“Certainly. I’ll take this box and meet you on the third floor.”

  “Perfect. Thank you. I’m just so thrilled about all this!”

  “Well, good,” said Mitchell, eyebrows raised, a hint of caution in her voice. “No reason not to be.”

  Once Mitchell exited, Helen collapsed into what was once her desk chair. Her chair. Her desk. Her office. Her Talbot. What had he done? He’d betrayed her, that’s what. He’d thrown her aside, or at least, hadn’t fought to keep her. He was behind this and didn’t even have the balls to face her.

  Well. He owed her. He would be very, very sorry he’d done this.

  She rose and used her stolen key to open Talbot’s office door. She walked behind his desk and dropped into his chair, willing herself to think, to pull herself together. She reached into her pocketbook for a Salem and her lighter. Her hand found Talbot’s Minox and she briefly considered returning it to his drawer. But no. She would not give it back. He didn’t deserve to have it, however precious it had been to him in the war. And if he discovered it missing, he couldn’t even ask her for it because he wasn’t supposed to have it.

  She riffled through the files on his desk and finding nothing interesting, moved to his file cabinet. Using her key, she pulled out a drawer and quickly scanned the documents in the front folder, the one that held urgent business. There she saw foreign maps, timetables, talking points for the upcoming Paris summit, correspondence with the British Royal Air Force, and an undated press release from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics about the loss of a weather plane. She snapped photos until the little camera stopped clicking. Then she wrote a note on the legal pad on Talbot’s desk, mindful to write something that couldn’t boomerang back on her:

  I got promoted! But I’ll see you around, you can be sure of that.

  She rose and took a last look at his office.

  “Goodbye, Talbot,” she said aloud. “You’ve done a stupid, stupid thing.”

  . . .

  Arriving at her new station, she was welcomed with applause from a handful of her new charges—the few who’d arrived early—all of them young and eager, much like she imagined she had come across only a year earlier. As Helen fumbled through some introductory remarks, Mitchell reappeared, pulling a fresh-faced blonde carrying a box of office supplies out the door by her elbow. She’s Talbot’s new girl, Helen thought frantically. This cannot stand.

  Eyes misting, as if she were grateful to be among them, she thanked the secretaries around her.

  “I look forward to getting to know all of you better as we support our officers here and agents in the field,” she said. “First, which desk is mine?”

  The women laughed, one of the veterans stepping forward and offering to help her settle in. She escorted Helen into her new office which featured a door and a measure of privacy Helen had never before enjoyed in her work life. Her misery lifted a bit as she considered this perfect spot from which she could place phone calls that would not be overheard.

  “Okay, then,” she said, placing her box on the desk and returning to the doorway. “I have some matters I must attend to right now, but I’ll be right back out in just a few minutes.”

  Her new team looked at her with uncertainty, unsure of what to do until the new boss was available.

  “Coffee. Everybody get coffee or tea or whatever you’d like and just…do what you know to do, or visit with each other or just…anyway, we’ll circle up at nine.”

  The awkward spell broken, members of Helen’s new team grabbed their pocketbooks, some giving her a little wave as they exited the office to enjoy this little bonus time. She stood in the sudden quiet, worried, thinking, planning.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  Monday, May 2, 1960

  Arlington, VA

  Talbot managed a few hours of sleep before his alarm sounded, his mind kicking fully into gear as soon he was conscious, resuming the tumbling and twirling that had occupied it the day before. He hauled himself out of bed to prepare for what he expected would be a brutal day. He was due to meet first with the Inspector General, to review how the mission team had come together and, he worried, to suss out if safeguards had been breached. He steeled himself with several cups of coffee, watching the sun rise over the back patio as he scanned The Washington Post to see if any of their reporters had sniffed anything out. Not yet.

