1

Loring walked out the side entrance of the Justice Department and looked for a taxi. It was nearly five thirty, a spring Friday, and the congestion in the Washington streets was awful. Loring stood by the curb and held up his left hand, hoping for the best. He was about to abandon the effort when a cab that had picked up a fare thirty feet down the block stopped in front of him.

“Going east, mister? It’s O.K. This gentleman said he wouldn’t mind.”

Loring was always embarrassed when these incidents occurred. He unconsciously drew back his right forearm, allowing his sleeve to cover as much of his hand as possible—to conceal the thin black chain looped around his wrist, locked to the briefcase handle.

“Thanks, anyway. I’m heading south at the next corner.”

He waited until the taxi reentered the flow of traffic and then resumed his futile signaling.

Usually, under such conditions, his mind was alert, his feelings competitive. He would normally dart his eyes in both directions, ferreting out cabs about to disgorge passengers, watching the corners for those dimly lit roof signs that meant this particular vehicle was for hire if you ran fast enough.

Today, however, Ralph Loring did not feel like running. On this particular Friday, his mind was obsessed with a terrible reality. He had just borne witness to a man’s being sentenced to death. A man he’d never met but knew a great deal about. An unknowing man of thirty-three who lived and worked in a small New England town four hundred miles away and who had no idea of Loring’s existence, much less of the Justice Department’s interest in him.

Loring’s memory kept returning to the large conference room with the huge rectangular table around which sat the men who’d pronounced the sentence.

He had objected strenuously. It was the least he could do for the man he’d never met, the man who was being maneuvered with such precision into such an untenable position.

“May I remind you, Mr. Loring,” said an assistant attorney general who’d once been a judge advocate in the navy, “that in any combat situation basic risks are assumed. A percentage of casualties is anticipated.”

“The circumstances are different. This man isn’t trained. He won’t know who or where the enemy is. How could he? We don’t know ourselves.”

“Just the point.” The speaker then had been another assistant AG, this one a recruit from some corporation law office, fond of committee meetings, and, Loring suspected, incapable of decisions without them. “Our subject is highly mobile. Look at the psychological profile, ‘flawed but mobile in the extreme.’ That’s exactly what it says. He’s a logical choice.”

“ ‘Flawed but mobile’! What in heaven’s name does that mean? May I remind this committee that I’ve worked in the field for fifteen years. Psychological profiles are only screening guidelines, hit-and-miss judgments. I would no more send a man into an infiltration problem without knowing him thoroughly than I would assume the responsibility for NASA mathematics.”

The chairman of the committee, a career professional, had answered Loring.

“I understand your reservations; normally, I’d agree. However, these...