bobby-pinned to the side of her head presented me with a silver tray of noisemakers and hats. I selected a horn with metallic purple fringe but passed on the hat.
“Where’s your holiday spirit, kid?” Anderson asked from behind me. He was wearing two pointed hats atop his head like devil’s horns, the elastic digging into his double chin. His suit jacket was already off, the back of his tuxedo shirt translucent with sweat.
“Will Baby New Year be making another appearance tonight?” I asked, referring to the time he’d stripped down to a white sheet wrapped around his crotch, stuck a giant pacifier in his mouth, and clutched a bottle of rum at our New Year’s Eve celebration in Kandy.
“The night’s still young!”
“Speaking of holiday spirits, where can a girl get a drink?” My insides were already warm from the three glasses of Dom Pérignon I’d drunk at home, but I wanted to keep the feeling from dissipating; I wanted to keep my thoughts of Irina at bay, at least temporarily.
Anderson handed me his half-full punch glass. “Ladies first.”
I downed it, blew my horn at him, then waved to the waiter with a fresh tray of drinks. Anderson asked if I wanted to dance, and I told him maybe later. I’d already spotted the man Frank wanted me to get to know better across the dance floor.
I watched Anderson go back to a table full of people who cheered his return, then turned my attention back to my man. Henry Rennet stood catercorner to the stage, watching the Eartha Kitt knockoff sing “Santa Baby.” I bypassed Anderson’s table, skirted the dance floor, and found a spot opposite the stage from Henry. Then I waited. The band finished the song and the singer sashayed over to the clock to move its hands to ten thirty. The crowd cheered; Henry snickered, but he raised his glass to the last hour and a half of 1957 anyway. Then he looked my way.
* * *
—
What I knew about Henry Rennet: Yale boy. Grew up on Long Island but said “the City” when asked. Just five years and three months into the Agency, his meteoric rise within SR raised suspicions. Lived alone in a one-bedroom walk-up across the bridge in Arlington paid for by his parents. A linguistics man—fluent in Russian, German, and French. Spent the year between Yale and the Agency “backpacking” across Europe—which really meant hopping from one five-star hotel to the next on his parents’ dime. Orange-haired, freckled, and thick-necked, but did better with women than one might suspect. Had dated two members of the typing pool—in the loosest imaginable terms—neither of whom was aware the other had also dated him. Best friends with Teddy Helms, for reasons Irina did not understand. But I understood. Those Ivy League boys always stuck together.
The other thing about Henry Rennet, and the reason I was at the party, was that Frank thought he might be a mole. Frank had first told me about his suspicions months earlier, shortly after enlisting me for the book mission, and I’d put out a few feelers. When I returned from Italy, he asked that I get to know Henry better.
See, all Agency men had big egos—but usually flexed them only within their own circles. Henry had the type of ego that could get him into trouble. He was seen as a braggart. That and his known drinking problem were enough to raise a few flags.
I didn’t bring it up, and I hoped the rumors weren’t true, but I’d heard rumblings that Frank’s mental faculties had recently been called into question—some saying he just wasn’t the same after the failed mission in Hungary, some attributing his obsession with rooting out a Soviet mole to his diminishing competency.
* * *
—
After some chitchat by the stage, a few spins around the dance floor, and two glasses of punch, Henry suggested we go somewhere private to talk. The singer had already moved the hands of the clock to eleven forty-five and the crowd was readying itself with poppers, cranks, and drink refills for the midnight toast. We slipped away, and on our way out, he plucked a bottle of champagne from a silver bucket. “For our own toast,” he said, holding it up like a trophy.
“Where we headed?”
Henry didn’t answer, walking two paces in front of me. Normally, I was the one to take the lead, and as I quickened my pace, I tripped on a bump in the carpeting and