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for that, was he?”
    “We were here for the North trial,” she said. “Steady had booked us rooms for the next three months.”
    “Why so early?”
    “He was trying to arrange for a permanent seat in the courtroom.”
    “Did he know North?” Granville Haynes asked.
    “Not North,” she said. “But he’d known Secord since the Congo and, of course, Albert Hakim.” She paused. “And some of the others.”
    “Dear Albert,” Tinker Burns said and, displaying a remarkable flair for mimicry, added, “ ‘Just let us handle the money, Ollie, so you won’t be burdened with all that tedious bookkeeping.’ ”
    “Was he in on it, Tinker?” Haynes asked.
    “Steady? Nah. Nowhere near it. And it’s too bad in a way. If they’d’ve had Steady doing the retouch, Secord, Hakim, North and the others might be thinking about what they oughta say at Oslo when they got handed the peace prize.”
    Haynes turned to Padillo and said, “My old man and the truth were never more than nodding acquaintances.”
    “He was exactly what he claimed to be—a propagandist,” Gelinet said. “And a superb one.”
    Haynes stared at her. “That’s what I just said. What I don’t understand is why he’d want to spend weeks or even months in some courtroom.”
    “It was to be the epilogue,” she said.
    “To what?”
    “His memoirs. He thought the North verdict, however it goes, would serve as the perfect metaphor for an epilogue—although there won’t be one now.”
    “No book or no epilogue?” Padillo said.
    “No epilogue.”
    “But there will be a book?”
    She shrugged.
    “Who’s in it?”
    Isabelle Gelinet made a small but encompassing gesture that managed to capture the restaurant, Washington and half the world.
    Padillo rose. “Then I’ll have to buy a copy, won’t I?”

Chapter 5
    Standing at the very end of the long line, McCorkle rearranged his expression into one of terminal boredom and used a foot to shove his ancient one-suiter toward customs at Dulles International Airport. For years he had been convinced that a bored look, when combined with a suit and tie, made the perfect match to the U.S. Customs Service’s profile of the innocent traveler.
    Still looking bored, McCorkle watched two Federal dogs, both mutts, sniff out a pile of luggage for drugs. He continued to watch the dogs when a roving uniformed customs inspector appeared at his elbow and said, “Nice flight?”
    “Not bad.”
    “Could I see your passport?”
    McCorkle turned and began the search, slowly patting his pockets with no sign of panic. He finally removed the passport from his hip pocket, the last one left, and handed it over, trusting that his carefully unhurried search was another hallmark of innocence.
    The inspector opened the passport and leafed through it. “Frankfurt, huh?”
    “Frankfurt,” McCorkle agreed.
    “Business or pleasure?”
    “Neither. My wife’s brother died. We went to his funeral.”
    The inspector glanced around as if hoping to discover a Mrs. McCorkle. “She stayed on?”
    “There was some family business to clear up.”
    “Your wife’s first name, Mr. McCorkle?”
    “Fredl.”
    “Eine gute Deutsche Hausfrau, ja?”
    “Washington correspondent for a Frankfurt paper.”
    “You’re kidding. Which one?”
    After McCorkle told him, the inspector nodded approvingly and said, “The serious one.”
    “Profoundly so.”
    “And what do you do, Mr. McCorkle?” the inspector asked, his eyes pricing the five-year-old gray worsted Southwick suit McCorkle had bought on sale at Arthur Adler’s.
    “I run a saloon.”
    “In Washington?”
    “Right.”
    “What’s it called?”
    “Mac’s Place.”
    “Ate there once,” the inspector said. “Not bad.” He looked down at the passport again, read the name “Cyril McCorkle” aloud and looked up with a smile. “Bet everybody calls you Mac.”
    “You win.”
    The inspector bent down, marked the old suitcase with a piece of chalk, straightened and