  He lingered in the shower, hoping to calm his roiling stomach, and nicked himself shaving, trying to hurry through it with an unsteady hand. “Get a grip, man,” he told himself. “You’ve been through worse.” But the truth was, he hadn’t. Even in his undercover work in the war, he’d had a measure of control, an understanding of the risks. In this case, something had gone completely haywire and he didn’t have a clue what had happened. And the risk inherent in clandestine overflights that he’d so blithely dismissed with Dulles and the president now felt outsized and ominous.

  Talbot returned to the bedroom to whisper to a sleeping Eleanor that he was heading to the office. She had escaped the cocoon of bedclothes, one leg snaked on top of the coverlet, hands folded under her cheek, her breaths deep and even. Talbot stroked her arm, the skin so smooth and lovely, still so familiar. He was grateful to her for handling all this with steady calm, bringing fresh coffee throughout the day Sunday, encouraging him to eat, reassuring him that things would work out.

  She stirred, turning to see her alarm clock then dropping back on her pillow, drawing the coverlet to her chest.

  “Going now? Running late?”

  “Just a bit. Gotta meet with Bissell and the guys from the IG’s office at 8:30,” he said, hating the unease his voice betrayed. “They’re coming to my office.”

  “Your office? That’s good. You don’t have to sit half the day in some strange conference room somewhere.”

  “Maybe. But it also gives them lots of time to eyeball everything—my shelves, my desk, the secretary’s area.”

  “Well, I’m sure Helen will make sure everything is set up per regulation.”

  Talbot tamped down the urge to tell Eleanor he didn’t expect Helen to be there. He breathed a shaky sigh and wondered what would happen if he confessed, if he told Eleanor what he’d done—with Helen, with the others before her? Would telling the truth, admitting he’d been weak and stupid, draw them closer—give them a chance to start over, be honest with each other? Would it wipe the slate clean and enable Talbot to be the upright man he presented himself to be on the Sundays he ushered at church, escorting little old ladies to their preferred pew? Or would it fray the remaining tethers that held them together? I’m being irrational, he thought. Telling her the truth right now won’t fix what I’ve got to deal with at the office.

  Seeing the tension in his jaw, the worry in his eyes, Eleanor sat up and reached for his hand.

  “Talbot. It’s nothing you did, right? They could bug the place and they wouldn’t have anything on you. I know this wasn’t your mistake. Probably something mechanical—the plane failed. It’s awful you lost someone—I know that really troubles you—but you’re not responsible for that, right? I mean, you can’t think the Soviets were tipped off to what you were doing and just lying in wait.”

  “I can’t see how.”

  “Okay, then. Even if you had a sloppy guy on your team who said more than he should to somebody, nobody did anything intentional. Maybe the Soviets did get lucky. They’re watching the skies all the time and they saw a trespasser. But even that—and I can’t imagine that happened—is not your mistake. You’ll be fine. I’m not worried.”

  Eleanor’s confidence in him heartened him. Her kindness, her belief, made him ache to be the person she believed him to be.

  “I’ve seen these things go off the rails—an officer losing his job, his pension, his reputation—based on a set of facts put together by creative minds who need a scapegoat.”

  “Not this time, Talbot,” Eleanor said. “Just tell them the truth and show them you have nothing to hide.”

  “Right. Nothing to hide.” Talbot gave Eleanor a quick kiss on the cheek and headed out to his car.

  . . .

  The querulous Helen was not waiting when Talbot arrived at his office. He heaved a deep sigh, the unoccupied desk a symbol of at least one problem solved. The desktop held only a monthly calendar, his appointments penciled in, no coded messages that he could see that might point to past or upcoming assignations. A crushed tissue sat in the trash can; if this was some kind of message from her, he would ignore it. Helen would have no access privileges beyond the third floor, so chances of an unexpected encounter were low. He’d requested that her replacement be “mature and experienced”—code within the ranks for someone asexual and unattractive. A man, even. He needed a respite in this moment, to un-complicate his life.

