CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  Saturday, May 7, 1960

  Washington, DC

  Talbot spent two nights in jail before he was freed to home confinement, the judge’s order specifying he could only leave the townhouse for meetings with his attorney. The preliminary hearing was held in a closed courtroom, two members of the DC police standing guard at the judge’s order, waving off questions from members of the press, insisting there was nothing newsworthy going on behind the closed doors.

  Saturday morning, Talbot and George walked out of the jail, heads together, chatting, Tal’s expression relaxed. They approached Eleanor’s car, George saying the hearing had been routine—a good sign that nothing significant had popped up in the past two days in the investigation to incline the government to keep Talbot behind bars. The men shook hands and set a time to talk the next day. George walked off towards his car, Tal giving a hearty wave before he climbed into the car next to Eleanor. Once the door was safely closed, he slumped in the seat and stared out the window at security officers as they paced—sidearms at their hips—and the vista of barbed wire that encircled the jail compound.

  “This is shit, Ellie,” he said, his voice low, angry. “I did nothing. NOTHING. I’m being set up. Set up because—well, for something stupid that has nothing whatsoever to do with this mission going south.” He raked his hands through his dark hair, his eyes weary, depleted. “I am a loyal American. What the hell else do I have to do to prove that? They know that. I’ve done what this country has asked of me my whole adult life. You know that, right? Please.”

  Eleanor pulled the car through the gate and onto Washington’s crowded streets, thinking how days earlier, she’d ferried a self-satisfied Talbot home after her surprise birthday party, drunk, cocksure, full of swagger. Now she’d sat through an interview with CIA Counterintelligence—an interrogation, actually—her house searched, and she was ferrying Talbot home from jail. The DC Jail, in fact, known for having electrocuted spies during the war. Six of them. Germans. Was that what awaited Talbot?

  “And what was this something stupid that tripped you up, Tal? A paperwork error? Saying too much in the cafeteria?” Eleanor shot him a glance as she spoke, surprised to see pain in his eyes and color rising in his face. She didn’t relent. “Why don’t you tell me who set you up and turned our lives upside down—the thing that landed you in jail for being a suspected spy?”

  “Helen. I got involved with Helen.”

  Eleanor stared straight ahead.

  “I broke it off. And that made her angry so she made up a story, apparently, that I was working against the mission, betraying my county.”

  They rode in silence as Eleanor absorbed his admission, pieces clicking into place now. She made the final turn onto their street, pulled into the garage and shut off the engine. She turned to him, her face tense, steeled for what he would say.

  “How long?” she asked. It was the least important thing in all this, with both their marriage and his freedom at stake. But she wanted him to say it.

  “Started last year. Not even a year ago. It was nothing, Eleanor. Nothing to me. That’s why I ended it. Had her transferred out. And it set her off.”

  “Nearly a year? And you say it was nothing. Although, now that I think about it, I recall the two of you took several trips together.” Talbot dropped his head, hand massaging his temples. “How nice for you. You and your lover. How convenient.”

  “Eleanor, you know things have been tough between us—you can be so damn remote and distant—and I thought…”

  “Talbot, do not even try to pin your screwing around on something I did. You think you deserve whatever you want. You always have. That you can just grab whatever thing you like, anything that crosses your mind because it pleases you. Me. Helen. Whomever. I’m sure there have been others, Talbot. And it’s a shame you didn’t see how all this is connected. That when you’re off having sex with anybody who’s willing to have you, you make yourself more distant—to use your word—from me. So this is on you. You and the dick you couldn’t keep in your pants. But please, do tell me the story. How did she set you up? What could a secretary possibly do to make the CIA believe her over you?”

  “She got into my filing cabinet and took photographs of documents—maps, coordinates—things she doesn’t have clearance to see. That cabinet is locked and my office stays locked when I’m not there. I don’t know how she got in. She used my little Minox—the one from the war—to take the photos. Then she handed the camera over to the IG and said, ‘Gee, I found this in my boss’s office. Is it important?’ And the IG referred it to the Counterintelligence Unit.”

