Present Day
Constructing a portrait of an absent person is an exercise in extrapolation and verification. For all the research and detective work, there must be a black hole at the centre – where a man once stood and is no longer. His form can be surmised: the testimony of those who knew him offers a series of spotlights against which his silhouette emerges in dark, fleeting relief. Hundreds of people knew Michael Hess, or Anthony Lee, and I have spoken to dozens of them. But each spotlight focuses on a separate angle – at times, it seems, on an entirely different man – and where some remember a thing one way, others remember it otherwise. Some informants appear under their own names in the text of this book; others have asked to appear under a pseudonym or not to appear at all. Most have spoken with honesty and goodwill – the exceptions are those in public positions who have something to hide.
I will describe at the end of the story how we contacted the three or four people who played the most important roles in Michael’s later years and how the arc of his life emerged from the accounts they gave. There are new photographs and documents on my desk now to guide me in the final stages of my search: a group of smiling young men at a West Virginia cottage; official White House portraits from the 1980s Republican heyday; a forty-year-old man in earnest conversation with a fragile elderly nun at the door of a country convent; a brother and sister, older again, sitting huddled on the wooden steps of a back porch in the country with sorrow written in their faces . . .