  At that moment, Mitchell from personnel—the woman he usually called when he found a transfer of his secretary was in order—stepped into the office. A younger woman followed shyly, carrying an apparently heavy box Talbot rushed to help her set down.

  “Ladies,” he said. “What have we here?”

  “As you know, Mr. Bentley,” Mitchell began, her tone stern, eyebrows raised for emphasis, “Helen Sizemore has been promoted. Miss Key is her replacement—not exactly the experience-level we would like you to have—but it’s the best we can offer on short notice. I trust you can get her settled in and handle things from here?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, I appreciate it.”

  “I’m sure you do,” said the liaison, offering Talbot a curt nod as she exited.

  He turned to the young woman. “Talbot Bentley. Welcome. Glad you’re here.”

  “Frances Key. Bridgie.”

  “Bridgie?” Talbot echoed. “You’re called Bridgie?”

  “Got the nickname from my friends. I grew up here. You know, Frances Scott Key Bridge—Key Bridge, so Bridgie.”

  “I know it well and take it often. Okay, Bridgie, let’s get you settled in. You say you’re from Washington, huh?”

  “Arlington. I went to Wakefield High School. Tops in my typing class and started here two years ago, after I graduated. Very excited to get promoted into your office. I thought I’d be in the pool forever.”

  Holy shit. She’s twenty, thought Talbot, who vowed in that moment to keep his distance. He had to, he told himself, despite her pretty face framed by silky blonde hair, the fluid way she moved her trim, young body. She reminded him of Eleanor when they’d first met.

  “Well, set up your desk however you’d like and let me know if you have questions. I have meetings this morning in my office so just take lunch when you need to, head home when you need to—don’t worry about me.”

  “What do you need me to do? Do I have assignments?”

  “Uh, for now I’d say just answer the phone and let callers know I’m tied up. Take names and numbers and I’ll return calls when I’m free. My calendar is there on the desk so you can see when I have open time if someone needs to schedule a meeting. Other than that, there will be couriers bringing documents, briefs, that sort of thing, so collect the relevant information on those, hang on to them, and I’ll get to them as soon as I can.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Can’t wait to get started.” Frances gave a clap and turned toward her desk, essentially dismissing Talbot to go about his business.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  Monday, May 2, 1960

  Arlington, VA

  Brought fully awake by her conversation with Talbot, Eleanor took several deep breaths to settle her own anxiety. She’d never seen him so worried, not fully in control as he worked so hard to be, confident he could see around corners to anticipate what lay ahead. So there was something to this, some kind of threat he perceived but felt he could not confide in her about.

  She rose to shower and dress, another week at the library ahead of her. She was glad to have a place to go, colleagues who whispered cheerful greetings when she arrived, facile tasks to distract her from what was happening with Tal. It was not work she particularly enjoyed; she’d only become a librarian because no one would hire her at any of the city’s museums. She lacked a key qualification to be a Smithsonian docent or curator: she was female and in DC, where the cultivation of the arts mixed in an odd, regulated way with bland government bureaucracy, museums were the provenance of men. For all its trying, Washington retained a provincial character in which men were thinkers and doers and women, dutiful helpers who got the work done behind the scenes while camouflaging their own ambition and agency. Had she stayed in Europe, her training would have secured her work more vivifying.

  Eleanor’s job as Head Research Librarian was not a sinecure exactly, although the staff members who worked for her handled the bulk of patron requests. Usually it was high school students and their teachers who approached the Research Desk in need of a fact or two: serious scholars crossed the Potomac to the Library of Congress. This left Eleanor wide swaths of free time to read (under the guise of patron research) and spend her lunch hour in various museums along the National Mall. When she walked the rooms of the National Gallery, she was reminded of the thrum of her early life—the energy, the rich history and artistry that had surrounded her in Italy. She still missed Florence despite her harrowing experience there. She hoped one day she would have the chance to return to the place where the first outlines of her future began to take shape.