  “Plucky Helen,” she murmured, like a reflex. “Getting them to investigate you for being a spy.”

  “I’m charged with violating my security clearance—for allegedly giving her access to these documents. They can hold me on that while they continue to investigate if I had anything to do with the U-2 mess.”

  “And did you?”

  “Shit no, Eleanor. Why the hell would you even ask me that?”

  “Well, Talbot, it seems I may not know you as well as I thought I did.”

  They made their way into their townhouse, Talbot saying he really needed a shower. Eleanor was grateful for a few minutes alone, for time to process Tal’s admission and how it tied in with what Chamberlain had asked her. The phone rang, Caroline’s anxious voice coming through the line, eager to hear how things had gone with the bond hearing and whether there was anything she could do to help.

  “It’s because he had an affair, Caroline,” Eleanor said. “This happened because he made the wrong woman mad.”

  Caroline said nothing.

  “Hello?”

  “Sorry,” Caroline breathed. “I’m just a little stunned.”

  “Yeah, well, me too, Caroline. What else has he been lying about? Where his allegiance lies, maybe.”

  “Eleanor. A man doesn’t live like he has, following the rules, serving his country for decades, then decide to serve the Communists. He’s just…” and here Caroline hesitated, “he’s a playboy, Eleanor. I’m sorry. But he is and, well, we’ve talked all around it for years, but we both know it’s the case. But being a shit husband doesn’t mean he’s a traitor.”

  “I suppose,” said Eleanor. “But I have a feeling there’s a lot more I don’t know.”

  For a second time, Caroline said nothing.

  . . .

  Over the next few weeks, the more perceptive among the Bentleys’ neighbors, friends, and Eleanor’s colleagues pieced together that Talbot’s sudden retreat from view, the absence of his Corvette from the flow of commuters exiting and returning to the neighborhood each day, might be linked to the U-2 story topping the headlines. With the spy scandal driving both gossip and newspaper sales across Washington, enterprising reporters began to dig for more angles to the story to keep it going. One, who used his connections to camp out at the bar at Congressional Country Club, was sitting near the Bentleys’ ostensible friends as they rather loudly listed all the places that in recent days, the Bentleys had failed to appear, including the golf course and St. John’s Church. Had Talbot, big CIA man that he was purported to be, simply blundered, or done something illegal and anti-American? They mused over their martinis, one of the women saying she’d always thought he was a skirt-chaser, which in her view made him roundly less trustworthy. Within days, the reporter unearthed the pertinent court records and made the connection. CIA intelligence officer Talbot Bentley had indeed been arrested then released weeks earlier, just after the U-2 was shot down.

  When the curious deigned to ask her about it, as they encountered her at the mailbox or in the case of her workmates, at her office, Eleanor assumed a forbidding reserve that even the nosiest were reluctant to pierce. Eleanor went about her days at the library, her errands around Arlington, as if nothing were amiss. Talbot developed a habit of trailing her through the house when she returned home at night, overly solicitous and annoying, so she began driving out to the Auclairs’ several evenings a week to find comfort and to decompress, to get away from Tal’s anxious, hovering presence. She knew he needed her, that this could be an opening to repair things and be honest, finally, with one another. But she was unsure if she could take that step.

  “He’s mad with worry,” she told Caroline as they sat on the Auclair patio one night, sipping gin and tonics in sweating glasses, watching the sun slip below the horizon after an oppressive June day. Rémy was inside, dumping Chef Boyardee Spaghetti-O’s into a saucepan, the children anticipating this delicacy with delight.

  “What’s the attorney saying?” Caroline wanted to know. “Has he been able to convince the government that it’s not sabotage or espionage or whatever they want to call it but just a pissed off woman who should have known better, who’s probably set him up?”

