“I’ll be arrested?”

  “That’s what they’ll think, Mrs. Bentley. You and Auclair would go into protective custody while government lawyers figure out what the hell to do with you.”

  “What about Caroline?” Eleanor asked.

  “Still in the dark. No sense upsetting her applecart until we have to. Her husband is going into the office, working some long days, but for the most part, keeping his regular schedule. For now. Until we tie up some of these loose ends.”

  . . .

  Tuesday, July 19, 1960

  Arlington,VA

  With the raids and arrests rolling out as well as they had, due in part to the intelligence Rémy provided, he had hope now that he could wrangle a deal without sacrificing the life he knew, the life he was very late in realizing he didn’t want to give up. All Caroline knew was that for past two weeks, he’d been working extra-long days, unusual in July when the city usually emptied out, its residents fleeing to Ocean City and Rehoboth Beach.

  Early Tuesday morning, he brought her coffee in bed and said he’d been thinking: what if they moved to upstate New York?

  “Where is this coming from?” she asked with a laugh. “You love it here.”

  “Two things have changed,” he explained. “Our children are growing up without grandparents and we fix that if we lived closer to your parents.”

  “And the second?”

  Rémy hesitated. “The Bentleys. Talbot. The Halcyon days with them are past now, no? They were our family here. And now, however his case ends up, it won’t be the same.” He watched her eyes, wondering if she was ready to put distance between herself and Talbot, eager to erase her private memories of him.

  “We need to talk more,” she said, “but yes. Let’s think about it. My parents would be thrilled. It’d be a lot slower life. A lot. Upstate New York is pretty quiet.”

  “More like what I grew up with. And maybe it’s time to slow down, Caroline. This town has sort of worn me out.”

  “You just want to escape the humidity.”

  “And the radiation cloud that’s sure to cover Washington long before anything happens to the upstate.” Caroline laughed and he kissed her, hope and guilt colliding, nearly overwhelming him. He had married well, far better than he deserved. If he got clear of all this, he would make it up to her. He would learn to be an honest man.

  . . .

  Rémy enjoyed a light day at work, now that the Feds were no longer camped out in the conference room. He actually handled real planning issues, invigorated by questions and problems that weeks earlier had annoyed him with their triviality.

  At four-thirty, he placed a few files in his briefcase and explained to his colleagues that his long days of the previous week had caught up with him. He was cutting out a few minutes early. As he rode the elevator to the parking garage, he decided to run by Giant to get ingredients for Chicken Jardinière for dinner—he had been promising Caroline he would cook one night. The Giant supermarket could not be more different from the small family markets he knew in France, where inventory varied on every visit, but the produce was always ripe and bursting, the chickens freshly plucked. Maybe he should move his family to France. He would, he decided, if he got the chance.

  As he pulled out into traffic he imagined life without the lies, the cover, the subterfuge. He would leave behind the way he’d lived since he was an eighteen-year-old fighter in the forests of France—a life fueled by deep belief and surges of adrenaline. It had been an addiction, really, something that he had hung on to after the war because it made him feel essential, important. Someone else could pick up the baton now. He was through.

  At that moment, he heard the car window shatter in his left ear. His foot fell heavily on the accelerator and the car lurched into the side of the building across from the garage, the hood folding like an accordion. The Arlington police would later conclude the driver had a heart attack, or perhaps was seized by a stroke. There was so much blood, they missed, at first appraisal, the bullet hole just above his ear.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-TWO

  Tuesday, July 19, 1960

  Arlington,VA

  Chamberlain was not entirely surprised when he got the call. He figured there were more operatives out there but had hoped to sniff them out before somebody got hurt. Members of the counterintelligence surveillance team had been slow to track Rémy when he left his desk early, all of them weary after a non-stop few days, mistakenly believing the operation was essentially over. They’d been on the other side of the building when they heard the crash and had raced to find the car wrecked and a man fleeing. Two agents pursued him on foot, wrestling him into handcuffs and throwing him in the back of their sedan. Chamberlain and Engwall arrived to persuade the Arlington police to ignore the prisoner writhing in the car and write up the incident as a single-car traffic accident with fatality.