  Eleanor’s weekends in New York—social and artistic diversions, she explained to her husband—ensured her ennui did not deepen into depression. For years now, she had been taking the train from Union Station to Manhattan to meet up with old friends for a couple of days of restorative conversation, inside jokes and shared stories, protracted gabfests that would be constrained if husbands came along.

  “Besides,” she explained when Talbot expressed interest in joining her, “we go to shows, stay out late, and behave completely irresponsibly. You don’t want to do that.”

  Early on, Talbot had protested that he did.

  “I would love it,” he said. “I want to meet your friends and hear what you were like all those years ago, hear about your family before—well, before things came apart. We could go up to Boston and visit Smith and see if any of your dad’s professor friends are still around.”

  Eleanor insisted that keeping him and the life they shared now separate from her growing-up years helped her manage her sense of loss.

  “I can’t just open up everything like that and let you wander in,” she said.

  “But you can’t just park your past somewhere—everything you’ve been through—and ignore it, can you? I’m interested in it, Ellie, because I want us to be close, to understand not just what happened to you in the war but how you got to be you.”

  “You don’t talk much about what you saw and did in the years before we met,” she chided. “You keep all that in a rather neat box, don’t you?”

  “Because it was clandestine activity, Eleanor. Not the real me. We’re talking about completely different things here.”

  Eleanor would promise, at intervals, that he’d be invited along soon. But it was Caroline she eventually asked to accompany her, much to Talbot’s surprise. His invitation never came and after a year or so, he stopped pushing. So, Eleanor saw her friends, wallowed in the memories of the family she had lost, then got back on the train and returned home to pick up the thread of her life with Talbot. And indeed, when he met her at the station, he often commented that her time away was obviously good for her because she seemed especially happy to see him upon her return.

  Since the moment she married, Eleanor had let go, piece by piece, of the moments and milestones around which she thought her life would unspool. Like many people reared in happy families, she had expected to recreate a home much like her parents’: noisy, curious children complicating and enlivening every moment, a kitchen rife with the aroma of favorite, familiar foods, holidays celebrated practically the same way every year, treasured friends and neighbors who helped shoulder burdens both anticipated and unforeseen. And somehow, she had planned to wedge a career in the arts into the tableau, to put her costly training in Italy to good use.

  Instead, she was a librarian living a childless life on the rim of the world’s most political city, where private people tasked with consequential jobs tended to keep their own counsel. The couples they’d first met in Georgetown were less available now, having become serious people, raising two, three, four children, living an entire world of experiences Eleanor and Talbot would never know anything about. Their busy families limited their capacity to delve into art and culture, as Eleanor wished to do. The only exceptions were the Auclairs, with whom she and Talbot had grown intensely close, people with whom they could debate politics and recent works of fiction, who were usually up for a last-minute cookout and ice-cold gin and tonics. But even they had children, now, that constrained their schedules and created other priorities.

  So Eleanor quietly ended her quest to surround herself with like-minded souls as she had enjoyed all those years ago on the piazza in Florence—people who could name the best contemporary painters and had a thoughtful understanding of what the European Continent looked like before the war. She settled for what she had, grateful for the friendship with Caroline and Rémy, and skated on the surface of life, not expecting much. In this way, her deep, deep disappointment in her childlessness, in failing to find work she loved, could not wreck her further.

  Talbot no longer looked so forlorn when she left for her New York weekends and she had a few theories as to why that was so. They’d settled into a comfortable, stable understanding. They visited his aging parents regularly, spent analeptic summer weeks in Virginia Beach at a little cottage she’d found. They had season tickets to the National Symphony and involved themselves (at Eleanor’s urging) in fundraisers for a new Washington ballet troupe that was to perform Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker at Constitution Hall next year. While they seldom spoke authentically about what mattered most to them, their sexual connection thrived, evidence of that on Saturday night when he’d slid a hand up her skirt as they left her birthday party. So she had a life, she told herself, an active life that she didn’t spend time and energy and regret comparing to the life she had hoped to live.