Talbot went quiet, thinking. “I seem to remember, Eleanor, that once you began running up to New York every few months, things went to shit for us. Before that, I thought we had something pretty good. And then, out of the blue”—he snapped his fingers—”now I know why.”

  “Perhaps we can leave that aspect of things alone for…” began Chamberlain but Eleanor interrupted, speaking as if she and her husband were the only two in the room.

  “I couldn’t get out of it, Talbot. I wanted to. I did. I was 19 when this started—19! What did I know about what I was getting in to? That first trip, I rehearsed how I would tell him I didn’t want to do it anymore. But he threatened me—I was afraid he would hurt you, Talbot. Or worse. I created that distance so I wouldn’t know as much about what you were doing—so there would be less to pass along.”

  “So you were protecting me! Aren’t you thoughtful!” Talbot thundered.

  “I did protect you, yes,” Eleanor said, “the only way I knew how.”

  Talbot turned to Chamberlain.

  “So what damage has she done? To me, to the country. Are you going to incarcerate her? Deport her?”

  “She’s admitted to multiple acts of espionage, Talbot, that involve surveilling you and passing what she found on to the Soviets. At first, she mostly monitored you—observable things anyone could find out. But then, they got her a camera, installed a recording device in your office, wiretapped your phone. We found a couple of small cameras in your office, but they don’t appear connected to anything. We think over many, many months, she passed along bits of information on the flight plans on the U-2 mission. Nothing like the documents Sizemore showed us. But we think things you said on the phone here—sites you were targeting over there, your concerns about the weather, wanting to pull this together before the Paris Summit—we think the Soviets cobbled all that together and it gave them a timeline and a flight path to intercept Powers and shoot him down. There’s still a lot to be sorted out.”

  “I was surveilled here in this house.”

  “You were. Phone taps, a recording device in your briefcase. The FBI got their hands on that in New York just a couple hours ago. So—for now, we’re gonna leave the tap on your phone lines while we continue the investigation.”

  Bewildered, hurt, humiliated, Talbot put his face in his hands. “And I’m the goddam intelligence officer who let her in, allowed this to happen.”

  Engwall spoke up. “And that’s something we still need to resolve, Officer Bentley. How you were fooled. Whether you were fooled. You understand.”

  “I fooled him. I fooled everyone,” Eleanor insisted. “He didn’t know. You can see he didn’t know.”

  “So you lived this lie with everyone at your office, with all our friends, with Caroline and Rémy…”

  “Not Rémy, no,” she said quietly,

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Chamberlain spoke up. “It means, Talbot, that she had a partner. Rémy Auclair was working with her. And she’s agreed now to bring him to us, and take down Cossutta and perhaps others in his cell. So we’re not at the end of this yet, Talbot. Not by a long shot.”

  “Rémy too,” breathed Talbot. “Jesus.”

  After a long silence, Chamberlain rose to conclude the meeting and forecast what lay ahead.

  “Here’s where we are. As Jerry said, there’s work to do, unraveling the U-2 shoot down. We’ll stay on that. For now, both of you are going to remain here in the house and out of sight. Mrs. Bentley, you’ll call the library and explain with your husband’s troubles, you’ve decided you need the next few weeks off. Because you left New York like you did, we expect Cossutta’s people will be watching your movements and we don’t want to make it easy in case they want to talk to you—or take you. We have people in the neighborhood looking for vehicles or people who seem out of place. Cossutta is still up in that hotel room—we’ve got a team watching him—waiting for you to return, so you haven’t set off any alarm bells with him yet. So for now, act as normal as you can, especially with the Auclairs. Let Rémy know about your quick departure from Cossutta; say you had a lover’s spat, you’re really, really sorry and need him to let Cossutta know. Hopefully, he buys it and we wait for Rémy to bring your next set of instructions—probably instructions on your exfiltration from Washington. Then we’ll go from there.”

  “Do I follow instructions when I get them?” Eleanor asked.

