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Group—and the official answer came back that the rumor was false. The agency wasn’t doing anything new with Soviet nationalities.”

“I see,” said Anna.

“But that’s nonsense, isn’t it?”

“Please, Auntie. Don’t push me. I’d talk about it if I could.”

“Watch out, my dear. That’s all I really wanted to say. Be very careful. This really is much more dangerous than you realize. Not simply to you and your career, but to others who may come to rely on you.”

“Listen,” said Anna gently. “I think you’re more worried about this than you need to be. I can’t talk about what we’re doing, but I promise you that Stone has no real covert-action program of the sort you describe.”

“What do you mean ‘real’? Does he have a phony covert-action program?”

“I’m sorry. I told you, I can’t talk about it.”

“Well then, I repeat: Be careful.”

“Why are you so upset, Margaret?”

“Because I can see it on your face. The look in your eye, the tone of your skin. You are suffering, my dear, from the exhilaration of working on something very secret and very exotic. And I’m happy for you. But I have to warn you: Men like Stone are at their most attractive when they are slightly out of control. But that is also when they are most dangerous.”

“Really, Auntie. I think you’re going overboard. If you can’t trust men like Stone, who can you trust?”

“My dear,” said Margaret, shaking her head, “I fear you are a lost cause. You’ve been in the business six months and you are already beginning to sound like Stone himself. Let’s order dinner, shall we?”

“I’m not hungry anymore,” said Anna.

But she stopped sulking after a few minutes and another glass of wine, while Margaret told a long, cautionary tale. It concerned a woman case officer whose husband had been killed in the line of duty. Driven by grief and a desire for revenge, she had studied Russian and volunteered for duty in the Moscow embassy. The mandarins had been only too happy to give her the chance. They were looking for women that year, to fill drops and service agents in “denied areas” like Moscow. What the woman didn’t know was that Moscow Center had her made from the moment she arrived at Sheremetievo Airport. They finally nailed her as she was filling a dead drop for a putative agent. They held a press conference and showed off the goodies: one-time code pads; secret-writing equipment; even a poison capsule. It was a great show. The poor woman went home in some embarrassment.

“Somebody should have warned her,” said Anna.

“Of what?”

“Not to get caught.”

30

The empty desolation of the Karpetland office in its early days had disappeared. The fluorescent-lit showroom was now stacked with boxes—books, cassette tapes, manifestos and handbills printed in the various Turkic languages of Central Asia—that were arriving every few days from clandestine printshops and audio labs around the Washington area. The provenance of this material was something of a mystery. Taylor hadn’t ordered it, nor had Anna, and Marjorie certainly hadn’t ordered it. That left Stone, who as usual was conducting most of his activities out of view.

Marjorie moved the boxes from the couches at the back of the showroom, clearing an area for her colleagues to sit. Stone would be arriving shortly for a meeting to discuss what he vaguely described as “Phase II.” Anna mounted the stairs, then Taylor a few minutes later. The artifice was lost on Marjorie, who was too busy tidying to notice whether they were arriving separately or together. Taylor and Anna parked themselves on separate couches, in the shadow of a stack of boxes of Korans that had arrived the previous week from Pakistan.

Anna looked tired and preoccupied. In the days since her dinner with Margaret, she had been brooding about her personal and professional life. She had put up a brave front at the Italian restaurant, but the conversation had unstopped a mental dam of some sort, and she had slept uneasily ever since—tossing and turning, wondering where her noiseless steps were carrying her. Taylor had been away in New York much of the past week, which had given Anna more time to brood, and to contemplate her world in the cold, flat light of day. To pass the time, she had done some reading about Abdul-Hamid’s intelligence service, the hamidiye, hoping it would give her some ideas about organizing networks in Central Asia. But it seemed, reading the books, as though Abdul-Hamid’s only notable success had been in organizing pogroms against Greeks and Armenians. She found that worrying, too.

Anna wasn’t frightened, or even all that worried; she was mostly confused, and she had decided, in the middle of one of these restless nights, that it was time to voice her uncertainties to her two male colleagues. And if they didn’t like it, or thought her weak and feminine for asking questions, then tough shit.

“Hello, my friends,” said Stone cheerily when he arrived.

“Hello, boss,” said Taylor.

Anna didn’t say anything. In addition to her other concerns, she was becoming tired of Stone’s relentless politeness.

“Today’s the day,” said Stone when they were all seated on the two fat couches in the back.

“For what?” asked Anna.

“For reviewing the order of battle, my dear, and deciding where we go next. The time has come to talk of many things, as the Walrus said to someone or other.”

“The Carpenter,” said Anna.

“Thank you. Now then, Alan, where do you stand with Mr. Munzer?”

“Munzer’s on board,” answered Taylor. “I’ve made three trips to Brooklyn to see him, and we have reached an understanding.”

“What are the arrangements?”

“He’ll be a contract agent, on a six-month contract. We’ll pay him six thousand a month, plus expenses.”

“What about termination?”

“He’ll get an annuity of a thousand dollars a month when he reaches sixty, which is next year, on condition that he signs a quitclaim and keeps his mouth shut. He says we owe it to him anyway because of the work he did for