Andrea felt dizzy and more than a little sick. “When she resigned from the board…” she began.

“Exactly. When the board voted to ask for her resignation, nobody had any idea that she would respond the way she did. But they should have. It breaks me up when I think back to it. During a weekend retreat of the trustees, she went on a bender. Fell off the wagon. I wasn’t there, but I heard the accounts. I’m sorry. This kind of thing must be so hard to hear.”

“It’s important to hear you say it,” Andrea choked out. “I need this.”

“And so the vote was taken. Precipitously, in my view. Laura was an incredibly vibrant and insightful human being. She brought so much to the board. And if she had a weakness, well, who among us does not? But the request for her resignation must have seemed punitive to her. She was angry and upset, and who could blame her? She responded just the way they should have anticipated. We don’t keep the liquor under lock and key at Katonah. She drank herself into a state of advanced intoxication.”

Andrea’s head was throbbing. The Balm of Gilead was what her mother had jokingly called it once upon a time. All those tumblers filled with ice cubes and vodka. But she had quit. She was clean and sober. She had put it behind her. Hadn’t she?

“As soon as someone discovered that she’d taken her car keys and had driven off, we sent a member of our security staff after her. To try to stop her, bring her back safe.” He looked stricken as he spoke. “But it was too late.”

The tanned man with the wheat-colored hair—Scanlon—returned with the sheet of telephone numbers.

“Registered to a Thomas Hill Green, Jr., sir,” he told Bancroft briskly. “Public-affairs officer of the U.S. Consulate General in Dubai. We’ll work up a bio on him.”

Bancroft turned to his cousin. “Does that seem possible?” Taking in her quizzical expression, he said, “Let’s call it now, why don’t we?” He gestured toward a compact black telephone console on a low table nearby.

Andrea pressed the SPEAKER button and then pressed the digits carefully. After a few seconds of fuzz and burbling came the purring tones of a ringing phone.

A friendly, almost chipper voice. “Tommy Green here.”

“I’m calling from the Bancroft Foundation,” Andrea said. “We’re trying to reach the public-affairs officer of the Consulate General.”

“You’re in luck,” said the voice. “How can I help? This about the education conference tonight?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Green,” Andrea said. “Mix-up on my end. I’m actually going to have to call you back.” She ended the phone call.

“The foundation does support some educational work in the Gulf,” Bancroft said cautiously. “If he’d been called, I assume it was to do with coordinating our Emirati programs. But I can look into it further if you like. We do hear reports about cellular numbers being ‘cloned’ by lawbreakers of various sorts. A way to stick other people with their phone bill.”

Andrea’s gaze drifted over to the bubbling creek. “Please don’t bother,” she said. She had been planning to ask him about the nameless man. Yet in the clear light of day, she was at a loss to say exactly what that man had done or said that was so troubling. When she even tried to frame the complaint in her head, it all seemed so hysterical, even to herself. The words died in her mouth.

“You know you can always ask me anything,” he said. “Whatever questions you have.”

“Thank you,” she said mechanically.

“You’re feeling foolish. Don’t. You did what I would have done. Someone hands you a gold coin, you grip it between your teeth, see if it’s real. You came across things that puzzled you. You needed to find out more. And you wouldn’t be put off. If this was a test, Andrea, you passed with flying colors.”

“A test. Is that what this was?” Despite herself, she spoke with a flare of heat.

“I didn’t say that.” The philosopher pressed his lips together, hesitated. “But we are tested—every day, every week, every year. Decisions confront us. Judgments must be made. And there are no answers in the back of the book. That’s why stupidity, like incuriousness, is a vice. A form of sloth. In the real world, decisions are always made under conditions of uncertainty. Knowledge is always partial. You act, there are consequences. You don’t act, there are consequences.”

“Like with that runaway trolley car of yours.”

“Ten years ago I failed to act, and we lost somebody I cared for very much.”

“My mother.” Andrea swallowed hard. “Did she know about…?”

“Theta? No. But we could have used someone like her.” His eyes were bright. “I know how much you must wonder about this part of her life. But you mustn’t be disappointed by what’s in the official record. You mother’s contributions were very real and very significant, more so than those sorts of documents could ever capture. Please know this.” He took a deep breath. “Laura. I think I loved her, in a way. I don’t mean that there was anything between us, anything romantic. It’s just that she was so alive, so vital, so good. Forgive me, I shouldn’t be troubling you with this.”