  “You do. If you’re required to travel, we’ll be with you. If you’re asked to visit a drop site, we’ll have people there. And if Cossutta or Rémy press you for information, you say you’re trying, but you ain’t got squat because CIA cut Talbot off from everything. The tap stays on your home phone line on for now—our side will be listening too—but we’re gonna muddy up the tap on your office line so we’ll be able to use it without them hearing.”

  Eleanor nodded hesitantly.

  “Listen, Mrs. Bentley. You need to stay in the game and be cooperative. They’re making their plans to get their hands on you, which will take a few days. Don’t give them reason to think you’re not on their team or they’ll swoop in and take you before we’re ready.”

  Eleanor nodded. “I’ll do whatever you ask.”

  “Duly noted.”

  As the group dispersed, George spoke quietly with Talbot, saying the case would now pivot around Eleanor’s cooperation, Talbot’s future tied to how the next few weeks played out. He clapped Talbot on the shoulder, told him to keep the faith, saying they’d speak later.

  Before he departed, Rector Grant promised to bring dinner one night next week, advising Talbot and Eleanor to get enough sleep and nourishment so they could manage themselves through this. Then he let Talbot know that, since he’d be missing the next vestry meeting, he’d mail the meeting minutes for Talbot to review. Talbot shook his head as he departed, noting the absurd kernel of normalcy embedded in the rector’s remarks.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Saturday, June 25, 1960

  Washington, DC

  Approaching a month in pre-trial detention, Helen was losing both weight and hope. The feds had marked her the highest security risk so she couldn’t get bail. Her attorney-cousin had shared no timetable for when her case might get a hearing. She remained isolated from the rest of the prison population so no one could pump her for information, but already, the press was breathlessly piecing together her role in the U-2 scandal. When a Washington Post reporter called cousin Todd and asked if his cousin, Beatrice, was the one who worked for Talbot Bentley in the FBI, he’d helpfully clarified that it was Helen who worked for Bentley at CIA.

  “All I need,” chirped the reporter and only then did Todd—unfamiliar with the tactics of determined journalists—realize he’d been bested. And when the neighbor on the other side of Helen’s duplex confirmed to a second reporter that he’d seen government agents cart Helen Sizemore away, the alleged paramour had been identified.

  During her long, unchanging days, Helen lay on her cot, recalling how it had felt each day to arrive at work, to sweep down the hushed, carpeted hallways toward the elevator, to fix a coffee, then review the calendar at her very own desk as she prepared for the day. She’d stand to receive important files from the courier who came to Talbot’s office each morning, signing her name to his paperwork in an increasingly illegible script, the way Talbot and other senior employees did. At lunch, she’d sip iced tea and laugh with other secretaries in the cafeteria, all of them dreaming and plotting their next steps, whether it was attracting the attention of a certain person, or moving up in the ranks. She wondered how her little home was, who was feeding her cat, whether the neighbor on the other side of the duplex was cutting her side of the yard. Her houseplants were likely all dead now, she realized, the food in her fridge spoiled and stinking. And at this, she cried, angry at her own stupidity in falling for a married man in the first place, thinking she could outplay him. She no longer cared about having a career in intelligence: she just hoped to regain her freedom.

  Late one afternoon, told her lawyer had arrived for a meeting, she was almost too despondent to rise from her cot to see him. She wasn’t in the mood to hear him explain yet again he’d made no progress. But, she decided, at least she’d get to walk down the corridor, see a slightly different shade of urine yellow on the walls of the meeting room. An hour outside her cell would help pass the time. She arrived to find cousin Todd with a wide smile on his face.

  “Get ready to go,” he said.

  “Go where?”

  “Outta here. Just got a call. They’re sending over a plea deal. Time served. Probation. No trial.”

  Helen asked him to repeat himself, sinking into the metal chair as he did.

  “What’s the catch? Do I have to testify against Talbot? Is that it? I’m not sure I can.”

