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passionate matinee kiss, then dropped into the empty chair beside his wife. Amy seized the back of her chair to steady herself and gasped, “I love it when the Tarkingtons come to dinner.”
    â€œTwo days you’ve been gone,” Rita said icily to Toad, “and I don’t get the romantic treatment. Is this a hint?”
    â€œStand up, babe.”
    As everyone cheered, Toad gave Rita a movie kiss like the one he had bestowed on Amy. When they broke, Rita’s cheeks were flushed.
    â€œWell,” Toad demanded, “are we still a number?”
    â€œYou’ve sold me, Toad-man. Sit down and behave yourself.”
    Trust the ol’ Horny Toad to lighten the mood, Jake thought. He winked at Callie and had a sip of wine.
    â€œIs this what we have to look forward to?” Fairchild asked Jack Yocke, who put his hand on hers.
    â€œToad may have one more good smooch in him, if you ask him nice,” Yocke replied. Fairchild joined in the laughter. Tarkington rescued his son from his boss’s lap and installed him in the high chair.
    After dinner Rita insisted on helping Callie with the dishes. Toad got into a conversation with Amy about college—she was a student at Georgetown—so Jake led Yocke into the living room. Greta Fairchild stayed with the men.

    â€œHow goes the war against terror these days?” Yocke asked. The fact that Jake was currently assigned to the antiterrorism task force was public information, but his duties were not. After knowing Grafton for years, Yocke well knew that he would not get anything classified from him. Nor could he use Jake as a source, even an anonymous one. Grafton was, in the lingo of journalists, deep background.
    Grafton’s answer to the reporter’s question was a shrug. Yocke glanced at Greta, who blandly met his eyes. She had no intention of being shuffled off to the kitchen. Yocke gave up. He leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other.
    They talked politics for a while. Greta was not shy about voicing her opinion, which the admiral listened to with interest. Finally he said to Yocke, “So what’s wrong with the CIA?”
    Yocke snorted. “The organization was put together after World War Two to keep an eye on the Russians. The mission was to prevent World War Three, and everything else was secondary to that.”
    â€œYet they missed the collapse of communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union,” Grafton mused, “the most significant political event in Russia since the 1917 Revolution. Not a soul at the CIA even suggested that the collapse of communism was a possibility. Then, bang, it happened, leaving every policy maker in Washington stupefied with surprise. Why was that?”
    â€œAll I can tell you is what my sources say—”
    â€œLarded with your own opinions,” Greta Fairchild interjected.
    â€œNaturally,” Yocke said, not missing a beat. “The KGB was very good at rooting out Soviets who were spying for the U.S. And various American traitors were busy betraying these people to the KGB for money. Add in the natural aversion of liberals for intelligence bureaucracies—gentlemen don’t read other people’s mail, and after all, it is cultural imperialism—and you have an outfit that decided
it could find out what it needed to know by signal intelligence and imagery, which is satellite and aircraft reconnaissance. The agency never had enough good sources in high places in Moscow to let them see the big picture of what was really going on.”
    â€œThey missed nine-eleven, too,” Jake murmured.
    â€œFrom what I hear, analysts at the agency were saying that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was not an isolated threat. The Clinton administration didn’t want to hear it. Then came the USS Cole . But still, the agency is structured to warn us if the Russians are preparing for World War Three, not tell us who in the mosques and bazaars