  Eleanor smiled at her loyal friend. “It’s Tal who should have known better, Caroline. Truly. Helen is a child. Only a few years out of college. She wasn’t mature enough to understand what was happening and to keep out of Tal’s clutches. You know how he operates.” She fixed her eyes on her friend as she took a long draft of her drink. “Did I mention? She called me the day she was transferred out of his office. Early, before I got in. I never called her back.”

  “To say what, do you think?”

  “To tell me about them, I’m sure. Maybe if she’d been able to rat him out, devastate me, and blow up our marriage it would have been enough for her. But I didn’t return the call—and here we are.”

  “This wasn’t triggered by anything you did or didn’t do, Eleanor.”

  “Oh, I’m not so sure about that. Did you know there were others, before Helen? He’s admitted it, all of them young and eager and probably just positive they’d end up married to him. Too inexperienced to realize what clichés they are, sleeping with somebody else’s husband.”

  In the growing twilight, Eleanor couldn’t see Caroline flinch, an involuntary shiver that prompted her to wrap her arms around herself, despite the warm night. Once the sun was fully set, Eleanor rose and patted her friend’s cheek before making her way into the house. There she found Rémy, who pulled her into an embrace and whispered intensely in her ear. Eleanor nodded, responding with a passionate, almost bitter whisper of her own.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  Wednesday, June 1, 1960

  Bethesda, MD

  The satisfying jolt Helen felt in asserting herself, in introducing chaos into Talbot’s tidy life, was short-lived. Her single-minded quest to ensure he knew he wronged her prevented her from anticipating how the chaos would envelop her.

  The way he’d dismissed her after she came through for him in getting the cake, his gall in getting her transferred, opened her eyes, finally, to who Talbot was. A user. Using her to make himself look good to his wife and friends, never considering how he was hurting her. Helen had felt enraged, an emotion new to her ordered, educated, calibrated life—a life he’d upended by seducing her then failing to recognize that what they’d found together he needed to protect. When she snapped those photographs, she’d been oblivious to the story developing a world away, that the operation Talbot had been directing all these months had failed. She had just wanted to muddy the waters a bit, make him sweat. Had Eleanor picked up the phone that morning and given Helen the chance to express her outrage, the Minox and its exposed roll of film might still be rattling around in her pocketbook.

  But now, he’d spent a few nights in jail and faced serious charges. She’d been suspended from work for three weeks—just temporary, she was told, until certain questions were resolved, specifically the provenance of the photos on the Minox and what she might know about the loss of the U-2. She had been interviewed at work first by the IG. Then the Counterintelligence people came to her duplex multiple times, pressing her in ways that surprised and worried her. She was on their side, after all, standing up for truth and integrity. They seemed skeptical of her version of what had happened that Monday morning, no matter how many times she repeated it: she’d found Talbot’s door unlocked and had simply entered his office to hand him a sheaf of documents and tell him she’d been promoted. But here was Jerry Engwall, back for a second time in three days, reviewing answers she’d repeatedly provided.

  “If Officer Bentley was not yet in the office on Monday, May second, Miss Sizemore, why did you try the door? Why expect it to be unlocked?” he asked. He was seated in her small sitting room, ignoring the coffee she’d prepared, his ubiquitous tape recorder on her small coffee table, whirring away. “You’d just learned you were promoted and Miss Mitchell was there to help you move your things to your new location. So help us understand why you tried a door you expected would be locked and continued to handle documents on Officer Bentley’s behalf, when you were, effectively, no longer assigned to his office.”

  In their initial conversations, she’d explained that she was so surprised by her promotion that she’d unthinkingly barged into Talbot’s office expecting him to be sitting at his desk. But Engwall continued to press why she hadn’t left the office when she found it vacant. So Helen began to improvise.

  “Well, as I said, I was very surprised Mr. Bentley wasn’t there. But I like to finish what I start. I’m extremely thorough,” she said brightly. “When I realized he wasn’t in, I just thought, ‘He must have unlocked his office and gone down the hall—the men’s room, probably. I’ll leave him this paperwork, and a note to explain I’ve been promoted—’see you later’ and all that. And I saw the camera just sitting there and thought it seemed out of place, that it might be important.”