  “Nope. No testimony. We don’t want to go there and we don’t have to. This is it. They’re charging you under U.S. Code 18 section 1924. Unlawful retention of documents—that you retained them improperly in photographic form. But then you gave them back. They’ve dropped the security violations related to your entering Bentley’s office and possessing the keys. That’s gone. So you’ll need to pay a fine—five-hundred bucks—but they’ve reduced it to a single misdemeanor. You could even continue to work for the government at some point if you wanted—just not at CIA.”

  “How did this happen, Todd?” she asked. “What made them offer this?”

  “No idea, Helen. They came to me with this deal, tied up in a bow.”

  Todd explained government lawyers would be coming later so she could sign the deal. It would take a day or two to be approved by the court. After that, she’d be released and could return to her home, with the provision of monthly check-ins with a probation officer for the next twelve months.

  “One more thing, Helen, and this is critical. We’ll talk more about this when we meet with the government. The story about you that will come out in the papers is gonna be a little different from what’s actually happening. You aren’t to let on that you won’t be testifying. When reporters call—and they will—you say you stand ready to provide your truthful testimony in the case against Talbot Bentley.”

  “What’s the point of that? Talbot didn’t do anything—well, not that I know of. Do they have something else on him?”

  “I think it may be more complicated than that—like there may be some other people they want to confuse or draw out and you saying you’ll testify helps do that.”

  Helen processed this new twist, then erupted in a convulsive cackle—her first laugh in many weeks, since before Eleanor’s birthday, before she’d last been with Tal at the townhouse. But she suddenly found her situation very, very funny. They were asking her to do something clandestine. She recognized misdirection when she saw it. At last, she thought, the CIA is using me on a case. The very thing she’d wanted since she first joined the intelligence service.

  . . .

  Curled on her cot that afternoon, knowing she had only hours left in confinement, Helen wept over the wild turn her life had taken, how radically her perspective had shifted in just a few weeks. Had someone told her a year earlier—when she first arrived in Talbot’s office—that her brief CIA sojourn would culminate this way, she would not have believed it. She had trusted her upbringing, her education, to create a smooth career trajectory, free of stumbles and mistakes, immune to sexual traps and temptations. Other girls, she once thought, stupid girls were the ones who made ill-advised choices and got caught up in terrible situations. Not her. Not Helen.

  Her former self could never have imagined embarking on the affair or cultivating the spite and anger that ultimately led to her arrest. Love, she now knew, made you do strange things. Crossing one line made it easier to cross another. She resolved to be a little kinder to all those girls she once considered stupid now that she was one of them. It was a fitting end to her time at CIA, getting to play the role in public of the aggrieved secretary intent on telling the truth about her untrustworthy boss. She would enjoy that, maybe get a new dress in case the TV cameras came around. Helen Sizemore, ladies and gentlemen, portraying the scorned woman in a CIA production. But after this, she never, ever wanted to be in any type of situation—personally or in her career—that required her to lie and be convincing at it. When all this was behind her, after she’d fulfilled the terms of her probation, she thought she might move to Williamsburg—or maybe Virginia Beach, but away from Washington anyway—to start over. She intended to take the very hard lessons she’d learned from entering into a disastrous, disingenuous love affair and embark on a different kind of life.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Saturday and Sunday, June 25-26, 1960

  Arlington, VA

  Alone, finally, Eleanor and Talbot had so much to say but no words to say it. Once George and the others left, Eleanor sat mute at the kitchen table, steeled for Tal’s assault. He milled about for a few minutes, dumping the coffee the rector had prepared into the sink and reaching for the Jim Beam. Without a word, he took his glass into his office, closing the door and lying down on his leather couch, an arm draped over his eyes.

  After weeks of insomnia, pacing the halls to wrestle with how he’d become the fall guy for the U-2 mess, he had answers. He had indeed screwed up the mission but not through inattention to detail. He’d done it when he invited this woman into his life. His sense of failure gutted him—his willful blindness both as an intelligence officer and a husband. He’d ignored all the small things with her that didn’t add up, acquiesced to the boundaries she erected between them without demanding she let him in. And why?

