He had found ample opportunities at work, young women assigned to his office or elsewhere in CIA, overt in their appreciation of his physical attributes and his verbal ripostes, women he nudged, inch by inch, into an intimacy that enthralled them both. The trick was to have his fun while making sure his playmates didn’t expect things to progress to something deeper. When they did, when he sensed they were growing too attached, he could place a call and have his lover shuffled off into another department. When he encountered these women later, in the cafeteria or an elevator, after they were transferred out, he would offer a smile and a shrug, as if to say he had nothing to do with their changed circumstance. The slight crease that appeared between his eyes as he did this, the concern it communicated, reassured them it was not a matter of Talbot’s waning interest. Several of them soon left CIA, abandoning dreamed-about careers in favor of safer, more traditional lives that didn’t put their hearts at risk. Others remained in their jobs, tight-lipped and ashamed that they’d allowed their boundaries to be breached as they had. They could not expose Talbot, as that would involve exposing themselves.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  April, 1960

  Washington, DC

  Their affair had raged for nine months now but “affair” was not a term Helen liked to use. In her mind, she and Talbot were a couple. Partners. They practically camped out at his townhouse when Eleanor left on her New York weekends—four times so far. They would leave the office separately on Friday afternoon, calling out loud and conspicuous goodbyes to each other and wishes for a good weekend. Helen would drive home, feed her cat, and when possible, make small talk with the neighbor on the other side of her duplex. She’d often tell a little story about her weekend plans—she was headed out to dinner with a girlfriend and might spend the night, or she was heading to see her parents, or she was going with a hiking group to the Blue Ridge Parkway for the weekend—just to provide a little context for her absence. Then she’d drive in the direction of the bus stop, park her car in a lot nearby, and catch a bus to Arlington. Talbot would scoop her up when she arrived and their weekend would fully begin.

  On this day, Helen stepped from the bus and hopped energetically into Talbot’s car, slinging her canvas tote bag into the footwell, not even glancing around before kissing Talbot on the cheek. His retrieving her like this just felt more appropriate, more dignified to her, until he reminded her to slide down in her seat as they pulled onto his street, so she’d be out of view until the garage door was safely closed. Once it was, Helen grabbed her tote and leapt from the car, face flushed and eager. Every time Talbot brought her home, inviting her inside his life, moved her a step closer, she believed, to something permanent. It was proof their relationship was more substantial than whatever dalliances he’d involved himself in before. “What if I live here someday?” she mused to herself. “What if, before long, we’re just Tal and Helen, coming home together?”

  They made their way up the stairs to the main level, where the nubby creme furniture was enlivened by an array of art pieces Eleanor had brought with her from Europe after the war and collected since. There were a few framed photographs, mostly of Eleanor and Tal or of Tal’s family, none featuring Eleanor’s relatives. Helen found it all rather bland, too neat, more like Holiday Inn than a home where a two people shared a happy life.

  “Hungry?” Tal asked, loosening his tie as he walked toward the kitchen. “I can make you a sandwich.”

  She came up behind him and slipped her hands around his waist. “I’m hungry,” she purred, “but not for a sandwich.”

  “You’re relentless,” he laughed, turning to face her then lifting her to the counter. He walked between her knees, pressing them apart as she protested, his hand reaching.

  “Not here,” she breathed. “Let’s get comfortable.”

  He lifted her in his arms and carried her down the hall to his and Eleanor’s bedroom. As he lay her down, unbuttoning her skirt so she could shimmy out of it, the phone in his office rang. Helen groaned.

  “Leave it, Tal,” she pleaded, as she undid the garters on her stockings. “It’s Friday. You’re busy.”

  He winced. “Can’t, honey. That’s the work line. But stay just like that. Exactly like that. I’ll be right back.”

  Talbot retreated down the hall to pick up the call.