  “Was it his habit to come to work before seven, go in his office, and shut the door?”

  “Oh, yes. Sometimes. He worked a lot. I just thought I’d try the door and see.”

  “Miss Sizemore, let me try it this way: was Officer Bentley known to come to work, unlock his door, then exit his office? Did he give you or anybody else routine access to his office when he wasn’t there, in violation of security protocols?”

  Helen jiggled a leg, casting about for an answer that would not make matters worse, implicate herself. Even if the door was unlocked, she knew full well she wasn’t allowed to go in when Tal wasn’t there.

  “It was stupid. I just wanted to finish up, leave Officer Bentley those papers. I wasn’t thinking. And Miss Mitchell can tell you, I was just rushing around, getting ready to leave. But when I saw the camera…I don’t know. I thought, as I said, it looked out of place. It was not a device I recognized. That’s it. I thought I should turn it in to the IG.”

  “Your fingerprints are on it,” Engwall said.

  “Of course they are. I found it.”

  “No, ma’am. On the shutter. Did you take photos of anything in Office Bentley’s office?”

  A rush of heat spread from Helen’s neck into her cheeks. This was new. They were accusing her? She fell silent trying to work her way to a reasonable answer.

  Engwall continued. “Yours were the freshest prints and they’re all over the device. We believe you’re the only one who has handled this camera for quite some time.”

  “Well, I picked it up. I must have grabbed it and touched the shutter. Maybe that erased other fingerprints…earlier fingerprints.”

  Engwall looked up from his legal pad. “You deny you took any photos?”

  “Well, yes. No.” How had this fallen apart so fast? This was supposed to implicate Talbot, not her. Ah. There it was. “I mean…I had to. Talbot—Officer Bentley—made me take them,” she said finally, eyes shining, relieved to have arrived at this solution. “He was my boss so I did as I was told.”

  “So you took the photos, then you had second thoughts?”

  “Exactly. Yes. He asked me to take pictures of some files, which I did, but as I was packing up for my transfer, I thought better of it and I took the camera to turn it in.”

  “And he asked you to take these photos when?”

  “Sometime…um…in April, I believe.”

  Engwall looked at her with a sad reluctance, knowing the surveillance images captured May second showed her removing the Minox from her purse, pawing through documents on Bentley’s desk, then unlocking the file cabinet and removing and photographing the U-2 file. He had hoped she would come clean, explain how she came to possess the camera and the office keys so he’d better understand who was behind all this. He replaced the cap on his pen, stowed his notebook, clicked off the tape recorder, and asked if could use her phone. After a hushed conversation, he returned to Helen’s sitting room and picked up the coffee cup she’d prepared for him, the contents now cold and muddy. He asked, casually, how long she’d lived in the duplex, if she had nice neighbors, how long her commute to the office was.

  Happy to be answering a series of benign questions, Helen believed the danger had passed. She relaxed into the tattered armchair she’d had since college, reaching for her coffee cup and holding it in her lap, eager to outline her daily commute. Her relief was short-lived. A loud rap sounded at her door, causing her to jump, the coffee sloshing first into the saucer, then across her white linen pants. She opened her door to find two federal agents waiting to take her into custody.

  “But! But!” she sputtered. “I’ve explained! I took the pictures, but he made me do it!”

  “That doesn’t quite align with what we already know,” said Engwall.

  “Of course. You believe Talbot over me.”

  “We don’t have to believe either one of you, Miss Sizemore. We have your prints on the camera. We have surveillance images of you using a key to enter a secure area you are not permitted to be in alone, then sitting at your supervisor’s desk and withdrawing the Minox from your purse.”

  Surveillance images? Helen’s thoughts careened wildly. Did they have photos of her and Talbot in the office, Helen splayed out on the desk or pressed against the wall? She closed her eyes and began to cry.