“Do you love Bill Baker?” he asked, still staring at the city’s sights.
“What?”
“He’s a good man,” Tom Leffler opined. “A good man.”
“What?”
His eyes rose to hers. “I said he’s a good man, and I asked if you love him.”
“I… No! No-o-o! What are you saying?”
He seemed dejected. His chin dropped into the loose folds of skin at his collar. “I want you to find happiness. I want you to know the joy of visits to this park with your child… and your husband.”
She couldn’t believe the turn the conversation had taken. She had come to talk to him about the coup, but he sounded as if he were matchmaking with its target. “Dad, we ate those wonderful lunches in fifteen minutes — sometimes in the car — so you could get back to your office. Half the time, you were on the phone. I remember when you opened the door, stood outside, and said, ‘There!’ just because Mom had asked you to come see how beautiful the turning colors were.”
He was staring at her now. “Those are the favorite memories I have in life.”
His pathetic statement hung in the air. Clarissa couldn’t believe that she had so defiled his artificially pleasant recollections. The picnics were wonderful, but what she remembered most were what seemed like the hours of preparation. She and her mother had carefully spread mayonnaise on sandwiches or cut tiny cheese wedges. What for her busy father had been a few minutes stolen from a hectic schedule had, for Clarissa and her mother, been the centerpiece of their day.
“You’re at grave risk,” he said to Clarissa. She felt a chill, and turned her collar up against the wintry gusts. “There’s a very nasty story circulating.” She swallowed the fear that constricted her throat and threatened to block her air passages. “Is it true?”
“What?” she croaked. “Is what true?”
“Did you have an affair with a Chinese army colonel — a recruiter for their intelligence services — when you were studying in Beijing?”
Clarissa’s head spun from the totally unexpected question. “What? Who?” She had engaged in only one affair during the three years she had been at Beijing University. He had been her only Chinese lover. She had met him in class. He had been fluent in English and had helped her become fluent in Chinese. They had talked of their shared desires for a free, democratic world. He had said all the right things until the last few months, when he had seemed to change and begun to argue every point. His parting words — delivered with a smile — had been more political than intimate. “I live in my world. It can be yours only if you choose it.”
“He wasn’t,” she lied, “a spy. Not really.”
“Oh, God, Clarissa,” her father said with eyes sinking closed. “You’ve seen what the piranha do in this city! How they tear their opponents apart with attacks on everybody around them! And something like this? At a time like now!”
“I didn’t know! I mean, how do we know it’s true?”
“These things are always true,” her father lamented.
“But it was so long ago!” she exclaimed. Her father gave a defeated shrug. If only everyone knew the truth, she thought. Knew how patriotic she was. But they would know! she realized. Right after the coup! Everyone would know that she had risked all to save her country from defeat by the Chinese! Would a Chinese agent plot with other American patriots to attack Chinese forces with nuclear weapons?
Her mood brightened, and her panic subsided. “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party,” she said.
Her father reacted immediately — shushing her — and took a paranoid check around. He leaned over and whispered, “God Almighty, Clissa. Where did you hear that?”
“I’m a member,” she explained, “of the coup.”
His jaw dropped. She told him about his muttering of the password in the video call and the mysterious E-mail that the phrase had unlocked. “But how would they have known that I told you about…?” he began, then his eyes widened. “The bugs in my house! It was them!” He turned to stare at her. “You’re on the inside,” he said ominously. “You’re in.”
She had known that all along. She had knowingly made the decision to join. But something about the way that her father confirmed the fact scared the hell out of her.
“Don’t ever speak those words again,” he warned sternly, but in whispers. He looked all about the empty scenic overlook. “What we were talking about before — the scandal — that was public ruin. Hell, they could be the ones who leaked word of your affair with Baker to damage him politically. But participation in a coup, Clarissa, could get you killed.”
She felt physically ill. “Oh-God-oh-God-oh-God!” she moaned. She sat on the stone wall beside him and buried her freezing hands between her knees to stop the trembling.
Her father was shaking his head and mumbling, “I’m sorry, Beth. I’m sorry.”
“Dad?” Clarissa snapped loudly in frustration. He refocused on her, but his mouth hung open in a pathetic, almost demented display, like a frightened, weak old man. “Who’s behind the coup?” she asked, but he wouldn’t tell her, saying that information could also get her killed. “But if the plotters are on the NSC,” she reasoned, “then why, I’ve been wondering, do they need my reports about…?”
“I have been contacted,” Tom Leffler interrupted dejectedly, “by one organizer. By the man I believe to be the leader. He isn’t on the NSC.”
“Who?” she asked in a plaintive tone. “Who is it?”
Her father shook his head. “There are some things you shouldn’t know. Things that could put you — your life — at risk.” He remained adamant in his refusal.
“Is it going to happen?” she asked in a barely audible voice. “Are they going to move against Baker?”
“They’re not there yet, I don’t think. I was approached, in a very tentative way, to get a reading on my leanings. I was asked a series of hypothetical questions that started with the very general. Things like, ‘Do you believe that the fate of our nation hangs in the balance?’ and ‘Would you rather play by the rules and lose the war, or break every rule and win?’ I got the sense that, if I answered every question correctly, the conversation would go on, so I did and it did. I shaded the truth to make it go on. I knew the buttons to push. And the questions grew steadily more pointed. ‘Do you believe that America was wrong in dropping atomic bombs on Japan during World War II? Do you believe that the world would be a better place today if India had used nuclear weapons against the Chinese? Is there a moral difference between using nuclear arms against invading troops in the field, and cordoning off a captive city’s population and incinerating them?’ The questions weren’t written down, of course, but they were, very clearly, carefully scripted. Each flowed naturally from the preceding question. The whole interview took over an hour.”
“And you passed the test?” she asked. “They told you their plans?”
He shook his head. “They didn’t tell me anything. They asked me. But the last two questions were, ‘Should America use nuclear weapons if all else fails?’ and ‘Will Bill Baker take that step?’ ”
“And what were your answers?”
“Yes and no.”
“And that’s how the interview ended?” Clarissa asked.
Tom Leffler nodded. “He got up, shook my hand, and left. But there was something in the way that he shook my hand. He held it for a long time.”
“You answered all the questions correctly,” she observed, and he nodded his head slowly. “Then you’re at risk too, Dad.”