“I’m not her,” Andrea said in a small voice.

Andrea felt that she was about to cry, and was determined not to. What to believe? Who to trust? I trust your instincts, Paul Bancroft had said. But could she?

“Andrea, I’d like to make a proposal to you. I want you to join my inner council as an adviser. With your knowledge and insights—with your background in economic history—you’re perfectly equipped for the challenge. You could be useful to us. To the world.”

“I doubt that.”

“You’ve discovered I have feelings. Mirabile dictu.” A wan smile. “But I reverence reason. Make no mistake: My proposal is a rational one. Besides, I’m not exactly a spring chicken, as the boffins here regularly remind me. You see me here the host at an estate where I will soon no longer be the master. The ranks have to be replenished with those of the next generation. And we can’t simply take out an ad in the newspaper, can we? As I say, nobody must know what we do here. Even in the foundation proper, very few officers would fully appreciate the exigencies we deal with here.”

“Exigencies. I need to know more about what really happens here.”

“Soon you will. At least, that’s my hope. It’s a stepwise process. You can’t throw algebraic topology at a student before he’s done geometry. Education is about sequence. We can’t make sense of information if it comes out of order. Knowledge builds on knowledge. But I have no worries. As I’ve had reason to remark, you’re a fast learner.”

“Then shouldn’t you start by explaining your worldview?” Andrea said, allowing herself a hint of sarcasm.

“No, Andrea. Because it’s already your worldview. The Bancroft strategy—you’ve already articulated it about as well as anyone ever has.”

“I feel like I’ve wandered someplace far away. We are definitely not in Kansas anymore.”

“Listen to me, Andrea. Listen to your own arguments, the voice of reason in your own head and heart. You’ve come home.”

“Home?” She focused now. “You know, I listen to you and everything sounds right as rain. Everything has the rightness of two plus two equals four. But I have to wonder.”

“I want you to wonder. We need people who wonder and who ask hard questions.”

“A secret organization that does secret acts. What I want to know is, where are the boundaries? What is it that you won’t do?”

“In pursuit of the good? Trust me, these are issues we constantly wrestle with. As I say, each of us is tested, all the time.”

“That’s an awfully abstract reply.”

“To an awfully abstract question.”

“So give me some details.”

The response was gentle but unyielding. “When you’re ready.”

Andrea stared at the flowing water through the sheltered glade, saw the sun sieved through the needles of tall pine trees. Their vast branches, she realized, concealed the facility from aerial view.

So much here was concealed from view.

Indeed, much was doubtless still concealed from her.

Exigencies. Activities. Interventions.

Andrea herself had something to conceal. Paul Bancroft’s reasoning was plausible, but disturbing to her as well. He was not someone who would shy from the logical conclusions of his own premises. And the steely logic of his doctrines would easily lead to actions that were outright unlawful. Would Paul Bancroft really hesitate to take the law into his own hands? Did he recognize the authority of any rules that did not arise from his own intricate system of morality?

“Then we’ll need to learn how to fit in with you. Personal styles will vary. And that’s fine—so long as the Bancroft strategy remains constant. Will you at least think about it?”

Part of her felt guilty for deceiving him. Yet if she decided that he was the moral paragon she had first taken him to be, she would have done no real harm. “I’m unlikely not to.”

“Just remember,” the spry savant said, arching an eyebrow. “Doing the right thing isn’t always easy.”

She recalled his remarks about bad acts with good consequences. Ecrasez l’infame!—Crush the horror! But too often, she knew, the effort to crush the horror became itself another horror.

“I guess my real worry is that I’ll disappoint you,” she lied. She tried to keep her voice from trembling. “You have these expectations of me. I don’t know that I can live up to them.”

“Are you willing to try?”

She took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said. “I am.” She forced a smile.

Bancroft smiled back, yet there was now something elusive and guarded about his expression. Had he fully accepted her display of enthusiasm? She would have to be careful. She could well find herself under surveillance. Bancroft’s team wouldn’t trust her yet: She could tell that much. She had been entrusted with a secret. That made her a potential asset—or a potential threat. She could not afford to do anything to alarm them.

The ambiguous admonition of the nameless man in Katonah returned to her, and the words were like a dark cloud passing over the sun: You of all people should know what can happen.