  Helen removed her skirt and blouse then considered whether to pose on the bed in her bra and garter belt, to put on the new silk nightie she’d brought, or to disrobe entirely. Ten minutes turned into twenty, then thirty. When Talbot made her wait like this, she made the best of it, doing a little poking around to ease her irritation.

  On her first visit to the townhouse, she’d swiped a key ring she’d found as she’d looked through the bureau drawers, giving in to an impulse she could not articulate or explain even to herself. Of course she’d never told him. In the first drawer she’d opened, she’d found Talbot’s T-shirts and boxers lined up with military precision. The next held little stacks of Eleanor’s panties, bras, and slips—white and utilitarian. Helen had reached in to feel the fabric and knocked the little pile askew, uncovering several keys on a ring underneath. Underneath the keys, were a pair of brassieres, one black and one red—lacy, satin, low-cut and to Helen, alarming. She looked at the label. French. She had nothing like this in her wardrobe. Was this the kind of thing Tal liked? Maybe these were old things, placed at the bottom of the stack because Eleanor no longer used them. Helen had replaced the items and arranged them as she’d found them, deciding the key ring must be a duplicate, hidden here as a back-up and not something Eleanor would miss. So she dropped the key ring in her pocketbook and at night, when she was alone and missing him, she often pulled it out to look at, her talisman of how deeply Talbot had let her into his life. The ring held a house key, two car keys, a smaller key, perhaps to a safe or safe deposit box, and a large key she thought must unlock a door at the library.

  Over time, she’d tried the keys here and there, surprised to discover the large key opened Tal’s office door and the smallest key unlocked his file cabinet. How had Tal’s key ring—now Helen’s key ring—found its way into Eleanor’s lingerie drawer? Helen supposed they’d been knocked in by accident and Eleanor hadn’t bothered to notice, unhelpful wife that she was. Helen had used the keys just a few times when Tal was away from the office, opening his office door not to snoop so much as to stand in his space and study it without him in it. She found a copy of her personnel file in the cabinet—education, background, start date—and wondered if he spent time looking at it, thinking of her. There were dozens of work-related files too, notes on operations already executed and others in the planning phase. Grand Slam was his big project now—something to do with the Soviet Union and taking photos. Helen had developed a habit in the months since she’d obtained the keys, of peeking into her file, hoping to see his effusive praise for her work. But so far, nothing.

  As Talbot’s phone call dragged on down the hall, Helen turned her eye toward the Bentleys’ bathroom. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking for. She just liked touching things that were his. Nothing much of interest on the vanity—Tal’s shaving cream and razor, his toothbrush. There was a dish with bobby pins, a can of Aqua-Net, but the rest of Eleanor’s toiletries and make-up were obviously with her in New York. Helen opened the cabinet under the sink to find neatly stacked towels and sheets. She pulled each of the three drawers open, where she found cotton balls, band-aids, some cough syrup and, happily, no condoms. None. She supposed that was nothing Tal and Eleanor needed to have on hand anymore. The very idea cheered her.

  With little left to explore, she made her way towards Tal’s office to encourage him to wrap up his call. The daylight waned—he’d been talking nearly an hour. She opened the door gingerly, smiled, then showed a bare leg. Clearly preoccupied, Tal waved her in, holding up one finger to promise he would soon end the call. She planted herself in front of his desk and began to slowly remove her bra. Talbot rose to his feet and waved her off, turning his back to her and stumbling though remarks to end the phone call, claiming to the caller that there was someone at the door, that he’d review all they’d discussed, and would be back in touch. At last, he hung up.

  “What are you trying to do to me, woman?” Talbot asked, coming around the desk and pulling her into him, hands on her backside. She looked around this office, thinking how it was so like him—black leather sofa, dark mahogany desk with his Cheney briefcase on top, the lid propped open. Prints of Amen Corner at Augusta National hung over the well-stocked bar cart—gin, vodka, and of course a full bottle of Jim Beam. She inhaled and pressed contentedly into the body of her lover. She liked being exactly here.