  If he was honest with himself, it was because her remoteness justified his pursuit of women—made him believe he was entitled to find succor elsewhere to salve his wounds. But the bargain they’d struck turned out to be a far more complex and uglier deal than he could have imagined. He picked up the phone and called George.

  “Where does this leave me?” Talbot asked. “Suspended animation until they decide what to do with the nest of Soviet spies I seem to have attracted?”

  “We’re in a hold, Talbot. The Feds want to get the Italian guy, isolate Auclair, and suss out how deep and wide this thing is. They can’t do anything abrupt that could signal Eleanor has changed sides. And as all this plays out, you cooperate, and they won’t find any evidence you were a part of this at all—correct?”

  “Right. Not a shred.”

  “Okay, so once they get to that point, you get your freedom back. So just hold tight for now and play along.”

  “That’s not as easy as it sounds, with us both here in the same house. What about Eleanor? Once all that shakes out, what happens to her?”

  “She doing okay?”

  “We haven’t spoken. I’m keeping my distance.”

  “Understood. Helluva lot to take in. So, Eleanor.” George sighed. “You know, the letter of the law calls for spies to be executed. Or spend the rest of their lives in prison. But in agreeing to cooperate in the investigation, helping bust up this little ring, she’s protected herself. Switch sides, and you may get immunity. Or deportation.”

  Talbot was quiet for a moment. “How did I not see it?” he asked.

  “What? That she wasn’t who she said she was? For one thing because she’s beautiful and, I don’t know, intriguing. So you fell in love with her and decided you wanted her and of course, you thought she was safe. You believed her and you stopped evaluating. Turned off the antennae. We all do that. And we all wear masks, Talbot, to make sure people see only what we want them to see about us. Her mask fooled you and—I gotta be honest, so don’t get mad—she didn’t particularly want to see behind your mask either, considering all the women you’ve chased around in the past ten years.”

  “So she knew,” Talbot said, “but couldn’t let on because she had to keep it going. Makes it kinda funny how she reacted when I told her about Helen and the others when I got out of jail. She actually cried. She pretended she was so upset…”

  “Talbot,” George interrupted, “when we were at the rector’s office this morning, and she was going through this wild story of hers, the only time she cried—the only time—was when she talked about you. Hurting you, the damage she’s done to you. Now, I’m hoping she has genuinely turned—come in from the cold, shall we say—to save herself. To get out from under this jackass Cossutta who ran her and has had her under his thumb for twenty years. But I also believe she just couldn’t do it to you anymore. Cossutta was thrilled, she said—thrilled you’re in the crosshairs. But she was distraught about her life here coming apart and that made him furious. It got so heated that she said he told her he’s pulling her out. And she knew if she’s exiled somewhere behind the Iron Curtain, you’d most certainly go to prison. Sizemore too. So when she realized his plans, she played nice, did what he asked, then got the hell out of there once he fell asleep.”

  “Huh,” was all Talbot could muster.

  “So, when you get around to talking to her, bear that in mind. She’s done a lot of terrible stuff. A lot. Made huge mistakes. But she cares about your welfare. Despite all she did, despite Cossutta’s influence, somewhere along the line she grew to care about you. If she hadn’t, we wouldn’t know a thing about any of this. We’d still be in the dark and you’d be headed to prison.”

  They ended their call, agreeing to reconnect on Monday. Talbot lay back on his dark leather couch, uncomfortably warm under the sunshine streaming through in his west-facing window this late June Saturday. On a typical day, he might be coming in from the golf course, showering to head to a bar-b-cue, a cocktail party—maybe a show at Constitution Hall or a fundraiser—the political conventions were only a few weeks away. That used to be my life, he thought, wishing he could trade the bourbon he drank alone for a gin and tonic on Rémy’s patio. Rémy. God, Rémy. Another searing loss among so many.