Libra

"It's not a question of belongs to us. It's a question of something working beautifully, of private investment being given the chance to help a country rise in the world, and Cuba was rising in distribution, manufacturing, literacy, social services, and any high-school student can make a solid case that the flaws and excesses of the Batista regime could have been contained without a revolution and certainly without a march into the communist camp."

They fell silent again. The power of his feelings made her want to pause. There weren't many things he believed in strongly. She felt a shrinking in herself, the old pathetic readiness to give in quietly. But what was there to fight about? She didn't know the subject. She saw the world in news clippings and picture captions, the world becoming bizarre, the world it is best to see in one-column strips that you send to friends. Refuge only in irony. If her aim was to go u

"Things are looking better in some areas," he said. "There are things I'm not unhappy about at all. I am making something of a professional comeback. There is, talk of moving me to the Office of Finance. There is a field unit in Buenos Aires. This is not to be discussed, of course. I'll work in money markets, making sure we have foreign currencies on hand for certain operations."

"Is this a plum, Buenos Aires?"

"I don't know where it stands in the fruit-and-vegetable kingdom. It is just goddamn good of them to give me this chance. The Agency understands. It's amazing really how deeply they understand. This is why some of us see the Agency in a way that has nothing to do with jobs or institutions or governments. We are goddamn grateful for their understanding and trust. The Agency is always willing to consider a man in a new light. This is the nature of the business. There are shadows, there are new lights. The deeper the ambiguity, the more we believe, the more we trust, the more we band together."

It was remarkable how often he talked to her about these things. The Agency was the one subject in his life that could never be exhausted. Central Intelligence. Beryl saw it as the best organized church in the Christian world, a mission to collect and store everything that everyone has ever said and then reduce it to a microdot and call it God. She needed to live in small dusty rooms, layered safely in, out of the reach of dizzying things, of heat and light and strange spaces, and Larry needed the great sheltering nave of the Agency. He believed that nothing can be finally known that involves human motive and need. There is always another level, another secret, a way in which the heart breeds a deception so mysterious and complex it can only be taken for a deeper kind of truth.

There were anemones in a bud vase on the table. The phone rang and Beryl went to her desk in the living room to answer. It was a man named Thomas Stainback. She knew from the tone of voice that it was a call Larry would take upstairs. She simply stood in the doorway. When he saw her, he got up from the table. She waited for him to climb the stairs to the guest room and pick up the phone and then she put the receiver down softly and went in to drink her coffee.

Parmenter said, "I'm here," and waited for Everett to ask the first question on the list.

"What do we know about schedule?"

"It looks like mid-November."

"That gives us time. I'm anxious to hear what Mackey is doing."

"He knows we've got Miami. I haven't told him when."

"Tell him right away."

"I can't find him," Parmenter said.

A pause on the other end.

"Is he reassigned?"

"I did some very delicate checking. He's not at the Farm or anywhere else he might logically be. There is no trace. It's begi

"It's a reassignment," Everett said,

"I looked into it, Win. I was extremely goddamn thorough.

He is not in a cover situation. He is supposed to be training JOTs and he isn't."

"Does it mean he's out? We can't operate without Mackey."

"He's setting up. That's all. He'll get in touch."

"He can't just walk away."

"He'll get in touch. You know the man is solid."

"I've had a foreboding," Everett said.

"He's setting up. I'll get in my car one morning and find him sitting there. He wants this to happen as much as we do."

"I've had a feeling these past weeks that something isn't right."

"Everything is right. The city, the time, the preparations. The man is absolutely solid."

"I believe in the power of premonitions."

Larry put down the phone. Downstairs he found Beryl at the table with the newspaper, her coffee and a pair of scissors. Pages were spread over the wineglasses and di

He'd stopped commenting on this oddness of hers. She said the news clippings she sent to friends were a perfectly reasonable way to correspond. There were a thousand things to clip and they all said something about the way she felt. He watched her read and cut. She wore half-glasses and worked the scissors grimly. She believed these were personal forms of expression. She believed no message she could send a friend was more intimate and telling than a story in the paper about a violent act, a crazed man, a bombed Negro home, a Buddhist monk who sets himself on fire. Because these are the things that tell us how we live.

Baby LeGrand stood at the end of the runway, knees bent, hands locked behind her neck, the drummer going boom to the jolt of her pelvis, and she sca

She did her trademark twirl of the breasts, one breast spi

Then she showered and wrapped herself in a towel and sat in the dressing room, smoking. This was the time when a cigarette was the purest pleasure known.