right and proper. d.i.c.k Bissell will be finished, too. The press will howl for the Company's hide. Congress will form killer committees to investigate where we went wrong; the fact that we went wrong trying to combat Communism in this hemisphere and abroad will get lost in the shuffle. If JMARC is a debacle the Company will need people like you to pick up the pieces, to save what can be saved, to get on with the always tedious and often dangerous business of defending the country. G.o.d help the United States of America if the Central Intelligence Agency is gutted at the height of this Cold War. America needs a first line of defense, however imperfect it turns out to be. Are you following me, Ebbitt?"

"I'm hanging on your words. Director."

"Fine. Don't let go of them." He thrust the envelope back at Ebby. "Now get the h.e.l.l out of my office and go back to work."

"I'd love nothing better, believe me, but it's simply not possible."

The woman's voice on the other end of the phone line said, "It used to be possible."

"You have to understand," Jack Kennedy insisted. "We just can't be together as often as we'd both like. Especially here. This place is a goldfish bowl. Hold on a second, will you?" He must have covered the phone with a hand because his words were m.u.f.fled. She thought she heard him say, "Tell him I can't come to the phone just now. Tell him I'll have to think about it. Then get Bobby over here. Make sure he understands it's important." The man's voice came across loud and clear again. "You still there?"

"I'm always here, your handy doormat-"

"That's not fair and you know it."

"How's your back?"

"Quiet for the moment. Jacobson came up from New York the day before yesterday and gave me one of his feel-good shots."

"I worry about you. I worry about whether you should be taking all those amphetamine injections."

"Jacobson's a bona fide doctor. He knows what he's doing. Listen, I have to go to New York on Sat.u.r.day for a fund-raiser."

"Is your wife going with you?"

"She hates these political road shows. She's decided to take the children up to Hyannisport to spend the weekend with my parents."

"Any chance of me coming to New York?"

"You took the words out of my mouth, Judy. I'll have a room booked for you in the Carlyle under your maiden name."

"What time does the fund-raiser finish up?"

"Around eleven-thirty."

"By midnight the last thing on your mind will be your backache."

"Just thinking about your coming to New York takes my mind off my backache." He cleared his throat. "Sal around?"

"He's in the living room."

"He alone?"

"Sal's never alone. He's got what the hoi polloi calls an entourage."

"Could you get him to come to the phone? Don't say who's calling in front of the others."

"I wasn't born yesterday. Hold on, huh? See you Sat.u.r.day."

After a while a door could be heard slamming and the footsteps of a heavy man could be heard approaching. "So what's duh good word?"

"How are things, Sal?"

"I can't complain. How's with you, Jack?"

"I'm all right. What's the weather like in Chicago?"

"Windy, like always. If I didn't have business interests here I'd move to Vegas in uh minute. I'm goin there next weekend-duh Canary'll be in town. Frank'd be tickled pink to see you. Why don't you drop what you're doin' an' join us?"

"What with one thing or another, I don't have much time for friends these days. But I haven't forgotten who my friends are. You get the satchel, Sal?"

"Judy gave it to me soon as she got off duh train. Thanks, Jack."

"Listen, Sal, what's happening with that little matter you were involved in?"

"You mean duh business duh fat man asked me to take care of?"

Jack was confused. "What fat man?"

Sal laughed. "Duh one dat talks Sicilian. Duh one dat drinks without never gettin' drunk. I wish I knew how duh f.u.c.k he does it."

The penny dropped. "I see whom you're talking about now."

"I thought you would. So about dat little matter-it's in duh bag, Jack."

"You're sure? I've got decisions to make. A lot depends on that."

"What's dat mean, am I sure? There's only two things sure, pal, death an' a taxes." Sal let out a belly laugh. "Hey, no kiddin' aside, Jack, its b.u.t.toned up."

"For when is it?"

"For anytime now."

"I don't need to hedge my bets?"

Sal sounded insulted. "Jack, Jack, would I lead you down duh garden path on somethin' like dis?"

"There's a lot at stake."

"There's always uh lot at stake, Jack. Everywhere. All duh time."

"All right."

"Awright. So did you catch what duh f.u.c.kin' Russians did duh other day, puttin' dat cosmonaut character Gagarin into orbit?"

Jack commented wryly, "There are people here who keep me up to date on things like that, Sal."

"I dunno... you seem to be takin' dis pretty calmly. I would've thought us Americans would've creamed duh Russians when it comes to things like sendin' rockets around duh earth. Now it's us with egg on our kisser."

"You take care of that business we spoke about, Sal, it'll be Khrushchev who'll wind up with egg on his face."

"Awright. So what's dis I hear about your brother being out to screw Hoffa."

"Where'd you pick that up?"