"I guess I should admire your precision."
"What are you talking about? I'm rounding like crazy."
"Please tell me you don't have a family."
Caston reddened.
"You must drive them crazy."
"Not at all," the auditor said, almost smiling. "Because, you see, they don't listen to a word I say."
"That must drive you crazy."
"Actually, it suits me just fine." There was a funny look on the auditor's face for a moment, and Ambler caught a glimpse of an attitude that was almost worshipful; the dry-as-dust auditor was a doting father, Ambler realized with surprise. Then Caston returned to the matter at hand, abruptly business-like. "The man who was with Undersecretary Whitneld, seated in her library-describe him to me in as much detail as you can."
Ambler now looked off into the distance and brought the image to mind. A man in his sixties. Silver hair, carefully groomed, above a high forehead. The forehead was remarkably unlined, the face fine featured and studious looking, the cheekbones high, the chin strong. Ambler started to describe the figure he recalled.
Caston listened and again lapsed into silence. Then he stood up, agitated; a vein was pulsing on his forehead. "It can't be," he breathed.
"It's what I remember," Ambler said.
"You're describing ... but it's impossible."
"Out with it."
Caston fiddled with his laptop computer, which he had plugged into the phone jack. After typing in a few commands into a search engine, he stepped aside and gestured for Ambler to take a look. The screen was filled with the image of a man. The very man Ambler had seen at Whitfield's house.
"That's him," Ambler confirmed, his voice hard with tension.
"Do you know who that man is?"
Ambler shook his head.
"His name is Ashton Palmer. Whitfield studied with him when she was a graduate student."
Ambler shrugged. "So?"
"Later she repudiated him and everything he stood for. Had no contact with him whatever. She wouldn't have had a career otherwise."
"I don't understand."
"Ashton Palmer-the name doesn't ring any bells?"
"Only vaguely," Ambler said.
"Maybe you're too young. There was a time, twenty, twenty-five years ago, when he was the brightest light of the foreign policy establishment. Wrote some widely reprinted articles in Foreign Affairs.
Both political parties were wooing him. He gave seminars in the Old Executive Office Building, in the West Wing, in the goddamn Oval Office. People hung on his every word. He was given an honorary appointment in the State Department, but he was bigger than that. He was destined to be the next Kissinger: one of those men whose vision leaves an imprint on history, for good or bad."
"So what happened?"
"A lot of people would say he self-destructed. Or maybe he just miscalculated. He came to be recognized as an extremist-a dangerous fanatic. He may have figured that his political and intellectual authority had reached the level where he could express his views frankly, and win people over to them by the simple fact that it was he who was making the arguments. If so, he was wrong. The views he expressed were dangerous, and would have put this country on a collision course with history. He gave a particularly incendiary speech at the Macmillan Institute for Foreign Policy, in D.C., and afterward a number of countries, thinking that he represented the government, or some faction of the government, actually threatened to recall their ambassadors. Can you imagine?"
"Hard to."
"The Secretary of State spent all night working the phones. Practically overnight, Palmer became persona non grata. He took up a teaching position in the Ivy Leagues, built an academic center of his own, was appointed to the board of directors of a somewhat fringe think tank in Washington. This image is taken from the Harvard Web site. But anyone at State who was too closely associated with him became an object of suspicion."
"So none of his people got anywhere."
"Actually, there are lots of Palmerites, all throughout government. Brilliant students, graduates of Harvard's Kennedy School or its graduate program in government. But if you want to have a career, anyway, you can't admit to being a Palmerite. And you certainly can't maintain any connection to the old rogue."
"Makes sense."
"Yet you saw the two of them together-and that doesn't."
"Slow down."
"We're talking about a major player of the State Department in the company of Professor Ashton Palmer. Do you realize how explosive that is? Do you realize how utterly ruinous that could have been to her? As a great American jurist once said, 'sunlight is the best disinfectant.' And it was the one thing they couldn't afford."
Ambler narrowed his eyes, brought