Free Back Channel by Stephen L. Carter

not slow Harrington down. She worshipped her great-uncle the Union cavalry officer, who’d had a tendency to ride off on missions of his own choosing, always pointing to poor lines of communication to explain why he had ignored orders. He got away with it because his mad schemes usually paid dividends. Harrington had inherited her ancestor’s personality. In mid-July, without awaiting authorization, she sent an intermediary to meet Bobby Fischer in New York.
    The intermediary—the very same Borkland who would later interview Margo in Niemeyer’s office—returned that evening, as exhausted as if he had gone ten rounds with a champion boxer. Bobby was willing, said Borkland, but only on the condition that they pay him money—a great deal of money—and also arrange for a certain young lady to accompany him.
    It is in Harrington’s memorandum of this conversation for the SANTA GREEN file that the asset subsequently known as GREENHILL makes her first appearance. Within two days, Harrington had a bit of background on her, most of it the result of intermittent surveillance conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on GREENHILL ’s roommate, a suspected radical. J. Edgar Hoover’s grim men rarely shared material with the spies, but Harrington had done Hoover the occasional rather grubby favor, and in return he now and then sent her files that might be useful. The coincidence of the connection to Bobbymight have been God’s hand, or Harrington’s good fortune, but she was not about to reject it merely because she couldn’t explain it.
    After that, she went up to Vermont to visit Lorenz Niemeyer at his summer cottage. They had sandwiches and lemonade on the porch, where the susurrating insects provided a natural cover for their conversation. He didn’t want to hear operational details, said Niemeyer, although he still held his security clearance. And, no, he hadn’t had GREENHILL in class yet, but he had heard not entirely bad reports of her, and she was enrolled in his course on Conflict Theory in the coming fall. In the meanwhile—said Niemeyer—Harrington should pull the file on GREENHILL ’s father.
    “What file?”
    “Just look. Donald Jensen was his name.”
    “Look where?”
    He told her.
    “Why would I want to do that?”
    “Because some talents run in the blood.”
    “That’s absurd.”
    “Just look.”
    Getting the file proved difficult. She had to cash in more favors, this time at the Defense Department. But at last she was able to see a redacted version. Even incomplete, the tale was impressive.
    Back up to Vermont: none of this could be discussed on the telephone.
    “You knew him?”
    “I did.”
    “Even so. Those are the father’s accomplishments. Not the daughter’s. What makes her special?”
    “I promised to look out for his family.”
    “Sending her into harm’s way is looking out for her?”
    Niemeyer had the good grace to look embarrassed: a thing that she had never before witnessed. “She’s ambitious. She wants to be noticed. This will send her straight to the top of people’s lists.”
    “Assuming she survives.”
    “That’s your responsibility, not mine.”
    “There’s more to this than you’re telling me.”
    Niemeyer was his cool, diffident self again. “Use her or don’t use her. It’s entirely up to you.”
    Harrington hated him for that, as for many other sins, and for a week pretended that she might not need GREENHILL after all. But, no matter how hard she tried, she could not come up with a plausible alternative.
    She gave in—and the rest of the operation fell into place. Within days, she had a rudimentary plan of attack. There was no point in going back to Gwynn, and so Harrington chose a tactic known in the jargon as “plowing around the tree.” She stepped outside the chain of command and, ignoring Gwynn entirely, took her brief to Higher Authority: the undersecretary, at that time the second rank in the State Department, whom she had known in