It was not the money that had made him take on the job. What, then? He supposed Louise was right. What greater challenge could there be than to write the official biography of his own father-in-law, one of the fiercest and most controversial of that last cohort of Cold Warriors who had, so they believed, brought the Evil Empire to the dust?

“You know you’ll have to give the manuscript to the boys at Langley for their okay,” his father-in-law had told him, with that famous twinkle. “There are some things that can never get told.” And Glass, remembering that remark, thought again now of Nixon, poor old Tricky Dick, sweating under the arc lamps, in another age.

David Sinclair arrived. He was tall and sleekly slim, like his mother, but black-haired and swarthy where she was russet and pearl-Rubin Sinclair, his father, was a hirsute and barely civilized redneck from Kentucky. David was handsome, in a dandyish sort of way, but his slightly protruding eyes were set unfortunately close together-whenever Glass contemplated his stepson he recalled Truman Capote saying of Marlene Dietrich that if her eyes had been a fraction nearer to each other she would have been a chicken. Waspish, wicked Truman. Glass had tried to interview him once, over a hopelessly bibulous lunch at the Four Seasons in the middle of which the sozzled novelist had laid his cheek on the tablecloth and gone noisily to sleep. Glass at the time was young enough not to be embarrassed, and contentedly finished his broiled squab and the remains of a bottle of Mouton Rothschild, calm in the knowledge that the lavish treat was being paid for by the Sunday Times of London.

“Hello,” David Sinclair said to Glass, sliding sinuously into his seat and unfolding a napkin across his lap. His attitude always toward his stepfather was one of amused skepticism. “How is the great world?”