"I've done that once or twice myself," I admitted.

She went on, "I drove up to the guard booth and explained I'd taken a wrong turn. Talk about a creepy place. God. All these big warning signs saying things like' Armed Forces Experimental Training Activity,' and 'Entering This Facility Signifies Your Consent to the Search of Your Person and Personal Property.' I was half expecting a SWAT team of Neanderthals in camouflage to bolt out of the bushes and haul me away."

"The base police are not a friendly lot," I said, somewhat amused.

"Well, I wasted no time getting the hell out of there," Abby said, "and, in truth, forgot all about it until four days later when two FBI agents appeared in the lobby of the Post looking for me. They wanted to know what I'd been doing in Williamsburg, why I'd driven to Camp Peary. Obviously, my plate number had been recorded on film and traced back to the newspaper. It was weird."

"Why would the FBI be interested?"

I asked. "Camp Peary is CIA."

"The CIA has no enforcement powers in the United States. Maybe that's why. Maybe the jerks were really CIA agents posing as FBI. Who can say what the hell is going on when you're dealing with those spooks? Besides, the CIA has never admitted that Camp Peary is its main training facility, and the agents never mentioned the CIA when they interrogated me. But I knew what they were getting at, and they knew I knew."

"What else did they ask?"

"Basically, they wanted to know if I was writing something about Camp Peary, maybe trying to sneak in. I told them if I had intended to sneak in, I would have been a little more covert about it than driving straight to the guard booth, and though I wasn't currently working on anything about, and I quote, 'the CIA,' maybe now I ought to consider it."

"I'm sure that went over well," I said dryly.

"The guys didn't bat an eye. You know the way they are."

"The CIA is paranoid, Abby, especially about Camp Peary. State police and emergency medical helicopters aren't allowed to fly over it. Nobody violates that airspace or gets beyond the guard booth without being cleared by Jesus Christ."

"Yet you've made that same wrong turn before, as have hundreds of tourists," she reminded me. "The FBI's never come looking for you, have they?"

"No. But I don't work for the Post. " I removed the steaks from the grill and she followed me into the kitchen. As I served the salads and poured wine, she continued to talk.

"Ever since the agents came to see me, peculiar things have been happening."

"Such as?"

"I think my phones are being tapped."

"Based on what?"

"It started with my phone at home. I'd be talking to someone and hear something. This has also happened at work, especially of late. A call will be transferred, and I have this strong sense that someone else is listening in. It's hard to explain."

She nervously rearranged her silverware. "A static, a noisy silence, or however you want to describe it. But it's there."

"Any other peculiar things?"

"Well, there was something several weeks ago. I was standing out in front of a People's Drug Store off Connecticut, near Dupont Circle. A source was supposed to meet me there at eight P.M., then we were going to find some place quiet to have dinner and talk. And I saw this man. Clean cut, dressed in a windbreaker and jeans, nice looking. He walked by twice during the fifteen minutes I was standing on the corner, and I caught a glimpse of him again later when my appointment and I were going into the restaurant. I know it sounds crazy, but I had the feeling I was being followed."

"Had you ever seen this man before?"

She shook her head.

"Have you seen him since?"

"No," she said. "But there's something else. My mail. I live in an apartment building. All the mailboxes are downstairs in the lobby. Sometimes I get things with postmarks that don't make sense."

"If the CIA were tampering with your mail, I ran assure you that you wouldn't know about it."

"I'm not saying my mail looks tampered with. But in several instances, someone - my mother, my literary agent - will swear they mailed something on a certain day, and when I finally get it, the date on the postmark is inconsistent with what it should be. Late. By days, a week. I don't know."

She paused. "I probably would just assume it had to do with the ineptitude of the postal service, but with everything else that's been going on, it's made me wonder."

"Why would anyone be tapping your phone, tailing you, or tampering with your mail?"

I asked the critical question.

"If I knew that, maybe I could do something about it."

She finally got around to eating. "This is wonderful."

Despite the compliment, she didn't appear the least bit hungry.

"Any possibility," I suggested bluntly, "that your encounter with these FBI agents, the episode at Camp Peary, might have made you paranoid?"

"Obviously it's made me paranoid. But look, Kay. It's not like I'm writing another Veil or working on a Watergate. Washington is one shoot-out after another, the same old shit. The only big thing brewing is what's going on here. These murders, or possible murders, of these couples. I start poking around and run into trouble. What do you think?"

"I'm not sure."

1 uncomfortably recalled Benton Wesley's demeanor, his warnings from the night before.

"I know the business about the missing shoes," Abby said.

I did not respond or show my surprise. It was a detail that, so far, had been kept from reporters.

"It's not exactly normal for eight people to end up dead in the woods without shoes and socks turning up either at the scenes or inside the abandoned cars."

She looked expectantly at me.

"Abby," I said quietly, refilling our wineglasses, "you know I can't go into detail about these cases. Not even with you."

"You're not aware of anything that might clue me in as to what I'm up against?"

"To tell you the truth, I probably know less than you do."

"That tells me something. The cases have been going on for two and a half years, and you may know less than I do."

I remembered what Marino said about somebody "covering his ass."

I thought of Pat Harvey and the congressional hearing. My fear was kicking in.

Abby said, "Pat Harvey is a bright star in Washington."

"I'm aware of her importance."

"There's more to it than what you read in the papers, Kay. In Washington, what parties you get invited to mean as much as votes. Maybe more. When it comes to prominent people included on the elite guest lists, Pat Harvey is right up there with the First Lady. It's been rumored that come the next presidential election, Pat Harvey may successfully conclude what Geraldine Ferraro started."

"A vice-presidential hopeful?"

I asked dubiously.

"That's the gossip. I'm skeptical, but if we have another Republican President, I personally think she's at least got a shot at a Cabinet appointment or maybe even becoming the next Attorney General. Providing she holds together."

"She's going to have to work very hard at holding herself together through all this."

"Personal problems can definitely ruin your career, " Abby agreed.

"They can, if you let them. But if you survive them, they can make you stronger, more effective."

"I know," she muttered, staring at her wineglass. "I'm pretty sure I never would have left Richmond if it hadn't been for what happened to Henna."

Not long after I had taken office in Richmond, Abby's sister, Henna, was murdered. The tragedy had brought Abby and me together professionally. We had become friends. Months later she had accepted the job at the Post.

"It still isn't easy for me to come back here," Abby said. "In fact, this is my first time since I moved. I even drove past my old house this morning and was halfway tempted to knock on the door, see if the current owners would let me in. I don't know why. But I wanted to walk through it again, see if I could handle going upstairs to Henna's room, replace that horrible last image of her with something harmless. It didn't appear that anyone was home. And it probably was just as well. I don't think I could have brought myself to do it."