  “Bedroom? Or here?” Talbot nodded toward the sofa.

  She turned around to face him.

  “Both,” she laughed. “First here and then in bed, and then on the kitchen table and then the floor of the den…”

  “As you wish,” he responded.

  . . .

  After a squeaky, sticky interlude on the leather sofa, they soaped each other up in the shower then relaxed at the kitchen table over BLT’s, both of them satiated for the moment, Helen especially content.

  “So who called?” she asked. “I mean, if you can say.”

  “Knox. We’re moving on that project.”

  “Must be important for you to talk that long on a Friday with me…waiting.”

  Tal smiled. “It is. He was sharing the latest and we had some timing issues to consider.”

  “The weather plane?” Helen winked.

  “The weather plane.” Talbot winked back.

  . . .

  The next morning, Helen awoke first, the crisp spring sunshine streaming in the window suffusing her with a sense of well-being. Talbot lay naked with his back to her, his breathing slow and rhythmic. She moved her hips into his and her hands to his torso, eliciting the response she was looking for.

  “Morning,” he mumbled, rolling over to pull her face to his.

  “Pretty nice way to wake up, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Agreed,” he said, beginning his usual machinations, reaching under her nightie, kicking clear of the bedsheets.

  “So, Tal. Maybe it’s time we take the next step together.”

  Talbot seemed not to hear her as he nuzzled her neck, kneed her legs wider.

  “Right, Tal?” Helen tried again.

  “This is right, Helen,” he said as he entered her. “So, so right.”

  “It is right. Exactly right. So… baby,” she whispered, breathing into his ear. “What do you think about what I said? If we made this permanent. If we lived here—or somewhere—together.”

  “Honey,” he moaned, ignoring her question. It was a tactic he’d used many, many times—pretending to miss the ask and continuing on. But this time, Helen wasn’t having it.

  She pulled off and faced him, drawing her knees up as a barrier to further overtures, pulling the afghan from the foot of the bed over them. “Talbot. The least you can do is answer me.”

  “Answer what?” he asked, teeth clenched, jaw muscles working. “What do you want to discuss at this exact moment, Helen, when we were enjoying each other, enjoying the morning?”

  “Enjoying the morning? Is that all this is to you? Just some morning fun?” She jumped to her feet, clutching the afghan in front of her. “Is that all this is, Tal?” she repeated, anger rising, “Am I just a transient thing for you? Are you kidding me? After the way I’ve been there for you? Supported you? Because you don’t have a wife who’s even interested in you?”

  “Helen,” he began, quietly, reasonably. “Who do you think you’re involved with? I’m a CIA officer. A married intelligence officer. Divorce would end my career. End it. But we can still be together and even travel together, and have this, this incredible time together… this connection. But we can’t be more than this right now, Helen. You understand that.”

  She could not process what he was saying. They were a pair. They were in love, weren’t they? How could he stay married to someone else when he loved her? Or was that it? He didn’t love her.

  “But you…you always want to be with me. You want it as much as I do and I see it! You’re sad when we can’t be together. I love you, Tal. I thought you knew I did—and that you love me and wanted me for more than just the occasional weekend.”

  The look on his face told her everything she didn’t want to know. He looked regretful, like he felt sorry for her, felt bad that she was disappointed. Not at all like a man in love, intent on soothing and keeping his worried lover. He reached for her hand.

  “Helen. You’re fantastic. You’re fun. You’re so, so smart.” He locked his eyes on hers. “But did we ever talk about love? A future together? No. We didn’t. Because right now, we can’t have that.”

  “Tal, I just… I thought…” Her tears fell as she moved to him, straddling him and pulling his head to her chest. “How could you give this up—us together, the way we fit so perfectly, what we do for each other. Are you saying you could actually walk away from this—from us—when it feels this good to be together?”