  “No can do,” said the dutiful young police officer in charge of the scene. “Window on the driver’s side is shattered—looks like a bullet. There’s more to this.”

  “No, my friend,” said Chamberlain, as he took the officer by the elbow and walked him away from the other cops, Engwall trailing behind. “There is not. Single car accident. That’s it. Nothing more for you to do. Got it?” Chamberlain pulled out his ID and placed it before the officer, suggesting he take a second look. The officer studied it for a long moment, eyes darting between the two men before him, then gave a quick nod. Chamberlain went on to say he was taking custody of the body because of the deceased’s ties to a federal case. After he directed the ambulance driver where to take the victim, he left the scene to travel the few miles to the Bentleys’ knowing he needed to deliver this news in person.

  . . .

  Talbot’s reaction to Rémy’s murder proved complicated, disorienting, yet another unimaginable event in a sudden string of them. He was relieved—and for this he felt a fissure of shame—realizing he would never have to face Rémy about his involvement with Caroline, never have to own up to it or explain it. There was the familiar sense, too, that he’d felt in his intelligence work when an enemy was taken off the field—a move in the right direction, a point for the good guys. But beneath all that was profound grief for the friend that he had once had, the man he’d lost when he learned of his treachery in the days before the assassin’s bullet found its mark. The false friendship had nevertheless been an anchor these past ten years and there would be no way, now, to redeem it. No way to find out if there had been any authentic aspect to it at all.

  Talbot’s thoughts ran next to Caroline and the children, the promise he and Eleanor had made as godparents at their christenings years before. They had taken those vows in an entirely different, parallel life, but the children didn’t know that. Talbot hoped they would never learn the truth about their father and decided he would push for whatever truth-bending was required to protect them.

  “Are we next?” he asked Chamberlain. “Do you think we’re targets?”

  “Shooter’s in custody. We think Cossutta sicced him on Auclair—based on the timing of a call Cossutta made from the jail. Seems Cossutta thinks Auclair triggered all this, not Eleanor.” Chamberlain had sent his team to the jail to squeeze the detainees and threaten their immediate return to Moscow if they didn’t give up more names. Each, independently, had named or described the man arrested at the scene.

  “He’d been working as the defense attaché at the Soviet Embassy. We’re filing to strip his diplomatic immunity because he ain’t no diplomat. He’s at the Arlington Jail, gun charges pending, but he’ll be indicted for murder and espionage—spend the rest of his life in federal prison.” Chamberlain paused and ran a hand across his jaw. “But hell, I’m damn sorry this happened. We’ve still got guys outside your house and we’ll leave them in place. Right now, we can get you out to McLean to see Mrs. Auclair if that’s what you need to do.”

  . . .

  As Caroline drove her kids home from the neighborhood pool, she heard the traffic reporter on the radio describe a snarl in Arlington. She hoped her husband wasn’t caught up in the closed intersection. After she arrived home, she rooted around the refrigerator to pull together something for dinner, finding a leftover cassoulet she could reheat and serve with salad.

  When the clock approached seven, as she debated whether to delay dinner for him, Arlington police officers arrived at her door. They explained as gently, as apologetically as they could, that her husband would not be coming home. Shattered, in shock, she tried to shoo them out the door, saying she wasn’t having it—they needed to leave and take their story with them. Talbot and Eleanor arrived just then, Talbot ushering Caroline to the sofa, handing her tissues, holding her as she keened. Eleanor rounded up the children and sat with them on the patio, the youngest, Elise, huddled on her lap, Oliver and Colette wedged together in a patio chair, until their mother appeared some hours later to tell them what had happened to their father. The story she offered that day would become the family truth; daddy had suffered a medical emergency and died when he crashed his car.

