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in your eyes, and I wonder if you're
    thinking about her again."
    "I'm not thinking about her, Elizabeth."
    "What was her name? You've never told me her name."
    "Her name was Sarah."
    "Sarah," Elizabeth said. "Very pretty name, Sarah. Did you love her?"
    "Yes, I loved her."
    "Do you still love her?"
    "I love you."
    "And you're not answering my question."
    "No, I don't love her anymore."
    "God, you're a terrible liar. I thought spies were supposed to be good
    at deception."
    "I'm not lying to you. I've never lied to you. I've only kept things
    from you that I'm not allowed to tell you."
    "Do you ever think about her?"
    "I think about what happened to her, but I don't think about her."
    She rolled onto her side, turning her back to him. In the darkness,
    Michael could see her shoulders shaking. When he reached out to touch
    her, she said, "I'm sorry, Michael. I'm so sorry."
    "Why are you crying, Elizabeth?"
    "Because I'm mad as hell at you, and because I love you desperately.
    Because I want to have a baby with you, and I'm terrified about what's
    going to happen to us if I can't."
    "Nothing's going to happen to us. I love you more than anything in the
    world."
    "You don't love her anymore, do you, Michael?"
    "I love you, Elizabeth, and only you."
    She rolled over in the darkness and pulled his face to hers. He kissed
    her forehead and brushed tears from her eyes. He held her for a long
    time, listening to the wind in the trees outside their bedroom window,
    until her breathing assumed the rhythm of sleep.
    CHAPTER 7.
    The White House.
    ANNE BECKWITH HAD ONE RULE about dinner: Talking about politics was
    strictly forbidden. Politics had ruled their lives in the twenty-five
    years since her husband had been sucked into the GOP machine in
    California, and she was determined that for one hour each evening
    politics would not intrude. They dined in the family quarters of the
    Executive Mansion: the President, the First Lady, and Mitchell Elliott.
    Anne revered Italian cooking and secretly believed the country would be
    a better place if "we were a little more like the Italians and less like
    Americans." Beckwith, for the sake of his political career, had asked
    Anne to keep such views to herself. He resisted Anne's desire to
    vacation in Europe each summer, choosing "more American" settings
    instead. That summer they vacationed in Jackson Hole, which Anne, on the
    fourth day, renamed "Shit Hole."
    He indulged her when it came to food. That night, beneath soft
    candlelight, she had chosen fettuccini tossed with pesto, cream, and
    peas, followed by medallions of beef tenderloin, a salad, and cheese,
    all washed down by a costly fifteen-year-old bottle of Tuscan red wine.
    Throughout the meal, as White House stewards drifted silently in and out
    of the room with each new course, Anne Beckwith carefully guided the
    conversation from one safe topic to the next: new films she wanted to
    see, new books she had read, old friends, the children, the little villa
    in the Piedmont district of northern Italy where she planned to spend
    the first summer "after our sentence is over and we're both free again."
    The President looked exhausted. His eyes, normally a clear pale blue,
    were red and tired. He had endured a long tension-filled day. He had
    spent the morning with the heads of the agencies investigating the
    attack on the jetliner: the FBI and the National Transportation Safety
    Board. In the afternoon he had flown to New York and met with grieving
    relatives of the victims. He toured the crash site off Fire Island
    aboard a Coast Guard cutter and flew by helicopter to the town of Bay
    Shore to attend a prayer service for a group of local high school
    students killed in the tragedy. He had a tearful meeting with John
    North, a chemistry teacher whose wife, Mary, was the faculty sponsor of
    the trip to London.
    Vandenberg had scripted the events perfectly. On television the
    President looked like a leader, calmly in control of the situation.