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an innocent question: Dupree lacked the authority to challenge the highly secretive, all-powerful Internal Compliance Unit, and any reference to the limits of his authority was bound to infuriate him.
    Dupree’s little ears reddened. “I’m expecting a brief consult. If the spook hunters at ICU knew as much as they pretend, they might realize that you aren’t exactly cut out for that line of work.”
    His eyes shone with what she imagined was contempt.
    Anna loved her work, knew she was good at it. She didn’t require praise. All she wanted was not to have to spend her time and energy trying to hang on to her job, clinging by her fingernails. Again she kept her face a mask of neutrality. She felt the tension localize itself in her stomach. “I’m sure you did your best to make them understand.”
    A beat of silence. Anna could see he was debatinghow to reply. Dupree glanced at his beloved whiteboard, at the next item on his agenda. “We’ll miss you,” he said.
    Shortly after the meeting broke up, David Denneen sought her out in her tiny cubbyhole of an office. “The ICU wants you because you’re the best,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”
    Anna shook her head wearily. “I was surprised to see you at the meeting. You’re in operations oversight now. Doing great, by all accounts.” Word was he was on the fast track for a position in the AG’s office.
    “Thanks to you,” Denneen said. “I was there today as divisional representative. We take turns. Got to keep an eye on the budget numbers. And on you.” Gently, he placed a hand on hers. Anna noticed that the warmth in his eyes was mixed with concern.
    “It was good to see you there,” Anna said. “And send my best to Ramon.”
    “I’ll do that,” he said. “We’ll have to have you over for paella again.”
    “But there’s something else on your mind, isn’t there?”
    Denneen’s eyes didn’t leave hers. “Listen, Anna, your new assignment, whatever it is, isn’t going to be like getting a new call sheet. What people say around here is true—the ways of the Ghost are mysterious to man.” He repeated the old jest with little humor. The Ghost was an in-house nickname for the longtime director of the Internal Compliance Unit, Alan Bartlett. During closed hearings before the Senate subcommittee on intelligence, back in the seventies, a deputy attorney general had referred to him, archly, as “the ghost in the machine,” and the honorific had stuck. If Bartlett wasn’t ghostly, he was a legendarily elusive figure. Seldom seen, reputedly brilliant, he ruled over a rarefied dominion of highlyclassified audits, and his own reclusive habits made him emblematic of its clandestine ways.
    Anna shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never met him, and I don’t think I know anyone who has. Rumors thrive on ignorance, Dave. You of all people know that.”
    “Then take a word of advice from an ignoramus who cares about you,” he said. “I don’t know what this ICU thing is about. But be careful, O.K.?”
    “Careful how?”
    Denneen just shook his head, uneasily. “It’s a different world over there,” he said.
    Later that morning, Anna found herself in the immense marble lobby of an office building on M Street, on her way to her appointment at the Internal Compliance Unit. The unit’s workings were obscure even within the department, and its operational purview was—or so certain senators had occasionally charged—dangerously undefined. It’s a different world over there , Denneen had said, and so it seemed.
    The ICU was located on the tenth floor of this modern office complex in Washington, isolated from a bureaucracy it was sometimes obliged to scrutinize, and she tried not to gawk at the splashing indoor fountain, the green marble floors and walls. She thought: What kind of government agency gets fitted out like this? She got on the elevator. Even that was trimmed with marble.
    The only other passenger on the elevator was a