  Talbot smiled, reaching his arms around her and kissing her as tenderly as he could, brushing away her tears, urging her not to cry. He laid back on the bed, pulling her on top of him. He took his time with her, moving slowly, pausing to lock eyes with her, Helen interpreting his deliberate pace as some sort of commitment to her, that he couldn’t, in fact, walk away from her. It struck her that he had used the words “right now”—they couldn’t be openly together right now. He’d said it twice. That meant he was planning for down the road. That’s how she interpreted what he truly meant to say.

  Helen did not broach the subject of them moving toward something permanent again that weekend. Instead, she resolved to accelerate the timetable through her sexual pliancy, her attentiveness to his needs. They found some old movies on TV Saturday afternoon, which they watched entangled in one another’s arms. By Sunday, after she’d helped tidy up to erase any evidence of her presence in the townhouse, she boarded the bus for the hour-long trip back to Bethesda. And despite what he had plainly said, his clear unwillingness to put his career at risk for her, Helen was convinced he was looking forward, as she was, to a future together.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  April, 1960

  Washington, DC

  Eleanor returned from her New York weekend more upbeat, with renewed interest in Talbot and his work, the progress of his golf game, what he’d like for dinner. His perpetual wish was that she would remain in this more open frame of mind, not drift back into herself. She was turning forty in just a few weeks and he’d reserved a room at the Italian restaurant off Dupont Circle for a surprise party. He phoned Caroline to ask for her help contacting friends from the library, several neighbors, and people they knew from the club so it would be a lively enough gathering.

  “Do you think you could get any of her college friends to come for the party” he asked, “the ones you get together with in New York?”

  “Come here?” she’d responded, “to DC?”

  “Well, yes, Caroline, if we’re going to have the party here, they would need to come here, yes.”

  “Sorry, no, I just meant that bringing people in from out of town involves arranging places for them to stay, transporting them from the airport or the train station. And we’re three weeks out so it might be a lot to pull together.”

  “Aren’t most of these friends in the Northeast? It’s a three-hour train ride. Not so complicated, Caroline. And we have a guest room. It would make for a bigger surprise.”

  Caroline waited a beat before responding. “First of all, Talbot, unlike you, with all your hopping around on business trips, not everybody finds it so easy to just pick up and go. And to be honest, they just don’t seem like those kinds of friends. I mean, they’ve known her a long time, and they like to go out together, but they just don’t seem that close to her. And we did raise a glass to our girl at Tavern on the Green when we were up there last week. I think we just focus on the people here and we’ll have a big enough surprise.”

  Talbot relented, accepting that his newest tactic to get a look at Eleanor’s old friends would not be successful.

  “Sure. You’re right, of course. It will be good with just the people here. Can you help with flowers? I thought it would be nice if we brought some in.”

  . . .

  Two days before the big event, Helen came upon him in his office, scanning the Yellow Pages for a bakery able to provide him a suitable birthday cake by Saturday night. He wanted something unusual, he said, more upscale, beyond frosted yellow cake.

  “It’s a little late for that,” Helen said, sounding to Talbot more scoldy than supportive. They had not found a window to be together since their weekend at the townhouse at the beginning of the month and when they had spans like that, she tended to grow irritated and impatient with him. He camouflaged his annoyance by catering to her, praising how expertly she’d drafted a letter, how perfectly she prepped a file for a meeting.

  “So I’m finding out. Not something I usually do, ordering cakes and so forth.”

  Helen paused a moment, crossed her arms, then said she knew the place to call. She could get it ordered and delivered to the restaurant Saturday evening.

  “Excellent. Thank you.” Tal leaned back in his chair, taking in the angry set of her mouth, her crossed arms. “Helen, you know Eleanor has no other family.”

  “I’m well aware.”

  “Do you want to come?” he asked suddenly. “You could bring a date and it might be kind of…I don’t know… fun.” He winked.

  “Bring a date?” she asked incredulously, her voice low to make sure she wasn’t overheard. “Uh… it’s not like I have a lot of time for DATING.” She gave a tight, angry smile.