  . . .

  The brief obituary in The Washington Post mentioned Rémy Auclair’s courageous service with the French Resistance, describing a peaceful if unremarkable life he had found working for the city of Arlington, one cut tragically short by a car wreck. Talbot argued there was no purpose served by exposing Rémy now and Chamberlain agreed: Caroline would never know the layers of falsehoods and betrayals that comprised her husband’s life. It left her to believe her affair with Talbot was the ugliest secret between them.

  Rémy’s death severed Eleanor’s last tie to Cossutta and the freedom she felt, especially in the first few days, of being out from under their malign control left her in tears every time she tried to articulate it. She felt exhausted, hollowed out, and strangely bereft—no one sending messages and instructions, let alone whispering in her ear to direct and appraise. Caroline read her tears as grief for Rémy, understandable and apt. The Bentleys stood near her at the receiving line after the funeral, minding the children for her and bringing things she might need—a sip of water, more tissues. Caroline drew them over repeatedly to introduce them to neighbors and colleagues, saying again and again that here were the friends Rémy loved most, that she didn’t know where she would be without Talbot and Eleanor.

  The emotional fog of those early, grief-filled days made it easier to convince Caroline of other things that were not strictly true. She was occupied with making arrangements for her husband’s service when reports first surfaced about the busting up of the Soviet spy ring, so the entire episode mostly escaped her notice. She was overjoyed to learn the charges against Talbot had been dropped—not espionage, just a woman scorned—and she supported his decision to leave CIA because how, really, could you work for an organization that didn’t trust and believe you? But with the affair with Helen a matter of public record now, she also knew his opportunities at CIA would be constrained. Talbot’s decision to return to private legal practice, joining George’s law firm as a partner, seemed a logical step, especially when Talbot said he was tired of getting by on a government salary.

  “All of Washington thinks George is a magician, given what happened with my case,” he explained to her one Saturday when she and the children came by for hamburgers and hotdogs on the grill. “George has got more white collar-criminal defense cases than he knows what to do with—least I can do is help.”

  “But you did love your work, Talbot, and it’s a crime things had to end because of their ridiculous jumping to conclusions.”

  “A crime,” Talbot snorted.

  Caroline stared into the deep red of the wine in her glass, lost inside it for a moment. She lifted her head and gave a small, sad smile, looking first at Talbot, then Eleanor. “Everything’s changed for all of us since we lost Rémy. If only we could rewind the clock.”

  Caroline went on to explain that her event work with the State Department had suddenly dried up, something she blamed on the extended leave she requested after the funeral. She would never know Talbot and Chamberlain had arranged it to insulate her from State Department visitors with diplomatic cover and malintent who might have known her husband.

  “But with life insurance, his government benefits—we’ll be okay. I don’t have to find work right away. The kids need me around. Worst case is I move up to New York. My parents are begging me to do that. And what about you, Ellie? What are you going to do next?”

  Of Eleanor’s departure from the library, Caroline knew there’d been an incident—a library patron who got fresh when Eleanor walked him to the door, several other patrons—one an armed officer stepping up valiantly to defend her. Caroline never heard about the right hook Eleanor delivered to the man who came to her office that day, although it became the stuff of legend among the librarians, some forgetting they had not witnessed the moment, telling the tale as if they’d been standing on the sidewalk when it happened.

  “Mmm. Not sure,” Eleanor responded. “I never wanted to be a librarian, you know. I wanted to work in the arts. After everything that’s happened…it just seemed like it was time for something new.”

  . . .

