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colleague’s arm. “I believe Miss Jensen isreferring to Varna, New York.” To Margo: “The Varna we are asking about is in Bulgaria.”
    She colored. “Oh. No. I’ve never been anywhere in Europe.”
    Stilwell: “Well, you’re going now.”
    Borkland greedily snatched back the narrative. “There’s a State Department program that provides grants for student journalists to report from abroad, especially behind the Iron Curtain. You applied for a fellowship.”
    “I didn’t.”
    “Well, no, not exactly.” A shy smile. “But you were approved anyway.” He slid the form from his briefcase, handed it over. “Take a look.”
    She did. There were the various questions answered in her own block capitals, and there was the essay, in her own handwriting, complete with the little dagger-strikes for the lowercase “g” and “j,” and the many cross-outs that characterized her writing in haste. Reading the lines, she could almost imagine penning them. Her boyfriend was teaching her to play chess, the essay explained, and she wanted to go to Varna, the Bulgarian one, to watch the Chess Olympiad, where several dozen countries would send squads of four players each to battle over the course of a month for gold and silver medals. Thus would she combine her interests in chess and study of the Cold War.
    The essay looked and sounded exactly like her work.
    The trouble was, she had never seen it before.
    “I don’t understand,” said Margo, managing to keep the tremor out of her voice. “Who wrote this?”
    Borkland tapped the signature line. “You did.”

FOUR
The Social Contract
I
    “This is a forgery,” she said after a moment.
    “It’s as genuine as it needs to be.” Stilwell’s chilly voice brooked no argument. “Maybe we were a little naughty. Let’s get past that, shall we?”
    “So—you want me to go to Bulgaria?” She looked at the paper. “To the Chess Olympiad? This is how you want me to—to protect my country? Why?”
    Borkland slipped the application from her hand and slid it back into his briefcase. He pointed the pipestem her way. “Well, this is where we have a problem,” he said, with a confiding frown. “We don’t actually want you to go. If we could spare you the trip, we would. Unfortunately, Miss Jensen, the matter is out of our hands. There is someone else we need rather urgently to do something for us there—well, for America, really—and he adamantly refuses to help us unless we send you, too. So here we are.”
    Mystification, fear, fury: all were swirling now. At least she understood what Stilwell was so angry about. “Who is he?” When they said nothing, she asked a different way: “Why won’t he go without me?”
    The diplomat gave a doleful shrug. “Alas, the identity of the gentleman in question cannot be disclosed until you have agreed to make the trip. And the information in any case is not ours to vouchsafe. You’ll have to come to Washington to get your explanation. All I am allowed to tell you this afternoon is that your country needs you.”
    “You expect me to agree to fly to Europe, with a man you refuse to name, and you won’t tell me why?” She finally exploded. “What kind of woman do you think I am?”
    At this Stilwell smirked and made a note. Borkland’s tone became if anything meeker. The pipe appeared to have burned out. “My apologies, Miss Jensen. Certainly it isn’t that sort of trip. We’ll send a chaperone. An older woman. What we call a minder.” She was about to reply, but he lifted a finger. “All I can tell you at this moment is that the task we need the gentleman in question to perform is vital to the nation’s security. Nobody else can do it, and, as I said, he will not do it unless you go. Unfortunate, but there it is. He rather has us over the proverbial barrel, Miss Jensen. Thus this visit.”
    Margo’s fear was growing, but so was a peculiar thrill of excitement. The national security apparatus of the United States was