volumes about the legacy of the Cold War and the profitable cult of the secret agent. This part of upper Georgetown is a labyrinth of locations where secrets and watching have spilled over into history. There’s Wild Bill Donovan’s house on Thirtieth Street; Alger Hiss’s various addresses on Volta Place, on P Street; Au Pied de Cochon, the restaurant Vitaly Yevchenko disappeared from when he redefected to the USSR. The restaurant is gone, but a plaque (also in the Spy Museum) once marked the table where he sat. There’s the home of Amy “Betty” Pack, the OSS “swallow” who got her hands on the Vichy French naval codes by first getting them on Charles Brousse, the Vichy French attaché. Farther up Wisconsin Avenue is the apartment where the South African agent Jennifer Miles fucked her way through various echelons of the White House, DOD, and State Department. All are regular tour stops now, as much part of the quilt of Washington attractions as the monuments on the Mall, and perhaps all the more compelling for being so mundane.
The Georgetown library is a grandly sited neo-Georgian structure on the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and R Street. I was paying my mother’s fine at the front desk when Marge Noonan came out of the History and Reference Room with an armload of books. “Come up and say hello,” she called to me and pressed the elevator button with her elbow.
“I’ve been meaning to call your mother all week,” she said as I entered her office a few minutes later. The room would be claustrophobic if it weren’t for the enormous window directly behind her desk. The view is one of the best in the city.
“I was just returning some books for her,” I said.
“How is she?”
“Fine,” I said.
“Come in and close the door.” I hesitated, unsure about the whiskey on my breath. “I’m sorry about your father,” she said.
“Yes, well.” I shifted my gaze to the window behind her.
“He was too young.”
I nodded.
Marge pushed herself back in her chair. “I spent some time with your mother while you were at the funeral.” She put her reading glasses on and glanced for a moment at her computer screen. Then she took them off again and let them dangle from the chain around her neck. “I worry about her.”
“Well, you shouldn’t.” It came out sounding testy, but I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t just the busybody nature of the remark but the suggestion that my mother wasn’t able to look after herself and I ought to be doing more to help her.
Marge took the tone of my remark as proof of her suspicion. “I think I have a right to worry,” she said. “Your mother and I are old friends.”
My resolve collapsed. I felt trapped. “What I mean is that she’s—well, she is the way she is.”
Marge’s look softened. “It’s been a rough time for both of you, I know.” I was about to take this as my cue to leave when she perked up suddenly. “Oh, before I forget. You remember that elderly gentleman? When you were in here a while back? He came in recently and asked me to give you this.” She rummaged through the drawer of her desk, then produced a card and handed it to me. It was an old index card, yellowed at the edges. “I have a map which may interest you.” On the back were a name, address, and telephone number.
“Did he say anything else?” I asked.
Marge shook her head. “He just asked me to give you that.”
I slipped the card into my pocket and only half listened as Marge mentioned the upcoming retreat at the Trappist monastery in Virginia. Evidently, my mother had invited Marge to join her. “I just hope she knows she’s free to change her mind if she wants to,” Marge was saying.
“Change her mind?”
“About me coming along.”
I fingered the card in my pocket and glanced at my watch.
“Will you tell her?”
“That you changed your mind?”
“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?” She rolled her eyes and waved me off. “Forget it. I’ll tell her myself.”
“When was he in here?” I asked, taking the card from my pocket.
“At least a month ago. I don’t remember exactly.”
It was dark outside. I crossed the library parking lot behind the building and stood in the little park that adjoins it. I never leave the library without stopping here to take in the view. I sat down on a bench, pulled my collar up against the wind. In the foreground, the rooftops of Georgetown slope down Wisconsin Avenue, quaint and tasteful and haughty in the Washington small-town way. Across the river, Arlington Cemetery, the Pentagon, and the skylines of Rosslyn and Crystal City spread out in their closed crucible of power. Vaulting into the sky just behind the Pentagon is the Air Force Memorial, a bouquet of chromium arcs meant to suggest the trajectories of soaring jets that looks more like an explosion tearing up the horizon.
The Pentagon
38°52’15.10”N
77°3’20.51”W
Noel and Cowper have spent all morning at the Pentagon in meetings. Representatives from the offices of legal counsel were present at all of them—uniformed and civilian—chains of command going every which way. They each carried an armful of printouts containing all the relevant data. Rarefied stuff. Being the custodian of such material is its own reward—akin, Noel likes to believe, to knowing an ancient language or unraveling genetic code at the molecular level. Of course, Noel and Cowper are not the only ones who work with it, and a fair amount of possessiveness, jealousy, and conceit attends its use. Meetings can become great storms of silence as groups contend to have the greatest impact without overstepping their inner frontiers. Goals are spoken of laboriously. Everyone is circumspect. Today’s meetings concluded with somber acknowledgment that the common mission absolves them individually. In the end, people don’t kill, the state does.
As Noel is heading out to catch the shuttle back to Bolling, Cowper pulls him aside. “I thought it went well, considering.”
“Considering what?”
“Well, considering how badly it could have gone.” As ever, Cowper’s reasoning is airtight. He fixes Noel with a look of aggrieved authority. “Look. There’s nothing more we can do about it. Don’t lose sight of the big picture.”
Outside, in the big picture, plows have cleared the parking lots. The air is crisp and fresh. The Bolling shuttle pulls up, but Noel, in a sudden change of mind, waves the driver on. Pat is turning fifty-two next week, and he needs a birthday present. He heads over to Pentagon City Mall, navigating the unmarked network of sidewalks, shuttle stops, and parking lots. One can only feel out of place on foot here, either a threat to or threatened by the streaming traffic. As he is crossing Army-Navy Drive, his phone rings. He stops to answer, fumbling in the pockets of his overcoat.
It’s Pat.
“Hey. I was about to leave a message. When are you coming home?”
“I’m running an errand.”
“You sound out of breath.”
“I’m walking.”
“Noel? Can you hear me?”
“It’s the traffic.”
“I’ve been worried about Hannah.”
“Me, too. We’ll talk about it when I’m home.”
“We have a bad connection. I can barely hear you. I’m going to hang up.”
In Macy’s, yellow signs warn of wet floors. Noel moves cautiously around them, through the polished glare. A display at one of the counters catches his eye: I’Homme Fatal.
“A new fragrance for men,” a young woman says, materializing