  But the truth was, her future was not in her hands. Eleanor was waiting for the Feds to decide whether to indict her, and if they did, Caroline would learn the truth despite all that had been done to obscure it. By October, the lawyers still debating, Eleanor was released from home confinement but directed to stay within fifty miles of Arlington. By December, Tal’s mother’s was pushing for her son to come to Atlanta for Christmas, an invitation he declined, citing the mountain of legal matters he needed to wrap up before the end of the year. The Bentleys’ phone remained tapped and Eleanor’s contacts monitored—intrusions she welcomed if it helped her prove herself to them. A pattern developed, where things would go quiet for a couple months, giving Eleanor and Talbot a window of normalcy, then up would pop another lawyer with a question or a demand that Eleanor take yet another polygraph. Early in the new year, the CIA, oddly, consulted her when they needed help with a translation or nuance only a native Russian-speaker could provide. She suspected it was only to see if she was translating honestly. She would dutifully head down the George Washington Parkway to the newly opened CIA headquarters at Langley—a building Talbot would never enter—and review what they placed before her. Her first visit there, she remarked to Chamberlain how relieved she was that she would never, ever have to take photos of the state-of-the-art facility for a Soviet handler.

  “Glad to hear you’re not spying,” Chamberlain said, shaking his head, his voice a monotone. “I’ll be sure to let the director know.”

  . . .

  There was a new director now, Dulles having resigned after the Bay of Pigs debacle and John McCone stepping in. He had held repeated meetings with Chamberlain in hopes of closing out the Eleanor Bentley/Marisha Yahontov file because with Cuba, Central America, and Southeast Asia simmering, McCone didn’t need another thing on his plate. Angleton, still running Counterintelligence, continued to push—for expulsion, a prison sentence, something—still nursing his disappointment that his team hadn’t come up with anything concrete on Talbot. So McCone turned to Chamberlain for his read of things.

  “I don’t think she’s a threat—not at all,” Chamberlain said at their meeting, a year and a half after the U-2 shoot down had so dominated the headlines. “This whole thing’s gotten old and tired. I think we move on.”

  “Angleton could not disagree more,” responded McCone. “He insists that a head should roll—somebody’s—after all that’s happened. He believes she could be a conduit for Soviet operatives still in the country.”

  “If that’s the case, she’s doing a terrible job. We just had her here, looking at some cable intercepts between the Soviet Union and Cuba. Her translation matches what the guys on the Russia desk gave us. Exactly. So if she’s involved in any subterfuge at all, it’s not to fool us.”

  McCone thanked him for his input, but said he owed it to his Counterintelligence chief to listen to his analysis.

  George, meanwhile, was relentless in making the case to the U.S. attorney that Eleanor deserved her freedom, that she was a de facto juvenile offender, young and unknowing when she’d been recruited. Moreover, she had repented, turned, and delivered Cossutta’s operatives. Talbot too, advocated for her freedom, insisting that as a former intelligence officer, he’d make the same argument even if she were not his wife; sending her back to the Soviets would be a terrible waste of intelligence. Their position gained purchase when the search of Cossutta’s office at Fordham turned up a photo of Mishie at fifteen. On the back, written in Cyrillic and English in her mother’s hand, was the name “Eleanor.” The plan to enlist her in this shadow war had been set in motion fully four years before she’d left for Florence, perhaps before.

  Throughout the months they were marooned in the townhouse, before and after Rémy’s murder, while they waited for word on Eleanor’s fate, Talbot’s sense of betrayal ceased to be the only emotion through which he channeled all others. The analyst within him wanted to understand her better, understand the predicament in which she had lived her entire adult life. Through conversations that ran late into the night, they imagined different scenarios they might have lived had they never met, or if she had found herself earlier, broken away in Florence, or when they’d first come to Washington. They dreamed of paths they might follow now so each could reclaim a life of purpose when whatever this was, was over. They never really decided to stay together, never turned to one another to announce the answer to the unresolved question between them. If she were returned to the Soviet Union, that would be that. Until that was decided, it seemed pointless to separate, to devise a plan to live apart, craft a plausible explanation that would make sense to Caroline and her children, because they’d have to recant all of it and admit what really happened if Eleanor were indicted or expelled.