The two women shared a late breakfast, in the course of which Harrington asked Margo about her hopes and her dreams and her young man, and kept the conversation carefully clear of Varna and Fomin and the missiles in Cuba. Afterward, they went for a walk along narrow Georgetown streets while Ainsley trailed a block behind, watching for surveillance. At three-thirty in the afternoon, a car called for her, a dark Ford that practically screamed official business. The driver’s name was Warren. He was brown-haired and broad-shouldered and sported a crew cut and an ill-fitting suit, and even if his identification, demanded by Harrington, had not said “Secret Service,” Margo suspected that she would have recognized him a mile away.
“We won’t speak again, dear,” said Harrington on the front step.
“I understand.”
“You’ll do fine.”
“I’ll do my best,” Margo said, and felt somehow that her answer had let Harrington down.
Sitting in the back as the dark sedan sailed through the Saturday traffic, Margo was at once nervous and proud. This was it. She had what she wanted. Harrington had warned her back in September that being on the inside could be an addiction, and Margo understood entirely, because the rush that had her trembling was anticipation, not fear. Her body felt loose and hot, her clothes scraped uncomfortably against her skin, and she supposed this is what it must feel like when you’re sneaking off to meet your lover.
She was righter than she knew.
Warren drove swiftly across town. Twice she asked where they were going. Twice he answered with boyish diffidence that they were almost there. Finally, he pulled up outside an aging apartment building on Columbia Road, just off Sixteenth Street. Warren parked on a side street and, holding the door, directed her to what looked like the service entrance.
“Just ring the bell, miss. Oh, and don’t forget your bag.”
The man who answered might have been Warren’s twin, in affect if not in appearance, for he, too, was tall and crew-cut, although his hair was black to Warren’s brown, and Margo guessed he was somebody’s bodyguard even before he had her remove her hood and then held up a photograph, comparing the likeness. He stepped aside and invited her in, but never offered to take her bag, she supposed to leave his hands free in case she pulled a weapon.
“Please, follow me,” he said, his voice surprisingly soft in a man so obviously tough. He led the way along a narrow corridor. The walls were sagging with damp. At the back of the apartment, he knocked at a door, opened it, waved her through, shut it from the outside.
The man waiting inside was small and professorial, right down to the regulation tweeds. The steel frames of his spectacles glistened. His eyes were very dark, and very serious.
“My name is McGeorge Bundy,” he said, taking the bag from her hand and setting it aside. He seemed distant and distracted. Behind the polished lenses, his sharp eyes flashed with the anger of unresolved tragedy, like a man who had just lost a relative and wondered whether you were to blame. “I work at the White House. I am special assistant to the President for national security affairs.”
A larger stage indeed.
“I’ve seen you on television,” Margo said, and immediately felt like an idiot.
But Bundy was in any case not a man for small talk. “We have very little time, Miss Jensen. I’m going to explain what happens next, and then, God willing, you’re never going to see me again.”
Steam gurgled behind a wall. Clothes, tools, and empty beer bottles competed for floor space. She suspected that the building super lived here, when the President’s national security adviser wasn’t borrowing the place.
For half an hour, he laid out the scheme—she would have a cover job at the Labor Department, housing had been secured for her—and then he explained the procedure for arranging her meetings with Kennedy.
“I’ll be meeting him personally?” she asked, very surprised.
“That seems to be what Fomin expects. He doesn’t want intermediaries. He sounds ready to see conspiracies everywhere. The only way to reassure him is if you carry messages directly to and from the President.”
“I’m just going to walk into the Oval Office and meet the President?”
“Not exactly. We’ll get to those details in a moment.”
There was more to the briefing—contact numbers, addresses—and then Bundy apologized handsomely for drawing her into the middle of this. But he kept looking at his watch, and she wondered what he was late for.
“That covers it, Miss Jensen. Any questions?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Please.”
“I’ve been asking, but nobody will tell me what happened to Agatha. Agatha Milner. She was with me in Varna—”
“We’re not discussing Varna,” he said firmly. “Next.”
The swiftness and finality of this dismissal left her momentarily dizzy. As simple as that, Bundy was able to conjure Agatha into the ether.
“How long will I be in Washington?”
“Until the crisis is over, or until we persuade Fomin to deal with us directly. And that last is unlikely, I might add. Next.”
“Are the missiles a real threat? They really could hit Washington and New York, like the press is saying?”
“Yes. Next.”
“You said we’d come back to how I’m going to meet the President.”
“Yes. Well, this is where the plan gets complicated.” As if the rest were not. “Let me explain the cover story.”
He did. And as she listened, her fists clenched with anger and her eyes grew wide with dread.